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Unboxing Live 054: BlackBerry Presenter
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, Cell Phones, Features, Videocasts
During CES 2010, we were able to catch up with Ryan Biden of BlackBerry, and he was able to give us a live unboxing of the new BlackBerry Presenter device. For those unfamiliar, the BlackBerry Presenter hooks up to a monitor, projector, or display, and allows you to wirelessly give a PowerPoint presentation using a file stored directly on your BlackBerry, with no need for a PC. It’s a great idea, and you can check out the device in this episode. We will also have a demo of the device in our next episode of Bleeding Edge TV.
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PAX 2009 Keynote Speaker Revealed
Posted by Drea Avellan Categories: Culture, PAX
Fans of the Monkey Island Adventure series are about to go bananas! Organizers of Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) have just annouced Ron Gilbert as the keynote speaker at this year’s sixth annual event to be held Sept. 4-6 in Seattle, Washington. The 20-year veteran game designer, programmer and producer, Ron Gilbert’s resume includes Maniac Mansion and the first two installments in the Monkey Island adventure series. In addition, his famous SCUMM scripting language granted him a spot in the Computer Game Hall of Fame. He is currently creative director at independent development studio Hothead Games in Vancouver, Canada.
GDC 2009: Hideo Kojima: Solid Game Design: Making the Impossible Possible
Posted by Alex Lifschitz Categories: Culture, Features
If you at any point in your life have enjoyed a stealth game, you might know Hideo Kojima as the man to whom you owe your firstborn. He’s the father of the beloved Metal Gear game/interactive movie series, and he delivered the final keynote of the GDC today. And, as expected, it was worthy of a man who had just received a lifetime achievement award the night before. I took some pictures of the presentation, and tried to elucidate as best I can, but I seriously cannot stress how much you should try and find the video of the presentation as filmed by the GDC – Kojima is a genuinely funny guy with a lot to say, and if you like the cut of his jib (which is a very good cut, I hear), you deserve to see and hear the whole thing. In the meantime, have some on the house.
Windows 7 beta goes public January 9th
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: CES, CES 2009, Corporate News, Microsoft, Software
During the kickoff Microsoft keynote that marks the start CES, Steve Ballmer announced that Windows 7 beta is available starting today for TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Nothing too exciting there for the average Joe, we know, which is why we were excited when he also mentioned that the beta would also be publicly available beginning this Friday, January 9th. You’ll be able to grab either the 32-bit version, or the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 beta software if you are one of the first 2.5 million people to hit the download button. You just need to head to the Windows 7 product page to do so. Just be aware that the beta software will expire on August 1, 2009.
As part of the release, Microsoft was also happy to note that Windows Live Essentials, “a free suite of communications and sharing applications that make it easy for people to communicate, share and keep their online lives in sync and in one place with one login,” is now also available on a worldwide scale.
Keynote Remote app introduced by Apple
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Productivity, Apple, $0.99
Apple just announced their latest contribution to the App Store this morning in their MaWorld 2009 keynote. Keynote Remote is the official method of controlling your Keynote presentations from your iPhone or iPod touch. In order to advance slides, you swipe across the screen. You are also able to see your presenter notes beneath your current slide, and you can preview your next slide by turning the device to landscape mode. You can pair your iPhone or iPod touch to any Mac with Keynote ‘09 installed. In fact, that is an important point to bring up - Keynote Remote only works with the newly announced Keynote ‘09, part of the iWork ‘09 productivity suite. You can download it now for $0.99.
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iWork ‘09 announced at MacWorld 2009
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Software
Aside from the new iLife ‘09 suite that was announced this morning, Apple is also showing off the new version of iWork, iWork ‘09. Here is a look at some of the highlights:
Keynote: New to Keynote, you can now identify objects within slides, and Keynote will take care of moving them around between slides. There is a Magic Move feature, which will do everything automatically, including resizing and rotating an object. There are new animations as well, featuring fly-ins on charts and graphs, rotating and grow on bars, zooming in on charts, etc. New deck themes have also been added.
As a side note, there is also a new Keynote remote control app available in the App Store that will allow you to use your iPhone or iPod touch to control your Keynote presentations. It will cost $0.99.
Pages: Pages ‘09 gets a few new features. First up is a fullscreen view that makes everything else on your screen disappear. Basically, you get the document you are typing on, and everything else fades to black, to help you focus. There are also new dynamic outlines, which let you outline what you are going to write before you actually start writing, and you can switch back and forth to reorganize your thoughts. Pages also gets a new mail merge feature, which works with Numbers, connecting to tables, and it also works with MathTpye and EndNote. Oh, and you get 40 new themes.
Numbers: Numbers 09 picks up easy formula writing, advanced chart options (like mixed chart types, error bars, trend lines) and new table categories. If you have a Pages document that is linked to data from a Numbers document, if you update it in Numbers, it is automatically updated in Pages. Nice. Lastly, Numbers also gets theme templates, which is rare for a spreadsheet application.
iWork ‘09 ships today, and sells for $79, or $99 for a family pack that is good on up to five Macs. If you purchase it with a new Mac, it costs just $49.
iLife ‘09 announced at MacWorld 2009
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Google, PC / Laptop, Software
During his first (and only) MacWorld keynote speech, Phil Schiller announced the latest update to the iLife suite of software, iLife ‘09. Let’s take each app, one by one, and look at the changes and additions:
iPhoto ‘09: New to iPhoto is Faces. Faces uses facial recognition to organize and tag photos of people. iPhoto will find a face in a photo, and you tell it who it is. It will then find other photos that it thinks are of the same person. Easy way to grab snapshots that feature the same person. Another new organization feature is called Places. This uses the geotagging feature available on a lot of modern cameraa, and puts pins on a map showing the different places that the images were taken. If you have photos that aren’t geotagged, you simply tell iPhoto where the image (or event images) was taken, and it fills in the rest. The map feature is based on Google Maps, so you can zoom in on a location, look at satellite or street view, etc.
Apple has also added in built-in support for Facebook and Flickr to iPhoto - that means no more fumbling around with clunky plugins to get your pictures out of iPhoto and onto those services. A very welcome addition. Facebook users can add the names of people in their images, and iPhoto will retain that info as well (presumedly for the Faces feature.)
iPhoto also gets new slideshow themes. You choose a theme and photos, and iPhoto puts it all together. It uses the Faces to find the faces in images so that those are centered and zoomed. You can save slideshows to iTunes, and they can be synced to an iPhone or iPod touch. Something new for the Books too, you can now automatically get maps included, with pins that show your location. Great for making travel books.
iMovie ‘09: Apple has admitted that, since it was new, iMovie ‘08 didn’t have all the features that older customer wanted. This year, they aim to change that. iMovie ‘09 gets a new Precision Editor, Advanced drag & drop (that give you context-sensitive menus,) dynamic themes, and even animated travel maps. So, again, you can use your location data to insert 2D and 3D maps of those locations into your movies.
GarageBand ‘09: GarageBand ‘09 is being updated with a new feature called “Learn to Play,” which brings up an instructor which plays video lessons. If that’s not enough to get you excited, there are even Artist Lessons. You get people like John Fogerty, Colbie Caillat, Sting, Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones, and Patrick Stump, who will teach you how to play instruments like the guitar or piano.
iLife ‘09 also includes updated versions of iWeb and iDVD, and ships free on new Macs. You can purchase an upgrade for $79, or buy a family pack (good on up to five Macs) for $99, and it will be available in “late January.”
For those wondering, Apple has also released a new version of iWork - iWork ‘09.
Bleeding Edge TV 280: E3 2008 Xbox Media Briefing
Posted by Nate True Categories: Full Episodes, Announcements, Home Entertainment, Microsoft, Movies, Video Games, Videocasts
In this episode, coming to you straight from E3 2008, we chat with Xbox’s Heather Snavely about all the news that Microsoft announced during their Xbox Media Briefing. We have keynote clips here as well, in case you missed it and want to see all that went down, while Heather gives us a bit more detail and answers a few questions we had about some of the specific announcements.
Specifically, Heather tells us a bit more about the new Xbox 360 Experience dashboard, answers a few questions we had about the Lips game and the motion-based microphone controller, as well as Xbox avatars and questions we had about the future of Gamer Pictures on Xbox Live. All in all, a nice look at all the new details uncovered at E3 in relation to Xbox 360.
E3 2008: Xbox Media Briefing: Gears of War 2, Lips, Guitar Hero Tunes, Final Fantasy XIII announced
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, E3, Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Marketplace
We’ve entered the auditorium here in the West Hall, and are currently waiting for the E3 2008 Xbox Media Briefing to begin. Very nice setup in here, by the way. Bunch of stage lighting, high definition displays, and…oh, even a mock living room setup. Snazzy. Anyhow, keep it locked here, as we will be bringing you live updates from the keynote as it happens. Any predictions on what we will be seeing announced today?
Oh, as for images, we will update the post with a bunch of those after the keynote ends. We wanna focus on bringing you the text updates for now, mkay?
We start with some Xbox 360 Street Talk, where apparently Microsoft went around town and interviewed people off the streets, and asked them about what they like about Xbox 360. Obviously, all good comments here. Now we get answers for questions like “What is a noob?”, “What does it mean to be ‘pwned’?”, “What does melee mean?”, “What does RPG mean?”, etc. Basically, what do average people know about video game terms. This is kind of like sitting through the advertisement trailers in the movie theater, the ones that come before the actual trailers.
Check out the rest of the keynote after the jump:
Live blogging the WWDC 2008 Steve Jobs Keynote
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Corporate News, Handhelds, Internet, PC / Laptop
In just about five minutes, Steve Jobs will be taking the stage to give his WWDC 2008 keynote. We are monitoring all the news, and will be bringing you updates on everything going on, live, as it happens on stage. In case you’ve been summering in Antarctica, we are expecting the new 3G iPhone to be launched (and not expecting it to be as radical as others think it will be - no front-facing camera, no iChat video chat - just some 3G and GPS goodness), Snow Leopard should be given out to developers to take home with them in anticipation of the launch of OS X 10.6 at MacWorld 2009, and the new .Mac replacement we’ve all been hearing about, Mobile Me, should be announced and shown off to the masses.
Well, it’s just about time. Let’s get started…
Click to continue reading Live blogging the WWDC 2008 Steve Jobs Keynote
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