In the category of ‘mobile computing that never made it’ and ‘things the iPad utterly killed’, the UMPC is (was?) a term for very small PCs that can do everything your average laptop or desktop can, but in a small form factor. Since PC makers figured the small size and ‘cutting edge’ technologies they put in them (200+ DPI screens, fingerprint readers, 3G) demanded a premium, UMPCs were often a $1200+ market, which also explains why they never caught on.

Now that the smoke on the mobile computing battlefield has cleared, though, one can pick through the remnants and find a good deal on what is interesting technology. It’s easy to be discouraged by all the lemons and genuinely weird micro-PCs, but I’ve also found a little gem in there. And that bulky, funny looking gem is the Vaio UX.

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When Sony presented its “Next Generation Portable” device (which I’ll refer to as ‘PSP2’ for the rest of the post) and other plans for portable gaming yesterday, they proudly started their presentation with a bold slide: (images courtesy of Engadget)

Now, when Sony does a bold claim like this, I get very excited. The interface they introduced in 2003 with the mediocre “PSX” product and later used as the main UI for their flagship consoles like the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable was known as the “XrossMediaBar“, and despite its awkward — ‘X-treme marketing’ — name, it was (and still is) an amazing piece of work. In fact, Sony managed to innovate in the stale and extremely unfriendly gaming console interface and create something that was devoid of useless flashy crap, extremely scalable, discoverable, elegant and intuitive.

That’s why it’s no surprise that Sony has decided to outright kill the XMB in its PSP2 console and replace it with an absolute train-wreck UI that shows they lost all sense of what a good interface looks like.

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Steam for Mac will be available for download in a week’s time. Steam, for the uninitiated, is the world’s largest gaming platform, serving in essence as an ‘iTunes for games’. Steam lets you buy, try, and play games, stay connected with other gamers and friends, and much more. I’ve enjoyed testing the beta release of it for the last few weeks.

However, the part I disliked about Steam on the Mac is the (understandably) less-than-native looking and feeling UI. While the entire application was recently redesigned (and re-engineered to utilize Webkit as its rendering engine), it still feels less than at home between the system apps.

As a fun exercise, I’ve redesigned Steam in a way that maintains consistency with its own UI conventions and values, while changing look and feel to make it more native to the Mac platform.

You can see a comparison between Steam for Mac’s UI and my redesign on flickr here.

I won’t tease you with only vapid mockups, though. While you’re here, grab my Steam replacement icon for OS X.

Steam replacement icon – 434 KB

Of course, if you have input on the mockups, sound off in the comments. Meanwhile, I am currently considering sending my thoughts to Gabe for further consideration.

In this day and age, with a variety of handheld and TV-set bound consoles vying for the attention of the modern gamer, making a distinctly different and yet approachable game is a challenge worthy of a Nobel Prize. If there actually were such a thing, id Software‘s web-savvy Quake Live would be a worthy nominee.

Quake Live is actually the (almost) 10-years old Quake 3 Arena with a lot of tweaks and adjustments. Not only have the graphics been improved: the overall gameplay has been balanced, and the entire game is launched through a website that also facilitates chatting and meeting friends, keeping tracks of your statistics, and finding servers to play on. It’s also entirely free. There’s no catch.

A Quake 3 / Quake Live icon is included in this post, so you can put it in your Dock when this all sounds appealing.
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As you might have figured from my twitter updates, I spent the weekend at the locally hosted LAN party ‘the Reality’.

A LAN party is an event where a bunch of computer-loving geeks take their computers with them to play games and have fun together, which I certainly had. I made a little video to show what it looks like when over 730 people come together and go crazy. It’s HD – fullscreen playback is recommended!

While using Windows was a bit bumpy at times, the party was great and I’ve had a lot of fun.

Already looking forward to next year.

Generally, a Mac owner is expected to have a lot of Apple peripherals, like keyboards, mice, and even displays and display adapters. I’m no exception, which isn’t very strange, because I love the way most of them look and feel. Apple doesn’t offer everything you might need, though – full-size headphones, a great love of mine, are something that could use the nice design touches of Apple, but I had to look elsewhere for a fitting solution that also has an acceptable sound quality.

I set out for an affordable and quality headset. Design may be important, but since you typically wear the things, it’s best to do a selection based on technical merits. However, I found a set of ‘cans’ that qualify quite well in both departments. Read on for the full review of the Steelseries Siberia headphones. Also, read the last bit of the post for a shot at winning a free Siberia.
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