The Call of Duty: Black Ops map expansion, called “Escalation,” is now available to Xbox Live subscribers. Escalation adds five new maps, including four that are available in multiplayer mode. As we noted back when the expansion was announced, the maps include a Russian Zoo, a Cuban hotel and casino, a weapons of mass destruction stockpile, and “convoy.” If you still haven’t had your fill slaying the living dead, the update also includes a new zombie experience called “Call...

If you’re proficient in Russian, Polish, Czech, or Turkish, and want to search the web in one of the aforementioned tongues, Google has got you covered. Recently, the company announced the addition of the four languages to its Voice Search functionality. “Try speaking queries like ‘концерты Юлии Савичевой’ (tour dates for Yulia Svicheva), ‘przepis na pierogi’ (recipes for pierogi), ‘obrázky Hradčan’ (pictures of the Prague castle), or &...

Things we know: Microsoft has an Internet Explorer event scheduled for September 15th, Microsoft has released four developer previews of Internet Explorer 9, IE 9 beta is set to launch in September and in all likelihood will be unveiled at the 9/15 gathering. Things we don’t know: what IE 9′s interface will look like. However, thanks to Microsoft’s Russian press site, we may have a better idea of what we are in-store for. ZDNet found the screen shot above sitting on the Redmond software gi...

We’ve seen pretty wild iPhone thefts in the past, some involving serious injury, but you just know it’s bad when Interpol gets involved. Thousands of iPhone 3GS’ were stolen from a Belgian warehouse through a hole in the roof directly above the smartphones, and they’re now surfacing in Russia. The iPhone 3GS is definitely going to be a hot commodity there because of the vast grey/black market and because the 3GS hasn’t been officially released in Russia. If you’re planning ...

If there was ever a contest for blurriest photos taken post-haste, this image of a Motorola CLIQ look-alike, rumored to be called Motus, takes the cake. There isn’t much to be said or gathered about the Motus so far, except that it looks like a CLIQ with a flat keyboard and no D-pad for navigation. Said to be coming out in Q1 2010, rumors also peg this device as packing Android 1.6 and a 5 megapixel camera, so it’s not as if anything terribly special is going on. Unfortunately, the image is far to...