Played Quake Live before? If you haven’t I suggest you do it – it’s an excellent port of Quake Arena with better graphics, and you play on your browser. However, it uses a plugin, so it’s not exactly the most optimal way to play games on your browser. Same goes for Flash-based games like Farmville.

So what if you can play Quake 2 on your browser – with no plug-in needed? All you need to do it woud be HTML 5 and WebGL. And Google has pulled it off, apparently. Check out the video demo:

According to Download Squad:

They started off with Bytonic Software’s Jake2, a Java port of the open source Quake engine. From there, they re-compiled the engine using the Google Web Toolkit (also OSS), created a WebGL renderer to display the graphics, moved multiplayer communications from UDP to WebSockets (part of the HTML5 spec), and bolted on an emulated filesystem to allow game and preference saves.

However, I’ve looked for the download link in the Google Code page. I can’t find it anywhere. So if you want to try out something else that uses HTML 5 for Quake, you might want to check out Copperlicht. It’s a JavaScript 3D engine that utilizes WebGL and HTML5.

Amazingly, Copperlicht can actually render up to 110 FPS! For comparison, Google Quake 2 can only render 30-40 FPS. Copperlicht is going to work for Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it. It seems that Acer has come up with a laptop that has a 3-D display effect. The 3-D effect is achieved by a transparent polarizing filter overlaid on the screen, which splits images into separate streams for each eye. You would need a pair of special polarizing glasses to get the effect, and if you look at the screen straight-on, you’d get the 3-D effect. Looking at the screen at an angle may actually not show the 3-D.

According to The Times Online, the 3-D “results range from stunning to not so good.” So far, the videos that look best apparently are the ones already saved on the hard drive to begin with. You know, trailers and animations. You can download new videos, but I’m suspecting the ones especially made for 3-D will work best. That means that episode of Glee you downloaded off a torrent site won’t definitely produce the best results. Gaming on the other hand, would work better, although The Times Online reports that they can be blurry at times.

Now I won’t go all skeptical on this one and say that 3-D is just going to be a passing fad, because I really can see that this is going to be the future. We probably won’t see it in a while, but this technology is going to be adopted and 3-D will be a standard. But until then, I’d advise you guys to stay away from it until we get TV shows, movies, and games that won’t give you a headache after viewing it in 3-D.

The specs of the Acer 5738DZG are:

• 2.1GHz Intel Dual Core processor
• 4GB RAM
• 15.6 inch screen
• 1366 x 768 screen resolution
• ATI Radeon HD 4570 512 MB Graphics Card
• 500GB Hard Disk

So the world waited with bated breath this November for Michael Arrington’s much-awaited $200 internet tablet, the Crunchpad. And it never arrived. In fact, the way it just disappeared from the zeitgeist made people speculate about its premature demise.

Well Arrington came out and said that no, the CrunchPad is not dead. In fact, it’s going to be out sooner or later and it’s going to cost between $300-$400, with sponsorship (probably like Google sponsoring Firefox by being its default search engine).

Check out this video.

Okay, wait. $400 dollars for a paltry Atom-powered tablet designed to do nothing more than surf YouTube? Atom at a time when CULV netbooks are coming out? Something that doesn’t even have Windows on it? Seriously?

I’m sorry, but I think $200 is the sweet spot for something like this. I don’t think I’ll be seeing the CrunchPad take off, really. Not with its current state and price.

[via]

I know what you’re thinking: what is the Litl Easel? It’s apparently a “webbook,” or an internet appliace. It’s designed to get the clutter of an operating system out of the way. The custom operating system will take you straight to the browser and open up multiple windows to do tasks straight in the cloud.

It’s got some nifty features, like the “Easel Mode,” where you can navigate with a wheel and a remote ccontrol. It’s HDMI-ready, so you can plug it into a HDTV and watch your YouTube videos. I’m pretty sure you can do your work here as long as it renders Google Docs and Zoho Office properly.

But for a computer designed to do less, I find it to be a bit pricey. $699 for a computer that’s basically a glorified browser and nothing else? Watch the video and you be the judge.

The Litl has a 12.1 inch display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and a graphics processor that can handle H.264 video at 720p resolutions and output video to an HDTV via HDMI. It has 1GB of RAM, and 2GB of Flash memory, 802.11g WiFi, mic and headphone jacks and a USB port. It also has 2 infrared ports for using a remote control (which costs an additional $19) to operate the computer.

If you also do the same things like I do then the Dell SP2008WFP will be a good monitor for your needs. It’s a 20 inch flat panel monitor that is meant to be used for gaming, multimedia and and for communications. The nifty thing about this Dell monitor is the integration of a 2 megapixel webcam to the unit. No more awkwarly propped up webcams with this baby. It also makes your desk look less cluttered. It also has a built in microphone for easier video conferencing. The great thing about this webcam is that Dell has made it fully functional. It comes with a Dell Webcam software suite that allows you to do a number of functions with your webcam.

The monitor has a wonderful pixel response time of just 2 ms. This means that it can easily handle the demands of high end gaming. It has an HDCP compliant DVI connector that also allows you to view high definition content that is protected.

I’m going to list down this Dell monitor in my wishlist to Santa.

Microsoft seems to have built a reputation for always coming out with rushed products. You just need to look at all of their software, which are technically working betas than final releases, the aforementioned Xbox 360, and now Halo 3. I have yet to hear about glitches on the software itself but, predictably, complaints are being posted on the internet about the game case scratching disks.  I’m not wholely blaming Microsoft for this fiasco because they surely have contracted a third party to manufacture the cases but shouldn’t these things also be tested? In fairness to Microsoft, they have acted quickly about this complaint, not like their very slow acknowledgement of the ring of death issue.

I know I’m going to get a lot of hate mail from Xbox fanboys for this one…

But, predictably, Sony announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2007 that it is delaying the release of Home until next year. The company, through Sony Computer Entertainment  (SCE) Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, said the reason for the delay was to further improve the service’s product quality. Hirai said that since the service will have to offer a number of different functionalities in many regions in the world and they want to launch it at a level where they can meet the high expectations of people.

Another disappointment was the failure of Sony to give price cuts for the PS3. The biggest gripe about the console is its high price and consumers were hoping that a price drop would be inevitable. Instead, Hirai said that they will be strengthening their title lineup to attract more customers.

As an eventual PS3 buyer, I am hoping that Sony will be able to get its act together soon in order to really attract customers. I hope I won’t get disappointed.

It was, therefore, quite understandable for both fanboys and gamers to go crazy over iD Software’s recent unveiling of its newest game, Rage. The game revolves around the premise of fighting a corrupt government in a post apocalyptic setting. Rage is expected to be a multi platform release, with Windows, Mac, Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. The game will be using an all new graphics engine and this alone will set excitement levels to stratospheric levels because iD games are best known for the high quality of its graphics.

There are still no announced release dates for Rage, which also highlighted another of iD’s well established characteristics, the reputation for long development cycles and a penchant to break scheduled release dates. I hope that this would be the one game where they will not announce any delays.

Well, I decided to take action two weekends ago and bought 2 games from Best Buy. One, was Empire Earth 2 and the other was Defcon. Empire Earth 2 is your standard RTS game, only it’s chock-full and loaded with features, going from prehistoric times up to a time of futuristic weaponry.

I had played Empire Earth 1, so I knew what to expect from Empire Earth 2. It’s a fun game. But you know what, it’s the other game I bought, called Defcon, that I find myself addicted to.

The premise behind Defcon is that you are immersed in an approaching all-out, world-wide nuclear war. The music is eery. Combined with the premise of mass destruction, and a goal of killing as many people as possible from the enemy territories, I’ve got to admit that I felt a bit of unease in playing this game. It almost seems a little inhuman.

But I’m hooked.

The game itself is simple and elegant. It’s real time strategy, but there’s no resource collection. You basically have 5 stages of Defcon starting out at 5 and moving down to 1. In each of the 4 earliest stages you basically prepare for Defcon 1 where all out chaos emerges.

When each game starts you position your radars, nuclear silos, airfields, and navy fleets. Nuclear silos double as air and anti-missile defense but can only serve one function at a time. I usually start the game out leaving most of them in anti-missile defense mode until I’ve had the chance to use all my bombers to knock out the opponents silos.

Airfields have both fighters and bombers. Fighters have a very limited radius, but are mainly to protect the homeland. Bombers have something like a 1/2 -2/3 of the globe radius of movement. And silos can basically hit any location on earth.

Submarines are very important units in that you can sneak them up to your opponents shore and then launch quick and dirty nuke attacks. They also let you discover weak spots in the enemies defense.

Carriers are like roaming airfields. They have bombers and fighters. Battleships are good for defending subs and carriers or attacking the other teams subs and carriers.

At the end of the day, the game is all about mass destruction and the goal is to wipe out whole cities. Like I said, this has a bone chilling effect, but the suspense and the sheer adrenaline rush that you get are immeasurable.  Watching a nuclear war unfold….well it’s crazy.

From the very beginning of Defcon 5, the suspense starts building and doesn’t relent. There’s no toying around with resource building or waiting for the right moment to attack. The game forces you into nuclear war, and it’s this aspect along with the perfect simplicity of the game, that make it so intriguing. Just like a game of chess, the rules are simple, but the variety of games and strategies are huge. And because of its simplicity, anyone can jump in and play right away.

I’d give this game a 9/10 review and say its a must have for any fan of war games.

However, I was recently noticing how my current computer was holding me back (I found myself waiting on bootup and feeling especially sluggish with 5-10 applications open at once). So I buckled down and bought a new ‘puter. The system I got is from Dell, customized to handle the 5-10 applications I’m using at any given time. The system has 4GB of RAM, a 500GB Hard drive, and a 21 inch widescreen lcd monitor. The monitor is *sweet* and to my amazement, the ability to have two applications open side by side without having to Alt-Tab between them literally does save you bundles of time.

I can’t emphasize this enough. If you’re still going old school with your monitor you’re missing out. Think of all the time you spend moving between applications. Now think of all the times when you’re using two applications in coordination. Cut in one, paste in the other. What if you didn’t need to alt-tab between the two? You’d be amazed by how much time this saves in the end.

How about all the bloggers out there? Need one browser open for research and another for writing? A widescreen or dual screen setup allows you to have to 2 browsers side by side. Again, this simple functional enhancement saves you loads of time.

Although I was skeptical a year ago, now I’m a believer. A true believer in the power of having the proper setup to maximize your productivity.