It's time again for the International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA)! Like last year, there will be cash prizes and other amazing opportunities for game developers.

 

The winner will have software licenses from Adobe, Nokia phones and a guaranteed contract for an operator and publisher to market the title. A total of US$ 40,000 will be awarded to winners in the following categories:

• Excellence in Connectivity (multi-platform, social networking)
• Excellence in 3D
• Excellence in Game Play
• Best-licensed IP-based game
• Best Casual Game (Flash, Java, etc.)

The contest is global, and participants can submit their games online at IMGA's official website. The basic platforms developers can use to create their games are, but not limited to, Flash, Java, Brew and I-Mode. The submissions deadline is on September 24. There will be 25 finalists chosen who will then have until January 28 to produce a demo version of their concept for the final judging and winners will be announced in Barcelona.

Head on over to their site for further details, provided at the Read link below. Good luck, developers.

Seems like the iPhone has acquired quite a following. It has even attracted the intense focus of more than 300 hackers who have gathered last weekend in San Francisco.

The iPhone was released last June 29 and since then has become so popular that a recent survey found it more popular than cars. A device that combines the iPod music player with a mobile phone that allows internet surfing, the iPhone is naturally the source of a lot of people's interests, even those who want to maximize its potential even if they go through unconventional means. Like a weekend camp designed for hacking.

In an effort to get what Apple won't give them, 300 (plus) brave hackers set out to find the limits and capabilities of the iPhone. Organized by Chris Messina, the iPhoneDevCamp was held in a borrowed office complete with its own message board projected on a big screen. The event was not sponsored by Apple and efforts by Adobe to make participants sign nondisclosure agreements were met with a quick boot.

Hackers at the camp have produced a number of unusual and interesting results. One found a way to make iPhones yell out like Chewbacca when dropped. Another figured out how to flip through the top 10 photos on Flickr with the touch of a finger. A useful program also went out to make the iPhone function as a baby monitor. One program that got some hype allowed customized home pages with iPhone icons. "For example, a user can put an icon for the cable station CNN on their home page if they want to go to the site every time they turn the iPhone on."

By the end of the camp, 45 new programs for the iPhone were demonstrated, not including those that the more secretive programmers have chosen to develop by themselves. Perhaps we may yet see more things spark in the future from the endeavors of the 300. We should also see more from the developers of the iPhone themselves and third party developers now that the public has shown so much interest in it.

The International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA) honored six mobile game developers for their amazing creativity and grasp of innovating the mobile game industry. The six were chosen by a jury of 13 industry experts upon their meeting last February 12.

They selected the winners for Grand Prix, Most Innovative Game, Best Use of Flash, Best Interactive Experience, Excellence in 3D, Best Use of Connectivity, and Most Innovative Game awards.

The results are as follows:

• TNO's (Netherlands) Triangler: Grand Prix Award, Most Innovative Game Award
• IKS Mobile's (Poland) Crazy Matches: Best Use of Flash Award
• Firemint's (Australia) Mega Monster: Excellence in 3D Award
• SuperHappyFunFun's (U.S.) 3DTiltAWorld: Interactive Experience Award
• Anino Mobile's (Philippines) Anima Wars: Best Use of Connectivity Award

Winners will also be supported by IMGA sponsors, which include Adobe, Movida, Nokia, Nvidia, Orange, Texas Instruments, Auchan Telecom, Belle-de-Mai Media Park Marseille and Vivendi Games Mobile, when they bring their games to the global market.

The awards ceremony noted that of the 25 finalists, 15 had shown the amazing use of creativity and innovation, and Kamar Shah, Global Head of Industry Marketing for Nokia, believes it identifies the growing trend for "social connected gaming experiences."

The team behind [H]Enthusiast tried out three core processors particularly for systems heavy on video editing, music encoding music and manipulating images. The contestants were Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800, Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, and AMD Athlon 64 FX-32.

The mission: Determine real-world benchmarks for functions an average person would perform on a home PC with similar specs.

The tests:

• Ripping a full-length motion picture from a DVD
• EncodingFrank Zappa's Packard Goose to an iPod native .mp4 / AAC file using iTunes
• Running Adobe Photoshop v8 and Driver Heaven's testing suite
• Importing a 2.3GB avi file imported from a camcorder
• Importing an 800MB MiniDV video clip from a video camera using Windows Movie Maker to encode it to the 2.1Mbps bitrate

The findings: When it comes to editing video, manipulating images, or encoding music, the Intel Core 2 Duo and Extreme processors at 2.66GHz outclassed AMD’s Athlon FX and Athlon 64 line of processors.

Finding out how to see and navigate through the Skype cloud to be able to find a Skype client, how to publish a client's profile into the Skype cloud so other Skype clients can find that one client, and how to negotiate starting the call session. These are the things needed to be figured out to be able to build a Skype-compatible client and are the things that a Chinese firm had to unearth to be able to come up with this application that allows Skype-compatible softphone calls.

The said Chinese firm has been successful in reverse-engineering Skype's communications protocol, leading them to build a Skype-compatible softphone. The firm aims to release their app to the public by the end of the month but they have not given word yet if they'll just offer consulting services or if they'll also publish the protocols and offer Skype-compatible consumer software and Skype-compatible engineering products to other developers.

Publishing this Skype calling protocol will not only benefit Skype users but will also open up opportunities for developers. Skype connectivity can now be built into a third party's own software without the need for an official Skype client. Also, it is possible to create Skype-compatible server software plus Skype to PBX integration allowing users to preserve their Skype identity, authentication, encryption, and presence while routed through an Asterisk server.

While this opening up of the Skype protocol is good for third party developers, it may kill Skype. They do have options on how to prevent an inevitable death with this application. Skype Journal's Phil Wolff suggests the following:

Open. They're already on the path to opening up more of their apps at the API level. Skype could embrace this at the protocol level too. This is the hardest thing to do, but may pay off in the long run. Exposing these protocols is the only way for the Skype network to become an industry standard. And it would put Skype in a position of leadership the way Microsoft is for dot net, Sun is for Java, and Adobe is for Flash.

Switch. Skype could change the protocols, breaking the new software. This is a costly and temporary solution; tricky but doable. Replacing Skype clients for updates is hard enough; getting everyone to migrate could kill the brand love. It won't be long until the Chinese engineers figure out how to get in again.

Quash. Skype might try to blow out the startup's fire. eBay has a powerful combination of PR, lobbyists, litigators, and business allies. Even in China. Skype could try to accuse the startup of piracy. My guess is Skype will tread litely. These tactics rarely work in China and often tarnish the reputation of the outsider applying the pressure.

Ignore. Skype has enough to do. Wait and see.

Invest. Buy the team, put them to work.

Since we're already halfway through the month, we'll just see how Skype reacts to this Skype-compatible softphone.

It seems that the e-book industry is getting a much-needed rejuvenation. The industry has sufferred from a slow and long take-off and when it finally did, it was marred by different consumer and reader issues, to getting content from one device to another, and its issue with digital rights management (DRM).

But a good news for those who are willing to deviate from the traditional way of reading books.  A new ebook standard has been adopted, and many major ebook and publishing players are backing it. The new standard, called IDPF (International Digital Puslihing Forum) is based on the OEBPS (Open ebook Publication Structure), an XML-based ebook format. Companies such as Mobipocket, Adobe, and OSoft have already expressed that they will be offering support for IDPF in the future.

As early as now, IDPF has begun working to formalize its cooperation and collaboration with other organizations. While the needs of the digital publishing industry may require specific technologies, IDPF policy is to build on broader information technology standards wherever possible. Such organization includes  the OASIS International standards consortium which hopes that the IDPF OEBPS container format may be further advanced within OASIS as a general file containment technology standard.

It seems that there is no stopping BlackBerry from blooming and improving! Now, they are making their presence felt on Reino de España. Under the Vodaphone network, the BlackBerry 8707v is released in Spain.

The 8707v packs the usual compliment of BlackBerry features, along with support for Vodaphone's UTMS network, which gives near broadband speeds and allows for simultaneous voice and data connects.
 
The 8707v is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS; 2100 MHz UTMS) device with 64 MB of memory, Bluetooth, and support for JPEG, BMP, TIFF, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect and Adobe PDF file formats. Indeed, BlackBerry is just beginning to flex its muscles.

Amidst the growth of the videogaming world, the mobile gaming industry has remained a contender in people's choice of entertainment. The international support received by the upcoming International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA) proves that mobile games are still an important sector of the entertainment and graphics industry.

Bringing us the third annual awards event for mobile gaming are Adobe, MOVIDA Group, Nokia, NVIDIA, and Texas Instruments. Sponsoring the event are Orange, the Khronos Group, Auchan and Belle de Mai Media Park, Marseille.

Formulated to encourage and reward the creativity of all leading studios and amateur mobile game developers prizes will be awarded for the the following categories:

• Grand Prix
• Most Innovative Game
• Best Interactive Experience
• Excellence in 3D
• Best Use of Connectivity

Students will aslo be able to partake in IMGA 2006 because the awards will also feature a separate competition for them. Aside from cash prizes, leading-edge gaming handsets, opportunities to attend top-level training camps, and an all-expenses-paid trip to the 3GSM World Conference 2007 in Barcelona are up for grabs.

Entrants who would like to compete in this year's IMGA are invited to submit initial proposals by 6pm CET 11 September 2006. The 20 best proposals will then be announced on September 20. Shortlisted entries will be given until 26 January 2007 to produce a demo version of their concept for judging. The winners will be announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona on February 14, 2007.

If you're interested in submitting your entries, full details are available in IMGA's official site.

Macworld tested the new Intel-based laptops, both the 1.83GHz white and the 2.0GHz black models, set to replace the G4 based Powerbook and the G4 based iBooks. The processor speeds of these new non-pro MacBooks are the same as the first generation of MacBook Pros so they hold up pretty well in processor-heavy tasks and they beat the G4 based laptops except for the Photoshop test.

Note: Because Adobe has yet to release a universal binary for the CS2 suite they were ran through Rosetta.

The results look as good as the new MacBook color, I've always been a fan of black electronics (in fact all I carry is a black cell, a black PSP, and a black iPod) but until Adobe get the universal binary of CS2 out I'm afraid I'll have to stick to my iBook G4. What do you think of the benchmark results? What do you think of the new MacBook Color? We want to hear from you in the comments!