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\r\nToday, Apple Inc. introduced its much hyped and much anticipated tablet device known as the iPad. The new hardware resembles an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch, uses a modified version of the iPhone OS interface, and borrows some elements from Mac OS X such as a Dock, floating windows and a desktop background.\r\n

\r\nThe tablet itself is half an inch in thickness, weighs 1.5 pounds, uses a 9.7-inch 1024x768 display, has a 1GHz Apple A4 processor, and 16 to 64GB of flash storage. It is also equipped with an accelerometer, compass, microphone, built-in speakers, wireless 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and 3G. The unit\'s battery is said to last a month on standby, with 10 hours for running video.\r\n

\r\nMultiple demos at the media event in San Francisco have shown unmodified iPhone apps working on the iPad at original resolution and scaled up to take advantage of the iPad\'s increased screen real estate. According to Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software at Apple Inc., the iPad can run \"virtually every\" app (presumably including The Sims 3 for iPhone) without modification by using an on-screen button to scale an app\'s resolution up and down as desired. Users of the iPhone or iPod Touch will not need to re-purchase apps to load them onto an iPad.\r\n

\r\nA thoughtful editorial written by developer Ara Shirinian has been spotted over at the Gamasutra website, which deals with the subject of gameplay and narrative in video games and their continuing evolution. Here is an excerpt:\r\n

\r\n\"In a quiet and unassuming way, for better or worse, the video game of today has evolved beyond just abstract gameplay and into a generalized entertainment medium that can contain imagery, audio, and text of almost any kind. Indeed, we have already surpassed the point where the quality and category of exposition is more limited by how we choose to allocate our resources and our ingenuity than it is by any hard technological constraint.\"\r\n

\r\nThe six page article can be found at the following link:\r\n

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\r\nBioware is one of the biggest and most respected names in the video games industry today. In celebration of the company\'s 15th anniversary IGN has put together an extensive article detailing Bioware\'s history, from its humble beginnings to its strategic acquisition by game publishing giant Electronic Arts in 2007. And now a sampler:\r\n

\r\n\"Thanks to its groundbreaking PC and console role-playing games, BioWare has both elevated the genre and established Canada as a world power in the gaming industry. With their biggest game -- Mass Effect 2 -- now arriving, and their fifteenth anniversary just weeks away, it\'s safe to say that BioWare is just getting started.\"\r\n

\r\nThe five page article, written by Travis Fahs, can be found at the following link:\r\n

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\r\nFor those using Firefox, there is a handy thirteen page guide over at the Tweakguides website. Written by Koroush Ghazi, this guide is a handy resource for getting the most out of the open sourced, dynamic and evolving web browser. Here is a sampler:\r\n

\r\n\"Whether you\'re a first-time user or a veteran, this Firefox Tweak Guide brings together all the major tips, tricks and tweaks for Firefox - from the very basic to the very advanced. The guide provides all the information you need to know about all of Firefox\'s features, and how you can use them to your advantage. Consider it a crash course in all things Firefox. You can also rest assured that the guide is not written by a raving Firefox fanboy - it\'s a true objective TweakGuides tweak guide.\"\r\n

\r\nThe full guide can be found at the following link:\r\n