How do you take a great idea like Xbox Live games coming to cellphones and ruin it? By only bringing those games to Windows Mobile phones, which may be what Microsoft has planned.

As you can see by the image above, taken from some internal Microsoft marketing material from last month, Xbox Live is spread across the Xbox 360, Windows and...Windows Phone. Now, this could just be a stand-in for many phones, or a new branding for game content to be available on many platforms. But it also could mean the games are just heading to Windows Mobile phones, which would pretty much kill the entire initiative right off the bat.

Also conspicuously absent from these plans: the Zune. No love for the Zune, Microsoft? [Kotaku]

Google's Nexus One support forums have been flooded with anecdotes about the phone's poor 3G connectivity, so one user decided to follow up with some reasonably scientific tests. The conclusion? The Nexus One is kind of terrible at basic cellphonery!

The test was simple and limited, consisting of one dude, user WV, wandering in and out of his house, recording signal strength as measured in dBm and ASU with Android's built-in metering app. Assuming the Nexus One is supposed to work like a normal cellphones—that is, it connects to 3G networks when they're available and EDGE only when they're not—something's wrong.

Since the phone is obviously finding and receiving the cellular signals just fine, but not handling them as you'd expect, randomly flipping between the two—and evidently preferring EDGE most of the time—no matter how strong its signal is. This points to a software issue, not a hardware issue. That, and this:

OK. I found "Phone Info" screen through "Any Cut". This looks like a screen not intended for average users. It clearly has settings that should not be messed with. However, it does have a pull down menu that was set to "WCDMA Preferred". I changed this to "WCDMA Only". The phone reset, and never again saw the f'ing "E" on the signal indicator- ALL 3G. After about 1/2 hour of speed tests (150k - 800kbps) and google satellite map downloads (all definitely faster), I switched back to "WCDMA Preferred". Guess what? After a few minutes, I was back on EDGE, even with a good signal. Switched back to "WCDMA Only", and 3G it remains.

This doesn't fully solve the problem, because as WV notes, if you fall out of T-Mobile's 3G coverage area with EDGE disabled, you're basically boned. But anyway, yes, this appears to be a software bug. Or, if you're feeling conspiratorial today, like WV, a software feature:

My concern is whether T-mobile is being sneaky about this and purposefully dumbing down the 3G to Edge to reduce cell frequency congestion and/or their back-end network congestion.

I'm not sure I want to draw that nexus (haw?) quite yet, since the issue was first brought to light by comparing the Nexus One's 3G/EDGE handling to other T-Mobile 3G Android handsets, and those, despite having the same data-sucking potential as the Google Phone, haven't been throttled in any way. While Google is silent and T-Mobile says they're "investigating," the evidence keeps mounting and the question looms larger: what's really wrong with the Nexus One's 3G? [Google Nexus One Support Forums]

Proving once again that Apple's iTunes approval process is absurd and futile, an app developer got his porn browser approved in under 12 hours, even with all the latest rules in place. The funny thing: Apple doesn't know about it.

Until now, that is. Here's what the developer told us:

I developed an app that is currently available in the app store. It's called forChan and it is technically the first app with nudity that meets all of Apples requirements (hey, it was approved in under 12 hours believe it or not!).

It is a web browser/photo app. You have to enter URLs to browse different imageboards which do/don't contain nudity. You can switch between categories to decide which uncensored content gets delivered to the
previous URL (blondes, brunettes, etc, etc).

There is currently over 100,000 pics spread between 15 categories with much much more coming soon.

It's pretty simple. When you get the app, you can only browse a gallery of dogs. They are naked, but they are dogs, so unless you are into furry butts and lipsticks, all is fine.

But after pasting the image board URL, forChan allows you to browse through your favorite smut with ease, including full frontal nudity. While I haven't seen any gallery with actual sexual intercourse yet, you can basically set this $1 iPhone/iPod touch software to browse whatever material you want. The app is 17+ and its description mentions nudity and sex, so Apple must know about it. However, no other 17+ iTunes Store app shows all the juicy bits.

Would Apple remove this app, like they did with BeautyMeter? That was a interactive application for teens, created to exchange photos and rate them. Porn was bound to happen. This one, however, is just a web browser for images. If they ban it, however, they will be consistent with previous cases: Any app that can be used to browse porn is automatically removed from the store.

But unlike previous cases, the software itself is truly innocuous until you enter a web address in the URL field (one could have argued the same about BeautyMeter, which was innocuous until you uploaded your bust or penis to ie). So, if they remove forChan, they will set yet another dangerous precedent.

I can think about another app in the iPhone that does exactly what forChan does. It comes from the factory.

Its name is Safari. [iTunes App Store]

With $1.36 billion in worldwide receipts after last weekend, Avatar topped LOTR: Return of the King and is now the second highest grossing film of all time. Next up? Titanic. Its record is just $500 million away. [BusinessWeek]

As if streets didn't have enough pandemonium, Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki has created a White Noise Machine. He put it in a street in Delhi, India, and this is what happened.

The White Noise Generator analyzes the sound coming into it, and spits it back at you as gibberish. Sometimes I believe that Times Square does this on its own, out of pure acoustics. [Designboom]

The darker transgressions of our digital lives are sometimes left better unmeasured. [9Gag via TheNextWeb]

For those who can't afford clear OLED laptops, this acrylic concept by designers at PEGA may be the next best thing...if you enjoy squinting at those sitting across from you through a tiny port between your keyboard and screen.

It's pretty, but as soon as this machine leaves its studio photography session, it'll be covered in a layer of irremovable human grease. [PEGA via designboom via Unplggd]

This bit of Blu-Ray news was left suspiciously out of Sony's CES keynotes and big reveals, which doesn't bode well...but anyway. Now it's out: The BD Live feature MovieIQ Sync debuted with Michael Jackson's This Is It. Woo?

Now, what does this feature do, exactly? Well here's a refresher...it lets you view supplementary materials on your PC or iPhone while you watch the movie, without any of it appearing on the TV screen. The "sync" part means the information presented on your monitor or iPhone is synced up appropriately with the movie.

The disc also has a feature that allows owners to create and share custom playlists using songs from the movie. Again, not a lot of fanfare about this. Could it be that most people don't really mess around with all this extra crap on their discs, and just, you know, want to watch the movie? [BigPictureBigSound via Engadget]

Brazil is one of my favorite countries. Cool people, great music, heavenly beaches, and caipirinhas. But if you have to buy a Mac, you are screwed. And like this graphic shows, it's the same in other places in the world.

Brazil wins, however: The price of one MacBook Pro 17" there buys you two identical models in the US. It's the same with other Apple products, so if you can't live without your Apple fix, you better move to another country.

I'd take the caipirinhas and the beaches, thank you very much. [cmyplay—Thanks]

Here's your job: Stand for ten hours in a noisy convention center. (You might want to wear something revealing.) Try to get the attention of thousands of men—and a few women—who rush by. And don't forget to smile.

We didn't approach these women—models, actresses, circus performers, dancers, students, nurses, programmers—just to ogle and schmooze. We didn't simply want to collect pretty pictures for readers to drool over. (Although we did that, too.) We wanted to get to know the girls, their pasts, how they came to be booth babes, what they did when they weren't charming strangers, and what they experienced during their times at conventions such as CES.

Many of these intelligent, charming women had a sense of reluctance when it came to taking members of the press seriously. Often we heard girls talk of men who don't understand that a "press badge isn't an excuse" to fondle them as one might touch "everything shiny and pretty" in the booths.

A booth babe's job is to lure convention attendees into her booths, to do a product demonstration or to pass people off to a coworker. That's fine. But when misunderstandings occur—or attendees forget they're interacting with living, breathing human beings—some attendees turn into jerks, pressing intimidatingly close and crossing boundaries.

Some slip these girls their hotel keys, pressuring them for a visit later in the day. Others mistake professional flirting for actual flirting and try pick-up lines. "Do you know what the speed of light inside a vacuum is? I do."

We've shown off pictures of booth babes plenty and even encouraged ogling them. Others in the tech industry, such as game developer EA, have promoted this mentality to the point of offering a bounty to anyone harassing their booth babes with photo evidence. The point is that these girls are being paid to be pretty and cordial—and we aren't ashamed to enjoy checking them out and laughing with them.

But there wasn't a single woman we spoke to that didn't have at least one icky experience. Let their confessions serve as a warning to you: don't be a creep.

Many thanks to Adam Lam and Christopher Mascari for assisting with the video, Michael Margolis for sending in a few photos, every wonderful woman who spoke to us (particularly Bob Suicide whose encounter guided along this idea), and every single gal running a booth or promoting a product.

Hey storage fiends? The 4TB WSS NAS monster from Buffalo just jumped the Pacific and made its way Stateside. The smokey smell is your credit card.

At $2,000, the 4TB version may be a bit steep for some, and the 2TB version for $1,600 ain't much cheaper. But that's still a lot of storage.

For comparison's sake, one of this unit's predecessors, a 3TB beast launched in 2007, was $2183. One extra terabyte, just $183. Now, what to fill it with... [PR Newswire via Engadget]

Forget PowerMats and wireless charging and the like, because the Airnergy wi-fi signal harvester is my new front runner for the future of gadget charging.

It's not exactly new tech, as ohGizmo notes, but it's the first application that's of any real use to consumers. Put simply, Airnergy takes the energy created by wi-fi signals and stores it in a rechargeable battery. At CES, the device's battery, which I believe was precharged with Wi-Fi power, was able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% power to full power in about 90 minutes.

Pretty handy, and supposedly available this summer for $40. Not too shabby, and very appealing considering how ubiquitous wi-fi hotspots are these days. Very simple, somewhat cheap and incredibly useful if it works are advertised—by far one of the coolest things I've seen come out of CES this year. [OhGizmo]

For many X-Wings in the Star Wars universe, the end came as a spectacular explosion on the field of battle. Not so much for this RCX-4 helicopter. For it, the end will no doubt arrive as a boring ol' lawsuit.

First spied at CES, hovering in the air and openly thumbing its nose at George Lucas and Lucasfilm, the RCX-4 is a four screw beast of an RC helicopter that bears more than just a passing resemblance to the workhorse of the Rebellion. And like Dak, Luke's enthusiastic but doomed gunner in The Empire Strikes Back, it too feels as though it could take on the whole Empire by itself, if not for that pesky IP issue that will surely bring it down very, very soon.

So its days are numberd, but even so this knockoff sounds decidedly un-knockoff in the quality department. Developer Digitronics promises easy flight thanks to an on board gyro and simple controls. The aluminum case is beefy. The asking price is steep. The chopper even has the ability to hover safely in place all by its lonesome, should you have to put the controller down to take receipt of a subpoena or something. [ars technica]

By way of Kotaku, we hear about Canadian blogger Rinry, who subjected eight NES cartridges to all manner of video game torture and hell. When the dust settled, seven of the cartridges still worked. [Kotaku]

DailyTech reports that a number of companies with tiny budgets who resorted to the survival tactic of showing their new gear at hotel suites around Vegas during CES were kicked out of hotel rooms they paid for by CES's organizers.

One company was reportedly ordered to pay a $10,000 exhibition fee to the CEA, the organization behind CES, in order to continue showing their products in their hotel suite.

If you're one of the companies who got booted, we'd like you to pitch us your new stuff, so we know we didn't miss you because of the CEA. [DailyTech]

We've seen batteries charged by outlets and by cranks, but this concept from designers Song Teaho and Hyejin Lee is the first that charges with a twirl.

However, like all things tagged concept, this battery doesn't *technically* exist yet.

Still, Teaho and Lee both hypothesize that this battery, should it become the real deal, would require about 130 twirls for two-minutes talk time.

From what I've seen of crank-charged batteries, that seems relatively plausible (and tiring). Get to work, fellas. [design(dot)fr via Engadget]

The New York Times takes an interactive look at what Netflix users are watching in a dozen U.S. cities, including my backyard, Boston. My neighbors are watching what now?

Oh, just Mad Men, it seems, with a sizable pocket in Cambridge. We're so liberal.

And why the heck was Eagle Eye so popular on the North Shore last year? Anyone? [New York Times via Slashdot]

The few times I go bowling each year are more about pitchers of cheap beer than they are satiating some desire for the perfect game, but nevertheless I'm intrigued by this "smart ball" from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Developed by sports scientist Franz Fuss, the smart bowling ball contains aluminum tubes in the finger holes that track the force a bowler applies to each roll. Fuss had ten bowlers of different skill levels bowl various shots down the lane, measured the force, and used it to try and find the perfect shot.

The simple system found that the better bowlers were consistent (surprise!), in that they always pinched the ball with "much greater force prior to release." This allowed for a much faster delivery than the newbs, and of course higher scores. [New Scientist]

The Westminster Chiming Grandfather clock is an obelisk of discarded toys. At 2.2 meters tall, it's also a monstrous, functioning timepiece that now resides in, where else, Dubai.

But how was it created? Well, just a little Buzz Lightyear here, Hulk action figure there, and then a coat of high gloss polyurethane white paint to seal everyone in.

There are more out there, says designer Ryan Mc Elhinney, with the toys used symbolizing the client's childhood memories. This leads me to believe some clocks are far scarier than others. [Dezeen]

The Microvision pico-projector video game gun controller we profiled last month might actually see the light of day—and soon. Who's ready for some murky, awkward angle FPS fun?

I mean, I kid Microvision about the fact that you'd need a cylindrical room with nothing on the walls and no light to use this controller properly, really, but nevertheless—my angst aside—there seems to be enough demand in place that their CEO is going to market this thing sooner rather than later.

CEO Alexander Tokman said manufacturer samples are slated to be sent out later this year, with cellphone, video game and other markets creating real, live products sometime in 2011. Because random, screaming kids playing Gears of War 2 on the side of the subway during the morning rush would be totally cool with me... [Projector Info]