Could it be? Is it true? Was Microsoft lying through their teeth when they said no Blu-ray drives in the Xbox 360? It appears so according to the Chinese Economic Daily News says Digi Times. An OEM subsidiary of Asustek, Pegatron, has purportedly secured a contract with Microsoft to produce Xbox 360 consoles with Blu-ray drives. They’re said to begin shipping in Q3.

Did you have fun last night?

Flickr’d

If TmoNews is to be trusted and something tells me they should be then here’s a bit of info on the Sidekick Gekko I told you about the other day. It will be an entirely new device and not a limited edition LX or Slide like Tony Hawk’s forthcoming model. It will, however, replace the iD with a few major upgrades. Does anyone else feel like the Sidekick gets refreshed in half increments? For example, the Sidekick 3 was more like a Sidekick 2.5 while the LX and Slide were what the 3 should have been. Right? Anyway, the Gekko will see a 2-megapixel camera (bout damn time) with video capture. It will be highly customizable and may have some sort of video sharing software. TmoNews believes the Gekko and Aspen are one in the same. Who knows.

Not that this help us, but folks out in German-land can now us Nokia’s Ovi service with their phones along with Nokia’s maps, games, and music through their phones. The news comes with the launch of the Nokia 6650.

Now that we’ve actually tried the Ovi service, we might be hooked. It’s clearly one of better services running and I’ve used quite a few in my day. This one streams straight to the web, offers embeddable widgets, and the N95 offers some nice shots, even in the dark. Good for you, T-Mobile Germany!

Here’s the latest CrunchGear-themed crossword puzzle. You can find the answers to the clues spread throughout this week’s posts. Enjoy!

CrunchWord Puzzle for Friday, May 2nd

News.com.com digs down into what Psystar really needs to keep itself alive during the sure and swift onslaught of litigation that will some hit them broadside. Here’s the rub. According the the OS X license:

“This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.”

Bloops. In fact, Psystar enabled us to do so. The company’s real legal ammunition will probably be in couching the argument in terms of illegal tying by Apple, leading to a monopoly battle that ‘lil old Psystar can’t fight. Now, there’s something else no one has considered: that this is a backdoor move by another major player or Apple itself to bring the issue of OS X tying to the fore. I seriously doubt that but stranger things have happened.

Thanks to Nokia for hooking us up with this cool Ovi channel for the event

On this day in 1964 John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz ran the first BASIC program. Designed to be an easy-to-use programming language for students, BASIC has stood the test of time and is probably the first language many of us mastered in our early geek years. The two also created the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, which is pretty much the basis for every multi-user operating system in existence. Thank you, Mssrs. Kemeny and Kurtz. Without you many of us wouldn’t have jobs.

Apparently plasma TVs are no longer the “it” girl of the tech world, at least not here in the Shining City on a Hill. Shipments of plasma panels increased by 53 percent Q1 2008 compared to Q1 2007, but you’re not likely to notice unless you’re in China or Latin America, where plasma is more popular than LCD.

Why is LCD more popular than plasma here? A big reason is that consumers still think that plasma suffers from burn-in, which is largely a non-issue at this point. I personally own an LCD, but would totally be down with whatever tech can give me the best screen size:price ratio.

Feel free to ask me stupid questions at our fiesta this evening; I have plenty of snappy answers ready for y’all.

Most watches are called waterproof but they’re really not waterproof. While most will keep water out if left untouched, if you try to engage the chronograph on most pieces the watch will become unstable and could let water in. Breitling has solved this problem by placing magnets on the pushers — the buttons, basically — and another magnet inside the movement. When you press the button, it engages the movement without actually touching anything — the magnets repel each other.

Sadly, this is a quartz piece. However, it is pretty beefy and since it’s really waterproof it might be good for divers with a few thousand bucks to spend.