Valve’s co-founder and managing director, Gabe Newell, just went on stage at Sony’s E3 keynote a few moments ago and announced that both Steam and Portal 2 are headed to the PS3 the same time as when the Xbox 360, Mac, and PC owners get their copy. While Portal 2 has Steamworks enabled and supports community features (like chat), it will not be cross platform capable.
With all this news, it’s interesting that Newell said a while back that game consoles are “a waste of everyone’s time” and “a disaster on many levels … I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it’.”
Just two weeks after iPhone OS 4 was announced and a developer preview released comes the second iPhone OS 4 beta, presumably crushing some bugs that beta 1 had and killing the iPhone 3G’s beta 1 jailbreak, meaning jailbreakers will need to hold out for now. You will still need a UDID registered device to install and activate beta 2.
After nearly three weeks of waiting, everyone gets the result we they were looking for with Opera – Apple approves Opera Mini to go on sale (for free) on the App Store. While the app is not on sale at the time of this writing, you should be able to see it within 24 hours, depending on the market that you have an iTunes account on. Original iPhone owners can also feel a little happier today, since the browser, when tested under EDGE connections, outpaced Safari by more than 6x.
Opera Mini isn’t a Safari based browser, like all the others on the App Store, which explains why people believed that it would get denied from the App Store. The app was first demoed at Mobile World Congress 2010, and then officially submitted the app to Apple in the wee hours of March 23. Most skeptics (me included) wondered if it will ever be approved, and so far it has. It doesn’t mean, however, that the app will remain approved for the weeks and months to come.
Update: Based on reports flying in from various places, those in Australia and the UK should be able to already download and use Opera Mini. Still not out for the United States. Video and more pictures after the break.
Update 2: It’s in the United States App Store, and from initial review, kicks Mobile Safari out of the playing field. Whether you have your iPhone handy or not, download it now.
Taking a step forward, probably in response to CTIA 2010, Apple has now begun selling contract-free iPhones in the United States at list price. List price means $499 for 8GB, $599 for 16GB and $699 for 32GB. The iPhones would still be tied to AT&T and require their SIM cards, but you don’t need to show proof that you have AT&T as your current wireless provider to get them this way. Original report speculated that the phones would be sold unlocked, and proved to be inaccurate minutes before us posting this. Let down, yes, but now you don’t need to lock yourself into AT&T clutches, since “everyone knowns it takes 2 minutes to unlock them”.
At the time of writing, Apple’s online store still requires a two year contract. Customers can pick up one iPhone a day only. Sorry for your multiple impulse buys.
Let’s face it, the Nexus One is a beautiful phone we would all like to use. The phone is already out for AT&T and T-Mobile networks and coming soon to Verizon, but it has no word for Sprint. That’s about to change. Just a little past a day after the announcement that the phone would work over AT&T’s 3G bands comes word from Sprint that they will be carrying the phone, and that a release date would be announced “soon”. Verizon still has to get their CDMA version of the Nexus One, but now we known that every major US carrier will sport the phone (probably at the same price) sometime this year.
MIX 2010 started, and one thing quickly grabbed everyone’s eye: Windows Phone 7 Series Marketplace, and it’s sexy. Besides from its charming good looks, it has support for ad supported content, operator billing, and credit card charges. There’s also a try before you buy option similar to what Android has to offer, but developers get to pick the terms and the fine detailed things, like time of trial. The UI looks identical to rest of the well-polished OS and has a panoramic view where the user can see categories and titles, as well as get more information on their app that they’re seeking, including pricing, screenshots, reviews, and ratings.
Who are among the first to launch their apps for Windows Phone 7 Series? Well, these guys:
AWS Convergence Technologies, WeatherBug, Citrix Systems Inc., Clarity Consulting Inc., Cypress Consulting, EA Mobile, Fandango Inc., Foursquare Labs Inc., frog design inc., Glu Mobile Inc., Graphic.ly, Hudson Entertainment Inc., IdentityMine Inc., IMDb.com Inc., Larva Labs, Match.com LLC, Matchbox Mobile Ltd., Microsoft Game Studios, Namco Networks America Inc., Oberon Media Inc., Pageonce Inc., Pandora Media Inc., Photobucket Inc., PopCap Games Inc., Seesmic, Shazam Entertainment Ltd., Sling Media, SPB Software Inc., stimulant, TeleCommunications Systems Inc., Touchality LLC and Vertigo Software Inc
A nice, smooth set of first developers, but unless the platform gets lots of good apps quickly, it won’t be going anywhere. One of the biggest selling points on the iPhone is apps, over 140,000 of them. When a consumer is deciding whether to buy a WP7S phone or iPhone, one thing that they’ll think over is apps. Since apps extend what the phone can do, the consumer might be attracted more to the iPhone if the app catalog is as skimpy as the Zune HD’s catalog.
Oh, and it’s the only way to install apps on your Windows Phone.
We’ll know more soon, and keep checking back for the latest.
A pair of iPads passed the FCC just hours ago, right on time for Apple’s pre-orders. As you may remember from previous times, Apple has a thing for perfectly timing its FCC filings, such as with the iPhone back in 2007. There’s nothing new this time around, as manuals and both internal/external pictures have been held back. What’s more is that there is only two filings, one of which has UMTS 850 / 1900 and GSM 850 / 1900, which means that Apple has condensed both models and all sizes into just two filings, one for the WiFi only model and one for the 3G model.
It’s also worth noting that it probably will come right on schedule.
Zune HD users can rejoice today, knowing that there’s now a Facebook app for their platform. Hopefully nothing is censored this time around, unlike the Twitter app, but users are reporting problems installing the software or using the app itself. I don’t have a Zune, so I don’t care. More pictures after the break.
At The Engadget Show, Aaron Woodman, director of consumer experiences for Microsoft’s mobile division, shocked the world by pulling out a LG prototype phone running Windows Phone 7 Series. You can view all the pictures of the phone here.
There’s not much for specs, but it is a trifle bit thicker than an iPhone or Nexus One, has six hardware buttons, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, and a 5MP camera. He wouldn’t confirm it had any Mac support, but he didn’t toss it to the curb. At least now we have an idea for the future of Windows Mobile hardware.
Update: There’s also a short snippet of it being on the Engadget Show. See below.
Google launched a social networking tool today, taking on the same market as Twitter, called Buzz. Google Buzz can be described social networking service also integrating your other social network updates into its own wing, built right into Gmail and the entire Google ecosystem.
Buzz has four notable features, including:
A friend list created automatically based on the people you email the most often from Gmail.
Other social networks and media sharing sites, such as Flickr, Twitter, and Picasa are combined with file sharing for status updates.
Private or public sharing (equivalent of Twitter and email, respectively).
A recommended buzz, similar to when you see tweets retweeted by your followers on Twitter.
One thing not left out were cellphones. Buzz is also designed to work with the iPhone and Android browsers, so you can “buzz on the go”. Buzz can also change your stream to places around you like restaurants, businesses, among others using your current locations, which you can manually update (with location-aware disabled iPhones) or find automatically.
Google Buzz will slowly roll out to Gmail users, so don’t expect to use it right away.
Valve’s co-founder and managing director, Gabe Newell, just went on stage at Sony’s E3 keynote a few moments ago and announced that both Steam and Portal 2 are headed to the PS3 the same time as when the Xbox 360, Mac, and PC owners get their copy. While Portal 2 has Steamworks enabled and supports community features (like chat), it will not be cross platform capable.
Just two weeks after 
