One of the very first booths I hit on the show floor this year was Bioware’s SWTOR – or Star Wars: The Old Republic – the company’s massively multi-player game set in the Star Wars universe. In development for the last five years, I was excited to learn there would finally be hands-on demos of the game both at the Con as well as off-site at the Hilton Gaslamp across the street.

To coincide with Comic-Con this year, Bioware announced pre-orders for the game on Thursday, which would allow players early access to the game as well as spiffy in-game bonuses. Given that the game’s release window is set for Holidays 2011, it made sense for the SWTOR team to leverage Comic-Con to start showing off their shiny new MMORPG.

After a roughly 45-minute wait, myself and a dozen other eager players were ushered into the booth and each seated at one of the high-end Alienware gaming rigs running SWTOR. We slipped on our headphones and were given 15-minutes on the clock to put the game through its paces. I decided to play a Sith Warrior, went through a brief intro and my character was jumped into a desert-like world ripe for the exploring.

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Robert Kirkman is perhaps best known for his hugely popular Walking Dead series, a long-running comic franchise that last year won the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series and just last fall landed its own TV-series on AMC. And yet, Kirkman’s SKYBOUND imprint over at Image Comics has been churning out one huge comic hit after another that have absolutely nothing to do with zombies.

I hit the SKYBOUND panel on Friday in sunny Downtown San Diego to find out just what the small company has been up to lately. With Kirkman heading up the panel, also on tap were ”The Infinite” artist Rob Liefeld, “Thief of Thieves” co-writer Nick Spencer, as well as Brandon Seifert and artist Lukas Ketner of Skybound’s recently launched “Witch Doctor” series.

The panel started with an overview of how the imprint is doing, with clear winners Walking Dead and Invincible hitting the biggest numbers in terms of sales. Kirkman’s own all-ages series “Super Dinosaur” has been rapidly gaining popularity, especially among the younger readers out there.

I may not necessarily be the comic’s core demographic, but an armor-clad, missile-equipped tyrannosaurus rex named Super Dinosaur sounds pretty damn cool in my book. I made a note to pick up an issue or two next time I hit my local comics store.

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Legendary Entertainment, one of Hollywood’s smaller production firms,came to San Diego Comic-Con for the first time this year to talk about some of their upcoming films currently in pre-production. I sat down Friday, not sure what to expect, however I was excited to learn more about their upcoming films and hear from some of the directors and stars themselves chat about their various projects.

First up was the ‘Pacific Rim’ panel, presided over by acclaimed writer, producer and director Guillermo del Toro. His new flick stars Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, and Rinko Kikuchi and in Guillermo’s own words, features “Giant f***ing robots fighting giant f***ing aliens.” Ah Guillermo, always so colorful. Set to release in 2013, the film’s plot is quite simple, but also strikes me as something we haven’t quite seen before: as aliens attack and threaten the Earth’s existence, giant robots piloted by humans are deployed to fight off the menace.

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Google’s annual developer’s conference kicked-off yesterday with some fairly big announcements from the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, California. As 5,000 web, mobile, and enterprise developers packed in for the two-day event, Google provided the “State of Android” speech that everyone was expecting.

With over 100 million Android devices already activated and roughly 400,000 new ones registered each day, Google’s mobile OS is truly making some huge strides against their nearest competitor, Apple. In the app department, Google does not disappoint, with 200,000 apps available via Google’s Market as well as Amazon’s new Appstore for Android.

The biggest announcements from Day 1 of I/O seemingly patched up Google’s strategy for media sales and consumption on Android-powered devices, a substantial vulnerability for the Android platform when compared to Apple’s robust iTunes. ‘Music  Beta by Google‘ was announced as an invite-only beta service, offering cloud-based storage for up to 20,000 user-uploaded tracks, quite a bump over Amazon’s similar Cloud Drive service, which offers 5GB of storage for streaming.

Google Music launched with nary a single record label on board, so users will not be able to purchase tracks directly. ‘Google Movies,’ available via the Android Market, sounds a bit more ready for prime-time.

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As expected, late yesterday Apple released a new update for iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad. This update, dubbed iOS 4.3.3 for AT&T and iOS 4.2.8 for Verizon, addresses the dreaded “Location Gate” issue that has been in the news the last few weekes.

Specifically, it makes changes to how the device stores and manages the “iOS crowd-sourced location database cache.” It also reduces the size of the cache, doesn’t back it up to iTunes and deletes the cache when you disable Location Services.

The updates are available right now. Simply connect your i-device to iTunes and you will be prompted to perform the update.

We’ve updated our devices here at The Flickcast offices. So far, so good. Although, we are still waiting to see if this improves our battery life that seemed to go down after the last update.

Let’s hope so.

Let this be a lesson to you out there if you’re working on any cool projects for notoriously secretive tech companies: Don’t steal or leak info. Why? Well for one it’s wrong. For another, it can get you arrested — in China.

Local authorities in China arrested three employees of Foxconn, the company Apple uses in China to manufacture a whole bunch of stuff including the iPad. They were officially charged in March with leaking the design of Apple’s iPad 2 to third-party accessory makers before the device was unveiled.

Cases that accurately depicted the external shape and design of the iPad 2 and accurately portrayed the redesigned exterior of the device, including its 33 percent thinner frame, rear-facing camera, and larger speaker grille that extends to the back of the device, surfaced soon afterward.

I hope the workers who leaked the designs got a lot of money for their trouble and were able to pass it along to their families. Now that they’ve been charged and will most-likely be found guilty, it’s unlikely they will be able to work anywhere else for a very long time, if ever.

Remember kids, stealing and leaking information is bad — especially if you steal from Apple.

The final flick from the long-running Harry Potter series hits theaters this summer and the official Facebook page is abuzz following the release of the official movie poster. The 7th movie in the ‘Potter’ series wraps up the events contained in the final novel by J.K. Rowling entitled Deathly Hallows, having been split into two parts to better do justice to the dark and dangerous tale.

The end begins as Harry, Ron, and Hermione go back to Hogwarts to find and destroy Voldemort’s final horcruxes, but when Voldemort finds out about their mission, the biggest battle begins and life as they know it will never be the same again.

Directed by British filmmaker David Yates (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince) and with a script written by Steve Kloves (Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Half-Blood Prince), Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 arrives in theaters everywhere on July 15th.

Be sure to hit the jump for the full-sized official movie poster!

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One of the more annoying marketing gimmicks among wireless carriers, but also true among WiFi hardware makers as well, is that as soon as a new standard is announced, the urge to jump in and declare “we have that,” often trumps actually waiting for standards to be finalized, and far too often before the company can even deliver the real goods.

Case in point is the 4G service being touted by the nation’s wireless carriers. In case they weren’t aware, the term ’4G’ actually means something. In 2008, the ITU-R organization specified the IMT-Advanced (International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced) requirements for 4G standards, setting peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 Mbps for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 Gbps for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users).

With that said, which of the carriers are truly delivering  data speeds truly approaching the 4G standard? Seattle-based Analyst Root Metrics set out to determine exactly that. In a test comparing AT&T’s HSPA+, Sprint’s WiMAX, T-Mobile’s HSPA+21 and Verizon’s LTE networks in the Seattle area, the company used 4G-capable smartphones to get a clearer picture of what the consumer experience looks like on the ground. Down here in reality.

What they found will interest you.

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Some would say it’s a crazy move to try and sell apps for the Android smartphone market outside of Google’s own Android Market which seems to do a relatively commendable job of making apps available and easy to download. But that’s precisely what Amazon has decided to do.

You’d also think it was painfully obvious that naming your new Android marketplace “Amazon Appstore” would result in an instant lawsuit from Apple, but again Bezo’s company seems to be pitching caution to the wind with their latest move. And predictably enough, Apple has filed suit against Amazon for trademark infringement.

Despite all dangers, the new Amazon Appstore for Android has indeed launched and the company is bribing folks to give it a try.

Up for grabs? A full copy (no ad-supported nonsense here) of Angry Birds Rio, the latest version of the popular game from Rovio. Pretty sweet, right? And you know what else is free right now? World Series Of Poker: Hold’em by Glu.

Not so fast! First you have to download the Amazon app, which seems easy at first, but becomes increasingly more difficult than you can possibly imagine. It failed miserably on my first attempt to install it. More recently, it managed to download and install much more smoothly, so it seems like you may have an easier experience than I.

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The Flickcast’s very own Cortney Zamm has been covering the amazing video game previews and news hot from the show floor at PAX East 2011 like nobody’s business. And yet, there is one game in particular that I felt deserved a bit of extra coverage.

That game is BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, a story-driven MMO developed in conjunction with LucasArts. There’s a whole lot of anticipation for this game and with good reason: SWTOR will be the WoW of the Star Wars Universe. And the story will be deeper and more personal to each character. If you’re familiar with BioWare’s previous titles, you know how important story is to their game developers.

I’ve been following the developer’s blogs and various updates on this soon-to-be released title and recently, I was excited to hear that Bioware made a big showing at PAX East 2011 in Boston, offering fans a few new glimpses at this ambitious project.

Be sure to hit the jump to watch the developer’s walk-through video showcasing some of  SWTOR’s flash-points with tons of developer commentary and some amazing in-game footage.

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The fourth installment of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise hits theaters in May, but today we’re bringing you the first official movie poster. Entitled On Stranger Tides, the flick will be the first of the series to be released in 3D and will be producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s second 3D film to-date, following his 2009 animated G-Force.

The Walk Disney Pictures release stars Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush, and Kevin McNalley, among others. Interestingly, the plot of the new Pirates is inspired by the novel On Stranger Tides, which is the same novel that inspired the LucasArts game, The Secret of Monkey Island; a game that has become a bit of a cult classic, even sporting a recent iPad port of the original game.

The plot focuses on Captain Jack Sparrow searching for the fountain of youth and along the way, confronting the infamous pirate, Blackbeard himself.

On Stranger Tides releases May 20th. Until then, hit the jump for the full movie poster in all its glory.

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It seems like just a few months ago, we were reporting that despite how the Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry devices seem to be lagging behind popular smart phones like the iPhone 4 and the various Android-powered smartphones like the Droid 2 and Droid Incredible, RIM somehow managed to hang onto it’s market dominance in the U.S.

What a difference a few months can make. For the first time ever, Android has taken the number one spot in the U.S. Market, with nearly one third (31.2%) of all  U.S. smartphones running Google’s Android OS as of January 2011. This is according to a study released Monday by comScore. Android managed to best the BlackBerry share of 30.4% of American smart phone owners, as well as the popular Apple iOS and easily trounced the new kid on the block, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

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