Apparently we aren't the only species to prefer the crisp, smooth picture of an HDTV compared to that from one of those old CRT sets of yesteryear.

A study of octopus behavior (which first surfaced in December 2008 but was revisited in an article by the Journal of Experimental Biology on Friday) shows the mollusks react to high-definition videos where they used to be nonresponsive to movies on a SD set.

Renata Pronk and colleagues from Macquarie University, Australia, decided to see if using and LCD display and HD video would fix the long-time problem.

On Wednesday at the GDC, LucasArts unveiled its plans for The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. The game will be distributed for the Mac by Aspyr, and sold through the GameAgent online store for $10.

The Special Edition includes two versions of the game. The first version is the original game released in 1990. The second version is what an Aspyr representative called an “enhancedâ€

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is for Intel Macs only and requires OS 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Aspyr says that Macs with integrated Intel graphics are not supported.

Steve Jobs is accustomed to bringing the house downв”unveiling remarkable devices like the iPad, the iPhone, and the original iPod make that a pretty common occurrence. Now, though, after an extended battle, the Apple CEO can finally bring down the other house heвs been trying to raze for so long. Maybe.

Hereвs the background: In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, and Jobs bought a 17,000-square foot mansion in Woodside, Calif. The mansionв”built in the 1920s by San Francisco copper magnate Daniel C. Jacklingв”somehow never really impressed Appleвs CEO, who called it one of the biggest abominations of a house Iвve ever seen. The home includes 14 bedrooms and 13.5 bathrooms, and sits on a 6 acre lot.

GDC is a time for many game developers to show their stuff, each vying for media and consumer attention in the last big press period before E3. Gameloft, one of the leading developers for the iPhone and iPod touch, unveiled three new games to the assembled press on Thursday.

Gameloftвs Elvin Gee demonstrated Tom Clancyвs Splinter Cell Conviction, a sneak-and-shoot action adventure game. The console version of the game will launch in mid-April, but Gee is mum on when the iPhone version will hit the App Store.

China now has the iPhone and more big-name smartphones are due in the country, but few buyers overall are choosing smartphones despite promotion by China's mobile carriers.

High prices are slowing smartphone sales growth despite work to cut their prices down to around 1,000 yuan (US$146). Smartphone sales in China -- not counting sales on the country's gray market -- passed 7 million units in the final quarter of last year, but that accounted for less than 15 percent of mobile phone sales in the country, Chinese consultancy Analysys International said this week.

"Price is still the biggest obstacle," said Liu Ning, an analyst at technology consultancy BDA. Smartphones remain expensive because they require more powerful hardware and their makers often must pay to use their operating systems, he said.

launch of the iPhone 3GS, rumors are beginning to circulate about what we can expect from an iPhone 4G. One of the most-wanted, and most-speculated features for the next-generation iPhone OS is the ability to truly multitask between apps.

Apple has neither confirmed nor denied that a next-generation iPhone OS is impending at all, but that hasn't stopped the speculation. Apple seems to be a slave to routine, and past development and release cycles suggest that we can expect a new iPhone OS this summer.

Multitasking, or the lack thereof, has been one of the most prevalent complaints about the iPhone as a serious business smartphone--although I am not sure it is iPhone users who are doing the complaining. The lack of iPhone multitasking was a prime target of Verizon's "Droid Does" marketing campaign for the Android-based Motorola Droid.

Some of you World of Warcraft addicts may be familiar with Blizzard's Armory app for iPhone that lets you keep track of your character and guild, and generally blurs the line between your online and offline world. Running with that same concept is AFK Interactive, which has created a mobile development platform that will bring similar functionality to all kinds of mobile phones, including "dumb" ones.

AFK Interactive's technology is currently used in an app for the MMO (massively-multiplayer online game) Fallen Earth. The app offers features likecharacter profiles and guild and player chat, as well as auction house bidding and item crafting. AFK had this app running the on Android, Blackberry, WinMo, and iPhone at this year's Game Developers Conference.

It's been a busy week for those of us in the Land of Geek, what with a new processor from Intel, a major trade show, plus more new tech and gadgetry than you can poke a stick at. Here are a few of the stories we covered over the past week or so.

Meet the Car-puccino

And you thought you couldn't function without coffee. This car, created for the British TV show Bang Goes the Theory, runs entirely on coffee grounds. Although it's a form of alternative energy, I don't think coffee is the answer to our future energy needs: The Car-puccino guzzles 56 espressos per mile. Read on...

Toon Boom Animate 2 announced

Toon Boom Animation has announced the upcoming release of Toon Boom Animate 2, a new version of its vector-based professional animation package. The upgrade offers more power and flexibility for creating traditional, digital, cut-out, and Flash-style animation.

New features include: fast distribution of character parts to layers; easy adjustment of velocity on multiple character parts; efficient creation of richer-looking ambiance; full SWF export with effects; direct import of scanned drawings via TWAIN; and text capability.

As a unified package, Toon Boom Animate lets you to draw or import scanned drawings, color, animate, synchronize sound, set camera moves, apply effects, and render your projects in popular output formats. Changes can be implemented in real time at any time during the production process without having to switch between applications.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 video-game console moved to the top of the U.S. market in February. The software giant's console had been number two behind the Nintendo Wii for nearly three years.

The popularity of the new BioShock 2 game may have been behind Microsoft's sales of 422,000 Xbox 360s in February, an eight percent increase from a year earlier, according to NPD Group. Nintendo sold 397,900 Wiis and Sony sold 360,100 PlayStation 3 consoles in February.

HELSINKI – Nokia Corp. on Friday revised its global market share estimate for mobile phones in 2009 to 34 percent, from an earlier 38 percent, and said it expected no growth this year.

The revision was due to more accurate measuring methods, including of counterfeit products, the world's largest mobile phone maker said.

Nokia said that although its market share was not expected to grow, the value of its market share this year would 'increase slightly' over 2009. It gave no figures.

Nokia left as unchanged a previous estimate that the total global market of mobile devices would grow 10 percent this year compared to 2009.

The Federal Communications Commission unveiled three digital tools Thursday that will enable consumers, businesses, schools and other organizations to test the real-world performance of their fixed and mobile broadband connections and help identify gaps in the nation's broadband coverage. The tools include downloadable applications for mobile devices based on Google's Android platform and Apple's iPhone OS.

With the launch of the testing apps, the commission's goal is to empower consumers, promote innovation and investment, and encourage competition by fostering transparency, noted FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Apple is accepting pre-orders for the iPad, its new touch-screen gadget for reading books, watching video and surfing the Web.

IPads with Wi-Fi wireless connections will go on sale on April 3 for $499 and up. Apple Inc. says people can pre-order online and get it on April 3 where Saturday delivery is available.

Shoppers can also reserve an iPad online, then pay for it and pick it up at a local Apple store.

One of the big obstacles to the adoption of 3D TV at home, I'm convinced, is the fact that to get the 3D effect, you'll need to be wear "active shutter" glasses. No one I've talked to thinks that that's an ideal solution, but there really isn't another technology that makes sense for the home TV market. Even worse, the initial glasses that the TV makers are rolling out with their sets typically only work with their own brands of TVs: Panasonic glasses with Panasonic TVs, Samsung glasses with Samsung TVs, and so own.

That's a big problem because the glasses are expensive - about $150 a pair. That's a lot of money if you have a 3D TV and want to invite your friends over to watch. In the long run, many executives believe in the "BYOG" (Bring Your Own Glasses) model, but that's not going to happen if each TV maker has their own standard. All the executives of the companies I've talked to agree it's an issue, and all say they hope to have some sort of answer soon. I can't really fault them for shipping now, before it's standardized, but it is a bit of a shame.

In the meantime, though, I talked with Xpand, which seems to have a solution in the form of active shutter glasses that can adapt to work with just about every TV on the market.

Ami Dror, Chief Strategy Officer for Xpand, says the company's X101 glasses are used in most 3D cinemas outside of the U.S. (in the U.S., I believe Real3D has the largest share). These active glasses are designed to work with projectors that cycle at 144 frames per second using a "triple flash" technology where it cycles to each eye three times for a movie frame. Xpand recently announced a deal with Mitsubishi with its X102 glasses, which use a technology called "DLP Link" that puts a tiny flash of white light into a black interstitial frame (that can't be seen by the human eye) to control the shutters. This will work with 20 projectors using TI's DLP technology, as well as DLP TVs.

The next set of glasses planned, called the X103 series, are designed to be universal active shutter glasses, which will periodically search for infrared signals and be able to interpret the signals from all the major sets - Panasonic, LG, Samsung, Sony, etc. - as well as the signals used in Nvidia 3D Vision glasses. Dror tells me he expects these glasses to be in stores by June, and says they will come in 12 colors - in adult and kid sizes - so they can be a "fashion item." I'm not quite sure about the fashion statement they make, but that's not my area. He said final pricing wasn't set yet, but it will probably be in the $125 to $150 range.

Xpand says it is also making glasses on an OEM basis for Philips (using infrared technology for signaling) and Vizio (using Bluetooth). He says the company made 2 million pairs of glasses for cinema use in 2009; and expects to make about 7 million in 2010 (including 3 million for cinemas, 2 million for DLPs, 2 million X103s, and 1 million OEM glasses). But, because the volume is relatively high already, don't look for a drastic decrease in the price of active glasses.

It won't surprise me at all if other companies create "universal" glasses eventually; and that the TV makers eventually agree on a standard. That solves one issue related to the glasses, though I still worry about the relatively high price, and I wonder how often real consumers will want to put on glasses at home. But it is a step in the right direction.

Down again overall, with upticks in Xbox 360 and PS3 sales and BioShock 2 ruling the software roost, that's February's US video game narrative in a nutshell courtesy NPD Group's retail industry figures. Overall video game industry sales slumped 15 percent, falling from $1.48 billion to $1.26 billion, raising year-to-date sales to just $2.42 billion, a 14 percent deficit against last year's $2.82 billion for the same period.

Higher price tags mitigated some of the revenue slump. Unit sales declined more than dollar sales, said NPD's Anita Frazier, noting that higher retail prices in all categories save for console hardware helped dollar sales performance.