TechnologiesExpert Blog

First, the rant: if this is anything like Virtual Boy, it will fail. Fortunately, the Nintendo 3DS, introduced at E3 on Tuesday, does not appear to be anything like that old 3D gaming system.

The 3DS looks like an ordinary Nintendo DS handheld gaming system, but it comes with a 3.5" special 3D top display screen. By using a slider, gamers can adjust the screen so that their eyes can see the images properly, even without stereoscopic glasses (like those used to view the 3D version of "Avatar," for example).

Huddle CollaborationThe Nintendo 3DS also has a motion-sensor, wi-fi, and a gyroscope. It's compatible with the DSi, with one camera on the inside, and two cameras on the outside (for 3D imagery and videos).

The company noted that a fair number of developers will support the 3DS, including Activision Blizzard, Square Enix, THQ, Electronic Arts, Capcom, WB Games, Ubisoft, Namco Bandai, and Konami. Nintendo itself is working on a 3D version of the popular (and cute) Nintendogs, dubbed Nintendogs + Cats.

Speaking of "Avatar," the 3DS will also be able to play movies (if you care to watch a 3D movie on such a small screen). Pricing and availability were not announced.

May 17, 2010 150th Anniversary of Martin Kukucin's Birthday - (Slovakia)




May 15, 2010 Teacher's Day - (Korea)



May 14, 2010 Singapore Art Festival - (Singapore)



May 14, 2010 Paraguay's Independence Day - (Paraguay)



May 13, 2010 Father's Day - (Germany)



May 09, 2010 150th Birthday of J.M. Barrie - (Selected Global)



May 09, 2010 Mother's Day - (US)



May 09, 2010 Mother's Day - (Selected Global)



May 07, 2010 170th Birthday of Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky - (Global)



May 06, 2010 Election Day in U.K. - (UK)



May 05, 2010 Rocket Festival - (Thailand)



May 05, 2010 Patios Cordobeses - (Spain)



May 04, 2010 Umm Kalthum's Birthday - (Selected Global)



May 01, 2010 World Expo Opens in Shanghai - (China)




May 01, 2010 Labour Day - (Selected Global)



Apr 30, 2010 Queen's Day - (Netherlands)



Apr 29, 2010 225th Birthday of Karl Drais - (Germany)



Apr 25, 2010 ANZAC Day - (Australia)



Apr 25, 2010 ANZAC Day - (New Zealand)



Apr 24, 2010 Hubble Space Telescope's 20th Anniversary - (Global)



Apr 01, 2010 April Fools! - (US)



and google shere more logo..... credit by google

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, Google has created the first-ever interactive and playable doodle, or custom home page logo. Seen here is a screenshot of the game, as it is being played on the Google home page.
(Credit: Google)

Saturday is the 30th anniversary of the release of Pac-Man, and to commemorate the occasion, Google is rolling out its first-ever truly interactive and playable home page logo, a fully-functional version of the iconic 1980s video game.

For years, Google has produced its so-called doodles for all kinds of holidays and special occasions, from Valentine's Day to the Fourth of July to Mother's Day and many others. In each case, the Google Doodle team works on a special logo that appears on the search engine's home page.

But a few months ago, when the team discovered that May 22 would be the 30th anniversary of the release of Pac-Man in Japan--it was actually called Puck Man, but that name was rejected in the United States because of the propensity of the "P" to chip and look like an "F"--they knew they had to do something extra special.

"When we became aware of the...anniversary," said Ryan Germick, a member of the Google Doodle team, "we thought it would be awesome to create not only something that references Pac-Man on the home page, but also something playable."

Until now, the most interactive of the logos had been one last Halloween that users could click to see more candy, and another for Isaac Newton's birthday that dropped apples. But for the Pac-Man celebration (see video below), Google has pulled out all the stops and has built, from scratch, a fully-playable version of the game, complete with 255 levels and re-created (but authentic) sounds and graphics. And unlike most of the special logos, which disappear off the home page--but are available in perpetuity in the archives--when the day is over, the Pac-Man doodle will stay up for 48 hours.

According to Germick, the company worked with Pac-Man's publisher, Namco Bandai, to make the project as realistic as possible. Yet the Google team, with the inspirational lead of Marcin Wichary, a Google senior user experience designer, built their version of the game from the ground up using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

"We are very excited about the Google doodle project," Namco Bandai President and CEO Kenji Hisatsune told CNET by e-mail. "With this being the first time Google has ever included sound or made a doodle playable demonstrates just how big of an impact Pac-Man has made. "

And in the end, Wichary made a "picture-perfect" version of the game, Germick said. Except for one thing, of course. Being a Google home page logo, it had to have the word "Google" in its design, so Wichary, Germick and their colleagues built their version of Pac-Man so that it had the search engine's name in the middle of the iconic board.

Growing up with games
For Wichary, who grew up in Poland, arcade video games were in his blood. His father was a game technician who used to take him around to arcades and let him see how the various machines worked. From those humble beginnings came a lifetime of interest in games and, now, the motivation and passion to make the Pac-Man project be as faithful as possible to the original game.

That commitment to authenticity extended, Wichary explained, to some of Pac-Man's little quirks. For example, though many people would never have experienced this, the original arcade game had a bug that resulted in anyone making it past the 255th level hitting what came to be called the "kill screen," where the machine essentially crashed. Google made sure to build that experience into their game.



Similarly, after completing some levels of Pac-Man, a player would sit through brief animations, which came to be known as "coffee breaks," since it provided enough time to stretch one's fingers and, perhaps, grab a cup of coffee. That, too, has been built into the Google version.

And the team was so focused on making their version true to the original that they even included some of the smallest touches possible, things that only the most serious Pac-Man players would know about. Wichary said those include things like the fact that in the original game, the ghosts would give the slightest hint of which direction they were going to turn by moving their eyes that way. That was included in the Google version, as was a peculiarity that allowed Pac-Man to cut corners by a couple of pixels while the ghosts had to turn them at full right angles.

In addition, Wichary pointed out that the original game was "deterministic," meaning that players could memorize and develop winning patterns. Google, too, built that into its version, meaning that those who put some serious time into the game now will be able to make a lot of headway by figuring out the patterns that work best.

Namco Bandai President and CEO Kenji Hisatsune.

"Google spent a lot of man-hours making sure the simple things that make Pac-Man were included," Hisatsune said, referencing the coffee break and 255th-level bug.

Germick explained that at Google, the Doodle team is always looking for ways to make the Google home page a "fun place to be," so once the team came up with the idea for the Pac-Man project, "it didn't take a lot of selling internally. Once people saw it, they were like, 'Awesome.'"

Putting together the Google version of Pac-Man took a couple of months, but Wichary said it would be hard to estimate how much time they actually put into the project because "I enjoyed it so much. It was a throwback to my childhood."

Indeed, Wichary said that one of his biggest reasons for getting involved in this effort was to help bring other people back to their own childhoods.

I'm feeling lucky
On a normal day, Google's home page features two simple buttons: one for a full keyword-specific search and the famous "I'm feeling lucky" choice, which picks one result based on a keyword.

For the Pac-Man project, the team has converted the "I'm feeling lucky" button into an "Insert coin" slot, reminiscent of the place where countless kids have pumped billions of quarters over the years.

Fittingly, the team decided that if they were going to make their Pac-Man game authentic, they would need to make it playable by two people at once. So where a single player will, so to speak, insert a single coin, clicking twice sets up a two-player game. In that case, one player will be Pac-Man and the other will be Ms. Pac-Man, and both will be playing on the same board at the same time, using a single keyboard.

In the end, the Google team put a lot of focus into re-building what is one of the best-known and recognized games of all time. For a game that's 30 years old, it holds up remarkably well over time, and still has a hold on popular culture.

And as something that is still a hit so many years later, it made perfect sense to the Google team to break new ground with its approach to the Pac-Man project. Yet, rather than just getting code from Namco, they decided to do things the Google way.

"I wanted to do the same thing we do with everything else at Google," Wichary said, "which is use modern Web technologies. So we built it from the ground up."

Two of the most amazing things from my childhood are celebrating their 30th anniversaries this weekend: Pacman and Empire Strikes Back. It’s hard to believe it’s been thirty years since Pacman fever reigned, but even harder to believe that this is the weekend I got sick at the movie theatre because I made my dad take me to see Empire Strikes Back and didn’t tell him I had the flu.

My friends and I played Pacman on the Atari nonstop, and when we weren’t playing on the Atari, we were at the local arcade feeding quarters into the console. I even raised my daughter on Pacman, and today she can be found with her Gameboy in the corner chomping pellets and chasing ghosts all over the maze.

Google is celebrating the anniversary with a special Pacman game you can play right on your search screen, but if you don’t feel like leaving the site and opening Google up, I embedded a Pacman game you can play right here:
Pacman.



1980 was a life-shaping year, as Empire Strikes Back hit theatres too. Along with playing Pacman, my friends and I also played Star Wars, reliving the new movie as best we could since we wouldn’t be able to watch it outside the theatre for years after it was released. We could often be found parading around with cardboard laser guns, me with my hair in cinnamon buns, our Han Solo telling Chewbacca (the neighbor’s dog) to “Laugh it up, Fuzzball.”

The world wasn’t like it is today, but both Pacman and Empire Strikes Back had a huge impact on the youth of yesteryear. Even if you weren’t alive in 1980, you’ve heard of and probably enjoyed both at some point during the last thirty years.

Take a moment to celebrate today. I mean, come on… It’s not every day Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite.

fans Can Play Pac-Man From Google's Homepage for 48 Hours

About Pac-man:-

PAC-MAN is a cultural icon whose popularity has crossed the globe for 30 years. This official PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary site is dedicated to telling the story of PAC-MAN through his games, gear, and accomplishments. His journey through the maze of gaming infamy is far from over! Be sure to check in as the story is told that is distinctly PAC-MAN!

Pac-Man is back. And to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the classic video arcade game, Google has unveiled its first-ever interactive doodle – a Pac-Man game that Web users can play straight from Google's homepage.





On May 22, 1980 the now-iconic Pac-Man game was released in Japan by Namco Bandai Games. Originally called Puck Man, Pac-Man launched in the U.S. in October 1980 and went on to sell more than 100,000 units in its first year of production.

The name of the game comes from the sound of eating, according to the official Pac-Man website. "Paku" is the Japanese sound for "chomp."

Now the game is listed by Guinness World Records as the world's most successful coin-operated game.

To help recognize the pop culture mainstay, at 11 a.m. ET today (midnight in Japan), Google turned its homepage over to a Pac-Man game that can be played for the next 48 hours.

Visitors can click on the "insert coin" button or wait 10 seconds to automatically start the game, which reaches 256 levels.

Ghajini The Movie starring Aamir, Asin, Jia Khan and Pradeep Rawat is making high on Indian theaters right now. There is also a good news for Aamir fans, as a Game is going to be launched on 28th Dec 2009, just 4 days after the release of the movie.

It’s going to be first 3D PC game. Developed by FX Labs, the game will have Max Payne like game play with manhunt like environment.

As described on FX labs Ghajini site:

Who is “GHAJINI”? For one man who has nothing left in his life, it is the end of a long road. Sanjay’s last memory is the brutal murder of his girlfriend Kalpana and her last whispered word – “Ghajini”. Will he find what he is looking for and avenge her murder? Experience the story through the unique perspective of a man who forgets but does not forgive. Experience his panic and paranoia as he comes to grips with his condition and tries to make sense of a world that is rapidly fading. Help him piece together the fragments of his life by sneaking into heavily guarded buildings searching for a reason to go on. Join him as he fights against those who have taken away his past, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. Find out what lies at the end of that road.

So, get ready to hunt Ghajini….

Well, it's official now. The much awaited XBox 360 will now be available in India too. The price of the xbox 360 will be between Rs.20,000 and 24,000. Microsoft's marketing directors in India have selected youthful brand ambassadors from the Hollywood industry and the Cricketing world. Akshay kumar and Yuvraj Singh will lead the promotional ads in India.

The majority of the Indian public will not be able to afford this but it is mainly for the upper class people as each game will be costing anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 rupees. They have also decided to launch the game 'Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007', lets hope that does his batting form some good too!