Europe

Asian Stocks Mixed; Europe Posts Gains — Asian stocks ended mixed and European shares were rising ahead of a U.S. trading day filled with economic data.

Unreal Engine 3 hits Palm’s webOS: gamers ahoy! —

Palm’s Pre and Pixi aren’t exactly known as gaming powerhouses, but that could go a long way in changing now that Unreal Engine 3 is arriving for the webOS platform.  Announced at the Game Developers’ Conference this week, the new UE3 release – which should be available to licensees soon – works hand in hand with Palm’s Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) beta.

Unreal Engine 3 is the engine behind Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War, among multiple other titles, and from what we’re hearing from the GDC its performance on webOS was surprisingly good.  There’s even a minimal frame-rate preview version for webOS’ card view, though if you leave your game mid-play to enjoy it then we don’t see you lasting the level.  Since the Pre is based on the same processor that iPhone 3GS game developers have had such success with recently, we’re hoping that this could be the shot in the arm Palm needs to stay topical.

[via The Official Palm Blog]

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NVIDIA: AMD's PhysX Bribery Accusations Make No Sense — Not exactly long ago, AMD’s Senior Manager of Developer Relations in Europe, Richard Huddy, boldly stated that NVIDIA used bribery in order to persuade game developers to use PhysX middleware in their games. AMD claims that, except for Epic, game developers don't really want PhysX, but they are required to use it because it is implied b... (read more)

Best Pre-Paid Data Plan For a Visit To Germany? — code prole writes "With two upcoming trips to Germany, and no readily available Internet (WiFi or otherwise) in the location where we'll be staying, I'm looking for a no-contract USB stick and pre-paid data plan. Vodafone has a huge selection of USB sticks but has proven to be unresponsive to questions about data plans. And the US-based T-Mobile Help Center was clueless about getting the device in Europe and using it there. Hopefully the Slashdot community has some suggestions. Any duds to avoid?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HTC to start volume shipments of HTC Smart to major Europe and Asia markets at the end of March — HTC will start volume shipments of its feature phone, the HTC Smart, to major markets in Europe and Asia at the end of March 2010, according to industry sources. The company actually began to ship the HTC Smart phones to India recently to test the water with an unlocked price of 10,000 rupee (US$220), the sources noted.

Dream Of A Tropical Resort Inspires Midwest Town —

Elkhart, Ind., is situated close to major Midwest cities like Chicago and Indianapolis. With 35 million people within a few hours' drive, the town is exploring the possibility of building a type of tropical resort that's popular in cold climates in Europe.

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Dream Of A Tropical Resort Inspires Midwest Town —

Elkhart, Ind., is situated close to major Midwest cities like Chicago and Indianapolis. With 35 million people within a few hours' drive, the town is exploring the possibility of building a type of tropical resort that's popular in cold climates in Europe.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Warbirds: Dogfights for Mac flies gamers in WWII battles — Macgamestore has released Warbirds: Dogfights for the Mac. The game features aerial dogfight action in a World War II setting. A number of pivotal WWII air battles are played out over Europe and the Pacific. Players fly as either Allied or Axis fighters in over 100 different WWII aircraft. It also offers access to one month of free playing time on the WarBirds online multiplayer service....

Paid apps coming to Canada & Mexico —

We all knew paid apps were headed to Europe. That was well announced by Palm and was well received by eager European users. As a Canadian, I was stuck, sitting there, and thinking "but what about me and other Canadians?" After all, Canada was the first international carrier to get the Palm Pre.

Good news! A few hours ago, arthurthornton posted a Palm email in our forums. The email basically described to developers what the international paid app expansion would mean for them. Interestingly, the email did include this brief key new bit of information:

We'd also like to inform you that in addition to the planned European launch, we will be launching e-commerce support in Canada and Mexico.

No date mentioned was, so it could mean that the Canada/Mexico expansion will occur at the same time as the European expansion (expected at the end of March), or possibly at some later unannounced date.

Regardless, it's good to see progress is being made for Canadian and Mexican users wanting their paid app fix. Hopefully this announcement can help attract more developers with the expanded international user base.

Thanks to Arthur, Keith, and sketch42 for tips!

Dating, It's Complicated: Issue #40 —

Dating someone? Well great! Send your craziest, funniest, most embarrassing dating related stories to me at dating.itscomplicated[at]gmail.com!   While dating my first girlfriend, we had gone out to dinner probably at a diner or something. All I remember is that I drank a lot of soda (hey I was like 17). By the time we made it back to her house I had to piss something fierce but she had to use the bathroom too. She politely let me go first. I bolted into the bathroom and took a piss only to find out after I was finished that my pee had been shooting in two directions (WTF) and while one stream was aimed perfectly into the toilet, the other was aimed directly down my left pant leg. I had just pissed myself at my girlfriend's house. Seeing as how I was a loser in high school I wore those pants with the zip off pant-legs so you can turn them into shorts. I slyly unzipped the pant-legs and made them into shorts and then complained all night about "how warm it was inside" in the dead of winter. She never said a word about it but I think she knew. -Anonymous While helping my girlfriend get prepared for her summer semester abroad, I convinced her that she will need to get a new watch because Europe is on "metric time".  I said they have 100 hours instead of 24 hours in a day. She says, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that".  Good luck finding your new watch! -Dan, ND State So me and my (ex) girlfriend went to Texas (my old home town) to stay for about 3-4 days. And onmy step fathers land he had a single wide trailer for us to use while he stayed in his newly built house. Well one morning after waking up me and my GF decide to start at it again. In the middle of sex she asks me to moan for her. I don’t really do that, but I didn’t care so I did so and probably sounded like a girl doing it because I was faking it. So we get done and I start heading to the shower and outside in the living room (near bedroom door) is my step dad on the couch just laughing saying "well son it sounds like you had fun". Now he probably thinks I sound like a girl having sex. -E-Brake, Army (deployed currently) Keep Reading
	Written 2010-03-11 16:00:00 by Jason Michaels  from 15 likes

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Matias Palm-Jensen Quits Isobar's Swedish Agency Farfar —
In a big week for agency departures in Europe, Matias Palm-Jensen, creative heavyweight and founder of Swedish digital agency Farfar, quit the agency -- a cornerstone of Aegis Group's Isobar digital network. Separately, the core Unilever team at Lola (Lowe Latina) in Madrid defected to JWT to form a new Global Task Force.

NASA, cosmos community turn up volume on International Space Station — While detractors say the ISS is a costly lab that may never see a great return on investment, building the ISS has cost NASA $48.5 billion, the leaders of the ISS agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States met in Tokyo, Japan recently to reaffirm its value.

Italy green-lights largest PV solar plant in Europe — SunEdison's 72-megawatt photovoltaic solar power plant finds a home in Italy's Veneto region.

Italy green-lights largest PV solar plant in Europe — SunEdison's 72-megawatt photovoltaic solar power plant finds a home in Italy's Veneto region.

NASA, cosmos community turn up volume on International Space Station — While detractors say the ISS is a costly lab that may never see a great return on investment, building the ISS has cost NASA $48.5 billion, the leaders of the ISS agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States met in Tokyo, Japan recently to reaffirm its value.

Browser ballot not on tap for Asia — Opera won't be lobbying for a browser choice screen to be implemented in Asia-Pacific, while Mozilla's Open to Choice campaign stays within Europe.

Browser ballot not on tap for Asia — Opera won't be lobbying for a browser choice screen to be implemented in Asia-Pacific, while Mozilla's Open to Choice campaign stays within Europe.

Indian billionaire's yacht is seen in St. George's — A luxury yacht owed by an Indian billionaire visited Bermuda for a few days this week on its way to Europe. Indian Empress is one of the largest yachts in the world,

Tories pledge 'fastest broadband' — The Conservatives say they will make Britain the first country in Europe to have widespread super-fast broadband.

Transport Secretary sets out vision for high speed rail network — Public consultation on a £30 billion high speed rail network will begin in the autumn, the Transport Secretary said today as he unveiled plans for the fastest railway in Europe.

Transport Secretary sets out vision for high speed rail network — Public consultation on a £30 billion high speed rail network will begin in the autumn, the Transport Secretary said today as he unveiled plans for the fastest railway in Europe.

Mexico's Carlos Slim is world's richest person — With a fortune estimated at $53.5 billion, he leads Bill Gates and Warren Buffett on Forbes magazine's list.

Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim is the first man from a developing nation to become the world's richest person -- a shift that underlines the loosening of America and Europe's stranglehold on the top spots in the billionaires' club.

China Shares Rise; Europe Lower — Inflation in China rose in February, making for tentative trading Thursday as investors wondered whether the Chinese government might take further action to stem the economy from overheating.

Asustek reduces brand motherboard shipments target for March 2010 — Asustek Computer, affected by weakened demand in Europe, has reduced its own-brand motherboard shipments target from 1.9 million units to 1.75 million units, according to market watchers.