The Zone

Although we primarily eschew Macs for their mice, we can't simply resist the temptation of the new iPhone, which was unveiled last night at Macworld. stunningly thin and ultimately gorgeous, we think that it's the device that's currently the closest to perfection (until communication brain implants are developed). Although there is a slight disappointment in the choice of finish (we want apple white!), us Asians will only recieve stocks in 2008 (and hopefully the bugs will be ironed out by then)

*image from Apple Inc. 

Juicy specs include:

super-big 3.5" touchscreen @ 320 by 480 at 160 ppi

"multi-finger" input 

runs on OS X 

is also a widescreen iPod (hence, no new iPod video we guess)

comes in 4GB or 8GB flavours

connectivity options include quad-band GSM, WiFi b/g, EDGE, BT v2.0 with A2DP and uses the 'iPod connector' for charging and data connections

has a 2.0 Megapixel camera 

Its going to be offered with a 2-year plan from Cingular at USD499 for the 4GB model, and USD599 for the 8GB model. Better save those pennies now!

Not contended with their 1/60 scale Perfect-Grade Gundams, the Maru family from Japan got their paws on the 1/12 version of the iconic RX-78 Type II, which is over 3 feet tall, and assembled it! The whole kit costs a cool USD3000, and while its able to flash its eyes menacingly, and has over 14 moveable parts, it wont get around killing your entire family in the near future, not just yet. 

Check out the cool assembly pics here! 

Taking all efforts to eschew the current trends of Core 2 computing, OC Team Italy, or more accurately, ThuG, has broken the record for world's fastest OC'ed CPU, a 'lowly' but golden P4 631. While they used a modified Asus P5B with slapped on copper pipes, liquid nitrogen and a line straight to a coal burning power station, (and 2GB of CellShock PC8000 RAM, if you're asking)  and several packets of ciggies, this is undoubtedly a feat to be reckoned with. Too bad they didn't run any from of benchmarks though, although we've got some pics! (all rights reserved to OC Team Italy. Forza Italia!)

Check out Microsoft's take on viral marketing; its definitely better than a bunch of Kens messing up the PSP's Xmas push =

WhatsWrongWithU

Too bad the nearest country that has the sweeet promotional bundle of a 20GB machine + PGR3 + N3 + 2nd wireless remote for a mere RM1600++ is Singapore, although you enterprising gamers would have a lubang or two to cash in on the deal.

And its not the R600!!!!

Although we would like to call the R600 a monster, judging from all the spy shots that we see from Vr-zone (wasn't the whole issue under NDA? boo hoo) this Asus 8800GTX takes the cake for size - its not as long, but once installed, you can't SLI your whole setup! Unless, of course, you extend the tubings to make 'em fit outside the case.

Oh yeah, the cooler is OEM-ed from Thermaltake if anyone's asking. That gives us somewhat of a clue on its thermal dissipation performance. 

Head over to this new PICTAPS site to draw a character, any character, even some mixtures of lines and random parts, and later star it in its own music video! While the dancing characters are quite simple, and the background shows clones of the dude you;ve just created, its simply fascinating to watch them dance and do thier stuff; if only those retards whould stop drawing dancing phallic images!

I've 30 Granado Espada Closed Beta invites to give away, courtesy of Sendi Mutiara Multimedia and GameAxis. That's right. THIRTY. The requirement is simple. All you have to do is email me at fatcatlim@yahoo.com and if you're one of the first 30, I'll send you the ID and password. Only 1 invite per email/person. 30 emails don't count. :p

To download the game client, you can check out the download page here for the download links. Keep in mind that the game is a whopping 2.5GB download, so make sure you have enough space on your hard drive.

Granado Espada download links

Happy gaming~

No offense, but we're in a nihon mood today - especially with this solar-powered plant (not solar electric plant) that absorbs the sun's rays by day and emits a glowing light that soothes and calms your nerves.

The beef is that its rather........phallic in imagery and we're wondering - what are they up to? replacing thier sexy time with looking at things that look like someone's manhood? Just look at the dude staring at it.....oh dear!

Just as we know it, after suing a disabled woman for downloading MP3s, the RIAA is suing a 10 year old kid who allegedly downloaded illegal MP3s.........when she was seven. Most shocking thing is, she has downloaded songs from Atlantic, Priority, Capitol and even BMG.

WTF does a 10 year old girl wants with gangsta-rap and Sean Paul when she has her Sesame's Street songs?

More links to discussions over here. The madness has gotta stop. We're lucky that we're not 'persecuted' this way :D

LG has teamed up with Google in a move that allows preinstalled Google software on LG mobile phones. Users can then use their extra accesibility to search, check their Gmail, update thier blog and even use a cut-down version of Google Earth (how is this possible, we're not sure).

Coming to Europe, America and Asia as early as the second quarter of 2007, will include a dynamic user interface, including one-click access, and the liberal use of Java for mobile. 

"“Building on our efforts to set new standards for wireless handsets, we are excited to partner with Google to offer extra value to consumers with enhanced mobile Internet experiences,” said Mr. Paul Bae, Vice President of the Product Planning Team at LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “LG’s mobile devices, combined with Google, will provide consumers with easy access to their favorite Internet services even without a PC and make it easy for them to stay connected while in motion.”"

We hope that the collaboration will make better phones, instead of rehashing the Chocolate brand over and over again, though.

We were too bored out of our heads with the rains and all, and so we didn't bother doing an April Fools thing to garner more publicity (we never denied that we're boring people, anyways), But our lovely search engine has overdone it this year with a total of three (and possibly more) pranks! Viva la Google we say; they have too much time on their hands!

Happy Easter!!! 

Aside from that, we have had a relatively quiet Easter so far, with little reports on the iPhone and even lesser news on what's coming to us in a couple of weeks. What we do know is that the R800 is coming - and is already trouncing the NVIDIA's 8800s due to their lack of proper HDMI-outputs (ATI has an inbuilt HD soundcard in their R800s!!). In other news, crazy Prius owners get back at the oil industry's big brother, and we spotted this cooooooool LEGO dock - which you can build your own! We'll be back for more regular updates - tomorrow XD

Incredible! Crazy lawyer Jack Thompson has blamed Bill Gates, of all people for the incident at Virginia Tech where Cho Seung Hui killed 32 people. While his whole open letter did mentioned Halo, he was comparing sniping skills in Counterstrike with school gunmanship and blaming it all on poor Bill. WTF? CS isn't made by Microsoft, you old hag! Gaygamer has more updates on the gaming life, or lack thereof of Cho, while we sure think Jack Bauer has more killing cred than any all of the nerds on this planet.

This piece of important news might be a little late but hey, better late than never. If you didn't already hear about it, TM (formerly known as TM Net) recently announced that its ploughing US$50 million (~RM175 million) in a massive project to build a undersea fiber optic cable from SEA all the way to the US. The entire project will actually take about US$500 million (~RM1.75 billion) and quite a few SEA telecommunications companies such as from Indonesia, Thailand and India are sharing the cost.

It is said that the main reason for the cable is SEA telecommunication companies are hoping to avoid the recurrence of last year's Taiwan earthquake debacle. If you don't remember, the quake pretty much severed most SEA countries from the Internet for several weeks. The new cable expected to be ready in late 2008, will bypass the quake and volcano prone North Asia, and we should have nothing to worry about if any quake hits or volcano erupts in the future.

More importantly though, TM said that it's data capacity will go up from 60Gbps to 75Gbps when the cable is ready. Will this mean faster broadband speeds for everyone? 2Mbps speeds (or more) for the home? TM says its possible but we'll wait and see on this one. The new cable will surely create excess bandwidth and we hope that TM will deliver on that promise. At the very least, we just hope that we will be able to finally get the true speeds that we subscribed to. 

Original link here (via The Star)

Nokia has surprisingly hogged the online news limelight for the past couple of days with the uber-cool and radical modified phones by Mehmet Erkök and today, we find out that the humble 1100's sales figures has beaten the likes of the Nokia 3310, Sony Playstation 2 and Apple iPod with a whopping total of 200 million units sold! For sales comparisions, the 1100's closest competitor would be the the legendary 3310 itself, and while the Apple iPod broke the 100 million mark, it was only after five generations, and the Playstation 2 attained the 115 million units sold mark in six long years. That also means that the Nokia 1100 and its deriavtives (the 1110, 1110i, 11108 and 1112) moves across the globe at a tune of 1 million units per week! If you're selling a mobile phone that's below 150 dollars (USD), we're not surprised at how fast they sell out.

Viva le 1100?