SystemShock

Microsoft and Yahoo! have announced a web search deal to rival Google.

The agreement ends years of negotiations and gives Microsoft access to the internet's second-largest search engine audience.

It adds a potentially potent weapon to Microsoft's Internet arsenal as the software maker girds for an online assault against Google.

Yahoo is teaming up with Microsoft following years of financial decay.

WHEN MICHAEL CORLEONE’S TRUSTED Don of New York City is killed, as the Mafia organisation attempts to flee from the New Year’s Revolution in Cuba (in 1958), he appoints a new Don to oversee the massive city. His name is Dominic, and the player controls him. This marks the first break from the first The Godfather videogame: instead of starting at the bottom, the player more or less starts as high as he is going to go for the whole game. However, as the Don of New York – and later Florida and Cuba – the player has more than enough to keep him busy. He has to ‘build up’ a family of ‘made men’, take over businesses, improve his own character (as well as those of the men who work for him), and take on five opposing Mafia families.

Johannesburg, South Africa – August 2009: Leaf International Communications, the sole distributor of HTC in South Africa has confirmed the Android Market, Google’s mobile application directory, will be available to South African users from August 2009.

“HTC was the first to launch Android-based handsets in South Africa during May 2009,” says Stephen Strachan, marketing director at Leaf. “At the time, the Android Market was unavailable to local users and, while we have developed a local application portal, it is great that consumer demand has resulted in Google allowing local users to access this popular global portal. Leaf, together with HTC is exceptionally proud to bring the Android market to the South African consumer”.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT cool is? Samuel L. Jackson. I say “what” and not “who,” because Samuel L. Jackson is an entity. He’s ‘cool-in-a-can’. If Samuel L. Jackson can make Snakes on a Plane watchable, he can make any game playable. By that token, surely a game featuring the voice of Samuel L. Jackson (shortening his name is forbidden), more blood than a leech farm could handle and visual style to challenge Tarantino’s greatest works should be fantastic, shouldn’t it? Sadly, this is not always the case, as Afro Samurai sets out to prove. No matter how cool your game is, it still has to have a good dose of actual game to keep its head above water.

TWENTY YEARS IS A long time to wait for anything, and in an industry that starts producing sequels before the original films are even on circuit, it’s practically forever. Thankfully, the gaming industry got tired of waiting for Ghostbusters III and decided to take matters into its own ectoplasm-dripping hands. While there have been Ghostbusters games before, they were based on existing IP. This Ghostbusters is an all-new sequel to the movies, complete with new (and old) villains, characters and punch lines.

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.