The UpStream

This Saturday we all got a big reveal when we saw a preview of Portal 2 being next month's Game Informer cover. This is extremely exciting for all of us here at PluGHiTz Live!, but didn't reveal much to us as to the cold hard facts of this highly anticipated game. Now, between Eurogamer being told by Valve that the game is heading to Xbox 360 and PC, and Game Informer's reveal that the sequel features a "two-player co-op mode with its own campaign featuring two new playable characters," I am excited to see how exactly Valve plans on pulling this off and even more excited that the game is coming out this holiday season.

Remember the ongoing battle between Apple and Nokia? Oh yes, the incident you try to forget but it just wont go away. Well, there's more! What a shocker.

The last update in the case occurred when Apple decided to retaliate after Nokia filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC). Nokia's reason for filing the complaint was to have the ITC ban imports of Apple products into the U.S. This complaint was completely ridiculous since it did not relate to the original grievance in any way. Yet, Apple had to get a piece of it and decided to file a complaint with the ITC themselves. Their reasoning was unclear. By this point, we knew that this dispute would not be settled in court.

Yeah, Steve Jobs said that. Looks like 1996 Steve Jobs and 2010 Steve Jobs haven't met. When 1996 Steve Jobs was fired and sold off all his shares and anything Apple Computers-branded, 2010 Steve Jobs killed that man and renamed the company to Apple, Inc. And with that, he also went on a tirade of lawsuits and counter-suing with Nokia to now duking it out with HTC. Apple has sued HTC for infringing on 20 patents "related to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware."

Apple's claims are nuts! Just because ANOTHER phone has touch screen doesn't mean it's infringement. I got news for ya, Apple: You weren't the first. But yes, I understand, you're lost in the cloud that is your beloved operating system and won't admit that you merely passed the phone off by calling it innovation when inventions before you have outperformed it, I get it. It's fine. But you've even surprised HTC with these claims, who, by the way, had the PPC6600 before the thought of a touch device was even a gleam in your development team's eyes.

Here's the press release:

Do you remember Portal, the fantastic shooter puzzle game from Valve where you had to escape from a psychotic robot? It turns out that Valve remembers about it, too, and even updated the PC version of the game this week completely unexpectedly. Their release notes said,

Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations.

Immediately we got excited and knew something was up with the radios. In digging into the audio files for the game, it was discovered that there were a number of new MP3 files all related to the radio. The new files include several Morse Code transmissions and the rest are SSTV encoded photos. The images all appear to be photos from inside Aperture Laboratories, possibly from the security cameras. There is definitely a lot of thought behind what is going on here.

The guess has been that all of these new challenges are leading up to a Portal 2 which Valve then announced officially. The official description of the game says,

You know the Internet has taken over when a capital city is actually considering renaming themselves to Google. Yes, Google.

The mayor of Topeka, Kansas has decided that the city will temporarily be named Google, through the end of March. This decision has been made in hopes of receiving Google's new "Fiber for Communities" service. Google has begun taking nominations for the service that may have been successful if it wasn't for Buzz and DNS. Google's failed attempt at a social networking site makes the "Fiber for Communities" program less impressive in our opinion. Yet, 79-year-old mayor Bill Bunten thinks that the quicker service will benefit the residents of Topeka...I mean Google, Kansas.

Nominations run through March 26th but the number of cities that will be chosen for the project is unknown. Google has said, "We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people." This program is intended to get the U.S. caught up with the world when it comes to Internet speeds. We'll have to see how that goes.

Jon has been upset for months over the fact that droves of people flock to Twitter for absolutely no useful reasons, and investors keep throwing money at them because of it. So when users were scammed for over $150,000 on the social media site, we knew Jon would be elated.

Scammers set out to target brides-to-be and exhibitors last week when they opened an account on Twitter for promotion of a nonexistent bridal show, claiming to be part of the The Boston 411, a community site for local Boston residents. Police have launched a full investigation and are hunting down the conmen.