Diablo fan? Want Diablo 3 real, real bad? Well, just close your eyes a little bit longer and make that wish and it may come true as soon as July of this year! External beta testing of Diablo 3 is set to start in Q3 of this year. It was revealed in Activision's first quarter investor call where president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Morhaime, revealed the company-wide beta testing of Diablo 3.

Mike also gave some updates on the status of Diablo 3 saying:

On the 'Diablo 3' front, I'm pleased to report that we began internal, company-wide testing last week. The game is looking great and we are currently targeting a Q3 launch for external beta testing. The development team is working hard to try to launch 'Diablo 3' this year, but I want to be clear. We do not have an official release date or window yet.

GPU giant meets Baseband & RF superstar, and $367 Million later an acquisition is born. Everyone at both companies is clearly excited about the deal, but nothing will be set in stone until a conference call held between the two companies Thursday, May 12, at 2:00PM PDT. Anyone at all can listen in to the call to find out more details, just dial 706-679-2572- no password or meeting number required! NVIDIA and Icera will also webcast the call, and you can listen in here and here. More details below in the press release.

SANTA CLARA, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 05/09/2011 -- NVIDIA announced today that it has agreed to acquire Icera, a leading innovator of top-performing baseband processors for 3G and 4G cellular phones and tablets.

Icera has more than 550 patents granted or pending worldwide, and its high speed wireless-modem products have been approved by more than 50 carriers across the globe. By combining the companies' products and technologies, including NVIDIA's Tegra processor, NVIDIA will enhance its position as a leading player in the growing mobile market.

16:12 US PST:

UPDATE: Both of the LG Devices will offer Wireless content streaming!! That's right, no plug or HDMI out required (although it's available too).

Tony Curry, LG PR representative, just got up to tell everyone about how much LG loves the Tegra 2 processor. Shipping this week are both the LG G2x smartphone and the LG G Slate tablet, available exclusively on T-Mobile. Life is certainly good with these two devices, sporting 4G capability and optimized battery lives.

13:52 US PST:

Here at the lovely Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco, I'm listening to Bill Rehbok, General Manager of Mobile Games at NVIDIA tout just how awesome and how important their TegraZone platform is to Android mobile gaming. Android recently surpassed iOS as the most used OS for game developers with over 300 million users. TegraZone is what Rehbok describes as a content curator, ensuring that the best mobile games (those that run on NVIDIA Tegra) are available.

one of the biggest challenges is communicating to consumers what they can run, what they can play, and what they can pay for on their mobile devices.

BioWare's first steps into the MMO world will come in the form of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a new MMO that is in development between BioWare and LucasArts where it pits players in a world that takes place 300 years after the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and thousands of years before Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Players will have the choice of character roles such as Jedi or Sith and give context to their personal story with the option to follow the light or the dark side of the Force. EA has now reported that its total investment in the new Star Wars-based MMO has reached $80 million, in development alone. Michael Pachter, Wedbush Security analyst says:

The contribution from the 'Star Wars' MMO is significant. Under the terms of its deals with LucasArts, EA is required to pay a royalty, but was required to front all of the development, marketing and distribution costs, as well as the costs of building out servers for the game. We estimate that LucasArts' share is 33 percent of revenues, after EA recoups its investment in game development. Given that the game was in development for over four years, with an estimated 200 full-time developers working on it, we estimate that EA's investment exceeds $80 million.

Google's over-the-air updates are amazing, I love updating my phone without having to use something like iTunes. For Apple users, they can hear about a new firmware being released for their iOS-based device, yet have to be at a computer - plug it in, open iTunes and let it update. Where Android-based users can just do it from their phone - magic, huh?

Apple are finally catching up and it seems with iOS 5 there are claims that Verizon users with iOS-based devices might have the opportunity to do updates over-the-air instead of the traditional way I explained above. Right now, theres no news on whether this will extend to other carriers as most iOS updates are pretty large in size - roughly 600MB. Obviously carriers won't want millions upon millions of people downloading massive upgrades every however often.

This is where Wi-Fi networks step in of course, but there is no news for whether the OTA updates can be done via Wi-Fi yet or not.

For current iOS-based devices such as the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, Apple use Samsung for their processors, this is set to change with Apple changing to Intel for their processing needs. At the moment Apple obviously are loving Intel as their Mac-based range of products are Intel powered, but now Apple is looking to have Intel power the iOS-based devices.

Analyst Gus Richard says:

It makes strategic sense for both companies. The combination of Apple's growing demand and market share in smart phones and tablets gives Intel a position in these markets and drives the logic volume Intel needs to stay ahead in manufacturing. Intel's manufacturing lead gives Apple an additional competitive advantage in these markets and distances it from Asian competitors that are knocking off its products. Furthermore, it would also serve to weaken Samsung who is a significant competitive threat to both companies.

We all knew this was coming but waiting for 100-percent confirmation is hard and now we're seeing a leak from a voice actor for the current two Modern Warfare titles, Craig Fairbrass. He did an interview with a UK radio station talkSPORT. Craig does the voice of Ghost and Gaz and has let slip that he's currently working on a big game that is costing $200 million to make.

That rounds it down to, well, just one title. Craig said during his interview:

I did Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as Gaz and then I did Ghost in Modern Warfare 2, which has become one of the most iconic figures in the history of computer games, which is great. And I've just been out in LA doing something that's going to be announced in May...I've just been out there doing some bits and pieces and one of it's to do with...I can't say too much.

Munich / San Francisco-based augmented reality solutions firm metaio have developed a nifty feature for attendees of this year's Augmented Reality Event

in Santa Clara, CA, May 17-18. Using their mobile augmented reality browser junaio to navigate the entire conference.

Attendees can download the junaio browser on their Android or iPhone and launch the experience from specifically and strategically placed Latitude, Longitude and Altitude (LLA) markers that will synchronize the indoor AR experience. Generally, AR navigation depends on GPS and geo-locational data to function, but GPS isn't yet precise enough to facilitate indoor navigation (things are just too close together). Metaio's technology however allows for a fairly seamless indoor directions and information (pending that you launch the application correctly).

Episode 3 of the web-series for Mortal Kombat is out and this one features non other than Johnny Cage. The description for Episode 3 is below:

After unsuccessfully trying to sell his reality television pilot pitch to a studio exec, Johnny Cage, an American action-hero movie star who has fallen on hard times, is recruited by Shang Tsung, a powerful sorcerer who has the power to suck souls from people, to fight in the upcoming Mortal Kombat tournament.

But that's not all! Episode 4 is also out, which features Kitana and Mileena: