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ASUS’ Express Gate 2.0 instant-on OS demoed on video

Continue reading ASUS’ Express Gate 2.0 instant-on OS demoed on video

ASUS’ Express Gate 2.0 instant-on OS demoed on video originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and 470 specs and pricing emerge

We’re only a week away from their grand unveiling, but already we’ve got word of the specs for NVIDIA’s high end GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards. Priced at $499, the 480 will offer 480 shader processors, a 384-bit interface to 1.5GB of onboard GDDR5 RAM, and clock speeds of 700MHz, 1,401MHz, and 1,848MHz for the core, shaders and memory, respectively. The 470 makes do with 446 SPs, slower clocks, and a 320-bit memory interface, but it’s also priced at a more sensible $349. The TDPs of these cards are pretty spectacular too, with 225W for the junior model and 295W for the full-fat card. Sourced by VR Zone, these numbers are still unofficial, but they do look to mesh well with what we already know of the hardware, including a purported 5-10 percent benchmarking advantage for the GTX 480 over ATI’s HD 5870. Whether the price and power premium is worth it will be up to you and the inevitable slew of reviews to decide.

[Thanks, Sean]

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and 470 specs and pricing emerge originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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First Data and Tyfone announce partnership for NFC payments by microSD card

Continue reading First Data and Tyfone announce partnership for NFC payments by microSD card

First Data and Tyfone announce partnership for NFC payments by microSD card originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Review: Knights of Charlemagne card game is simply simple, and we like it like that

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

The clever 2006 card game Knights of Charlemagne has made it to the iPhone and iPod touch as a simple little number placing app [$1.99, iTunes link]. We don’t mean simple in that it’s easy to beat or uninteresting. We mean that the game is clearly designed and plays quickly. While the beginner level (the Squire) is really only worth playing through once or twice with the tutorial minstrel on to learn the rules, getting to and beating the AI at Knight, and then the King level (which is supposed to be Charlemagne himself) is a good challenge and provides plenty of game for two bucks.

There’s a whole lot of math and bluffing in the game. That is something which is better experienced in person and using real cards, but board games on the iPhone are their own experience. So, when you want some light brain-burning with a medieval theme, look no further than this simple app. Read on to find out more.

The Game

Like Poison, Knights of Charlemagne could just as easily use pictures of animals or be a themeless collection of colors and numbers. The game starts with a deck of knight cards and ten spaces, called estates, to fight over. Five are numbered 1-5 and the others are colored one of five colors (which might cause problems with colorblind players). Each card portrays a knight who can be sent to fight at one of two locations, either the colored space that matches his color or the numbered space that matches his number. Even though there are only ten estates total, the app helpfully highlights the two spaces where a selected knight can go before you place him on the battlefield.

The deck is made up of 50 cards, two of every number/color combination, and each player is dealt half the deck. Of course, since designer Reiner Knizia doesn’t want you to be able to completely predict what’s coming, two random cards are removed before cards are dealt, adding an element of uncertainty to the end game. Does my opponent really still have a “1″ to take the first estate away from me? You won’t know until the last card is played. Speaking of which, each player will play 24 cards in a complete game, something that takes only a matter of minutes once you’ve learned the rules. Your opening hand is eight cards, and the little tent icon on the left side of your hand shows how many cards remain in your draw pile.

Why send the knights to a particular location? Whoever has the most knights at an estate at the end of the game (when all cards have been played) will score the points for that estate. The numbered estates are worth points equal to whatever their number is, while the colored estates are each worth five points. If both players tie for an estate, each wins a point. Why wouldn’t you put all of your knights on the colored estates? Because whoever wins the two lowest-value estates first (estates are scored from left to right) gets the crown, a five-point bonus, and this usually determines the winner, in our experience.

The App

Like we said, the defining word for the iPhone app version of the game is “simple.” Bare-bones would also work, but that’s sort of two words. Everything on the screen is easy to see and read. Gameplay is easy to “get” and the graphics by Schrumpfkopf are basic. There is no music, and only minimal sound effects. You load up the app, play for a few minutes and see who won and then maybe play again. If you get interrupted, the app easily saves games in progress, but there’s no win/loss record screen or any way to track how well you’ve done over time. Simplicity is the name of the game here, and it informs all areas of the design.

Want to see who’s winning a particular estate? Look for the little sword icon. Want to make the knight cards even easier to identify? Turn on high visibility mode, which transforms the cards in your hand from little knight icons into simple colored squares that are easier to read. You can’t change between modes mid-game, but that’s not a huge deal.

Another quirk is that the app feels upside down. When you play, it’s with the home button on the left, and there’s no way to change the orientation. Another interface issue that might cause you to misplay a knight is when you select a blue number five knight, since the two places he can be sent are next to each other. We’ve never clicked the wrong space, but we can see that it’s possible. Oh, and here’s a tricky thing. The few sound effects that there are in the game (and, thankfully, you can still listen to iTunes music while playing, unlike in version 1.0) are counterintuitive to turn them on or off. On the menu screen, if it says “sound on,” that means touch there to turn the sound on. Same thing with “sound off.” So, while it looks like these items are telling you the status of the sound effects in they game, they’re not.

The app can also only play the two-player version of the game. The physical game from Playroom Entertainment can handle up to three, and the earliest version, which came out in 1995 and was called Tabula Rasa, could play anywhere from two to four players. IRL, three players is a bit more fun, but the designer has said he has no plans to introduce that option to the app and it seems doubtful that a even baksheesh would change his mind. Instead, we have the three-level AI and the human vs. human options. Two-player pass-n-play works well – with the screen dimming and hiding your cards in hand from your opponent between turns – but we’re always interested in networked play. Obviously, this takes more time to program into the app, but we think the potential for doubling your sales should be incentive enough for developers (our math on that correct, right? Of course it is).

Overall, the Knights of Charlemagne isn’t quite as elegant as other Knizia games like Lost Cities (which we’re still waiting to see in the App Store) or Money, but it is a game with a lot of replay value. We know we’ll keep fighting for those estates for a while to come. This isn’t an every day kind of game, but it simply fun to pull out every now and then.

TUAWReview: Knights of Charlemagne card game is simply simple, and we like it like that originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ATI’s six-screen Eyefinity madness reviewed, fatal flaw found

Along with its introduction of the HD 5830, ATI announced the HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 card yesterday, which predictably comes with six DisplayPort outputs and enables that hallowed six-screen gaming overload that the Eyefinity branding has been about since the beginning. Some lucky scribes over at PC Pro have been treated to a live demonstration of what gaming at 5,760 x 2,160 feels like, and their understated response was to describe it as “far more immersive.” No kidding. They did raise the spectral figure of those monitor bezels, however, pointing out that bezel correction — where the image “behind the bezel” is rendered but hidden making the overall display look like a window unto the game world — habitually obscured text and game HUD elements. In their view, the sweet spot remains a triple-screen setup, and we’re inclined to agree (particularly if they look like this). For those interested in getting their multi-monitor gaming up and running, we’ve linked an invaluable guide from HardOCP below, which breaks down how much you can expect from ATI’s current HD 5000 series of cards, and also provides a video guide to setting your rig up.

ATI’s six-screen Eyefinity madness reviewed, fatal flaw found originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Keyser Söze Opportunity

“The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled was convincing Apple that Google didn’t exist.“

If Microsoft plays its cards right, that may be a statement we’re saying years from now.

What does that mean? Aside from being a riff on one of the best lines in movie history, what I mean by that is: imagine if Microsoft was able to convince Apple to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone, rather than Google. Leading up to Apple’s press event last month, rumors were swirling about this possibility. As is always the case with Apple, it’s hard to know how legitimate those talks were or if they were just some ploy to get something else it wanted. But from Microsoft’s perspective, it should be more than wishful thinking.

While the iPhone may not control the overall mobile sphere in terms of sale, it does control mobile web browsing. And increasingly, that’s becoming a popular way for users to browse the web. Basically since its inception, stats have the iPhone at the top of the pile when it comes to mobile browsing share. Yes, as more and better Android phones become available Android can and probably will leapfrog it. But the fact is that the iPhone is going to remain a huge factor in web browsing going forward. And certainly, Microsoft won’t be able to cut a deal with Google to feature Bing on Android.

Other recent numbers have Google seeing 1.46 million impressions a month from the iPhone alone. Bing? It gets just 2,387 impressions from the iPhone. That’s pretty incredible.

So how much are those million and a half impression worth to Google? Apparently, north of $100 million a year via a revenue share with Google, Silicon Alley Insider reported today. For Microsoft to woo Apple away from Google, it’s going to have to cough up a lot of money. But I would argue that it’s definitely worth it. And Microsoft actually has a history of such maneuvers.

Remember, when Microsoft bought a tiny share of Facebook in 2007, everyone was up in arms over the extrapolated $15 billion valuation it gave Facebook. But the truth is, Facebook was never worth that much (at least not at the time) because Microsoft was never interested in purchasing it at that price, nor was anyone else. Instead, Microsoft was making a strategic investment to secure the rights to Facebook search and advertising. More importantly, its $240 million investment for less than 2% of the company insured that Google wouldn’t be able to cut a deal with the social networking giant.

And that deal worked out well for Microsoft. Who knows if Microsoft made any money off of it, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that thanks to that initial deal, Microsoft and Facebook just got done renegotiating a new one, which will now see Facebook take over its display ads, but give a larger role to Bing for web search. With Facebook surging past 400 million users, this search deal is key for Microsoft and it undoubtedly blunts the loss of the display ad business (which probably wasn’t doing all that great anyway). Again, more importantly, it means Google can’t cut a deal with the social network to power its search.

And Google loves those deals. Not only did it strike one with MySpace (that didn’t work out so well), it has ones with AOL and others. But the key one for it may be the deal with Mozilla to make Google the default search engine within the Firefox browser. Google is paying something like $75 million a year to Mozilla for this privilege (based on 2008 revenues). That’s relevant because it’s the same type of deal Google now has with Apple for the iPhone. And it’s the deal Microsoft needs to get.

Despite pouring resources into its online division, Microsoft continues to bleed money there. And despite some success for Bing this year following its launch, the recent numbers indicate that it’s stealing search share from soon-to-be-search-partner Yahoo (assuming the deal goes through), rather than Google. Top search billing on the iPhone would ensure Bing is eating into Google share instead. And for that reason, price really shouldn’t be an issue for Microsoft if it’s serious about Bing battling Google Search. This is biggest and best opening it has.

There are no shortage of people who believe that Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the others are now all basically on par with each other when it comes to search results. Certainly Microsoft and Yahoo believe that to be the case (while Google, of course, does not), but others do too. The problem, as Microsoft and Yahoo see it, is that users are simply used to Google so they keep going back to it rather than trying something new. That’s exactly why Yahoo is moving away from the backend of search and more towards prettying up results on the front-end to give users a better experience. Microsoft has an even easier way to prove this: cut the deal to make Bing the default engine on the iPhone. If users don’t start complaining, we’ll know it’s true.

And the Microsoft/Apple deal could go farther. As long as both sides are cutting a deal for the iPhone, why not cut one to make Bing the default engine on the iPad as well? And how about Safari for the Mac in general? Every little bit of share gained is a good thing for Bing. And if the iPad proves to be a huge success, it could end up being a lot more than a “little bit” of search share.

But would Apple do this — cut a deal with its longtime rival?

Absolutely, provided it too believed that Bing’s results were at least on par with Google’s. In fact, at this point, Apple might even prefer a deal with Microsoft over one with Google given the war brewing between the iPhone and Android. With every search done on an iPhone, Apple is simply giving Google more fuel to pump into Android.

Microsoft’s alternatives aren’t pretty.

It can hope and pray that that Google will rest on its laurels and let its search engine much wither in the way that Microsoft itself rested on its laurels when it had 90% market share with IE.

Or it can hope that Windows Mobile stages a dramatic turnaround (Windows Mobile 7 is expected to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress shortly) and becomes the dominant mobile device for searching the web, with Bing in tow.

I don’t see either happening.

Or Microsoft could keep pumping money into advertisements about Bing and watch as it continues to eat away at Yahoo’s search share. But Microsoft would likely get much more bang out of those bucks if it simply cut the deal with Apple. And the time seems right for that to happen, if it ever will.

Microsoft could play the role of the villain that gets its longtime nemesis to do exactly what it wants. And just imagine if that helps Microsoft pull its entire online division out of its funk, thus giving the giant the thing it needs to battle the likes of Apple and Google going forward. That would be Microsoft’s ultimate goal in pulling such a deal off, after all.

And then Microsoft can exit the negotiating room — and like that *poof* be gone.

[images and videos: MGM]

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NVIDIA’s first two Fermi cards to be known as GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480
Don’t get too excited, we don’t have specs or release windows yet, but we do have hilariously inflated model names to share with you. NVIDIA’s all-new graphics architecture, commonly known as Fermi and recently re-coded as the GF100, has its first two commercial product names — the GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 — which as you’ll have noticed skip right past the 300s and nearly double the model numbers of the company’s current gen offerings. Let’s just hope the performance lives up to such a blusterous naming scheme.

NVIDIA’s first two Fermi cards to be known as GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AirStash wireless SD card reader hands-on

Just as CES is wrapping up, we managed to get some hands-on time with the AirStash wireless SD card reader, which is targeted at iPhone OS devices (but does work with other WiFi-enabled devices). Like many of the mysterious products from Vegas we have no price, release date or battery life, but what we do know now is that it’s indeed very light (1.5 ounces), fits nicely in our hands and supports up to 32GB SDHC cards. As for wireless connection the AirStash acts as a WiFi 802.11b/g access point — a cunning way to dodge the Apple dock connector license fees or the lack of Bluetooth profiles. Sadly, the prototype wasn’t working properly due to “some RF interference,” but as you can see above, the AirStash is accessed via a browser (UI design not final). Sure, this would mean you’d lose Internet connection via WiFi, but if the AirStash is cheap enough, then we’ll live with it. Let’s hope they hurry up with the release, though.

AirStash wireless SD card reader hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 04:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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