Why Is Everyone Talking About Sony's New Gaming Device?

The PlayStation Vita reviews are in, and it seems we have a winner. February 22nd is the Vita's mainstream launch date, but pricier early-bird bundles are shipping this week. Sony's betting hard that it can woo gamers back from their phones with actual hardware (and not just terrible commercials). Still, the PS Vita does have some features that mobile lovers have gotten used to -- the five-inch AMOLED screen acts as a touchscreen device and it packs a built-in GPS. With its standard array of console-style buttons, analog and direction pad controllers, and a touch-sensitive back panel, this thing's not lacking for input.
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Minecraft: Making Your Own Fun, One Brick At a Time

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The era of the rampage is officially over.

In 2001, Grand Theft Auto III introduced a mass audience to a new way of experiencing the world of a game: Instead of walking narrow corridors or outdoor environments that felt hemmed in by invisible walls and artificial barriers, you could explore a vast city.

Back then, the ability to wreak havoc in a wide-open space was enough. For decades video games were linear affairs, fraught with difficulty. Find yourself stumped by a tricky puzzle or brutal boss battle and you were left with nothing to do. Video games were rife with dead ends. Grand Theft Auto III helped change all that. Sure, the game had a plot. But you weren't limited to chasing the story. Players who found themselves stuck could blow off steam by stealing a car, blowing stuff up with a rocket launcher or punching a random pedestrian. But the kind of freedom Rockstar's blockbuster offered was ultimately limited. Players could roam a vast world, but their only meaningful way to interact with that world was to cause trouble.

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Graham McAllister maps out the opportunities and pitfalls that lie ahead if games were to know how you feel.

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Gamers are always demanding new experiences. Fortunately then, game developers and platform holders have continually been dreaming up new ways in which to entertain us. Over the last ten years we’ve seen games focus on technology: increasing graphical fidelity, delivering more natural animation and improving AI and physics. More recently, new game experiences have been delivered by gestural interaction controllers such the Wii, Move and Kinect, also bringing with them a new audience.  
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A Tennessee man, Marvin Potter (on the right), is in police custody tonight, charged with two counts of first degree murder in the shooting deaths of a couple who had unfriended his 30-year-old daughter on the popular social site.

The murderous spat began when Billy Payne Jr. and his girlfriend, Billie Jean Hayworth, unfriended Potter's 30-year-old daughter Jenelle. According to police, Jenelle began harassing the couple in the week leading up to the shooting on January 31st.
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Scientists believe that this is the animal from which everything else evolved. The first multicellular being that spawned every living being in this world through billions of mutations, from fish to amphibians to reptiles to birds to mammals to you. 
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More than 20,000 photographs, from over 130 countries were submitted to the National Geographic Photography contest, with both professional photographers and amateur photo enthusiasts participating. The grand prize winner was chosen from the three category winners: Nature - Shikhei Goh, People - Izabelle Nordfjell, Places - George Tapan. Shikhei Goh, of Indonesia, took the grand prize honors with his amazing photograph of a dragonfly in the rain and will be published in the magazine. The competition was judged on creativity and photographic quality by a panel of experts composed of field biologist and wildlife photojournalist Tim Laman, National Geographic photographer Amy Toensing and National Geographic nature photographer Peter Essick. The winning submissions can be viewed at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/photo-contest/- Paula Nelson 
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This luxury watch concept named “Ringen” was created by French designer Marc Tran. It was inspired by the perfect roundness of balls and automotive shapes. The watch is composed mostly of white gold, but the blue disc that represents the hours is made of brushed, anodized aluminum and adds a touch of youth to the overall design. A blue ball, representing 2 minutes, is moved along a horizontal progression of black slats. An additional blue ball orbits the face to displace seconds. Pretty creative watch concept! Take a look! 
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The Italian car builder Faralli and Mazzanti (F&M) presented render of its first mid-engined supercar the F&M Evantra. Executed in an aggressive style, with opening of the door against the model resembles Batmobile. The Evantra (formerly dubbed Mugello) will be constructed from either composite materials or handcrafted aluminium (depending on customer preference), with the latter option available for personalisation. Power will derive from a 3.5-litre flat-six engine, which will be available in two guises; a naturally aspirated model with 392bhp, or a twin-turbocharged option developing 587bhp. At its most powerful, the Evantra will hit 62mph from standing in 3.7sec. Production of the Faralli and Mazzanti Evantra will be limited to five units per year, with first deliveries slated for mid-2012. Check out some awesome pics!
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A recent study conducted by the University of British Columbia suggests that people are more likely to lie in text messages than they are using other forms of communication. The study was conducted with 170 students using face-to-face, via video, audio, and text message communications, and took the form of a role-playing game. Students were asked to take the roles of either brokers trying to sell stock, or consumers being asked to buy stocks, and the participants were offered cash rewards of up to $50 to engage in the game -- brokers for selling the stocks, and buyers based on an unrevealed value of the stock. 
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When electronic components bite the dust, there’s very little you can do. Unlike a leaky pipe or broken piece of plastic, it’s not like you can tear off a piece of duct tape and fix a cracked or failed microchip. Best case scenario is you replace it, but if it’s an integrated part or a discontinued chip, you might have to replace the whole device. Bummer. But what if a chip could heal itself?

It sounds like science fiction, but a team of engineers at the University of Illinois claim they’ve “developed a self-healing system that restores electrical conductivity to a cracked circuit in less time than it takes to blink.”
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