This week brings us the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the video game trade show better known as E3. This is E3's 14th year, and my 10th time attending the show. But despite booming game sales and a firm foothold in the mainstream pop culture marketplace, the future of this gaming event is in jeopardy.

After years of big-budget extravagance for an audience of 60,000-plus visitors at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the game companies that form the backbone of the show felt their budgets were spiraling out of control, and even the large amount of media attention they got from E3 wasn't worth the millions they put into building massive booths and displays. » Read the rest of the entry..

Microsoft on Sunday cut the price of its best-selling Xbox 360 Pro model game console with a 20GB hard drive from $349 to $299.

The company also introduced a new Xbox 360 model with a 60GB hard drive. It will go on sale in stores in the U.S. and Canada for $349 in early August.

Microsoft's announcements, which were widely expected, come on the eve of the start of this week's E3 video game industry trade show in Los Angeles. » Read the rest of the entry..

Approximately 36 hours after the release of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, existing iPhone customers still can't download it. iTunes says it's unavailable. Apple should have done better.

We already know that on Friday, there were severe activation problems with the iPhone 3G. This isn't exactly a surprise, perhaps, after the new in-store activation procedures and AT&T's dismal performance last year. » Read the rest of the entry..

We are reviewing have reviewed the new Apple iPhone 3G and will be have been updating this blog entry all day long as we go went through the review process. Check back periodically for the full scoop. Senior Editor Donald Bell also contributed to this article

Update: We've done our full rated review of the Apple iPhone 3G. You can read it here, plus check out our full gallery slide show as well.

2:15 p.m.: We activated the iPhone 3G finally!

Even though it took us awhile to get started, thanks to the iTunes activation mayhem this morning, we finally have our Apple iPhone 3G up and running. Senior Editor Donald Bell and I will be putting the new iPhone 3G through its paces throughout the day, so keep checking back as we post new sections of the review when we get them done. » Read the rest of the entry..

Now that the day is almost over, you're probably sick and tired of iPhone news, and we don't blame you. But there remains one question (albeit a very silly one) remaining on some people's minds. And that is, do I get the white one, or the black one?

Yes, it's a purely aesthetic choice, but c'mon, Apple fans are known to care about looks, so this is a relevant question. As you know, the white iPhone is only available in the 16GB model, so many people have posited that this is seen as the "luxury" color, similar to the way black MacBooks were seen as the "it" item back when it was released (Black MacBooks are only available if you want to cough up $200 more for a bigger hard drive). » Read the rest of the entry..

Yesterday, it was the RIM BlackBerry Bold, today it's the HTC Touch Diamond and the HTC Touch Pro. Both Windows Mobile smartphones got FCC approval today, and it looks like they will be headed to a CDMA carrier as rumored. No word on when and whether it will be Sprint or Verizon Wireless, or both. At least, it's a light at the end of the tunnel.

The portable speaker for the iPhone can be folded up into a compact "ball" that's very easy to transport.

Now that you've gotten your iPhone 3G, it's time to get some accessories for it.

Digital Life Outfiter (DLO) didn't wait for long and has just come out with a slew of stuff that you can use to protect, carry, and enhance your iPhone 3G. Most of them work with the original iPhone and the iPod Touch, too. » Read the rest of the entry..

People were still willing to wait in line for hours Friday afternoon outside the downtown San Francisco Apple store, as employees assured them sufficient supply of the iPhone 3G lay inside.

The line for the iPhone 3G at 4 p.m. in San Francisco was almost as long as it was earlier in the day: stretched down Stockton Street and around the corner onto O'Farrell.

Orange-shirted Apple store employees were moving up and down the line, answering questions and promising customers that there would still be an iPhone 3G for them once they got to the head of the line.

An Apple employee assures customers who had spent hours in line that they would get an iPhone 3G.

» Read the rest of the entry..

Jott is a very simple idea made sophisticated, and it works.

As a free download software for the iPhone, this application allows you to record voice notes, just like any sound recorder. However, the software goes one step further with the ability to transcribe recorded notes into text. You can even have the note sent to your mail account. » Read the rest of the entry..

Yelp for iPhone contains all the ingredients you'd expect from the well-known site for users to rate local business and restaurant listings--except one. It has a perplexing tendency to space out when loading user reviews. The instability is surely an early bug, but a detraction nonetheless.

Apart from that, Yelp for iPhone features a clear display composed of category listings for nearby restaurants, bars, banks, and so on. Like so many of the other apps that CNET editors have reviewed, Yelp's iPhone offering taps into the phone's GPS receptors to find matching listings in your neighborhood, with further parameters on distance and hours available in the button marked Filter. » Read the rest of the entry..