Look up there, folks. That’s the future of Sony’s hopes and dreams in the handheld gaming sector. With just hours to go before the company’s official E3 2009 press event, it looks like the pieces are all coming together. First a UMD-less game release, then a highly credible mole giving the PSP Go a name, and now — live action shots. The images here were sourced from an obviously slipped June 2009 Qore video, and aside from giving us a look at the slider-based system (which, let’s be honest, looks a ton like the questionably successful mylo), we’re also told that it’ll tout 16GB of internal memory, built-in Bluetooth and an undisclosed memory slot. If all goes well, it’ll ship this Fall for a price to be determined, and it’s actually not slated to replace the PSP-3000, as both of ‘em will attempt to live on store shelves harmoniously… at least for awhile. Oh, and don’t worry — we’ll be on hand in LA to bring you all the impressions we can muster early next week.

[Via PlayStation Forums, thanks Matt and A1]

Update: Video is now after the break! Thanks adizzy615!

Update 2: Official press shots have emerged. [Via Engadget Spanish]

Update 3: A few more official specifications are flowing from the full Qore video (pardon the sync issues). Here’s the dirt:

• 3.8-inch display (resolution is undisclosed)
• 43 percent lighter than the PSP-3000
• 16GB of Flash storage
• Bluetooth built-in; supports handset tethering and BT headsets
• No UMD drive
• Memory Stick Micro slot
• New Gran Turismo, Little Big Planet and new Metal Gear Solid (!) on the way
• Full PlayStation Network support (movie and TV rentals / purchases)
• Integration with PlayStation 3 (works the same as the PSP-3000 does)
• Sony views each of its products as “10-year lifecycle products,” so the PSP “needs to live on.”

Full Photo Gallery - http://www.engadget.com/photos/sonys-psp-go-leaked/2044620/

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/30/sonys-psp-go-leaks-out-before-e3-is-obviously-a-go/

Copy this whole post to another site

Slurp cancel

select site advertising consumerist deadspin defamer fleshbot gay fleshbot gawker gizmodo idolator io9 jalopnik jezebel kotaku lifehacker valleywag artists gawkershop

I’m looking at these images from a Hong Kong blog, and they totally look like The Real Thing™ to me. Sure they are blurry, but those applications’ user interface definitely screams Apple design. The gallery shows the video/camera screen, compass, and the autofocus, among other things.

Yes, the more I look at these images, the more I’m convinced they are the real deal. As we get closer to WWDC, it seems that some stuff may be starting to leak. We saw potential parts from the next-generation iPhone 3G and what may be a new finish.

These could very well be the first shots of the new iPhone, featuring the new compass and video functions, as well as the autofocus in the camera. They look like polished new Apple applications. You can also see how the camera app can change between video and still modes, as well as the autofocus overlay—I wonder if you could change it with your finger—and MMS screens.

http://gizmodo.com/5273348/first-iphone-3g-2009-screens-look-very-real-to-me

Though this New York Times report doesn’t mention the local connection, both TechFlash and Slate have previously plumbed two-year-old Seattle company Pet Holdings. Run by former journalist Ben Huh, the company owns and runs the famously popular, viral I Can Has Cheezburger site, which is now venturing into book publishing, as the Times reports.

The books come mostly from reader-generated content, since it’s we citizen Web surfers who upload our favorite krazy kat photos and kaptions to Huh’s site; then he gets to profit from the book. Though the Web site itself, which now carries a fair amount of advertising, is clearly driving the revenue train. Huh told John Cook at TechFlash that his family of sites (which includes Fail Blog) attracts five million page views a day. (For this reason, Seattle Weekly is considering its own SeelyCats feature, based on the cats of our managing editor, Mike Seely.) Huh bought the LOLcat site for $2 million last year from Hawaiians Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami; see the Honolulu Star-Bulletin account. The two compiled the first Cheezburger book, which sold 100,000 copies.

And Huh’s money quote to the Times: “We’re turning user-generated content into editorial content.” He tells the paper he estimates that his company will generate half a million dollars in revenue from its book deals alone. Smart guy. Smart enough, too, to get out of journalism.

A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.

Earlier this year, Microsoft shipped a bundle of updates known as a “service pack” for a programming platform called the Microsoft .NET Framework, which Microsoft and plenty of third-party developers use to run a variety of interactive programs on Windows.

The service pack for the .NET Framework, like other updates, was pushed out to users through the Windows Update Web site. A number of readers had never heard of this platform before Windows Update started offering the service pack for it, and many of you wanted to know whether it was okay to go ahead and install this thing. Having earlier checked to see whether the service pack had caused any widespread problems or interfered with third-party programs — and not finding any that warranted waving readers away from this update — I told readers not to worry and to go ahead and install it.

I’m here to report a small side effect from installing this service pack that I was not aware of until just a few days ago: Apparently, the .NET update automatically installs its own Firefox add-on that is difficult — if not dangerous — to remove, once installed.

Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says “this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly install software on your PC.” I’m not sure I’d put things in quite such dire terms, but I’m fairly confident that a decent number of Firefox for Windows users are rabidly anti-Internet Explorer, and would take umbrage at the very notion of Redmond monkeying with the browser in any way.

Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox’s handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the “uninstall” button on the extension. What’s more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that — if done imprecisely — can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up.

When I first learned of this, three thoughts immediately flashed through my mind:

1) How the %#@! did I miss this?

2) The right way would have been to just publish the add-on at Mozilla’s Add Ons page.

3) This kind of makes you wonder what else MS is installing without your knowledge.

Then I found that I wasn’t the only one who had these ideas. Microsoft has heard these criticisms from others who long ago commented on this unfortunate development (see the comments underneath this post).

Anyway, I’m sure it’s not the end of the world, but it’s probably infuriating to many readers nonetheless. Firstly — to my readers — I apologize for overlooking this…”feature” of the .NET Framework security update. Secondly — to Microsoft — this is a great example of how not to convince people to trust your security updates.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html

Wikipedia has banned the Church of Scientology from editing any articles. It’s a punishment for repeated and deceptive editing of articles related to the controversial religion. The landmark ruling comes from the inner circle of a site that prides itself on being open and inclusive.

In a 10-1 ruling Thursday, the site’s arbitration council voted to ban users coming from all IP addresses owned by the Church of Scientology and its associates, and further banned a number of editors by name. The story was first reported by The Register.

Self-serving Wikipedia edits are hardly new. Wired.com readers pulled in an award for discovering the most egregious Wikipedia whitewashes by corporation and government agencies, but this is the first time the site has taken such drastic actions to block those edits.

And the edits are unlikely to stop, now that the user-created encyclopedia has become one of the net’s most popular sites and is often the top result for searches on a subject. Being able to massage an entry about oneself or one’s company has proven difficult to resist, even for founder Jimmy Wales — despite Wikipedia’s official warnings to the contrary.

The Church of Scientology, founded by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1953, has had a long and bloody history on the net — dating back to Usenet groups, where critics maintain that the organization is a cult that brainwashes its members and sucks them dry financially. The Church, which teaches that humans are reincarnated and lived on other planets, says it is a legitimate religion.

The case, which began in December, centers on more than 400 articles about the ultra-secretive Church and its members. Those pages have hosted long-running, fierce edit wars that pitted organized Church of Scientology editors — using multiple accounts — against critics of Scientology who fought those changes by citing their own or one another’s self-published material. In fact, this is the fourth Wikipedia arbitration case concerning Scientology in as many years.

The committee also banned a number of editors individually, prohibiting them from editing any Scientology-related articles for at least six months. Those privileges can be reinstated afterward if they show they can play nicely by Wikipedia’s rules.

While most disputes involving the Web and Scientology in the past year have involved anti-Scientology activists who bind together under the name Anonymous, that group is largely not involved in this argument, because only registered accounts are able to edit the articles under dispute.

The Church of Scientology did not immediately return a voice message, asking for comment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PPlkOyaqaQ

SUSAN BOYLE DOES NOT WIN  Brittan’s got Talent Susan Margaret Boyle (born 1 April 1961) is a Scottish singer who came to public attention when she appeared as a contestant on the third series of Britain’s Got Talent. Boyle became known when she sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables in the competition’s first round, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on 11 April 2009.

Susan Boyle was favourite to win from her first rehearsal 7 weeks ago when she came to the public’s attention, from then she has starred in both south park and the Simpsons and has become one of the most famous singers in the world in just 7 weeks.

Here’s one pre-E3 announcement we weren’t exactly expecting: The re-emergence of Electronic Gaming Monthly. EGM founder Steve Harris, who left the magazine in the ’90s, has announced to the world that he has made an agreement with Ziff Davis Media to “re-acquire certain assets, including trademarks and publishing rights” related to the EGM brand, and operating under the name EGM Media, LLC. Although both print and online-based publication is mentioned in the website’s press release, it’s not 100% clear whether EGM would be brought back as a magazine, a website, or both. There is, however, a note that much more information will be revealed during E3 next week and beyond. In the meantime, you can keep up with the news by visiting egmnow.com, the EGM Facebook page or the EGM Twitter feed.

UGO Entertainment and Hearst Corporation acquired 1UP.com from Ziff Davis Media in January, but was not interested in the EGM property, and with increasing risks in the print business, Ziff Davis decided to cease publication of EGM at the same time. Any other party could have stepped in and acquired the rights, but it was the man who originally created it to be the one to get it back.

According to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert, ‘Valkyrie‘ was the top-selling title on Blu-ray in the US for the week ended May 24. Second place was for ‘Taken‘, the top-selling title the week before. ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop‘, despite winning easily on the overall DVD/Blu-ray charts, only managed third place in Blu-ray, outsold by ‘Valkyrie’ by nearly 2 to 1. ‘My Bloody Valentine 3D‘ got number 4.

Here is the Blu-ray top 10:

1. Valkyrie
2. Taken
3. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
4. My Bloody Valentine 3D
5. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
6. True Blood: The Complete First Season
7. A Bug’s Life
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
9. 24: Season 7
10. Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection

As regards market share, the highest BD ratios for new releases of the week were for ‘My Bloody Valentine 3D’ and ‘Valkyrie’, which got 21% and 20%, respectively. TV series ‘24: Season 7‘ and ‘True Blood: The Complete First Season‘ grabbed 15% and 14%, whereas ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop’ got only 7%.

Update

Home Media Magazine has now published the already-familiar pie chart comparing aggregate unit sales of the top 20 BDs versus the top 20 DVDs. The split for this week is 14% BD: 86% DVD.

Total revenue from BD sales was $20.92 million, up 119.47% from the same week last year. DVD revenue was $178.53 million, down 13.10% year-on-year.

BD accounted for 10.5% of total packaged-media sales revenue.