Crysis: Warhead

8/10

Take on the fight as the volatile Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes in a new parallel story taking place during the events of Crysis. Psycho’s secret mission will take him to the other side of the island on a ruthless pursuit of a North Korean general hell-bent on obtaining powerful technology.

With the versatile powers of his Nanosuit and an arsenal of fully customisable weapons and vehicles at his disposal, Sykes will do whatever it takes to carry out his top-secret objective.

Action on the other side of the island is more intense, the battles are fierce, and the mission protocol is no longer “Adapt to Survive.” As Sergeant Sykes, now you must adapt to dominate the battle. Twin SMG’s blazing, seizing new vehicles, or going stealth, the action and the victory is on your terms.

Crysis: Warhead is the latest pulse-racing instalment of 2007’s PC Game of the Year. This time round you play as Sergeant Sykes, with a vital mission to recover the technology that an enemy general wishes to own, at any cost.

This time round there are more dynamic gameplay elements, customisable weapons, new vehicles, more locations and a fully interactive war zone to dominate – whether you want to play in a guns-out way or you’re more of a stealth merchant.

Warhead is an extremely clever and very exciting stand-alone expansion pack, meaning that you don’t need the original Crysis in order to play it. What makes it even better though is the reverse-engineered and altered graphical engine – it will now play on more machines than the original Crysis (which, let’s face it, even with a hugely powerful PC, you might not be able to crank it to full settings graphically).

This should mean that a wider audience can access the fun of Crysis – and it really is a lot of fun. The physics aspects remain (picking up soldiers, throwing them into rocks, other soldiers etc, punching vehicles and so on) and the nano-suit remains integral in the battle scenario.

Exactly how do you want to target that Korean base up ahead? Go stealth like the predator, sneak up and take them out? Or would you rather engage your strength suit to neutralise any weapon kick-back and go all out? Ii really does make a difference to the strategic play.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from being extremely short – there are perhaps only around six hours gameplay to be had here. However, there are a bunch of multiplayer options (that now brilliantly includes team deathmatch), with some new online modes and 21 maps – seven of which are new.

Perhaps the only real gripes that I have with the game are that firstly it can be a little too linear (I actually found places in Crysis where you couldn’t access and these became more apparent in Warhead) and the enemy AI – which at times reacted a little too oddly to what I was up to. Nonetheless, Crysis Warhead is an absolutely solid title and the parallel storyline adds to the original game if you’ve played it.

If you liked Crysis, or even if you like first person shooters in general, then you’ll probably want to play this. It’s well worth a look.

VideoSurf can “see” inside videos to understand and analyze the content, in order to deliver more relevant results. VideoSurf’s patent-pending technology also visually identifies important characters within the results, so that users can discover new videos based on the appearances of characters in which they’re interested. Users can also view the contents at a glance before deciding whether to watch the video, and can easily skip to a specific moment within the video.

Unique features of VideoSurf Beta include:

- Search Your Results by Character
- Visual Summaries of Videos
- Show Only Faces
- Ranks videos by visual relevancy

VideoSurf aggregates content from across all leading sites on the Web

In the top shot, you can see how the girl's face has been radically altered. Many people I know would of course find the face on the right beautiful, but you can't help but be shocked at the overall impact that a few minor feature alterations can have on the appearance of a face.

In some cases, it's just funny, like Woody Allen here:
In case you couldn't tell, the machine judged that Allen is, for the most part, devastatingly handsome, but that nose of his just had to be trimmed.

I am not sure what that says about the panel of judges. I wonder what would happen if a beauty poll of 100 different countries was used to create the rules. Maybe we'd discover a universal concept of beauty. Or maybe we'd learn that with so many opinions of beauty, nothing would need changing.

In the short term, the computer doesn't say a lot that Hollywood can't already tell us. Shots of James Franco, for instance, go through the process untouched, while the nerdier Michael Cera gets more of a going over. Check out these shots and more, plus the full story of Leyvand's software. [NYT via BBG]

Microvision is a world leader in the innovation of a new generation of display and imaging products for mobile applications. Recently, Microvision announced that they signed an agreement with Taiwan’s Asia Optical for them to produce products based on Microvision’s proprietary PicoP Technology. In the agreement, Asia Optical will be responsible for manufacturing PicoP display engine as well as Microvision’s SHOW pocket projector. The two companies have already started mass production of these products and expect to have completed devices by the end of this year. The display engine being manufactured will be integrated into future devices including mobile handsets, portable media players, digital cameras, and laptops. The SHOW projector is Microvision’s first stand alone pocket projector. It uses different colored lasers to display images that never go out of focus. The SHOW is able to display on screens up to 100 inches diagonally. Microvision plans to release the SHOW to the consumer market sometime in the beginning of 2009.

[via Digi Times]

S101 has already shown its presence a couple of times before but now it’s rightfully official as Asus acknowledged it with a press release. Asus has managed this fashionista netbook to be really anorexic at 18mm and lightweight at around 1kg. It comes with an encrypted Eee Cloud Storage of 20GB and SSD up to 64GB as the local option. Finally with the Super Hybrid Engine (SHE), this netbook can give five hours of continuous use. That’s what Asus claims. Full specifications below.

Press Release

Advertisement: Samsung Hub - Tracking minute steps of the Korean Giant

Next year sounds like a long time to wait for the Nokia XpressMusic 5800, but luckily there are some sticky-fingered reviewers out there willing to give it the full run-down right now. Folks were quick to pit the Tube against the iPhone (as we do with just about any touchscreen smartphone nowadays), but the reviewers point out that the two are in different leagues altogether. On the whole, the XpressMusic gets nothing but praise - fine call quality, good features, lots of multimedia, and very few OS problems. Russia will supposedly be getting in on October 5th., and then coming to Europe in 2009 for 279 € before subsidies. The low price point will be a big factor in competing with the other full touchscreen devices out there and hopefully set a new standard for other manufacturers.

[Mobile-Review via Engadget Mobile]

Nokia XpressMusic 5800 “Tube” Specifications

Size

* Form: Classic with full touch user interface
* Dimensions: 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm
* Weight: 109 g
* Volume: 83 cc
* Touch user interface optimised for one-hand use with tactile feedback

Display and 3D

* Main display
- Size: 3.2″
- Resolution: 640 x 360 pixels (nHD)
- Up to 16 million colours
- aspect ratio 16:9
- automatic orientation sensor (Accelerometer) for display rotation
* 3D image engine

Keys and input method

* Stylus, plectrum and finger touch support for text input and user interface control (alphanumeric keypad, full and mini qwerty keyboard, handwriting recognition, full screen handwriting for Chinese language)
* Dedicated Media Bar touch key for access to music, gallery, share on-line, Video Centre and web browser
* Voice commands
* Physical keys for application launch key (menu key), send & end, power, camera, lock, volume up & down

Colors and covers

* Available in-box colours:
- Red
- Blue
- Black
Available colours may vary per region.

Connectors

* Micro-USB connector, USB 2.0 High Speed
* 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector
* MicroSD card slot, small DC jack, Micro USB cable interface to PC (CA-101), TV out interface (CA-75U)

Power

* BL-5J 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery
* Talk time (maximum):
- GSM 8.8 h
- WCDMA 5 h
* Standby time (maximum):
- GSM 406.2 h
- WCDMA 400 h
* Browsing time with packet data (maximum): 3.4 h
* Video playback time (maximum): 5.2 h, Video playback time (maximum, nHD/Mpeg4) 3.4 h, VGA video playback using TV-Out with Stereo BT Headset 3.8 h
* Video recording time (maximum): 3.6 h
* Video call time (maximum): 3 h
* Music playback time (maximum): Up to 35 h
* Gaming time (maximum): 5.6 h

Memory

* MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, max. 16 GB
* 81 MB internal memory
* 8GB microSD memory card in-box, expandable up to 16GB

Memory

* MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, max. 16 GB
* 81 MB internal memory
* 8GB microSD memory card in-box, expandable up to 16GB

Operating frequency

* WCDMA 900/2100
* GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
* WCDMA 850/1900 (Latin America and Brazil variant only)
* Automatic switching between GSM bands
* Flight mode

Data network

* CSD
* HSCSD
* GPRS/EDGE class B, multislot class 32, maximum speed 296/177 kbps (DL/UL)
* WCDMA 2100/900 with simultanous voice and packet data, maximum speed PS 384/384 kbps (UL/DL), CS maximum speed 64 kbps
* HSDPA cat 6, maximum speed 3.6 Mbps (DL)
* WLAN IEEE 802.11 b/g (3G version only)
* TCP/IP support

Local connectivity and synchronisation

* Bluetooth version 2.0
- Bluetooth profiles: A2DP & AVRCP
* MTP (Mobile Transfer Protocol) support
* TV out with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U, in-box)
* Support for PC synchronisation with Nokia OVI Suite

Call features

* Integrated hands-free speakerphone
* Number screening for messaging and calls
* Automatic answer with headset or car kit
* Any key answer
* Call waiting, call hold, call divert
* Call timer
* Logging of dialled, received and missed calls
* Automatic redial
* Speed dialling
* Voice dialling: speaker independent dialling and voice commands (SIND)
* Fixed dialling number support
* Vibrating alert (internal), also with tactile feedback
* Side volume keys
* Mute/unmute
* Contacts bar for 4 contacts with images and communication history (SMS, IM, email, web feeds)
* Talking ring tones
* Conference calling with up to 6 participants
* Video calling: up to 3h, QCIF 176 x 144 pixels, low up to 5 fps, normal up to 10 fps, smooth up to 15 fps

Messaging

* SMS
* Multiple SMS deletion
* MMS version 1.3, message size up to 600 kb
* Automatic resizing of images for MMS
* Nokia Xpress audio messaging
* Common inbox for SMS and MMS messages
* Number screening for messaging
* Distribution lists for messaging
* Instant messaging client
* Cell broadcast

E-mail

* Supported protocols: IMAP, POP, SMTP
* Support for e-mail attachments
* OMA e-mail notification support
* Mail for Exchange 2008 in DL client, in 2009 embedded

Web browsing

* Supported markup languages: HTML, XHTML, WML
* Supported protocols: HTTP, WAP, JavaScript
* TCP/IP support
* OSS browser
* Nokia Mobile Search

GPS and navigation

* Integrated GPS for pedestrian and car navigation
* Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch application

Photography

* 3.2 megapixel camera (2048 x 1536 pixels)
* Image formats: JPEG
* Carl Zeiss optics
* 3x digital zoom
* Autofocus
* Dual LED flash
* Flash modes: On, off, automatic, red-eye reduction
* White balance modes: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
* Centre weighted auto exposure; exposure compensation: +2 ~ -2EV at 0.5 step
* Normal, Sepia, Black & White, Vivid, Negative
* Dedicated camera key
* Landscape (horizontal) orientation
* Photo editor on device
* Direct printing to compatible picture printers

Video

* Main camera
Video recording at up to 640 x 480 pixels and up to 30 fps (TV high quality), up to 640 x 352 pixels and up to 30 fps (widescreen quality), up to 320 x 240 pixels and up to 30 fps/15 fps (email high/normal quality), up to 176 x 144 and up to 15 fps (sharing quality)
- Up to 4x digital video zoom
* Front camera for video calling
* Video recording file formats: .mp4, .3gp
* Audio recording formats: WAV (normal), AMR (MMS), AAC/MP4 (high quality)
* Video white balance modes: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
* Scene modes: automatic, night
* Colour tone modes: normal, sepia, black & white, vivid, negative
* Clip length (maximum): 1 h 30 min (high or normal quality). Dependable on available memory.
* RealPlayer
* Video playback file formats: MPEG4-SP playback 30fps VGA, MPEG4-AVC playback 30fps QVGA, WMV9 playback 30fps QVGA, MPEG4-SP playback 30 fps nHD
* Video streaming: 3GPP and CIF
* Landscape mode video playback
* Video editor on device
* Video Centre service supported: download and stream video content, WMV support, video feeds

Music and audio playback

* Nokia Nseries digital music player
- Playlists
- 8-band graphical equaliser
- selection by artist, composers, album and genre
album graphics display and audio visualisations
bass booster, stereo widening, loudness
* Music playback file formats: .mp3, SpMidi, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA
* Dedicated volume keys & immediate access to Music Player from Media Bar, dedicated music keys in the headset control unit AD-54
* Stereo FM radio
* 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector
* Music Player
* Nokia Music Manager
* Nokia Music Store support
* Nokia Podcasting support
* Ring tones: 3D stereo ring tones, 64-tone polyphonic, mp3 & video ring tones (3 videos and 9 mp3 songs built-in)
* Integrated stereo speakers with surround sound (crystal clear hi-fi sound quality with dedicated audio chip)

Voice and audio recording

* Voice commands
* Speaker-independent name dialling (SIND)
* Voice recorder
* AMR, NB-AMR, FR, EFR
* Digital stereo microphone

Personalisation: profiles, themes, ring tones

* Customisable profiles
* Ring tones: 3D stereo ring tones, 64-tone polyphonic, mp3 & video ring tones
* Themes

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EA announced some new details for the latest title in the franchise called Need for Speed Undercover. The game will offer several online modes including modes similar to what we got on Pro Street for circuit race and sprint race.

The most interesting online mode is called Cops and Robbers. In this mode, two teams of four play at the same time with four players on the cops and four on the robbers side. The goal for the robbers is to deliver a package while the goal for the cops is to prevent the delivery. Undercover uses a new Heroic Driving Engine to provide realistic driving effects. The game is slated to launch on November 18 in America.

Need for Speed Undercover

EA announced some new details for the latest title in the franchise called Need for Speed Undercover. The game will offer several online modes including modes similar to what we got on Pro Street for circuit race and sprint race.

The most interesting online mode is called Cops and Robbers. In this mode, two teams of four play at the same time with four players on the cops and four on the robbers side. The goal for the robbers is to deliver a package while the goal for the cops is to prevent the delivery. Undercover uses a new Heroic Driving Engine to provide realistic driving effects. The game is slated to launch on November 18 in America.

Need for Speed Undercover

Flying cars are all hat, no cattle. But wait. What's this? A flying car that will actually exist, roll on real streets and highways and then take off into the wild blue? You betcha. Pony up your $194,000, and by the end of next year you'll be cruising skyward in a 1300-pound Terrafugia Transition and then parking it in your garage when you're done. It's more like a drivable airplane, but we'd rather call it a flying car.

Let's do a walkaround. Out back is a push prop, and the front canard does double duty as a wing and bumper. Its gas engine will push it over a range of 460 miles through the air. Look at the cool way the wings fold up into a compact package, completing its metamorphosis from airworthy flying machine to street-legal road rocket.

We've been hearing about this Terrafugia Transition for ages, so this is great news that it's actually going to be shipping to paying customers. The first flying prototype is scheduled to take off next month. Nice. Covert that prop to a jet engine and give it vertical takeoff capabilities, and we'll be living in the future.