It came as a surprise to no one when we named "Batman: Arkham Asylum" our favorite video game of 2009, so it should be equally un-surprising (non-surprising?) to know that we're ridiculously excited about any and all info we can get about the sequel, "Batman: Arkham City."
Back in September we got a look at a bunch of new images from "Batman: Arkham City" featuring Catwoman, Two-Face, and other characters, and now a teaser trailer for the game has arrived online. The full trailer for "Batman: Arkham City" will debut this Saturday during the Video Game Awards on Spike TV, but this new video offers a short tease.
SPOILER WARNING: Batman does indeed continue to be a total bad-ass in the sequel.
Make sure to check back here and on MTV's Multiplayer blog for more on "Batman: Arkham City" as it develops...
Let us know what you think of the "Batman: Arkham City" teaser in the comment section or on Twitter! You can also follow me, Splash Page editor Rick Marshall, on Twitter!
среда, 8 декабря 2010 г.
Calling Captain Awesome
Unemployed Ore. cabinet maker legally changes his name and signature, with inspiration from the NBC series "Chuck"
Brian Davies/The Register-Guard AP
Captain Awesome shows off his new I.D.
People familiar with the NBC series "Chuck" will recall that "Captain Awesome" is the nickname Chuck has given to his brother-in-law, Dr. Devon Woodcomb.
Tweeple are divided on the awesomeness of this move, ranging from marriage proposals to outright mockery. But most agree that Awesome's new signature -- a smiley face flanked by two arrows -- lives up to his name. While the state is perfectly willing to accept the new mark, his bank has deemed it too easy to forge.
Youku.com plans initial offering of 15 million ADS
NEW YORK
Youku.com Inc. plans an initial public offering of approximately 15.4 million American Depositary Shares this week.
The Chinese online television company said in a regulatory filing that the IPO is likely to be priced between $9 and $11 per ADS. Each ADS represents 18 Class A shares.
The company anticipates net proceeds of about $139.3 million, or $160.7 million if the underwriters fully exercise their option. The net proceed amounts are based on the IPO being priced at $10 per share.
Youku.com said it plans to use about $30 million of the proceeds for technology, infrastructure and product development efforts. Another $25 million will be used for video content acquisition, and approximately $20 million will be used to expand sales and marketing efforts.
The company said remaining funds would be put toward general corporate purposes, such as working capital and possible acquisitions.
Youku.com had revenue of 153.6 million renminbi ($204.1 million) for the year ended Dec. 31, 2009.
The company's stock is expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the "YOKU" ticker symbol.
Youku.com Inc. plans an initial public offering of approximately 15.4 million American Depositary Shares this week.
The Chinese online television company said in a regulatory filing that the IPO is likely to be priced between $9 and $11 per ADS. Each ADS represents 18 Class A shares.
The company anticipates net proceeds of about $139.3 million, or $160.7 million if the underwriters fully exercise their option. The net proceed amounts are based on the IPO being priced at $10 per share.
Youku.com said it plans to use about $30 million of the proceeds for technology, infrastructure and product development efforts. Another $25 million will be used for video content acquisition, and approximately $20 million will be used to expand sales and marketing efforts.
The company said remaining funds would be put toward general corporate purposes, such as working capital and possible acquisitions.
Youku.com had revenue of 153.6 million renminbi ($204.1 million) for the year ended Dec. 31, 2009.
The company's stock is expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the "YOKU" ticker symbol.
Falcon 9 Static Fire Test Nears
Challenged by an unprecedented series of “firsts” for its upcoming initial flight of Falcon 9 with a Dragon spacecraft, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) stresses that even if the vehicle is not recovered intact as planned, the mission should be judged an overall success. Unlike the first successful launch of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle in June with a representative Dragon, the planned flight in early December will launch an operational spacecraft to low Earth orbit. After as many as four orbits, the plan is for Dragon to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and be recovered by parachute en route to a splashdown in the Pacific off the California coast.
Flight 2 of the Falcon 9 is also the first demonstration flight under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, a critical milestone on the path established in 2006 to encourage private companies to develop commercial space transport capabilities, and to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) starting in 2011. The Dragon is designed to return as much as 5,510 lb. of cargo back to Earth, well in excess of any other commercial cargo supply system.
The second flight also will be the first test of the Dragon’s operating system, heat shield and Draco maneuvering thrusters. The flight represents the first processing of hypergolic fuels for those thrusters on the launch pad, as well as the first time an FAA-licensed commercial space company has attempted to bring a spacecraft back through Earth’s atmosphere. And the flight marks SpaceX’s first interaction with the Dragon spacecraft from its newly opened mission control center in Hawthorne, Calif.
The launch attempt of the Falcon 9/Dragon combination itself remains a significant achievement, says SpaceX CEO and Chief Technical Officer Elon Musk. “It will be the first time any commercial company has tried to recover something from orbit. Only a handful of governments have succeeded in doing that,” he adds. Given the number of firsts involved in the deployment and recovery of the Dragon, Musk concedes that “there’s maybe a 60 to 70% chance of Dragon coming back fully intact, so when you multiply those probabilities [including an 80-90% launch success], then there’s maybe a 60% chance of success for the mission as a whole.”
However, even if Dragon is lost, Musk says each completed element of the mission will be a valuable contribution to the COTS demonstration. “There are graduations of success. It’s more information we’ll learn about the functioning of Falcon 9,” he says. “The reason we’re doing this mission is to learn. There’s no operational payload.”
The vehicle is being readied for launch at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and is scheduled for a final static firing test around Dec. 3. Pending a successful test, and no impact on range and recovery vessel availability caused by the slippage of the space shuttle launch, the earliest window opens Dec. 7.
Production items are also stacking up at Hawthorne for Flight 3, and a few for Flight 4, two COTS demonstrations scheduled for 2011. In mid-November, Aviation Week viewed at the SpaceX facility the sub-assemblies and parts for future Falcon 9 missions, including a first-stage engine truss, a single first-stage tank section undergoing friction-stir welding and a yet-to-be-completed composite inter-stage. The facility also housed numerous pressure domes—some are allocated for Flight 4—as the Dragon used for the successful Aug. 12 drop test, another Dragon under construction and a nose cone mold. Eight Merlin 1C engines were also awaiting integration into the first-stage truss. “We have just about finished the engines for Flight 3, and the engine parts for Flight 4. They’ve all been made and are going through testing now,” says Musk. “Anything at a component level is for Flight 4.”
Commenting on the relatively small number of assemblies in the factory, and SpaceX’s ability to meet demand for the follow-on COTS missions, Musk adds, “We’re not production constrained, the constraint is more on finalizing the engineering, finalizing the testing and passing the ISS safety review.” As these demonstrations require formatting and docking with the ISS itself, “there is lots of external validation and verification to occur. Their safety reviews are super hard core and pretty darn intense. If something goes wrong, you destroy a $100-billion asset and lives of astronauts.”
From purely a production perspective, SpaceX “feels confident it could be ready to launch [Flight 3] around late spring next year,” says Musk. However, if design changes are required because of the safety review or lessons learned from Flight 2, these would be minor changes to Dragon rather than the launch vehicle, he adds. Changes have been incorporated in the next Falcon 9 as a result of experience gained with the first vehicle. These include modifications to counter the roll seen on lift off. Calibration devices “were not properly calibrated, so all the engines had a slight amount of roll,” says Musk.
5 Alternative Smartphones To The Google Nexus S
The Nexus S might be a great phone but it is still too expensive for what it offers; at £549 SIM-free, it is almost £200 more expensive than competing handsets.
This is why we put together a list of alternative handsets that deliver everything the Nexus S does (except for Gingerbread and NFC) but for much less.
The first candidate is unsurprisingly the Galaxy S, which is the direct precursor of the Nexus S. It has the same underlying hardware specification. You can pick a Samsung Galaxy S handset for around £350, £200 less than the Nexus S and apart from the flash Gingerbread and NFC, there won't be much left out.
The other smartphone that we'd pitched again the Nexus S is the Orange San Francisco, otherwise known as the ZTE Blade. It costs a sixth of the Nexus S (at around £89) and yet provides with most of its features. You get a 3.5-inch WVGA screen with a powerful processor and a microSD card reader as well as Android OS 2.2.
The third obvious competitor to the Nexus S is the iPhone 4 which can be had for roughly the same budget. The iPhone 4 uses an altogether different OS but yet manages to outdo the Nexus S when it comes to screen resolution and memory capacity.
The HTC Desire HD is yet another contender, one is genuinely better than the Nexus S. It has a bigger screen, a microSD card reader, a similar processor to the Hummingbird (which powers the Galaxy S) and costs significantly less than the Nexus S. Expect its successor to come with Gingerbread and NFC capabilities.
The last alternative smartphone to the Nexus S is the Motorola Milestone XT720, the keyboard-less version of the Motorola Milestone 2. As for the other handsets, it can be had for around £200 less than the Nexus S and provides with most of the features.
There's simply no reason why Google should charge that much for a handset that features yesteryear's technology that are set to be obsolete in a few weeks' time.
Album signed by John Lennon for Mark Chapman on sale for £500,000
The album that John Lennon signed for Mark Chapman hours before the fan killed the former Beatle is up for sale at over £500,000.
Mark Chapman [left], who murdered John Lennon in front of his wife Yoko Ono, will not be allow to reapply for parole until 2010 Photo: AP/PA
The Double Fantasy LP was signed by Lennon as he left his home at the Dakota building in New York City on December 8th 1980.
When he returned five hours later with his wife Yoko Ono from a recording session he was shot dead by Chapman.
Photographer Paul Goresh was among the fans outside Lennon's home and took the only photograph of the singer signing the album with a Chapman in the background.
In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting the album was dropped on the floor.
A maintenance man found the record at the Dakota entrance and handed it over as evidence.
It was later returned by New York City prosecutors with a letter of thanks from the District Attorney involved in the prosecution of Chapman.
The album is being sold for $850,000 through autograph dealer Gary Zimet's online site momentsintime.com.
"The album is the most extraordinary artefact in rock and roll history. It has Lennon's signature on the cover and Chapman's forensically enhanced finger prints on the sleeve," said Mr Zimet.
"There are evidence markings from the NYPD. I originally sold it in 1999, but it has come back up for resale."
He said the current owner has chosen to remain anonymous because he received death threats.
Chapman is currently serving a life sentence in Attica prison in upstate New York.
His most recent appeal for parole was rejected with Yoko One saying she was opposed to her husband's killer being set free.
Last month millions of Lennon fans around the world celebrated what would have been his 70th birthday.
Memorial services are planned for the 30th anniversary of his death next month with hundreds of fans expected to make a pilgrimage to the Strawberry Fields Memorial Garden in New York's Central Park
A maintenance man found the record at the Dakota entrance and handed it over as evidence.
It was later returned by New York City prosecutors with a letter of thanks from the District Attorney involved in the prosecution of Chapman.
The album is being sold for $850,000 through autograph dealer Gary Zimet's online site momentsintime.com.
"The album is the most extraordinary artefact in rock and roll history. It has Lennon's signature on the cover and Chapman's forensically enhanced finger prints on the sleeve," said Mr Zimet.
"There are evidence markings from the NYPD. I originally sold it in 1999, but it has come back up for resale."
He said the current owner has chosen to remain anonymous because he received death threats.
Chapman is currently serving a life sentence in Attica prison in upstate New York.
His most recent appeal for parole was rejected with Yoko One saying she was opposed to her husband's killer being set free.
Last month millions of Lennon fans around the world celebrated what would have been his 70th birthday.
Memorial services are planned for the 30th anniversary of his death next month with hundreds of fans expected to make a pilgrimage to the Strawberry Fields Memorial Garden in New York's Central Park
Sony Dash, SpaceX: Hot Trends
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- "Sony Dash" is a trending search topic today after Sony(SNE) announced that the Hulu Plus subscription service is now available on the Dash tablet. Hulu Plus, which is available for $9.99 per month, is also available through Apple(AAPL) devices, such as the iPad and the iPhone, as well as Samsung TVs. "With Hulu on board, the Dash platform has the ability to deliver a huge variety of online entertainment instantly to consumers' homes on top of glanceable, real-time tidbits of information," Sony Electronics personal imaging and audio senior vice president Brennan Mullin said. "Space X" is a hot search topic today after the commercially developed Falcon 9 rocket blasted off today on a test flight. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket took off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station this morning through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. 
NASA is financing the COTS initiative to encourage private-sector rocket development. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA through which it has agreed to deliver more than 44,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station.
NASA is financing the COTS initiative to encourage private-sector rocket development. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA through which it has agreed to deliver more than 44,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station.
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