Showing Out

Google is pretty much taking over the world, so it really comes as no surprise that it’s headed off the internet and onto your TV screen. According to the NY Times, Google has teamed up with Intel and Sony to develop Google TV, with plans to introduce a new generation of television sets and set-top boxes into homes across the world. The service will allow users to navigate the internet as if they were flipping channels, with options to switch between Web apps like Twitter and Picaso at the drop of a hat. Google plans on rolling out Google TV in the next few months, partnering with Logitech to provide customers with keyboards and remotes compatible with the technology. Face it: if the internet could be turned into a human being, Google would be the biggest celebrity in the world. Get ready for this bad boy.

For those of you who got tired of your local bar’s Rock Band night for a lack of a decent catalog of songs to choose from, prepare to put back on your drinking cap. Taking it to their official Facebook page, Harmonix has announced that it’s developing Rock Band 3 for a worldwide release this holiday season. Though there’s no exact release date set in stone, the game, which will be published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts, is said to “innovate and revolutionize the music genre once again, just as Harmonix did with the original Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band.” In the meantime, a Jimi Hendrix Rock Band is due later this year in addition to a Green Day edition. Yay for better theme nights at your local watering hole!

Another benefit to watching the Oscars last night was seeing the new ad for the Apple iPad, which is headed to retail April 3rd. The ad, which features the song “There Goes My Love” by The Blue Van, shows just how amazing this piece of technology is going to be. Not only does it function like an iTouch and iPhone, but you can read e-books on this bad boy as if you were flipping real pages; watch movies like it ain’t no thing; surf the web on its wi-fi system; and basically use it like a portable computer. If you’re not at least somewhat interested in purchasing one of these after watching this, then you are probably a proud owner of a phone that has Snake on it. You know, stuck in the past. G-bless you.

Looks like Hulu’s taking a big ol’ L today. According to the AP, Hulu is losing two of its most popular shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, beginning when Comedy Central pulls its shows from the site starting on March 10th. Unlike most public falling outs these days, the departure is amicable, with senior v.p. of content and distribution Andy Forssell taking to Hulu to write a blog post on the matter. ”In the past 21 months, we’ve had very strong results for both Hulu and Comedy Central, in terms of the views and revenue we’ve generated,” said Forssell. ”After a series of discussions with the team at Comedy Central, though, we ultimately were unable to secure the rights to extend these shows for a much longer period of time.” Comedy Central will most likely move programming to its own website properties, but this means that Hulu’s about to lose a substantial amount of traffic. Sucks to be Hulu right about now.

Think you know everything about President Obama? Well, you’re about to at least know more. According to the AP, Pulitzer Prize winner David Remnick is penning a new biography of the Prez, with a tentative release date scheduled for April 6th. The book, titled The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, is based on “hundreds of on-the-record interviews” with Obama himself, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, with the addition of some correspondence and letters by his mother, Shirley Ann Dunham. No word what sort of material will be discussed in the book itself, but it looks as though it’ll document his ascent to the President through the eyes of those around him. Adding this to our wish list.

Here’s some more video game news for you this morning. According to /Film, writers Douglas Cook and David Weisberg (The Rock, Double Jeopardy) are currently in the process of adapting the best-selling video game Darkest of Days for the big screen. Though there isn’t any studio that’s currently attached to support production of the film, it already sounds like it’s shaping up to be pretty sweet based on the synopsis:

In Darkest of Days the player controls Alexander Morris, a soldier fighting in General Custer’s army during the Battle of Little Big Horn at the beginning of the game. After Custer is killed and Morris is wounded he is suddenly rescued by a man in futuristic armor and taken through a strange portal. Morris then awakens in the headquarters of Kronotek, an organization that has managed to develop time travel technology and is apparently dedicated to researching and protecting history. A Kronotek higher-up known as “Mother” tells Morris that the organization’s founder has gone missing and disturbances have started appearing through history, causing individuals that have played key roles in history to be placed in danger, and tasks Morris with helping Kronotek restore history.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer, and expect this one to go into production some time next year.

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Yikes. Guess the post-holiday rush to buy stuff didn’t really work out for the video game industry. According to the L.A. Times, game and console sales were down a whopping 13% during January in the U.S. to $1.2 billion from a year earlier, based on a report from NPD Group that tracks sales of games in stores across the country. Games fell 12% to $597.9 million last month, while console sales plunged a hearty 21% to $353.7 million. In defense of the video game industry’s rapid decline in sales, people tend to back off shelling out cash for games and consoles during January because there typically aren’t any big game releases and people tend to cash in on gift certificates they received during the holidays. Meanwhile, the top five video game sales for January were as follows:

1. New Super Mario Bros. (Wii) 656,700
2. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) 572,100
3. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) 555,700
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) 326,700
5. Mario Kart (Wii) 310,900

Looks like CD sales numbers if you ask us. Good luck to the vid game industry - they could use a little post-Christmas cheer.

Google really hasn’t been hitting them out of the ballpark, what with their Google Wave craze going away as quickly as it came (seriously, did anyone that actually got a Google Wave account use it for more than five minutes?). Now, Google is trying their luck once again with Google Buzz, a program being integrated into Gmail that allows for users to share links, video and content with their friends on Google via @ symbols. Hm… Sounds awfully similar to Twitter, don’t you think? Watch the demo video that was released this morning above, and tell us that this is something you’ll constantly be using. You’d not only be lying to us, but also to yourself. Sigh.

You read that correctly: Vanna White is about to invade your home - through the magic of 3-D, of course. According to THR, a 3D clip of Wheel of Fortune was screened last week at an open house for Sony’s new 3D Technology Center by Harry Friedman (exec. producer of WOF and Jeopardy), suggesting that game shows might be taking the 3D route in the near future. “One of the biggest challenges is keeping a game show fresh - by changing the show without changing the game,” he said. “We do that with enhanced production value, such as set design. We typically do dimensionalized sets, which are made for 3D.” Though there’s no timeline for when we can expect Jeopardy answers to be thrusted into our faces, it’s likely to be soon, considering that 25% of all TV sets sold will be 3D-ready by 2013. Imagine a world where Pat Sajak is in the room with you every night. Scary thoughts, right?

The game’s about to change as far as digital readers go. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s latest project dubbed the iPad, a tablet that’s “so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone,” according to Jobs. The tablet features a 9.7-inch touch screen, is only a half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds and comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage. The cost varies between $499, $599 and $699, depending on how much storage space you’d like, and each product comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology and can last up to 10 hours without needing to be recharged. Head over to the Yahoo News piece on it to get a closer look at this technology. Watch out, Kindle and Nook.

Sound off: Will you be buying an iPad?