Consoles, cartridges, and a host of game-related media will be preserved for future generations. The videogame medium is, depending on when you start counting, 46 years old. That's still relatively young compared to other popular media, but it's old enough, it seems, to start preserving the industry's rich history. To that end, the U.K.'s first official National Videogame Archive was launched earlier this week, which will house a "treasure trove" of consoles and cartridges ranging from "the humble beginnings of 1972's 'Pong', to the blockbusters of the 21st Century."

The archive was formed by academics at Nottingham Trent University, in cooperation with the National Media Museum in Bradford. The archive will, in fact, be located at the National Media Museum, and managed by Nottingham Trent University's Centre for Contemporary Play. Interestingly, along with games and consoles, the archive will also include a wide swath of game-related media, such as advertising campaigns, artwork, and "the communities that sustain them" (which we really hope doesn't mean they'll be preserving the average videogame forum post).

Source:  Full Story at 1UP News

In its continued struggle to duplicate the worldwide dominance of its text-based advertising biz, Google has launched a long expected program for slapping ads onto Web-based Flash games. Naturally, "AdSense for Games" is billed as a beta.

Google gobbled game ad outfit Adscape Media in February 2007, and this morning, the, um, fruits of its purchase were finally unveiled on the Official AdSense blog. "Do you develop or publish web-based games?" asks chipper Google ad guy Ryan Hayward. "As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue."

Ah, but not everyone is eligible. Your game must be played a minimum of 500,000 times a day. At least 80 per cent of your traffic must come from the US or the UK. And your Flash must be "family safe."

Source:  The full story @ The Reg

Google has released the very first beta of their new web browser, Google Chrome. Chrome is a browser that, for now at least, is focused on offering a full browsing experience within a minimalistic user interface. To skip past the P.R. phrasing, Google Chrome is designed to be simple to use without sacrificing any of the features required for daily web browsing.

To get a little more in depth, Google Chrome uses the same rendering engine as Apple's Safari browser, named Webkit. In recent history, the developers of Webkit have made great strides in creating what is, as of today, the fastest browser engine in terms of rendering speed.

Other features of Chrome include a dynamic tab system which allows you to drag and drop tabs inside and outside of the browser window, an "incognito mode" in which the sites you visit are not added to your browsing history, and a feature similar to Opera's Speed Dial, in which you are presented with your nine most visited websites, in thumbnail form, when opening a new tab.

Link:   Google Chrome

How far will you go for an MMORPG? A group of MMORPG gamers played for 18 hours straight just to try and kill one boss-mob. Tried, because they failed to do so -- an 18 hour, non-stop, effort gone to waste.

Final Fantasy XI's Pandemonium Warden was the mob in question. The boss of this mob goes through some 20 different forms, some of which regen to 100% health, each of which spawns along with minion monsters.

"...After you kill all of the above [20 forms of the boss] he will pop with "hatched" lamps -- smaller chair dudes", posted Sylphet, chronicling their experience in frustration.

"We killed all of the Lamps and at 75% he popped another 8 and regened to 100%. We attempted again but the lamps were faster this time and we wiped after killing just one."

The group started playing at 3:30 pm EST, U.S, and finally ended at 9:00 AM the next morning:

"People were passing out and getting physically ill," Sylphet continued. "We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible new story about how video games ruin people's lives."

Sony has announced a new wireless keyboard attachment for Sixaxis and DualShock 3 controllers, named simply the Wireless Keypad.

Some of the features of the new Wireless Keypad include bluetooth connectivity, automatic pairing with the PS3 via the included USB cable, a full QWERTY layout, and dedicated shortcut keys for one touch access to XMB features such as your "Friends" and "Message Box".

One additional and rather unique feature of the keypad will be it's "touch pad" mode. In this mode, a user doesn't type on the device, rather, he/she can slide a finger across the keyboard, much like a touchpad on a laptop, and move the cursor around the screen either in a game to select an option or in the web browser, to make for easier navigation. How well this feature will work is yet to be seen.

Sony also promises to utilize the Wireless Keypad in more and more exclusive software titles, including the hotly anticipated LittleBigPlanet, allowing for in-game text based chat, should you want to keep your microphone turned off.

View:  Sony Wireless Keypad

Kaspersky Labs, has detected two variants of a new worm, Networm.Win32.Koobface.a. and Networm.Win32.Koobface.b, which attack MySpace and Facebook users.

The worms transform victims machines into zombie computers to form botnets which are used to create DDOS attacks and send spam email.

Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a infects the user when they access accesses their MySpace account. The worm creates a range of commentaries to friends' accounts.

Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, targets Facebook users, creates spam messages and sends them to the infected users' friends via the Facebook site.

The messages and comments include texts such as "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street"; "Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet"; "Hello; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam"; "Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments and many others".

Unlike DirectX 9, the DirectX 10 will not have a more than four year lifespan as Microsoft Corp. plans to introduce features of DirectX 11 application programming interface at the forthcoming XNA gamefest conference that takes place next week in Seattle, Washington. Moreover, ATI, graphics product group of AMD, and Nvidia Corp. also plan to discuss certain Direct3D 11 features at upcoming conferences.

Microsoft is going to host four sessions dedicated to Direct3D 11 application programming interface (API), according to agenda of XNA conference. The world’s largest software maker plans to introduce the Direct3D 11 graphics pipeline, unveil details about D3D 11 Tessellation capability, new type of shaders called Compute Shader as well as high level shader language 5.0.

Blizzard has won the first round of a legal battle against the maker of software that automates game play in World of Warcraft. It brought the case against MDY Industries claiming its WowGlider program infringed its copyright.

An Arizona district court has ruled MDY does infringe Blizzard's copyright but not in the way the game maker claimed. WowGlider controls characters in Warcraft so they kill enemies and loot them automatically.

The summary judgement by US District Court Judge David Campbell says that MMOGlider, as the software is now called, breaks the terms of the license players agree to abide by when they run World of Warcraft (WoW).

Despite this decision Justice Campbell did not side with Blizzard in its claim that MMOGlider broke the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. MMOGlider is the creation of MDY founder Michael Donnelly and more than 100,000 copies of the $25 (£12.47) tool are thought to have been sold.

It has proved popular as it helps players overcome the "grind" involved in turning low level WoW characters into more powerful ones.

Source:   BBC News

One terabyte hard drives still cramping your decadent data storage lifestyle? No more tears. Seagate is rolling out 1.5TB HDDs this August.

Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 will use four platters to cram the scale-tipping new raw capacity into an eleventh generation of its flagship drive. The storage firm points out its the single largest hard drive capacity bump in the last 50 years.

As the name suggests, the HDD spins at 7,200RPM. The 3Gb/s SATA I interface has a sustained data rate of up to 120MB/s.

A screen name once connected to animated TV dad Homer Simpson is being used to spread malware. In a 2003 episode of The Simpsons, writers revealed that Homer's e-mail address was chunkylover53@aol.com. Prior to the episode's airing, the address was registered by one of the show's writers, who used it to answer hundreds of e-mails from Simpsons fans.

Years later, the chunkylover53 screen name has resurfaced, and it's now being used to distribute a trojan disguised as a Simpsons movie file. According to FaceTime malware research director Chris Boyd, chunkylover53 is sending out auto-reply messages to users which promises a special exclusive episode of the show available for download.

The link in the message leads to an executable file. Upon launching the trojan, the user is presented with a fake error message which is followed by several real error messages and, finally, a blank screen. Upon restarting, the system will run noticeable slower and be prone to crashes.

"For now, this is a good reminder to be cautious when randomly adding cool things seen on TV and film to your online applications," said Chris Boyd, the Malware research director.