Gameloft has launched N.O.V.A. 3, the next step to their sci-fi first-person-shooter franchise for iPhone and iPad. This time, you’re taking to the streets of Earth, engaging in gripping firefights with a bunch of high-tech weaponry and vehicles. As with previous games, there’s full support for multiplayer, spanning 6 modes and including up to 12 players, but there’s also a ten-level single-player campaign to get you warmed up. Vehicles now let more than one player hop in, which promises to be a ton of fun when playing online.

The Apple Store is currently closed for business. Apple could introduce the MacBook Pro 2012 overnight: multiple Apple resellers are reporting some of the current models as out of stock, including J&R and Best Buy. In fact, the latter is not accepting online orders at this point.

If you’ve been to Google’s homepage lately — and the chances you have are astronomical — you may have noticed a little announcement mentioning something about changes in Google’s privacy policy. You then probably ignored it — but you shouldn’t.
On March 1st, 2012, Google will implement a new, unified privacy policy. The new policy is retroactive, meaning it will affect any data Google has collected on you prior to that date, as well as any data it gathers afterward. The official Google Blog has more details on what the new privacy policy means. But what does all of this legal jargon mean practically? Basically, under the new policy, your Google Web History (all of your searches and the sites you clicked through to) can be combined with other data Google has gathered about you from other services — Gmail, Google+, etc..

Cramming a desktop environment onto a smartphone is a fun project that promises very little actual usefulness. Smartphone screens are too small for desktop OSes, and connecting a keyboard and mouse is usually out of the question. But now Canonical’s Ubuntu for Android takes a different approach, surfacing the desktop OS only when it actually makes sense..

According to the latest speculation, Microsoft’s sequel to the Xbox 360 will actually be two models, a pared down set-top box for casual gamers and a heftier model for the hardcore. Either way, Xbox 720 / Xbox Loop’s getting paired up with a revised version of the magnificent Kinect hardware. The digital grapevine’s saying that Kinect 2 will be able to read your lips, track your fingers and sense the tone of your voice to determine if you’ve come over all angry. It can’t do that currently thanks to its USB cable, which can only transmit 16MB/s of data – limiting the camera’s resolution to 320 x 240 at 30fps. We don’t know what protocol the new sensor bar will use, but we do know that either USB 3.0 (which can transmit 400 MB/s) or Intel’s Thunderbolt (700MB/s) would remove such limitations..

RIM has unveiled a new platform that allows IT specialists to more tightly manage company devices — even those from rival manufacturers like Apple and Android. With the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion software, announced this morning, companies will be able to set up rules governing employee passwords apps and other software across a variety of smartphones and tablets, including the iPhone, iPad and Android handsets. The system also allows managers to remotely wipe and lock any devices that go missing or stolen, potentially bringing enhanced security to a workplace that’s become increasingly fragmented…

Microsoft announced that its Xbox 360 dashboard would be getting an upgrade “in the coming days.” Today, the company has clarified that statement, declaring that the revamped interface will launch on December 6th. As we’ve previously noted, the update promises to bring deeper Kinect integration (including sharper voice recognition capabilities), Facebook sharing mechanisms, and a cleaner interface. Redmond also says that the fall cleanup will introduce “a wealth of new content,” including live TV, music and movies, available for streaming..

Despite our fascination with all things high-tech and the fact that we’ve got a smartphone in our pocket at all times, we’ve got a serious soft spot for stylish and inventive timepieces. Ziiiro is one of those companies that consistently finds its way on to our wish lists with watches like the Orbit and Gravity. Celeste is its latest offering, which represents your linear travel through the fourth dimension as a pair of overlapping colored disks…

Here’s the trailer for We Are Legion, a documentary featuring members and supporters of the Anonymous hacker collective and various commentators whose names and titles aren’t provided yet, so we don’t know who they are. But they seem knowledgeable enough! Slated for a 2012 release, the movie’s being produced by the Los Angeles outfit Luminant Media and is directed by documentarianBrian Knappenberger. There’s lots of shots of dudes wearing Guy Fawkes masks and making fierce gestures as they march in the streets, which gives the movie a somewhat macho, revolutionary vibe…

first LTE markets without tossing in a few 4G friendly toys, did you? Of course not, we told you as much last week — but today things get official: The Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket and HTC Vivid (formerly known as the Holiday) are ready to take Ma Bell’s new LTE nodes for a spin…

The Fire is Amazon’s long-awaited Android tablet, a device which many say could be the one true competitor to the current tablet industry leader, the iPad. Amazon, like Apple, has what all other tablet companies don’t: Millions of customer credit cards on file, streaming video-on-demand services, a massive library of mp3’s (backed by a beefy, cloud-based streaming service), even its own app store…