Many of you have likely handled disc image files or even virtual hard drives. Sometimes there’s no need to burn a DVD if you already have the disc image on your hard drive. While there is third-party software that will quickly and conveniently mount a disc image so that it appears as a DVD drive, such functionality will be baked into Windows 8.

Rajeev Nagar, principal group program manager for Windows, detailed Windows 8′s built-in ISO and VHD mounting support.

“So how does this work in Windows 8? It’s quite simple – just ‘mount’ the ISO file (you can select mount from the enhanced Explorer ribbon or double-click or right-click on the file), and a new drive letter appears, indicating that the contents are now readily accessible,” he wrote. “Underneath the covers, Windows seamlessly creates a ‘virtual’ CDROM or DVD drive for you on-the-fly so you can access your data.”

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When Nintendo dropped the price of the 3DS, we knew that sales of the handheld must not have been what the company hoped. Now that the device costs just $170, it seems more people are prepared to take the 3D gaming plunge.

Nintendo reports that sales of the 3DS have shot up more than 250 percent percent since it dropped the price of the console. When the price drop kicked in on August 12, the company sold 185,000 3DS units in the U.S. This is up 260 percent compared to the same period in July.

“Consumers are responding very positively to the new suggested retail price of $169.99 for the Nintendo 3DS,” Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, said in a statement. “With Star Fox 64 3D and the new Flame Red color launching tomorrow, and Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 arriving later this year, Nintendo 3DS will offer consumers cutting-edge entertainment and tremendous value this holiday season.”

Nintendo announced the 3DS price cut late in July, with the new price coming into effect in the second week of August. As a result, the handheld finished out August as the number two edicated game system according to NDP.

SOURCE via Nintendo

Google has announced that it has acquired respected restaurant ratings guide Zagat. Established in 1979 as a way to gather the ratings and reviews of restaurant diners, it’s since expanded to incorporate more than 100 cites and reviews on everything from restaurants and hotels to zoos and golf courses. Now, it all belongs to Google.

Google’s Vice President of Local, Maps and Location Services, Marissa Meyer (pictured), announced the major acquisition via the company’s official blog yesterday and explained that the business will become an integral part of the search giant’s local offerings.

” [...] I’m thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat. Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”

“[Tim and Nina Zagat] have demonstrated their ability to innovate and to do so with tremendous insight,” she contined. “Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of UGC (user-generated content)—gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed.”

Financial details of the deal have not been released but rumors are flying wildly around the blogosphere. Google tried to buy Yelp for half a billion in 2009 and the price it paid for Zagat is said to be considerably less. The Washington Post points the fact that there was no FTC antitrust review, which is automatically triggered for any deal over $66 million.

SOURCE via Google

Nike got us all hot and bothered when it teased the launch of Nike Mags just like the shoes Michael J. Fox wore in Back to the Future. The company’s Back to the Future-themed hints together with a 2010 filing for self-fastening shoes had us pretty damn excited. Last night, Nike pulled back the curtain to reveal the 2011 Nike MAG shoe and though it’s a visual replica of Marty’s shoe, they aren’t self-fastening.

“The original NIKE MAG was worn by the Back to the Future character Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, in the year 2015. It came alive, lit up and formed to Marty’s foot,” Nike says. “The 2011 NIKE MAG shoe was designed to be a precise replica of the original from Back to the Future II. The aesthetic is an exact match, down to the contours of the upper, the glowing LED panel and the electroluminescent NIKE in the strap. The 2011 NIKE MAG illuminates with the pinch of the “ear” of the high top, glowing for five hours per charge.”

The lack of a self-fastening feature was confirmed in the commercial for the shoes, which, of course, stars our favorite Doc Martin. The store salesman says the self-fastening version isn’t coming until 2015 (just like the movie!), and while that may be a joke, Nike does have the patent for it, so you never know.

If you still want a pair of 2011 Nike MAG shoes, you’ll be even further disappointed to discover that these aren’t going to be on general sale. Instead, there’s only going to be 1500 pairs made. Each day, eBay’s Fashion Vault will auction off 150 pairs and all proceeds will be going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The auctions will be running from September 8 at 8:30PM PST (the time of the announcement), and will end September 18. The going rate for a pair of the shoes seems to be between $4000 and $5000 and they run in sizes 7 to 13 (mens, I am assuming). Check out the auction here.

A dual-core SoC embedded in a smartphone doesn’t necessarily mean the device will be faster than a single-core phone, claims Sony Ericsson.

On September 18, Sony Ericsson will launch the PlayStation-certified Xperia PLAY smartphone on AT&T, a slightly modified version sporting 4G support, a cool accessory kit, a fresh new coat of paint and an incredibly low price-point of $49.99 USD with a two-year contract. The game phone originally made its exclusive North American debut on Verizon Wireless back in May, with an international release just before that.

But within the last few months, Verizon has knocked the subsidized price of the phone down to just $99.99 USD (after a $50 rebate), and as previously mentioned, AT&T plans to offer the phone for half that price. Given that the Xperia PLAY launched with seemingly outdated hardware to begin with, it’s easy to assume that the PlayStation-certified phone – complete with a PSPGo-like slide-out gamepad and a PSOne emulator – isn’t doing so well in a market saturated with dual-core Android phones.

Yet according to Dominic Neil-Dwyer, head of market development at Sony Ericsson, the device is actually “meeting expectations,” and the company doesn’t see any need to pump out a sequel to match the hardware packed within contenders like the DROID X2 or the just released DROID BIONIC, both of which sport dual-core processors and HDMI-out connectivity.

“It’s devices for what devices do,” he told Eurogamer. “This device, with the GPU integration, has been optimized for gameplay. Bearing in mind when we talk to the high-end publishers, they’re very precious about the devices their games are going to be displayed upon, particularly those that are coming in from outside of mobile. They’re very much impressed. In terms of what it can do within gaming, it’s proven every time. And these are deep, technical people. They’re all very impressed by the power of the device.”

Still, when you compare a 1 GHz dual-core Tegra 2 SoC to a 1 GHz single-core Snapdragon II SoC, consumers will likely think that phones outfitted with the Nvidia chip will undoubtedly outperform the latter. But that’s not necessarily the case.

“When you go into things like dual core versus single core, what a lot of people don’t understand or appreciate is the actual benchmarking and the ability of a device to do what they do, dual core doesn’t mean it’s faster,” he said. “This is PlayStation Certified, and it’s been proven by all of the discussions of a very technical nature we’re having with publishers. It’s not going to be outperformed that quickly.”

Despite the Xperia PLAY meeting expectations on the market, Sony Ericsson believes the best revenue is yet to come in Q4 2011 as subscribers gear up to renew their two-year contacts or purchase new phones as Christmas gifts. That said, there are no plans on the table for an Xperia PLAY sequel. In fact, the company’s big focus is on “improving the experience of Xperia PLAY, bringing face chat, video calling with Skype, and movies and more software updates, because we can, and bringing better games.”

“We’re trying to create a new market,” he said. “That’s our thrust right now, to build a great device. It will keep improving. We’ll keep upgrading the experience, the software and the games you get with it.”

SOURCE via Eurogamer

Gamespot bring us some news from the Citi Technology conference, where Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl has said that Blizzard will be producing six “proven property” games/expansions over the next three years.

The announcement reveals plans for two more World of Warcraft expansions over the three years. Could one of these be the Mists of Pandaren expansion we’ve previously heard rumours of? In addition, the first expansion to Diablo 3 will be expected by the end of 2014. The two planned Starcaft 2 expansions, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, are expected in the same period.

By choosing to refer only to ‘proven properties’ Blizzard have left the door open for a new ‘unproven property’ to be released in that same period, such as the long rumoured Project Titan.

As of this writing, Blizzard has not stated anything in regards to the post-Cataclysm expansion packs save for wanting to get them out once a year at the very least. As for the next two StarCraft 2 installments, Battle.net project director Greg Canessa already indicated that Heart of the Swarm will be available in mid-2012. With that in mind, the StarCraft 2 team may close the three-part series by the end of 2014.

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The latest Battlefield 3 trailer shows part one of a single player mission called Operation Guillotine. It is dark, noisy and packed full of mortar fire and tracer rounds. It’s the first big of night-time footage we’ve seen and the Frostbite 2 engine is looking staggering. Part two is set to arrive next Friday.