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Grand Theft Auto developer Gary Penn told Gamasutra about how the original Grand Theft Auto video game title was almost canned during development.

The GTA series has been one of the biggest stories of the video games industry so far, with the Grand Theft Auto IV title selling a huge 17 million copies within two years of its commercial release. Earlier versions of the title also had strong sales across gaming platforms over the past decade.

All of that came very close to never happening. In fact, it was something that was then considered a kind of "bug" in the game that convinced the developers to continue with it and set its tone.

"It never really felt like it was going anywhere. It was almost canned. The publisher, BMG Interactive, wanted to can it," Penn said. "There are probably two key things it fell down on; two critical things. One of them is stability, which is a really boring one, but it crashed all the f---ing time. So even if you did get something in the game, you couldn't really test it."

Sony Ericsson has finally confirmed the Xperia Play, placing an ad during the Super Bowl, at the price of $6 million for the 1 minute spot.

The PlayStation phone will be formally unveiled at the Mobile World Congress on February 13th, running an Xperia Arc custom interface, on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Sony's Xperia Play has a 4-inch display with 854x450 resolution and will be powered by a Sony Bravia engine for smoother video playback.

Under the hood, the device runs a single-core Snapdragon processor clocked at 1GHz, an Adreno 205 GPU and 512MB RAM.

As is standard, the smartphone/handheld will have 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, and an FM receiver plus transmitter.

Physically, the smartphone has 4 buttons, Back/Menu/Home/Search, a 1500mAh battery, USB port, microSD slot and 5MP camera which lacks 720p recording.

The Motorola Xoom tablet has purportedly been priced, selling for $800 without contract, and hitting Best Buy on February 24th. The pricing and date comes via an ad posted on Engadget.

Perhaps more notably is the fact that to be able to use Wi-Fi on the device, you must pay for at least 1 month of Verizon 3G service, which will cost you a minimum $20 for a 1GB package.

It is necessary to point out that the flier has multiple spelling errors, so there is still debate as to whether it is real.

Motorola's Xoom will be the first tablet to run Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which has been optimized for media tablets.

The powerful tablet will ship with a 10.1-inch display, 1280x800 resolution, a Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 32GB onboard memory (expendable via SD), a 5MP dual-LED flash standard camera and a 2MP front-side camera for video conferencing.

Aircell, the company that started Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi, has raised another $35 million in financing, bringing its total financing to a bit over $500 million, so far.

The company's CEO, Michael Small, says the company is also finally on the "path to profitability."

Small says Gogo had 3 million Wi-Fi sessions for the six weeks ended New Year's, thanks to a free promotion by Google. Overall, the company just hit its 10 millionth session implying that many users love the service, when it's free.

The CEO did say that Aircell has now evolved to the point where "the airlines themselves are paying to activate each plane, as opposed to the early days when Gogo had to front the cost."

Aircell's airline partners are American Airlines, United, Delta, Virgin America, and Air Canada, making Wi-Fi available on 1100 commercial airlines and 6000 private/business jets.

AOL has announced today that they will purchase the popular news/lifestyle website The Huffington Post, which started in 2005 and now has 25 million unique monthly visitors.

As a combined group under AOL, the site will now be readily available to 117 million unique visitors a month in the U.S. and 270 million globally.

AOL has been rapidly expanding into the news, analysis, and entertainment sectors and the when the deal is completed, Huffington Post co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington will run the The Huffington Post Media Group which includes Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, and StyleList content.

Says AOL in the press release:

The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers. Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.

Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company.

IBM's supercomputer "Watson," set to take on human contestants on "Jeopardy" this month, has beaten its two competitors in a quick practice round.

Watson will take on all-time champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

In 2005, Ken Jennings won 74 straight games en route to $2.5 million in earnings. Rutter did not win as many games, but took home $3.2 million, the highest ever.

Watson will take on Rutter and Jennings over a three-day period and the winner will receive $1 million. Second place gets $300,000 and third gets $200,000. IBM will donate all their winnings to charity and Jennings and Rutter will donate half.

IBM says the supercomputer will not have Internet access, but is loaded with a massive database "covering topics from history to entertainment." The computer can even "differentiate between literal and metaphorical expressions and understand puns and slang."

In the practice round, Watson beat out Jennings and Rutter, taking $4400 in the round to Jennings $3400 and Rutter's $1200.

The real competition starts on February 14th.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said this weekend that Egypt's decision to shutdown the Internet could cost the nation $90 million, or about $18 million for each day of the 5 day shutdown.

Overall, telecom and Internet services account for 3-4 percent of GDP in the country.

The organization says the greater implications may be worse, however, since Egypt has been working for years to attract tech firms to the nation:

The shutdown will make it much more difficult in the future to attract foreign companies and assure them that the networks will remain reliable.

One such example, is that of Vodafone, which was forced to hire 100 new workers in New Zealand when its call center and staff of 180 became unreachable in Egypt.

Continues OECD (via PCM):

Therefore, while the direct costs of shutting down telecommunication networks are still significant, the true social and economic costs will be much higher. Egypt will need to regain the confidence of customers around the globe if it still wants to be considered a key ICT hub for business again.

T-Mobile has dropped the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab to $250 with contract, likely in an effort to begin clearing out inventory before Honeycomb tablets begin hitting the market later this month.

The discounted price does require a two-year contract with the carrier, however.

Samsung's tablet runs on Android 2.2, has a 1GHz processor, a 7-inch multi-touch screen and dual cameras.

The tab is available in 94 countries.

Samsung announced earlier this month that the company had shipped 2 million Tabs since launch.

The world's top mobile phone maker, Nokia, is on the verge of firing several executive board members, in the largest management "shake-up" in years.

CEO Stephen Elop, in charge since last September, will unveil the overhaul on February 11th.

A few of the executives expected to leave are "Mary T. McDowell, the executive in charge of Nokia's mobile phones unit, Niklas Savander, the manager of the markets unit, Chief Development Officer Kai Oistamo and Tero Ojanpera, the manager responsible for services and mobile solutions," says Reuters.

Elop is allegedly looking "for top people with good software expertise" as the company continues to see its smartphone market share demolished by Apple and Android.

According to a new report by iSuppli, tablet shipments will increase by 1200 percent by 2015, as demand continues to grow.

Tablet shipments were 17.4 million in 2010 and will reach 242 million in 2015, says the research firm.

The new report claims that Android 3.0 Honeycomb will help "propel" the market forward, before Windows-based tablets begin to truly cut into the "traditional" desktop and laptop markets.

Says Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research at iSuppli (via PCM):

The remarkable expansion of the tablet market from 2010 to 2015 will be driven by three successive waves of growth. The first wave, which is hitting in 2010 and 2011, was created by the arrival of the iPad and the ensuing tsunami of demand for the device. The second wave, arriving in 2011 and 2012, will be propelled by a deluge of iPad competitors, particularly Android-based models. The third wave, which will turn up in 2013, will consist of a flood of models based on the Windows operating system that will expand the reach of tablets into traditional computer markets.

Google has confirmed that their Middle East and North Africa marketing head has tragically gone missing in Egypt.

The search giant has said that Wael Ghonim disappeared last Thursday in central Cairo and has not been seen since.

Says Google:

The safety of our employees is very important to Google, so if anyone has any information please call the following UK number: +44 20 7031 3008.

Google has now closed its office in Cairo to ensure the general safety of all employees based in the country.

Over 400 people have died since the uprising began last week.

Yesterday, Al Jazeera posted footage that allegedly showed Ghonim being dragged away to detention by plainclothes officers.

His identity has not been confirmed, however.

The latest rumor in the Apple space has iOS 4.3 coming in two weeks for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Citing 'reliable sources,' reports claim Apple will release the major firmware update on Monday, February 14, at 1PM EST.

iOS 4.3 will introduce Personal Hotspot tethering for iPhone users.

The betas for 4.3 also shows off new multi-touch gestures for iPad users, but the company says that is just a "preview" for developers to test their apps with. The functionality will be held back until later iterations of the OS.

Apple released the last beta for 4.3 this week.

Mozilla has confirmed that there will be two more beta releases of the upcoming Firefox 4 browser, before a true RC hits.

The company had promised 11 betas of the browser, and the 12th was a "just in case" that now seems necessary.

Says Christian Legnitto, Firefox release manager at Mozilla (via Soft):

The current plan is to build [Firefox 4.0 Beta 12] when the remaining betaN hardblockers are done. This is heavily dependent on fix and blocker creation rate.

I will be doing some analysis to give people a possible date range, but as far as development is concerned everything is the same (fix as many betaN hardblockers as quickly as possible).

Beta 11 is set for release to testers this week.

Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the first version of the software to be optimized for tablets, may eventually hit smartphones as a 'lite' version of itself, says Phandroid.

Honeycomb was coded from scratch for tablets, but there are a number of important features that can be ported to upcoming firmware updates for Android versions of the operating system.

Google recently launched Android 2.3 Gingerbread for smartphones, which integrated minor updates.

However, according to the new reports, Google has already begun building new code for a 'lite' version of Honeycomb for smartphones, which may add hardware acceleration, RenderScript and a fully updated notification system.

Furthermore, the new camera UI will likely get ported, as well.

The update isn't expected until at least the Q3.

American fashion designer Kenneth Cole has apologized for his outrageous tweet earlier in the week, one that used the protests in Egypt to pump his upcoming clothing line.

Read the tweet:

Millions are in an uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at [ link ] -KC

The #Cairo hashtag has been used by many to keep the world updated on the news coming out of Egypt.

In the past, Cole has used the same tactics, posting "punny" billboards after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

After thousands commented on Cole's Facebook and replied to his Twitter, the designer responded with two apologies:

I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I’ve dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.

And later: