Microsoft shows off new controller, with transforming D-pad

courtesy of ArsTechnica

The D-pad on the existing 360 controllers is, to put it mildly, utter garbage. If you want to play any games relying on precise movements, such as fighting games, buying a third-party controller is a requirement. Microsoft hopes it has this problem licked, however, and is releasing a controller with a new, updated D-pad on November 9. The catch? You won't be able to buy the controller alone; you'll need to grab the Play and Charge Kit to get it, and the final cost will be $64.99.

Here is the controller, complete with transforming D-pad.

Major Nelson will be giving away a few of these controllers at PAX this Sunday, and we'll be bugging Microsoft for one to report on how much better the D-pad works in this new design. Once thing we do know, it certainly can't be worse.

$2bn space experiment seeks out 'anti-universe'

courtesy of TGDaily

What's being described as one of the most complex space scientific instruments ever built is on its way to the International Space Station to seek out the 'dark universe'.

The $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) has arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and will fly on the space shuttle - as part of its last mission - next February.

AMS-02 is aimed at learning more about the origin and structure of the universe by observing antimatter and 'dark' matter. It may even detect an 'anti-universe' made of antimatter, the physicists say.

With a magnetic field 4,000 times stronger than that of Earth, the particle detector will directly examine each particle passing through it, in a program designed to complement that of the Large Hadron Collider.

It will also gatherinformation from cosmic radiation sources on stars and galaxies millions of light years away.

The ISS "is the only place where it can be installed due to stability reasons, the long-term exposure and also because we can always refurbish the instrument if necessary," says Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA’s Human Spaceflight Director.

AMS-02 is expected to remain active for the entire lifetime of the ISS and will not return to Earth. "The ISS is set to be utilised for scientific and exploration purposes, so it is important to count on an instrument that can remain fully active for more than a decade," says Di Pippo.

AMS will now be installed in a clean room at the Kennedy Space Center for more tests. In a few weeks' time, it will be moved to the Space Shuttle, ready for its last mission.

Best of Craigslist: Gamers Seeking Gamers

Donkey Kong Office Building

1990 vs 2010

Tightend Caught in the Sidelines

Take a Break and Watch This: Westboro Church Protest Against Jews Hilariously Interrupted By Brick Stone

Laser Tag Now Officially An Olympic Sport, Sort Of

The modern pentathlon will switch to using laser pistols for the shooting portions of the event in the 2012 Olympics. Super cool sci-fi twist, or major puss move?

Gone are the days of actually using guns, and putting a visible hole in a piece of paper or cardboard duck cutout or whatever they did. (Actually, the firearm days are long gone; until now, they used air pistols.) They've tried it out at the sports' world cup, and at the youth championships, and laser guns are in for London 2012.

Klaus Schormann, president of world governing body the UIPM, said: "We will have laser shooting for London. We can now hold competitions in parks and shopping malls."

It'll also cut costs by as much as two-thirds, because photons come cheaper than bullets.

We were all set to get our panties in a twist over the radical change, but then we remembered that modern pentathlon consists of running, shooting, swimming, fencing, and riding horses over little hurdles. So who really gives a shit anyway.

Pentathlon switches to laser guns for London 2012 Games [BBC]

Send an email to Barry Petchesky, the author of this post, at barryp@deadspin.com.

Final Fantasy XIV's Play-Limiting Fatigue System Explained

A game mechanic that drops the amount of experience points earned after a set amount of play time has Final Fantasy XIV fans in an uproar. Game director Nobuaki Komoto explains the eight hour a week limit.

Fans have been railing against the Final Fantasy XIV experience limiting system for a while now, but Komoto was too busy getting interviewed at Gamescom in Germany last week to respond. Now he's back in Japan and has issued a statement regarding the system on the Japanese beta test website, translated by FFXIVcore's Savalithos.

Massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft have systems in place to reward players for taking a little time away from the game, but few if any have directly penalized players for playing too long. That seems to be exactly what the Final Fantasy XIV game mechanic is doing. Komoto's message begins with an explanation of why this system is in place.

First off, the main concept behind FFXIV is allowing those players with little time on their hands to play effectively, and game balance is based off of that. Furthermore, it is being designed to not give those with more time on their hands to play an unfair advantage. Because of that, systems such as Guardian's Favor (a bonus to Guildleves) have been implemented to make leveling in the short-term easier than leveling in the long-term.

He says to think of the experience limiting system as a counterpart to real-world fatigue. "No one could train ad nauseam in the real world with no ill effects." That's true, of course, but we don't play MMO games to be burdened with real-world limitations, now do we?

Here's how the whole thing works. Once you begin training in a class, you have eight hours in which you can earn full experience. Once those eight hours is up, the amount of experience you earn will lower over the course of seven hours. At the end of those seven hours you will no longer be earning experience.

Final Fantasy XIV's job system allows players to switch classes on the fly, however, so if you begin to approach the threshold on one class, you can switch to another class and play that instead. The system is on a weekly timer, so seven days from the time you begin training your skills, you'll be able to start again with full experience.

OF course this is all still being tweaked and tested. Komoto says they are still looking into tweaking the rate at which experience points begin to drop off to make the system a little bit friendlier.

I can understand how players could be outraged over such a system. It effectively limits one class to an hour and change per day of full experience in any given week. That seems awfully low, and won't sit well with players hoping to focus on a single class.

Asking folks to pay you a monthly fee to play your game and then dictating how long they can play their favorite class without penalties seems like a very bad idea indeed.

It works out for me, though. I'm going to have to review this beast, and get a taste of every class while doing it, so chances are I'll be switching up so much the system will never touch me.

But for your average MMO player? This could be a deal breaker.

We've contacted Square Enix for comment on the mechanic, and will update should we receive further information.

Surplus and You: Komoto Speaks! [FFXIV Core - Thanks Steven!]

Send an email to Michael Fahey, the author of this post, at fahey@kotaku.com.

Fight Begins Online, Continues With Fisticuffs And A Knife

Late last week, two men from New York got into a heated argument while playing a PS3 game online. Normally, that's where the beef would end, but in this case, it was only the beginning of hostilities.

Eric S. LaChapelle, 24 (left), had been playing an undisclosed PS3 game online against Corey J. Chalich, 18 (right), when things took a turn for the worse. Rather than leave it be, LaChapelle jumped in his car and drove to Chalich's house, where he "assaulted him" sufficiently for the younger man to require hospital treatment.

That prompted Chalich to reach for a knife and "threaten" his assailant, who then took off and ran. He didn't get far, though, as he was arrested "minutes later", and for his troubles Chalich was picked up as well.

Both men now face charges, LaChapelle of third-degree assault and Chalich of second-degree menacing.

Police: Video game dispute leads to knife threat [Post-Star, via Dtoid]

Send an email to the author of this post at plunkett@kotaku.com.

The Dreamcast Will Not Die

By all accounts, the Sega Dreamcast should be dead. But it's not.

The Sega Dreamcast launched in 1998. While it was discontinued in the West in 2002, Sega continued to officially support (and repair) the console up until 2007.

And while Microsoft could have given Dreamcast games a second life (but didn't), that doesn't mean new Dreamcast games have dried up. Throughout the last decade, the console continued to get new games — from licensed developers in Japan and homebrew developers in the West.

At the recent Gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany, developer RedSpotGames had Dreamcast demo kiosks placed proudly between the Xbox 360 and the Wii demo kiosks.

RedSpotGames has published Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles, a puzzle game developed by a Costa Rica-based studio, in 2008 and Rush Rush Rally Racing, a top down racer, last fall.

Other developers and publishers continue to work on Dreamcast titles. Even in 2010, when we are well on into the console lives of the current gen, the Dreamcast keeps on keeping on. Dreamcast games have found a home on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 as games are hitting the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade this fall.

The Dreamcast's pulse is faint, but make no mistake, the console is still alive.

RedSpotGames [Official Site]

Send an email to the author of this post at bashcraft@kotaku.com.

Art Appreciation 101: The two rules of awesome SF/fantasy art

Where would science fiction and fantasy be without their awesome visuals? Orbit Books Creative Director Lauren Panepinto gives us a crash course in appreciating speculative artwork, and reveals the two unshakable rules of science fiction and fantasy art.

Welcome to Science Fiction & Fantasy Art Appreciation 101. (a.k.a. SFF Art). The fabulous folks here at io9 think I'm qualified to give you this little overview because, as the Creative Director of Orbit Books, I've created hundreds of covers for books in the genre, and have been a fan of SFF Art in all of its forms as far back as I can remember. Plus, I've logged more hours working in comic book stores than I care to admit.

Let me start with a little disclaimer: in the hopes of keeping this an overview and not an encyclopedia, I am going to be making wild generalizations across genres, skipping around wily-nilly with chronology, and leaving out a great many artists we all love. I apologize up-front for these crimes, so feel free to crucify me in the comments. Now off we go…

Before we start covering genre and artists, let's take a moment to think about what makes SFF Art unique. I could talk about proportions, color theory, and proper lighting all day, but these are qualities that are important to all genres of art. I really want to focus on what makes a fantastic work of SFF Art, and the most important thing is its purpose. All well-made commercial works of art — whether they're movie posters, book covers, or ads — need to catch the eye and hold it long enough for the viewer's brain to engage. Most commercial art does this by relating to a target audience and making them recognize something familiar-it's about the art coming to meet the viewer. The purpose of a great work of SFF Art is almost exactly the opposite: it is to depict something alien, and then drag the viewer away from their world into the imagined world of the book, movie, or video game.

To this end I offer the Two Rules of Awesome SFF Art:

1) It must have that elusive special quality of a visual hook, or as I like to call it, the "Holy Sh*t That's F*cking Cool" Factor. People are bombarded by images all their waking lives, and you have about a nanosecond to grab them and hold them. In SFF art, this usually means taking advantage of genre cues, like a completely bad-ass heroine, insane looking spaceship, or haunting alien landscape. It's a hard quality to define, and even harder to capture, but we've all had that moment of "oooh me want!" in front of a book cover, movie poster, comic, or video game. I literally had a case of whiplash by the end of Comic-con this year.

2) Once the artwork has grabbed the viewer, it must draw them into the world of the art. SFF fans are fans, ultimately, of world-building, and it is the art's job to begin that story. The best SFF artists just somehow magically put pages worth of stories into a single visual, and it is truly the storytelling quality that distinguishes SFF Art. It is the artist's job to accurately depict the world of the creation behind the art, using their own imagination to fill in the details. In no other genre of art is the reader/moviegoer/video game player so affected by the artist's vision, because they don't have the safety net of reality to fall back on.

So now let's talk about some of the subgenres within SFF art, and some of the fantastic artists that have made such an impact on our imaginations.

EPIC FANTASY:

Swords & sorcery, dungeons and dragons… this is the meat and potatoes of the fantasy world. There are many ways to go about tackling this realm, but it usually boils down to scene or character. The great hurdle is fighting against the tendency to info-dump — you want to give an enticing glimpse into this alien world, not end up with an overstuffed mess.

For the "character" end of the spectrum (and some hot babes) I direct you to Frank Frazetta. Even when his characters aren't really doing much, you just know there's some insane backstory happening.

For the "scene" end of the spectrum I direct you to Alan Lee, whose art, along with that of John Howe, pretty much directly dictated the Lord of the Rings movies. The magic of Alan Lee is all in his framing and cropping – it's almost more about what he doesn't show.

See also: Greg & Tim Hildebrandt, John Jude Palencar, Cliff Nielsen, Steve Stone, Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell, Sam Weber

SPACE OPERA:

Space opera is to science fiction what epic is to fantasy, and there are many similarities between the two. Again, as in most of these categories, you'll have a character-driven vision or a scene-driven vision. Let's stick to depictions of space scenes and spaceships and I'll use Daniel Dociu as my artist example. As with the work of Alan Lee, much of the magic is in the composition and balance of elements, but I love Dociu's brush-heavy painterly style – which is ironic, since I know he paints digitally, not with a brush — it gives a real energy to his work that I love. A lot of the artists who do these kinds of scenes work most heavily in concept art for movies and video games, and it's a treat when I can steal them away to work on a book cover for me.

See also: Stephan Martiniere, Sparth, Ralph McQuarrie, John Schoenherr

URBAN FANTASY:

Urban Fantasy is really bookcover-based, and as a genre is really a mashup of fantasy and romance novels, and we're still sorting out the schizophrenia of clichés that this has produced. It's the subgenre that gets the most artistic bashing, but there are people doing it with an emphasis on the art, and it's interesting to me to see how people can tackle the same kind of cover from both a traditional painting direction, and photo-illustration technique.

In the photo-illustration corner is Chris McGrath, who gets a special gold star in my book for being equally good at female-led and male-led urban fantasy, without drowning in a pool of cheese.

In the painting corner is Dan Dos Santos, who I'm including specifically for his covers for the Mercy Thompson books, as he could be included in any of these genres. On paper these covers are the urban fantasy stereotype: hot chick, scantily clad, tattoos — but I love them anyway, so sue me. It's the powerful personality he gives the character that keeps it about being a strong woman, rather than just a cheesecake image.

See also: Larry Rostant, Gordon Crabb

STEAMPUNK & CYBERPUNK:

As opposed to the above genres, where a wider view of the world or character signals genre, Cyberpunk and Steampunk is all about the details. For Steampunk, gears, goggles, airships, and/or Victorian accessories must be recognizable components. Since this is a relatively new genre, artists really have a chance to redefine the boundaries. Because of the opportunity to enforce the historical aspect through typography, I'm going to include art with text. Instead of picking one artist here, I'm going to jump around, which is also a fabulous opportunity to show how, especially in these two genres, bookcovers can influence movies, fashion can influence comics, and it becomes one big messy cultural collaboraton.

(Boneshaker, art by Jon Foster, design by Jamie Stafford-Hill, Suckerpunch movie directed by Zach Snyder, Soulless cover designed by me, photo by Derek Caballero, model Donna Ricci, Steampunk Vader by Eric Poulton, Laptop by Datamancer, Time Traveller ensemble by Clockwork Couture, modeled by Donna Ricci)

Cyberpunk and Steampunk are closely linked, but where Steampunk looks to the past, Cyberpunk looks to a (usually) dystopian future overrun with technology. We all know Blade Runner and The Matrix, but do you know Moebius, and H. R. Giger? Their art was so inspirational to Ridley Scott, Luc Besson, and William Gibson. And without Geof Darrow, I can't imagine The Matrix being anywhere near as visually rich. Cyberpunk, like Steampunk, is all about the details, but now its all about crammed skylines full of mile-high spires, knots of wires and robotic cybernetics.

(H. R. Giger)

(Moebius)

(Geof Darrow, Matrix concept art)

See also: Mike Mignola, Frank Quitely

I wish I could have a dozen posts to cover SFF Art, but this is supposed to be an overview. I'm going to try to wrap it up, even though I've left out countless masters and genres like SFF/Horror, Military SF, and so many others. (and don't forget the poor neglected zombies!) I've pretty much sidestepped the entire issue of tools: oil paint, digital paint, photo-montage, photography, and even sculpture. I've also completely glossed over some important issues I deal with on the industry side. For example, this post has been an overview done by a fan aimed towards people who have some interest in SFF already. However, every day at Orbit I try to balance on the fine line between making fans happy while also reaching potential new fans. It can be tough to find the right balance, but we are all about converting the masses.

SFF Art is such an emotional topic for many people, myself included, because it's often so tied up in our childhood nostalgia. I can't picture Dune without John Schoenherr. I couldn't imagine a Middle Earth without John Howe & Alan Lee (and Peter Jackson couldn't either). There's a little girl inside me riding a Hildebrandt dragon flying over a landscape by Michael Whelan and I'm really blessed that it's my job at Orbit to get to work with such fantastic art and artists. I hope this look into the SFF Art World is a pleasant refresher for you fans out there, and a good overview for those of you not so versed in the SFF world.

Homework for SFF Art 102: Dave McKean, Mélanie Delon, Frank Miller, Gregory Manchess, Adam Hughes, Cliff Chiang, Donato Giancola, Ben Templesmith, Dave Palumbo, Charles Vess…

Microsoft Is Ready To Ban Halo: Reach Pirates

As leaked copies of Halo: Reach hit the torrent sites, Microsoft tells Kotaku that they are aggressively investigating the leak and are fully prepared to hand out bans to anyone caught playing the game pre-release.

It happens every time a big game comes out, but when it's a game as big as Bungie's final Halo title, Microsoft sits up and takes notice. Released on the internet far in advance of its September 14 street date, a Microsoft representative tells Kotaku that the source of the leak is under investigation.

"We are aware that an unauthorized copy of "Halo: Reach" has leaked. We are aggressively investigating the matter. We have no further details to share at this time."

So where does that leave folks who can't resist the lure of early Halo: Reach? Even if you have every intention of picking up a retail copy, we'd suggest you wait, lest Microsoft come after you.

"We are aggressively pursuing the violators. Microsoft's commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the 25 million members of the Xbox LIVE community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox LIVE."

Send an email to Michael Fahey, the author of this post, at fahey@kotaku.com.

Could You Play Modern Warfare 2 Without Killing Anyone?

And I don't mean in singleplayer. I mean multiplayer. Because Glen McCracken is doing just that, trying to reach the maximum level 70 in multiplayer without killing a soul.

How the hell is he going to do that? He uses a riot shield, and gets his XP from grabbing flags in the game's Domination mode. Why the hell is he doing that? Because he's already maxxed out the old-fashioned way five times, and thinks this is an interesting challenge.

So far he's reached level 11, having recorded zero kills for 272 deaths. That's a great achievement considering that both the shield can still kill if your target has low enough health when you whack them.

Best of luck, Glen. Because if there's one thing the world needs more than angry men with weapons, it's love.

UPDATED: Modern Warfare 2 Player Attempting To Reach Rank 70 Without Killing Anyone [Game Informer] [image credit: Adage Media]

Send an email to the author of this post at plunkett@kotaku.com.

Playboy Gets Into The Online Gaming Business

Playboy has had enough of letting people simply license games based on the magazine and its bunnies, today revealing a deal with online developer Bigpoint to host games on the magazine's website.

The first of these games, due out later this year, is called Poisonville, which as you can see by the trailer is a poor man's Grand Theft Auto turned into a browser game with added tits. Actually, we're not even sure about the tits, as everyone seems strangely over-dressed for a Playboy game.

Despite the GTA appearance, Poisonville is described as a massively-multiplayer online game, so if gunning down bikers with a girl in tiny jeans sounds like your idea of fun, you can keep up with things on Playboy's site.

Send an email to the author of this post at plunkett@kotaku.com.

The 288,945 Most Popular Websites On The Internet

Earlier this year, Alexa sat down and compiled a list of the top 1,000,000 websites in the world. Listing those sites would be good reading, but looking at a picture of the most popular ones is much cooler.

Nmap have run a script that gathered the 288,945 most popular websites from that list, stuck their icon on a page and then scaled the icons according to the popularity of the site.

The results are far from perfect - Alexa is suspect as a traffic counter, and Nmap admit their own collection efforts aren't 100% effective (Amazon, for example, being tiny) - but for the most part, things look pretty good.

While the site linked below lets you search via URL, go see if you can find Kotaku the hard way!

Favicon Chart [Nmap, via Neatorama]

Send an email to the author of this post at plunkett@kotaku.com.

What Do The Buttons On The PlayStation Controller Mean?

The buttons on PlayStation controllers have always been a bit of a mystery. Why those weird colours? Why those wacky shapes? PlayStation designer Teiyu Goto explains.

Goto, who designed not only the PlayStation but the PS2 and PS3 as well, has told Japanese magazine Famitsu that it was all about keeping it simple.

"That was...pretty tough," he says. "Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a color."

"The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one's head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent 'yes' or 'no' decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. People thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that's what I wanted."

Before you ask, in case you didn't know, the circle meaning "yes" is a Japanese thing (most functions in a Japanese game performed by it), whereas over here, we contradict this by predominantly using the X button, which despite intended to mean "no" is in a more logical position for Western gamers (who associate the bottom button as the "main" one).

All About the PlayStation 1's Design [Famitsu, via 1UP] [image credit: kennymatic @ Flickr]

Send an email to the author of this post at plunkett@kotaku.com.

Solar system with Earth-size planet found

courtesy of cnet

After six years of painstaking observations, astronomers have identified a distant solar system with at least five Neptune-class worlds orbiting within 130 million miles or so of the parent star--closer than Mars is to the sun. Two other planets are believed to be present, including one just 1.4 times as massive as Earth.

The presumed Earth-size planet orbits a scant 2 million miles from its star, completing a full orbit, or "year," every 1.18 days. If confirmed with additional observations, this hellish world would be the smallest yet discovered, additional proof that Earth-size planets are falling within the reach of current Earth-based instruments.

An artist's impression of a distant solar system with up to seven planets, including a world just slightly bigger than Earth.

(Credit: European Southern Observatory)

"We have probably found the system with the most planets known today, coming close to the solar system," Christophe Lovis of the University of Geneva, lead author of a paper reporting the discovery, told CNET in an e-mail exchange. "This means that we are now able to detect very complex systems of low-mass planets, which will help us a lot [in] understanding their diversity. This a step towards answering long-standing questions, such as, how common are habitable planets in the universe?"

As for the presumed Earth-size planet, Lovis said "it is probable that such a low-mass body cannot retain an atmosphere so close to its star. Most likely, this body is like a big melted-lava ball. Hard to imagine, since this is unknown in our solar system."

Over six years, Lovis and his colleagues used a sensitive spectrograph mounted on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter (11.8-foot) telescope at La Silla, Chile, to measure subtle changes in the light from a sun-like star known as HD 10180 in the southern constellation Hydrus.

Located 127 light-years from Earth, HD 10180 wobbles ever so slightly, as it is tugged this way and that by the gravity of a retinue of unseen planets. Over the course of 190 observations, astronomers were able to confirm the presence of at least five Neptune-like planets between 13 and 25 times as massive as Earth.

All five worlds orbit HD 10180 at distances ranging from 0.06 and 1.4 times the distance between the Earth and the sun, out to about 130 million miles. The much smaller, yet-to-be-confirmed planet orbits inside the five Neptune-class worlds. A seventh Saturn-class planet is believed to be at a range of 3.4 times the Earth-sun distance, taking six Earth years to complete one orbit.

According to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia maintained by the Paris Observatory, 488 planets beyond Earth's solar system have been discovered to date. Some 15 solar systems feature at least three planets. A star known as 55 Cancri has five confirmed planets, including two Jupiter-class worlds.

The HD 10180 solar system is unique in that its planets circle the parent star in nearly circular orbits and seem to be positioned according to a relatively simple arithmetic rule that may be "a consequence of the various gravitational interactions that occur between the planets during their evolution," Lovis said.

"It is difficult to say at this point how significant this result is, but it will be very interesting to hear what our theoretician colleagues think of it," he added.

Surprisingly, perhaps, it appears the HD 10180 solar system is gravitationally stable over long time scales, despite the effects of five Neptune-class planets orbiting so close to their star.

"This was not an easy question, and answering it required in-depth dynamical analyses," Lovis said. "When modeling all major effects properly (including effects of general relativity), it turns out that the system is indeed stable over long time scales."

He said additional observations will be needed to pin down the orbit and mass of the innermost, Earth-class planet.

"We will dedicate some more telescope nights to observe the star...to improve the coverage of the 1.18-day period," he said of the smaller planet. "At the moment, we are suffering from the fact that we take one single data point per night, which makes it difficult to be sure about a 1.18-day period. I expect that we will make progress on this system within a year or so."

The observations are extremely difficult. The gravitational tug of the low-mass planet amounts to a 1.8 mph wobble in a star 127 light-years away, "which is hard to measure and, if confirmed, would represent a new record in precision," Lovis said.

Ring! It's Gmail's new voice feature calling

courtesy of computerworld

Computerworld - Google announced today that it is offering the ability to make phone calls over the Internet via its popular Gmail service.

Unlike Google's nearly two-year-old Gmail voice and video chat feature, which gives users an audio and visual experience online, the new calling feature allows users to dial phone numbers. With this move, Google is competing with Skype, which has long dominated the market for Internet phone service.

"Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail," wrote Robin Schriebman, a Google software engineer in a blog post. "We've been testing this feature internally, and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant to placing a call when you're in an area with bad reception."

Schriebman explained that making a phone call through Gmail works just like using a normal phone. Users can click "Call Phone" at the top of their chat list and enter a number or a contact name. She added that calls to anyone in the U.S. and Canada will be free "at least for the rest of the year." She said "very low rates" have been set for calls to other countries.

So, does Google have the muscle to make Gmail a Skype-killer?

Skype, a seven-year-old service, is used by individuals and companies to make video and voice calls over the Internet. According to Skype, its users made 6.4 billion minutes of calls in the first half of 2010.

While Google may be starting out behind in this race, it has the benefit of its large Gmail user base.

"Skype could get hurt by this," said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. "Skype has been offering the ability to call land lines and cell phones for years now. But having it integrated into Google's Gmail and, assumedly, their other offerings down the road, is quite an extension for Google."

Olds added that Google, always on the lookout for new revenue streams, is aiming to expand its reach over its customers and to move into complementary markets that will generate more sales.

"Adding voice calls to their existing product set enhances the user experience and keeps people using Google apps longer and more frequently," Olds said. "It also keeps people from using another service like Skype, and it certainly may prompt some defections from Skype. Google definitely has the scale and reach to put a big dent in Skype if Google can deliver on the service side."

The voice calling feature is expected to be rolled out to U.S.-based users over the next few days, according to Google. Users will need to install Google's voice and video plug-in and watch for the "Call Phone" button to appear on their chat list.

Hackers Claim to Have Grabbed Halo: Reach From Microsoft Site

courtesy of escapistmagazine.com

A team of hackers has allegedly broken Microsoft's security and got its hands on Halo: Reach a month early.

Remember that twelve-hundred dollar Halo: Reach listing we told you about earlier in the week? Well, it looks like it's gotten some attention, and not just for its hefty price tag. A group of modders from the Game-Tut forums have claimed that they were able to trick Microsoft's servers into letting them download the game and have been taking it for a spin.

The group said that obtaining the game had been a challenge, but even though they'd been successful, they had no plans to distribute it. Bungie is yet to comment on these reported leaks, although its forum moderators have reminded posters that discussing leaked details was a surefire way of earning a permanent ban.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has issued a statement about the leaks, saying it was aware of the group's claims and was "aggressively investigating" the matter. If Reach has indeed been leaked - and there is other evidence besides the team's comments to suggest that it has - then it will come as something of a blow to Microsoft. It's not going to stop the game selling a bajillion copies, but it may make Microsoft reconsider using Xbox Live for sensitive material in the future.

Halo: Reach gets its official release on September 14th.

Brink Is The Breakthrough That Makes 2011 Feel So Far Away

The game I most wish I was playing right now is Brink. I played it a week ago. It delivered on an unusual promise.

Brink is a first-person team shooter set on an advanced seaborne city of the future. You can play it solo or with up to eight players against either others. It's one of those modern games that seamlessly transitions from singleplayer to multiplayer.

Whatever.

A year ago, this is what Paul Wedgwood, head of Brink development studio Splash Damage told me: "The buzz you get from coordinated team play is beyond and above just about every other experience that you can have as a video gamer."

Brink could do that, he told me. Brink could make me feel the glory of team-based greatness. I guess it would be like becoming a member of the A-Team after feeling for so many years playing online shooters like the bad guys the A-Team shot.

Brink is supposed to enable anyone, even bad gamers, to get that experience that normally only an elite Team Fortress 2 player might have, an experience of slick coordination in which everyone knows their role and slickly performs it. That bad player might as well have been me. And a year after Wedgwood told me Brink could deliver that opportunity, I tried the game — and — he was right.

Brink, ingeniously, works.

In Dallas last week, during QuakeCon 2010, Wedgwood walked me through Brink's re-designed and lovely character selection screens, let me mod my weapons and then allowed me to start a mission with him on my team. The Brink player can have up to 16 characters saved in the game, each with permanent tattoos, unusual disfigurements (rough acne scars is a real option), and wild wardrobes.

After a cut-scene our characters and the rest of an elite security squad that was controlled by the computer docked and entered a part of the game's city, the Ark. Our big mission was to escort a bomb disposal truck. We were in a mission in the game's Security campaign, which presents one side of the game's narrative. Campaigns can be played solo or in co-op. In theory, we were trying to get rid of a dirty bomb, though Wedgwood said that gamers who play through Brink's rebel campaign will see from that side of the mission that the bomb is really vaccine. We were up against another Brink designer and a reporter who were both part of the rebel side for this session.

At the start of the action I could select our character class and then plunge forth. If I knew what I was doing, I could just do it. Maybe as a soldier I'd run ahead of the rolling bomb robot and clear out the enemy. Maybe as a medic I'd hang back and heal. Or, as an engineer, maybe I'd try stick to the robot since I'd be capable of repairing damage it took. For any of these actions — for each shot fired that causes damage, for each downed ally healed, for each moment spent near the robot keeping it safe, and so on — I'd gain experience points. Play Brink well and you are constantly gaining XP, which ticks up on the right side of the screen. The XP can be spent to unlock new items and abilities.

But what if you aren't sure what to do? What if the other team is more skilled than you and the people with whom you are playing — or just better communicators? Then, again, you might be me. If you were, you would pick your class (you can change it mid-mission at a terminal) and press up on the d-pad. With that press you'd see a big circle appear on the screen. That's the mission wheel. The wheel is chopped into sections, each representing a possible task for you. The longer arcs represent missions that generate more XP. The most valuable mission is colored in yellow. The mission associated with whatever your first-person perspective is pointed toward is blue. The missions, Wedgwood convincingly-explained, are dynamically generated based on your character class, your location and the needs of the overall mission at that moment. As a medic, I saw missions that involved healing certain characters who were in trouble, human or AI. I also saw missions to protect the truck and several others. There were always about five missions from which to choose.

How I played Brink: press up on the d-pad, get mission, execute, press up on the d-pad, get mission, execute, etc. (Okay, with some dying in there; Splash Damage's current build of Brink is tough.)

As Wedgwood said, a skilled player could ignore the mission wheel. But the amateur like me can use it in order to be constantly useful to the team. One imagines that a team of players using the wheel for guidance could do great things.

I didn't feel like I was playing a game with training wheels. I felt like I was playing a game with the ability to have sharp awareness of my situation and my orders. I felt like a grunt fighting for a trusted commander who could read the battlefield, recognize my focus and tell me my best options of what to do. It was a rarity for me in team multiplayer games. I felt like a success.

Brink has more than one smart design element. The game supports drop-in co-op. Friends can jump in and help out but can't earn experience points if they quit early. (Players will gain extra XP by playing co-op and will be split into tiered matches online, depending on character achievement.) Brink offers players lots of special abilities, all with trade-offs, Wedgwood said. For example the "sense of perspective" perk that puts the game in third-person while you are hacking a terminal but locks your movement as the trade-off. Some perks didn't sound like they have down-sides, like the one the causes the screen to flash yellow if an enemy targets you or the one that lets you toss and then shoot grenades.

Wedgwood's career focus has been team-based combat games. I'm gratified he and Splash Damage have recognized both what is fun about them and what keeps players like me out. They've wrapped their clever mission system into a game that has a slick, modern aesthetic drawn in the grays and blues of modern machinery moreso than the browns and oranges of rust and dirt.

It is exciting to see a game that is this progressive. I'm eager for 2011 when I can finally play Brink on my own console but, happily, not have to play it on my own.

Send an email to Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at stephentotilo@kotaku.com.

The Queen of Blades Made Flesh

Twenty-Four Years Of Metroid History, Narrated By Samus Aran

GameStop Robber Gets 40 Years, 36 With Edge Card

Gregory Reaux, 29, will be 69 when he gets out of the pen for robbing six GameStops in Louisiana with a boxcutter and a cutoff sleeve as a mask.

Reaux was a former GameStop employee fired because he "improperly use[ed] employee discounts and store deals," according to The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. In apparent retaliation, he robbed at least six different GameStop locations, making out with several thousand dollars and "various merchandise."

Reaux hit GameStops in the towns of Slidell, Jefferson Parish, Hammond, Walker and Denham Springs. That left the store in Mandeville. So officers staked it out and nabbed Reaux as he prepared to hit that one.

Man Gets 40 Years In Jail After Robbing Several GameStops [Hot Blooded Gaming

9 Reasons The Expendables Was A Huge Disappointment

courtesy of premiere.com

1. The blood was computer generated. There should be refunds because of this. Class action lawsuits. A movie like this demands skin-crawlingly realistic jugular spurts of hot blood. While we’re on the topic – there could have been more jagged bone splinters tearing through flesh and the Foley artist could have gone the extra mile and come up with more than one sound for knuckles smashing skulls. The same wet, meaty thud got boring.

2. This wasn’t a serious action movie. The Expendables should have been the Unforgiven of 80’s action movies... a tough, brutal movie about killers in their twilight. It should have been meaner, grittier, and more violent than the originals that served as inspiration. Unfortunately, The Expendables didn’t really take itself seriously, and so why would audiences?

3. There are no women in the world of The Expendables, save for exactly one Madonna and one whore. Well, Mickey Rourke briefly shows up with a floozy in tow. But their romance is short-lived, because, man, the heart is the most dangerous kind of fragmentation grenade, dig? Our heroes spend most of their time getting tattooed, riding motorcycles, and sharing their inner-most feelings, like it’s a Machoholics Anonymous meeting.

4. The plastic surgery was unnerving. Seriously. Eyelids looked like they were sponsored by Samsonite and Maybelline. The movie could have been renamed The Real Houswives of the Apocalypse.

5. One “Jet Li” is short joke is one two many. He’s not a Chinese leprechaun. Actually, Jet Li is probably the most fit and naturally badass of all the featured meatballs.

6. The lead characters banter like The Golden Girls. These supposed death dealers didn’t bust each other’s balls as much as mischievously goose them.

7. There wasn’t enough Terry Crews. This guy puts the “awww, yeah,” in “awesome.” Crews’ character was bursting with berserker joy, and brought plenty of charisma and fearsomeness to an otherwise tidy table. Automatic shotgun? Check. Monogrammed straight razor? Check? At one point in the movie, Crews serves as a human mortar. He lights the movie up like his smile is full of napalm. But there’s not enough.

8. Is classic rock really the music of mercenaries? Heavy Metal, yeah. Ride of the Valkyries for old times sake? Radio silence? You’re on a mission to kill, not a tailgate party.

9. There is no blaze of glory. Our heroes don’t go out shooting. Hell, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid die with honor, and those two guys are pretty. How do The Expendables finish off their suicide mission to defeat a dictator? (INSERT SPOILER ALERT) By hanging out at the frat house, drinking beers and giggling like schoolgirls made out of concrete and ham. They might as well have ended the movie with this:

Age Confirmed for 'Eve,' Mother of All Humans

A maternal ancestor to all living humans called mitochondrial Eve likely lived about 200,000 years ago, at roughly the same time anatomically modern humans are believed to have emerged, a new review study confirms.

The results are based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA. Found in the energy-producing centers of cells, mitochondrial DNA is only passed down the maternal line, and can be traced back to one woman.

However, this doesn't mean she was the first modern woman, rather it indicates that only her descendants survive to the present day.

"There is always some other female that predated mitochondrial Eve, whose DNA didn't make it up to modernity," said Marek Kimmel, a professor of statistics at Rice University. "So the age of the mitochondrial Eve is always less than the age of the true, first female modern human."

A molecular clock

While most of an organism's DNA is contained in the nuclei of its cells, mitochondria also contain genetic material, but much less of it, making it easier to analyze. Mitochondrial DNA contains a region that changes rapidly and can provide a sort of molecular clock calibrated to times comparable to the age of modern humanity, making it a favorite for population geneticists, Kimmel said.

As part of the three-year project, Kimmel and Krzysztof Cyran, a Polish researcher, compared the estimates produced by about 10 genetic models intended to determine when mitochondrial Eve lived. They started with data on mitochondrial DNA previously collected from random blood donors.

Scientists know the average rate of mutation, so they can look at the genetic variation among pairs of individuals to see when their lineages diverged. But the equation becomes more complicated.

"Mutation is producing divergence, but some of the divergence is lost because of random events that occur, for example some populations become extinct," Kimmel said. As ancient modern humans dispersed, some groups settled and grew, while others became extinct.

The models make different assumptions about growth and extinction rates, which had the potential to change the estimate of mitochondrial Eve's age, the researchers found. One type of model makes the less realistic, but more manageable assumption that the human population has increased at a smooth, nearly exponential rate. Another more realistic, but more technically challenging type of model assumes the human population has grown in discrete random episodes.

An agreement

But, regardless, all of the models produced estimates placing this ancient mother's age at around 200,000 years.

"We actually show if one uses different models, one comes up with a very similar estimate, so this makes the estimate more robust," Kimmel said.

The estimates produced by models that assume population growth occurred in discrete, random bursts fell within 10 percent of each other. When taking into consideration models that assumed smooth growth, that range expanded by up to 20 percent. These models also tended to estimate that mitochondrial Eve lived earlier, according to Kimmel.

The research was published in June in the journal Theoretical Population Biology.

Take a Break and Watch This: 'Dust' Tech Demo

Chatroulette: The Last Exorcism

Facebook Places: should Craigslist be worried?

Facebook Places: Mark Zuckerberg at the launch. Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Facebook's geo-location service has finally arrived – ladies and gentlemen, Facebook Places. It mimics the "checking-in" functionality made famous by Foursquare and Gowalla, and allows Facebook users to see where their friends are, and when.

But it goes deeper than that. Facebook has worked with Foursquare and Gowalla to fully integrate their services; it allows badges and check-ins to be imported – not only from Foursquare and Gowalla, but MyTown and Yelp too. The smaller services are exposed to hundreds of millions of users while Facebook becomes a geolocation services aggregator overnight.

Whether these services should be worried depends on the space Facebook moves forward into. Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown rely on a strong gaming element to gain traction. Foursquare helps local businesses and national brands generate and deepen consumer loyalty. Yelp is about peer recommendation. Facebook could move into any one of these spaces without blinking.

But perhaps there are bigger fish to fry – namely Craigslist. In 15 years, nobody has challenged the site's supremacy in the area of classifieds. That's not to say there aren't start-ups that consider themselves contenders, but none have come close to the site's (rumoured) nine-figure annual turnover or its ubiquitous association with online classifieds.

Since 1995, Craigslist has been instrumental in migrating a cash-rich revenue stream from newspapers to the internet. But Craigslist hasn't moved on since. The most obvious evolution of classifieds is the migration to mobile, utilising geolocation. Craigslist has had more than two years to play with the iPhone, yet has no mobile presence other than a third-party app that mimics the navigation of the site, instead of playing to the strengths of the device.

The iPad version is even worse – all that on-screen real estate, and it's still menu-driven. Why not a map, for crying out loud? Craigslist's own efforts are non-existent – despite its millions of dollars, the site isn't optimised for mobile browsers.

Craigslist, in a continued attempt to keep things simple, has dropped the ball. The mobile web – through web and native mobile apps, and optimised websites too – will revolutionise business in the next five years, just as the internet did 15 years ago. Ignoring trends in design is one thing; ignoring consumer-driven platforms is quite another.

When I look at Facebook Places, I see an impending marriage with Facebook Marketplace and a serious threat to Craigslist. Don't think of Facebook Places as simply being about checking in; it's about the broader ability to create geo-tagged content that can have relevance to tens of thousands of users in a given vicinity.

A simple Marketplace button on the mobile app (and the site) that mashes together Google Maps and local listings local to the user – or allows the user to add simple, geo-tagged listings with photos too – would enjoy massive takeup and become an essential service in no time. Why would you ever look at Craigslist again?

Scientists Map Massive North Atlantic Garbage Patch

Millions of pieces of plastic — most smaller than half an inch — float throughout the oceans. They are invisible to satellites, and except on very calm days you won’t even see them from the deck of a sailboat. The only way to know how much junk is out there is to tow a fine net through the water.

Scientists have gathered data from 22 years of surface net tows to map the North Atlantic garbage patch and its change over time, creating the most accurate picture yet of any pelagic plastic patch on earth.

The data were gathered by thousands of undergraduates aboard the Sea Education Association (SEA) sailing semester, who hand-picked, counted and measured more than 64,000 pieces of plastic from 6,000 net tows between 1986 to 2008.

“The highest concentrations that we observe in the North Atlantic garbage patch are comparable to that of the North Pacific, but we don’t have enough data about the size of the North Pacific one to say whether they are comparable in size,” said oceanographer Kara Law of SEA, lead author of the study published August 19 in Science.

“As far as I’m aware this is the most complete and long term data set for little bits of trash floating in the ocean,” said oceanographer Miriam Goldstein of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It is hard to get long term data sets of the ocean, there aren’t many programs that, and measure it the same way from year to year so you can compare the changes over time.”

The highest concentrations of plastic were found roughly from the latitude of Virginia to the latitude of Cuba. While they were able to clearly define the north and south boundaries of the patch, the cruise tracks didn’t venture far enough east to find the eastern boundary. They estimate the average concentration of plastic in this area is about 4,000 pieces per square mile, though it is as high as 250,000 pieces per square mile in some places.

To determine where the plastic is coming from, researchers used data from more than 1,600 satellite-tracked drifting buoys deployed between 1989 and 2009 to map surface currents in the region. More than 100 buoys passed through the Atlantic plastic region, most originating from the eastern seaboard. In most cases, the buoys reached the plastic patch in less than 60 days.

Computer model output for where plastic is likely to accumulate worldwide.

Plastic accumulated in regions called gyres, where currents circle and push water toward the center, trapping the floating bits. There are five major gyres in the the world, one in each major ocean.

To estimate the range and highest accumulation of plastic in the North Atlantic and elsewhere, the research team created a computer model to simulate where plastic would go over time if it originally had been distributed evenly across the planet (image above).

Albatross chick that starved to death after its parents inadvertantly fed it too much plastic.

“We saw very high concentrations of plastic in the model in the Atlantic in the same places we observed the plastic directly,” Law said. She hopes the computer model will help target future efforts to map plastic in the oceans.

One surprising conclusion of the study found the concentration of plastic in the North Atlantic has remained fairly steady during the past 22 years despite a five-fold increase in global plastic production and a four-fold increase in the amount of plastic the United States discards.

“If you are increasing the amount you put in, you’d theoretically be seeing more over time,” said Law. “It makes you ask other questions about the fact that the plastic might be sinking out. I’m also fairly certain that the pieces are breaking down into pieces that are smaller than the 335 micron (0.01 inch) size of our net.”

By Jess McNally at Wired.com

Optimistically, the study found a 1991 program by the Environmental Protection Agency to recapture industrial plastic pellets led to a significant decrease in the average number of pellets found in the Atlantic. The pellets account for less than 10 percent of the plastic out there, but the finding suggests efforts to reduce plastic waste on land can be effective.

No one knows how long plastic stays in the ocean or where most of it ultimately will end up. Sea animals such as birds and turtles often consume plastic, sometimes carrying it to land. Some likely will sink over time or wash up on shore.

“Cleaning up what is out there is really not feasible, and would likely cause as much harm as good because of all the other small creatures in the ocean that would get filtered out too,” said Law. “So what’s left is hoping that nature break this plastic down over hundreds of years or millenia.”

“Ultimately, we need to prevent adding to what is out there,” she added.

Dark energy mystery illuminated by cosmic lens

By Clara Moskowitz

Space.com

By peering at the distant reaches of the universe through a galactic magnifying lens, astronomers may have found a way to better understand mysterious dark energy, which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

Though scientists don't know what dark energy is — nor have they proven definitively that it exists — they think it is the force causing galaxies to stray away from each other at an ever-quickening pace. Dark energy is the name given to whatever stuff is permeating the universe and causing this surprising accelerated expansion.

In the new study, astronomers used a massive galaxy cluster called Abell 1689 as a giant cosmic lens to study how mass warps space and time around it. When light from even more distant galaxies passes near the cluster on its way to our telescopes on Earth, the light appears magnified and distorted because of this effect.

The researchers examined 34 pictures of these far-away galaxies, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, to study the geometry of space-time. This property is thought to be influenced by dark energy, which makes up about 72 percent of all the mass and energy in the universe, scientists think.

"The geometry, the content and the fate of the universe are all intricately linked," said researcher Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University in a statement. "If you know two, you can deduce the third. We already have a pretty good knowledge of the universe's mass-energy content, so if we can get a handle on its geometry then we will be able to work out exactly what the fate of the universe will be."

The researchers combined their measurements of the bent light — a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing — with previous calculations of the universe's geometry based on observing supernovas, galaxy clusters and other heavenly objects. Together, these clues helped narrow down estimates of dark energy's properties.

"Using our unique method in conjunction with others, we were able to come up with results that were far more precise than any achieved before," said co-researcher Jean-Paul Kneib of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille in France.

Ultimately, the researchers were able to refine estimates for dark energy's so-called equation-of-state parameter, called w, which relates to how dark energy shapes the universe. They were able to reduce the uncertainty in this value by about 30 percent.

The new findings are detailed in a paper published in the August 20 issue of the journal Science.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38061897/ns/technology_and_science-space