Monday, April 20, 2009

$US400 Xbox 360 Game of the Year Bundle Confirmed

11:39PM April 20, 2009 | Mark Wilson

The rumours were right. Microsoft is releasing a “Game Of The Year Bundle” including the Xbox 360 Elite, Halo 3 and Fable 2 for $US400—the same price of the standalone Elite console. It’s not an AMAZING deal, but if you’re looking to “jump in” to the Xbox 360, these are games you’ll want to play anyway. The bundle should be available anytime between now and soon. [Major Nelson]

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Online

Study Finds Pirates Buy 10x More Music Online than Non-Pirates

11:28PM April 20, 2009 | Mark Wilson

A study from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download free music from services like BitTorrent are also the biggest legitimate consumers of downloadable music.

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Toshiba’s SpursEngine Chip to Improve Internet Videos with PS3 Tech

10:50PM April 20, 2009 | Mark Wilson

Toshiba’s new SprusEngine chip can’t do anything about annoying internet memes, but it does promise to include their image quality a bit.

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SmartTrack Neo Multitouch Pad for PC Lets You Do the Pinching Thing

10:28PM April 20, 2009 | Jesus Diaz

If you have a PC you don’t have to be envious about the multitouch pad in MacBooks: Now you can replace your mouse with a big ugly thing and do the same magic moves. Wheee.

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Mobile

KDDI (au) Targets Accident-Prone Sunbathers With Water-Resistant, Solar-Powered Handset

9:05PM April 20, 2009 | John Herrman

Manufactured for KDDI (au) by Sharp, this outdoorsy phone should show up in Japan by June. Unlike the unrealistic claims made by other solar phone dabblers like Samsung, KDDI’s ambitions here are modest, but practical.

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Mobile

European Release Date For HTC Magic Set At May 5th

8:20PM April 20, 2009 | John Herrman

HTC’s second Android handset looks as though it’s been subjected to its last delay, with a listing for a May 5th release on Vodafone UK’s website.

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Software

Adobe Aggressively, Officially Promoting Flash For HDTVs, DVRs

6:52PM April 20, 2009 | John Herrman

To date, Adobe’s efforts to push Flash to TVs have passed mostly under the radar, and haven’t netted many actual products. This is about to change, according to a forthcoming announcement from the company.

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Entertainment

VHS Cover Wall Is 3600-Strong, May or May Not Have A Tanning Salon Out Back

6:08PM April 20, 2009 | John Herrman

Our children may never get to experience the revelatory joy of wandering through the miles of barely organised VHS shelves of a sleepy local video store, but at least they’ll have this. [3600 via Metafilter]

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Gaming

R18+ Discussion Paper Heading Public, Doesn’t Guarantee An Adult Rating

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4:00PM April 20, 2009 | Nick Broughall

After plenty of online commentary, bickering, arguments and maybe the odd fistfight, the battle for an R18+ rating for games may have taken a step towards existence today after the AGs from around the country failed to reach a unanimous decision regarding the R18+ discussion paper. According to Gamespot AU, instead of being caught up in a tangle of disagreement, the Commonwealth Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, has taken it upon his department to release the discussion paper to the public. More »


Software

Get MMS Working On Your Australian iPhone With The 3.0 Beta Now

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2:30PM April 20, 2009 | Nick Broughall

We saw the US team offer up a guide on how to get MMS working on your iPhone with the 3.0 beta software a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn’t all that useful to us Australians. Fortunately, the guys over at Whirlpool have all the necessary carrier files for the Australian networks in one handy Wiki page. More »