AT&T has provided more details about the Samsung Galaxy Express, set to be released onto the network next week. Aimed at first-time smartphone owners, it has 4G LTE connectivity and a sensible price tag.

Previously announced in September, AT&T has now provided some more details about the Samsung Galaxy Express, it’s latest mid-range Android smartphone. The network is pushing the Galaxy Express as being suitable for first-time smartphone owners, or those who’re planning to upgrade from a basic device.

It’s making it an attractive proposition too, as it has slapped a $100 price tag on the front, provided you scrawl your signature on the bottom of a two-year contract. For that, you’ll get a curvy, Galaxy Ace 2-alike device that will happily connect to AT&T’s 4G LTE network.

The specification, while not quite up to the standard of the current crop of superphones, is still intriguing, particularly the screen. It measures 4.5-inches, a fairly unusual size, and one that’s shared by devices such as the Nokia Lumia 920, the Motorola Atrix HD and the Huawei Honor 2. It’s a Super AMOLED Plus panel too, meaning it’s the same as that seen on the Galaxy S2, and not the often unfairly maligned PenTile display used on the Galaxy S3.

Inside is a 1.5GHz, dual-core processor of currently unknown parentage, which should see the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system perform well. There’s no information on the amount of RAM, nor any clues on how much internal memory will be found inside the Galaxy Express, although a microSD card slot is present.

A 5-megapixel camera sits on the real panel, and other features include GPS, Bluetooth and a 2,000mAh battery.

Anyone interested in the Galaxy Express will be pleased to know it’s going to be available from AT&T on November 16. It’s also part of an AT&T offer where you’ll get $100 off a second Samsung smartphone when you buy a Galaxy-branded device with a new contract.

Civl Servant developers in the U.K. have created a Web app that incorporates government data with trending topics from around the Internet and social media to help elected leaders make better decisions.

Believe it or not, governing a nation is tough work. There’s special interests to consider, tax plans to wrestle, budgets to contemplate, wars to run, opponents to blackmail. It’s almost too much for the human mind to handle. Or, in the case of British Prime Minister David Cameron, it is too much to handle. Which is why he did what any computer programmer would do when faced with a pesky problem: He got a computer to do the work for him.

The BBC reports that Cameron has begun testing a mobile Web app “to aid in decision-making and day-to-day government affairs.” The app, dubbed simply “Number 10 Dashboard,” was developed by British civil servants in the “Technology in Business Fast Stream” program. According to the app’s developers, Number 10 was designed to give government leaders “an at-a-glance overview of everything that’s happening in government and elsewhere.”

“With a few taps or swipes of his fingers, [Cameron] can see very quickly what important new information has come to light, how certain government services are performing, and a selection of relevant and important news reports,” according to those involved with the project.

According to the BBC, Number 10 will also keep its high-powered users informed about trending topics around the Web, and on social media outlets in order stay on top of events that might require government action, like “markets crash” or “bomb threat.”

Alice Newton, one of Number 10′s developers, says that Cameron likes the app, which he uses on his iPad, so much that he plans to give U.S. President Barack Obama a demo at the 39th annual G8 summit, which will take place in the U.K. next year.

“He in particular liked the statistical side, where we could give him quotable facts about what was going on,” said Newton. “He found it useful to have a hard evidence base.

“He liked it so much, he was looking forward to showing it to President Obama at the G8 summit.”

Chances are, Obama will be receptive to the app. His administration has been one of the most technology-focused in U.S. history, with initiatives concerning everything from increasing access to high-speed Internet to cyberwarfare and robotics.

Unfortunately, there’s no indication that the rest of us will have a chance to peep Number 10 anytime soon. But we imagine it working something like Apple’s Siri, but the answers take 20 times longer to appear thanks to stifling bureaucracy.

Image via DFID/Flickr

Electronic Arts offers up a brief sample of 2013's Dead Space 3, and while the presence of another player and overly familiar combat threatens to deflate the series, a hallucinatory twist signals potential for new scares.

Dead Space was the last great hope for horror video games when it came out four years ago. Can Dead Space 3 do the same thing in 2012? The first game faced an uphill battle, and it was hamstrung by 2008 being the year that the “survival horror” genre died. After ten plus years of the Resident Evil series and its many descendants and imitators that tried to scare you by limiting supplies and skills while surrounding you with monsters, ghosts, and demons, big game publishers decided that what people really wanted was balls to the wall action. Add in a bit of atmosphere and the odd moment where something jumped out at you, and a new survival horror genre seemed destined to take over. Just look at that year’s line up: Condemned 2: Bloodshot from Sega dropped the taut psychological fear of the first in favor of gore, Silent Hill: Homecoming traded atmosphere and the surreal for slick melee combat, and Atari’s Alone in the Dark ended up an unplayable mess after attempting to include action movie tropes like driving.

For fans of horror it was a rough time, but the action-ifying of fright wasn’t all bad news: EA and Visceral Games’ Dead Space turned out to be excellent. Even through Dead Space’s then-silent protagonist Isaac Clarke could slice and dice the mutated freaks surrounding him with a wealth of guns and construction tools, the game was scary as hell. It was also a success with gamers, and spawned several cross-media projects, including animated movies, comics, and more. 

Dead Space had two things going for it: Isolation and patience. It locked you in the dark bowels of a broken spaceship (or right out in space) and let you wait for something bad to happen all on your lonesome. When the baddies showed up you were ready for them, but the waiting, as Tom Petty says, was the hardest part. 2011’s Dead Space 2 ruined that magic formula, bombarding Isaac with a constant stream of enemies in a forgettable space city. There were a few moments of awe, but the atmosphere was more focused on action than survival. That game had no patience, and unfortunately Dead Space 3 is doing away with isolation altogether.

As touted by Electronic Arts at E3 2012, Dead Space 3 is now a co-op shooter. Sergeant John Carver joins Isaac on the planet frozen planet of Tau Volantis, where the two have to fight new hordes of the pointy-limbed Necromorph monstrosities. Continuing the story from Dead Space 2, Issac and Ellie meet up with Carver and follow a trail to what may be the source of the Markers responsible for transforming people into the Necromorphs. The group discover a ruined planetcracker on the icy surface, similar to the USG Ishimura from the original game. 

The differences between Isaac and Carver are minimal, both cosmetically and functionally. In the level demoed by EA at a recent event, the game looked just like what it was: Co-operative Dead Space. Both players wandered through grimy, dim hallways – the icy surface of Tau Volantis didn’t make much of an appearance – shooting up bad guys in tandem. If you start to die, you call the other player over to help you up like in every third-person shooter since Gears of War. It’s fun, but since loneliness was such a key component of the original, it’s hard to think of Dead Space 3 as anything but another action game in a nicely atmospheric environment.

That environment looks great. It calls back to Dead Space and its Wii offshoot Dead Space: Extraction, returning to dank industrial tunnels rather than the almost BioShock-esque hallways of Dead Space 2’s city, The Sprawl. Familiar as it is though, it’s graphically spectacular. I mistook the game for a Frostbite 2 engine game since developer Visceral Games is also busy making co-op Frostbite 2 third-person shooter Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel. Not so. Dead Space 3 is actually running on a modified version of the studio’s own Visceral Engine which powered Dead Space 2. You’d never be able to tell given how detailed the new sequel’s characters and monsters look by comparison.

It will be interesting to see how the co-op aspect fares with a single player. In most games designed around co-op, the second character is just an AI controlled assistant, sometimes helpful, sometimes good only as bait. But for Dead Space 3 Visceral is promising that when you are playing it by yourself, the second character will make several appearances, but the majority of the game you will be alone. Apparently there will also be gameplay mechanics and story elements that can only be accessed as Carver. How this all plays out with the drop-in/drop-out co-op is something we’ll have to judge for ourselves when the game is released on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on February 5, 2013.

There is hope for Visceral’s new sequel. At the end of Dead Space 3’s demo, the game is shaken out of its familiar formula. Dementia has always played a role in the series; Isaac suffered from repeated hallucinations in the first two games, haunted by visions of his dead lover. His psychosis, caused by the alien artifact MacGuffin (The Marker) fueling the series, never affected you outside of cutscenes though. Now Isaac will start hallucinating in the middle of a fight, confused by what’s actually an enemy and what’s a friend, and what in the environment is even there. It creates an interesting scenario for co-op: One player sees a psychedelic wash and people that aren’t there, while the other player just sees them flailing around getting attacked by a very real monster. It has the potential to create a wholly different sort of isolation, using cognitive dissonance to separate players empowered by having back up nearby.

The idea’s not a new one. Eidos’ Kane & Lynch series has played with pairing co-op players where one character is unstable and hallucinating. In that case, it didn’t add up to much. Dead Space 3’s success will be determined on how much Visceral Games is willing to experiment with perception. If the game skews too heavily towards standard shootouts, it could kill what makes the series special for good.