The Widget: Games, Tech, Whatever

Hey folks. First: let me apologize for the audio version of this running about a week behind release of the video. However, now would be a great time to remind everyone that we now record the show LIVE on our YouTube channel, so if you don't feel like waiting, or just love seeing our faces, that's the place to get your Widget fix in the mostly timely manner. Sometimes RL just doesn't understand that I have a show to get out! Anywho, lots of great stuff here, especially if you're a giant iPhone (or phone nerd in general). If not though, you may just want to skip till about an hour in. I'm just sayin... Oh, and to check out the sweet video of the official Widget Show rally car, click the link to read on (show notes follow the video). Be sure to check out more of Devon's rallycross videos on his YouTube channel! Thanks again, Devon for the support (and for understanding that Tim is a giant failure at keeping promises). On with the show notes! Apple: iPhone 5 is out Fanboy Paul posts unboxing video (to keep those google monies coming in). Benchmarks show it is the fastest smartphone out there currently. Doesn’t do too badly in drop tests either. Lightning adapter causes quite the fuss. iOS 6 is out and hits 15% IOS penetrationin 24 hours. Internet explodes with Apple Maps hate. New iPods coming in Oct. Some upset that the nano moves away from the watch style form factor. Seeking Samsung US sales ban and $707 million more in damages. Wins patent for the word ‘Podcasting’. In the wars with John McClane. (aka “Die Hard with an iTunes Account”) Amazon Announces the Kindle Fire HD. Wall-Mart decides to stop stocking Kindles in favour of Apple products. Intel IDF 2012 Haswell does what Ivybridge does using 10w less power. Future of wireless is the 802.11ad 60hz spectrum. Introduces the NUC (Next Unit of Computing). nVidia How far mainstream graphic cards have come in just four years. nVidia thinks the next gen consoles will be the last. Gaming News: Nintendo. Wii-U hardware specs revealed but some devs point to slow CPU as an achilles heal. No hard drive but does support up to 3TB of external space through USB. Wii-U prices and release dates announced. Wii-U will have no two player tablet games at launch. Extra tablet could cost up to $150. Results of the #WidgetStrawPoll- Will you be buying a Wii-U? No (10) Someday (6) Launch Day (3) First pics of the 3DS Circle Mahoooosive Pad Pro appear. Sony Introduces PS3 Super Slim in 250GB and 500GB flavours. Europeans get a version with 12GB of flash memory. Steam Releases the ‘Big Picture’ update. Project Greenlight starts, stops, introduces $100 entrance fee and starts again. First ten games submitted. More listings pointing to Valve entering the hardware industry. Bioware co-founders retire from the gaming industry. iControlPad 2 relying on a kickstarter to get going. Black Mesa released (up until Zen for now) Ubisoft removes PC games always online DRM, even after stating 95% of PC games are pirated.

Using any opportunity to cash-in on the latest dance craze, The Widget team is hoping to piggyback on the success of a certain K-Pop song. That being said, thanks to a technical snafu, the video of this episode is actually broken into two parts. The first one is up above, and the second one can be found after the 'Continue Reading' link. Alternatively, you could just subscribe to our YouTube channel and never miss another episode. I'm just saying... Industry in Crisis. Onlive files for bankruptcy to shaft creditors and shareholders. Massively in debt. Now owned by Lauder Partners. HTC loses $40 Million. Dell sees 8% fall in PC sales this quarter. Expects more next quarter too. Ubisoft thinks 90% of PC games are pirated. Sony closes Studio Liverpool, aka Psygnosis. Sony PS Vita only sold 2.2 Million so far. No price cut yet. Popcap studio’s job losses. PvZ2 announced as creator is laid off. Industry in Change. EA’s VP - Adapt or become irrelevant. Charles Cecil looking to kickstarter for the next Broken Sword. Steam ‘Big Picture’ mode to hit beta in September Nintendo Power Magazine to close. Game’s flagship London store to close. EA predicts death of high street stores within 10 years. EA states 3D is dead. EA for sale? Tech/Hardware News: Apple: Now officially the richest company ever in US history. Beats the shit out of Samsung in court. Samsung ordered to pay 1.2 BILLION dollars in damages for patent violations. Apple stock reaches highest ever position. When will Carolyn sell sell sell. :) Microsoft: Changes logo for the fist time in 25 years. Windows RT Surface to launch for $199? Windows 8 upgrade registration begins. nVidia launches the mainstream GTX 660 Ti. AMD drops prices again. AMD releases the 7950B and alienates original 7950 owners. IEEE 1tbps ethernet standard by 2015. 2.5” hard disks to slim to 5mm to enter the ultrabook market. Facebook shares dip below half of original value. Gaming News: Nintendo Own’s Japan in hardware and software sales. Wii-U price set to be released on September 13th. Talk of manufacturing problems with the gamepad. New SMB2 E-Shop accounts for 5% of sales. Price explains why. Sony Introduce cross-buy for PS3/PSV games. Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Declassified for Vita maybe isn’t all that afterall. Microsoft drops the price of the Kinect. $200 Neo-Geo X to arrive in December with 20 games. Day-Z, the biggest selling game of the summer. Dark Souls launches on the PC with a fixed resolution of 1024x720. Modders to the rescue. Australia finally welcomes in 18+ games. Primal Carnage promises to be everything all the Jurassic Park games should have been.

After being delayed because Paul was off at yet another bachelor party, and then another week because Tim was lazy/sick, at long last here's the audio release of the latest show. Lots of interesting stuff discussed this time, even Tim was able to concentrate on the show for a little bit before diving off into Laserdisc arcade game land. Hit the jump for the show links/notes. Tech/Hardware News: Microsoft: Windows 8 Pro & Enterprise RTM leaked. Metro name no more. Launches new W8 keyboard and mouse. Spo the influence. Gabe Newell hates Windows 8. Steam for Linux on the way. Blizzard hates Windows 8. Notch hates Windows 8. Xbox Windows brand announced with achievements. Outlook.com to take over Hotmail.com Google: Fibre to launch in Kansas first. Indefinitely delays Nexus-Q launch, promises free Nexus-Q to all pre-orderers. Android 4.0 ICS to come to Raspberry Pi. Apple: Next iPhone images leaking. Apple drops YouTube app from latest iOS6 beta. Google making standalone app. Amazon Instant Video app for iPad released. Apple admits it is not virus proof. Intel’s Haswell chip to be faster in both computation and 3D stakes over Ivybridge. Samsung officially announces the Galaxy Note 10.1. Demonoid bites the dust. Facebook share price sliding massively. Curiosity rover lands on Mars powered by PowerPC G3 processor Happy 30th birthday to the Commodore C64. nVidia posts quarterly profits based on the Tegra 3 chipset. 3->4 million Nexus 7’s ordered already. Gaming News: Ouya kickstarter campaign nets $8.6 million. Onlive streaming to be available at launch XBMC support. Vevo music support. Namco in talks to support. Pre-Order now. Quakecon: John Carmack apologies for Rage on the PC. JC rules out Linux as a viable gaming alternative. JC endorses the Oculus Rift project. ID giving up on mobile gaming and concentrating on Doom 3 BFG Edition and Doom 4. Steam To begin offering non-gaming software. Big picture project still ongoing. Updates EULA to avoid class action lawsuits. Nintendo drops the price of the 3DS XL by £5 and offers a free game, two weeks after launch. Blizzard’s Battle.net hacked. GRiD 2 on the way. Griefing ahoy. Rise of the Triad returns. Samsung to offer streaming gaming services direct to the TV with Gaikai. Widget Strawpoll Result: What is your primary gaming format?

Our second live show, now with added pain in the ass. Once we got Paul to stop getting us banned from Google + though, it was pretty smooth sailing. Thanks for watching, and let us know what you think of the new video format! Show notes below. Apple : Grabs John Bruno from AMD. Microsoft: Posts first ever quarterly loss. Windows 8 to launch on Oct 26th. Windows 8 Upgrade Offer website launches. UK offers look like this. Windows App Store details emerge. Office 2013 customer preview is released. Not compatible with Win XP or Vista. Microsoft like Big Boobs. Google Nexus 7 launched. Problems with deliveries means new orders are postponed. Patent Wars Apple ordered to publish adverts for Samsung in the UK for six month. Apple appeals. Galaxy Tab 10.1 still banned in the US. Mozilla OS revealed and devs can test the OS now on Windows, Linux & Mac. Ouya console breaks kickstarter records. Strange first big title commitment. XBMC finally comes to Android. Western Digital launches Red line of hard drives for those using raid setups. Digg sells for just 500k. Gaming News: Could the next generation consoles be hardware upgradeable? Microsoft may think so. Steam coming to Linux. Rocksteady taking Batman to the 1950’s apparently as Warner Bros look to games to establish the Justice League into public consciousness. Activision bringing back Pitfall.....again. Activision owns Nintendo. Do it or no games. EA/Bioware announce Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, a remake of 1985’s Ultima IV. Cross-platform free to play action RPG. Beta signup available through Origin. Battlefield 4 announced via Medal of Honor Warfighter.

The Widget: Games, Tech, Whatever... NOW IN COLOR! Our giant debut live video show thing. We apologize in advance for shattering anyone's dreams about what we look like. Show notes below. Tech/Hardware News: Apple (WWDC): iOS 6 Previewed MBP w/Retina Display Apple releases dedicated Podcast app for iOS Chinese iPad trademark suit settled for $60 million First App Store malware found. Google (IO 2012): Nexus Q media hub (for $299!?) Nexus7 7” tablet running Android 4.1 Project Glass Demonstration Chrome hits iOS. Google Drive hits over 10 million users. Microsoft (Surface Announcement): Surface tablet. Bill Gates gives it the thumbs up but HP reportedly dumps plans for Win RT tablet following Surface announcement. MS believe tablets will outsell PC’s in 2013. Windows Phone 8 Windows 8 early upgrade pricing at $40 for download, $70 for media. No Small Business of Home Server versions of Windows Server 2012. Smartphones Record quarterly profits of £3.8 Billion/$5.9 Billion for Samsung and now the worlds biggest smartphone manufacturer. As a consequence HTC suffers. Rumours of Amazon about to enter the smartphone market too. Patent Wars - Who cares anymore. Galaxy Nexus pulled off the market due to copyright claim from Apple. Then it comes back, but Google unsure for how long. AMD 7970 Gigahertz Edition Released. Fastest single GPU card available but there is a reason why. nVidia Colorful planning a passively cooled GTX 680. Craziness! Adobe Pulls the plug on Flash for mobile. Mozilla Firefox OS (Boot2Gecko) to release in 2013 for mobile phones Ceases all development on the Thunderbird mail client. EU Court Rulings ACTA anti-piracy agreement denied by EU. EU rules in favour of UsedSoft in case of reselling Oracle digital licences. Gaming News: Nintendo announces 3DS XXXL; Circle Pad Pro (massive edition) coming as well. Nintendo Wii-U tech specs. Sony purchases Gaikai for $380 million after seeing Bulletstorm on the Google Chromebox at IO 2012. Microsoft Xbox 8? Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC arrives. Nights HD to arrive in the fall.

E3, bay-bee! Or at least that's how we imagine Terry would say it. For reals though: we give our rundown of things. We try to not repeat the same crap you've heard on hundreds of websites and podcasts, but it's hard, y'know? In fact, I'm not even going to put any links in here. I mean, you know what happened, yeah? Anyway, all that, some viewer mail, and an update on our upcoming live call-in show.

Great time to build a new gaming PC, or greatest time to build a new gaming PC? The GeForce 670 is amazing, Ivy Bridge is living up to the hype, and hard drive prices are finally coming back down to Earth. How long can Tim hold out?!? Guess we'll have to see... Tech/Hardware News: Negative reaction to Peter Jackson’s 48 fps Hobbit trailer at CinemaCon. Bring on the soap opera effect. nVidia Launches the GTX 690 and the GTX 670 System builders not happy with Ivybridge. TIM found inside Ivybridge chips. Netgear to launch first 802.11ac router. Samsung Galaxy S3 launched. Revised iPad 2 gives better battery life. Google Drive launches. Net neutrality changing. Pirate Bay blocked by UK ISP’s and Dutch look to follow. Benedict Cumberbatch to play Khan in ST 2?!? Gaming News: Nintendo posts first annual loss ($533 million) in company history Wii-U launch line up leak and Ubisoft Rayman Wii-U video leak. Sony has sold 1.8 Million PS Vita’s. XBLA records being broken by Trials and Minecraft. Bioshock Infinite delayed to 2013 MS to offer $99 Xbox 360 (4GB Kinect) with 2-year Live Gold commitment at $15/month Microsoft looking to take control of fitness games. More advertising coming to Xbox dashboard. Wolfenstein 3D is 20 and now playable in HTML 5. Plus: viewer mail!

He's quite proud. Anyway, new show. 3.5 hours. Get some. Show topics are all over the place, so no real list is possible. We had a record of viewer mails though, so thanks for that. Sorry we were away for so long. We'll do our best to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Tech/Hardware News: Apple previews OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to media, will ship this summer More iOS features will make their way to Mac Google uses hack to bypass iOS privacy settings and track browser history. Intel IvyBridge to be delayed until summer. 3.4Ghz Ivybridge said to be up to 17% faster than 3.4Ghz Sandybridge. AMD release 7750 and 7770 GPU's. AMD graphics CTO leaves. So AMD not focusing on high end CPU or discreet GPU markets anymore. The Trinity lineup looks impressive in the performance per watt chart. More nVidia Kepler leaks. Recent results show revenues up and profits down. Tim Sweeney talks at DICE about the future of games and technology. EPIC plan on Unreal Engine 4 to shock. H.265 on the way. Creative Labs Soundblaster Recon3D with Sound Core technology. They're kind of stretching it at this point, aren't they? The PC market is declining, in the UK at least. Symantec held to ransom by hackers. Gaming News: Double Fine does an industry first: backing a project via Kickstarter. Their $400,000 goal was met in 8 hours. It's currently sitting at $1.9 million. Live stream of Mojang making new game in 60 hrs for Humble Bundle. Via @Cr1ms0nAvenger Sony embraces cross platform play between Vita and PS3. Sony Playstation games to come to HTC devices. Simraceway S1 steering wheel. Paul's new must-have accessory? 2012 Bafta Game Award Nominations released.

Tech/Hardware News: Facebook IPO. Graffiti artist is gonna cash in. AMD 7950 Launched. In tests the overclocked 7950 matches the more expensive stock 7970. Intel Ivybridge 22nm chips to arrive in April. (Sandybridge was 32nm). GlobalFoundries announce preparation for 14nm wafer processing. Kinect for Windows launched for $249. Asus testing Kinect built straight into laptops. Xbox 720 Rumors - To use an AMD 6670 GPU, Blu-Ray equipped, no used games, bundled with Kinect 2, no new Xbox in 2012 Boxee pulls the plug on PC client Google "Bouncer" scanning Android Marketplace for malware Link. And yet, Symantec says trojans still rampant Link New York Times article rips Apple for Chinese factory conditions Link Gaming News: Are you affected by a Resident Evil spelling mistake? If so, contact Capcom. EA's Kingdoms of Amalur locks portions of single-player game behind online pass Dumb politics: Oklahoma lawmaker proposes tax on all video games with T or M rating. Link Dodonpachi Blissful Death hits iOS next week. Time for Tim to get his iPad charged and ready. Aliens Collonial Marines trailer is pretty sweet.

Hey all! This episode, we're joined by someone who you've not heard is quite some time. The original Widget alumni: CountZer0. Why you ask? Because he has written a children's book. Fancy that... Topics this week include: SOPA, PIPA proponents back down in Congress. Yea! The Internet wins!! Though both are merely delayed rather than cancelled. Megaupload shut down, founders arrested in New Zealand at behest of U.S. agencies; Anonymous targets record labels, FBI, MPAA sites in response Link and Upload.to blocks US access to site. Kim DotCom's cars seized. CES : Wireless TV. LG 55" OLED TV.  Project Fiona (aka more Razor Vaporware). 802.11ac. Waterproof phones. No method of delivering true 4K content confirmed. Apple intros iBooks 2, iBooks Author; proprietary ePub format locked down to only work on Apple gear and iBookstore iPad 3 unveiling rumored for early February Alienware intros X51 console-sized gaming computer starting at $700 Link AMD Radeon 7950 card due by end of month. iPhone 4s and iPad 2 untethered jailbreak finally released on IOS 5.01. XBMC 11 (Eden) beta working great on iOS touch screens now. XBMC shown running on the Raspberry Pi. Kodak files for chapter 11 bankruptcy. X-Rangers spoof. No official Steve Jobs doll for Dave. Tim provides alternative. More poor PS Vita sales. Now down to 19,000 units sold in a week. Bioshock infinite set to party like its 1999. Cuttherope.ie brings Cut The Rope to HTML 5. Plus some viewer mails to help keep you warm by the fire. Talk to you later!

In keeping with the trend of being super-cool, here's all the links to the topics of this episode. I'd like to make it sound like it's a total pain in the ass, but honestly, I just copy-pasta from gDocs, so no biggie. GoDaddy takes a SOPA kicking. European court deems ISP monitoring file sharing to be illegal. LG to debut 84" Ultra Definition 4k 3D TV. CrimsonAvenger wants this 55" OLED display. Red Scarlet-X 4K raw video recorder. 64GB SSD capacity = 20mins of footage. Camera battery lasts 30 mins. Samsung buys out LCD joint venture with Sony. Ultrabooks to dominate CES 2012. AMD releases 7000 series GPU's. The 28nm Radeon 7970. Some modders pushes it up to 1.7Ghz. 1.26Ghz overclock = P10259 3DMarks.  7970 in Crossfire mode offers quite ridiculous performance. Two 7970 almost equals four of the previous generation cards.  nVidia GTX 780 performance leaks, nVidia partners worried by Kepler delay.  Intel to release GPU-less Sandybridge chips.  Intel rages war on SOC with Medfield.  Corona Jailbreaks IOS 5.01 untethered on A4 processors. (iPad 1 and iPhone 4)  IOS jailbreak team joins together to target A5 processors but runs into problems.  Steve Jobs doll to launch in China and Apple may not be able to stop it.  Amazon Kindle on sales Fire.  Goodbye IE6. Gaming News: PS Vita launches in Japan; sales drop from 325,000 to 72,000 in second week, 42,000 in third. PSP outselling Vita. 3DS sales take off PS Vita says "Hello World", reveals hidden system menu, bypasses Online Checks & plays Doom, Crown3DS on the verge of exposing 3DS piracy. Mame comes to Chrome. Sonic 4 Episode 2 is coming out then. New graphics and physics engine. GTA III launched on IOS/Android. Respawn releases teaser image of new game. Sonic CD remake was a Christian Whitehead fan game. Also: viewer mail. Talk at you soon.

Happy holiday season, everyone! For this last Widget of 2011 (onwards to year 7), we dive into why on earth Paul decided to watch 'The Human Centipede 2' and 'A Serbian Film', against all better judgement. Other than that, here's a handy list of other, less repulsive subjects that we cover: The Widget decides AMD Bulldozer sucks... Paul buys one anyway  AMD says it plans to concentrate on mobile chips but also still on track to release bulldozer successor in Q3 2012.  Companies/Universities buying up .XXX domain names to protect their brand.  Hitachi 3.5" internal 4TB hard disks spotted in the wild.  Android apps top 10 billion downloads. Infinity Blade 2 released Xbox Live app for iOS Scribblenauts Remix gets Siri support Microsoft rolls out Metro UI Xbox dashboard update, aka Advert Dashboard. Users react to block ads. Onlive open to working with Microsoft and/or Sony. IOS app on the way but they forgot to tell Apple. Also releasing a new joypad for portable devices. Mass confusion over Miyamoto's new role at Nintendo Wii has now officially sold 37.7 MILLION units in U.S.; 80+ million worldwide Dead or Alive 5 is 'fighting game entertainment'. Giant swaying boobs for everyone! EA release Theme Park IOS and destroy it in a sea of microtransactions. More Sony proprietary bullshit, aka Vita memory cards. More Duke Nukem DLC on the way. 100% the best and most innovative anti-piracy method seen yet. Beware, the awful Jurassic Park game will get a boxed release. Star Wars Old Republic release date brought forward. Notch stepping away from Minecraft. And of course, viewer mail featuring our friend and mentor, Bad Grammar Terry. We'll talk at you again in 2012!

In the spirit of the holiday season, this episode comes with bonafide topic links. See? Your Widget benefactors can be a giving people. AMD Bulldozer server edition is here! I bet AMD wishes they could go back in time to change all this.  nVidia Geforce 560 Ti 448 arrives.  AMD's 7000 series GPU specs leaked  Western Digital is buying Hitachi's hard disk business  Crucial M4 SSD gets firmware update that greatly increases performance.  Google Wave axed  Kindle Fire released  Samsung take the piss out of Apple with their Galaxy S II advert. Apple iTV rumours gather more and more momentum. Have a 1st gen iPod Nano? Trade it in before it explodes. Steam got haxored. Thanks to Super Mario Land 3D, the 3DS finally starts selling. On its way to beat first year DS sales. Minecraft pocket edition released to IOS. Minecraft proper is now at 1.0! Game publishers back Blockbuster rentals as a way to battle used games Doom 3 source code is now available, and with no Creative Labs owned code. Jurassic Park game devs scam Metacritic reviews ahead of launch Sony is working on their own version of Super Smash Bros Sega Genesis version of Super Street Fighter 2 updated to include online multiplayer Online bodyguard....anyone....anyone? Sonic the Hedgehog turned 20. Sega release special history of the character video online. Whoops. I just deleted an MMO. Space travel demands Counter-Strike. A little wee bit of Viewer Mail

Paul has found time in his oh-so-busy schedule to make an appearance on the show, and for that, we are grateful. Lots of fun this week. Here's the list: iOS 5 is out, and we give our thoughts AMD's Bulldozer chips are out and fail to impress Samsung announces the Galaxy Prime Hard drive storage is about to increase thanks to salt Netflix loses 800,000 subscribers: UK and Ireland launching soon Panasonic gets out of the plasma television business Nvidia 3D Vision 2 promises a brighter future Nintendo is hemorrhaging cash and so much more Plus, a dash of Viewer Mail from our good buddy Bad Grammar Terry. We think he loves us. Also: if you're interested in owning that swanky 'Punch it, Chewie' t-shirt, head over to http://www.cafepress.com/thewidgetshow to snag yours!