E3 2009: We Have Arrived!

A full day without any posts! I know…we’re ashamed too. But we have a good excuse. We’ve spent the day boarding planes and hopping cabs, travelling to L.A. for E3. Well, we’ve arrived.

Yes, The Review Crew is in Los Angeles getting ready to bring you the big stories from this year’s show. It all starts tomorrow morning with Microsoft’s press conference at 10:25 pacific. It was supposed to start at 10:30 but Microsoft bumped it up by 5 minutes claiming something big has come up! Guess we’ll see.

Hand Held Mosquito Bite Relief

Some gadgets sound just too good to be true. This is one of those gadgets. The Heated Itch Relief claims it can take the itch out of mosquito bites, using just a bit of heat.

Here’s how it works. You press the head of the unit onto your skin and hold it down for a few seconds. A coil begins to heat up and “neutralize” the proteins in the mosquito saliva underneath your skin. The process is supposed to bring relief and stop the itching and swelling that comes with a mosquito bite. The device runs off of 2 AAA batteries.

If you’ve tried this out let us know! We want the details on this one!

[Product Page]

PSP Go Leaked

Opps! Someone goofed. Sony’s upcoming June issue of Qore contains all the goods on the company’s new version of its PSP, the PSP Go. Well it appears someone got their hands on the issue before it went live and now the details are out in the wild. We could be the good ones and hold off for the official announcement, but that wouldn’t be any fun.

Read More »

DJ Hero Website Goes Live

It looks like Red Octane just couldn’t wait until E3. The company has now launched the official DJ Hero website giving us all a brief llok at the game. We gotta admit, it looks hot. While the site isn’t fully functional just yet, it certainly does a good job hyping the game.

Jay-Z, Eminem, Black Eyed Peas, a lot of stars are backing up DJ Hero. If you dig deep enough on the site you can find game order, website, officialplay footage, with a sample of what budding DJ’s will be able to create. Some of the songs do contain a few swears, which are edited out on the site. Makes us wonder how the final product will play.

Of course you can also pre-order the game on the website. It’s listed as $119 and will be available October 27th, although we’re hoping for a hands on next week at E3.

Official Website

Big Dates For Your Calendar

Three of this year’s most anticipated blockbuster game titles have been dated, including Bioshock 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Dragon Age:Origins.

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Sharp Develops 5 Primary Color LCD

Sharp Corporation is getting ready to show a first for LCDs. It has now developed a five-primary-color display that faithfully reproduces the real surface colors that humans are capable of perceiving.

While most displays use Red, Green and Blue color filters, this new one also adds Cyan and yellow into the mix. The company says now nearly all surface colors can be rendered, even colours traditional LCDs had issues producing.

The display will be shown off next week at the Society for Information Display (SID) to be held in San Antonio, Texas, US from May 31 through June 5, 2009.

30 Million Xbox 360 Consoles Sold

Microsoft is breaking out the champagne to celebrate, and it has good reason to do so. It has just announced it has sold it’s 30 millionth console globally. Not only that, the Xbox Live community has hit 20 million users. Pretty impressive numbers.

“We’ve always been confident that Xbox 360 offers more entertainment value than any other console on the market, and these latest numbers show that consumers agree,” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “We expect our growth to continue to accelerate. Our news at E3 next week will underscore our commitment to bringing blockbuster entertainment experiences to everyone and to growing the Xbox entertainment brand globally.”

Other interesting figures include the fact that Xbox 360 users own 8.3 titles each on average, and that Xbox LIVE has seen a 136% increase in new members since the launch of the New Xbox Experience last year.

Microsoft Announces New Search Engine

Get ready for it. Microsoft has lifted the veil of secrecy behind it’s new new search engine. So what’s the name? Bing! We’re serious, it’s called Bing.

The folks in Redmond are getting ready to launch the new service within days here in North America. They are calling it a “Decision Engine”. Not exactly sure what they mean by that. In fact, some of the information being released by Microsoft is a bit vague,  but here’s what we know so far.

Read More »

Palm Pre Syncs With iTunes

Fortune Magazine discovered an interesting little tidbit. It appears the soon to be released Palm Pre syncs seamlessly with Apple’s iTunes. In fact reports surfacing on the web by those who got their hands on the device a tad bit early, say iTunes treats the Palm Pre just as it would an iPhone or iPod.  How sweet is that?

There is one limitation. The Pre can not play back old copy-protected songs.

Makes you wonder if Apple will send down an update to stop this seamless syncing from continuing?

[Via Fortune]

First Chevrolet Volt Now In Production

General Motors has apparently started to build the very first pre-production Chevrolet Volt electric vehicles in Detroit today. These are the models that actually look just like the ones will will be driving in the not too distant future.

Each Volt is being assembled by hand! It’s a process that take about two weeks, yet engineers say it’s key to development. These “integration” vehicles will help engineers test the performance and safety of the Volt. If any changes are to be made, now is the time.

GM plans to have 80 cars on the road by the fall. The final product won’t be hitting showroom floors until the end of 2010.

[Via Wired]