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Blizzard is on full publicity mode today, with a number of sites posting preview stories and interviews with the people behind the game. StarCraft 2 is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and with Blizzard promising a new version of Battle.net launching alongside the game and three single-player full-game releases instead of one game with three campaigns, there are many questions gamers have about the product. We've scoured everyone's coverage to try to pick out the surprising, the odd, and the downright cool details from each one, bringing you a gaggle of StarCraft news. Let's get started.

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bkuchera@arstechnica.com (Ben Kuchera)

Mobster-themed apps bring the tactics of multiplayer role-playing games, once the domain of mega-nerds, into the mainstream. But is it a sustainable business?(author unknown)

A number of companies have signed a new document that will make microUSB ports the standard port for charging cell phones. Some of the companies agreeing to the standard include Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research In Motion, ...
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Eric M. Zeman

Sure TouchFLO 3D 2.5 is looking pretty amazing, but the future of HTC’s WinMo UI may be headed elsewhere. Despite the muddled availability of the new HTC Sense UI on Android devices, it appears as if its presence on Windows Mobile devices at some point in the future is a bit more cut and dry:

The Hero UI has been created specifically for HTC’s Android-based phones but also represents that three core pillars of HTC Sense. HTC’s future Windows Mobile phones will also be based on HTC Sense, but will enhance Windows Mobile in a way that is as appropriate and valuable to people.

There you have it — the Sense UI in some shape or form will appear on Windows Mobile devices in the future. Maybe that means HTC will retain the TouchFLO name and apply Sense elements to it, or perhaps we’ll see a completely new UI based on Sense. Either way, Windows Mobile 6.5 and 7 users definitely have some sexiness to look forward to.

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HTC’s TouchFLO 3D UI manages to make Windows Mobile hip but after HTC unveiled its Sense UI for the Hero, we’re sure that more than few of the WinMo faithful were tempted to switch over to Android to get in on all of the new hotness. But to the fanboys who dare not think of committing such heresy we ask that you take a look at the image above. It’s a screenshot from TouchFLO 3D 2.5 “Manila” (which is reportedly going to debut on the Firestone) that features many welcome enhancements over its predecessors. The home screen has been changed to allow the selection of up to three application shortcuts and support for Footprints is there as well, but to be perfectly honest its the skinning of pretty much every single Settings screen that has us excited. The less we see of the default WinMo UI we see the better. Hit the jump for a few more screenshots and a video walkthrough (in German).

[Via pocketnow]

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It's on! In a new ad campaign, Sprint is pointing out not just that its plans are cheaper overall, but that its Palm Pre can do things Apple's first-gen iPhone can't.(author unknown)

N!NJA writes with this excerpt from PCWorld: "A tectonic shift has taken place for the digital age: ad rates for popular shows like The Simpsons and CSI are higher online than they are on prime-time TV. If a company wants to run ads alongside an episode of The Simpsons on Hulu or TV.com, it will cost the advertiser about $60 per thousand viewers, according to Bloomberg. On prime-time TV that same ad will cost somewhere between $20 and $40 per thousand viewers. Online viewers have to actively seek out the program they want to watch, so advertisers end up with a guaranteed audience for their commercial every time someone clicks play on Hulu or TV.com. Online programs also have an average of 37 seconds of commercials during an episode, while prime-time TV averages nine minutes of ads."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Soulskill

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I knew this was the cause of all the problems. How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson. I knew this was the cause of all the problems.

"How do I calculate the size of meatballs?" That was the title of one of the seminal science projects that NBC's Conan O'Brien covered at an Intel science fair.(author unknown)

The news of pop icon Michael Jackson's collapse and subsequent death sent ripples across the Web on Thursday afternoon, affecting numerous services and sparking yet another spam campaign. Twitter, Google, Facebook, various news sites, and even iTunes were practically crushed under the weight of the sudden spike in Internet traffic. The phenomenon may not be new on an individual level, but combined across services, it was truly one of the most significant in recent memory.

When news first broke that the Jackson had collapsed in his home, Twitter was immediately abuzz. There were several points when the Ars staff observed between 6,000 and 13,000 new tweets per minute mentioning Michael Jackson before Twitter began to melt down—all before anyone other than TMZ.com was reporting his death. Of course, most of us are intimately familiar with the famed Fail Whale at this point, though Twitter's meltdown was mostly reflected in a major slowing of the service and the inability to send new tweets.

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jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng)

Today MetroPCS announced a new calling plan that allows customers to place an unlimited number of calls to 100 different countries for $5 per month. The unlimited international calling add-on requires a $40, $45 or $50 service plans from ...
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Eric M. Zeman

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is recovering after undergoing a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee, the institute's program director said Tuesday.

Several US senators are requesting that the Federal Communications Commission review the now-popular exclusivity agreements between wireless carriers and handset manufacturers. In a letter sent this week, four Senators voiced their concern over exclusivity agreements and their limitations on consumer choice, and asked the FCC to "examine this issue carefully" to determine whether such agreements should be allowed. The letter was signed by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

The FCC should review the issue on a number of criteria, wrote the Senators, including whether exclusivity agreements are becoming increasingly prevalent, whether they are restricting consumer choice with respect to handsets or geographic region, and whether these agreements place limitations on a consumer's ability to take full advantage of handset technologies ("such as the ability to send multimedia messages or the ability to 'tether' a device to a computer for internet use," wrote the Senators). The FCC should also consider whether such agreements manipulate the competitive marketplace by inhibiting the ability of smaller carriers to compete, and whether the agreements play a role in discouraging handset innovation.

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jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng)

David Friedman's Ironic Sans blog is full of great ideas, but never have we been in such desperate need of rapid implementation as this Outlet Wall. We'd say the idea is pretty self-explanatory, making an art out of plugging in devices instead of fussing with a hidden tangle of cords and powerstrips on the floor -- we've lost many a friend and family member to the wilds behind our entertainment center. As David points out: "Of course you don't have to actually wire all the outlets on the whole wall for electricity, but you'd better come up with a good way to remember which ones are live."

[Via Gadget Venue]

Filed under: Household

The Outlet Wall concept is true wall wart nirvana originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsPaul Miller

Residents of Sin City can now buy mobile WiMax services from Clearwire to get unwired on the Strip

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, is launching a new project to improve the usability of the platform. The developers aim to identify and resolve 100 minor bugs that negatively impact the Ubuntu user experience before the release of the next major version in October.

The initiative, which is called One Hundred Paper Cuts, will be implemented by Canonical's new design and user experience team in collaboration with the Ubuntu community. Canonical's design experts have called for Ubuntu users to participate by helping to identify relevant bugs. They are specifically looking for easily fixable bugs that impact the usability of key system components such as the panels and file manager. Canonical hopes to boost the overall quality of the platform by addressing a multitude of subtle issues that developers would otherwise ignore. Many of the improvements that are applied through this effort will directly benefit upstream projects.

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segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul)

Today Samsung announced a new touch-based device called the Jet. It has an 800MHz processor and runs the Touchwiz 2.0 user interface and AMOLED screen and WVGA resolution. The Jet launches with a brand-new HTML web browser called Dolfin ...
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Eric M. Zeman

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These are amazing. It is almost impossible to capture a speeding bullet with your eye and the impact the bullet creates is even faster and happens within a blink of an These are amazing.