Kongregate Gives Android Gamers 300 Titles Worth of Love

Free-to-play Flash game site Kongregate has just dropped a service for Android devices that’ll bring more than 300 games to the sorely under-populated platform.

Unlike the iPhone and iPad, Android is a bit lacking in users’ ability to track down quality games. Kongregate’s new service hopes to make the discovery part of the process a little easier, in addition to converting a ton of its site’s simple Flash games to a format that works on Android 2.2 Froyo.

Some of the games will be downloaded with the app and available for offline play, but for the most part, it sounds like you’ll need an Internet connection of some kind to play Kongregate Arcade. On the plus side, you can integrate your existing Kongregate account to keep track of all scores and any badges you earn when playing — so if you’ve got Kongregate friends, you can spend some time squashing their scores whenever you’ve got a free moment.

One more cool thing: this should single Kongregate’s start with making Android-specific games rather than just converting its existing Flash games to touchscreen capability. Sounds awesome.

Via Joystiq.


Exclusive: HP / Palm’s webOS tablets — pictures, plans, and more

Oh, hello. A trusted tipster just sent in these internal renders of HP / Palm’s “Topaz” webOS tablet, which is one of two tablets currently being developed in Sunnyvale. That’s right, two tablets: the 9-inch Topaz and a 7-inch model codnamed Opal — a lineup that fits nicely into Palm’s “Something big, Something small, Something beyond” tagline for its upcoming February 9th event. Looking at the render, we’re seeing the no-button design we’d previously heard about (we’re assuming the gesture area rotates with the display), a front-facing camera, a micro USB port on the bottom, and what appears to be a Vizio Tablet-style three speaker arrangement for stereo audio in both landscape and portrait modes — that’s two speakers along the left side and a third on the right. (That’s just a guess, though.) We’d also note the back appears to be a glossy material, which might rule out a giant Touchstone for charging — Touchstone backs have heretofore been soft-touch, but anything can change, we suppose.

We're told that units will start to arrive at Palm HQ in June as production ramps up for launch later this year — a timeline backed up by an internal marketing slide we received that lists WiFi-only, AT&T 3G, and Verizon LTE versions of the Opal arriving in September 2011, and on AT&T LTE in July 2012. The slide also indicates the Opal will have a particular e-reading focus, which makes sense for a 7-inch device, and there's a mention of "premium audio," which nicely reinforces our speaker hypothesis. Unfortunately, we don't have any word on specs or pricing yet, but these things had better be packing some serious heat for cheap if Palm is really planning to wait until September to launch them — they'll be going head-to-head with the Xoom, the PlayBook, and presumably the iPad 2. We’re still digging for more, so keep an eye out — things are going to get crazy leading up to February 9th.

Update: We’re told that they both have unspecified 1.2GHz processors, and that Topaz may arrive before Opal. We’ll let you know if we learn anything else.

Exclusive: HP / Palm’s webOS tablets — pictures, plans, and more originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats?

Digital audio has been around a very long time so there’s bound to be a plethora of audio formats out there.  Here are some of the more common ones, what differentiates them, and what to use them for.

Before we talk about everyday audio formats, it’s important you understand the basics, and that means understanding PCM.  After that, we’ll tackle compressed formats

Latest Features How-To Geek ETC

HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates

Todd Bradley did promise us there’d be more than just slates on HP’s webOS menu and today we can add netbooks to the list of form factors for Palm’s famed OS. This heretofore unknown slice of info comes from a carrier training website HP has set up to educate resellers on the strong points of its forthcoming products. The training video on the site speaks of the great synergies that can result from smartphones, slates and netbooks all running the same OS and “speaking” to one another, which echoes Bradley’s “connected experience” mantra from a couple of days ago. Smartphones are said to be the beginning of a new family of webOS products, with their larger siblings set to come “soon enough.” Is February 9th soon enough? We’d say so.

Continue reading HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates

HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 12:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PreCentral  |  sourceHP webOS Central  | Email this | Comments

Man discovers glasses-free 3D tech in the blink of an eye (video)

Who’s got two thumbs and needs glasses to see 3D? Not this guy! Francois Vogel’s figured out a way to remove those pesky spectacles from the equation, and he’s ready to revolutionize the stereoscopic industry forever. Sure, you’ll need a monitor with a 120Hz refresh rate, but that’s a prerequisite these days anyhow, and the rest is sweet, sticky gravy dished directly to your eyeballs. Get a sneak peek at the game-changing tech in the video above, and keep an eye out for unicorns (we’re sure they’re around here somewhere). You’ll never look at 3D the same way again, we promise.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Man discovers glasses-free 3D tech in the blink of an eye (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Kotaku  |  sourceJonathan Post  | Email this | Comments