Birdman buys Maybach Exelero for $8 million

The rapper, otherwise known as Bryan Williams, already has a garage packed with million-dollar rides like the Maybach Landaulet and the Bugatti Veyron, and now he's reportedly ordered himself an Exelero to go with them. Birdman is rated as the fourth richest hip-hop recording artist in the world, coming in just under Sean "Puffy" Combs, Jay-Z and Dr. Dre with a fortune estimated at around $100 million. And with that many Benjamins to his name, an $8 million ride seems like little more than a drop in the bucket.

Read more @ Autoblog.com

Game console pioneer Jerry Lawson dies at 70

Gerald A. "Jerry" Lawson is one of the great unknown pioneers of the video game industry. He passed away this past Saturday morning of unspecified causes, according to an announcement on Digital Press.

Lawson will be remembered as the engineer of the first cartridge-based game console (with a pause option!), the Fairchild Channel F, which launched in August 1976 as the Video Entertainment System (VES). He was also the only black member of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club, formed in Silicon Valley in the mid-70s.

In the early 1980s he founded and ran Videosoft, which developed a handful of games for the Atari 2600. Additionally, Lawson's Demolition Derby was one of the first coin-op arcade machines, produced in his garage in the early '70s and installed in a southern California pizzeria shortly after Pong debuted. One of its key design features prevented players from stealing "free" games by jiggling the coin switch

Just last month, Lawson was honored during the 7th Annual IGDA Minority Special Interest Group Social Gathering at GDC. Shortly before the event, he was profiled by the San Jose Mercury News. More about his life is revealed in a 2009 interview with Vintage Computing and Gaming.

Sidekick Update

RadioShack to get T-Mobile Sidekick 4G on April 20th



While T-Mobile's staying coy about the Sidekick 4G's availability, RadioShack went ahead and gave us the final piece of the puzzle: according to one of its latest tweets, said Android phone is heading to the Shack on April 20th. Oh yes, this just so happens to be the rumored date for the G-Slate and G2X as well. Coincidence? Only time will tell, and let's hope that this doesn't end up being an April Fool's joke -- well, at least the Shack would have something to blame if it actually misheard the information over the phone.

Source Engadget.com

T-Mobile shutting down Sidekick service

For those few T-Mobile (News - Alert) customers who still own the once-popular Sidekick mobile phone, it's about time to start looking for a new handset.

he carrier issued a statement early this morning stating that it will shut down the service that handles the majority of the phone's functionality effective May 31, 2011. It seems that so many customers have switched to a new phone, it no longer makes sense for T-Mobile to pay for the handset's Danger Service, which is handled by a third party.
T-Mobile hasn't stocked the Sidekick for nearly a year now, so the vast majority of subscribers have probably used their incentives to upgrade to a more advanced smartphone.

Read more @ http://gadgets.tmcnet.com