A downtown New York restaurant is asking patrons to upload photos of their meals to Instagram to help craft a visual menu for undecided diners and those interested in trying out the establishment. The inventive idea is fun and interactive, but it's hard for us to encourage people to keep taking photos of their food and uploading it to the Web.

Full disclosure: My family owns a restaurant in New York City and the cost of designing, printing, and distributing menus are a lot more than just clicking a few things on the Internet and waiting for things to ship. You have to pick a design that is functional, beautiful, representative of your facility, and most importantly, inviting. Then, it’s just a matter of hoping new customers are curious and kind enough to stop by, and luring them to come back for a delicious experience. So when I heard that a new Latin American restaurant opened up and is crowdsourcing its patrons to make its menu for them, I can’t tell if this is sheer cost-cutting laziness or pure genius.

Comodo, located in the SoHo neighborhood of downtown New York, came up with the idea when it noticed the food porn Instagram trends amongst its customers. You’ve likely seen this happen: People come in, get excited by the food they’ve ordered, and take artsy shots of the plate so their Instagram followers can be presumably jealous by what these guys are having for dinner. Comodo also realized this was a good way for the public to get a relatively accurate representation of the restaurant, so it start encouraging patrons to continue doing what they’re doing, then adding the hashtag #ComodoMenu to the photos.

The result? Ideally, a list of menu items, the names, what they look like, and the price. This is helpful for people considering trying the restaurant, but wants to know the price points, portion sizes, and an exact visual of what they should expect. Of course, this isn’t the only source of menu for Comodo; the restaurant has real physical ones as well for those who aren’t on Instagram.

So far, the hashtag and three-week-old restaurant has garnered 49 photos, but unfortunately, not all the photos are food from the restaurant, and most people forget to mention what the dish is called or how much it costs. Still, the idea is inventive and interactive, and it’s a cheap and easy way to create social buzz. The photos also help to show what menu items are popular judging by how often they show up under the hashtag, and can then be referred to as one of the recommended dishes at Comodo.

At the same time, us Digital Trends writers aren’t particularly thrilled with the whole food porn trend, so we’re pretty torn on encouraging other restaurants to follow suit. Hey, at least if you’re gonna do it, do it with a purpose and help a local business along the way. And businesses, if you’re gonna hop on the trend, you might want to provide some incentives for the patrons giving you free publicity! If it’s anything we can help promote, it’s symbiosis.

Apple has announced its latest media event a week before Microsoft's big Windows 8 party. This show of aggression may be designed to crush the threat of the Surface tablets early on, but could have been made out of fear rather than aggression.

Apple hates Android and wants to undermine Google at every opportunity. The evidence is everywhere, from Steve Jobs’ infamous willingness to “go thermonuclear” on the OS, to the banishing of Google Maps and YouTube from iOS 6. But it’s been more than a decade since Apple has appeared to loathe Microsoft. Yes, they used to be bitter rivals, but that was in a different time. Or, at least, we thought it was. But with Apple holding a major press conference on October 23, just three days before Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Microsoft’s Surface tablets go on sale, it’s apparent that it once again considers Microsoft a threat.

Microsoft has been building up to this moment for a while, and make no mistake the Oct. 26 launch of Windows 8 is the company’s big moment of 2012, and possibly 2013 too. Windows 8 is the basis of the Microsoft’s strategy and product plans for the coming years, and it’s vitally important that it succeeds and gets good buzz.

Apple however, wants to assert its position, and will do so on Oct. 23, regardless of the products it launches. If the rumors are true and it shows a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, a new Mac mini, or a curvy iMac, Apple will be saying “Computers? We do them better.” If it’s the iPad Mini, Apple will be reminding Microsoft that it has been making its own touchscreen hardware for a long, long time, and it can still suck up all the buzz and press, even when all it announces is a smaller, cheaper version of an existing product.

This is Apple flexing its muscles, arming its warheads, positioning the fleet, and pointing the finger directly at Microsoft. The sad thing for Microsoft is, it’s not even that aggressive a move. It’s as if Apple doesn’t really want or even need to spend much energy deflecting Microsoft’s efforts. A single press conference and product might do it. Even the event invitation’s slogan, “We’ve got a little more to show you,” makes the whole thing sound like an afterthought.

Apple to Surface missiles

What’s Apple’s problem, then? Apple is winning in smartphones and tablets — 85 million-plus iPhones sold in the US alone, 68-percent market share in tablets — and while Windows may dominate the home PC market, Mac OS X’s market share has been improving. Not that improving PC sales mean much. As we all know, PC sales are going nowhere but down at the moment.

Is this all about the Surface? Possibly, yes. Apple probably doesn’t relish the idea of another competitor trying to steal away some of its precious market share, and it’s obviously worried enough about the impact of cheap Android tablets to introduce a cheaper, smaller iPad. Microsoft has confirmed that it’s targeting the iPad with the official pricing of its tablets, with the 32GB Windows RT Surface going for $500, $100 less than the equivalent iPad. In the UK, that same 32GB Surface is £400, exactly the same price as a 16GB iPad.

It’s a sound business decision on Apple’s part to crash Microsoft’s party, but we can’t help but wonder if Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s words from an interview earlier this year initially woke the beast. Speaking to CRN.com, Ballmer was referring to Apple’s lead in innovation when he said: “We are not going to let any piece of this go uncontested by Apple, not the consumer cloud, not hardware or software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.”

Now that’s just asking for trouble.

But looking back, perhaps Apple did land the first blow. In April, during a quarterly earnings call, CEO Tim Cook criticized Microsoft’s attempt to merge tablets and PCs with Windows 8. “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but you know those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user… And you wouldn’t want to put these things together because you wind up compromising both and not pleasing the user. Some people will prefer to own both, and that’s great there. But I think to make the compromises of convergence, we’re not going to that party. Others might. Others might from a defensive point of view, particularly. We’re going to play in both.”

A carefully crafted strike

The timing of Apple’s event is no accident: it’s a carefully crafted pre-emptive strike against Microsoft, which it hopes will crush any resistance that may be forthcoming. Apple wants to dilute whatever buzz surrounds Windows 8 and keep the eye of attention on itself throughout the holidays. It’s all very “shock and awe,” but Apple is proving that it’s has its eye on the steadily rising wave of competition. Is all this noise and brashness merely to cover up a degree of fear creeping in at Cupertino? If so, it needs to be careful. Predators can smell fear from miles away.

Gearbox Software and Sega will release Aliens: Colonial Marines in February 2013, exactly five years after it was first announced to the public. The game's campaign looks promising but its multiplayer lacks magic.

It takes around ten months to release a game to the public. The press and hardcore video game hobbyists usually follow a game from a game’s initial announcement up until it’s release, usually around two years, but for the general public it’s ten months of television, print, and public marketing. Eight prior to the release, when the heaviest early previewing in the press takes place, and then two months following. That’s how good game business is done.

By that metric, Aliens—a collaboration between 20^th Century Fox, Sega, and Gearbox Software—has been terrible business. The game was announced via a cover feature in Game Informer magazine in February 2008. It will finally be released in February 2013. That’s not exactly within the proper business cycle. Based on a preview of a beta build of the game at the New York Comic Con last week, it’s hard to say one way or another if the game was worth the wait.

Sega and Gearbox had two samples of the game on hand, a playable version of its xenomorphs versus Marines competitive multiplayer mode and a guided, unplayable look at the early campaign. Of the two, the campaign looked the most promising. Take note: The next passage includes some story spoilers for both the movies and the game, so if you’ve never experienced the Alien series, skip it.

Picking up just weeks after James Cameron’s Aliens, Gearbox’s canonical sequel sees a full battalion of 400 Colonial Marines sent to the ill-fated planet LV 426 to investigate the disappearance of Ellen Ripley and the crew of the Sulacco. Weyland Yutani, the sinister corporation vying to get their hands on the vicious alien species hidden in a derelict spacecraft on the planet’s surface, has covered up the destruction of the LV 426 colony and the deaths of the series’ protagonists, so the Marines are just doing due diligence to find out what happened to the crew. When they arrive at LV 426 though, Weyland Yutani’s private military is already there cleaning up, and they assault the marines looking to keep things quiet. The first level of the game—played second, strangely, during the demo—puts you in control of Marines fighting humans and trying to evacuate from the derelict Sulacco.

Gearbox’s president Randy Pitchford was explaining during the demo that his team decided that the game needed more complex, thoughtful enemies than just the berserker aliens in their game, and the WY forces (seen briefly at the end of Alien 3) were a perfect choice. In the demo shown, they didn’t seem particularly threatening though. While they certainly had mean firepower—the demo player almost died—they didn’t have very cunning AI, they just burst into the room and blasted away in the open. There were moments when both human forces were fending off aliens, but it was very brief, so it’s impossible to tell if those dynamics will be more seriously explored.

The following level demoed was a concentrated dose of fan service, with a fairly steady, atmospheric tour of LV 426’s surface, revisiting many scenes from the film. The Marines’ ground vehicle Ripley crashed outside, the post-meltdown atmospheric reactor, and the medical bay where Ripley and Newt were attacked by larval alien face huggers were all stops on the Old School Express. It was only at the end of the demo that the action picked back up with aliens popping out and trying to snack on the player character.

The game looked good, albeit not as good as these Sega-provided screenshots make it look. Running on beefy PCs, Gearbox’s proprietary engine (a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 according to Pitchford) rendered a world as dark, wet, and mean as the one in Cameron’s movie. The character models, human and otherwise, looked nice with smooth animation, but at least in the campaign the aliens moved a bit too slowly in some moments. Gearbox stressed, though, that the game is in beta, meaning the content’s all in place but  still being polished. Janky-looking effects, like garish, solid-colored blood spatters from humans and aliens, certainly demonstrate that the game’s delay from fall 2012 was wise.

The competitive multiplayer  justified the delay as well. While the inclusion of competitive multiplayer is expected—not only as a modern necessity as a feature, but also as a tradition in Aliens video games like Aliens vs. Predator—my session made it seem like an after thought. Three types of alien were available for play, two swift soldier classes and a beefy bull-like alien that the player could upgrade to based on performance. Controlling the soldiers aliens was frustrating because it often simply didn’t work. Puling the controller’s trigger should make you stick to a wall to sneak up on unwitting marines, but it didn’t always work. The bull class, meanwhile, was too slow to be useful, lumbering around and only killing the most oblivious opponent. It was hard not to feel like Gearbox would have been better served not making the multiplayer component at all, instead focusing on the campaign. Another multiplayer mode was on hand but I didn’t get a chance to try it to see if it fared better.

Aliens looks like a solid piece of fiction in a rich, established sci-fi universe, but it did not look or feel like a game that’s been in production for five years. The campaign looks promising, but without getting actual hands on time with it, it’s still too early to say it looks good. Here’s hoping Gearbox makes the most of these next few months.

We have five copies of XCOM: Enemy Unknown to give away, two for the PS3, two for the Xbox 360, and one for the PC via Steam. Winning a copy is as simple as posting a comment. Read on for details on how you can enter to win!

Let’s get down to brass tax: A lot of you out there may not be into real-time strategy games, and that’s fine. The genre had its day in the sun, and with the exception of a few major franchises that appeal to a dedicated fan base, there isn’t nearly as much mainstream appeal as there once was. If you are among those that has lost their taste for the RTS style, you should consider getting over that for XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Firaxis Games did something remarkable with XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it took a classic game and reimagined it for a new generation. You hear that word a lot these days, “reimagined,” but usually those using it mean they took an existing property and made their own thing under the name of the old. That is not the case here.

Firaxis identified what it was about the last game that worked, then it built a game with modern technology that carried over those key ideals. It was a long process, but a fruitful one.  The result is a game we liked so much we gave it a 9.5. For more details on the development, check out our recent interview with Garth DeAngelis, one of the lead producers for the game.

So if you have been on the fence about this game, or maybe it is on your list but you just haven’t had the chance to pick it up yet, put your money away and enter for your shot at winning a copy on us.

We have five copies to give away to five winners: two PS3 copies, two Xbox 360 copies, and one PC copy that we have a Steam code for.

To be entered to win, all you have to do is post a comment below telling us what your favorite old school PC game was. Just post a comment, and you will be entered to win. Be sure to include what system you are hoping to win a copy on (multiple systems if fine, but each winner will only receive one copy).

The contest will run until Wednesday, October 24 at noon PST.

Good luck to all!