Gamers will have a chance to play the classic, original Half-Life with almost-modern technology, thanks to an all-volunteer total conversion

Steam Greenlight, the new initiative from Valve to make independent games available on the Steam Marketplace, could shut down tomorrow and it still would’ve been a worthy project.  Because whatever else it may release in the future, Greenlight has now brought a long-awaited title to gamers’ waiting hard drives.  Black Mesa: Source, the long-gestating total conversion of the original Half-Life, is now available.

The Black Mesa project was born from gamers’ dissatisfaction with Half Life: Source, Valve’s 2004 updating of their 1998 hit.  HL:S implemented better physics, effects, and lighting, but fans were disappointed when it didn’t update any textures, models, or level architecture.  Between the unhappiness players expressed with Valve’s port, the vast modding community built around Valve’s Source engine, and the company’s tolerant attitude towards fans playing with their intellectual property, even Valve CEO Gabe Newell admitted that a fan-made rebuild of Half-Life was “not only possible… but inevitable.”

However, getting the project to completion with an all-volunteer crew wasn’t going to be easy, or quick.  The Black Mesa: Source team announced their plans for a better conversion of the classic in September of 2004, and for years, they had nothing but a few screenshots to show for it.  Wired Magazine put Black Mesa: Source on their Vaporware of the Year list for two years running, joining such anti-luminaries as Duke Nukem Forever and L.A. Noire.

But now, all three of those games have arrived.  DNF was a critical and commercial disaster; L.A. Noire was a modest but ambitious hit.  As for BM:S…  Well, it won’t be uncontroversial.  While most updated ports are just recreations of an original game, the BM:S team decided to “improve” on the original with larger maps, re-balanced weapons, new music, and new voice acting.  They’ve also left out Half-Life‘s innovative Xen level — although they promise a massively-expanded version of Xen is on its way, but it remains to be seen if that will take another eight years.

It’s also hard to say if gamers will be quite so excited about this game as they would’ve been eight years ago.  Although the trailer looks good, and it’s certainly an improvement over the original graphics, the Source engine is showing its age, and making a game from 1998 look like a game from 2005 is rather less compelling in 2012. So far, though, the forums are full of delight, with gamers enjoying both the elegant pacing of the original Half-Life and the self-referential jokes of the mod. It helps that the developers have been extremely open about their recent builds, and willing to change the game in response to constructive criticism.

Gamers are also pleased by the open distribution of the title.  Getting through the Steam Greenlight process means the game can easily be purchased and installed through Steam, but for the more adventurous, the mod is freely available on a tremendous number of torrent trackers, as well as quite a few direct download links. 

It’s impressive to see this labor of love (almost) completed, and it’s equally impressive to see how supportive Valve has been. It’s hard to imagine another gaming company that would not only let fans’ recreation of their game go forward, but actually distribute it themselves.

Eleven independent developers are banding together for this year's Xbox Live Indie Games Uprising, with a curated suite of original games available for a paltry $11.

The third annual Indie Games Uprising launches this week, as developers band together to cross-promote titles on the Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) channel. Have you, perhaps, never heard of the XBLIG?  Well, that’s why they’re having an uprising!

When Microsoft launched the XBLIG in 2008 (then called the Community Games Initiative), there was reason to be excited. While adventurous PC gamers had long enjoyed a constant stream of  bedroom-coded wackiness, indie development on consoles was only for companies big enough to afford expensive development kits. The XBLIG changed all that, merging the open creativity of the PC world with the accessibility of consoles. It was a great way to show off the Xbox’s chief advantage: A straightforward Visual Basic programming framework that made shifting from development to release much easier than on other platforms. It also acted as a farm team for the game design stars of the future.

Unfortunately, the service suffered from all the problems that beset any open platform: tossed-off junk outnumbered quality titles, consumers found it too hard to find the good stuff, and with no big marketing budgets on the line Microsoft quickly lost interest in letting players know the service existed. When the new Xbox dashboard buried the XBLIG behind several layers of clicking, it looked like the service would be allowed to die alone, unmourned, and unloved.

And that would be tragic. Sure, there’s lots of Minecraft clones and lame strip-poker simulators on XBLIG, but there’s also quite a few masterpieces. In The Pit, a game with no graphics, Audiball, a puzzle game played with a Guitar Hero controller, and Weapon Of Choice, a heavy-metal inspired Contra-on-PCP freakout are all demonstrations of how much fun gamers could have if they just looked.

So for the last three years, indie developers have banded together to give a curated suite of games a single promotional push, in the hopes that a bigger mass would be more visible in the distance. The first year’s Uprising was a well-intentioned bust, with several of the games not even getting released on time. But the second time was the charm. Microsoft promoted the Uprising on the front page of the Dashboard, blogs took notice, and a few titles sold well into five figures.

In keeping with the XBLIG tradition, this year’s games are sometimes graphically crude, sometimes unpolished, and occasionally derivative, but they’re also cheap, clever, and sometimes intriguing. The lineup includes the  beautifully mournful City Tuesday, which applies the time-travel principles of Majorca’s Mask to a terrorist attack, the freaky 3-D puzzle game Entropy, and the minimalist first-person whatsit Pixel, along with management sims, 2-D platformers, dungeon crawlers, and, yes, a Minecraft clone (though with some interesting outer-space twists). Best of all, you can get all 11 games for $11, a great deal even if you only play the games for a few minutes each.

Microsoft seems to be continuing its policy of semi-benevolent apathy towards the service. Co-organizer Michael Hicks told  a reporter from Wired that Microsoft can’t promote them on the Dashboard because of vague “legal reasons.”

But the developers behind the Uprising are undeterred, pushing ahead with community growth even on Microsoft’s cold soil. Hicks told Wired, “We’re really trying to raise awareness for everyone. It would feel great to see other non-Uprising games benefit as well from what we’re doing.”  Mobile developerment studio Eleventy-Aught is lending a hand with the XBLIG Companion, a donation-supported app for Android and Windows phones that lets users browse and rate games on the service, as well as view trailers and queue up downloads directly from their phones.

It’s unlikely that anyone in the Uprising will make more than ramen money, and the rough edges of the games mean they’re aimed at the people willing to look past the occasional bug in search of creativity. But the do-it-yourself spirit of the Uprising should inspire anyone with a thumbstick and a dream, and if just one person makes this the first time they play a game made by a team smaller than a military platoon, it’ll all be worth it.

Samsung drops all pretence of class and shamelessly targets Apple's iPhone 5 in new Galaxy S3 print ad.

Set to hit newspapers across the USA tomorrow, Samsung’s latest print advertisement aims to make the iPhone 5 look low-end in contrast to the Galaxy S3.

The new advertisement claims “The next big thing is already here.” From the looks of the ad, Samsung has yet to move on after being ordered to pay Apple $1 billion in damages back in August. Publishing an advertisement directly comparing Apple’s products with its own is a bold move from Samsung, especially since it lost the court case to Apple for infringing on its patents.

The print ad carries the tagline, “It doesn’t take a genius.” This is a play on Apple’s Genius branding, referring to in-store Apple experts and the online recommendation system for iTunes and the App Store. It also implies that choosing the Galaxy S3 is a no-brainer for consumers, considering it’s large number of features over the iPhone 5. There’s a clear hitch with this type of comparison, however, as Samsung has (for obvious reasons) made the list of features quite one-sided in the Galaxy S3′s favor.

Without placing any bias in favor of one phone over the other, Samsung does omit some popular, well-known features of the iPhone 5. For instance, where’s FaceTime, iCloud, or iTunes integration? And Android 4.0 is a year old now while iOS 6.0 is brand new, is that really something to brag about?

Attempting to smear the competition’s hardware isn’t the most mature way to market a product. No one’s saying the Galaxy S3 is an inferior device, but Samsung could have easily focused on the stellar features of its own device rather than taking another stab at Apple that comes across as petty. Rumor has it Samsung has a video ad in the works as well, in the same vein as its Galaxy S2 commercials showing a line up of people waiting for the new iPhone while ogling Samsung’s newest Galaxy handset.

A few parodies of the ad — presumably made by fans of Apple — have already begun to circulate the net, giving the Samsung a taste of its own medicine. Here’s one courtesy of Business Insider and created by Tim Sears that hits Samsung right where it hurts.

What do you think? Is Samsung employing smart marketing or does the whole thing come off as a bratty child acting out?

Microsoft may be developing a way for you to "whack" your Windows Phone to shut off unwanted noise.

In a rather hilarious move, Microsoft filed a patent to make “whacking” your Windows Phone a part of popular vocabulary. There are numerous ways in which the term “whacking off” can cause immature laughter, but we’re going to leave those specific interpretations up to you. Moving right along to specifics, PatentBolt posted Microsoft’s filing overview:

“There are a variety of circumstances under which it may be desirable to quickly control a device without having to interact with a traditional user interface. For example, often mobile device users forget to set their mobile devices in a silent or vibrate mode and the device rings or makes sounds at an inopportune moment.”

It’s definitely annoying when your phone sounds off in the middle of a meeting, university class, or during the Phantom of the Opera. We’ve all been there and when it happens, suddenly your device is unfamiliar. You begin to fumble with the simplest commands as all eyes lock on you, judging your every clumsy action, and by the time it’s switched to silent, your phone’s quit ringing anyway (at least in our experience). Microsoft plans to change this problem by silencing it’s Windows Phones with a quick slap of the device. Of course, for this method to work at it’s best you’re going to want the device in your pocket, not your bag, but it still has a lot of potential for saving embarrassment.

If implemented, the feature would work by utilizing a smartphone’s accelerometer. When a user whacks a device currently producing sound, the accelerometer would interpret the input and silence the audio. As most people carry their smartphone in a pocket, the slap is meant to come from one side of the device. However, a whack on both sides will also work. Microsoft covered its bases with the exact type of whack it could be, listing slap, hit, swat, smack, flick, push, and tap as possible input methods. Similarly, “audio” includes a phone ring, a custom ringtone, user-initiated audio, a message alert, a recording, or an alarm.

There are obvious problems with Microsoft’s proposed silencing method, like accidentally activating silent mode or physical damage to the device over time, but it’s very possible that Microsoft will find a way to counteract these problems. It’s also possible this patent will never get a chance to exist in the real world and forever be a speculatory Windows Phone feature. And now that  you know about it, do you think you’d want this feature in a future smartphone?

Intel's Wi-Fi-on-a-chip technology moves us several steps closer to "the Internet of Things," where everything from your toaster to your garage door opener is on a network.

A better radio might not sound like an exciting new technology. The very word “radio” conjures images of Fibber McGee & Molly gabbing about Herbert Hoover while Pop relaxes from a hard day of selling apples for ten cents. But old-fashioned radio technology has been the base of all our smartphones, Wi-Fi connections, and wireless controllers, and it’s improved less than you’d think. That could change soon. At this week’s Intel Development Conference, Intel revealed what the company is calling the “Moore’s Law Radio,” and it could be the next step in transforming how our electronics work for us. 

The radios that run today’s connected devices have always had plenty of digital components, but many crucial components remained analog. Computer processors have been getting better at a mind-boggling clip thanks to Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip (and the computing power of that chip) doubles every two years.

But analog components aren’t subject to Moore’s Law. Analog components can’t be shrunk too far before they start sending stray electric pulses all over the place, they can’t use better processors to reduce power consumption, and they can’t be integrated into a modern production cycle.

For the last 10 years, Intel has been trying to make all of those analog radio functions happen digitally. And this week, the company showed off the culmination of its work: a completely digital Wi-Fi unit that fits onto a single chip. Besides being smaller than any previous Wi-Fi system, it’s also vastly more energy efficient, and ultimately will be much cheaper to build.

Intel is also unveiling a new wireless standard to go with the chip: WiGig, which consolidates a number of proprietary wireless technologies under one umbrella to deliver bandwidth over 5 gigabytes per second. And for good measure, Intel is also developing a vast Cloud Radio Access Network, which will allow Intel-based servers to act as wireless providers, giving faster service than today’s hubs with fewer dropped connections.

What all this means for consumers is a range of wireless applications that have been frustratingly out of reach for too long. Wireless connections that are cheap in terms of manufacturing cost and power consumption will enable a generation of phones and laptops that can be constantly downloading email,, news, and other data without devouring battery power. Many cities have talked about making their entire metro area wireless-enabled; this technology could make that kind of vast wireless network orders of magnitude cheaper and more reliable.

Better phones and laptops are just the start of how this technology can be applied. Ultimately, Intel’s vision is to create “the Internet of Things,” where every physical object has a wireless sensor and sends information to any other object that wants it. Intel CTO Justin Ratner is proposing a world where “If it computes, it connects.”  Cheap,  fast, low-power wireless technology means that everything from your monitor to your refrigerator to your dishwasher is always online, and always sending information, all without wires and all using less power than today’s netbooks. 

Apple dominated the news cycle this week, but there are a few other little tidbits worth noting. Plus, there's plenty of great apps and games from the week of September 9-14, 2012.

We’re not sure if you heard, but Apple made some sort of announcement this week. The tech world swarmed Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California to listen to Tim Cook and crew say everything that was expected. While all eyes were on the curtain that had already been pulled, the rest of the mobile world kept spinning — though it spent the week revolving around Apple. We’ve got a collection of the biggest headlines and best apps and games from the week of September 9-14, 2012. 

All New iPhone, Same Old Apple

There is almost no way to feign ignorance to the announcement of the iPhone 5, but in case you missed it, well, it’s real. The iPhone 5 announcement went off without a hitch, though there’s clearly a hitch in the way Apple handles information. The completely accurate leaks may be the biggest news that came from the conference, though the iPhone got bigger as well. With an increase to a full 4-inch screen, the phone also got skinnier, dropping to 112 grams in weight and 7.6mm in width. Basically, the iPhone got a growth spurt and is the awkward, lanky kid from high school. The handset also got a new processor, a new camera, and a new OS. You can get your hands on it September 21, assuming you can find one at all.

iOS 6 For Everyone

Apple fully embraced the “out with the old, in with the new” mantra with the Wednesday announcement. Coming alongside the iPhone 5 will be iOS 6. It’s amazing that the fact those numbers don’t match hasn’t driven someone within Apple headquarters nuts aside, the mobile operating system will roll out on September 19 and will be available on platforms dating back to the iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, and fourth generation iPod Touch. Anchoring the upgrade will be updates to iTunes, an Apple-made Maps app, and Passbook — an app that will take over handling cards and travel itineraries.

What’s Everyone Else Up To?

Sure, Apple dominated the entire week with just two hours of a press conference (see our full coverage of the event), but that doesn’t mean the other powerhouses in mobile weren’t making moves, too. Windows changed the name of their marketplace for mobile, now calling it Windows Phone Store. Samsung prepared an OS update of their own and will have Android 4.1 Jelly Bean available on the Samsung Galaxy S3 by October. Phone make and model aside, we also learned 50 percent of teens own a smartphone. Back in our day, we had to play Snake on a Nokia handset with physical buttons.

Apps and Games of the Week

SAT by Dictionary.com ($4, iPhone) – If you’re gearing up to take the SATs or you just want to test your knowledge, grab Dictionary.com’s app to prepare for the standardized test.

YouTube (Free, iPhone) – While it used to be integrated into all iOS devices, the upcoming iOS 6 will do away with Google’s grasp on Apple user’s video experience. Not to be totally forgotten, Google has rolled out their own app for their video service.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Zombies ($7, Android) – A game previously only available on specific tablets, Call of Duty Black Ops: Zombies gets a full range release on the Android OS. You’ve got one goal: survive.

OmniNote ($2, iPad/Android) – Keep all of your thoughts for different topics in one place. OmniNote allows users to keep multiple notepads for different topics stored on virtual shelves. Keep hold of all your typed, hand-written, or doodled reminders and ideas.

Crimson Dragon: Side Story ($1, Windows Phone) – A dragon-based shooter that conjures up memories of Panzer Dragoon, Crimson Dragon: Side Story lets you take to the air with your own set of wings to fight on the planet Draco.

Fabrik (Free, Android) – This cloud-based eReader takes full advantage of Dropbox integration that allows you to transfer your favorite pieces of literature to your Android device no matter where you’re at.

Caller Info Plus (Free, Android) – Sometimes just knowing who is calling isn’t enough. Give yourself a heads up by leaving notes about callers or see when the last time a person tried to contact you with Caller Info Plus.

Fieldrunners 2 HD ($11, iPad) – The hit iPhone game finally gets the big screen treatment. Fieldrunners 2 takes full advantage of the iPad’s Retina display in this high-definition makeover of the instant classic.