Gearfuse

GameStop, with its icy grip on the retail video game industry, has a new competitor coming up the pipelines. No, Funcoland isn’t making a comeback but rather Best Buy is trying out a trial program that lets customers trade in used video games for store credit. As Brian Crecente of Kotaku points out, this is a fantastic time to be in the used video game industry. No kid or adult has $60 to plop down on a next-gen game nowadays, save for Killzone 2.

I think this is a great move for Best Buy. It’ll force GameStop to become more competitive and will lower prices on used titles even further. Let’s see how Best Buy plays this out…

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The T-Mobile G1 is really enjoying its time in the limelight thanks to it being the only available Android phone at the moment. With that said, it’s taken Google quite awhile to roll out paid apps on the Android Market. This is no good considering that Apple’s App Store is the undisputed king of application shopping. It’s good to see that Google is finally catching up.

Unfortunately, as you can see in the above screenshot, there’s no real useful applications yet. This is still a huge sword in Android’s foot. For the OS to be successful, it needs strong, likable apps that people will actually want to pay money for. Makes sense, right? After all, who the fuck wants to spend $6.99 on “To Do Projects”?

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How does one create such a juicy, delicious masterpiece of brickery? Sure, it doesn’t have 50,000 pieces and may not resemble a George Lucas-inspired spaceship, but hey, if there’s one thing humans love, it’s chicken. Delicious, slow-roasted chicken breast, glazed in honey and PVC plastic. Mmmmm. I wonder how Martin Jaspers, creator of this masterpiece, designed the oven. It’s very detailed – so much so, that it rotates the chicken. Tasty!

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Who does Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace.com, think he is? Michael Arrington of TechCrunch? Because he certainly doesn’t think he’s the CEO of MySpace. If he did, he wouldn’t have come up with the crazy notion that MySpace could compete in what is essentially Apple’s market of portable media players. Seriously, a MySpace-branded portable media player? Are you nuts?

According to Reuters, DeWolfe is only thinking about it. Let’s hope this idea remains a thought never to be realized, lest it joins the ranks of the Zune all the way at the bottom. If Microsoft can’t compete, what makes MySpace think it can? Clearly, it’s the Kool-Aid.

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Planning on designing a malicious app to install on all those G1 phones coming out? Think again. Google reserves the right to “…remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion.” Better watch your back! And your privacy!

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In response to rising cellphone charges, citizens in Madrid, Spain has gone on a no-cellphone campaign last week. It is really hard to imagine if you are from places where public phone booths are getting demolished to build new wireless towers. A lot of people in Madrid supported the campaign, but there were people spotted for using the phonebook off cellphones when dialing in a phonebooth. We simply can’t live without cellphones any more, which is something that we never expected 5 years ago. Wait till we can’t live without 3G. –Sam Chan

Article [FujiSankei]