From DailyTech: Video game developers are always after the best effects and most realistic environmental interactions for their games. The more realistic and up to date techniques the developer can use when designing the video game, the more realistic and immersive the finished game will be for gamers.

One of the most recent additions to video games to make them more realistic is physics support. When physics interactions were first added to video games enabling them required a dedicated add-in card from Ageia called the PhysX card.

Ageia's add-in card never really took off, but NVIDIA saw the potential in physics processing on the computer with its GPUs and purchased Ageia in 2008. Since the purchase of Ageia, NVIDIA has added support for PhysX processing on its new GPUs and is rolling the technology out to game consoles.

NVIDIA announced this week that it has been approved by Nintendo as an official third party tools provider for developers building Wii games. NVIDIA's PhysX technology SDK is now available to all Wii developers.

"Nintendo has reshaped the home entertainment and video game market with the success of the Wii console. Adding a PhysX SDK for Wii is key to our cross-platform strategy and integral to the business model for our licensed game developers and publishers," said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA. "With NVIDIA PhysX technology, developers can easily author more realistic game environments for the evolving demands of a broad class of Wii gamers."

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From PC World: Thursday's announcement of HD movies sales being added to the iTunes Store may have been good news for consumers of Apple-supplied content--especially Apple TV users, who are best poised to enjoy such HD content. But it also highlights the big drawback of the Apple TV--that Apple sees it as a way to sell you more TV shows and movies, not as a way for you to access and watch all the video content out there.

Sure, you can capture and convert video files to play on your TV via an Apple TV (a time-consuming and sometimes multi-step process), but what about streaming Web video? Beside YouTube content, the Apple TV provides no way to view Web videos--free TV show episodes from sites such as Hulu, for example. This NBC Universal and News Corporation venture features content from Fox, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, and Warner Bros., and is available through a standard Web browser. And it's exactly what the Apple TV is missing.

Boxee attempted to bridge the gap with an Apple TV hack that let you install its software on your Apple TV, and in the process gain access to some of that untapped Web media to people sitting on their couches, including Hulu content (at least until Hulu told Boxee to stop doing so).

And then there are products such as the Roku Netflix Player (), which brings Netflix's Instant Watching service to your TV set with a US$99 box. Unlike the iTunes Store's paid movie rentals, Netflix gives subscribers to its DVD-rental service free streaming access to more than 10,000 titles (including TV shows, which Apple only sells, but doesn't rent).

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From PC World: Intel reaffirmed on Friday that it was readying new ultra-low-voltage chips, due in the second quarter, for inexpensive ultraportable laptops.

The company will ship the ULV chips as part of its Montevina Plus mobile laptop platform, an updated version of the existing Montevina platform, said Connie Brown, a company spokeswoman.

The chips could go into thin and small laptops that provide full PC functionality but are cheaper than existing ultraportable laptops, which are generally priced above US$1,500.

Laptops based on Intel's ULV chips could be as thin as Apple's MacBook Air or Dell's recently launched Adamo, with prices ranging between $599 and $1,299. In announcing the chips, Intel said it wanted to bring ultraportable laptops to the masses.

"You'll see many more of the ultra-thin laptop models at a variety of price points, and not just on the high end. This will give both business and general consumers more choice," Brown said.

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From CNET News.com: Google has begun work on one much-requested feature of its Chrome browser, the ability to detect when a Web page offers a subscription service through RSS or Atom technology.

Google programmer Finnur Thorarinsson formally marked the RSS support issue as "started" on Wednesday, though the feature is disabled for now.

"The first part of this has been implemented and checked in," Thorarinsson said, referring to the part that discovers when RSS feeds are available on a Web site. The feature is disabled for now, though, because the second part, which will produce a page that lets people actually subscribe to the feed, isn't yet available, he said in his comment about Chrome's RSS support.

When Chrome debuted in September, many often basic features available in rival browsers were missing. Google has been working feverishly to add them, though. A total of 250 people flagged RSS support as being an issue of interest, second only to the Chrome extensions, which 725 people flagged.

Google is working on extensions, too, which will let people customize the browser with features such as ad blocking. Extensions are a popular selling point with Firefox, the second most popular browser after Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

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From CNET News.com: Douglas Bowman, Google's visual design leader, is leaving the company after finding the company's reliance on detailed Web page performance data too confining.

Bowman clearly had mixed feelings about departing, but he wasn't shy with his opinion about what he didn't like. From Bowman's blog post Friday on the matter:

When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data...that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions...

Yes, it's true that a team at Google couldn't decide between two blues, so they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that. I've grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions...

I'll miss working with the incredibly smart and talented people I got to know there. But I won't miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.

Bowman also gripes that Google's designers came from a background of computer science and human-computer interaction rather than classical design, and that none of them rank high in the pecking order.

Google's vice president of search and user experience, Marissa Mayer, is pretty high-ranking and cares a lot about design. But it's not hard to see how her philosophy might rankle. Here's one thing she said about design in a 2008 speech: "On the Web in general, (creating sites) is much more a design than an art...You can find small differences and mathematically learn which is right."

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From X-bit Labs: ATI, graphics products group of Advanced Micro Devices, has reportedly boosted its orders to manufacturers of its graphics processors, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corp. The increase of orders may mean that the company anticipates rising demand of graphics cards or may indicate that AMD does not have a lot of products left in stock.

ATI ordered less than 2 thousand wafers to TSMC and UMC back in January and February, but doubled volume to 4-5 thousand wafers in March, according to a report from Commercial Times news-paper (the article was partly translated by DigiTimes web-site). However, AMD is expected to place orders for 8-9 thousand wafers at TSMC and UMC in April and 10 thousands in May.

According to Jon Peddie Research, 15.2 million discrete graphics cards powered by graphics processing units from ATI or Nvidia Corp. were shipped in Q4 2008, representing a 42.7% decline (year-over-year), accounting for $2.5 billion in revenue, reflecting a similar 43.8% decline in revenue. As a result, it is not surprising that both AMD and Nvidia dramatically lowered orders to TSMC and TSMC early this year.

It is not clear whether AMD substantially increased production volumes because it is about to roll-out new graphics cards – ATI Radeon HD 4700-series and ATI Radeon HD 4890 – powered by code-named of RV740 and RV790 chips or because it is about to run out of graphics chips and core-logic sets or because the company expects the rise of demand towards graphics cards.

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From InfoWorld: Windows 7 is the first Microsoft OS developed away from the watchful eye of Bill Gates, and the technical leaders who built it had to adjust to life at the company without its cofounder and former chief software architect, CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday.

"We have a lot of people who are stepping up and growing in new ways," Ballmer said, speaking at the McGraw-Hill 2009 Media Summit in New York. "There's no question about that. I'm growing in some new ways. Some of the senior technical guys are growing in new ways. "

Windows 7, which is expected to be out later this year, is a product of some of the changes that have taken place since Gates left, and Microsoft is proud of the result, he said in an on-stage interview conducted by BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler.

"It's a great piece of work," Ballmer said. "And it's a piece of work that was driven by a team ... independent of Bill and his leadership. And I think we're all, you know, feeling pretty good about it. We've got to finish it. But I think it'll be a big, big deal."

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From PC World: Sony Ericsson issued a profit warning on Friday, saying it will sell only about 14 million phones during the first quarter of 2009, down 8.3 million phones from the same period last year.

The company also expects to post a €340 million (US$460 million) to €390 million net loss before taxes, excluding €10 million to €20 million in restructuring charges. It will announce first quarter results on April 17.

For the first quarter of 2008, Sony Ericsson sold 22.3 million phones and made a €133 million net profit.

The drop in sales and increased net loss are the result of weak consumer demand and slowing retail orders for new stock, according to a company statement.

Last year, Sony Ericsson announced plans to cut costs by €300 million annually and lay off 2,000 people.

The news doesn't come as surprise to Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi. "The mobile phone market has picked up a little bit in the first quarter, but not in the markets Sony Ericsson is dependent on," she said.

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