It looks like negotiations continue between Optimus and TMN. Two of the main mobile operators in Portugal. Vodafone is out of the game, so is up to these two to dispute for the role of iPhone provider. The iPhone will cost around 400€ in Portugal. Do not despair, it’s almost there 
It is giving me the looks… Spooky! The Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute has developed a robot to help shoppers to find their way. It monitors people’s behaviour and if it thinks that they could be lost it will offer help. If the lucky people are not lost than Robovie will ‘recommend’ some shops and show them how to get there. This is quite a helpful robot. This company will soon be making this little fellow available to the market.
Check the article in Pink Tentacle.
Ms. Pac-Man game is being used to help on the AI research. It looks like Ms. Pac-Man can play its own game better than humans. It’s not a fair comparison; it’s her own game. 
We need to be careful. If Ms. Pac-Man gets smarter we can be in trouble. Imagine Ms. Pac-Man running lose in berserk mode eating all our documents throughout the internet. Dear god…
The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards Finalists, with BioShock getting 12 nominations including the Overall Game of the Year.
Twelve nominations. The game is a star. The nominations for BioShock were:
You can download the PDF file with the full list of finalists here.
Another post that made me wonder how can someone kill another human being because of some online dispute. A 33 year old man was killed by a college student because of some clan rivalry in Lineage II; an online game.
“The killer shows no signs of remorse, and has calmly explained:
“Beat everything that moves, and everything that doesn’t move – move and beat!” – this is one of the rules of the Coo-clocks clan.”
That’s just crazy. Oh well, you best not make any enemies in an online game or you may be next. 
Do you like the game Crysis? Then check out Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation) awesome review 
Yes, more news regarding the iPhone. I know that it’s starting to be a bit too much, but hey… the iPhone was THE gadget of 2007. Let’s talk a little bit more about it
First things first; Firmware 1.1.3 is out and available for you to update your favourite gadget (iPhone or iPod Touch). Check the news on Engadget.
Second in the list, some interesting numbers. According to Apple, they sold around 4 million iPhones since its launch. I guess that’s a good number, don’t you? So, if one costs £269 and if my math is still in good shape, that’s more than 1 billion pounds worth of iPhones sold (yes I used the calculator), not counting the mobile contracts. Ouch…
Another exciting news is that iTunes 7.6 is now available. I am doing the update right now. It is telling me that it is 64.99 MB. The most talked-about new feature in iTunes 7.6 is the movie rental. It is now possible to rent a movie via iTunes and watch it in your computer or iPhone/iPod. The downloaded content will have 640×480 resolution.
Note: Just as I was doing some final touches in this post; iTunes came up taking the focus out of this window and while I was deleting some text using the backspace key it started to delete some of my playlists in iTunes… arghhhh I hate when a piece of software throws itself to the front of every other windows I may have open.
Last but not least, it looks like Canadian citizens will be having the iPhone soon. Some more steps into the world domination, mwahahaha… 
It is now available the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC Refresh. It doesn’t have any major differences from the original SP1 RC, although it fixes some issues with SP1 RC itself. Microsoft will probably release some more fixes/updates in the near future, so if you already have SP1 RC installed don’t bother installing this one. You also need to uninstall Service Pack 1 RC in order to install the Refresh update.
You can check all the Hotfixes and Security Updates included in the Service Pack 1 here.
Click here to go to the Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 RC Refresh website.
Yep, it’s here. Engadget’s ‘You decide ’08: The best of Crapgadget at CES‘. Head to Engadget to vote for your favourite (or is it least favourite?) crap gadget at CES. If you’ve been checking Engadget’s posts you know that there were some really bad ‘gadgets’ showing in CES. So now you have the chance to give it a vote. I already did
If you want to find out more check the list below for the nominees.
The nominees are:
Round 1: the Mini Phone
Round 2: the MP5 player
Round 3: Boxing Champ
Round 4: Fugliest display evar
Round 5: tweety! digital camera
Round 6: The Apple Pie
Round 7: 64MB Beer MP3 player
Round 8: Firetruck with 1.5-inch digital photo frame
Round 9: spy recorder for little girls
Round 10: PC Desktop Duo
Round 11: Janky-ass MP4 watch
Round 12: iPod docking pink plastic purse
Round 13: e-paper display actually paper
Round 14: Hello Kitty with human debris
Round 15: Shredmaster Jr.
Round 16: Music Player Sunglasses
Round 17: the non-existent digital photo frame
Round 18 finale: Tole Pure really is a crapgadge
Now you can stop laughing and head to Engadget’s post where you can vote for the one that made you laugh really loud, here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/13/you-decide-08-the-best-of-crapgadget-at-ces/.
I don’t know about you but I uninstalled Windows Vista (Home Premium) a week ago. I think it’s quite a nice Operating System but not for gaming. I usually play World of Warcraft and I can say that Vista steals around 10 frames per second from me. With Windows XP Media Center Edition I get those back. It’s not a big difference when the game is steady at 50-60fps but once I get to Shattrath (the main city in the expansion pack) it usually comes down to 17fps. With Windows XP I get 28-30fps.
You must be thinking, what a crap computer he’s got. Well, I have the DELL XPS M1710 which has a 512MB GeForce 7950GTX. I don’t call that crap. It’s quite a nice graphics card although the new DirectX10 ones are much better of course. And yes, I play it with the native resolution for my screen (1920×1200) with everything at maximum resolution. I am not complaining, I am just saying that with Windows XP I can have better performance.
All this boring introduction :p is just to say that finally we have Service Pack 1 available. Hopefully will fix some performance issues. Check out Tech ARP’s article about “What’s New In Windows Vista Service Pack 1?“.
Interested in installing Windows Vista SP1? Click here to go to the SP1 page in the Microsoft site.
