At Torrington’s Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, the maternity center is even offering video conferencing technology. It’s one of many perks available to new parents today, where the maternity “ward” has been replaced with birthing “suites” that are more like a posh hotel room than your typical hospital lodgings.

Just a few hours old, Samantha Perez made her online debut last Tuesday. Her mother, Marianella Perez, held Samantha in her arms in front of a laptop equipped with a camera. She talked with her other daughter, Leah, using Skype, software that provides free video phone calls over the Internet.

Charlotte Hungerford recently began offering Skype to patients in its maternity center as a way to deal with a temporary ban on visitors under the age of 18 due to swine flu precautions. However, it fits in with a larger trend toward new amenities for new parents. Editing by helen

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There were, of course, huge political and social upheavals that roiled our world in the past decade. But there were also the gradual lifestyle changes that you don’t always notice when they’re happening — kind of like watching a child grow older. Here’s an alphabetical look at 50 things that changed our lives since the beginning of the millennium:

AIRPORTS: Remember when you didn’t have to take your shoes off before getting on a plane? Remember when you could bring a bottled drink on board? Terrorism changed all that.

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: From acupuncture to herbal supplements to alternative ways of treating cancer, alternative medicine became more mainstream than ever.

APPS: There’s an app for that! The phrase comes from Apple iPhone advertising, but could apply to the entire decade’s gadget explosion, from laptops to GPS systems (want your car to give you directions to Mom’s house in Chinese, or by a Frenchwoman named Virginie? There was an app for that.)

AARP cards … for boomers! Some prominent Americans turned 50 this decade: Madonna. Prince. Ellen DeGeneres. The Smurfs. Michael Jackson — who also died at 50. And some prominent “early boomers” turned 60: Bruce Springsteen and Meryl Streep, for example.

AGING: Nobody seemed to look their age anymore: Clothes for 50-year-old women started looking more like clothes for 18-year-olds, tweens looked more like teens, long hair was popular for all ages, and in many ways women’s fashion seemed to morph into one single age group.

BLOG: I blog, you blog, he blogs … How did we spend our time before blogging? There are more than 100 million of these Web logs out there in cyberspace.

BLACKBERRIES: Considered essential by corporate CEOs and moms planning playdates. Introduced in 2002, the smartphone version is now used by more than 28 million people, according to its maker, Research In Motion Ltd.

BOOK CLUBS: Thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey, the decade saw not only a profusion in book discussion clubs but a growing reliance on them by publishers.

CABLE: Cable 24-hour news made the evening network news seem quaint, cable dramas reaped Emmys … and at decade’s end, even Oprah was making the move to cable.

CAMERAS: Remember those trips to get film developed? Nope? Even your grandmother has a digital camera, and she’s probably e-mailing you photos right now or uploading them to a photo-sharing site.

CELEBRITY CULTURE: Celebrity magazines fed a growing obsession with celebrities and the everyday minutiae of their lives. By decade’s end, we were still obsessed, though Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie had ceded many covers to reality stars like Jon and Kate Gosselin. Celebrity Web sites like TMZ took hold mid-decade.

CELL PHONES: Cell phones are now used by more than 85 percent of the U.S. population and for some have replaced land lines entirely. On the downside, they’ve made cheating on a spouse more difficult — just ask Tiger Woods.

CHEFS: Chefs are hot! The Food Network, whose viewership tripled this decade, reeled in viewers with high-voltage personalities like Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse and Giada De Laurentis. Meryl Streep starred in a cinematic pean to the late Julia Child.

CONNECTIVITY: As in, we’re all expected to be connected, wirelessly, all the time. Boss e-mails you on a Sunday? Better answer, unless you’re off in Antarctica — you have no excuse.

COUGARS: A new TV series called “Cougar Town” focuses on a phenomenon that gained its name this decade: women dating younger men.

CROCS: Those ubiquitous plastic clogs debuted in 2002 and became the shoes you loved to hate. Kids love ‘em, but there are Web groups dedicated to their destruction. Not to be deterred: First lady Michelle Obama, who wore them on vacation in 2009.

DANCING: Dancing never went out of style, but this decade saw the huge popularity of dancing contests like “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing With the Stars.”

DATING: Dating was transformed like everything else by Internet sites, rendering other ways of meeting people obsolete. And it wasn’t just the territory of the relatively young: Seniors found love online, too.

DVRs: Suddenly, DVR-ing is a verb, and what it means is this: There’s no reason to know anymore what channel your program is on, and what time.

EMBARRASSMENT ENTERTAINMENT: Embarrassment has always been part of comedy — you need only think of Don Rickles — but this is the decade of cringe-worthy Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Ricky Gervais, and of course Sacha Baron Cohen, who as Borat and Bruno shamed perhaps the entire country.

FACEBOOK: Can you believe this social networking site was once limited only to Harvard students? Now it’s a time-sucking obsession for more than 300 million users globally and a whole new form of social etiquette: Who to friend on Facebook?

FAT: This was the decade that fat became the enemy of the state. New York City banned trans fats, and Alabama — second in national obesity rankings — introduced a tax on overweight state workers.

FOODIE: It’s not just that guy in the White House who liked arugula — this was the decade of the foodie, when we all developed gourmet palates. Even a burger became a gourmet item — as in Daniel Boulud’s truffle burger, stuffed with foie gras and short ribs.

GOING GREEN: From the kind of light bulbs we use to the kind of shopping bags we carry to the cars we drive, “going green” took hold this decade. Now, it’s not strange to hear a schoolkid tell a parent to use a cloth grocery bag.

GOOGLE: This was the decade that Google became a part of our brain function. You know that guy who was in that movie — when was it? Just Google it.

GPS: We can’t get lost anymore — or at least it’s pretty hard, with the ubiquitous GPS systems. But you’d better type in your location carefully: One couple made a 400-mile mistake this year by typing “Carpi” rather than “Capri.”

HELICOPTER PARENTING: Translation: helicopters hover, and so do many parents. After years of obsessive attention to safety and achievement of the youngest children, some said a backlash was under way.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD: An explosion in Internet use led to an overload of information about practically everything. It’s at our fingertips, but is it accurate? Some call it part of a larger phenomenon, namely …

INSTANT GRATIFICATION: Otherwise known as being able to get anything you want within an instant. Often referred to as a theme of the decade.

IPODS: An icon of the digital age, it’s hard to believe this portable media player was first launched in 2001. Six years later the 100 millionth iPod was sold.

LIFE COACHES: In the aughts, there’s a coach for everything! So why not life itself? Some say life coaches are merely therapists without the license or regulations.

MUSICALS: They’ve been around forever, but this decade musicals came back to film, starting with “Moulin Rouge” and “Chicago.” But for kids, it was Disney’s extremely successful “High School Musical” franchise — three movies and counting — that brought back the musical magic.

NETFLIX: The DVD by mail service, established in 1997, announced its two-billionth DVD delivery this year. For many, those discs on top of the TV are just one more thing to procrastinate over.

ORGANIC: Americans rushed to fill their grocery carts with organic food, making it big business — now a $21 billion industry, up from $3.6 billion in 1997. At decade’s end, Michelle Obama planted the first White House organic vegetable garden.

PREGNANCY CHIC: If you’ve got it, flaunt it: That was the new ethos of the pregnancy experience, with chic clothes that emphasized the bulging belly, personal pregnancy photos, and endless coverage of celebrity pregnancies.

REALITY TV: As a nation, we became addicted to reality TV, from the feuding Gosselins of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ to “American Idol” to “Project Runway.” At decade’s end, the Heenes of Balloon Boy fame and the Salahis of gatecrashing fame give reality TV some unwanted attention.

RECESSION CHIC: Fashion skewed to more severe styles — and much black — as so-called “recession chic” took hold in the latter part of the decade.

RETRO CHIC: Once you forget the smoking, the racism, the sexism and the homophobia, the early ’60s depicted by the AMC series “Mad Men” sure looked good. The swinging Madison Avenue ad men make neckties cool again.

SEXTING: Combine texting with a cell phone’s camera function and you get this parental nightmare. A survey from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 15 percent of teens ages 12-17 with a cell phone had received sexually suggestive images or videos.

STARBUCKS: It’s a cliche that there’s one on every block, but sometimes it seemed like it — and millions now consider it normal to spend $4 or so on a coffee drink in the morning, perhaps a venti half-caf half-decaf vanilla latte with an extra shot.

TATTOOS: It started innocently enough — maybe a butterfly on the shoulder or a tribal symbol on the bicep. A few characters from the Chinese alphabet later it seemed any hipster who really meant it had a full sleeve of tattoos. The trend extended to middle-aged moms and even tween idol Miley Cyrus.

TEXTING: R u still rding this sty? Hope u r. This is the decade we start communicating in the shorthand of text messages. Get used to it: E-mail is so ’00s.

TV SCREENS: Television screens became bigger and flatter, making some ordinary living rooms and dens the equivalent of big-studio screening rooms. At the same time, though, people were watching movies and videos on the tiniest screens imaginable — on their iPods other mobile devices.

TWEEN CULTURE: Tweens, especially girls, became an economic force to be reckoned with, buying everything from clothes to electronic devices to music to concert tickets.

TWITTER: The new social network introduced tweets, retweets, follows and trending topics — as long as it fit in 140 characters.

UGGS: Not since the Croc (see above) has functional footwear created such a frenzy. The fur-lined snowboots were everywhere, no matter the climate. Los Angelenos insisted on wearing them with shorts.

WII: In a sea of ever-more-sophisticated video games, this simple console became the decade’s breakout hit by appealing to the non-gaming masses. Wiis became a center of family gaming, home fitness and even senior socializing.

WIKIPEDIA: A boon to lazy students everywhere, the open-source encyclopedia used the masses to police its entries and keep them (mostly) (sometimes) accurate.

YOGA: Madonna, Gwyneth and other bendy celebrities brought the eastern practice mainstream. By the end of the decade, even Grandma could do downward-facing dogs on her Wii Fit.

YOUTUBE: Let’s end this list and go kill some time by watching … YouTube videos! The video-sharing site was born in 2005. Political candidates in 2008 even had their on YouTube channels. The most popular video yet: “Charlie Bit My Finger,” in which baby Charlie bites the finger of his brother Harry.

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Google Doodles have become so popular that scammers have started latching onto the topics and planting malware-infected pages designed to ensnare those looking for more information on certain Doodle subjects.

10 cool things you didn’t know about Google

It’s been a fun and varied year for Google Doodles, some of which are seen in all countries, some in just a portion.

Among the highlights:

• Google celebrated the anniversary of the bar code in October by using a bar code that translated into the word “Google.” • Sesame Street’s 40th birthday in November inspired a series of Google Doodles featuring characters such as Big Bird , Ernie and Bert.

• Also in November, more serious topics grabbed the Google Doodle’s attention: the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall and Veterans’ Day.

• Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday grabbed Google Doodle honors in early October, as did Brazil winning rights to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

• Google celebrated its own 11th birthday in September, doubling the number of “l”’s in its name to make it look like a number 11.

• UFO watchers got treated to crop circles in the shape of Google’s name in September, as the company sent online users on a mysterious chase for the meaning of this Doodle.  The 40th anniversary of the first Moon Landing also was commemorated via Doodle showing Google’s logo imprinted on the moon’s surface.

• Michael Jackson’s death in June sparked an outbreak of viruses related to searches on the late singer’s name.  Google also celebrated Jackson’s birthday, posthumously, via a Doodle in September featuring Jackson’s twinkle toes.

• Other notables Doodles included a nice one of a dad and daughter digging a Google sand sculpture on Father’s Day, the 25th anniversary of Tetris in June commemorated in colorful blocks and a Feb. 12 tribute to Charles Darwin, with Google’s letters represented by nature’s creatures and plants. Editing by helen

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Yes, Windows Mobile is down — really low — but the operating system isn’t bad. The mobile OS is good at the core, meaning the kernel, and multitasks pretty well. It’s the user interface and partner model that needs a makeover — and awfully fast. Microsoft is quickly falling behind Apple and Google, but there’s hope. Android is a bigger threat than anything Apple has got, because of competing licensing and partner models. Don’t give up, Microsoft, but for frak’s sake do get a move on.

For Microsoft’s benefit I’ll respond to IDC’s prediction and then to Levy. My question of the hour: Who spiked the eggnog at IDC? Three hundred thousand iPhone apps? What are they drinking at IDC? There’s simply no way that the iPhone/iPod touch ecosystem can support that many apps, unless there is huge application separation across geographies, cultures and languages.

Apple shouldn’t want that many apps, and IDC had better be wrong. I will say that Apple app bloat would be wonderful for every competitor, including Microsoft. Too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. Apps are already hard to find or differentiate at 100,000-plus. Triple the number would be beyond way too many.

Switching analysts, Levy writes:
With market share for Windows Mobile OS in freefall, vendors fleeing and its mindshare in meltdown, now is as good a time as any for the company to dive into a full-on re-think of its mobile strategy. Or an exit from the market until it can figure out what makes the most sense.

He strongly emphasized:
After 13 years and countless kicks at the can, it’s time for Microsoft to call it a day. Kill Windows Mobile, consolidate resources and skills from the shuttered unit as well as Danger and Zune — which continues to impress with technically sophisticated offerings that languish on store shelves — and pick one cohesive strategy.

I won’t disagree with Levy about Windows Mobile’s dire straights. Microsoft has fallen behind, and there’s no sign of any catching up. But I would strongly recommend against Microsoft exiting the mobile phone market. There is simply too much at stake. Smartphones are poised to be the next big computing platform, and the handset replacement market will be huge. The global mobile handset install base is about 4 billion, according to industry statistics, or about four times the PC install base. More than 1 billion new handsets are sold every year.

Most of the handsets in use are not smartphones, which already are beginning to replace so-called dumbphones — slowly at first but increasing numbers over the next three or four years. Nokia has the sales volume, with nearly 40 percent market share in dumbphones and smartphones, worldwide. Apple has the huge applications lead. Google seemingly picks up new Android licensees by the day. Android went from zero worldwide smartphone marketshare in third quarter 2008 to 3.5 percent share a year later. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile share declined during the same time period, to 7.9 percent from 11.1 percent.

History Repeats

What bugs me about Microsoft and Windows Mobile: It reminds me of Internet Explorer, which Microsoft let languish for years. There’s a saying that history repeats. It’s my observation this theory applies to organizations as well as people. Microsoft is repeating with Windows Mobile past mistakes made with IE — and not demonstrating the initiative to do better. Is somebody living in denial up there in Redmond?

Microsoft won the browser wars in the late 1990s only later to abandon the territory. Browser development essentially ended with IE6 in 2001 and didn’t pick up again until Mozilla released Firefox five years ago. Now, there is fierce browser competition, driven in part by search revenues; all the while, IE continues to bleed usage share even after two major releases.

According to Net Applications, in November, IE usage share was 63.62 percent, down from 67.88 Percent in July. By comparison, Firefox share was 24.72 percent, up from 22.47 percent, during the same time period. Safari: 4.36 percent and Chrome 3.93 percent. To reiterate, Net Apps data reflects usage and not market share, and many people tend to use multiple browsers.

There’s more than corporate history repeating. Browsers are important to the burgeoning smartphone market, where Internet Explorer trails even more than Windows Mobile. Microsoft must change its ways now. Hanging up on the mobile market is a bad idea. Letting Apple or Google woo away developers is even dumber.

Perhaps it’s time for Microsoft to call on partners for help. HTC already is nicely skinning Windows Mobile 6.5. The Windows Phone concept, with dedicated “Start” button, is a nice concept, but a Zune-like phone with a Microsoft brand or co-brand would be even better. A Nokia-Microsoft team could greatly benefit both companies. The point: Microsoft has to do something, and tomorrow is already too late.

I tell you this: If Microsoft loses the mobile market, it loses the future. Once again, and I’m exhausted from blogging this, I say that Microsoft must launch a mobile Manhattan Project. If not, it will be buyers of all categories, including enterprises, hanging up on Windows Mobile.

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 AOL begins a new chapter Thursday, a day after it completes its spinoff from one of the worst mergers of all time. The question on everyone’s mind is: What will the newly single AOL look like?

The last time the former Internet powerhouse was flying solo, it was worth more than $100 billion, with its stock breaking past $100 per share. But that was before 2001, when it bought CNNMoney and Fortune parent Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500) for $111 billion.

Today, the company is worth just a little more than $3 billion and its shares will start trading in the $25 range Thursday morning. In the first nine months of 2009, AOL brought in just $765 million of profit on $2.4 billion of revenue, down 33% and 23% respectively from the first nine months of the previous year.

Unlike in 2001, AOL is playing a distant second (more like fourth) fiddle to competitors Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), who dominate Internet traffic and advertising. AOL will emerge as a leaner company after it separates from Time Warner, with plans to lay off one third of its staff — 2,300 employees — by the end of the year.

Assets are still attractive. Many experts think AOL has some fight left.

With former Google advertising chief Tim Armstrong at the helm, analysts say the company is in good hands, and many think that AOL has a set of successful assets that it can build on. It won’t be able to “out-Google” Google, but it may be able to control some corners of the Internet.

“AOL needs to find its niche in the reconfigured Internet landscape,” said Ray Valdes, analyst with Gartner. “It’s just not quite clear what those viable niches are.”

AOL has an attractive content business, including some popular sites that most users likely didn’t even know belonged to the company. The leading gadget blog Engadget.com and social networking site Bebo.com are both AOL properties that have loyal fan bases and have made AOL the fourth most-visited online media network in the country, according to data tracker comScore.

Celebrity gossip news site TMZ.com, currently owned by AOL, will will stay with Time Warner after the split. (See correction below)

The company also owns Advertising.com, a display advertising network that the Internet services company bought in 2004. That acquisition has worked out very well for AOL, since comScore reported AOL now has the largest advertising reach in the country, putting it just ahead of Yahoo and Google by that measure.
0:00 /5:09AOL CEO: Why I took the job
But AOL’s legacy businesses are drying up. Its dial-up customers number a mere 6 million, less than half of what it had just three years ago. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) still has a strong user base, but the number of people using it has declined as similar services on Gmail and Facebook have gained in popularity.

Ultimately, AOL needs to pick a lane. Is it an Internet portal? A content company supported by advertising? Or something altogether different?

“They’re either going to decide that they’re a media company and produce more exclusive content or they’ll try to drive people through aol.com and be something for everybody,” said Todd Dagres, general partner of Spark Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm focused on media and technology. “But it would be folly for them to aggregate material and drive people to aol.com. They should find out what they do best and go after that.”

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It’s a difficult feat for sure. Google maintains 65% of the U.S. search market, compared to a combined 28% for Microsoft and Yahoo. But the newly partnered tech giants are hoping that one plus one equals more than two.

“This deal is really about scale,” said Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) Chief Executive Carol Bartz on a conference call. “By combining the … technology of both companies, we can create a real, viable alternative for advertisers.”

In other words, size really matters to advertisers in the search market. More data means more relevant searches and ads, which means more money can be charged to advertisers.

It’s a fact that Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) CEO Steve Ballmer said unfairly benefits Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), as many ad companies were less willing to deal with Microsoft or Yahoo because each maintained a tiny fraction of the market compared to the search leader. But Ballmer said a combined effort “provides consumers and advertisers … with a real No. 2 advertiser in search.”

“It’s reasonable logic that two is better than three,” said David Smith, analyst at Gartner. “The big picture is reaching a critical mass — the way advertising works is through a positive feedback loop, where the bigger you get, the better you get.”

Smith said that Google has carved out such a dominant share of the market that there’s nowhere to go but down if competition ramps up from its biggest rivals.

Not No. 1, but strong No. 2. Even if Microhoo doesn’t make a run at the top of the search market, some argue that the deal is good for both firms, advertisers and consumers.

“Overall, the deal makes sense,” said Shar VanBoskirk, search market analyst at Forrester Research. “It potentially creates synergies between the two firms — each had a gap the other one could fill — to create another one-stop-shop and a stronger second-place player.”

VanBoskirk said the consumer experience on Yahoo.com and Bing.com will improve, because data sharing will help Microsoft and Yahoo better customize content for each user. And with more relevant ads, advertisers will get more clicks and a better return on their investment.

Furthermore, VanBoskirk said the partnership will free up development talent to improve Bing’s “decision engine” technology, which provide information on when airline prices will increase, what hotels to book and what to shop for.

“Google is a great search engine, but the next wave of search will be more than just finding Web sites,” she said. “Both Bing and Yahoo try to do that, and the partnership will help them develop the online concierge experience that they offer.”

In the end, VanBoskirk said the combined Microsoft and Yahoo search engine could cut Google’s 37-point market share lead to just 15 points.

Nothing to see here? Some analysts aren’t convinced that the deal will really make a difference.

“The amazing thing about this deal is how little impact it has,” said Carl Howe, analyst at Yankee Group. “Search rankings won’t change, advertising rates will continue in a downward spiral and the regulatory hassles involved will benefit the very beast they’re hoping to bring down: Google.”

Howe argued that Google is so massive, that all a combined deal would do is create a singular, distant No. 2 search company (Microhoo) rather than a distant No. 2 (Yahoo), and an even farther-away No. 3 (Microsoft).
0:00 /4:54Yahoo searches for itself
Furthermore, all three companies have said that advertisers are paying less and less per click as the Internet becomes saturated with advertisements. If that trend continues, which Howe believes it will, then the deal doesn’t do much to help either Microsoft or Yahoo.

And, as both Microsoft and Yahoo expected, the antitrust battle has already begun. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., said Wednesday that his panel will closely review the proposed deal.

“The deal between Yahoo and Microsoft — industry giants and direct competitors in Internet advertising and search markets — warrants our careful scrutiny,” said Kohl. He said the deal has “potentially far-reaching consequences for consumers and advertisers,” including “dampening the innovation” in the tech industry.

Google didn’t offer much insight into its thoughts on the deal. “There has traditionally been a lot of competition online, and our experience is that competition brings about great things for users. We’re interested to learn more about the deal,” the company said in an emailed statement.

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It’s the first visual “smoking gun” evidence of liquid on the northern hemisphere of the moon, scientists said, and the first-ever photo from another world showing a “specular reflection” — which is reflection of light from an extremely smooth surface and in this case, a liquid one.

“This is the first time outside Earth we’ve seen specular reflection from another liquid from another body,” said Ralf Jaumann, a scientist analyzing data from the Cassini unmanned space probe.

Jaumann said he was surprised when he first saw the photos transmitting from Cassini, orbiting Saturn about a billion miles from Earth.

“It was great because if you look at photos of planets, you mostly see nothing is happening. But in two hours we saw a glint of light getting brighter.”

Titan’s similarities to Earth have attracted NASA’s attention for decades. It’s the only body besides our own in the solar system that is believed to have liquid on its surface. Like Earth, Titan has an atmosphere which is mostly nitrogen.

Experts believe the presence of liquid on a planet or moon improves the chances that some kind of life could develop there.

The photo comes from the spacecraft Cassini, which has been searching for this kind of reflection since it began circling Saturn in 2004.

Scientists with the University of Arizona were able to use previous data from Cassini to learn details about the reflection’s location on Titan.

The glint appears to be coming from the southern edge of a lake called Kraken Mare — a massive body of methane that covers about 150,000 square miles (400,000 square kilometers). That’s larger than the Caspian Sea, which is the largest lake on Earth.

The hunt for the specular reflection took five years, NASA said, because the moon’s northern half had been shrouded in winter darkness.

“Next, we want to find out more about Titan’s liquid,” said Jaumann. “Do we have some kind of weather there? Do we have changes with seasons? Does it rain? How does the liquid methane run across the surface?”

But Jaumann sounded a note of caution regarding the prospect of life in this case.

“The temperature on Titan’s surface is something like minus-180 degrees Celsius,” he said. “That means it’s very cold. But you never know.”

The project is based out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

This is not the first evidence of liquid on Titan. In 2008, project members used infrared technology to discover a large lake in the moon’s southern hemisphere.

But this recent foundations show that liquid exists on the moon’s northern half. That region is believed to include larger basins that could hold more liquid.

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January 23, 2009 New York – Microsoft has confirmed the closure of Aces Game Studio, the internal development studio responsible for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Flight Simulator is one of the company’s oldest product lines, stretching back more than 20 years. The closure came amidst the company’s first major layoffs in its history, announced on Thursday. Approximately 5,000 Microsoft employees will be laid off; around 1,400 were cut immediately, with the remainder to but cut over the next 18 months.

In a statement, Kelda Rericha of Edelman, Microsoft’s public relations firm, said that the decision was made within Microsoft’s Internal Entertainment Business “to align our people against our highest priorities.”

The closure of Aces marks the shuttering of another major developer within Microsoft Game Studios. Since September of 2007, the company has shut down FASA Studio (Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries, and Shadowrun), announced the closure of Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires), and Carbonated Games (Hexic HD, Uno). In addition, Bungie, the studio responsible for Halo, left Microsoft Games Studios and became an independent studio, though Microsoft does maintain an ownership stake in it.

Does this mean the end of the Flight Simulator franchise? According to Rericha, “We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise which has proven to be a successful PC based game for the last 27 years. You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great LIVE experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time.” Editing by Nancy Chrystler

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The latest version, Empire: Total War, is set in the 18th Century, and will include real-time sea battles, new modes, and a brand new multiplayer components, including a post-release multiplayer campaign update.

January 22, 2009 – Fusing elements of Civilization-style overworld map management and large-scale real-time strategy battles, the formula for Creative Assembly’s Total War series has remained a popular one since the franchise launched with Shogun: Total War back in 2000. The latest version, Empire: Total War, is set in the 18th Century, and will include real-time sea battles, new modes, and a brand new multiplayer components, including a post-release multiplayer campaign update.

To get a better idea of how all that is going to work, we took time to interview Creative Assembly Studio Communications Manager Kieran Brigden.

Empire: Total War is scheduled to ship on March 3, 2009.

IGN: Last we heard Empire was being pushed to allow time for the implementation of a multiplayer infrastructure. What sort of infrastructure are you referring to? What’s the status of that implementation?

Kieran Brigden: We are preparing the existing single player code base for the roll-out of a multiplayer campaign beta after release. Much of the foundations are now laid, although work will be continuing on this feature right up until release and prior to the beta itself.

Multiplayer Trailer – Watch or download the video here (HD available).

IGN: Can you give more details on how the multiplayer campaign might work? For instance, can you save your games in the middle of a campaign and return to it later? It seems like you’re limiting the action to just two players, at least in the beta. What player limits are you looking for in the final release?

Kieran Brigden: The multiplayer campaign game will be limited to 1v1, certainly for its first iteration; this is because we want to include playing battles from the campaign. In terms of how it will work, yes, you will be able to save your games and return to them. You could have several 1v1 games on the go so that you can have a series of opponents, enabling you to dip in and out of games against different opponents over a period of days, weeks and months. This links in deftly with the Steam buddy system: letting you see who’s online and pickup with them.

IGN: What are the basic setup options for the multiplayer campaign? Are we just looking at the standard campaign with one other human player or are there special considerations to be made? Are there unique victory conditions when you’re playing with other people?

Kieran Brigden: In the first instance, the victory conditions from the single player campaign will be applied for multiplayer. There are several campaign modes: shorter 100 turn campaigns or the longer 200 turn versions, and based on capturing a set of regions or earning the highest level of prestige by a given in-game date. At a later stage, we may well look to develop specific victory conditions and extend modes for multiplayer.

In terms of multiplayer campaign options, you can set up things like turn time limits, and how battles are fought (e.g. which battles to auto-resolve). Think of it like being able to play speed chess with the 18th century world. Some players will want limited turns and only specific battles, whereas others will want to play every engagement.

IGN: Which of the campaign’s episodes will be playable in multiplayer? Are there any specific considerations that make an episode more or less suitable to that kind of play? Did you find yourself rebalancing any of the single player portion of the game purely to accommodate multiplayer action?

Kieran Brigden: For the beta we will be rolling out the Grand Campaign from Empire, in which you can play as one of twelve different nations. It’s unlikely that we’ll be rebalancing this for multiplayer initially, although the nations do play very differently, and offer a diverse set of challenges. We’ve spent a long time balancing each of the nations in the campaign and this work will carry through to the campaign multiplayer. Having said that, this is a beta and the purpose of that is to test and to gather lessons learned on things such as nation and unit balance.

Might want to put that out.
IGN: This new mode is something we’ve wanted since Shogun. Can you give us some insight as to why with Empire you finally were able to add this new feature? Was the delay more a matter of game design or technology?

Kieran Brigden: Empire: Total War includes a brand new engine across the board in campaign, land and sea battles. The huge amount of work we’ve done with the engine has enabled us to explore the opportunity to make a multiplayer campaign game available for the first time.

The game has been streamlined, reducing the time the player spends on management each turn, making Empire more suited to a multiplayer campaign game. We’ve worked hard both to deepen the nation-management gameplay as well as reduce the time the player has to spend on it, and we’ve achieved this by giving the player more choices while reducing the burden of repeating those choices. For example, you can set a different tax level for different sections of the population, but you set this tax centrally rather than for every region. Also, you no longer have to recruit new army units at multiple cities and manually assemble them in the field: you can simply order them at the general in the field and they are automatically built in the nearest cities and make their own way to the army as requested.

All of these new design and technology advances influence multiplayer play. Synchronicity, connection, advanced gameplay options and game time are all issues that come into play with a multiplayer campaign. We’re hoping the beta will be a big success in this regard.

IGN: Civilization IV was the first turn-based empire game that really seemed to eliminate most of the tedious waiting that’s normally required of these types of games. What solutions are you looking towards to streamline play and keep players engaged all the way through the experience?

Kieran Brigden: We’ll be looking at various solutions to this as part of the Beta process. Turn times can be limited and players will be able to set their own time limits to prevent opponents from spending too long managing their empire.

Unlike Civ, we have epic realtime battles which can take some time to complete and we don’t want to make some players wait while others play out their battles. That’s the main reason we’re focusing on 1v1 to start with.

In addition, players will get the option to fight as the opposing AI army in any battle encountered by their opponent. So basically, the player can replace the AI in battle, meaning that players can be constantly fighting multiplayer battles that have an impact on the overall campaign. Want to buckle your opponent before they even reach your borders? This might just be the way to do it.

I’m excited about the multiplayer campaign but i can see a small problem. if you can control the AI opponent of the other player i assume you will be able to make it withdraw the battle or kill them all with friendly fire or make poor tactical decisions that are suicide. if you can do this then the… It’s too bad that the multiplayer campaign won’t make the initial release, but it sounds amazing. The idea of taking control of the AI nations’ armies during battles is really exciting, and a brilliant way to avoid the boredom that could come from spectating one battle after another.

IGN: What’s the status of the purely tactical battles with regard to multiplayer?

Kieran Brigden: Real-time battles both on land and sea will be included within the multiplayer campaign (and of course as standalone custom battles). Plus, as I’ve mentioned, players will get the option to fight as the AI armies against their opponent.

Of course, players will still have the option to auto-resolve battles if they wish to focus purely on the campaign.

IGN: You’ve said in the past that you want to make multiplayer accessible and would like to see that portion of the game scale to the player’s interest. Can you expand on that a bit and explain how a casual player’s involvement might different from that of a more hardcore player? Can you reconcile those two approaches so that players of different interest levels can share a game?

Kieran Brigden: Making multiplayer more accessible has been high on our list of priorities. This has involved streamlining the UI and making elements such as preset battles and preset armies available to the player. Experienced players can still tinker with every detail within their armies, but more casual players now have a ready-made, balanced force to go to battle with, on ready-made maps. In addition, we’ve included a “Quick Match” mode that automatically examines your online ranking and matches you with a similarly rated opponent. Player ranking helps balance opponents; new players can play with other new players, and veterans can stick to fighting vets, leading to a more satisfying multiplayer experience for all.

That’s going to leave a mark.
Although not in our initial plans, we may look to incorporate these features within the multiplayer campaign at a later stage. Of course, players can tailor their games according to experience via nation selection. Some nations such as France start with lots of regions. Others will have fewer regions and will be immediately more accessible. There will be nations and starting positions for players of all experience levels, but we’ll be looking to the Beta to help balance this.

IGN: We know that you’re going to add the multiplayer campaign after the core game is released. Do you have a time frame for the eventual release of this feature?

Kieran Brigden: We’re not setting a target date at this point. Right now our focus is on getting Empire Total War complete and then we’ll be looking at full support for the game outside of this Beta. We’ll be releasing details of our post-release plans very soon, including for the multiplayer Beta.

IGN: How long will the multiplayer campaign beta run and what do you have to do to get in?

Kieran Brigden: It’s likely that this will be a limited Beta (open to all applicants) to begin with before we open it up to a larger user base. We haven’t finalised plans for the method of application but we wouldn’t be restricting this to invite only; it’s likely to be first come, first served.

Slightly outnumbered.
IGN: The multiplayer news is obviously the big story here, but since this is the Total War universe, we’ve got plenty of other questions for you about some of the as-yet unexplained features. We’re curious about the progression of the episodic campaign. How does the game start and what choices will the player have to make as they progress from one chapter to the next? Is there meant to be a narrative sort of continuity there or is this just a method to showcase different eras and slowly introduce players to the game design?

Kieran Brigden: First and foremost, the Road to Independence is a series of standalone focused campaigns driven by a single narrative which takes the player from the founding of Jamestown in 1607, through the bloody days of the French Indian War and ending with the War of Independence against Britain, and the establishment of the United States itself.

Throughout the campaign, the player is issued with a series of missions, some of which will need to be completed in order to progress to the next episode, but the way in which the player chooses to complete these tasks is entirely up to them.

Episode one begins with the birth of America itself. The player starts the campaign as the intrepid Captain John Smith and his band of settlers as they seek to create a new colony for the British crown and survive clashes with a nearby Native American tribe.

The story is developed by our narrator, George Washington. As young soldier of the Virginia colonies fighting on behalf of the British, he sets the scene as the French Indian War begins and America is propelled into full-scale conflict. The player’s first objective in this episode is to claim the Ohio Valley. The French have a stranglehold on this territory, with a series of forts presenting a major obstacle for the player’s armies. These fort battles will challenge even the most experienced Total War players, as all routes will be guarded by ambushing units, cannon redoubts and buildings garrisoned by enemy troops.

The third episode of the Road to Independence gives the player the chance to drive the British from America. This opens with the Battle of Bunker Hill. Here the player must hold back the advancing British for the opportunity to change history.
The full campaign game opens up in the final episode when the player can begin establishing America as a world power and take it in any direction they deem fit.

IGN: Can you talk about keeping the ruling class and the general population happy under each of the three government types? What sorts of technologies and actions will impact the happiness of your citizens or subjects?

Kieran Brigden: As you mention, in Empire the ruling class and the people both have to be kept happy, and different factors influence the happiness of each class. There are many options open to the player. Tweaking the levels of taxation across the population classes has a direct effect on their happiness, and you can also make certain troublesome regions exempt from tax if they are edging close to riots and rebellion. Towns can be developed as centres of entertainment by building bawdy houses or opera houses. These will help boost the happiness levels of certain classes within a region. The people also care about foreign policy. Attacking a hostile nation and winning great victories makes the people erupt with patriotic fervour. Attack and ally or continually lose battles, and your public won’t be happy. Of course, you can always repress the population by posting troops in cities; it won’t make the people happy, but it will quell unrest.

Another interesting new twist is clamour for reform. Building universities and researching certain technologies makes the population aspire to modern democracy. In an absolute monarchy, clamour for reform is a growing problem and it can be quite a challenge to advance up the tech tree while avoiding revolutionary agitation. In a democracy (especially a Republic), this is less of a problem, but if the population is not happy you may find that at election time your ministers are voted out of office.
IGN: What about the more extreme consequences of unhappiness? How likely is it that frequent and intense unhappiness will lead to the types of revolutions and civil wars that marked this period of history? What kinds of remedies can the player take if they’ve let things reach such a low point?

Kieran Brigden: The consequences depend: in the lower classes, you will see strikes, then riots before full-scale armed rebellion. The nobility issues letters of demand and will also launch armed rebellions if ignored. The army make up for each is different. Rebellions in some regions can result in the emergence of nations — for example, Scotland or Greece.

In your home region (your capital), it’s a different story with Revolution occurring if discontent boils over into revolt. The nobility will seek to install a new monarch, the people to establish a new Republic. Units in your armies may defect to join the rebels. The player can choose to fight as the incumbent government and stamp out the revolution, or choose to take control of the revolutionary armies tasked with taking the capital and overthrowing the old regime. A successful revolution forces a change in government so it could be that the player deliberately provokes a section of his population in order to bring about a desired change.

Ranged combat will play a major role in Empire.
IGN: You’ve added new buildings to the game that players can actually use to garrison their units. Are we going to be able to see many house-to-house battles during city assaults or do you think that most of the fighting will still take place in a more traditional Total War format? How does close quarters fighting within a city influence your overall approach to simulating combat?

Kieran Brigden: Some buildings on the battlefield can indeed be garrisoned. This is part of the cover system introduced in Empire Total War that sees every single projectile realistically modeled in battle — that’s every single bullet and every fragment of shrapnel across thousands of soldiers. As a result, battlefield elements such as walls offer a degree of cover to units deployed behind them. Buildings offer the ultimate source of cover. Troops within will be able to fire from windows on an enemy in range but they will of course be vulnerable to artillery fire. In a siege situation, taking cover in a building can be a key tactic in the final defense of the central plaza. In a field battle, an abandoned farmhouse can offer a unit a strong defensive position that can turn the tide.

That said, I should clarify that battles for cities take place in the outskirts rather than in the centre of cities. Siege battles are really about capturing the forts guarding the approaches to the city. The biggest forts in the game are so massive they contain quite a few buildings and are a real challenge to capture, even with the mightiest army.

IGN: You’re close enough to release now that you’ve got to have a good idea of your projected system requirements. Care to share them with us?

Kieran Brigden: Our minimum specification right now is a 2.6Ghz processor backed with 1gb of memory and a graphics card with 256mb RAM. Of course, there are a lot of scalable options for those players with lower and higher spec machines. However, as with all PC games the better your hardware the better your performance.

IGN: Finally, the Mongols invaded Shogun, the Vikings invaded Medieval, and the Barbarians invaded Rome. Who’s going to invade Empire? The Canadians?

Kieran Brigden: You won’t be surprised to hear that we’re not quite ready to discuss future products or expansions for Empire. There are plenty of routes for us to explore, however, and I’m sure we’ll be bringing you details when the time is right.

IGN: Thanks for your time.

Empire Game: Total War is scheduled to ship. Fusing elements of Civilization-style overworld map management and large-scale real-time strategy battles, the formula for Creative Assembly’s Total War series has remained a popular one since the franchise launched with Shogun: Total War back in 2000. The latest version, Empire: Total War, is set in the 18th Century, and will include real-time sea battles, new modes, and a brand new multiplayer components, including a post-release multiplayer campaign update.

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Champions Come from SJTU

In 1 vs. 1 and 2 vs. 2 FIRA football matches in the 2008 Chinese Robots Competition held on June 11, 2008, Team 1 and Team 2 composed of medium-size independent intelligent robots developed by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University got two first places and were awarded the cups with special meaning.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University has been praised as “the cradle of Chinese robotics”, because the university researched and developed a series of “first Chinese” special robots. Now the homemade football robots developed by students of the University defeat the export-based football robots. The students creates another “Chinese first” miracle. For this reason, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University is not only “the cradle of Chinese robotics”, but also “the cradle of researchers of robots”.

More than 200 teams from research institutes and colleges, high and elementary schools across China took part in the competition. Among them, only robots from Team 1 of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University are the only “China-made troops” in the competitive teams of completely independent items.

Development of robots is the aim of many students, including Li Yanzhi. Li Yanzhi comes from the 2nd High School Directly Affiliated to Beijing Normal University. He might originally be admitted to the Tsinghua University. In the year when he attended the entrance examination for colleges, however, he came across the news that the Shanghai Jiao Tong University won in the international robots competition. He then decided to enter the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In September that year, he was enrolled in the University.

The friendly learning environment and excellent researching conditions benefit Li Yanzhi a lot. He not only studies relevant knowledge but also takes part in the research of robot. He said proudly, ”I took part in all kinds of contests of robots. The development of medium-size independent intelligent robots in the competition is my graduation design, under the recommendation of Professor Gao Xueguan and teaching of Professor Cao Qixi”.

Teachers of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University are proud for students with strong creativity like Li Yanzhi. Last October, under the guide of Professor Lv Tiansheng, an expert in research of robots, Li Yanzhi got the first place in the competition of robots in the Shanghai Science & Technology Festival.

To get knowledge and increase abilities in practices is the educational principle of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The homemade robots independently developed by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University got the first place in the competition. It is an effective “Quality Control Report” delivered by the university to the society.

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