According to the Number Resource Organization (NRO), the group that oversees the allocation of all Internet number resources, announced in January 2010 that less than 10% of available IPv4 addresses remain unallocated. As Axel Pawlik, chairman of the NRO, said in a statement, “It is vital that the Internet community take considered and determined action to ensure the global adoption of IPv6. The limited IPv4 addresses will not allow us enough resources to achieve the ambitions we all hold for global Internet access.”

What is a browser? was the question we asked over 50 passersby of different ages and backgrounds in the Times Square in New York. Watch the many responses people came up with.

pCHIP has been designed by Asian School of Cyber Laws & Data64 Techno Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Code-named pCHIP, this Portable Mega Investigation & Forensic Solution is delivered in two versions – on a USB device and on a micro SD card.

Fans of the first game, were you expecting a new story of an innocent, drawn reluctantly into the world of organised crime? Mafia 2 isn't such a kind creature. Sandbox fans, perhaps you were thinking that seven years in development would lead to an evolution of the first game, building on the original's linear structure to make a free-roaming speakeasy? Nope - there's no evolution there, either.

Check our our Mafia 2 gallery here:

Mafia 2 is a faithful sequel. It's an extremely linear driver and shooter. Does that description lack ambition? Haven't our expectations been stretched beyond their elastic limit by a decade of "living, breathing cities"? Or can Mafia II be described as the driver genre's Modern Warfare 2, in terms of outstanding linear set-pieces?

Mafia 2: Background

The game starts with Vito, the lead character, after short-lived adventure of robbing jewellery shops in Empire Bay- a habit that gets Vito arrested and shipped off to fight in World War Two.  Dispatched to his homeland of Sicily, he learns how to vault, crouch and throw grenades, and also gets his first taste of the power of the Mafia. Witnessing Don Calo's persuasive power over the troops, Vito isn't consumed with ambition - he just seems suitably impressed.

Originally posted on CVG: Mafia 2 review

Vito is a very different person to the first game's Tommy Angelo. While Tommy was a taxi driver, drawn reluctantly into the Family, with scenes set aside for personal crises, Vito feels like he was born to this life. When asked if he can kill without question or reason, there's no hesitation. When his early missions catch up with him, he takes to a spell in jail like an angry duck to bloody water. The problem is, Vito never takes any real pleasure out of his actions, either.

Mafia 2:  Location

Empire Bay isn’t a big town, but over the opening chapters set in a '40s winter, and the later episodes set in a leafy '50s summer, you feel like you're driving around two different towns. There's a single mission thread that carries you through the story, and unfolds the areas in their own time. In fact, if you explore too much and you'll ruin the story's own unfurling of the city. There are collectibles, in the form of Playboy covers. When you pick one up, these covers flash up immediately, it's an odd decision to make these ladies, in the middle of missions.

Mafia 2: Missions

The missions you take part in are a mixed bag - Mafia 2 is a fairly short game, so there's little repetition within the 15 chapters, but it's all familiar stuff. Tailing cars without getting too close, intercepting a car, and escaping cops - it's all driving game staples. The driving conversations are good. Occasionally they're great, but frequently, they're just, plain good. Joe's list of chat-up lines is a poor cousin to those of Niko Bellic's cousin, yet later on, as the game reaches a peak, you finally warm to the amoral bastards you're working with.

Combat lets you try stealth occasionally, without demanding it of you. When you fight in a group, your colleagues have the slightly imbalancing knack of being both good fighters and nigh invincible.

The weapons, meanwhile, are superbly tactile and effective. The basic pistol and revolver; the precision and power of the Magnum; the knock back and drop down of the shotgun and the inefficient spray of the Tommy gun. Rarely for a game like this, each one became a favourite in its own way.

At times, Mafia 2 all comes together perfectly, and these moments that stick with you. Shooting up a greaser bar in a revenge attack. Dealing with your drunken, vomiting friends in the car when you realise there's urgent and unsavoury unfinished business in the trunk. Then driving home with them singing hopelessly out of key.  These moments have genuine comedy and warmth, and they carry you through the less warm aspects of the game's characterisation.

Mafia 2: Driving

Driving, as you'd expect from the former Illusion Software, is great. Our preference was to flip between gamepad for driving and mouse and keys for combat, but whatever you use, you'll find the cars zippier than the first game. They take a while to get to full speed, but once they're there, you're almost guaranteed to die when you finally hit something. And thanks to a slightly unforgiving checkpoint system, this could easily throw you back to a point before your last combat mission. So plan your driving trips sensibly, or use the speed limiter. This will also prevent the police from sniffing around your exhaust pipe.

In fact, with guns and ammo being so easy to come by, this is really all you've got to spend your money on - tuning up the car, fixing the damage, and adding a filthy number plate. But this isn't a game about accruing a personal fortune - it's a game about the unstable fortunes of a risk-taking criminal. Spend it as you get it.

Mafia 2: Music

In an extremely welcome touch, songs are debuted at scripted moments, and then add to the playlist of the three radio stations. The song list isn't massive, but it's an outstanding collection: hearing the Andrews Sisters talking about "working for the Yankee dollar", getting told to Straighten Up & Fly Right by the King Cole Trio, or simply listening to the oppressive no-means-yes fantasy of Baby It's Cold Outside - the music adds more character to the city than the scripted arguments and serenades going on in the back streets.

Mafia 2: Conclusion

For a game that trades so strongly on its people, there are perhaps too many to truly care about, there isn't a single truly branching event in the game, and only one ending - mean that you resent, more than experience, your betrayals.

2K Czech clearly has a story it wants to tell, so this power is used instead in a number of subtle and throwaway moments. For all their triviality, they're instantly appealing. For instance, when your drunken passenger says he's going to be sick, do you stop to let him out? When you report back on your mission which took you through an abattoir and a sewer, will you stop off to buy a change of clothes? Details like this distinguish Mafia 2 as a game that you could actually love, rather than play, but with seven years in the pipeline, there should have been more.

Mafia 2 is 10 hours of driving, story, and extremely competent gun action. Running at top specs, it looks stunning, and if there was a soundtrack album, we’d buy it, but it would've been more satisfying to have felt like part of the story more...

Available now for xBox, PS3, PC and DC

Link: CVG
 

That marketplace has grown slowly, still offering far, far less than the 200,000-plus apps of the Apple App Store. But with App World 2.0, RIM hopes to make the whole app-buying process a little easier.

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More on Blackberry:
Blackberry Curve 3G review
Blackberry Pearl 3G review
Blackberry Bold 9700 review

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One of the major gripes with the original platform was the clumsy navigation - the top 25 paid and free apps were in separate places, downloading took up all the device’s processing power and the updates were hard to install.

RIM has made a few tweaks to the UI, but not enough to satisfy: there are now only four tabs (categories, top 25 apps, search and My World) and moving between them is much faster, but the same multiple levels of clicking to simply buy an app still exist.

The biggest improvement comes in the infrastructure surrounding the App World, and here RIM is finally rivalling the iPhone’s App Store.

When first using App World, users are asked to create a BlackBerry ID, which is synchronised with a PayPal account or credit/debit card. From then on, users only need to type in the password to buy a new app, rather than having to log in, then log into PayPal before the download can finally begin.

App updates, sadly, haven’t improved. While there’s an option to see how much internal storage you have left (which is handy) you still need to open every app manually to initiate the update, which is laborious and means most people won’t do it. We would have loved to see an ‘update all’ icon like in the iPhone App Store, or just a more user friendly interface like in the Android Market.

Barcode scanning is also included here, and works pretty well - users can see a 2D barcode (QR code), the phone’s camera is fired up and the BlackBerry deciphers the code and heads to a dedicated website or app in the App World.

Our BlackBerry Bold 9700 could recognise most QR codes with ease, and it will certainly make app advertising easier in the future.

The new BlackBerry App World is a step in the right direction, with a cleaner interface, easier layout and reduction in the amount of steps needed to buy each application. However, the average price of the apps is still a little steep and the selection rather woeful - hopefully with the new BlackBerry 6 OS developers might feel more inclined to create on the BB platform too.