This afternoon, the challenge between IBM's Watson supercomputer and Jeopardy! legends Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter wraps up, and based on the results so far, it appears we should begin accepting that Watson will soon be our new king/lord. Still, the process is sort of amusing, if only for Jennings looks of annoyance and general irritation that a box of wires is destroying him at the only thing he's famous for.

However, Greg Wyshynski, a hockey blogger for Yahoo, offered an interesting, yet highly unlikely twist:

Again, not likely, but I would like to see the look on the smug bastard Trebek's face.

After hearing from every AT&T hater (and I get it, they are a lousy provider) that the Verizon iPhone was going to be brought down from smartphone heaven by angels and unicorns, I found an odd sense of satisfaction from Verizon essentially pulling the same tricks to preserve their bandwidth:

The launch of the iPhone on Verizon adds to the mountain of evidence that you just can’t trust wireless carriers.

On the day that iPhone preorders began last week, Verizon quietly revised its policy on data management: Any smartphone customer who uses an “extraordinary amount of data” will see a slowdown in their data-transfer speeds for the remainder of the month and the next billing cycle.

It’s a bit of a bait-and-switch. One of Verizon’s selling points for its version of the iPhone is that it would come with an unlimited data plan — a marked contrast to AT&T, which eliminated its unlimited data plans last year.

Verizon incidentally announced a plan for “data optimization” for all customers, which may degrade the appearance of videos streamed on smartphones, for example.

Verizon didn’t send out press releases to alert the public of this nationwide change regarding data throttling and so-called “optimization.” The only reason this news hit the wire was because a blogger noticed a PDF explaining the policy on Verizon’s website, which Verizon later confirmed was official. Obviously it’s bad news, so Verizon wanted to keep a lid on it.

And here we thought Verizon’s network technology was better-prepared than AT&T to handle a big crowd of iPhone customers. While our initial tests showed that Verizon was better at making and holding phone calls, its data speeds are slower than AT&T’s. The company must be worried about the effects of an influx of iPhone customers — otherwise, why would it throttle bandwidth like this?

[Wired]

“Dead Space 2” is the next chapter in Isaac’s quest to solve the mysteries of the Markers. Players will once again assume control of Isaac Clarke, an engineer who survived the necromorph outbreak aboard the Ishimura.

The next generation of hand-held gaming will soon be upon us, and it may change the way we think about interacting with games.

Nintendo’s 3DS, with its glasses-free 3-D screen, is set to launch this March, while Sony’s freshly announced NGP, "Next Generation Portable," is quite possibly the most technologically sophisticated portable gaming device ever made; it's slated to hit stores this holiday season. Both will offer unique experiences for gamers-on-the-go, but each device was built with a different design philosophy.

Let’s take a look at some of the key differences between the two devices.

While I spent an obscene amount of time playing both games on really early Apple computers in my third grade classroom (Corbett Elementary, where you at?), I'm not entirely sure Facebook versions that likely will ask the player to post tons of "requests" on their wall and pay to actually enjoy the game is exactly the comeback for the Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego that I hoped for. Then again, considering I've had a week-long flirtation with dozens of games on Facebook, I'll definitely see if I can save my friends from dreaded dysentery.

Possibly of interest: Minneapolis City-Pages delves into the history of the Oregon Trail.

[Hollywood Reporter]

When I was fourteen, I spent most of my spare time making mixtapes for girls that I would never actually give to them. Robert Nay made a game that's been downloaded over two million times.

For more than a month, Robert spent a couple of hours each day on the game, ultimately writing more than 4,000 lines of computer code, his mother said.

Kari Nay said she helped him design some of the puzzles in the game, but he came up with the concept and did everything else on his own.

According to its App store description "Bubble Ball" is a "fun, new physics puzzle game, where you will test your ingenuity and thinking skills to get the bubble to the goal."

[ABC News]

2010 was a great year for tech, and 2011 is shaping up to be another standout year for consumer electronics. Here are my predictions for the top tech trends of 2011.

Tabletmania!
Call it an oversized iPod Touch all you want, there’s no denying that the tablet is here to stay, thanks to the Apple iPad. Manufactures have been scrambling to hop on board the tablet craze with competing devices of their own, but none can come close to dethroning Apple’s device. Samsung took an admirable attempt with the Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch Android tablet, but Android Froyo (2.2) is still clearly meant for phones and not tablets. Google is readying Honeycomb (Android 3.0) for 2011, which promises better tablet support. RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, sporting a powerful dual-core processor and a custom user interface is also set for a 2011 release. HP is also expected to unveil the much rumored PalmPad, a tablet powered by Palm’s webOS.

• Photograph courtesy of Apple
• The iPad brought tablet computing into the mainstream, but will it still be the tablet to beat in 2011?

The Mighty Smartphone Gets Mightier
Mobile is exploding. In 2010 we saw many sleek and powerful phones sporting the latest operating systems from Apple, Google and Microsoft. If 2010 was the year of the Snapdragon processor, then 2011 will be the year of the NVIDIA Tegra 2. The Tegra 2 will be the first dual-core CPU for mobile devices, and according to a few who have had their hands on Tegra 2 devices, it’s fast—really fast.

Expect Apple to release a new iPhone later this year, and if the rumors are to be believed, also expect a Verizon version to be released as early as January. Android 2.3 Gingerbread just came out with the release of the Nexus S, and should be equipped on future Android-powered devices as well as many current Android devices via a software update. As mentioned earlier, Honeycomb is also set to come out in 2011.

Microsoft just announced that they have sold over one million Windows Mobile 7 devices, but they are still far behind Apple and Google. The future of Windows Mobile 7 will rest on how well they handle promoting their new OS and if they continue to get quality support from hardware manufacturers.

Last but not least, HP is expected to put its acquisition of Palm to use (finally) and announce a slew of new webOS devices, although unfortunately for them (and the very intuitive webOS), it may be too late for webOS to take on the big dogs.

• Photograph courtesy of LG
• LG's Optimus 2X will be the first smartphone sporting the NVIDIA Tegra 2 under the hood.

When I was a kid and got an Sears knockoff of the Atari 2600 for Christmas, I never dreamed of this glorious age when I could have a digitally animated samurai yelling at me while playing a urine-powered video game.

Thank you, Japan.

• Photograph courtesy of Microsoft

A lot has changed since the introduction of Xbox 360 in 2005 kick-started the “next” generation of home consoles.

Microsoft and Sony came out swinging with two powerhouse machines capable of full high-definition graphics, extended online and media capabilities—with a price tag to match.

Nintendo turned its back on traditional consoles and came out with the Wii: a small white box only capable of pushing out games at a measly 480p resolution with an easy to use motion controller.

Since its release, the Wii has become one of the fastest selling game consoles ever.

But now Nintendo isn’t the only player in the motion control game.

Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect are now on the market and they’re both looking to dethrone the wiimote. Now that the big three all have compelling motion controllers to bring to the table, making that challenging decision on which console to purchase this holiday season has become even more difficult.