Halo Legends

Games have always been taken into movies and series, either live action or anime. Devil May Cry, Tekken, Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, Final Fantasy and so on. Now Toei Animation, along with The BONES, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio 4°C, will bring to the list Halo Legends, an anthology of seven short films based on the Halo game franchise by Microsoft Studios.

Microsoft's creative staff is approving the visuals and storytelling. Three of the creative directors are Frank O'Connor of Microsoft's 343 Industries, Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed), and Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers).

Aramaki's short will cover the history of the Spartan warrior class from the games. Studio 4°C will animate two 30-minute shorts about "the entire 100,000 year history of the Halo universe." Toei's short "is outside of the official canon and pokes fun at some of the game's characters."

Warner Brothers will release the anthology on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and digital in early 2010.

The trailer (this next video) was shown this past Thursday at the San Diego Comic Con.

An the Wars continue... Google vs Bing

We all know Google, and some off us know of the existence of Bing, the search engine Microsoft created to battle the gigantic nemesis Google. So the question is, which one is better? Now you can find out for yourself! Google vs Bin @ www.bing-vs-google.com shows both sites results side-by-side in real-time.

Bing has a few features on it's side taskbar to display related searches and has a search history feature. But can it compete with the champion, whose name has become a standard for web search. Time will tell.

In the meantime, give Bing-vs-Google.com a try, which one do you prefer and why?

It's War!! Send More Megapixels!!!

I was reading on a photography website an article titled, "Why Moore's Law does not apply to Digital Photography". There is a lot of great info in it, but one point talked about the limit when it comes to megapixels. I know this might sound old, and some people already know this, but most of them still believe that more megapixels make a better 4"x6"print out.

We have the main brand's like Sony, Nikon and Canon showing of to see who has the biggest sensor... camera sensor, which means more megapixels. But the sensor isn't the problem. It's the Glass, that thing that forms the lens and make the light go through and captures your family photos. Ray Maxwell points out that lenses will reach their limit and simply adding more pixels to the sensor won't result in higher quality photos.
So while laptop and desktop computers do obey Moore's Lay, camera glass lenses don't. Maxwell says "If someone produces a 35mm full frame camera with 100 Megapixels, beware. Given the limitations of the wavelength of light, no lens can live up to that resolution".

This brings us to what is being done today in this area. More features are being added instead of megapixels. HD video, wider wide-angle lenses and wireless to name a few. LCD touch screen just like the iPhones would be a great addition to the feaures, especially in the point-and-shoot department. Apps anyone? How about a Ponarama Mode that automatically crops your pics on the fly and puts them together in just a couple of seconds.


Do you wish your digital camera could run applications like the iPhone does? What other new features would you like to see on a new digital point-and-shoot or SLR?





(Source : www.luminous-landscape.com)

Microsoft Releases Office 2010

Today, Monday 13, computer giant Microsoft released an invitation only preview of Office 2010.

"RSVP only" means mortals like me and you, who are not part of the WorldWide Partner Conference nor are we assisting to the TechEd Show, will not get a peek of this new version... or will we? There is a Technical Preview that can be found in the wild. Search and you shall find...

Also, Microsoft won't show the biggest change made on Office, the browser based version of Excel, PoserPoint, Word and OneNote. Well played Microsoft, this way we will be able to work on documents in any computer that has access to the web! YEAH!! Oh, wait... Google Docs anyone? I think someones development team is using too much CopyPaste.
The browser version will work with Safari, Firefox and IE, as does Google Docs.

Anyway... the desktop beta version is expected to be released by the end of this year and will be found in a 32 and 64 bit version.

The software included will be Excel, Infopath Designer and Editor, Access, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, SharePoint and the well known Word. They will come in 4 versions : (1)Home and Student, (2)Home and Business, (3)Professional Standard and (3) Professional Plus.

And now... a Video!




(Source : www.cnet.com)

Google Chome OS!

Yes, it's true... Google announced yesterday Google Chrome OS, based on the web browser of the same name. There's no official download release date, but we can expect it somewhere around the second half of 2010.

Google posted on their Official Blog some of the features :

"We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

Could this be the OS that brings Windows down? or any other OS for that matter? I really doubt it. Apple's OS does a lot of great things and has great features that Microsoft's OS doesn't, and still it only has around 5% market share. Maybe next time or next OS...

Thanks for reading.

(Source : www.nytimes.com)

@ the Hospital.

Yes, that is where my MacBook Pro is at this moment. It got sick, poor thing.

Apparently someone in NVIDIA made an Oopsy! because their graphic card, GeForce 8600 GT, malfunctions in some MacBook Pro models made between May 2007 and September 2008. But they aknowledged it publicly and the good news is that if it fails within 3 years of its original purchase, you get it repaired without any charge, even if you dont have Apple Care.

Here are some pics of the sad situation my computer is in. Get well soon!

China owns iPhone!

Yes, we know they have a lot of copy and replicas there, and this is no exception. A local company by the name Hanwang Technology Co. owns the trademark of "i-phone".

Appla is planning on introducing the God Phone in China next year and has already made an agreement with Chin Unicom, the telecommunications company, but hasn't talked to Hanwang. Apple registered the iPhone in the hardware and software category en 2002, but the chineese company owns the phone category.

By law Apple cannot sell the iPhone unless they get the trademark from Hanwang, or they come up with a deal.

OOPSY! What would Steve Jobs do?



(Source : Sillicon Valley Insider)

PS3 Slim

I believe everyone saw this coming, I mean PS2 went on a diet, why not PS3, right?

Companies that sound just like two new team members of the Transformers family, Foxconn and Pegatron, are already working on this new slim model and say that will have the system ready for shipping at the end of the month.

Also, there are rumors of a price cut all around the gaming industry, and this sounds obvious, new systems, new hardware, new price. Also the 80GB version is saying bye-bye and it's big brother, the 160GB PS3, will become a standard. There is no proof yet about the price cut, but history tells us that there is a posibility of going down $100 USD per system.

In other news, Microsoft is releasing a new version of its Xbox 360 called "Pro". It's hard to come up with new names, isn't it... anyways, the Elite gets a price cut and both these systems will be sold at the same price.


(Source : Engadget)

Sony considering "PSP Phone"

According to the Nikkei Business Daily, Sony is, at this moment, considering developing a PSP phone, a cellphone/gamegear hybrid, in an effort to compete with the popular iPhone.

The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant launched its first Walkman 30 years ago, dominating the portable music player market, but it has been running far behind the iPod and iPhone in recent years.

Sony plans to get a project team together in July to develop the new product, which will "combine functions of its portable game player (the PSP) and Sony Ericsson's mobile phones," reads the report.

Although Sony did not want to comment on this, the move would make sense and has been oft rumored for years.

Game developers such as Capcom and Square-Enix have been offering games for the iPhone and iPod Touch, taking advantage of the strong market share for Apple products while at the same time taking away revenue from the traditional handheld gaming devices, PSP and Nintendo's DS/DSi.



(Source : www.nni.nikkei.co.jp)