Minnesota video game law blocked

Underage gamers in Minnesota can sleep a little easier now.

Thanks to one legal interpretation, should they get their hands on a video game rated "M" for mature or "AO" for adults only, they won't have to cough up a fine if caught.

A federal judge on Monday declared Minnesota's video game law unconstitutional, saying that the purchase or rental of a video game is protected by the First Amendment.

Originally slated to take effect Tuesday, the law was an attempt by state lawmakers to limit the exposure of those younger than 17 to sexually graphic and violent games by imposing a fine of $25.

U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum also ruled that the state did not prove that overly realistic depictions of sex and violence actually harm minors.

"There is a paucity of evidence linking the availability of video games with any harm to Minnesota's children at all," he wrote.

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch said the state will probably appeal, according to the Associated Press .

Similar laws in other states--including California , Illinois and Michigan --have also been rejected.

12.11.08 17:14, comment

Windows Mobile to get pumped up on Nvidia

Watch out, Nvidia is stalking the iPhone. The maker of fast graphics processors will apply its chip know-how to juice up the mobile internet device market and the Windows Mobile interface.

As reported back in February , after a decade of pumping up PC performance, Nvidia is betting a big part of its future on boosting graphics performance in fit-in-your-pocket mobile internet devices .

CNET Video of APX 2500 prototype here .

iPhone-style devices with Nvdia's APX 2500 system-on-a-chip--due late this year and next year--incorporate most of the functionality of a PC. And it is important to note that Nvidia is building all of the core electronics that will run a mobile internet device, not just the graphics component.

The APX 2500 is different from Intel's Atom processor platform--which is offered as a processor and a separate chipset--because the 2500 integrates everything onto one piece of silicon. This makes it more akin to Intel's upcoming Moorestown processor that's due next year or early 2010.

Nvidia's goal is to pack as much processing punch as possible into a few-hundred-milliwatt power envelope, said Michael Rayfield, general manager of the Mobile Business Unit. "I said start from zero. And then made my team beg and plead for every milliwatt," he said. Notebook PC processors typically operate in power envelopes between 10 and 35 watts.

But to the user, the biggest difference will be Microsoft's Mobile Windows interface and what can happen when there is Nvidia GeForce graphics silicon pushing everything around.

The platform that Nvidia is demonstrating goes far beyond the staid, pin-striped Windows Mobile that is used today. Nvidia is showing finger-flick-and-roll screens and accelerometer-based reorienting 720p video.

These tiny devices are designed to run 720p HDTV video for 10 hours--one of the marquee features that Nvidia will be emphasizing, Rayfield said. He plugged a prototype APX 2500-based device into a large screen TV via a High-Definition Multimedia Interface connector and played high-definition movies with the same fluidity and resolution as you get from a big HDTV box or bigger computer.

All on, believe it or not, Windows Mobile. The operating system has struggled since its inception back in 2000. Initially, it had promise on Compaq iPaq handhelds, but these devices never appealed to a large base, even in corporate America which eventually went en masse for the Blackberry. There is more acceptance now as Windows Mobile 6.1 is adopted by companies like HTC , Samsung, and Acer --but it is still Windows. In a post-iPhone world, Nvidia says this is not adequate.

The prototype mobile internet device that Nvidia is currently working on is not the product that will appear from phone companies or navigation device vendors. Rayfield said it is necessarily a thick device and contains extra circuit boards because it is a development platform. The final product made by device manufacturers will be thin, he said.

12.11.08 14:50, comment

Globetrotting YouTube dancer shares his tech secrets

Sure, the YouTube video " Where the Hell is Matt 2008 " is clever and maybe even inspirational, but what's been overlooked in all the hoopla over the clip is how technology contributed to its popularity.

Matt Harding first earned fame two years ago by filming himself dancing in exotic locales all over the world and posting the video montage to YouTube. Everyone from the The New York Times to National Public Radio has swooned over Harding's latest clip since it first appeared on YouTube three weeks ago.

In less than a month, the video has been viewed more than 5 million times.

While much of the mainstream press is just discovering Harding, he has been well known among the early adopter crowd for some time. His first installment of "Where The Hell Is Matt" was one of YouTube's earliest viral-video blockbusters.

In an interview with CNET News, Harding, a former video-game developer, describes himself as a tech enthusiast and credits software, gadgets, and the Internet with helping to turn his videos into blockbusters.

For example, go to Wherethehellismatt.com and check out how much better the YouTube embeddable player appears on his site than it does at YouTube. Harding doesn't like to talk about it but he went online and found a piece of script that improved the quality of YouTube's embeddable player.

"There is a way to force high quality into YouTube's embed," Harding said. "I felt a little bad about doing it."

Here's something else that Harding was sheepish about talking about. In addition to YouTube, he posted the clip to Vimeo, a YouTube competitor. He says if people want to watch the video in the highest quality, they should watch it there. "Vimeo's video looks phenomenal," he said.

Who can blame him for being less than loyal to YouTube? He danced his ass off for 14 months in 46 countries and shot everything in high definition. Don't all filmmakers want to showcase their work in the best possible quality?

To this end, Harding upgraded his camera for this world tour. He shot his original 4-minute clip with a point-and-shoot camera, the Canon Powershot SD500 . He loved that it was small and easy to carry. This time, however, Harding decided to pay $800 for a Sony Handycam HDR-SR8 .

Harding only had good things to say about the camera's durability and ease of use. The hard disk drive camera did have one drawback, but it's one that only someone like Harding is going to encounter.

A safety feature prevents the camera from writing to the hard drive anytime it senses the camera is falling. This proved to be an obstacle when Harding was flying above Nellis Airspace, Nev., during a weightlessness exercise.

"The camera always thought it was falling and wouldn't record," Harding said. "I had to go up again with a solid-state memory card and we recorded with that."

Aside from the gadgets, technology's most important contribution, of course, was turning someone like Harding into star in the first place. He's a former video-game developer from Connecticut. He's neither a trained filmmaker nor dancer .

Yet, Harding has earned a modest level of international celebrity from his videos. Fans showed up to dance with Harding in places like Seoul, Lisbon, and Tel Aviv. He said more than 2,000 people in total .

That may not sound like a lot, but Harding didn't do much advertising other than announce on his blog where and when he was showing up.

Harding's real significance is that he's one of the best examples of how YouTube enables anyone to communicate with audiences across the globe. And what's the message Harding is trying to communicate?

"Some people will probably accuse me of spreading humanist propaganda," Harding said. "Everybody knows that we can all be small-minded and petty. But we also like to be reminded once and a while about what we can be at our best."

12.11.08 12:26, comment