Lady Gaga fastest ever single to 1m iTunes downloads

Lady Gaga's new single 'Born this Way' has become the fastest selling track ever on iTunes, reaching a mllion downloads in less than five days.
The eccentric pop star, who hit the headlines by emerging from an egg during at the Grammys last weekend, is leading the iTunes single's chart in 23 countries across the globe.
Gaga has established herself as the new media queen in recent years with over 407,000 subscribers on YouTube, while the official Vevo video for Bad Romance garnering 346 million views.

The dust had barely settled after a chaotic stampede of tablets at CES. Now, a month on, there’s more tablet action to come.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress, Samsung, HTC, Acer and LG all announced new tablets. Add these to devices on show from HP, RIM, ViewSonic and Motorola and you can see why 2011 is going to be the year of keyboard-less computing.
Here’s our round-up of the best tablets and pads on show at MWC 2011…
HTC Flyer
After much speculation, HTC finally revealed its Flyer tablet at Mobile World Congress. It comes with a 7-inch display, so it ducks direct comparison with the iPad and has more in common with the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Blackberry PlayBook.
In fact, the HTC Flyer fits neatly between the two – it’s better specced than Samsung’s mini-tablet, yet not as high-tech as RIM’s over-sized Blackberry.
We like the screen, which has a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels and can be used with a stylus. We also like the 5MP camera on the back and the addition of a 1.3MP lens on the front for video chat.
What don’t we like? The early model on show at MWC ran the Gingerbread phone OS with HTC Sense rather than the tablet-specific Android 3.0 version.
The 1.5GHz single-core processor inside is also a strange choice compared to the dual-core CPUs being deployed in rival devices.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
While the HTC Flyer is a mixed technology bag, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 eliminates any niggles we had with Samsung’s original 7-inch device.
Rocking the Android 3.0 OS, the new Galaxy Tab speeds along courtesy of a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU and impresses with a luxurious 10.1-inch (1280 x 800 pixel) touchscreen.

On the back, Samsung has added an 8MP camera, while around the front there’s a 2MP lens for video conferencing. Or for simply using the Galaxy Tab 10.1 as an expensive mirror. With Flash 10.1 and 1080p support, the overall specification just edges out the Motorola Xoom. Just.
LG Optimus Pad
It’s difficult to pick a favourite Android tablet when the hardware specifications are so similar. Like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, The LG Optimus Pad boasts a screamingly fast dual-core Tegra 2 processor (with Nvidia GeForce graphics) and Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb.
But the Optimus Pad stands out in two respects. First, it features an 8.9-inch (1024 x 768 pixel) touch-sensitive display that might just hit a sweet spot for anybody who thinks that 7-inch screens are too small and 10.1 is too unwieldy.

Second, it features two 5 Megapixel cameras on the back, enabling it to take 3D videos and photos like the LG Optimus 3D smartphone.
Whether you see this as a deal-maker or a pointless gimmick (like fingerprint recognition on a consumer laptop), it certainly differentiates the Optimus Pad from the crowd.
HP TouchPad
This was the TouchPad’s first appearance since HP unveiled the device at its San Francisco WebOS event in early February.
Like the iPad, the HP TouchPad features a 9.7-inch display and is well-built and neatly designed. The fact that it runs WebOS 3.0 and multi-tasks beautifully makes it a credible alternative to Android 3.0, the Blackberry OS and Apple’s iOS 4.

Under the hood, there’s a turbo-charged Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core CPU (APQ8060), ticking along at 1.2GHz. It’s also available in two configurations, with either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage.
Oddly, there’s no rear camera. But HP has specced a front-facing 1.3 Megapixel camera for Skyping.
Acer Iconia Tab A500
While the tablet spotlight gets hogged by LG, Samsung and HTC, Acer rolled out its own Android device with hardly a ‘ta-daa!’
Again, here you’ll find a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, a 10.1-inch (1280 x 768 pixel) display, HDMI out, plus a 5MP rear camera and a front-facing camera. Here, the Iconia Tab A500 ran Android 2.3 laced with Acer’s own UI tweaks.
ViewSonic ViewPads
ViewSonic is making a real effort to ensure that its tablet devices stand out. Its 10-inch ViewPad 10Pro, for example, can dual-boot both Android 2.2 and Windows 7 Professional and is one of the first tablets to use Intel’s Oak Trail CPU. Is this the future of tablet-kind?
Blackberry Playbook
RIM had already announced the Blackberry PlayBook, but its appearance at MWC was an opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with the tablet.

Like the HTC Flyer, the PlayBook has a 7-inch display with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels, a 3MP camera on the front and a 5MP lens around the back.
Crucially, it’s powered by a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, which gives it a performance advantage over the HTC Flyer.
Motorola Xoom
We’ve already written a lot about the Motorola Xoom, the darling of CES 2011 thanks to Android 3.0, a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display, dual-core processor, 1080p video playback and 3G/4G/Wi-Fi connectivity.
But what a difference a month makes. Facing up to the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 and LG Optimus Pad, it doesn’t seem quite so special.

WowWee's Light Strike makes laser tag look more like Paper Jamz

WowWee, the same folks who brought you Paper Jamz, are giving yet another American leisure-time institution a makeover, and this time they've set their sights on laser tag. Carrying over the Paper Jamz aesthetic, Light Strike aims to "bring video game action into the real-world" with a set of laser tag guns and accessories that sport fingerprint ID, long-range LED targeting, built-in health and ammo meters, and the ability to play with up to four teams of unlimited size. The game's stable of weapons includes Light Strike's signature gun, the Assault Striker, a machine gun bipod with recoil action, a scope attachment with 100-foot range, and a grenade launcher that can shoot groups of enemies down in a single shot. Now, who's going to lead the campaign to make the Assault Striker the official gun of the 2012 Olympic Pentathalon? Light Strike is set for an August 2011 launch with guns starting at about $40, but you can get a very dramatic preview after the jump.

DARPA-funded Nano Hummingbird spybot takes flight (video)

We were plenty impressed when we saw the initial tests of AeroVironment's robo-hummingbird -- now officially dubbed the Nano Hummingbird -- but we can't say they quite prepared us for the final product that the DARPA-funded company is now showing off. Not only does the bot look and fly like a real hummingbird (at least if you don't look too closely), but it packs a built-in camera and a downlink of some sort that's capable of transmitting live video. According to the company, the hummingbird's also able to hover for up to eight minutes, reach speeds of eleven miles per hour in forward flight, and remain stable in wind gusts of five miles per hour -- not to mention make a perfect landing. Head on past the break to check it out in action -- it may well be one of the few chances you're actually able to see one in the wild.

HTC investing in smartphone gaming, details coming next week

HTC has announced plans to invest $40m (£25m) in OnLive, a company that specialises in cloud-based gaming.

The move could see HTC dipping its toe firmly into the gaming waters, with handsets like the Sony Eriscson Xperia Play hoping to explode the mobile gaming market this year.

Excitement abounds

HTC told us that it's very excited about the investment, and that "more news will follow next week."

Could we be in line for an exciting gaming announcement from the company at Mobile World Congress?

According to HTC spokesperson Maggie Cheng, the company's investment will "strengthen its gaming capabilities and help HTC tap into increasing demand for games on smartphones."

Good plan

We've already seen HTC move in the direction of the cloud with its HTCSense.com Mobile-Me-alike service.

Given the company's investment in its on-handset software, it would make sense for HTC to get involved in mobile gaming which is already a huge market; plus it could help the company differentiate itself in the very-samey Windows Phone 7 market.

Exciting times ahead, we hope; we'll bring you all the details next week.

Windows XP partially re-created in LittleBigPlanet 2, ups the stakes for gamer ambitiousness (video)

We've seen an CHIP-8 emulator and even a virtual CPU built inside games, but we've yet to encounter a game recreation of Windows. Thanks to a quartet of industrious LittleBigPlanet 2 beta players, though, we can now finally check that off in our copy of 100 Geeky Projects You Must Witness Before Dying. As the video above shows, major Windows functions they've emulated to date include a working start menu and mouse cursor, multiplayer support for a variety of bloatware games, and even the good ole' blue screen of death. That's pretty impressive stuff from an ambitious platforming title that won't officially ship until mid-January. Needless to say, once the full version arrives, we expect to see a working copy of Lion running stat. You heard us folks -- we're setting the bar that high.

Minecraft users go wild building CPUs in their virtual world (video)

Gaming, Alt

Minecraft users go wild building CPUs in their virtual world (video)

By Joseph L. Flatley posted Nov 9th 2010 10:17PM

So, apparently this is what a functioning 16-bit arithmetic logic unit looks like... at least when it is designed in Minecraft. And that ain't the half of it! It seems that there are a whole bunch of folks who are taking the game, with its avatars, pitchforks, and immense landscape, and building computers and the like. Indeed, there is also a complete 8-bit CPU out there, which takes binary machine code and sends output to a line of torches. While we'd rather spend our time teaching our avatars to breakdance in Second Life, we do admire the hard work that clearly went into these projects. For a tutorial on the 8-bit CPU, hit up the source link. For more info on either of these projects, check out the folks' YouTube pages -- we've thoughtfully included the videos after the break.