What’s this, then? MCV, a British games industry publication, has run an ad for Little Big Planet game accessories that boasts among its many compelling features compatibility with the PSP-4000. Of course, there is no PSP-4000, but you have to admit — this is more than a simple typo. When asked what the dilly was, a rep from Accessories 4 Gamers told Negative Gamer that it was merely a simple “mistake.” Sure, but the questions still remain: was it a mistake because the PSP-4000 doesn’t yet exist? You see, we’ve definitely heard otherwise. Or was this a mistake because you accidentally spilled the beans on some top secret new handheld game console? If that’s the case, you might want to contact us with the details. We won’t tell anyone — promise.
Continue reading PSP-4000 accidentally leaked in print ad over the weekend?
Sitting across from Grockit CEO Farb Nivi, you’d never know that a few months ago he was spending weeks in the hospital and with tubes down his throat after getting hit by a minivan on his Vespa. One of his kidney’s burst and half of it had to be removed. His recuperation was slow and painful, and it took a toll on his social learning startup as well. He lost some employees and investors, who put in $8 million last year, began to worry about Grockit’s health as well.
Nivi came back strong, though, and he’s about to push out a significant redesign for Grockit. The social learning site, which launched at TC50 in 2008, helps high school and college students study together for standardized tests such as the SAT, GMAT, and GRE, and connects them with tutors. It competes with Knewton and Brightstorm. The redesign (see screenshots below) does a better job highlighting the three main things students can do on Grockit: take virtual lessons from tutors, do a group study session, or practice solo.
The wait is finally over. Over a year after its memorable (and zany) debut at TechCrunch 50 2008, Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera iPhone application is now available worldwide. The augmented reality (AR) app has already established itself as a huge hit in Japan, and now Tonchidot is taking its shot at world domination. Or, at least, at getting everyone to start leaving each other geo-tagged virtual Post-It notes. You can grab Sekai Camera here, free of charge.
The premise behind the app is quite simple: as you go about your day, Sekai Camera invites you to leave text messages, photos, and audio recordings that will appear as floating bubbles wherever you created them. You can also fire up Sekai Camera to look at the world around you to see what kind of content has been left by other users. As you spin the camera around, you’ll see new messages pop up as floaty icons. Click one, and you’ll see the content that was shared previously. It’s a bit like Twitter in that everything is
Cowon has finally made its latest and greatest PMP official, and the spec sheet does not disappoint. Mixing appealing curves with a 4.8-inch display, the V5 HD offers 720p video playback that can be channeled out via HDMI or Composite outputs. On the software front, there’s the usual litany of wide-ranging file compatibility and basic apps — cortesy of Windows CE 6.0 — as well as a world clock, RSS reader, Flash games, voice recorder, and an optional T-DMB tuner. We still don’t know what’s doing the dirty work under the hood, but you won’t be wanting for storage, with integrated memory options up to 32GB being augmented by SDHC expandability. Battery life is rated at 10 hours of video or 45 hours of music, and the Korean landing date is January 1 with prices starting at 299,000 KRW ($256). Until then, you can check out more pictures after the break.
[Thanks, The DarkSide]
I had a lot of theories back in 2008 when I started researching entrepreneurship in emerging markets, and I had one big, glaring question: For all the noted VCs urging me to go check out their companies in Israel, Eastern Europe, China, India, parts of Africa and even Iceland?almost no one mentioned one of the hottest emerging countries: Brazil. In fact, only one person in the Valley urged me to visit any country in Latin America, and that wasn?t a VC. It was Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN which has a core part of its R&D down in Buenos Aires.
How could that be? We?re geographically closer, have a shorter difference in time-zones and while few countries in Latin America are growing as fast as China or even Rwanda, Brazil?s economy just graced the cover of the Economist and anchored a special report in the Financial Times. Hell, the biggest IPO of the year was a Brazilian company. So what gives? It can?t just be the fact that it’s harder to get into Brazil than Harvard.
If there’s one thing that 2009 proved, it’s that there’s nothing like an addictive game to keep people coming back to your service for more. Over the last year, we’ve seen Foursquare and Gowalla tap into this with their colorful badges, and Zynga is making a killing off games like Farmville. But what if you could turn that habit into something that might actually be helpful to school or your career? That’s the premise behind Lingt, a new startup that’s looking to leverage gameplay elements to help with the mother of all repetitive tasks: learning a new language.
The Y Combinator funded company is launching today in public beta, offering a suite of matching games to help English speakers learn Chinese. Using the app is quite straightforward. First, you choose a set of words that you need to learn. You can use a one of Lingt’s suggested lists, a list of vocabulary words drawn from one of thirty US/Chinese textbooks, or you can manually enter your own words. From there, the site will quiz you on the meaning of the words. You can either input your answers via text, by saying them aloud, or as a matching game (click on one of five choices).
A controversial comment on Hacker News makes us wonder if hot U.S. startups are the new vanity purchase for rich Russians.
We weren’t the only ones surprised earlier this year when Facebook raised a new round of financing at a $10 billion valuation. Facebook itself apparently held its nose as it closed the round, but Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies was offering a far richer valuation than anyone else (and, importantly, they didn’t require a board of directors seat).
When I was growing up, one of the most popular PC games was Wolfenstein 3D. It was a great first-person shooter in general, but let’s be honest, there was one reason that everyone really loved it: The goal was to kill Nazis. Fast forward to this year, one of the most popular movies in 2009 has been Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. It’s a great movie in general, but again, let’s be honest: People love it because it’s about killing Nazis. And a new iPhone game follows in this timeless tradition.
In Inglourious Basterds, Brad Pitt’s character, Lt. Aldo Raine, gives a speech to the group of soliders he’s recruiting for a special mission: “Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps. And all y’all will git me one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazis. Or you will die tryin’.” The speech is the driving force behind 100 Nazi Scalps, a new side-scrolling iPhone game that has just gone live in the App Store. The goal is very simple: Collect 100 Nazi scalps before you are killed.
It’s hard to put too much credence in a survey. Not only is it easy to fake (although this one sounds fairly legit and has popped up elsewhere), but the questions posed could be purely theoretical. That caveat aside, there’s a bunch of very interesting stuff in this list of features we just got from someone who claims to have done a survey for Sony about its plans to charge for “premium” PlayStation Network content. The actual subscription costs flung around ranged from $20 to $60 a year, or alternatively $6 to $9 a month, and while some features might sound familiar to Xbox Live members, there’s plenty of innovative stuff here that we wouldn’t mind seeing pop up on either platform, including:
Customer Service Priority Access
GameFly (which is sort of a Netflix for video games) sent along word that they have updated their free iPhone app called Gamecenter [iTunes link]. Not only does it work as an official app — you can update and add to your queue straight from the app, which is definitely nice, as you can go carry it around a game store an add titles at will — but the new update adds lots and lots of game information that’s even useful away from GameFly. You can browse games on all of the major systems, and check out user ratings and screenshots along with video of nearly all of them. It’s pretty well done, especially for a free app.
The app also includes game news from Shacknews as well, which is a nice bonus, but hopefully by now you’ve got your own way to get any news you need on the iPhone. If you’re a GameFly member, this one’s a no-brainer, and even if you’re not, there’s enough per-game content (and quick access information) in the app that it’s definitely worth a look.