Rockstar Games is showing the 1st trailer for its upcoming 10.16.07 release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Info is sparse, but the game retains its low dynamic range & brooding tonality and is said to be as socially unredeeming as ever. More details in the May ed. of Game Informer.
GTA IV Trailer Splash - RockStar Games, [...]

The World Economic Forum has just released its latest Global Competitiveness Report - it sees the U.S. falling to 6th place just behind Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Singapore.
The WEF rankings represent potential competitiveness and attempt to indicate where a country is headed and are influenced by ’soft’ items such as infrastructure, macroeconomics and health care. While the WEF report praises [...]

At CTIA 2007, Texas Instruments showed a mockup of a DLP pico-projector built into a mobile phone. The pocket and (now) pico projector market is expect to grow to 1,000,000 units by 2010. The pico projector is a work in process and shows a half-VGA image at a short distance under ambient lighting conditions.  
DLP [...]

Business rag Barron’s has just published their 3rd annual list of the world’s 30 best CEOs. At the top of that list is Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. and later of Pixar…and all-around nice guy, we might hasten to add.
Barron’s estimates that if Steve were ever to leave Apple, its market cap would shrink by a largish [...]

CNet is reporting that the soon-to-be-iconic iPhone will be released on Monday June 11, 2007 to coincide with the start of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2007.
Apple iPhone to be released on June 11 - CNet, March 30 2007 

Jeffrey Katzenberg, he of DreamWorks Animation, predicts a big future for 3-D movies. Katzenberg sez that 3-D movies will be a tremendous business opportunity for movie studios, that moviegoers will be willing to pay a 50% premium over conventional movie prices, and that movies shot in 3-D will be much more difficult to pirate.
Apparently many major motion [...]

Samsung’s Blackjack beat out RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl to win the CTIA 2007 award as best Smartphone/PDA.
No reasons were given, but it must have been close as the 2 products generally review the same…7.3 on CNet and 4/5 on PC Mag.
Presumably, the Wi-Fi enabled, and highly-rated Sony Ericsson P990i didn’t make the short list because of its high price [...]

The Transport by Alberto Frias creates a personal light, sound and space environment for one or two. Flashing LEDs synchronized to music are employed to that end. Enough said. Buy one. $10K.
Curl Up and Transcend - NYT, March 25 2007  

That curmudgeon Walt Mossberg had a look at the Samsung UpStage we made note of just yesterday & decided to rubbish it.
Walt starts off with a feint, calling the UpStage creative and a better music phone than the LG Chocolate, but the review goes downhill after that. He tears into-
1. The low battery life at only 7 hrs [...]

If you must travel to where the Internet is not, $2495 buys you a Nera WorldPro 1010 BGAN unit that can provide a data rate of up to 384 Kbps of internet connectivity & phone service in most parts of the world. The Nera unit seems to be 1 of the smallest & lightest BGAN terminals available. [...]