Today was a big day for Google. Almost $170 million in solar power and a new Google-based trivia game all in 24 hours. Google announced today that they'll be implementing a new trivia game that encourages rather than prohibits the Googling of answers. It seems relatively redundant to have questions for which a player can just type a few words into a search engine, but Google is specifically crafting cryptic and difficult questions that will teach Google users how to better use their search engine. What about when people just post the answers online? Google has even refined their algorithm to exclude those types of sites from the results so as to not spoil the game for the rest of us.

You can start playing now by going to agoogleaday.com and checking out the first question. Questions will be posted daily, and will also be located conveniently above the New York Times Crossword puzzle each day.

This is an insanely clever way to get people to use their site. I would say it's evil (which it is), but I love trivia, especially challenging trivia. Hopefully Google will stick to its promise to keep the trivia challenging, as well as the excluding algorithm for spoilers. Every once in a while (and I am not at all ashamed to admit this) I'll Google or Wikipedia the answer to a particularly difficult NYT crossword clue, and I've come to appreciate the way that Crosswordsmiths have made their clues less and less searchable. The one thing that kills it for me are the crossword content farms and blogs that just post the answers straight-up. It's just as much fun strategically using Google as it is discerning the answer to the clue, so it's nice to know that Google is going to take steps to even the playing field.

Silicon Valley's favorite search engine giant just dropped a whopping $168 million in a new solar energy plant in California's Mojave Desert designed and developed by BrightSource Energy. Google is counting on BrightSource's Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) to generate 392 MegaWatts (gross) of minty-fresh clean solar energy. In a blog post today, Google wrote:

Which would be no small contribution to our nation's energy qualms, something Google is clearly dedicated to aiding as the tech firm has now invested more than $250 million in the future of clean, renewable energy. Google is investing in the proven technology of "Power Towers", which use fields of mirrors (heliostats) to focus solar rays onto a receiver placed on top of a large tower (seen above in the photo). According to the post, the first use of the technology was the fabled existence of Archimedes' heat ray that used a similar system to focus solar energy to burn the sails of enemy ships. Thankfully, BrightSource's Mojave Desert station is far enough from the ocean and any other life, for that matter, for us to worry about superweapons. Still, the Ivanpah station will utilize over 170k different heliostats, each with two mirrors. Construction began last October and will continue until sometime in 2013. Energy corporation NRG and the US Department of Energy are also funding the project.

European software company Autonomy has announced their upcoming augmented reality iPhone application, dubbed Aurasma. The application uses a form of Autonomy's already existing IDOL pattern recognition software to scan what appears to be print images of all types with the end goal of automatically inserting a related video of some sort. Aurasma seems to have been conceived as a competitor to Google's already available Google Googles visual search application that allows the user to search their environment by snapping pictures of it. Autonomy's founder, Michael Lynch, told the New York Times:

Aurasma will evidently be available sometime next month, debuting as part of an AR advertisement tie-in with an as-yet unnamed upcoming film. Lynch also reportedly mentioned the availability of a development platform which, like Aurasma, will be available for free download.

Optus has today launched the commercial pilot of femtocell technology which is designed to boost its 3G network coverage and speed with the customer's own fixed-line broadband service at home. Dubbed "Optus 3G Home Zone", the product uses technology built by Alcatel-Lucent, plugs into a fixed internet connection and allows 3G devices like mobiles, tablets and mobile broadband devices to utilise the network to make calls or access the internet within a 30-metre radius.

Optus is trialling the technology in multiple cities; Sydney, Brisbane, Wollongong and the Gold Coast. Optus consumer marketing director Gavin Williams has said:

Lining Yao, Anthony DeVincenzi, Ramesh Raskar, and Hiroshi Ishii from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab have developed a prototypal teleconference interface demonstration using Microsoft's Kinect sensor array.

Featured in their demo video, Lining (Lizzie) and Anthony (Tony) show off some of the features they managed to successfully implement. In their interactive interface, speakers will be given time-bubbles that pop up over their respective heads, tracking the length of time that each is speaking. Amazingly, the clock stops as soon as the person stops speaking, meaning the program is recognizing voices individually. A cool feature (that may need a bit of tweaking, but cool nonetheless) they also included is the automation of focus- when a person is speaking, the focus of the camera changes, ensuring that everything but the speaker is blurry. This wasn't as successfully implemented as the time-tracker, but a very interesting idea, especially for someone like me with rampant ADD.

Speaking of ADD, I have many problems when it comes to not answering or responding to portable phone vibrations, so this next feature made me sigh in relief that someone was actually working on it. The MIT team developed a way that a person in a teleconference can actually freeze an image of themselves, for instance sitting at a table with a rapt expression, while the person (unbeknownst to the people on the other side of the video chat) can check their phones, scratch their armpit or play Angry Birds (picture above).

The browser war continues, and it just got mobile.

In a press release yesterday, the Norwegian-based browser Opera announced that their mobile browser had reached 100 million monthly users, with 2 billion daily page views. Two months ago, Opera Software had announced 100 million users combined as a combined total for Opera Mini and their other mobile browser, the aptly named Opera Mobile- meaning that Opera Mini's user base has impressively doubled since February this year.

Opera Software boasts "the worlds most used mobile browser" with Opera Mini, a browser that generates faster page views and site loading by compressing as much as 90% of the content prior to loading the page.

In an interesting game of cat and mouse, the United States Department of Justice has approved Silicon Valley's most successful tech company's intent to acquire ITA, a travel information search service based in Cambridge, MA.

The DoJ filed a consent decree with the conditions that Google continue to license ITA"s tech to existing clients such as Kayak and maintain the fairness of its current availability. Also in the decree consent were stipulations that Google erect firewalls to ensure that ITA data is blocked from other areas of Google.

Interestingly enough, the DoJ has evidently filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block the impending acquisition of ITA if Google did not consent to the conditions. Google really didn't have a choice, especially with the rampant antitrust allegations running around, as recently reported by Bloomberg.

Mozilla has a detailed new development model for Firefox, with the current draft saying Firefox 5 will make its way to fans on June 21, 2011 and Firefox 6 not that long after on August 18, 2011. These dates may well change but right now this is what Mozilla is hoping for. All changes to the Firefox source code are initially integrated in the mozilla-central Mercurial repository.

At scheduled intervals (usually 6 weeks) the changes are then imported from mozilla-central to one of three other channels. In addition to mozilla-central there will also be firefox-experimental, firefox-beta and Firefox (release) with each one backed by its own Mercurial repository. The names below are placeholders and Mozilla may still change them:

The firefox-experimental channel will receive new features at regular intervals, but some of them have the option of being disabled if they look like they require more work. The beta channel will receive new features that are set to be included in the Firefox release. New features are never directly added to the firefox-experimental or firefox-beta channels. Each stage of the process lasts for 6 weeks but because of the development overlap, we should see new versions every 6 to 12 weeks.

If you're part of a small group of affected users, your iPhone might be using the rear-facing camera to snap pictures of you without your knowledge. Wired reports. According to some recent posts on Apple's Support Forum, users have been complaining about an unusually observant iPhone 4 Facetime feature. User MrGQ posted the following:

I tried using my iPhone, much to my chagrin/relief there was no such error. I have to say, ever since the debut of pre-installed webcams, I've wondered if one day I won't notice that green light flashing on my MacBook, even though I'm not running Skype or PhotoBooth. I wonder sometimes how difficult that would be to hack into- my friends and I used to play around with Trojan Horse programs on each other's computers back in the 90's that would let us turn the monitor on and off and eject the CD-ROM drive (amongst other things); I can't imagine that similar viruses or coding couldn't handle turning the webcam on and off.

This morning, GameStop launched a massive digital retail store on their Facebook Fan Page. The store was developed by Adgregate Markets, a Sausalito, CA based startup that has already designed and built around 50 other digital Facebook stores. This seems like a natural move for Gamestop as they already have around 1.8 million likes on their fan page. Facebook stores utilize an already-present consumer market, as those same fans will receive promotions and marketing incentives on their respective Facebook Newsfeeds. Selling merchandise on Facebook also allows users to do things like "like" and Share products on other people's Facebook walls, as well as gift products for Facebook friends.

According to Venturebeat, Gamestop hopes that the arrival of the Facebook store will generate revenue somewhere around $1.5 billion, more than 10% of their total sales. With almost 7,000 stores, it's clear that the video game retailer has no intention of going completely digital, but with online stores and video game digital renting services becoming more and more prevalent, GameStop now has a hand in digital revenues.

Adgregate, founded in 2009, offers "the only secure" social retailing system, utilizing services like McAfee to protect email and credit card information. With GameStop, Adgregate's system also connects with GameStop's to ensure accurate inventory descriptions to coordinate localized physical purchases. As of the writing of this article, GameStop is now #115 on the top 500 Internet Retail list.

AMD has said that it will reveal some details of their next-generation GPUs at the AMD Fusion Development Summit (AFDS) that is set to start in mid-June. AMD are also looking to reveal trends about future directions of accelerated processing units (APUs) and software development.

Eric Demers, AMD corporate vice president and chief technology officer is set to give a keynote at AFDS where he will recap the evolution of GPUs in the recent years, including the latest VLIW5 and VLIW4 core architectures and instruction sets. More specifically, he will present an overview of the next-generation AMD cores that are currently under development, which are going to throw forward new capabilities and continue the never-ending GPU evolution.

AMD is expected to release their 28nm-based GPUs codenamed Southern Islands, later this year. The Southern Island-based GPUs will support DirectX 11 functionality and should include architectural improvements and new features.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, fanboys all over the world will rejoice to learn of the upcoming Evil Dead Game for iPhone. Though it has been 30 years since the film's release in 1981, Evil Dead still has a both loyal and sizable fanbase. And unlike most adaptations of popular cultishly-followed media, this one's getting a nod from its creators, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert.

Trigger is the company charged with developing the game, and one that has made successful mobile apps for many Hollywood movies in the past. This is a bit of a departure from their previous work, as Evil Dead is 30 years old and most of their subject matter deals with adaptations of (at the time of development) recently or to-be-shortly released films like The Green Hornet and the latest installment of The Karate Kid.

Atari announced earlier this week that they'd be launching Atari's Greatest Hits, which is a collection of 18 arcade classics and 82 Atari 2600 console games for iOS-based devices. The app is free and includes the original 70's classic, Pong with the other 99 games available through an in-app purchase.

The app runs on iPhones, iPod touches and iPads - the app is the first to support the iCade mini iPad arcade cabinet which is set to launch this June. The game includes access to arcade classics such as Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, Battlezone, Missile Command, Crystal Castles, and Tempest. Also, users will have access to a selection of Atari 2600 titles like Combat, Adventure, Night Driver, Star Raiders, Outlaw, all the Real Sports titles, and Yars Revenge.

The games come in 99c four-packs that are loosely theme-based, the "Super Breakout Pack" includes Super Breakout, Breakout, Off-the-Wall, and Circus Atari, while the "Tic-Tac-Toe Pack" includes 3D Tic-Tac-Toe, A Game of Concentration, Backgammon, and Brain Games. You also have the option to buy all 100 games for a single $14.99 in-app purchase if you'd like them all at once.

In a radical move, patients will finally be able to see just how long the list of people are in hospital emergency departments ahead of time before they arrive. The overhaul of the health system is being lead by Health Minister Jillian Skinner who as her first move is also giving power back to the doctors and nurses to run their hospitals.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph yesterday, Skinner said she would not rule out job cuts and wanted bureaucrats in "ivory towers" to get back to working in hospitals.

Under the new reform, patients will have the ability to "hospital-shop" on the internet to find out which emergency departments have shorter waiting time. A similar system is already active in Western Australia. Skinner says the plan is to introduce the same system to NSW's major teaching hospitals such as the Royal Prince Alfred.

A Koren news site, Etnews.co.kr, posted the following on their website, and the internet went insane:

Slow news day guys? C'mon. Even if Apple weren't notorious for locking down any and all product information*, why would they confirm it at the Mobile World Congress two months ago and no one gives a damn until now?

Have you or any of your over-caffeinated stress-riddled office coworkers developed an unnerving twitch due to sitting at your desk all day, harried by the incessant ambient clicking of mouses (do we say "mice" when pluralizing the device? anyone?)?

Well Nexus Technology has the product for you! They introduce today their SM-800 ("SM" presumably standing for "Silent Mouse"- that kind of simplicity is very comforting in an age where every tech product has a name that sounds like something that belongs in space), with patented "Switch" technology. The latter is what gives the SM series its stress-relieving silence:

Remember ASteroids? Like, for Atari? How quickly things would devolve once you had blasted a few of the big ones and you were spinning wildly out of control? Imagine that in 3D environment, but with giant bouncing bright-hued balls reminiscent of grade school gym class. That's Terry Weissman's Ball Pit, available now, for free, for iPhone 4.

So 3D Asteroids for iPhone you say? "Eh", you say? This is not a platform game- you can actually move within the environment by moving in real life. If you take a few steps back, you'll move backwards in real time within the game. You're in a giant doorless and windowless room with a bunch of bouncy balls. And a bouncy ball gun. Stuff is going to bounce off the walls "behind" you and to the sides, so you're going to be aiming your iPhone 4 in various directions at a very rapid pace. I just played the game for about 10 minutes before falling over a chair, a table, and at least one person.

This app treads the line between Augmented and Virtual Reality, but I'll call it a win for AR because you can interact with the environment using your own. AR needs as many wins as it can get lately anyway.

Max Payne 3 information is finally being released, with some snippets of information now available. Max Payne is now residing in São Paulo, Brazil - balding, hairy and fat. Max has retired from the police department and is now working for politicians and property moguls.

It's reported that Max Payne 3 will feature flashbacks to bridge the gap from the last two Max Payne games. Painkillers are still Max's requirement for health, but the comic book frames are not being featured, in their plac will be "an animated collage of action footage" - but Rockstar still maintains there will be a comic book approach.

MP3 is also meant to not play like a corridor-based shooter, it will instead focus on set pieces, bringing a frantic pace to the action.

Anonymous has stepped up to the plate and has targeted Sony's PlayStation Store today by using a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which temporarily took down playstation.com - Anonymous strikes again.

Sony is being attacked by Anonymous because of the lawsuits Sony have against PS3 jailbreakers George Hotz (GeoHot) and Graf_Chokolo. This time Anonymous aren't just attacking online, they're also asking gamers to support them by gathering at their local Sony stores to complain in person.

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Sega announced today on their blog that Spiral Knights is finally available for free download and play on pretty much everything, including Windows, Mac OS and Linux (Yay!- Linux users got something to play besides Super Tux!) The game was developed by San Francisco-based Three Rings of Puzzle Pirates fame, and features impressive visuals as well as immediate accessibility. Whether you're a longtime MMORPG gamer or just new to internet gaming altogether, you'll still very much enjoy Spiral Knights.

I briefly took it out for a spin (download was fast, 2-3 min) to check out the visuals and familiarize myself with the gameplay.

Definitely going to revisit this one in the wee hours of the evening.