Digital Trends
More than a year ago, computer maker Dell began offering a series and stylized covers for notebook computers—starting off with its Studio series—to let users express their personalities and creativity, rather than going with a bland same-old same-old notebook lid. The program must be popular, because Dell keeps expanding artwork options for the program, and now it has brought the Design Studio offerings to its Inspiron 15, which the company claims to be its most popular consumer model.
Computer maker Dell is looking to further shed its image of making only boring grey PCs and notebooks, and to that end has just vastly expanded the number of Design Studio stylized notebook lid designs available for its Studio 15 and Studio 17 notebook models—although a handful are also available for Inspiron Minis. Dell has just added some 120 new designs to the collection, featuing artists like Deanne Cheuk, Maya Hayuk, TWEEQIM, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Filth, Robert Hargrave, and Keith Warner—including a total of 13 Product (Red) designs that direct $20 towards the Global Fund to fight AIDS and other diseases.
Dell has expanded its Art House offerings to include three new covers for its Studio 15 and Studio 17 notebooks. But these aren’t just additional, permanent designs customers can pick out when they order a notebook: the designs tie in with the PRODUCT(RED) campaign, supporting The Global Fund to combat AIDS in Africa.
“Dell continually innovates through offering unique ways for people to pursue their passions and express their individual style,” said Dell’s VP for consumer sales and marketing Michael Tatelman, in a statement. “By bringing these amazing artist designs together with a meaningful cause and our technology, we create new opportunities for self-expression.”
Continuing with the sharply stylized angle that Dell first adopted with its Hybrid Studio Desktops in July, the company rolled out two more Studios intended for home entertainment on Wednesday. The Studio Desktop and Studio Slim Desktop have been designed to fit in well alongside home entertainment equipment, and sport features to match.
While the Studio Desktop closely resembles Dell’s more standard desktops, but with a glossed-up piano-black fascia, the Slim Studio hacks off a decent chunk of its width, looking more like a video game console.
Not much news has slipped out of Id Studios since the announcement of a totally new game engine last year, but not surprisingly, this year’s E3 conference has brought precious more tidbits of news. At Electronic Arts’ Monday press conference, Id founder John Carmack announced that his studio had selected EA to publish the upcoming title Rage over its old standby, Activision.
As an independent game studio usually battling the likes of EA, the announcement came as a surprise, which Carmack acknowledged. “I’ll admit that, if you asked me years ago, I still had thoughts that EA was the Evil Empire, the company that crushes the small studios,” he told Gamespot. “I’d have been surprised, if you told me a year ago that we’d end up with EA as a publisher.”
Since we noted the initial release back in June, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note Microsoft has released verison 1.0 of its Microsoft Robotics Studio a set of software tools and development aids designed to let hobbyists, programmers, and even commercial developers create a slave race of resentful, autonomous, powerful, and very dangerous artificial beings.
(Oh, did we say that out loud?) We mean, uh, toys! Yeah. Cools toys and gadgets and, uh, stuff.
JBL Studio L Series loudspeakers offer expanded installation options, and feature a contemporary design that complements most décors and home entertainment installations.
The Studio L Series includes two wall-mount/bookshelf monitors (models L810, L820); a compact bookshelf loudspeaker (model L830); two floorstanding towers (models L880 and L890); two dedicated centerchannel loudspeakers (models LC1 and the wall-mountable LC2) and a 12-inch, 600-watt powered subwoofer (model L8400P). Prices for the Studio L Series range from $550 to $1,398 per pair (SRP).
Final Cut Studio also includes state-of-the-art tools that complement Final Cut Pro 5 such as Soundtrack Pro, a revolutionary new audio editing and sound design application that makes video projects sound as good as they look; Motion 2, the world’s first real-time motion graphics application with GPU accelerated 32-bit float rendering; and DVD Studio Pro 4, the first commercially available DVD authoring software that burns high definition DVDs to the latest HD DVD specification.
Read more at Apple’s website
Allen Adham, a co-founder and vice president of successful development studio Blizzard, has resigned from the company to pursue a career in finance, although a spokesperson claims that he has not cut ties completely.
Adham, who co-founded Blizzard with Michael Morhaime and Frank Pearce in 1991, is the latest in a recent series of high profile resignations from the developer, which is wholly owned by Vivendi’s games division.
Another vice president, Bill Roper, resigned from the company along with the three co-founders of the Blizzard North studio (which created the massively popular Diablo series of games) in the middle of last year, and they have since formed a development studio of their own.
Studio 33 is best known for its collaborations with Sony. Its latest project, the PS2 Online enabled Destruction Derby Arenas, is due out later this year. In the past, Studio 33 has also worked on Formula One titles. Although neither DD nor F1 titles are part of the transaction, with EA ramping up its support for PS2 Online, the developer’s experience in this area is sure to be invaluable.
As you might imagine, EA Northwest’s primary focus will be driving games, with the studio overseen by EA UK General Manager David Byrne. Chris Gibbs will act as Studio Manager leading development, and John White will serve as head of the Technology Group.
Everyone wants to be an insider, and you can be one too! Choose your poison: sign-up for our Newsletter, join us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. Do all three and you'll be swimming in the the latest news, reviews, videos and more gadget goodness!
Become a DT soldier! Join us on Facebook and share the best news, guides, videos and other cool information directly with all your friends. Some might even thank you for it!
Join the thousands and follow the best of us on Facebook.
Do you like information in small snippets? Then our Twitter feed is just for you. Follow Digital Trends and you'll be able to catch up daily on our latest content, or even interact directly with our team. Tweet Tweet!
Join the thousands and follow the best of us on Twitter.
That’s Right, Sign-up For Our Monthly Random Prize Drawings and You Could Be That Winner.
