Signs of a new iPhone hardware model being tested online and Apple’s interest in updating the handset’s built-in Maps application have been revealed.

A handset identifying itself as “iPhone 3,1″ was tracked by PinchMedia in its application iBART for San Francisco public transportation. According to MacRumors, iPhone 3,1 appeared in its usage logs during November.

The reference could signify a new iPhone model with major hardware changes, as Apple only changes the first number in a product’s identifier string when it receives a significant upgrade. The current iPhone 3GS carries the identifier iPhone 2,1 while the original iPhone identifies itself as iPhone 1,1, and the iPhone 3G — which featured minor architectural changes from its predecessor — is iPhone 1,2.
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The Chromium OS has been open-sourced for hardly a week and some industrious tinkerers over at Dell have already delivered a beta version especially designed for the Dell Mini 10v netbook.

Here’s how to get it:

I have released an USB key image file to: http://linux.dell.com/files/cto. The file name is: “ChromiumOS_Mini10v_Nov25.img.” It contains a functioning image of my USB key loaded with ChromiumOS. In addition, I have made a best effort attempt to get the Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter working in this image. It’s definitely not perfect (read: highly experimental, untested, unstable, yada yada…) but it does appear to function.
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Microsoft Corp. has done more to popularize graphical programming than any other vendor. The company’s development tools, led by Visual Basic and Visual Studio, have been used by millions of software developers over the past two decades.

But during a revealing and often humorous panel discussion on the future of programming at last week’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft’s own superstar developers espoused their loyalty to old-school methods of coding software.
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Bethesda Softworks announced today that Rogue Warrior is now available at retail stores across Europe for the Xbox 360 video game entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation3 (PS3) computer entertainment system and Games for Windows. Rogue Warrior, a character-driven first-person shooter featuring real-life American Navy Seal Richard “Demo Dick” Marcinko, offers an action-packed single-player campaign as well as intense multiplayer combat.

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An industry analyst has told Gamasutra that the Nintendo Wii bubble “could be” on its way to deflating.

According to Doug Creutz of the Cowen Group, Wii owners plan to buy fewer games than they did a year ago, while Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 players intend to increase their purchases.

He attributed the expected decline in Wii sales to the current economic climate, as core gamers who owned other consoles were unlikely to slash entertainment spending “when budgets get tight.”
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As you begin to contemplate your Thanksgiving meal, your family gathered around you, your loved ones embracing you, please be thankful you are not Sal9000.

Sal appears to be a man with very idiosyncratic needs, which he has attempted to satiate by marrying his favorite video game character.

Perhaps you think I have finally lost my last marble. However, please examine this footage. Courtesy of the radical realists at BoingBoing, this video shows that Sal married Nene Anegasaki, a character in the Nintendo DS game, Love Plus.
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Here’s a scenario for how Redmond could combat Google’s Net appliance OS before it gets out of the gate.

Thin is in again. At least that’s the message I’m taking away from the full-frontal media orgy surrounding last week’s Chrome OS demo. Virtually everyone who’s anyone is now singing the praises of the smaller, lighter, Web-centric desktop model at the heart of Google’s still unreleased “Windows killer.” And that includes Microsoft.

In fact, the folks up in Redmond are doubtless watching the entire spectacle with amusement. After months spent shadowboxing a Chrome OS vaporware ghost, the company finally has a tangible, non-ethereal target to shoot at. And shoot it will — with both barrels.
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