landed

Earlier this month, I wrote that Electronic Arts had made an announcement to members of its long-running but poorly received virtual world, The Sims Online, that it was re-branding the service as EA Land.

On Tuesday, however, EA announced on the official EA Land blog that it is now planning to shut the service down altogether.

"It is with mixed emotions that today we are announcing the EA Land experiment will soon draw to a close," the blog entry read. "Since 2002, EA Land/(The Sims Online) has attracted a very special group of players...and we … Read more

VTech may be one of the most overachieving phone makers in the land-line business. Rather than just lie down and let mobile handsets invade the home, the Hong Kong-based company has continually pushed the envelope by developing computer-like functions for its products, ranging from online news feeds to instant messaging. (We think they may be overcompensating because of their reputation as a toy maker, but that's no crime.)

In fact, it was nice to seem them lighten up a bit with the latest version of their DECT 6.0 home phones. The LS6117 sports a look that was "… Read more

Is flash going to take over the notebook market, or are drives going to continue to be able to undercut it in price?

This is probably one of the questions we will try to answer in a live chat starting at 11 a.m. PDT Thursday on Ask the Editors. Click this link here at that time and I'll be fielding questions about flash density, technological advances and hurdles for both flash and hard drives, and how the different players in the hardware world are lining up on this question.

And, as an added bonus, we will have a … Read more

For anyone familiar with The Sims Online, the poorly-received virtual world launched by Electronic Arts in 2002, take note: EA is relaunching it under a new name and for a new price: free.

Born as The Sims Online, it will now be called EA Land.

This is a rather momentous move by EA, since it means it is bringing back from the dead--at least as far as perception goes--a game that, while it never really got off the ground, was extremely important in the overall development curve of 3D social virtual worlds with economies.

And while TSO, as it came … Read more

If you live in the bay area (or plan to be here the weekend of August 22nd), get ready for the first annual Outside Lands music festival! The Bonnaroo-size line-up features some of the biggest names around, such as Radiohead, Beck, Tom Petty, Jack Johnson, Wilco, Primus and more (see below). Tickets go on sale this Sunday, March 30th at 10AM on Sfoutsidelands.com

The festivities will take place in Golden Gate Park August 22-24th, and it's being produced by Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly Productions, Starr Hill Presents, and the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department. It will be … Read more

If you're an apartment dweller in Manhattan or San Francisco, you might as well skip this item because it'll probably seem utterly useless. But if you're in any other part of the country--with an abode that's more than a closet-sized studio--this device might actually come in handy.

The "Xlink Cellular Gateway" is a networking hub that lets you take your land-line calls on your mobile phone and vice-versa. That means if you leave your Vertu "Signature Cobra" in your library while retiring to the billiards parlor, you won't miss any important … Read more

The budget ax has not been kind to the U.S. Army's long-running, tech-focused Land Warrior system, but last year backers did manage to get a small test deployment into the field in Iraq with one infantry battalion. Soldiers involved in the test have had some good things to say about the system, which among other things is built to deliver real-time location information via digital maps in helmet-mounted eyepieces. But they also say many features go unused, or don't always work as they're intended to, and that just means a lot of useless extra weight to … Read more

Click here for more 2008 Detroit auto show coverage.

Some companies just refuse to give up on an idea, no matter how illogical it may be. That seems to be the case with VTech, which is still trying to sell the concept of a land-line phone with computer-like features.

More than a year ago the company came out with its "infoPhone," a cordless handset that included limited online functions, such as getting news headlines and doing local directory searches--a classic example, we thought, of a solution in search of a problem. But this year, rather than ditching the idea, VTech has actually expanded the concept in its … Read more