Filed under: Joyswag

It’s finally here, the end of our week-long Joyswag Holidaze. But, it’s not over yet! We’ve saved the best for last. Just ask Faith, she loves herself a swanky bag. You know, the type of thing to carry your trusted intel — gotta keep the resistance going! Or maybe you’re tired of holstering your lightsaber on your hip? Look no further than this custom-made Joystiq Timbuk2 messenger bag! Just remember to keep it on your person at all times. Even a bag doesn’t deserve to be left for dead …

Okay. Are we done shamelessly plugging our previous giveaways? Yes. But — uh-huh, there’s a but — don’t miss your chance to win the Joystiq Timbuk2 bag (suitable for toting a 15″ laptop!) below. We’ll even toss in a Zune! To enter this giveaway:

• Leave a comment suggesting the next random item that needs to be customized with a Joystiq theme
• You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec)
• Limit 1 entry per person per calendar day
  
• This entry period ends at 12:00pm ET on Friday, December 19th. We’ll randomly select 1 winner at that time to receive one custom Timbuk2 Joystiq medium-sized messenger bag (ARV: $150.00) and one black 16 GB Zune (ARV: $199.99). Please check your e-mail!
• For a list of complete rules, click here

Is the end of 2008 approaching already? In honor of another year of gaming gone by, Joystiq is hosting five straight days of Joyswag giveaways. Check out each giveaway here — you’ve still got plenty of chances to win some prizes!

Joyswag Holidaze: Joystiq Timbuk2 bag & Zune originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Downloads, FPS, Multiplayer, Team Fortress 2

Valve usually puts a game from a third party publisher on sale for its Steam weekend deals. This weekend, it puts one of its own on sale. Team Fortress 2, their popular multiplayer shooter, is now available for download via Steam for just $9.99 this weekend only. That’s a 50 percent savings.

As we reported late on Thursday, a new update to Team Fortress 2 has adds some new features to a few of the game’s character classes. The next big update won’t come until sometime next year when the Scout class is expected to get new unlockable weapons and achievements. Until then, a 50 percent discount will have to do.

Team Fortress 2 just $9.99 this weekend on Steam originally appeared on Big Download Blog on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Trends, Government/Legal, Earnings/Financials

With the U.S. Senate denying the Detroit 3 relief plan, it looks like oil prices might continue to tumble. Our sibling site BloggingStocks is predicting barrel prices might drop as low as $35 as a result. This comes on the heels of predictions of higher prices in the near future.

It had been thought that OPEC and possibly Russia would be curtailing production, which might have led to higher prices, but if the U.S. auto industry collapses, demand for oil could plummet. That would result in even lower oil and gas prices.

In fact, oil prices started dropping Thursday night as soon as traders heard that Senate Republicans had blocked the bill, with barrel prices checking in at $44.76 as of Friday morning. We just saw regular unleaded for $1.59/gal at a station down the street this morning and thought we had woken up in 2000. Can sub-$1 gas be far away?

[Source: BloggingStocks]

Oil may hit $35/barrel in wake of auto bailout bust originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, any doubts of legitimacy have certainly been quelled: United Keys rushed us over an OLED keyboard and keypad today, and they’re certainly the real deal. We’re naturally utterly un-blown-away by the product — you get what you pay for — but it’s still a relatively unique and interesting product, and wears the mantle of “the poor man’s Optimus” quite well. Read on for our full impressions.

Continue reading United Keys OLED Display Keyboard and Keypad hands-on

Filed under: Peripherals

United Keys OLED Display Keyboard and Keypad hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Minivans/MPVs, Trucks/Pickups, Plants/Manufacturing, Commercial Trucks, Nissan, Rumormill

In what seems like a foregone conclusion to us, intraweb rumors suggest that Nissan is strongly considering dumping its Quest minivan and Armada full-size SUV along with Infiniti’s version of the behemoth ‘ute, the QX56. The NV2500 light commercial vehicle will take the place of the Titan pickup at Nissan’s plant in Canton, Mississippi, so, putting together the trail of crumbs, it’s easy to speculate that Nissan is merely getting ready to phase-out the Titan truck and its platform-mates in preparation for a new Ram-based pickup from Dodge. Although the Quest doesn’t share the same underpinnings, it has consistently been an under-performing nameplate when sales figures are tallied up, so its loss from the lineup won’t be terribly missed.

Considering the sorry state of affairs that full-size sport utility vehicles see themselves in, we wouldn’t bet on any Ram-based replacement for the Armada and QX56 either. If a minivan replacement ever rears its head in the U.S. from Nissan, it would likely have much more in common with the NV200 concept from the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show than the current Quest, minus the sweet sliding guts, naturally.

[Source: Motor Trend]

Nissan likely to dump Quest, Armada and Infiniti QX56 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Retail, Apple Financial, Deals, iPhone

Which hardly seems believable, but you never know. Yes, Walmart, that bastion of crass commercialism, is going to be carrying the iPhone, that symbol of elegant commercialism, and what we’re going to get is a whole lot of commercialism. Analyst Gene Munster (our favorite prognosticator other than the Groundhog himself) says that not only will Apple sell a whopping 45 million iPhones next year, but a tenth of them will be sold right here in America at good ol’ Walmart.

Apparently he didn’t change his numbers from before the announcement of the Walmart deal, since he had already planned on Apple finding other ways to sell the iPhone. But man, that’s a lot of iPhones – enough to give everyone in my current city of Chicago an iPhone, and then some to spare (we’d send them to St. Louis, if we actually had a Walmart here to buy them from).

But no one’s ever been proven wrong overestimating Apple sales we guess. If you think iPhones are commonplace now, wait until you see them at Walmart.

[via MacBytes]

TUAWAnalyst: Walmart will sell 4.5 million iPhones in 2009 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, we try to front as world-weary cynics, but when we pinged our folks at Nokia for a statement on that suspiciously-awesome slide about a previously unseen touchscreen interface and device concept, we were totally hoping for a “oh, our bad, that’s a real phone and it’s awesome and it’s being released in the States tomorrow.” Naturally, that was not the case. Here’s what Nokia had to say on the matter:

“The story you sent over was from a non-public presentation that discussed some UI enhancements – NOT a new product. The form factor shown was a generic form factor and not meant to showcase a new device / product.”

So, yeah. They’re not really going to fess up to a lot here, but if we were to read between the lines we’d say these “UI enhancements” are much more likely to get real and official someday than whatever vaguely-hinted-at device was shown off beneath them. Maybe. Reading in further, we’d say it’s a little odd that Nokia’s demonstrating to investors its “best in class touch” capabilities by using a mockup interface on top of a mockup device, but perhaps that’s why we were never so good with “the monies.”

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia says touch interface and handset leaked in presentation don’t point to new product originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

MacRumors reports that the developer of the “Pull My Finger” iPhone application was finally accepted by Apple. You may recall that Apple banned the application from the App Store a few months ago due to “Limited Utility.” It looks as though Apple has changed its mind about the application, and has decided to finally allow it into the Store.

The developer told MacRumors, “[Apple] told me that they are going to start approving a whole new “genre” of apps, and that Pull My Finger will be the first to be accepted in this genre. As of now Pull My Finger is available in the app store.”

If you would like to download this once-banned application, you can purchase it for $0.99US from the iTunes App Store. Do you have a theory about Apple’s change of mind? Tell us in the comments!

TUAW“Pull My Finger” returns to the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Driving

Rockstar construction crews are hard at work laying down pavement for those already bored with Midnight Club‘s LA streets. The developer confirmed that it will release a “South Central Upgrade Map” for free next year, adding numerous LA landmarks and a new area equivalent to about a third of what’s already on the disc.

Those looking to burn a little of their leftover holiday cash can also pick up the “South Central Content Pack,” which will trick out the racing game with new character competitions, races, music and that all-important element of the LA landscape: The SUV. No release date for either download has been announced, though Rockstar notes that Xbox 360 and PS3 racers can look forward to rolling down the 105 Freeway sometime in early 2009.

Midnight Club: LA races into South Central in early ’09 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware

Valve‘s Steam service doesn’t just provide gamers with downloadable titles. It also lets Steam users (if they want to) provide info on their PC rig’s specs so Valve can have a better idea of what kind of systems are running their games. Today Valve released the results of their latest survey, with info from June of 2008 until now.

There’s quite a bit of info in the survey and while we won’t go over everything in this news post here are just a few of the more interesting stats:

• Nvidia dominates video card use in the survey with 65.11 percent of PCs having an Nvidia chip. ATI has 27.44 percent while Intel has 1.76 percent and the rest is less than a percent
• Intel dominates the PC processors used by Steam customers with 63.62 percent with AMD trailing with 36.37 percent
• Windows XP in its 32 bit version is the number one used OS by Steam users with 68.67 percent. Two years since its launch Windows Vista has only gotten up to 23.19 percent of users.
• 58.18 percent of Steam users have a PC with 2 GB of Ram or more.
• 49.04 percent of PCs in the Steam survey have two processors while 40.19 percent still have just one. Only 10.12 pecent of PCs have four CPUs.

Valve reveals new Steam hardware survey results originally appeared on Big Download Blog on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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