Early in September, some of the luminaries of the mobile gaming and mmog industries got together for the Austin Game Conference, an event organized by the Austin Game Initiative. Running concurrently with the Game Conference was the Women's Game Conference, a get-together focused on women in gaming. Over the past two weeks there have been a number of good reflections and observations put forth on the experience of both conferences. Show Director Chris Sherman sat down for an interview with Gamespot. Gamedevnet has a wrap-up of the whole event, as does the Guardian. TerraNova has observations on The BigWorld Middlewear suite, and a mmog specific wrap-up. For those interested in wireless, IBM has an article about mobile gaming. There are discussions of the Women's Gaming Conference as well, from MemoryCard's parting thoughts and the Guardian's one day overview.

kwiens writes "We had such a positive response from Slashdot with our Free-As-In-Beer Mac disassembly instructions last time around, we decided to do it again: We've made six more FixIt Guides, perfect for those intrepid road-warriors who refuse to trust anyone else to work on their 'Book. Now there's nothing stopping you from trying that LNO2 overclock on your PowerBook-- or just a hard drive upgrade. The new Guides have professional photos, a new GUI design, and screw guides (no, not this). Guides are now available for all iBook G3, PowerBook G3, and PowerBook G4 models (including the oft-requested 12, 15, and 17 Aluminum 'Books)."

b0m8ad1l asks: "I'm wondering what AV, software/hardware firewalls Slashdot readers are using these days. I remember another Ask Slashdot a long time ago, but i'm curious as to how everyone is keeping up with the times. I'm using Kaspersky AV, Sygate Personal Firewall Pro, behind a Netgear RP114 router"

mjpaci asks: "One of my co-workers has a son, age 12, who is visually impaired among other problems. He is smart, charismatic, and funny--an all around good kid. Due to complications during his mother's pregnancy, he is near-blind. His father is a saint and spends many hours each night helping his child with homework. The problem is that the child is now taking Social Studies in junior high and has great trouble with geography as he cannot read the maps in the book even with his 'overhead visualizer.' Can Slashdot help me help this child?"

rgovostes asks: "I've been looking around for a (hopefully low-cost) Linux-based handheld device with WiFi capabilities for some network testing and security evaluation. I need to be able to ping, list nearby WiFi signals, and run Ettercap. I'd also like it to be Mac OS X compatible without much work. I found handhelds.org (Coralized), which has some information, but I'm not very handheld-savvy, so it isn't too helpful to me. Am I asking for something unrealistic or is something like this possible? Any advice on the matter would be appreciated."

Anonymous the younger writes "Cringely once again has another column, this time with a company in Canada that does neato stuff with Open Source."

pacopico writes "HP's much hyped and highly-regarded UDC system has gone the way of the dodo. The Register charts the technology's demise and points to the few other reporters who covered UDC's end. Spent some time at HP checking out UDC and am sad to see it go. Ahead of its time to be sure."

Tong writes "PDA Buyer's Guide has published an in-depth review of the HP iPAQ hx4605. 'This has been the month of the iPAQ with so many new models released! The hx4705 is one of the most anticipated because it features a fantastic VGA display and a super-fast 624MHz processor. Heap on plenty of memory, Bluetooth, WiFi, both CF and SD slots and a touch pad navigator and you've got the 4705. It's one of only two Pocket PCs with a VGA display sold in the US.' Read the full review on the buyer's guide."

LeninZhiv writes "Celebrating five years of DevelopperWorks goodness, IBM has just launched a new section dedicated to the Power architecture. Initial stories include such goodies as "the developerWorks' Power Architecture challenge" and the Linux on Power Architecture toolkit. May this usher in a new era of community support for Linux on POWER outside IBM?"

dolphin558 writes "Warp Pipe may be in partnership with Nintendo to bring online gaming to the Nintendo DS! What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming that hasn't been seen before. A press conference is scheduled for October 7th. I cannot wait!" This would seem to partially confirm earlier speculations, and partially explain Warp Pipe's decision earlier this year.

Digital_Quartz writes "Students at the Vienna University of Technology have come up with an augmented reality game in which players control virtual trains on a real wooden track. Players can adjust railway switches, and must prevent the trains from colliding. The catch is, of course, that the trains don't exist; they are viewed and controlled using networked PDAs with cameras. The system is based on the custom Studierstube framework for creating augmented reality applications for handhelds."

povvell writes "German telecomms giant Siemens has managed to hit speeds of an astonishing 360 Mbps in field tests in the centre of Munich using 'orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and the so-called multi-hop technology'. This is not the only demonstration of OFDM producing super fast wireless speeds, as other companies are also working on variants of the technology. It surely can't be long now before we're all streaming the latest blockbuster movies to our laptops on the commuter train home?"

TourmalineT writes "PalmSource has introduced Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 during their European DevCon. Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 is aimed at next-gen smartphones and provides VGA support, enhanced integrated telephony features, roaming support for WiFi and Bluetooth and enhancements to the user interface. They have also announced a new web browser and free platform development tools based on the open source Eclipse IDE."

Bored with regular controllers and sitting on your butt to game? jimm wrote to tell us about FPGameRunner, a treadmill that acts as a keyboard and mouse. Reenz wrote in about a lightsaber controller "in production" by GameTrak (the folks who brought us the award winning Cyberglove). And just think, you could use both in Jedi Academy. (warning: running on a treadmill with a lightsaber not recommended)

DLWormwood writes "Well, after acquiring a reputation for being 'vaporware of the year' from Wired News, MacCentral is reporting that Griffin Technology's radioSHARK is finally shipping. Now maybe I can finally get some sleep while Dr. Demento is recorded by my Mac late at night..."

pillageplunder writes "Businessweek talks about Jamdat Mobile and its upcoming IPO. It also goes a little in-depth about the U.S. Wireless Mobile Gaming market as a whole. Estimates (From the article) show that by 2004, the industry should more than double, from 91.3 million in 2003 to 203.8 million in 2004 and even as high as 1.8 billion by 2009. Hmmm...perhaps a new career?"

Florian Becker writes "A new Wiki with hardware information for newbies and developer has opened. The site can be found at linux-driver.org." The site is designed to collect driver information about as many pieces of Linux-friendly hardware as possible, "like specifications, developer specifications, installation and the actual state for Linux driver and support. The new page reached the 500 contents in just one week." Update: 09/29 16:08 GMT by T : Jeremy of linuxquestions.org writes "Just wanted to point out that LinuxQuestions.org has a user-created Linux Hardware Compatibility List that already has over 1,500 items." Thanks!

T.Hobbes writes "IBM's BlueGene/L has set a new speed record at 36.01 TFlops, beating the Earth Simulator's 35.86 TFlops, according to internal IBM testing. 'This is notable because of the fixation everyone has had on the Earth Simulator,' said Dave Turek, I.B.M.'s vice president for the high-performance computing division. The AP story is here; the NY Times' story is here."

igargoyle writes "Wearable Computer manufacturer, Xybernaut, has encouraged the kludge that is the patent office by patenting collar based wearable computers. Besides being extremely vague, the whole thing sounds likes the Slashdot article, 'A Linux Machine For Your Collar.' There are many references to this idea, and computer collars have been used as nomadic radios and animal tracking devices before. Please help encourage this company to stop wasting taxpayer's money and encourage innovation instead of preventing it."

SuperPuppy writes "Hardcoreware.net has rounded up three 2500+ Socket A processors from AMD. An AthlonXP, based on the Barton core (this particular one predates the locked multipliers we've been seeing lately), a Mobile Athlon, based on the Barton SOI, and the new Sempron, which is based on the Tbred core. Each processor differs in clock frequency and cache size, but most importantly, the Mobile Athlon takes up a LOT less juice than either of the other two, and is therefore a remarkable performer in terms of overclocking. The Sempron was quite disappointing on all fronts but price."