ESPN NFL Football Unlockables LXI (PS2)

ESPN NFL Football is a video game that was developed by Visual Concepts Entertainment, Inc. and was published by SEGA Corporation. The game arrived on the PlayStation 2 home console from Sony and on the original Xbox from Microsoft.





The game was launched in September 2003 and it is classed as being a sports simulation which is played from a third-person perspective making use of an official license which allows all the players to have the likeness and names of their real life counterparts.

ESPN NFL Football includes a variety of game modes like: Quick game, Franchise, Season, Tournament, Practice, First-Person Football and Online Play.

The Franchise mode is the most complex of the bunch, allowing gamers to control one team for more than one season, including the crucial draft, off season player deal, recruitment and release of players, with all the rules of the NFL in full effect.

One of the most intriguing modes is First Person Football, which allows the player to experience a virtual playing field that is as close as possible to reality.

One new feature introduced by the game is The Crib, which is a virtual area where the player can see all the games he has won and all the Achievements that he has completed.

As the gamer performs certain tasks, from scoring a kick from 99 yards or playing for more than 5 hours straight, he gets more content for The Crib.

There are cheats and bobble heads of famous NFL players that can be unlocked for the virtual area and players can also access soundtracks from famous SEGA titles.

While the title of this game boasts the ESPN license, this is actually the next game in Sega's NFL 2K series.

The collaboration with ESPN means that all the video games have the visual style of the sports oriented channel, with Chris Berman delivering commentary during the games.

UNLOCKABLES
Team game ball D
Get a 99-yard kick or punt return for touchdown.

Team player painting
Get a 70-yard kick or punt return for a touchdown.

Here is a video showing the game in action:

Unreleased Asus Sandy Bridge Notebook Packs NVIDIA GT 540M GPU

There's been quite a lot of talk about the fact that the NVIDIA GT540M, the first mobile GPU pertaining to the GPU manufacturer's new 500 Series, is going to get an official CES unveiling and plenty of new products built around it, and now, we've decided to add a little something to the rumor wheel, namely the fact that the graphics unit will find its way into a yet-unreleased Asus notebook built on Intel's Sandy Bridge platform.





It so happens that one of our sources in the industry has provided us with a very interesting GPUz screenshot, depicting the NVIDIA GT 540M discrete graphics card running on an Asus notebook and packing 1GB of DDR3 memory.

And while the GPUz application doesn't provide any information on the actual portable system on which the GPU is installed, our source (for whose reliability we can vow) told us that the Asus notebook in question, does, in fact, also feature one of the mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs.

As some of you might remember (and the GPUz screenshot confirms), the next-gen mobile GPU from NVIDIA is built using a 40nm process and will feature 96 processor cores, as well as an 128-bit memory interface, while the graphics clock reaches 672 Mhz.

The processor clock has also been improved, reaching 1344 Mhz, while the card also delivers up to 1.5GB of memory, reaching up to 900 Mhz clock frequency and, depending on the specific notebook model and OEM preferences, featuring either GDDR5 or SDDR3 memory.

Of course, we're now eagerly waiting to actually seeing the respective notebook from Asus make an official appearance on the market, and we're pretty sure that we won't have to wait for too long, given the fact that, after all, the Sandy Bridge platform from Intel will go official in just a couple of weeks' time. 

Last Minute Mac OS X 10.6.6 Tidbits Emerge

It is known that Mac OS X 10.6.6, the sixth incremental software update to Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system, delivers compatibility elements and support for the January 6 debut of the Mac App Store. Recent findings indicate that Apple’s Mac App Store won’t only be a new application that users are to download through software update, but it will also be integrated deeply into the operating system, recent reports indicate.

Apple’s official report confirming the launch date of the highly-anticipated Mac App Store contains an important piece of information regarding the process through which Mac OS X Snow Leopard users will be installing the utility.

According to the Cupertino, California-based electronics and software vendor, “the Mac App Store will open for business on Thursday, January 6.”





Apple promises that the Mac App Store will make discovering, installing and updating Mac apps easier than ever, “by bringing the revolutionary App Store experience to Mac OS X.”

Now, 9to5mac reports that a MacGeneration forum poster attempted to open an unsupported file on Mac OS X 10.6.6 build 10J537 only to find that his Mac asked if he would like to search the App Store for an application to open the unsupported file type (screenshot above).

The blog appropriately points out that the feature is comparable to the way Windows allows users to search the web for applications to open unsupported files.

However, Apple makes the process more intuitive and, most importantly, more secure on Mac OS X.

Earlier this month, Softpedia wrote that Apple’s Mac App Store was just another step towards converting everyone to Mac.

We outlined that, besides ensuring quality control, the Mac App Store will also enforce rules that translate into more secure computing for the end users.

“In a world where cyber threats are on the rise - and don’t think for a second that Mac OS X isn’t vulnerable to attacks - Apple is the one throwing the first blow, by building walls around its ecosystem,” Softpedia wrote on December 5th.

Mac OS X 10.6.6 has long been known to be tied to the forthcoming release of Apple’s Mac App Store.

Apple released a beta of OS X 10.6.6 early December (build 10J537) which reportedly contained developer support for fetching and renewing App Store receipts.

Power Balance Wristband – Product Review

A little over a year ago, I began stumbling onto more and more reports on a product calledPower Balance, a silicone wristband that boasted the ability to tap into the body's energy field to improve balance, strength and flexibility.
Celebrities endorsed it by the dozens, while people online were raving about it. Given its claims, it's no wonder: this is a tiny piece of plastic with two holograms on each side, pretending to hold the key to a myriad of problems. 

As I said in the article from back then, the people behind Power Balance vouched it was not a scam, because it used the same principle employed in age-old practices like acupressure and acupuncture.

Intrigued (and seeing the interest my initial coverage of Power Balance generated in readers), I contacted the company making this so-called revolutionary product posing as the solution for both athletes and regular people. After all, who wouldn't want to be the best they can be? 


In June this year, I got a package in the mail: in it were two fancy little boxes, containing two separate bracelets, one white and one black, both in medium size.

From the start, I noticed that, for a bracelet made of plastic, the wristband was very nicely packaged. It comes in 5 different sizes (from XS to XL) and several colors, including red, blue, and orange. 

To make my test as objective as possible, I gave the black bracelet to my best friend, keeping the white one for myself – it was fancier, too, just suitable for a girl. 

The first couple of days, I noticed nothing different, except for the fact that many people were very intrigued about what I was wearing on my wrist: they would confuse it for a watch and couldn't understand how I could read time on such a minuscule piece. 

Then, I realized something had changed. Though I've never been what one may call the hyper-active type, I do like to be on the move a lot: I go for jogs in the morning when the weather is nice, strength train, go on walks and, when my schedule allows me, also go to the gym for aerobics classes. 

The very nature of my work makes it so that I welcome every little help I can get in terms of being more physically active: the dangers and disadvantages of a job behind the desk at the computer are well documented in specialized literature. 

I was, either way, determined to test Power Balance starting from the premise that it might just not work. Imagine my surprise when I realized, two weeks into the testing period, that I was feeling better than ever. 

I wasn't that surprised either that the wristband didn't work as I believed it would, especially since the makers say it acts differently with each wearer. I didn't feel more energized or stronger – instead, I slept sounder and better than ever.

My college formation and current occupation (together with some medical issues we shan't get into now) have left me with back pains that, when stress and exhaustion are added in, translate into insufferable headaches and poor quality of sleep. 

With the Power Balance, I would wake up refreshed and completely relaxed, as if the previous day had been a holiday. My friend told me he had also noticed the same, but only after I made sure I had not informed him of what I made of the changes. 

Two more weeks passed (still with excellent sleep at night and clarity of mind during the day), and we decided to switch back to our previous, un-Power-Balanced selves. 

I took the wristband off during lunch hour and barely made it through the rest of the work day. I felt I could die right there from the lack of energy. I got home, went straight to bed, and, upon waking up a mess the next day, decided the bracelet worked and I would never remove it again because the experience without it had been horrendous. 

Thus I continued for another three weeks. It was very warm outside already and because I didn't want to get a tan with the band on my wrist (girls will be girls), I removed it one day and decided I would deal with whatever evil should befall me without it. 

My friend agreed to do the same, and we would meet later to talk about how the experience had been for both.

The next day, I woke up and sensed nothing different: oddly enough, I still had slept well without the band. I went to the office and willed myself not to think of it (and particularly of not having it on me), which, it seems, was easy enough because I got caught up in work. 

And so, one week passed, then two, and three, and four. After a month – and still seeing no difference – me and my friend put the bracelets back on. Still nothing. 

We wore them for another week without any change and then, after doing lots of research online about the tests you can perform with the Power balance, I put it through the paces on my friend. 

He, of course, had no idea what it was all about: we did all the (blind) tests recommended by the makers themselves using the bracelet and replacements, and we noticed no difference. 

After many months trying to at least come close to understanding the mysterious ways in which Power Balance worked, we came to the conclusion that it does what it says only when the wearer knows s/he has it on. 

Claims of the Power Balance Wristband

“Optimal health and peak performance occur when your body maintains ionic balance (the exchange between negative and positive charges) and free flowing energy pathways (harmony) at the optimum frequency,” reads a post on the official page of the product.

“Power Balance, after years of research and development, has produced a system to safely restore and optimize the electro-magnetic balance within the human body… immediately,” it is further said.

“Power Balance’s Mylar Holographic Disk (the same substance used to keep static electricity from damaging electrical components) has been embedded with an electrical frequency that restores your body’s electrical balance, promoting a free exchange of positive and negative ions and align your body’s energy pathways,” the post reads. 

Scientific Foundation
None. There is not one single study to confirm the claims made by the makers of Power Balance. Even those who endorse it can't tell how it works, choosing instead to go for the “it depends on the wearer” excuse.

Moreover, the Australian Skeptics have proved all the claims of improvement in physical condition are bogus and entirely dependent on the wearer knowing s/he has the hologram on. 

Conclusions
In other words, the Power Balance works only if you want it to, which is only a more delicate way of saying you're paying $29.95 for something to motivate you when you can't find it in yourself to do so. 

Whatever improvements in strength, flexibility, balance and (as in mine and my friend's case) quality of sleep and clarity of mind are noticeable are the placebo effect, defined as “the beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patient's expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself” by the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Then again, if you have the money to dispose of, and you simply can't find it in yourself to motivate yourself in certain situations, the Power Balance can do no harm. 

The Power Balance Test – Pro video 


The Power Balance Test – Proving it's bogus

Yamaha Develops Technology to Transfer Data from Audio Devices to Smartphones

Yamaha has recently announced that it has developed and tested a way of utilizing sound waves as a means of transferring data between various devices, allowing existing sound-producing devices like TV and radio sets to transmit information by delivering a high-frequency audio signal to network-capable devices like the iPhone.














This feat is achieved by using a high-frequency audio signal of 18kHz that most audio devices out there are able to produce.

The technology has been recently tested by Yamaha in Japan, using an iPhone loaded with a special app that allowed for the phone to pick up the audio broadcast and translate it into a usable URL for web surfing.


Still in its early stages, the technology has its limitations as data speeds are right now set at an incredibly low 80bps.

To put things in perspective, even an obsolete 26.6kbps modem is 333 times faster than the present implementation of Infosound.

However, high transfer speeds aren't what Infosound is about, as the technology was designed in order to enable any sound device totransfer data, bringing additional information to the user.
As VR-Zone puts it, Infosound could be used to mix in a specific sound frequency into the broadcasting signal which can then by interpreted by a smartphone, providing users with details about the band they are listening to or about the movie they are watching.

In addition, this technology could be used to deliver in-show advertisements, although I certainly hope this won't be the case.

According to Yamaha, the technology is immune to noise interferences, meaning that users won't have to reposition their speakers, its effective rage being rated at about 10 meters, more than enough for most users.

Sandy, no information is available detailing when we should expect this technology to reach our living rooms.

5 Predictions for Mobile in 2011

Mobile really exploded in 2010, thanks to a surge in smartphone sales, the rise of the iPad, and of course the iPhone. Mobile devices are getting more powerful, data connections are getting faster and developers are really pushing the boundaries of how we define a “mobile app.”

It’s always tough to make predictions about technology because of the speed of innovation. This is especially true for mobile technology, where the landscape can change in a period of six months, let alone in a year.

These are five of my predictions for what we will see happen in mobile in 2011.

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1. Tablet Mania Hits a Fever Pitch

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Mark Zuckerberg might not think that the iPad is mobile, but I respectfully disagree. I define mobility more in terms of being portable, not pocketable.

Many people predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet, but in actuality, it was the year of one tablet, the iPad. I fully expect the iPad to continue to succeed but in 2011, it will finally get some competition.

The most important lesson that tablet makers can take away from the iPad is that user experience matters. We’re already seeing that in the early demos of the BlackBerry PlayBook and in teasers from Motorola.

We might also see HP use its purchase of Palm to bring some webOS tablets to the market.

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2. Photo Sharing Will Expand to Video

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The mobile photo sharing boom, led by apps like Instagram and PicPlz was a nice surprise in 2010. Fusing the improvements in camera phones with the ability to seamlessly share photos across social networks is something that just really clicks with users all over the world.

Smartphones have had the capability to record video for a very long time — and the hottest phones on the market all include the ability to record and upload HD footage. Still, we haven’t seen mobile video take off quite the same way as photographs.

This is in part because, though improving, the quality of a smartphone video camera isn’t a “real” replacement for a camcorder, and more importantly, the bandwidth needed to upload video just isn’t widely available.

As the major wireless providers across the world prepare or continue their 4G rollouts, the bandwidth issue has the potential to get a lot better.

Moreover, compression technologies with video make it possible to send video from a device more quickly, without sacrificing tons of quality. The companies that make the image sensors in smartphones are also introducing models that support 1080p video, which means full HD on a mobile phone is on the horizon.

We might not see the ease of sharing movies as we do with photos, but I expect mobile video to get bigger and better in 2011.

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3. HTML5 App Explosion

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Lots of app developers — or people hiring app developers — debated the merits of native versus web apps on mobile platforms.

Native apps can take advantage of more hardware capabilities of a device and have tighter integration with some of the key components of a mobile OS, but web apps can be more easily ported to other types of devices and can really be beneficial in areas like iterative updates and user testing.

With HTML5 however, many of the system-level and device specific features can still be harnessed by a web app. Moreover, developers can build a base application in HTML5, yet still put it in a native wrapper so that it can take advantage of some native device capabilities.

When comparing some of the Chrome web apps with their iPad counterparts, it was easy to see how a base HTML5 implementation could be ported to a straight web app.

This has been the idea behind development toolkits like Appcelerator’s Titanium, and with more and more devices of varying screen size and processor speed hitting the market, targeting the browser and then making modifications for the specific device will become more and more popular.

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4. Flash Still Won’t Matter on Mobile Devices

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It’s been an interesting year for Adobe Flash. The technology has withstood criticisms from Steve Jobs, has been heralded by RIM and is now available on Android handsets.

Adobe is doing a lot of work to help make Flash more suitable for mobile platforms; the problem is for Flash to really work well on these devices, existing Flash content needs to be reoptimized. For many developers or companies, if a site has to be retooled anyway, it is simply more pragmatic to adopt a solution like HTML5 that will work on a wider variety of mobile platforms.

Flash 10.1 was a big improvement, and I expect that Flash 10.2 will be even better, but I still don’t think Flash is going to become a massively adopted mobile technology.

That isn’t to say that Flash is dead — or that on the right platform (like the BlackBerry PlayBook),Adobe Air runtimes won’t be perfectly suitable. On the whole, I still think that the momentum that HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and native libraries have in the smartphone and tablet space is unlikely to be usurped by Flash.

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5. We Will See a Verizon iPhone

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Even though Apple’s exclusivity agreement with AT&T for the iPhone is supposed to extend until 2012, I’ll go on record as saying I’m convinced we’ll see a Verizon iPhone in 2011. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly take my lumps, but the signs and the rumors are just too great to ignore.

First, Verizon is rolling out its LTE network. That removes one of the technical barriers of a Verizon iPhone, the CDMA factor.

Second, is the fact that Verizon is already carrying the iPad, albeit a Wi-Fi version with a MiFi plan and adaptor — but hey, they are running ads.

Finally, Verizon has made it very clear that it wants the iPhone, and AT&T has made it clear it knows its days of exclusivity are waning. With AT&T being a major factor with consumers who decide not to buy an iPhone, Apple has to want to break off that exclusivity agreement too.

Free Kindle Books: A Guide

If Google Trends are anything to go by, a fair number of you were fortunate enough to unwrap a Kindle 3 this 

Christmas (currently, “free kindle books” is trending at number 9).

As such, we thought we’d alert you to some of the following resources for getting free Kindle books on your new device (as well as yoursmartphone and desktop). For all but the Kindle Store, you’ll need to transfer the books manually using a computer and USB cable.

1. Project Gutenberg: 33,000 free e-books, including all of the classics, available in Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.
2. Google E-Bookstore: The free section is filled with thousands of free, scanned copies of books, available in Kindle-friendly PDF formats.
3. Internet Archive: Millions of primarily rare, out-of-print works in multiple languages and formats (including Kindle), especially useful for academic work.
4. Open Library: 20 million user-contributed items in multiple editions and formats (including Kindle).
5. ManyBooks.net: Nearly 30,000 titles, many of which have been pulled from Project Gutenberg. Has a good collection of little-known Creative Commons works.
6. LibriVox: Thousands of free audiobooks.