Gamers at the PC Gamerz gaming centre in Hawaii were robbed by some idiots. Sadly, despite the apparently evil and sociopathic nature of gaming presented in mainstream media, no-one did anything to stop them… until they tried taking someone’s DS.

The owner of said DS decided to fight back, which prompted everyone else to wake up and attack the robbers. The robbers have since been arrested, and the world is safe again, thanks to the Nintendo DS.

Full story version is available at KHON2, if anyone wants to read about gamers getting good press. They’ve also got some of the security camera footage, and there are some pretty good blows in there.

[KHON2]

Google have decided to up the possible resolution of YouTube to 4K video (That’s 4096 x 2304 pixels, or 8 times larger than my desktop) to support future high resolution cameras and higher bandwidth internet connections that we will have in the year 2525…

If you were to go to any of the videos on this playlist, you will be able to select “Original”, which is what Google got as the original resolution of the video. Of course, you can use it for lower resolutions than 4K which happen to be higher than 1080p, but no-one really cares about that.

You will have issues playing the video if you are on a slow connection (except if you can stand the buffering, in which case I suggest you get cable or DSL) and you will not be able to view the glorious full resolution version without a stupidly high end display setup (I dread to think the multi-screen layout some people will try to watch this) and your computer may balk at the idea of doing this much work, but if you feel brave (or at least want to see if your processor starts to die), then feel free to check out the playlist.

[YouTube Blog]

It’s not often that Tesco’s advertising makes me want to say good things, let alone Tesco warranting a blog post on a tech site, but they’ve done it.

In this advert, Tesco Mobile manages to pastiche the generic empowerment and “blue sky thinking” that you get in the average mobile phone adverts and give a basic message at the end…

The fiasco with the interfering granny that aired for far too long is forgiven, but it does raise the question as to why the UK mobile phone industry continues to batter us with “inspirational” claptrap in order to hawk phones.

And yes, I’m ignoring the advert’s focus on 12 month adverts instead of the 18 or 24 months you get with most other suppliers if you want a phone, because we all know what the answer to that would be…

Microsoft formally named the Xbox 360′s motion controller without the Wiimote, dubbing it the “Kinect”. I’m sure there’s a decent marketing reason for it, but it doesn’t spring to mind immediately. Anyway, Justin managed to get a “Behind The Scenes” video of it from E3 which he posted on sister/brother/cousin site E3coverage.com

High Points – It makes a Skeleton, Voice Recognition and putting a ring on it.
Low Points – My bank manager suddenly feels the need to cry…

[E3coverage.com]

Warning: Taking apart your iPad will void your warranty. Do not attempt to disassemble the iPad unless you have a load of money or ninja tech support skills. If you want to see a selectively dissected iPad, why not watch this stop motion creation from TechRestore…

[TechRestore]

UK broadcasting giant the BBC sent their reporters over to CES to see the latest and greatest in gadgetry. However, they ended up with more than they bargained for…

Firstly, they were given a demonstration on how indestructible a hard drive from iosafe was. It was set on fire, soaked, dropped and crushed by a digger, yet still allowed the data to be readable after a little extracting from the remains. Given the BBC’s own video and also reports elsewhere such as bit-tech.net, I’m pretty amazed it survived through all of that.

The Beeb’s second triumph was over another product billing itself as unbreakable: the XP3 2.0 from Sonim. They said that if anyone managed to break the phone at CES, they’d get one for free. Cue BBC reporter dunking it in a fish tank, then proceeding to introduce the screen to a fish tank for a few seconds. Amazingly, he broke it on camera, with the CEO standing right next to him. Props to Bob Plaschke for taking the bad news well, although in their favour, the phone probably got hammered by every technology journalist in the city, so the single failure is probably acceptable.

Wouldn’t mind getting one for those times I head home to the farm…

[BBC 1, 2 and bit-tech.net]

Good News: Someone’s got hold of the Sony VAIO X11 and filmed an unboxing. Bad News: The site that did it is a German language tech site by the name of Newgadgets.de. Good News: They speak great English in the video…

The above version is in English, but you know where to look for the German one.

Essentially, it’s a thin VAIO with a theoretical 8 hour battery span, Atom processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSDPA/HSUPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS, camera and an on button.

Great find, Newgadgets. Mad props to you.

[Newgadgets.de]