It seems to be battery news day in the tech world. Panasonic has announced a new line of alkaline batteries that should last 1.3 to 2 times longer than the current ones.

The EVOLTAs should release on April 26th and will carry at 15% price increase over the standard AA batteries. Sounds like a perfect product for Wiimotes and 360 controllers.

(via Engadget)

One of the coolest things we saw at CES 2008 was Alienware's curved monitor prototype that hopes to finally address the issues of peripheral vision in games.

The monitor is equivalent to two 24" LCDs and looks amazing running Crysis.

Check out our interview now and look forward to this tech releasing in about 6 months.

As you all know, Warner Brothers went Blu-Ray, but rumor has it that the WB was rewarded with a fat stack ($500 million!!) of cash money for their choice.

The story goes like this: Warner was seeing its DVD sales slump because of the format war and wanted to end it quickly. They preferred HD-DVD, but going Blu would end it sooner. They gave Toshiba a chance if they could get another Blu-Ray studio to switch.

FOX was apparently lined up, but dropped at the last minute due to a reported $120 million payout by Sony.

This lead Warner to go Blu-Ray as well. If true, this is $620 million of payouts by Sony.

Tough luck, Toshiba. You win this game with your checkbook, not lower prices.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Sound Advice: Blu-ray wins in format war, but at what cost?

Reactrix Systems showed off some Wii-like advertising tech called WaveScape at CES last week and they plan to roll it out soon to 150 Hilton hotels.

The sytems will provide mini-games that can advertise hotel features at the same time. They claim that the mini-games can be finished in a matter of weeks and that the games are extremely simple to produce.

They claim it's Wii-like, but we think it's Vii-like.

There are no current plans for a consumer release, but look for Wii fever to hit advertising soon.

PC World: Wii-like Game System Works with LCD TVs

The Consumer Electronics Show has come and gone and we’ve been trying to wrap our brains around everything we saw to try and sum it up for you. We can only come to the conclusion that unless you really like HDTVs and their ability to grow in screen size, decrease in thickness, and get rid of wires, there wasn’t that much to see.

There were products that played MP3’s for no reason and big companies showing off their already released product lines. Bill Gates made his last keynote address to CES and Microsoft made some minor announcements.

Sony showed off some beautiful OLED TVs (hey, more TVs!) and added Skype to the PSP. Pioneer wowed us with two concept plasma TVs that we won’t see on the market for at least a year.

Maverick tech blog gizmodo were bad at CES. Using a TV-B-Gone remote, the bloggers turned off monitors in the middle of the show floor and during presentation, causing rage and hair-pulling from exhibitors and lulz for themselves.

The movie they took is sweeping the internet with debate about the ethics and morals of the whole deal.

Here's a video. Watch it and let us know what you think.

TheFeed's reaction is mixed. On one hand, we enjoy a good prank, and think CES takes itself way too seriously for a convention of new televisions, cell phones and car stereos, so the punk-kid half of our personality thought it was funny in a dumb way.

But the grown-up half thought: That guy doing that presentation didn't do anything to those bloggers, and showing off TVs is his job. Should he lose an order because a retailer now sees those displays as unreliable, someone should be punched in the mouth.

What about you? Mean? Funny?

In an interview with German publication Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bill Gates flat-out said that Microsoft will not be going after the iPhone directly.

"No, we won't do that. In the so-called smart phone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile [Operating System]," said Gates.

Gates stressed that their partnerships with manufacturer's like Motorola (with the Q) and Samsung (with the BlackJack) allow them to reach more customers than if they were to release their own device.

Still, the iPhone has managed to capture a 20% smartphone market share since its release.

Yahoo News: Gates Says Microsoft Won't Launch iPhone Rival

We managed to snag an interview with the very busy Kevin Unangst, Senior Global Director of Games for Windows, at CES 2008. Kevin definitely doesn't believe that PC gaming is dead and spoke with us about the Games for Windows brand, Games for Windows Live, and future plans for the platform.

First, Microsoft has announced 9 new titles that will be released under the Games for Windows brand in 2008:

• "Alone in the Dark" (Atari)
• "Bionic Commando" (Capcom)
• "Conflict: Denied Ops" (Eidos Interactive)
• "Empire: Total War" (SEGA)
• "LEGO Indiana Jones" (LucasArts)
• "Microsoft Train Simulator 2" (Microsoft Game Studios)
• "Sins of a Solar Empire" (Stardock)
• "Space Siege" (SEGA)
• "Tomb Raider: Underworld" (Eidos Interactive)

Second, Kevin informed us that Microsoft plans to invest much more heavily in GFW and GFW Live in 2008. They see 2007 as laying the "plumbing" and infrastructure and 2008 is where the platform (yes, they see it as a platform, just like the 360) will grow.

Among the high-tech gadgets that made its debut at CES this week was a lil’ thing called Fyre.

No, not the electronics store! It's the cool, new box o' porn invention!

Miami-based entrepreneur Estefano Isaias calls Fyre the first set-top box to deliver DVD-quality adult movies on demand to home televisions. The Fyre just needs to be plugged into an Ethernet port via a broadband connection, with another plug in the TV set.

During his keynote CES speech, General Motors chief executive Rick Wagoner said that by 2012, half the company's cars will use Flex-fuel energy alternatives.

"All the factors point to a convergence of the automotive and electronics industries that is literally transforming the automobile," he said.

A few hours earlier, General Motors vice president of the research and development centre Lawrence Burns told earth2tech.com that the industry needs to move to new fuel sources like hydrogen cells and ethanol because "the power grid has surplus power that equals 40% of the miles driven in the US."

Sony and Media Molecule unveiled new features to the "play, create, share" title LittleBigPlanet to CES conventioneers and business types yesterday.

The team demonstrated a new pre-built level that introduces player death and respawn points to the DIY platformer, and showed off a steaming hot magma rock that kills on contact. Yippee!

There’s also an updated emote system further, with angry, sad, nervous, happy faces and postures, each with three degrees of intensity. Plus, “Sackboys who've been killed off can return later, courtesy of respawn portals. This adds a bit more of a competitive element to the game, as those still alive can secure unclaimed Fluff. At the end of the level, the LittleBigPlanet player with the most Fluff wins.”

At CES this week, Best Buy Inc.'s CEO Brad Anderson called the shutdown of most analog TV transmissions in 13 months “one of the biggest risks our industry has."

Anderson says he is "very nervous" about being able to supply customers with the millions of digital TV converter boxes needed when the analog boxes are no longer available.

Full-power television stations will turn off their analog signal on February 17, 2009, after which they will broadcast in digital only. Viewers who get their signals via an antenna instead of cable or satellite and don't have a digital-ready TV will need to buy a converter. That’s about 14.3 million households, by the way!

While taking great pains to explain that they still support HD-DVD, a Microsoft executive told Reuters the company could consider supporting Sony Corp's Blu-ray technology should consumers want it.

"It should be consumer choice; and if that's the way they vote, that's something we'll have to consider," Albert Penello, group marketing manager for Xbox hardware said.

"I fundamentally don't think ... this has a significant impact on Xbox 360 versus (Sony's) PlayStation 3," Penello told Reuters in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Reuters: Microsoft's Xbox could consider Blu-ray support

The people at 3DV are bringing the Wii mechanic to the PC with the ZCam. Working in concert, the ZCam and accompanying software give PC owners the ability to use their hands to manipulate objects on their desktops at a frame rate of up to 60 fps.

That's great, because you’d better believe you’ll be able to play games with it! The simple, yet evocative USB device will hit store shelves some time before Saint Nick has to load up his sleigh and harness his magical reindeer.

Here’s a bit of news that will come as no surprise to you: Apple has unveiled a newer version of its popular Mac Pro, and according to Phil Schiller, Senior Vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing for Apple, it’s the "fastest Mac we've ever made."

The new monster machine has 8 cores and the 45nm quad-core Penryn Xeon 5400 CPUs from Intel. It also comes complete with 320GB drive, two PCI Express slots, as well as two PCI Express 2.0 slots, 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM , Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, 16x DVDRW and the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (256MB) graphics card, all for the low, low price of $2,800.

It’s time for you to hit up your old man for money again.