portal

preGAME 18: E3 2010 press conference wrap-up

This week on preGAME we take an in-depth look at all three major E3 2010 press conferences. If you didn't get to catch those shows live, make sure to tune in here as we run through each conference, picking apart every announcement, game, and hardware debut.

We've got dozens of videos to show, displaying the latest and greatest from the world of gaming, including Nintendo 3DS hands-on, Microsoft Kinect, and PlayStation Move gameplay. Also, we'll be checking out game trailers for blockbuster titles like Portal 2, Twisted Metal, Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Gears of War 3.

So … Read more

Portal 2 closed until 2011; 'public safety' cited

Valve may have only announced Portal 2 a few brief months ago, but the game's development has apparently already run afoul of some evil machination in the Aperture Science laboratories. On Wednesday, the Seattle-area studio announced that its follow-up to 2007's award-winning Portal has been bumped to 2011 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The black-humored first-person puzzler had previously been scheduled to arrive this fall.

According to a release from the studio titled "Valve Announces Making Games is Hard," Portal 2's delay came about as part of "the successful completion of an … Read more

preGAME 17: E3 2010 preview

This week on preGAME, we gear up for gaming's biggest show of the year, E3. On today's episode we'll run down every last prediction and anticipated game we're looking forward to at E3 2010, from each of the three major press conferences to the individual titles themselves.

First up for debate is Microsoft. It sounds like we'll finally get an official name for Project Natal, as well as some game announcements made for the motion-capturing hardware. We also think we'll see an Xbox 360 Slim announced at the company's press conference; maybe there'… Read more

Hands-on: Steam gaming on four different Macs

With four different Macs sitting in the CNET lab right now, Valve couldn't have picked a better time to release its Mac Steam client, at least from a testing perspective. We just spent the past few hours with Steam, as well as Portal and Torchlight, two of the more graphically demanding games available for Steam at launch. So far, we find Steam on the Mac just as seamless as the Windows version. The games are also mostly trouble-free.

First, to accompany this launch Valve is offering Portal as a free download until May 24. If you haven't played Portal, or even if you have, we recommend it. It's fun.

The Steam software itself should feel instantly familiar to anyone who's used the Windows version. Valve recently gave Steam a cosmetic overhaul, so even Steam veterans might need a minute to adjust, but overall it remains intuitive to navigate. One considerate touch: In the Steam store you'll see the full list of titles available for download, Windows titles included, but a mouse-over message will warn you if you hover over a game that's unavailable for the Mac. That will hopefully prevent any incompatible purchases. At launch, there were roughly 50 Mac titles available.

For the games themselves, we have few complaints about their performance on our various test systems. Granted, we'd expect neither the older Portal nor the purposefully lightweight Torchlight to challenge a halfway respectable computer. With more games coming to Steam for the Mac from Valve and (presumably) other game manufacturers, future titles may provide more of a challenge to the Macs we tested. For today at least, we find that Apple's higher-end Mac laptops and all-in-ones make capable gaming systems.

Our four test systems:

27-inch iMac with 2.8GHz Core i7, 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4850 27-inch iMac with 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 256MB ATI Radeon HD 4670 15-inch MacBook Pro with 2.66GHz Core i7, Nvidia GeForce 330M 13-inch MacBook Pro with 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia GeForce 320M… Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1177: Nerd freestyle

We stayed on the rails pretty well in this episode, but there's a whole long thing about cake toward the end that the chat room dubbed "nerd freestyle" and, well, we love that. In other news, new TiVo underwhelms a bit (other than the remote) and Viacom goes all anti-Internet with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." That's the cake part.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) Episode 1177

TiVo unveils Series4 ‘Premiere’ DVRs with enhanced online integration http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10462438-1.html?… Read more

Developing downloader

MyTube Bigpack Internet Recorder 3 Free is a multifeatured program that allows users to view, download, and convert videos from a variety of different sites. Although we think the program has potential, it has a few kinks to work out before we can recommend it wholeheartedly.

The program's interface is attractive and well-organized, with easily accessed sections for finding, playing, downloading, and converting videos. We liked--in theory, anyway--that the program allows users to search a variety of different Web sites from within the interface, but this didn't always work as planned. Although we were able to search for … Read more

Portal Shirt lets you simulate teleportation

Update at 4:21 p.m. PDT: As some of our readers pointed out, this shirt first appeared on ThinkGeek as an April Fools' joke. Our bad. We'd still like to see a shirt like this one day, though.

Like huh? Unlike the Wi-Fi Detector and Dynamic Life T-shirts, which could be considered moderately useful, the Interactive Portal Shirt from ThinkGeek simply doesn't seem viable. Mounted in front of the apparel is a wireless 5.8GHz pinhole camera and TFT (thin film transistor) LCD display. The shooter projects what you see to the person wearing the other shirt … Read more

Bing sees slight uptick in July

It'll probably still be a long time before people start saying things like "I'd spend some time binging that guy before I go on a date with him," but in the U.S. things are looking up for Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, which was unveiled in May.

Web analytics firm StatCounter released analysis Monday stating that Bing slightly increased Microsoft's share of the U.S. search market in July. It now claims 9.41 percent, up from 8.23 percent in June.

The combined market share of both Microsoft and Yahoo in July … Read more

Liquid Planner gets project portals

Fuzzy scheduling tool Liquid Planner is expanding its reach into the collaborative task management market with a neat new feature called project portals. These are group pages that offer some of the same basic collaboration features you get with the core product, however they can be branded and shared with anyone else who is not a paying Liquid Planner customer.

Any project you're working on in Liquid Planner can now become "portalized." These pages serve as a central place to access shared files and lets outside users keep track on a project's status and ongoing tasks … Read more