The Large Hadron Collider has seen collisions for the first time, ushering in a new era for particle physics. Despite a problem with unstable proton beams, the first collisions were recorded at ATLAS just after midday. Beams were declared stable within twenty minutes amid joyous scenes at CERN in Switzerland. CERN tweeted: “Experiment have seen collisions!!!!!!!!!!!” Followed by: “Experiments are collecting their first physics data – historic moment here! Watch the webcast, look at the photos – all live! Great time Director for Accelerators Dr Steve Myers said: [...]

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Europe’s first on-console show FirstPlay will launch its first weekly episode on Thursday April 8 on the PlayStation, bringing high definition video reviews and previews every week, plus exclusive downloadable content and much more. Brought about by TechRadar’s publisher Future, FirstPlay will be available to UK gamers through Sony’s PlayStation 3 console from the PlayStation Network for 99p an episode or £8.99 for a 90-day subscription. Tim Clark, Editor-in-Chief of FirstPlay, said: “We’re tremendously excited to be finally launching FirstPlay, and to be bringing [...]

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Some companies come to the DEMO conference looking for investors so they can get their idea to market; others are on sale the day they go on stage. Some products sink without trace, others go on to be household names (Palm launched at DEMO). Not everything is brand new –last year Gwabbit won the coveted Demo God award, this year the Gwab-o-sphere service that works with it won again. Some of the neatest DEMO launches may never make it, but these are the ones we most want to use ourselves. 1. GlideTV Navigator GlideTV Navigator is a neat little $99 RF remote control which balances comfortably [...]

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CVG.com has revealed what the 50 best PS3 games ever are, with Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves nabbing the top spot. The gaming website, created by the same publishing company as TechRadar, consulted its readers on what they thought deserved a place in the ’50 Best PS3 Games’ feature and the results, though not surprising, do show a nice mix of first-person shooters, third-person actioners and sandbox delights. After its success at this year’s gaming Baftas – where it won four awards – Uncharted 2 sits in first place, with the biggest PS3 game of all time, [...]

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Switzerland looks likely to ban any game with a PEGI 16+ or 18+ rating after the country passed a law that bans violent games outright in the country. The ruling is similar to the one in place in Australia and could mean that any game not suitable for children will be banned from sale in Switzerland. The minutiae of the legislation has yet to be written, but now the ruling has been passed new titles like God of War III may not see the light of day in the country. Gaming rules The ruling states that any title that “requires cruel acts of violence against humans and humanlike creatures for [...]

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PlayStation exec Jack Tretton has insisted that the recent trend towards motion sensors will not kill the traditional gaming controllers. The SCEA-man insisted that the arrival of Sony’s PlayStation Move, as well as the popularity of the Nintendo Wii and the forthcoming Project Natal from Microsoft, were not a threat to more traditional gaming. “We have a 15-year heritage in this business which in some industries that is a short time, but in the game industry, it is a lifetime,” Trenton told G4 at GDC. Accuracy “PlayStation has come to stand for accuracy, cutting edge [...]

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This time last week I rattled off the world’s laziest column. I was struggling against my book deadline which expired 24 hours later and I simply didn’t have time to write anything else. This week should have been different; I should have finished the book days ago and now be sitting on a beach in the Caribbean, sipping a Diet Coke martini and lazily writing a long, well-thought-out column about some vital issue of the day. Why it’s inadvisable to write a mea culpa in the passive voice (otherwise it’s just a ‘culpa’). Something like that. And yet, and yet – [...]

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The Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii or the Playstation 3 – what are the specs and what can they really do…? The Best Games Console Many people are drawn to one camp – be it Xbox, Playstation or Nintendo and religiously stick to their camp of choice, no matter what. Personally I think it just prevents you from enjoying the variety and brilliance the collective consoles offer. For example Nintendo has, in my opinion, the best action/puzzle adventure game in the form of Zelda… Playstation has some wonderful titles like Devil May Cry, God of War or Metal Gear and… Xbox has the [...]

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Programming Luddites may have less to fear in the future. A new MIT project called Sikuli allows people to program using screenshots in lieu of written code. Basically, it lets you reference user interface elements like a Microsoft Word icon, Trash Can or search bar with pictures of the button or icon instead of script. (If you look at the picture to the right, you’ll see functions referencing icons and screenshots of buttons instead of text. It’s best explained in the video below.) The idea is to make it dead-simple for casual computer users to write their own programs without having [...]

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For the record, I’m writing these words on a MacBook Pro; the third Mac I’ve owned in the past twelve months. As I do so, I’m listening to music on iTunes through my standard issue iPod headphones, so as not to disturb my neighbours. Less than a foot from where I’m sitting, my iPhone sits charging. I am – as marketers might have it put – “a Mac”. And yet – my God – I’m bored of reading about Apple and their ‘long awaited’ tablet. Like most people who are broadly interested in technology, I set aside part of each day [...]

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