Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon will be available for the PS3 for the first time July 5th of this year. Hopefully you're not squeamish at all around bugs, especially gruesomely detailed ones rendered as large as your television- otherwise this might be one to skip.

Vicious Cycles released screenshots of the upcoming game introducing six very ugly giant insect classes: Wolf Spider, Tick (ew), Black Ant, Wasp, Daddy Long Legs, Bomber Spider, and Mantis. Despite what campy horror movies and the Japanese would have us believe, science and physics preclude building-sized insects from existing- but some of these screen shots made me shudder in revulsion, especially the ticks:

Evidently they try to run at you so they can explode all over you with corrosive acid. Ew ew. EDF: Insect Armageddon boasts the chance to destroy swarms of alien insect creature and classy arcade-style action, with online multiplayer available too! Even if you're an arachnophobe, here's your chance to get back at those creatures that have been tormenting you for years.

The welcome screen for Windows 8 has been leaked (and confirmed as real). The below screen show is the current Windows 8 Welcome Screen and is visibly based on the Windows Phone 7 lock screen - which is impressive in itself.

You can only change the background image of the Welcome Screen at the moment, but the display includes the time, day of the week, the date (month and day) and icons for power management (for portable machines only) and ease of access. More things could be added in the future. Aside from the functionality that has been shown in the leaked builds, there is also evidence of more features to come.

Tablet-type devices will be capable of logging on through a drawn pattern - like Android-based devices and Microsoft will also be supporting extensible Welcome Screen-based audio controls, which gives users the ability to control music playback when the machine is locked.

This is meant to be an April Fools joke but seriously, virtually everything he said as a "joke" is actually true. This makes the entire case even sadder. My readers will know my stance for gaming and how consoles have virtually destroyed quality gaming and the advancement of gaming technology (gaming engines, advancements in actual gameplay, etc).

It has some quotes from Robbie Bach, former president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division:

This one is only sort of a joke. Arianna Huffington, infamous Editor-in-Chief of online news site, The Huffington Post, did not pull a single punch today when satirically criticizing the New York Times recent Paywall implementation. Huffington announced in a post today that her news site would now be "offering" digital subscriptions exclusively to New York Times employees (and residents of Winnipeg, but that's another story). Huffington writes that current readers of "HuffPo" that are not Times employees will not be affected.

Biting snippets include the introduction of a "first 6 letters at no charge" plan and content availability depending on what site redirected the Times employee to the Huffington Post:

This is a good one. What appeared to be just another product listing on ThinkGeek turned out to be a bittersweet April Fool's prank. Bittersweet, because a lot of us would probably shell out the $180 for the entire Playmobil Apple Store set, including Line expansion.

ThinkGeek really went all out on this one, going so far to create miniature Wozniak on a Segway and miniature Steve Jobs giving the iPad 2 keynote. The sales floor is also suitably accessorized with miniature iPhones and iPads.

If you watched the promotional video first, you were alerted to the nature of the prank (if not from anything else, than the professional titles like "Squinty Bastard". Otherwise, you probably got very excited and pressed BUY NOW, only to be redirected to the "GOTCHA!" page where you promptly felt very sad and alone in the universe. Then again, my personal experience may not be the rule for everyone else.

"What do you do when you have bugs in your code? Send in the Angry Nerds. Consider these issues...resolved."

Atalassian announced their new mobile game today, Angry Nerds, in which the player hurtles various incarnations of "devs" against towers of concrete binary numbers, destroying various infectious "bugs" in the code. The various characters come with descriptions, amusingly satirizing stock figures in the tech world

Check out the site, you can even test out the game there. This is almost good enough to not be an April Fools Prank. They even put up a fictitious collection of "endorsements":

They almost had me until the guy in the video mimes licking a stamp and placing it on an envelope, where the "envelope" is his lifted knee. And it just gets better from there. Google might be the most infamous April Fool's Day prankster since they began the tradition in April of 2000 with the MentalPlex, Google's ability to read your mind as you visualize your query.

Google was no less enthusiastic about 4/1/2011 then they've been in past years, coming up some hilarious ideas to "announce" to the world.

The two that caught my eye were the "Comic Sans For Everyone" extension for Chrome and the brand-new "Gmail Motion".

Are we still saying things are "28 days later"? Is that even a topical reference anymore?

Regardless, IGN's Brian Altano, Arthur Gies and Nick Kolan put together a nifty info-graphic to explain some stuff about what over 1,000,000 users have been up to in the land of Telara since Rift's launch 28 days ago. Whether it's dealing more damage than healing, looting 44 billion total in coins, or just collecting over 9 million souls, Rift users have been making the most out of the first MMORG in a long time that has had the balls to compete with World of Warcraft. If you're not convinced, see their advertising tagline:

We're not in Azeroth anymore.

The University of South Australia brings us quite a nifty gadget / design tool as part of their Wearable Computer Laboratory. In a paper and accompanying video published by Ewald T. A. Maas, Michael R. Marner, Ross T. Smith, and Bruce H. Thomas, they introduce "Quimo", a free form spatial Augmented Reality interface. Short for "quick mock-up", the substance is a white malleable material that the user can sculpt and reform to their heart's content, all with their bare hands. It retains its shape once you sculpt it and doesn't harden later, so you can always go back and sculpt different things. It's like Play-Doh for Augmented Reality.

In the paper they write,

Yes Americans, we know it's not the best name for a device. Sure looks like a dongle though, right?

The British mobile provider Three announced a new and improved version of their broadband dongle, the Huawei E367. The dongle should be available in stores (wherever Three is accessible) starting next week, and boasts 40% faster browsing speeds.

David Kerrigan, Three's head of mobile broadband, reportedly touted the new device's capability:

If we jump into the DeLorean and set the clock back to February 2010, Facebook was proud to let the world know that they had 100 million mobile users per month. Fast forward to today and Facebook are now proudly boasting they have 250 million mobile users per month, with this news Facebook are listening to their users and instead of having two dedicated mobile Facebook sites (touch.facebook.com and m.facebook.com) they will be merging into the one site.

Generally Android and iPhone users are directed to touch.facebook.com while most other users are directed to m.facebook.com, now that the sites are merging there are going to be people that are worried they'll get a restricted or downgraded Facebook experience. Fear not! Facebook Head of Mobile Products, Erick Tseng explains that up until now having two versions of Facebook's mobile website led to issues.

The site's engineers were having to rebuild the same features twice, leading the two sites to rarely reach feature parity. Facebook is now launching a new framework built around XHP, Javelin and WURFL that uses the same underlying codebase, while tweaking UI elements on the fly depending on what device you're accessing the site from.

A new disc format is being beta tested by Microsoft in a new dashboard upgrade that is set to increase the storage of an Xbox 360 game disc by 1GB. Currently the maximum available space allocated to game data on the current disc format is 6.8GB out of a maximum of 7.95GB on a standard dual-layer DVD , iwth over 1GB dedicated to a DVD-Video partition that also contained anti-piracy security sectors.

Beta testers of the new dashboard upgrade get a free copy of Halo: Reach once they are accepted into the new preview programme. This is most likely not just a free gift, but the disc probably uses the new format.

With an additional 1GB available on their discs, this would give developers 14 to 15-percent more available space to use.

The "internet of things" just got one step closer to the "internet of people" with Google telling CNN Technology today that they are in the process of developing a Mobile App with which users can snap photos of people to learn about their personal information.

Whoops. Hello, privacy advocates? Not much to talk about recently? Boom.

The director of the project, Harmut Neven, founder of Neven Vision, a facial recognition company acquired by Google in 2006, claims that Google has this technology for a very long time- it's evidently wading through the privacy concerns that has held it back. No surprise there. The app will most likely be an extension of the already available "Goggles" feature on the Google Mobile App which utilizes object recognition to search "things" int he real world online.

There is just something really, really wrong with this video.

GoDaddy CEO Cecil Rhodes- I mean, Bob Parsons, is the new Great White Hunter. He has successfully saved an African village from a terrible, awful elephant that was allegedly destroying their crops, like, every day.

In all fairness to Parsons, the villagers did ask him to help them out, but what's with the video? Like this shot:

Intel Taiwan hailed the launch of the 2nd Generation Core i Series with the 'Intel Get 2gether Party' that was as flashy as the speeds Sandybridge delivers! The event was as star studded as it was flashy with celebrities such as Janet Hsieh, Big Mouth & the Korean girl band Visual Dream. In true APAC style there were dancing robots, scantily clad girls, asexual male dancers, WIDI demos, 3D glasses and a bevy of peace signs every where we turned!

The 2nd Generation Core i Series, code name Sandybridge have been knows for sometime, with their official release happening back at CES. What this launch was about was getting Taiwan excited about the processors hitting the streets and becoming available for purchase. Intel APAC GM Navin Shenoy swung Taipei to join in the celebration that involved all of Taiwans major OEMs.

In case some how you've managed to miss it, highlights of the 2nd Gen processors are built around a new 32nm microarchitecture. This includes more energy-efficient performance and improved 3D and graphics performance along with the latest version of Intel's Turbo Boost 2.0.

About an hour ago, Google announced the addition of the "+1" search rating feature, now available through your Google profile. Google is touting the +1 as a way to refine search to be as friendly and familiar, literally, to the user as possible.

Google users will soon start to see these icons popping up next to search results based on the participation of friends and family in their already existing social connections. Google claims they're going to be implementing +1 "slowly", but if you want to get in on the launch, check out Google's Experimental Search Site for more information. In order to use the new feature, users must have a Google account as well as a Google Profile- it won't pop up randomly on its own. At least, not yet.

This is actually good, just after my editorial are consoles holding back gaming tech, we have AMD saying Fusion would be great in consoles. I see this as a double-edged sword.

Consoles with 10 year life cycles just cannot sustain a single GPU/CPU combo. If the APU selected for a next-gen console is shipped with lets say 40-percent of its performance unlocked and future firmware/updates to the console unlock more and more power, it would allow a much better life cycle to games.

But, having a single APU in the next-gen consoles will only hinder them after a few years and we'll be back to the point that we are now. Console exclusives that hold back the immense power found in moderately priced systems (under $800). AMD still think that this is a future for them and I really think they will have an opportunity in the next-gen Microsoft-based console.

Valpak has got a brand new bag. And it's not a giant blue bag stuffed with coupons, either. It's a mobile augmented reality channel that uses geo-locational user information to display mobile-based deals in or near your vicinity.

Neato.

With the recent success of Groupon and LivingSocial, it does not come as a surprise that Valpak entered the mobile arena, especially after launching an iPhone app. Unlike a normal app, this one is in full Augmented Reality, so you actually perceive mobile coupon deals overlaid onto the physical world, i.e. wherever you're pointing your smartphone.

Capcom confirmed yesterday that they will ship the new Resident Evil title, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City this Winter. The game will ship on all three major platforms, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Operation Raccoon City is being developed by Vancouver-based Slant Six Games, Capcom have said that the new Resident Evil title will take the series in a "completely new direction" and is set to offer a style of gameplay "yet to be seen from the franchise". Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City will be a third-person, squad-based shooter set in the year 1998, during the events of the Resident Evil 2 and 3 titles.

The internet is very, very angry.

An media sharing application named Color that just received $41 million in funding is pissing everybody off. Color promises the user the ability to share photos and videos with everyone in the general area. The caveat is that everyone has to also be using Color, one of the many sources of complaints on the user reviews on the App Store. Users are also very unhappy about the user interface, which they claim is very counter-intuitive and does not have any sort of tutorial explaining its various functions.

Here are some reviews I pulled off the App Store: