The developers at LucasArts aren’t just about making games with lightsabers and TIE Fighters in them. A case in point comes in the shape of “Fracture”, one of their new titles now in development and slated for a mid-2008 release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Under development by Day 1 Studios, you step into the boots of Mason Briggs, a soldier from the mid 22nd century that uses weapons that can deform and manipulate the terrain around you to turn a physical disadvantage into a strategic advantage.

Suppose that …

Moore’s Law seems in jeopardy with some recent memory design innovations by IBM. The new design triples the amount of memory on a microprocessor and marks the fastest access times ever recorded with eDRAM (pictured).

The new eDRAM requires about one-third the space of prior designs and vastly improves microprocessor performance in multi-core designs, graphics for gaming, and networking performance. The new memory also has significantly lower power requirements – needing only one-fifth the standby power of conventional SRAM.

SRAM or Static RAM is a fast volatile memory and …

AMD has recently unveiled three new processors for mobile devices that are focused on enhancing multimedia capabilities – the AMD Imageon 2298, 2294 and 2192 media processors.

The processors are intended to bring faster and more efficient processing of high quality video and images to the mobile devices. Along with improved processing performance, multi-threading of applications would also be enabled to allow users to listen to music simultaneously while taking photos without disrupting the processing and music playback.

“As mobile broadband networks continue to increase capacity and improve quality, the consumer appetite for sophisticated multimedia …

Today Intel has announced plans for their next generation processor chips, intended to improve processing speeds and increase the lead between themselves and their competition when the new chips go into production. The new processor, code named Penryn, will used a 45 nanometer manufacturing process to provide faster processing on the same amount of physical space without significant changes to power consumption.

Intel’s ability to improve performance is due to the implementation of high-k dielectrics and metal material for the transistor gate electrodes. According to Mark Bohr, senior fellow at Intel, the …

Quiksilver, a leader in outdoor sporting apparel and Plantronics of Bluetooth technology fame have announced a partnership that aims to outfit outdoor enthusiasts with Bluetooth-enabled sports gear. The new line of products is designed to give outdoor enthusiasts a seamless experience to go from one environment to the next while staying continuously connected to their mobile devices.

The new line of apparel and accessories will integrate Quiksilver’s outdoor sports lineup with Bluetooth equipped mobile phones, iPods and MP3 players. Plantronics’ technology will be embedded within the Quiksilver apparel and accessories …

Electronic Arts, publisher of The Sims franchise, is developing a new line of Sim games titled The Sims Stores, that are aimed at the laptop toting, MySpace generation.

The Sims is EA’s number one franchise. EA has sold more the 70 million Sim’s titles worldwide since 2000. The Sim’s games are notable because half the players are female. Most video games are played by males.

EA has designed The Sim Life Stories to be less technologically demanding than other video games. The games do not …

Jobs has stated in a couple articles this week, one from the New York Times and one from MSNBC, that Apple will be restricting third party applications for OS X on the iPhone, unlike the open OS X platform for the Mac.

Jobs describes the iPhone operating system to be more inline with the iPod, and less like the Mac or mobile computer, stating that the risk of loading custom built applications onto the iPhone could cause the phone to just not work, or even …

Earlier this week Slippery Brick reported on the XO laptop and the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization, stating reports that the company planned on making the XO laptop commercially available for as little as $100 USD. According to Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the OLPC, making the XO laptops available to the public is not in the plans for this year, but may be in the future.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you couldn’t buy one …

Today Ford announced that they have teamed up with Microsoft to offer some in-car software to enhance the use of digital audio players, mobile phones and multimedia in their vehicles. Ford Sync will be powered by Microsoft Auto Software and provide voice activated communications and entertainment in select Ford vehicles.

Sync is planned to be available in 12 different Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles yet this year and will allow users to access their mobile phone, mobile music and will host almost any digital media player …

Sprint Nextel today announced that Nokia has been chosen as a key infrastructure and device provider for its 4G WiMAX mobile broadband network. Jointly, the companies will develop mobility services and applications and conduct co-marketing efforts to drive global adoption of WiMAX.

The partnership involves a commitment from Nokia to provide network infrastructure, mobile consumer electronic devices, and various market development commitments. Nokia is slated to be a major supplier to Sprint for WiMAX network infrastructure – namely the Nokia Flexi WiMAX base transceiver stations. Nokia will also have commitments …

According to the Observer, Google and Orange are collaborating on making a Google Phone with built in Google applications for surfing the web, and getting email. This would be another big step forward for both of these two very powerful companies in the technology world, and could be a large benefit to consumers in mobile internet access and potentially costs as well.

Google has been working on different technologies to make information more accessible from mobile devices, such getting email on your handset, and having another medium to …

Intel recently demonstrated the completed design of its first mobile WiMAX baseband chip at the keynote address of the 3G World Congress and Mobility Marketplace in Hong Kong. The new chipset is dubbed the Intel WiMAX Connection 2300 and marks another major step in Intel’s efforts to “drive innovation in mobile broadband access”.

The demonstration was preformed with an Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology-based laptop with mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005), Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n), and high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) 3G capabilities.

The demonstration illustrates the capabilities of WiMAX for handling content-rich applications without interference from other …