IBLOG SPACE

To say HTC is having a bad month is an understatement: share price ditching, outlook slashed and reeling from an embarrassing and unexpected defeat by Apple in the patent courts. The company that once led the smartphone segment has found its “Quietly Brilliant” message struggling to be heard above the crowd. Thepotential collapse of the S3 Graphics deal is just the latest stage of the company’s ebbing momentum, though it can’t blame the USITC entirely for investors’ loss of faith. HTC lost its common Sense some time ago.

Chess between two people is tricky enough, but add a third player and the classic board game takes on a whole new – circular – dimension. 3 Man Chess takes the original pieces, moves and rules of chess and throws in a third, gray set of pieces and transfers play to a round board: despite the extra manpower and the unusual shape, all of the core tenets actually stay the same. Six concentric ranks of 24 squares are arrayed around an empty “no man’s land” and pieces move as normal, though there are “moats” between the rooks to prevent them from taking each other on the very first turn. The full set of slightly modified rules can be found here. The curved lines overlaid onto the board are, in fact, trajectory lines to help you figure out how pieces move diagonally; because of the shape of the board, pieces like bishops can in fact circle all the way around and back to their origin point, assuming the path is clear. You can buy 3 Man Chess for $39.95 plus shipping. Of course, what it doesn’

Tablets are seeing sky-high demand, with news that social game developer Gameloft has inked a deal with Australian airline Jetstar to offer iPads preloaded with games for in-flight use. Twelve titles are expected to be offered to Jetstar passengers eventually, with Real Football, Shrek Kart, Avatar, UNO and N.O.V.A.: Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance first to appear on the rented Apple slates. Seven titles will follow on in Q1 2012, including GT Racing: Motor Academy, Brain Challenge, Blokus, Ironman 2, Let’s Golf 2, The Settlers and Asphalt 5. Only those on flights longer than two hours will be eligible to rent the tablets, which have a battery life of up to 10hrs each. Flights including Australian domestic, trans Tasman and short-haul international flights between Australia and New Zealand will all run the scheme, with pricing ranging from A$10 to A$15 ($10-15) per flight. It doesn’t look like the iPads will also have internet access, however. Jetstar isn’t the first airline to implement

Each time I pick up my iPhone, listen to songs on my iPod, or surf the web on my Mac, I think about the markApple has left on the technology industry. It’s amazing to me that a single company has been able to do so much in such a short amount of time. And it’s perhaps most amazing that no other company has even come close in many of the markets the iPhone maker competes in to matching it. When I get thinking about that, I ask myself a simple, but not so solvable question: would the technology world be the same if Apple didn’t exist? Admittedly, my opinions change from time to time. On one hand, I think that it’s possible that other companies could have done what Apple has if the company didn’t exist. But on the other hand, I tend to believe that Steve Jobs was such a special chief executive that no other CEO could have accomplished what he did. Let’s first look at my first thought. Sometimes, I can’t help but think that what Apple did with the iPod wasn’t all that groundbreaking. Sure,

NASA‘s Curiosity rover has begun its journey into space, the centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratoryproject. Blasting off at 10:02 am EST from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the $2.5bn rover will take nine months to travel the 354m miles between here and Mars, complete with an array of scientific instruments along with a nuclear battery to power them all. The Curiosity rover and other aspects of payload were launched on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, successfully sending a signal back to NASA shortly after separation. “Our spacecraft is in excellent health and it’s on its way to Mars,” Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager said of today. Whereas previous Mars missions focused on discovering water on the red planet, Curiosity will look for signs of ancient habitable environments. More information on the launch, the Curiosity rover and the separation from earlier today in the videos below. Mars Science Laboratory

There is a little keyboard-looking device out there, ladies and gentlemen, that goes by the name of Monotron, is made by KORG, and will either drive your parents absolutely up the wall or will play the part in your ultra-professional mobile electronic band like no product you’ve ever used before. The KORG Monotron is what’s called an analogue ribbon synthesizer and has just enough knobs, output ports, and volume to make you a musical masterpiece sit comfortably in your pocket. Watch as your humble narrator stumbles through the original electronic beat Popcorn and judge for yourself whether or not you want the cutest magic music machine in the world for yourself. This classic KORG Monotron is one of three different models you can get, the others going by the same name but with the word Duo or Delay after them, Teach offers a slightly different experience and set of options, and I recommend getting all three if you’re a completist or simply want a different set of colors for whatever you