You know how you’ll be playing World of Warcraft or Halo: Reach or Call of Duty: Black Ops with a bunch of friends and somehow you execute a decoy-flank-covering fire strategy that’s so brilliant it completely overwhelms your opponents? Well, the Navy wants to harness that same kind of emergent thinking in an MMO designed to tackle …
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Angry Birds: Still Angry, but Now Playable On the Web (for Free!)
You guys like Angry Birds? Who doesn’t, right?! I know, I know. Totally.
Well Google and Rovio have now brought Angry Birds directly to the web browser. You can whoop it up over in Google’s Chrome Web Store, starting today. And it’s free!
There are some exclusive Chrome-only levels to enjoy, and once Google gets its in-app payment …
Google to Nevada: Let Our Cars Drive Themselves
Google’s self-driving cars may soon hit the road in Nevada if a pair of bills get through the state legislature.
The bills would make Nevada the first state to legalize self-driving cars on public roads, the New York Times reports. One bill would amend electric vehicle laws to allow registration and licensing of autonomous …
Blizzard Accelerating New ‘World of Warcraft’ Expansions To Reenergize Base
The world of World of Warcraft isn’t as big as it used to be – but at least Blizzard Entertainment has a plan to deal with recent shrinkage.
Blizzard’s noticed two alarming trends in its subscription model for WoW: that subscriber numbers dip between expansion pack releases, and that those dips are happening closer and closer to the …
Spy Photo Shows Camera on Next-Gen iPod Nano
Longtime fans of Apple’s iPod nano lamented a major change in its radical sixth-generation redesign: the absence of a video camera like the one present on the previous-generation model. Apple may be prepared to change that if a Taiwanese Apple blog is correct.
The current sixth-generation iPod nano was introduced last September. It …
Hackers Tap a California Gas Pump, Make Off with 528 Gallons
An enterprising group of gas station hackers have been making their way around Southern California. Their latest heist saw them speed away with 528 gallons of gas priced at $4.28 per gallon from a Mobil station in Pasadena.
How’d they do it? CBS News is reporting that a hacked “credit card or other mechanism” was used to activate the …
Broken But Beautiful: ‘Brink’ Review
What happens to society when you run out of resources? That’s the question lurking in the background of new post-apocalyptic first-person shooter Brink. On a massive floating city known as the Ark, two extremes of troubling human behavior come to the fore in view of the game’s theme: perpetual conflict. The Security faction wants to lock …
Brit Plan to Reinvent Government Websites
The UK government wants to radically re-invent itself on the web, and it’s just taken the first step on that path with the release of a site called alpha.gov.uk.
Like any alpha, it’s a bit rough around the edges. That’s the point. The team that built it want British citizens to give it hell, and tell them how it …
Xbox 360 Update Includes PayPal Integration, Support for New Disc Format
In about a week’s time, owners of Microsoft’s game console will have another way to pay for their Xbox Live memberships and DLC, when PayPal support happens by way of a spring update. If you’re setting up through the Xbox accounts web site, you can already choose the popular payment service as a billing option but the update will let you …
Facebook Apps Are Leaking Your Profile to Third Parties
Not that I’m really shocked by any of this, but Symantec says Facebook apps are giving third parties access to your profile. That Farmville request doesn’t look so benign and innocent now, does it?
Who are these third parties, exactly? Advertisers? No way. Apparently, they’ve had access to your profile, photos, chat, and have …
San Francisco to Offer Free Electric Car Charging Stations
San Francisco announced yesterday that it will be placing free electric-vehicle chargers around the city, the SF Examiner reports. The chargers will be available in 20 city-owned garages, including the garages at San Francisco International Airport. They’re not meant to be electric car owners’ sole source of power, but to let them refuel …
Anonymous No More? Hacktivists Reportedly Fighting Among Themselves
In-fighting. Bickering. Fracture. Those things happen to every fearsome social movement, whether it’s Civil War Confederates or Stalin-era Communists. Now, it’s supposedly happening in the invisible ranks of Anonymous, the hacker collective who may or may not be responsibe for the grand-mal crash of Sony’s Playstation Network.
As seen …