Diablo III Welcomes Players to Beta Hell This Summer

Fans around the world have been waiting for their chance to play Diablo III since the game was announced back in June of 2008. During today's Activision financial results conference call, Blizzard boss Michael Morhaime pinpointed a three-month window for the Diablo III beta.

"The game is looking great," Morhaime said during the conference call, "and we're currently aiming at a third quarter launch for external beta testing." A third quarter target would have beta testing for Diablo III launching sometime between July and September of 2011.

What Morhaime didn't offer was any sign of an official release date. "I want to be clear that we do not have an official release date or window yet," he said, explaining that Blizzard would not compromise quality to hit a release window. A slide accompanying the conference call did mention the company was "driving hard" to get the game released this year.

With beta testing kicking off in the third quarter of 2011, we're sure to hear something regarding Diablo III's launch by the time BlizzCon 2011 rolls around in October.

Sega reveals new 3DS game 'Crush'

Heading out this fall, the puzzler/platformer game 'Crush' is sure to make a splash.

The game was just announced by Sega, along with a proposed September release date

What's unique about this announcement is that Crush was originally released for Sony's PSP handheld, which at the time was the only portable game device capable of running the game.

Now, of course, the 3DS is more than capable of powering any title that was originally developed for the PSP, though this is believed to be the first game that is a direct platform cross.

Crush 3D - the official title of the upcoming 3DS installment - is not just a port of the PSP adventure, but it is not a completely brand new experience either. Rather, it's more like a highly updated version of the PSP original.

Even on the PSP, Crush was a game that relied on viewer perspective and the manipulation of 3D graphics (despite being presented on a 2D display). The transition to 3D makes it a much more inventive concept.

"Navigate across the surreal platforms of Danny’s mind by ‘crushing’ your way from a 2-dimensional to a 3-dimensional world and back again whenever you need to. Discover how ‘crushing’ takes you to impossible heights, over insurmountable obstacles, and even disposes of dangerous enemies. With full 3D graphics that make complete use of the Nintendo 3DS capabilities, CRUSH3D also sports the possibility to leave gifts for friends to collect in-game, using the innovative StreetPass communication system," described Sega.

Caixa Mágica 16 Beta

A development build of Caixa Mágica 16, a Portuguese Linux distribution for the desktop, has been released for testing. The biggest change is the fact that Caixa Mágica is no longer based on Mandriva Linux as in the past, but it is now built from the latest Ubuntu, with standard GNOME 2 as the default desktop environment. Version 16 is based on Ubuntu 11.04 and it it includes many more installation and configuration options while supporting a much larger number of hardware devices than previous Caixa Mágica releases. For graphics card with 3D support it's possible to activate 3D effects (Compiz Fusion) in the control centre. As always, this is a beta release, so it is not recommended for critical computer system. See the release announcement and release notes (both links in Portuguese) for more information and known issues. Download: caixamagica-16-desktop-i386-beta.iso (700MB, MD5), caixamagica-16-desktop-amd64-beta.iso (701MB, MD5).

New details emerge over Acer's ex-CEO's departure

It was in fact largely because of the iPad that former Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci was ousted from Acer.

The executive was essentially forced to leave his post after he failed to react to sluggish PC sales, and didn't do anything to reinvigorate its brand after the market began looking bleak.

But Lanci says he can't be the sole person to blame. In a recent heated interview with the blog Mobilized, he blamed the company at large for being unwilling to invest in the mobile market, even when the overall PC market was dwindling.

"At that time, I already saw if we want to become a major player in this new world, we needed to do certain investments, mainly on software and on smartphones and tablets, on touch," he said.

"I said, 'Look, it is not de-Taiwanization.' It is just globalization. If we want to be in the top three (PC makers) in the next three to five years, we need to be a global company and we need to leverage resources wherever they are," he continued.

But the official company line from Acer is that Lanci was a failed leader. It blames Lanci for being stiff and unwilling to change. The company says its ex-CEO was too focused on being a volume company, where it didn't matter what they sent out as long as it sent out the most.

Lanci "failed to come out with explanations earlier when the company was unable to deliver results that matched up with its targets in two consecutive quarters from October 2010 to March 2011," Acer said in a statement in response to Lanci's comments.

Clearly, though, Lanci does not want to exit quietly. "People after a few years will decide who was wrong," he said.

SalineOS 1.4, 1.0 "Personal Server"

Anthony Nordquist has announced the release of SalineOS 1.4, a Debian-based desktop distribution with Xfce, and SalineOS 1.0 "Personal Server" edition, a Debian-based distribution for home servers: "SalineOS Personal Server edition 1.0 is now available. The Personal Server edition is designed to make setting up small personal home servers as easy as possible. It features stripped-down Xfce 4.6.2 desktop environment, FireStarter firewall utility, GNOME NetworkManager, the new SalineOS installer, ClamAV pinned to Debian 'Squeeze' updates, scripts for aiding installation of certain server services, and full user manual in English, Spanish and German." Read the brief release announcement and visit the product information page to find out more; the 1.4 announcement is here. Download links: SalineOS-1.4-i386.iso (921MB, MD5, torrent), SalineOS-1.4-AMD64.iso (931MB, MD5, torrent), SalineOS-1.0-i386-PSE.iso (635MB, MD5, torrent), SalineOS-1.0-AMD64-PSE.iso (658MB, MD5, torrent).

Email costs businesses a fortune, say researchers

The use - and, particularly, the misuse - of email costs businesses up to $16,000 per employee per year, a new study has found.

Thomas Jackson of the UK's Loughborough University and Sharman Lichtenstein of Australia's Deakin University say that problems such as unclear messages, email overload, security and privacy issues and email interruptions all slow staff down.

They developed a formula based on a salary of £41,000, the average number of emails received and the average time taken to read them, the total recovery time between reading email and getting back to normal work tasks and the number of employees in the organisation.

They found that for an organisation with around 3,000 employees with access to email, the cost works out at just over $8,000 per employee. For a company with 6,000 email users, the costs were much higher, at well over $16,000 per employee per year.

The survey revealed that almost one in five emails was copied unnecessarily to staff members other than the main recipient. Thirteen percent were irrelevant or untargeted, and well under half were for information purposes. Fewer than half of emails that required an action on the part of the recipient actually stated what that action was.

Ironically, though, almost half of employees felt that their own emails were easy to read.

"These findings may help organisations to become more effective in managing their email communication systems," the researchers say.

"It is recommended that communication managers or others responsible for email policy and management examine their email policies and develop a 'snapshot' of how their employees use email."