Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2008 > April
April 2008
Video: Big robots power NCsoft’s ‘Exteel’
In honor of this week’s release of, “Iron Man,” I thought I’d share with you a video of some other awesome robot-style action.
Austin’s NCsoft released this video today related to their new giant mech game “Exteel,” which is free-to-play.
Enjoy!
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Digital review: ‘Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds’
At first glance, the PlayStation 3 game “Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds” looks like an overly cartoonish representation of video game golf. You wouldn’t be surprised to see Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog appear in golf pants.
But the cutesy touches — anime-style Bobbleheaded characters and chirpy voice acting — are just window dressing for a challenging and satisfying golf simulation. Taking advantage of the PlayStation 3’s beefy hardware, the game offers gorgeously rendered courses, smooth game play and good online play options.
Even if you’re not a golf fan, there’s still plenty to like. The game’s graphics are impressive, and the controls have been improved over previous “Hot Shots” games to make them even more intuitive. Starting with the single-player Challenge Mode, the game progresses at an easy pace, opening up new options and opponents gradually. A few hours in, the tournaments increase in difficulty, and you’ll need to balance out your character’s strengths with new equipment and power-ups.
Those skills all come into play in multiplayer and online modes. Matches I played online were tough but friendly. Opponents offered encouragement via text messages, but they were also regularly scoring birdies and eagles. You start off in a game lobby, walking around different rooms and striking up conversations with other players with an even more cartoony avatar of yourself. From here, you can find games. One nice touch is that holes are played concurrently. You don’t have to wait around for each opponent to take their turn. Instead, you see ghostly, nearly transparent images of other players tackling the same hole as you play. That structure speeds things up considerably — you can get through a quick nine holes in about 15 minutes.
The most recent “Tiger Woods PGA Tour” games have disappointed some players and critics. For those with a PS3, “Hot Shots” is a surprisingly good alternative. It has enough depth to satisfy golf enthusiasts and casual players alike.
“Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds”
$60, PlayStation 3
Rated E for Everyone
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A (wireless) bridge to tomorrow: Airport Express
When we built our house, we spent some extra money having a home theater specialist run audio wire, coaxial cable and Ethernet lines throughout.
Some of it was money well spent: Having our rear speakers in the living room mounted overhead with no wires showing was great. Some of the other expense was a waste: We’ve never installed speakers on the back patio or upstairs because the A/V receiver in the living room cranks up music loud enough to be heard everywhere.
And in the era of cheap Wi-Fi, creating wired network connections in several rooms doesn’t seem like such a good use of money, either. In one way it’s helpful: Our cable modem is housed in a master bedroom closet and connects through the hard wiring to an Airport Extreme wireless router that’s far away upstairs.
But our installer accidentally installed a phone line connection in our living room instead of Ethernet and I never bothered to have him come back and correct that. So for the past four years, the only way my Xbox 360 or satellite TV set-top box could connect to the Internet was through a wireless bridge.
A wireless bridge connects to an installed Wi-Fi network, but has an Ethernet port that allows you to connect wired Internet devices. In the case of our satellite box, you can only access On Demand features through a high-speed Ethernet connection. Since there’s no Ethernet wall outlet nearby, a wireless bridge allows us to convert Wi-Fi to a wired connection without running more wires through the house.
I’d been using a very old wireless bridge, a D-Link Wireless-B bridge, circa 2002. The device was small, but ugly. It was slow and had annoyingly bright lights, but it got the job done. I could connect to Xbox Live and download TV shows via On Demand, even if the speeds weren’t spectacular.
Recently, the bridge stopped working. It had trouble connecting to the XBox network and wasn’t playing nice with our router. I got tired of disconnecting everything to diagnose weird network settings.
So the hunt was on for a faster bridge. Wireless-G bridges, especially for gaming, are plentiful. But I was holding out for something that could run at the newer Wireless-N standard because my router already broadcasts at that speed. Wireless-N bridges are just starting to appear in the marketplace and some cost as much as $100 or more.
The Express also recently was revamped to run at Wireless-N speeds. For $99 on Amazon, I had my device.
The setup wasn’t Apple-intuitive, but it did take less than an hour. I had to tell both the Extreme router and the Express bridge how to communicate with each other (it involved configuring an obscure protocol called “WDS” in the setup software). But once I got the green light from the Express, I was able to go online with the Xbox and the DirecTV box. Connections were speedier and both my laptop and desktop recognized the new iTunes speaker.
Combining iTunes streaming with the iPhone software “Signal,” I had an iTunes remote control that could change tracks from anywhere in the house (or outside of it).
For some people, this kind of setup might be overkill. It might be cheaper and less time-consuming to run a cable to the living room or have an installer come do it for you.
But I’ve found the Express to be a nice little Wi-Fi marvel, and streaming iTunes music (including copy-protected songs purchased from the iTunes store) is a welcome bonus.
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‘Mario Kart Wii’ scores; ‘GTA IV’ hype is white-hot
Usually we don’t get a glut of high-profile video games in the same week until the holiday season, but on Sunday, Nintendo launched “Mario Kart Wii,” and “Grand Theft Auto IV” launches at midnight tonight.
Because “GTA IV” isn’t available for the Wii, that means everybody (or at least everyone who’s a video gamer) wins. I took “Kart” for a spin a few hours Sunday and found it to be a worthy addition to Nintendo’s racing franchise.
I’m not ready to do a full review yet, but the little I played demonstrated that the goofy white plastic wheel that ships with “Mario Kart Wii” is more useful than I expected. The white wheel, which holds the Wiimote that clips into place, has a nice heft to it. Surprisingly, the racing game responds very well to rotations of the wheel. I thought the wheel might be annoying to hold up in the air and that it would make the game impossible to play. Nintendo must have worried about this too. They’ve made the game compatible with the older GameCube controller, the Wiimote minus the wheel and other Nintendo controllers that don’t require you to hold an object in the air for long periods.
“Kart” has the beautifully rendered, colorful tracks you’d expect from past “Mario Kart” games, but it also has nicely implemented online play. The game shows you where your online opponents hail from. If that sounds worrisome to parents, the game warns you to change your character name before venturing onto the Internet if it identifies your personal information in any way. Also, there’s no voice chatting in the game.
Nevertheless, online play, which has never been Nintendo’s strong suit, is a treat. The matches run smoothly, and it’s not hard to find a race and hop into the action.
I’ll post more about “Mario Kart Wii” as I keep playing, but so far I’m impressed.
As for the other big game, this week, it looks like “Grand Theft Auto IV” might be an even bigger hit than anyone expected. The violent, ambitious game, which we previewed in today’s paper, got a stellar write-up in The New York Times this morning and garnered unheard-of acclaim from the gaming press, scoring perfect and near-perfect reviews from those who played it early.
I don’t have a copy of the game yet, but I’ll be playing it as soon as I get my hands on it. By all indications so far, Rockstar has succeeded on its ambitions. Analysts are expecting the game to sell at least 9 million copies (at $60 a pop). If the game is as good as it sounds, expect it to have a long, long shelf life.
And if the angry e-mail I got this morning (a mass e-mail, but still) from lawyer and anti-“GTA”-crusader Jack Thompson is any indication, the argument about violence in video games (regardless of the quality of the game) is about to make a big comeback in mainstream media.
Some Best Buy stores and Gamestops will be having midnight launches for “GTA IV” tonight. If you have any hard-core gamers in your workplace, expect them to call in sick or to see them stumble in bleary-eyed Tuesday morning. Or, hey, that person might be you.
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Georgetown 8-year-old wins engineering award
I think when I was 8 years old, I was just learning the joys of beating Atari 2600 video games.
Carson Page of Georgetown has instead been playing around with customized circuits. The 8-year-old was written up last year in Electronic Engineering Times after tech company Actel Corp. asked Carson to help test out some of their software.
More recently, he was honored at a gala with an Editor’s Choice award at a recent Creativity in Technology Awards. As you can see below, the kid’s not just talented at technology: He also has impeccable fashion sense.
Congratulations, Carson.
Photo by Trish Tunney
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Still looking for a Wii? Try again Sunday
It seems incredible that there are still shortages of the Nintendo Wii, the $250 game console that debuted way back in November 2006. Nevertheless, this is the world in which we live: not enough Wiis, way too many empty-handed individuals who want to flail their arms in front of their TVs.
Toys ‘R’ Us says it’s getting a big Wii shipment that will be made available on Sunday. That’s also the day that the new racing game “Mario Kart Wii” debuts.
If you’ve been burned by going to a store and standing in line only to come away Wii-less, there’s hope. The retailer is taking $200 down payments on the system. They expect to get about 50 systems per store.
There are three locations in the area, so that means 150 new Wii owners should be getting happy on Sunday.
Here’s a copy of the online ad that got the attention of gaming sites, including this one:
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‘IT Girls’ present computer game showcase Saturday
Last year, we ran a big story about Project IT Girl, a program run by Austin’s Girlstart which trains high school-aged women for careers in math and science-related fields.
The three-year grant-funded program is in its second year and the young women of Project IT Girl are showcasing some of their work Saturday. A Computer Game Showcase in the lobby of Silicon Laboratories (400 W. Cesar Chavez St.) will take place 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The event is free and public. The game designs have been offered up to the One Laptop Per Child program for possibly inclusion. More information about the event is available at Girlstart’s Web site. They’re a hardworking group that we’ve always been proud to support.
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Facebook chats, adds funny cats
Two reasons to revisit Facebook this week — the Web site has added online chat for all users, and there’s a new application you might like.
Facebook Chat, which launched a few weeks ago but was only available to a few users, is now available for all members. The next time you log in, you’ll likely see a little notification telling you about chat. Thereafter, you might have to hunt for the chat application. It appears as a tiny strip on the bottom right of your Web browser window and looks like this:
Clicking on “Online friends” brings up a list of people you know on Facebook who are online. It’s very similar to Gmail’s chat and also gives you the option of making your chat into its own floating window.
The other thing exciting this week on Facebook (perhaps only for me and a few others) is Lolz, a Facebook extension of the Internet “lolcats” phenomenon. It was co-created by our friends at ICanHasCheezburger.com, too.
Using the application, you can upload photos (or select from a few pre-screened ones) and insert your own funny in-photo captions. You can also re-caption other people’s images, browse the funniest ones and share them with friends.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t really proud of one of my first efforts:
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Digital review: ‘Patapon’ for the Sony PSP
“Patapon” for the Sony PSP is another cute, oddball game from the Japanese studio that brought us “Loco Roco.”
It mixes elements of real-time strategy games with the controls of rhythm titles such as “Parappa the Rapper” to create a genuinely original mix.
You control the Patapon, a group of animated little warriors who hunt and defend themselves from warring tribes. By equipping your groups of tribesmen with spears, shields and helmets, you prepare them to take down their dinner as well as giant dragons and crabs.
The fun starts on the battlefield: Your troops only respond to commands issued by a drum; using the PSP’s buttons, you tap out rhythms like “Pata-pata-pata-PON!” to move them or to get them to defend and attack.
It’s novel and fun for a few hours, but eventually it’s tiring to keep plugging in those button combinations again and again. The game does progress to allow for new kinds of attacks and spells, but by that point, you might have already checked out.
“Patapon” is best enjoyed in short bursts or as a weekend rental. It’s nearly as cute as “Loco Roco,” which featured singing yellow blobs rolling through a colorful wonderland, but doesn’t quite capture the same kind of magic.
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The Amazon Kindle: back in stock
Like the McRib is prone to do, the Amazon Kindle is making a triumphant return.
The slim, boring-colored e-reader debuted last year and, though skeptics said that a device to read electronic books was a losing proposition, the device has been sold out since November.
It’s now in stock at the Amazon.com store. Still costs $400, still includes free wireless access for downloading books, browsing the Web and e-mailing.
Unlike the Apple rumor mill, there’ve been no indications that a new or improved version of the Kindle is on the way. And if product shortages are any gauge, it sounds like Amazon is doing just fine with the version it’s selling.
And, hey, it looks like you can subscribe to the Statesman via the Kindle for $5.99 a month.
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Full albums to hit ‘Rock Band’; Judas Priest first
We were just complaining the other day about the delay in full-length albums coming to “Rock Band.” It turns out our worries were unfounded. The first full album of songs for the game (with all the attendant drum, vocal, guitar and bass parts) debuts next week for $15: It’s “Screaming for Vengeance” by Judas Priest, according to MTV.
It’ll be available Tuesday for download on the Xbox 360 and on Thursday for the PlayStation 3 version. Individual tracks can be had for $1.99 if someone doesn’t want to spring for the whole album.
Not a big Priest fan? “The Cars” by the Cars will be made available in May, and “Doolittle” by the Pixies comes out in June. It will be time to rock.
MTV also said that 8 million “Rock Band” songs have been sold. I’m thinking they’d better figure out a way to allow downloads on the upcoming Wii version or our Nintendo-loving friends are really going to be missing out.
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Windows Vista video: not Bruce. More like BOOOS!
I am paid to write words, but even I do not have the vocabulary to describe the following Microsoft video, which is causing more than a few giggles on the Internet since it was posted last week.
Even if it was totally intended as a joke, it’s still horrifying.
Please do not hate me for sharing it with you. Instead, shed a tear for the musicians who sacrificed their very souls to put these ideas to “Music”:
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Minding your p’s and i’s on HDTV resolutions
“So, what’s the difference between 1080i and 1080p?”
I get asked that question more often than you can imagine, by pretty much anyone shopping for an HDTV set. The minute you walk into a showroom of HDTV sets of varying sizes, you fall into Acronym Hell, where you must make your purchase based on factors like resolution, something about “MHz” and “Full-motion,” contrast ratio on flat-screen TVs as well as the usual decisions about pricing and screen size.
Let’s tackle the most common one first: resolution. There are four oft-used resolutions in TV (not counting the myriad resolutions used in computer monitors). Let’s do a quick overview on each one:
480i: This is the resolution of standard-definition TV. It’s a 640 x 480 pixel resolution. And “i” stands for “Interlaced,” which means that the display shows alternating lines and then fills in the lines in between on a second pass. Here’s CNet’s very handy explanation on the difference between “Interlaced” and “progressive.” The same applies to 1080i and 1080p. It’s also what’s known as “4:3 aspect ratio.” That just means it’s not widescreen. Your own, square-shaped, cathode tube TV is 480i. All HDTVs can display 480i: usually they upscale the image to a higher resolution and either stretch or crop the image to fit the widescreen format.
480p: This is a very slight step up from 480i. For a while, the craze in DVD players was “progressive scan.” This meant the DVD player put out a 480-progressive image instead of the standard 480i. This makes for a slightly sharper image, but still nowhere near the quality of HDTV. The NIntendo Wii displays 480p as its highest resolution.
720p: Here’s where we start to get into real HDTV resolutions. It runs at 720 x 1280 pixels and is generally what smaller HDTV displays (say, 19”-32” models) display as their top resolution. Some broadcasters, including FOX and ABC, broadcast their over-the-air signal at 720p. Even though it sounds less desirable than 1080i, it actually works better for fast motion imagery because it’s progressive. Unless you’re looking very, very closely, it’s hard to tell the difference between a 720p and 1080i video image. This is a widescreen-format resolution.
1080i: Largely being phased out in favor of lower-end 720p HDTVs and higher-end 1080p sets, this is the resolution that is broadcast by CBS, NBC and HBO (as well as most cable and satellite HDTV providers). 1080i offers a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, the same as 1080p, but it’s interlaced.
1080p: Called by some “Full HD,” this is the highest resolution that the current generation of consumer HDTVs display. The only way you’ll see 1080p resolution content is by having a TV that can display 1080p (most newer, larger-screen HDTVs) and a device that can output content at that resolution: HD-DVD players, Blu-Ray players and game consoles such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. 1080p has the same resolution as 1080i, but because its progressive, it has all the advantages of superior display of fast motion, like 720p.
So what should you buy? If you’re purchasing a smaller set (32” or under), 720p will look sharp and is virtually indistinguishable from the higher resolutions. If you’re purchasing a set larger than 32” and have plans to invest in a Blu-ray player, you should definitely try to get a set that displays 1080p. It will continue to be the HDTV resolution of choice for some time to come, and as it becomes the standard, prices on 1080p sets will continue to drop.
Got any questions? Post a comment and I’ll do my best to answer. For further reading, check out this excellent CNet analysis. We’ll get into other HDTV purchasing factors at a future date.
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Has-been band’s new single to be had in ‘Rock Band’
A multi-platinum-selling band is releasing a brand new single on the video game “Rock Band.”
But don’t get too excited. It’s Mötley Crüe.
Not content to toil in past glories, the band is hoping to reach a whole new generation of fans (having missed two or three generations in between) with “Saints of Los Angeles,” a new song that debuted yesterday on the Xbox 360 version of “Rock Band” and will appear tomorrow for the PlayStation 3 version. (Sorry, PlayStation 2 “Rock Band” players: As usual, you got the short end of the virtual guitar.)
The song costs 99 cents to download (80 Xbox Live points).
It’s similar to an announcement made in December that a new song from Metallica’s next album would be appearing as a download for “Rock Band.” We haven’t seen that song yet (or full-album downloads, for that matter). Instead, we get Mötley Crüe.
Have you heard the song yet? Let us know in the comments.
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Hot summer games on the way
I’ve been compiling a list of summer video game release dates and it’s looking like there’ll be a little bit for everyone.
Here’s a few by date:
April 29, “Grand Theft Auto IV” — Rockstar Games’ crime empire makes the leap to the next-generation consoles with a story about an Eastern European immigrant who comes to Liberty City. Expect sex, violence and controversy, along with better graphics and a larger scale than any “GTA” game that’s come before.
May 19, “Wii Fit” — Nintendo just announced the price and release date for this funky title, which for $90 comes with a step “balance board” that players can use for exercising. Already a huge hit in Japan, the game promises to offer “40 yoga, aerobics, strength training and balance activities.” Will Americans fight the battle of the bulge with their Wiis?
June 10, “Don King: Prizefighter” — We haven’t seen much about this one, but I love a good console boxing game and until the next edition of EA Sports’ “Fight Night” comes along, this will have to do.
June 12, “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots” — Anticipation for this game has been building for so long (many expansive trailers have been released for it) that it’s tough to imagine the game will live up to the hype. If nothing else, what we’ve seen so far promises advanced graphics, a melodramatic and drawn-out storyline (typical of the series) and crazy-looking enemies. Will it lift up the PlayStation 3, the only console it will be released for at launch? Too early to tell.
Sometime in June, “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People” — A downloadable game for the Nintendo Wii, the game is based on the popular family-friendly cartoon Web site Homestar Runner and features our favorite Mexican wrestling masked e-mail replier. The Web site for the game already contains some funny videos. We can’t wait to see what the episodic game looks like.
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Austin’s Aspyr to bring SAT prep to the Nintendo DS
Austin’s Aspyr Media, which for years has published “Ports” of video games across different gaming platforms, is working on its first wholly original game. It promises to be educational.
The company is partnering with Kaplan, Inc., to bring an SAT prep video game to the popular Nintendo DS handheld game console. The as-yet-untitled game, to be released later this year, will be the first title in a “multi-year agreement in which Aspyr will bring Kaplan-branded interactive entertainment products to market,” the company said.
Aspyr, known more for games like its recent PC/Mac version of the blockbuster “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock,” says it’s confident it can make the leap to an educational title that will entertain and take some of the anxiety out of the standardized test.
“The SAT is a scary test,” said Ted Staloh, executive vice president of publishing at Aspyr. “There’s so much pressure based on that test that we want to make a fun and rewarding experience.”
The Nintendo DS has been the platform for several successful “Brain” games that have been popular in Japan and the U.S. “Brain Age,” “Big Brain Academy” and “Professor Layton and the Curious Village,” which each feature puzzles and brainteasers, have been hits on the DS.
Staloh said that Aspyr approached Kaplan a year ago about an SAT prep game. He said the game won’t simply be a list of questions, but rather a series of mini-games that correlate to parts of the SAT test (though, he said, not the writing portion).
While it’s not meant to take the place of SAT prep courses, it will help students learn skills they may need to succeed on the test, he said.
The game is still in the early stages of development: it has no title or pricing yet. Aspyr plans to design, develop and publish the game in-house. Staloh said the game is structured in a way that will make it easy to develop by year’s end.
An early mock-up of the game’s look:
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Digital: ‘God of War: Chains of Olympus’
‘God of War: Chains of Olympus’
$40, Sony PSP
Rated M for Mature
Fans of Kratos, the buff, soul-patched anti-hero of the Sony “God of War” series, won’t want to miss “Chains of Olympus,” a new game for the hand-held Sony PlayStation Portable system. A prequel to the PlayStation 2 “God of War” games, “Chains” explains why Kratos has such a chip on his red-striped shoulder (it involves his daughter, Calliope) and offers the same kinds of fast fighting and puzzle solving as the previous games.
Remarkably, though, the game loses almost nothing in the move to a portable console. The graphics are gorgeously moody, the scale is epic and the controls are snappy.
The game moves along at a good clip, requiring no more than a few dedicated hours to complete, and, though some kinds of enemies reappear often, “Chains” has plenty of great cut scenes to move the story along. It’s never boring.
It also loses none of the gore, implied sex and gloom of the other games (much of the game is set in Hades). It’s definitely not for kids, but adults will appreciate the stellar production values.
Until “God of War III” comes to the PlayStation 3, this is as much Kratos action as fans can expect for the time being. That’s all right. It’s a great technical achievement for the PSP.
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Universe laughs at HD-DVD owner (me)
A sad, brown envelope arrived at my front door today.
Inside were five HD-DVD movies, which I’d been waiting on since January when I bought an HD-DVD player add-on for my Xbox 360. (Oh, January. Such an innocent time, before the war was lost.) Back in those joyous days, you’d get five free HD-DVDs (at least!) with any HD-DVD player purchase.
I was waiting for the package with mild annoyance (“Hey, where’s my movies, dude?”), while at the same time feeling existential about the whole thing (“Who cares? It’s OVER!”) while also half-expecting to get nothing at all. (“It’s all right, guys. I know you lost a lot more than I did in this whole deal.”)
The list of movies I selected included “Charlie and Chocolate Factory” and “Darkman.” That’s not exactly what I got. Inside the envelope was a note on a little slip of paper. It said, “Unfortunately, one or more of the movies you have selected was no longer available. We have replaced any unavailable selections with other HD DVD (sic) titles, which we hope you will enjoy as well. Thank you again for your recent purchase.”
What movies did I get instead? “Waist Deep,” starring Tyrese Gibson and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
I also got “U2 Rattle & Hum,” “The Italian Job” and “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life,” and those are all right by me. I think I might have selected those, but I can’t remember for sure.
But “Waist Deep?” Yeah, I’m not sure I would have even picked that one in Bizarro World. At least that one is a combo format — it also works in a regular DVD player. All the rest are HD-DVD-only.
Ah well. Given the billions several companies lost on the whole HD-DVD fiasco, I should be thrilled that they sent anything. It would have been way too much to ask that they send five Blu-ray discs instead, I suppose.
Tyrese Gibson: has already moved on to Blu-ray.
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Browser wars all over again
I’ve been playing around with the latest test version of Firefox (Firefox 3 Beta 5) and Apple’s Safari browser (the latest 3.1 version for Mac as well as for Windows).
First off, if you’re still using Internet Explorer, you have my sympathies. Though it has improved with Version 7, IE has always struck me as bloated, slow and just ugly to look at. I’ve stopped paying attention to Internet Explorer and only keep it around for the rare instances when a Web site won’t load correctly in Safari or Firefox. To me, IE is like a fire extinguisher that I hope never to use.
Similarly, I’ve heard good things about Opera, but I’ve only used the mobile version and haven’t had any need to use it. If you have and love it, feel free to post in the comments.
On to Firefox and Safari: What first attracted me to these browsers was tabbed browsing and, with Firefox, the ability to download add-ons that enhance the browsing experience. I use an add-on called ColorfulTabs to keep my tabs orderly and distinguish them in the tab bar at a glance.
But what separates these new versions is their speed. As much as I like Firefox, I can’t help notice that new versions have been subsequently slower on startup and don’t seem as responsive.
Firefox 3.5 beta seems much speedier and has a revamped interface. I love the new navigation buttons up top. Unfortunately, the beta version doesn’t support a lot of the add-ons I’ve come to love, but once a final version of Firefox 3 is released, we can expect to see these updated. The beta version at least has the good manners to import all of your previous Firefox preferences and to check when you start the program on whether these add-ons have been updated yet.
When you type in a site in Firefox 3’s address bar, a list of suggestions and previously visited sites pops up. Most of the time, it’s dead accurate in finding what you’re looking for, but on occasion, it misfires and gives you a list of sites you don’t want. This takes a little getting used to.
There’s a whole list of new features you can expect when the final version of Firefox 3 is released, but what I’ve enjoyed the most so far is the behind-the-scenes speed improvements and what feels to me like a more pleasing look.
As for Safari, I was skeptical. I’ve never found it to be much faster than Firefox on the Mac, and the first version released for Windows felt like a disaster, with fuzzy fonts and frequent crashes.
Version 3.1 for Windows amps up the speed and fixes many of the crashing issues. It displays text more cleanly and has a nice OS Leopard-like interface. The improvements are vast and if it weren’t for the strides that the Firefox beta is making, I would probably prefer Safari to the most recent nonbeta version of Firefox.
Both programs are free downloads, of course. If you’re on Windows and are sick of Explorer, I would definitely recommend checking out Safari 3.1 and seeing whether you like it. Firefox is my default browser, and you can’t go wrong with the most recent 2.x version. If you’re feeling adventurous, try out the 3.5 beta. It seems very stable to me, and unless you’re using your Web browser for something mission-critical, I wouldn’t worry about losing data or unexpected crashes.
So if you’ve been frustrated with buggy, ugly Web browsers, there’s hope. Each of these non-IE browsers keeps getting better.
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Dusting off the Sony PSP for 2 new games
It had been so long since I’d used my Sony PSP. I was worried that its insides might have atrophied into unusable digital bits.
Mostly there just hadn’t been any games I was interested in playing on the device for so long that I’d stuck the slab of portable gaming in a drawer, thinking I might never see it again.
But two recent games have had me using the PSP every night. I’ll do full write-ups on the games later, but for now, here’s what I can’t stop playing: “God of War: Chains of Olympus” is a spectacular new chapter in the saga of the always-bellowing Kratos. The game retains the sharp looks and epic scale that marked the PlayStation2 versions of “God of War” and, surprisingly, it features the same kind of adults-only content. (Not for nothing is the game rated M for Mature.)
It’s technically brilliant and loses almost nothing in the migration to a handheld game console. Amazing.
The other game I’ve been playing is “Patapon,” a very cute and fun game from the Japanese minds behind “Loco Roco.” It’s a mix between a rhythm game and a real-time strategy game. You use the buttons to beat out drum commands for little stick figures that go into battle. It has to be seen to be believed, so I’ll leave you with a video. Man, those little songs get completely stuck in your head!
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Flickr: now with videos, too!
I’ve been using Flickr as my main photo upload site for several years now. It’s fast, it’s user-friendly and I love the community that builds around photo groups and tags on the site.
It’s been worth the $25-a-year subscription I pay to get a pro account. You have pretty much unlimited uploads, and you can create as many photo sets as you want. My biggest gripe with Flickr is that since it was bought by Yahoo Inc., it didn’t seem like the site was evolving much. The Flickr Upload application has gone through some upgrades, but other than a few minor tweaks, the site itself seemed static.
That changed yesterday when Flickr rolled out the ability to upload videos to the site.
There are a few limitations: Only pro users can upload videos at this time, and the clips are limited to 90 seconds, which means Flickr won’t be competing with YouTube anytime soon. Flickr says the 90-second limit is by design (they say they consider video to be a form of “long photos”), and they’re pushing the community features of the site to differentiate it from the myriad other video sharing destinations.
Videos can also be embedded elsewhere, YouTube-style. Here’s an example by a friend that was posted last night:
I really like the clean interface (the little pop-up menus on the bottom when you hover your mouse over the video). I’ll be curious to see whether Flickr expands the capabilities — it would be great to be able to upload video directly to Flickr from a mobile phone or to do some minor video tweaking using some Web-based tools.
Speaking of new video capabilities, you may not have noticed, but the Statesman and Austin360 have switched to a new video player. (Yeah, I never much liked the old one, either.) You can check out the Brightcover player right here. We promise it won’t stutter or break like the old one used to.
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More awards for Web sites’ virtual mantels
In case you aren’t already burned out on Internet-related awards after the Bloggies, the South by Southwest Interactive Web Awards and the YouTube Awards, you can vote on a whole new set of categories in the 12th Annual Webby Awards.
Or instead of voting, you could do what I’m doing and ignore it completely. The Webbys, which announced their nominations today, have five nominees for each of 70 categories (“Insurance?” “Pharmaceuticals?” You’re kidding, right?). Just looking down the list, you’ll see some ridiculous inclusion like The New York Times for “Best Copy/Writing.” I think their Web site might have gotten a little help in that department from the newspaper, don’t you?
In addition to nominating practically every Web site on the Internet, the Webbys also distinguish several hundred more sites as “Honorees.”
Way to honor so many Web sites that it makes the awards themselves completely meaningless.
No disrespect to the sites up for awards: many are the usual suspects you’d expect to be honored for great work online. But given that there are already awards for blogs and videos, you’d think the Webbys could narrow things down a little. As it stands, it seems pretty meaningless to me.
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Google Maps Street View addendum: privacy worries
In today’s newspaper, you’ll find a story I wrote about Google Maps Street View, which launched in Austin two weeks ago.
Unfortunately, Zimmer’s comments did not make it back to us over e-mail in time to be included in the story, but I wanted to present them here to offer another view of Street View:
Omar Gallaga: You’ve said on your site that Google has taken a very reactive approach to handling privacy concerns with Street View. What could they have done to better handle its initial launch, and would screening so much content in advance be technologically/financially feasible?
Michael Zimmer: There are a couple of different things Google could have done proactively, both from technological and internal policy perspectives, to ease the privacy concerns with Street View.
Technologically, they should have used their own facial recognition technology (acquired in 2006 and integrated into Image Search) to automatically scan the Street View image database to identify and blur all faces, thereby protecting privacy. While this would require an additional processing step, Google is not a company known to back down from a technological challenge. (They have the broadest index of the Web, are scanning books at an incredible pace, hire the best engineers and programmers, and continually push the envelope on various technological fronts.) If they are willing to automatically scan and blur images for Canadian and European cities, there is little reason why the same shouldn’t have been done for the U.S.
From an internal policy perspective, they should have recognized that individuals might take issue with the fact that their face, license plate, home, etc. is made available via Street View, and should have made it easier for users to request their image to be obscured or removed. The interface does not include an obvious “report this image” button but, rather, you need to go through the Help system. Further, initially users had to submit their legal name, e-mail address, URL of the Street View image, a copy of your driver’s license or other government ID, and proof of your association with that address (letterhead, utility bill, etc). Of course, many consider providing this level of detailed information to Google just as harmful as the Street View image itself, especially since there doesn’t seem to be a privacy policy in place regarding their handling of this extraneous personal data. Google later removed this requirement, offering to blur any image upon request. If Google is really serious about ensuring that people can protect their privacy and security by requesting take-down of images, they should have added a direct link entitled “Request Take Down” or “Flag for Removal” to the top of each Google Street View image, and created policies to facilitate removal without having to jump through additional hoops or provide even more personal information.
When Street View launched, there was lots of buzz — negative and positive — including all the photos posted of funny/inappropriate content. That seems to have died down even as it expands to new cities. Do you think people have just gotten used to the idea of Street View or has Google done a better job of implementing ways to flag content and respond to privacy concerns?
I think the lack of buzz is more due to the limited attention span of many bloggers and media outlets, and I think that perhaps companies like Google (and even Facebook) can now plan on this predictable behavior. They can beta launch a controversial product, ride out the privacy storm that ensues, and then continue with their longer-range plans. (I can’t prove this, just a hunch.)
The larger problem with this trend of lots of noise at the beginning, and then less as the technology expands (see also Facebook’s News Feed), is that the majority of users become normalized to the presence of the technology and its implications. Since few are screaming and shouting as Street View expands (there are some, but not nearly the amount as at the initial launch), it is natural to no longer question the relative benefits or harms of such tools, and just accept them as routine.
So, I don’t feel that the lack of reaction is because Google has done anything different to help protect privacy (and they haven’t). Rather, it is more a reflection of our attention spans.
You’ve speculated that Street View is partly groundwork for mobile applications tied to location-specific advertising. What are some of the privacy dangers there?
As mobile broadband spreads and processing power of mobile devices increases (see iPhone), it seems natural that services like Street View could play a larger role in how we search and navigate in our day-to-day activities. Already, my iPhone can tell where I am and help me find the closest Starbucks or Barnes & Noble.
With Street View, I could get on-the-spot visual clues for navigation and identification of nearby businesses. The benefit for Google (and these businesses) is to place geographically relevant advertising alongside my search and Street View activity. For example, if I’m searching for a coffee shop, I could get an advertisement for the Starbucks right down the street, rather than just a generic Starbucks ad. The concern, however, is that Google now would be collecting my locational data. Not only would they know what I am searching for (already a privacy concern), they now also know that I was at a particular geographic location at a particular day and time. The widespread collection of users’ locational data poses novel privacy concerns that must be addressed before any widespread mobile search and advertising platforms become adopted.
Quick update: The Smoking Gun features an interesting story about a Pittsburgh couple suing Google over Street View images taken of their house.
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Talking online content with Austin’s Unicorn Media
It was lost amid the shuffle for me at South by Southwest Interactive, but a new Austin company launched during the festival and aims to be another option in the increasingly crowded online video and music market.
Unicorn Media says it wants to give artists (musicians and filmmakers, primarily) a platform to get their goods out online and make money from their work.
Why would artists do that instead of putting their own work on YouTube or MySpace and building an audience there?
Unicorn plans to split advertising revenue with its artist partners and employ a “Velvet rope” policy, accepting what it considers to be only the highest-quality content on the Web. But in the YouTube era, is a subjective set of the “highest-quality” videos and music what people really want (or are willing to sit through ads to get to, even if the content itself is free)?
Joe Bransom, vice president of Artist Relations at Unicorn Media, chatted with me by phone and talked about the young company. He said the traffic on the site so far is “incredible” since the festival, but he declined to say what “incredible” means in terms of numbers.
The festival launch, he said, was not really a push for Unicorn as a consumer experience, but more of a starting point to get artists on board. He says that video and audio will stream on the site, but that eventually artists will be able to decide what content they’d like to sell through the site (for example, song downloads) and that once an artist is accepted into the fold, they’ll be able to upload their own materials and have control of their own social media page. Artists who work with Unicorn won’t need to be exclusive to the service and retain all the rights to their work.
So far, Unicorn has signed indie record labels Silverback Records and Suburban Noise.
The quality of video, Bransom said, will be 700k HD quality and music will be CD quality. “We want to give the viewer an experience that’s much better than YouTube and other sites,” he said, “We don’t want any crappy video that’s not professionally produced.”
I asked Bransom about OnNetworks, another Austin company focused on online video. He made it clear that they’re not competitors — he said his company would more likely work with a company like that to distribute their videos to other parts of the Web.
Most notable for gadget heads: The company is looking at the possibility of a proprietary piece of hardware that could hook up to a TV or partnering with another company to bring Unicorn’s content to a service (like, maybe, Apple TV or any number of other streaming devices hitting the market to bring Internet video to the living room).
So what will Unicorn’s content focus on? Well, that’s a little fuzzy. Bransom said that as far as video, it’ll be a broad range: “We have content about elder care. We’re also getting into extreme videos like base jumping and snowmobiling off of cliffs. It could be a 12-year-old kid or a 50-year-old or older person,” he said, “pigeonholing an 18-35 (demographic) doesn’t really work with the Internet.”
But does lacking a firm target audience mean large volumes of content without a focused identity?
We’ll be watching Unicorn to see what develops. Who knows whether they have the right strategy. It seems as if there are dozens of new video sites popping up, all convinced they’re going to change the way we consumers entertainment.
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iTunes becomes top U.S. music retailer
It’s official.
Apple has announced (based on NPD sales numbers) that it has surpassed Wal-Mart as the top U.S. music retailer. The company’s iTunes service has sold more than 4 billion songs and has 50 million users, the company said.
And oh yeah, MySpace has just launched its own music service with major labels which will offer free as well as pay-to-download music. Good luck catching up!
Speaking of music services, Austin’s curious Slacker Portable Music player gets the first in a series of write-ups from Engadget. Anyone who’s curious about the device’s capabilities and quality of the Slacker will want to check out these articles.
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‘South Park’ takes on ‘Chocolate Rain,’ YouTube stars
Oh my God, they killed Tay Zonday!
In an episode ostensibly taking on the winter WGA strike, “South Park” also found time to take on the world of viral videos. On last night’s show, the boys are trying to raise money to give to a striking Canada (long story) and create their own video featuring Butters. While trying to collect their theoretical money for their hit video, they end up in a waiting room with Tay Zonday (the “Chocolate Rain” guy), the Dramatic Chipmunk, Laughing Baby, Tron Guy and other YouTube “stars.”
Fans of the show won’t be surprised that the scene ends in a cartoon-bloody massacre, but seeing these Internet stars in animated from was pretty fun.
We can’t embed the video here (for content reasons), but you can watch the full episode (or just see the Internet stars clip) on the newly revamped South Park Studios Web site, which features every episode of the show in its entirety for free.
Warning: Very not safe for work. Some adult content.
Since we can’t show you “South Park,” here’s “Laughing Baby” instead:
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Real estate blogs launching new sites
If you’re buying or selling a house and scoping out a specific part of town, your real estate agent may be blogging about it.
Like many other parts of the country, Austin has sprouted a growing community of real estate bloggers, some independent, others part of realty companies. I tend to see a lot of their posts pop up on Austinbloggers.org, and every now and then I’ll take a peek to see what’s going in the Austin housing market. Some describe areas of town that are hot or cooling, others respond to housing market stories in the Statesman, while still others examine monthly MLS real estate stats.
Two sets of the most active realty bloggers in Austin (or at least some of the ones who are reaching out to the tech and blogging communities) are sporting new sites. Austin Real Estate Today launches this month, replacing Texas Realty Blog, and will continue to be run by Dee Copeland.
And a national realty opinion magazine called Agent Genius has been posting content from real estate agents from across the country. The site is run by Austin realty couple Benn and Lani Anglin-Rosales. The two have been active on the Twitter.com scene and showing up at lots of tech happy hours.
Will the rest of Austin care or are these sites mostly inside stuff for Realtors and their clients? I’m generally only inclined to read about real estate when I’m in the market to sell a house or hunting for a place to live, but I’m sure there are readers who want to know what’s going on with their home investments or want a real estate agent’s take on the current national housing scare.
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The Internet annoys on April Fool’s Day
Don’t believe it!
Anything you read online today is suspect, especially anything related to technology because techies and Web site owners just love to mess with everyone on April 1.
For some sites, it’s become a tradition. Google Mail, for instance, once infamously posted a page saying that it was offering a new service to print out all e-mails. This year, the company introduced the fake “Custom Time” feature allowing you to fake the time and date that e-mails are sent. Sure, it’s a hoax, but it’s one that users of Gmail have come to expect every year.
One egregious April Fool’s Day joke came to our attention today from a PR person for IGN.com who passed on, completely without mention that it was a joke, a link to a trailer for a “Legend of Zelda” movie. It takes a little while to realize it’s a fake, but it’s obvious a lot of work went into staging such an elaborate prank.
Parsing what’s real from what’s a joke is a chore today, and I don’t think I’m alone in wishing I could just skip going online for the whole day and go back to more clearly defined lines of fact and fiction tomorrow.
Want to be in on the joke? Here’s a far-from-comprehensive list of today’s top Web pranks.
Did you get fooled today? Let us know what site pranked you.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment Categories: Internet, Videogames
New tricks for your old social networks
On the heels of talking about the resurgence of high-tech happy hours in Austin, let’s look at some new things that three of the most popular social networking sites are doing.
Facebook’s People You May Know — Introduced a few days ago, this new Facebook feature on your news page shows you friends of friends whom you may already know. It makes it easy to add them. The first three people it showed me were all people I knew, but weren’t necessarily people I wanted to add to my Facebook friends. Over the next few days, I ended up adding about six people out of several dozen (and some repeats) it offered. As a friend of mine ruefully pointed out, for some it should be called, “Facebook People I Am Actively Avoiding.” Also, weren’t there already applications that did this? It’s nice to have it as a standard feature, in any case.
LinkedIn stops being so stodgy — LinkedIn, the go-to network for those happy hour-hitting entrepreneurs and marketers, is borrowing a page from the other popular social network by introducing some new features: a news feed of top business stories, “Network updates” (familiar to anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter of MySpace as “Status updates”) and customizable “Modules” that sound a lot like Facebook Applications you can add to your profile page. So LinkedIn isn’t exactly blazing any trails here, but these are features that were sorely missed before. Chances are a lot of LinkedIn users who wouldn’t be caught dead on Facebook or MySpace will be enjoying them for the first time.
MySpace gets on the “App” train — MySpace, which is hoping it won’t become the next “Friendster” as its users migrate to other social networks, has introduced a very Facebook-like “Apps” section where users can grab applications to add to their profiles. As of this writing, there are 619 applications available, the most popular one being a playlist for videos with about 49,000 installations.
Oh, and speaking of that happy hours story, I didn’t make it to the big Thursday night door64.com happy hour, but I’ve heard many hundreds more people showed up than were able to fit into J. Black’s, leading to lines to get in. Organizer Matt Genovese promised on the site’s forum that it’ll be at a bigger venue next time.
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