Activision Screws Up Their Own Guitar Hero Compatibility Charts

At first glance, these Activision-made Guitar Hero/Rock Band instrument compatibility charts appear very handy. That is, until you realize that they're completely overrun by inaccuracies. It didn't take long for the Kotaku commenters to rip apart the list, with one reader finding flaws with data on each platform. So we're left with one question:

If Activision doesn't understand the compatibility issues regarding their own games and hardware, how are we as consumers EVER going to get it? If these guys don't figure their shit out soon, I'm so going to start a real band. [Activision via Kotaku]

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BlackBerry Curve 8900 gets official for T-Mobile Germany

Beep beep, outta the way, incoming RIM product blitz! Seriously, this is like a high-powered corporate executive's dream -- not one, not two, not three, not four, but five major product launches out of Waterloo in the span of a few months' time. Latest out of the gate is the 8900 Curve, successor to the 8300 series featuring a heavily-upgraded 480 x 360 display, microSD support to 16GB, WiFi, 3.2-megapixel cam with autofocus, and integrated GPS. Sadly, network data tops out at EDGE speeds -- but if you really need more, we s'pose that's where the Bold comes into play. No word on any launches outside of Bavaria just yet, but on T-Mobile Germany, the 8900 is available "mid November" (which is basically now) for €4.95 (yes, that's not a typo, 4.95 euros) on a 24-month contract.

[Via IntoMobile]

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Intel Core i7-equipped Falcon Northwest Mach V gaming desktop hands-on

Benchmarks and reviews of Intel's Core i7 processors are pouring in, and while mere mortals must wait till later this month to get their hands on the hardware, we spent much of our weekend working overtime with Crysis, Fallout 3, and Age of Conan on an $8,238 Core i7 965-equipped Mach V gaming desktop from boutique PC manufacturer Falcon Northwest. It's got the works and then some: liquid cooling, dual ATI Radeon 4870X2 graphics cards with 2GB of RAM on-board, 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, Blu-ray, HD-DVD (yes, you read that right), and over a terabyte of storage. Based on our dozen or so hours of grueling, utterly boring hands-on tests, all three games were plenty playable maxed out at 1920 x 1080 resolution with 4x anti-aliasing -- only Crysis ever dipped below 40 frames per second, and we never saw Fallout 3 under 60. We sincerely hope you appreciate the backbreaking, soulcrushingly hard work we do for you -- more photos and benchmarks (including Crysis) in the gallery.

engadget.com

This Robot Wants Your Money, Jerks

Here in America, we use paper to pay for things—maybe plastic if we're lucky. But over in Japan, wireless RFID is gradually becoming the rage. And this NEC robot supports the trend of paying for something without feeling like you're actually paying for something.

Using the robot is easy enough. You push the touchscreen on its chest to select, say, tickets for an amusement park. Then you wave your FeliCa-enabled wallet phone (RFID device) over the robot's right hand to, as we can only assume, pay for your tickets and deactivate the robot's deadly laser security system.

Apparently the system could also incorporate facial recognition to identify frequent visitors, or recommend services based upon their age/gender. And while we know that this terminal is just a kiosk shaped like a robot, we can't help but to admire the sincere technoanthropomorphism. [IT Media via Pink Tentacle]

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