Valve Software, makers of the hit PC games Half Life 2, Portal and Left4Dead 2, have issued a press release for the upcoming Macintosh launch of their online gaming service, Steam.

May 11, 2010 – Valve announced that Steam will launch on the Mac platform this Wednesday, May 12.

On subsequent Wednesdays, additional collections of Mac titles will become available, each designed to highlight specific functionalities of Steam on the Mac.

The first collection of Mac titles will demonstrate “Steam Play,” which allows customers to purchase a game once and play it on all Steam supported platforms.

Portal, in addition to supporting Steam Play, will be the first of Valve’s Source engine based games available on the Mac. Native OS/X support for the Source engine is also available immediately to licensees for use in their games.

Among the initial titles available on Wednesday will be Runic Games’ critically acclaimed Torchlight. “We’re very excited to be bringing Torchlight to the Mac,” said Max Schaefer, co-founder of Runic Games. “Having Steam for the Mac solves so many problems for us as a developer. We look forward to our future games coming out on the Mac as well.”

In addition to bringing the online functionality of Steam to the Mac, Valve will also make its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform. These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more. The features and services available in Steamworks are offered free of charge and may be used for both electronic and tangible versions of games.

For more information on Steam, please visit www.steamgames.com.

Source [ SteamPowered.com ]

As a Mac user and a gamer, I am very excited about the impending cross-platform release, as well as knowing that I will not have to re-purchase Mac versions of (most) games I already own.  My Steam library, when I was using BootCamp to run Windows and Steam for the past few years, includes games such as Torchlight, the Half Life series, Left4Dead, TeamFortress 2, Portal, Bioshock and many games from the Quake and Doom series.

While detractors will argue that Steam for Mac does not mean that PC game developers will flock to the platform, that is not necessarily a requirement at this time.  There are plenty of Mac game developers who will benefit from Steam as a platform for selling their software, pushing out updates to their users and track hardware statistics to better help optimize their games.

It has been awhile since I have logged into Steam, but I will soon be back.  Once Team Fortress 2 has been fully released for Mac, which I hope is soon, meet me up for a few rounds.

It seems like Apple may have an issue on their hands here. A country and now three prominent Universities in the United States are banning the iPad. Each of them cited security concerns, bandwith concerns and interference with wifi as reasons for banning the device.

Quite a few people gawked at Israel deciding to ban the iPad in the country over security concerns. They probably aren’t gawking today. Princeton University, George Washington University and Cornell University have all banned the iPad.

All of them are citing security and connectivity issues as the reason. Cornell University said they are seeing connectivity issues and a bandwith overload which is why the iPad was removed from campus. George Washington University rejected the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch from connecting on their campus. Wonder if they are Microsoft fans?

I think we need to write some letters to Apple about this issue. If someone writes a snarky enough letter, we could get a response from Steve Jobs. He will probably tell us we’re nuts, but he may give a one sentence answer as to how he’s going to handle this issue.

It’s not every day you receive a reply from a big wig at Microsoft or Apple. It’s also not every day you receive a reply from Steve Jobs himself.

One man sent Apple an e-mail, airing his grievances with iPad’s international shipping issues. At one point, Jobs was accused of “pulling the wool over the world’s eyes.” This man got a very simple response from Jobs that started with “Are you nuts? We are doing the best we can.”

If you want to read the full e-mail conversation, it’s under the mystical “Read More” link.

“Dear Mr Jobs

On behalf of the international community of Apple consumers I would like to protest at the way Apple is apparently leaving us out in the cold with the Apple iPad product.

We have been fed either misinformation or no information at all and it is starting to cast doubt over Apple’s intents, at least it is to me.

I live in Switzerland and as yet we have no idea what the Apple iPad will cost here, if it is anything like the international pricing we have been used to to date on other Apple products, then it will certainly not be an “unbelievable price” as stated in your marketing. Read More

A great video of Alice in Wonderland is circulating the internet. It’s not the recent Disney movie that was released, it’s the book that is available as an app on the iPad. The book has become an interactive platform where pictures move and change. Things turn topsy turvy just like they should in Wonderland and the characters move about in odd Alice in Wonderland fashion.

This book is beautiful. It shows such promise for what books and readers like the Kindle from Amazon can become. If books started to work and read like this classic tale on the iPad, imagine how much more you would read. Could you imagine reading “The Fellowship of the Rings” or “The Hobbit” like this? I certainly could.

The app is made by Atomic Antelope and available on the iPad app store for $8.99 USD.

This great app found thanks to:
GigaOm

The Next Web

For years, we have been asking “How does Twitter make money”? No one knew the answer to the question. Rumors about celebrities paying for their accounts, sponsored tweets and “secret premium accounts” have circulated the internet. Nothing has ever come out in the open to show Twitter has a money making business model. To us, it seemed that Twitter may move off of private funding forever. In 2045 …Twitter is on their 56th round of private funding!

Yesterday, Twitter showed us they had the right idea. Though some people don’t like the format for ads Twitter is rolling out, I can’t be mad at them for it. They have made their internal search engine just that much more social. Nothing new, nothing invasive and nothing that will make me fume.

Sponsored search results are a good idea. Let’s say you are searching for iPad on Twitter. The top result will be sponsored. It might be Apple’s own Twitter account or Steve Jobs (now you know this is an example). You have the option to “favorite” that sponsored result or re-tweet it as usual.

“But I want to see REAL search results! Not something someone paid for!” You will see them. Just overlook the first result and scroll down. There you go, all real search results. This isn’t something invasive or something that is going to effect how you use Twitter.

Ads are most likely going to start showing up on Twitter’s timeline. Again, this is something I can’t be mad about if it happens. On my BlackBerry I use Uber Twitter, on the iPhone it’s Twitterific and the Droid has Twidroid. Each of these apps have ads that show in between tweets. On Uber Twitter, they show as part of the timeline with a “Sponsored” tag on them. It looks like Twitter is going to do something similar with their ads and place them in your timeline between tweets.

Which leads other people to ask questions about the ad format. Will people have the option to pay a small monthly fee and get rid of ads? I doubt it. Sure, Twitter may offer it but the idea is not the smartest. Twitterific offers a paid version that gets rid of the ads. I don’t know anyone who uses the paid version. It’s not that difficult to overlook the ads on your app (or web client) and move into your timeline.

I’ve been a Twitter user since 2007. I remember saying “This will never amount to anything.” Yet, I found myself using it. Not only did I become an avid user early on, but I opened more than one account to separate my work. Twitter has proved to have a lot of staying power. The problem was, they didn’t seem to catch up with everyone else. Where was their business model? They finally have the beginnings of one.

Things may need tweaking as time goes on with the new ads, but I’m quite proud of Twitter.I want to sniffle and grab a hanky while I see my little blue bird off to his first day at the office carrying his fail whale in a briefcase. He’s finally grown up!

Source

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

Netflix has announced that their internet streaming movie service will be coming to the Nintendo Wii in Spring 2010.  The service will be identical to the PS3 service added some months ago which requires a physical disc to assess the streaming content (as opposed to an Application installed directly on the console like the XBox 360).

Please keep in mind that with the Wii’s maximum resolution of 480P wide-screen, the Wii-Netflix service may not be capable of properly displaying 720P HD content.  Although it is unknown at this time, chances are the HD videos will be downscaled to 480P.

To reserve your Wii Netflix disc today, click on the image below.

Picked this up doing the rounds this morning, enjoy the strange techy goodness.

I’m very interested to see where this ends up leading us to.