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Baby-daddy
August 31, 2010
Stories before bed on the iPad
On a Saturday morning in April, I stood in line at a Best Buy in San Marcos to buy an Apple iPad. We planned to use it as a replacement for my wife’s aging, slow laptop and for me to test out apps and games for my work as a tech reporter.
After I came home and set up the device, it wasn’t long before our daughter Lilly, who just turned 3, grabbed the tablet and wouldn’t let go. I may have stacked the deck in favor of gadget-love-at-first-sight; the Netflix app I’d just downloaded was streaming the movie “The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.”
Since then, the three of us have all gotten good use from the first of what I think will be a big wave of touch-screen, tablet-sized computers many of us will use at home. But one surprising place the new technology has been a big hit in my family in bed, for story time.
Lilly loves her board books, whether it’s “Goodnight Moon,” her box of Disney Princess books or pretty much anything by Eric Carle. But one way of breaking the routine a bit once or twice a week has been to try out some of the interactive books available on the iPad.
There are literally thousands of apps aimed at kids in Apple’s App Store, but I’ve found their quality and prices to vary wildly. Sometimes, a free or 99-cent app makes you feel like you got exactly what you paid for.
The better ones we’ve found that Lilly responded to best offer not only stories with text read aloud and gorgeous, full-color images, games and some form of interactivity.
The “Wheels on the Bus HD” app, for instance, is a bargain at $1.99. It features a series of scenes on a school bus and a song that can be played in different languages and with different instruments. You can also record your own version of “The Wheels on the Bus” and play it over the colorful story pages. Each page has animations that can be activated by touch. For instance, the raindrops on the bus windshield can be cleared by moving the wipers.
It’s brilliantly designed, but also very short. Even with all the language options, it’s a quick experience that didn’t last us more than 15 minutes.
Along the same lines is “Yertle the Turtle” by Dr. Seuss ($3.99). Expertly narrated, the book can read to you with automatic page turning or kept quiet if you want to read the pages yourself.
One great feature is that practically every object in the book can be pressed and a word associated with it pops up and is spoken aloud. Click on the sky and “CLOUD” or “SKY” are spoken with the word growing and floating toward you. It’s a great tool for kids learning to read, but we found Lilly wasn’t particularly enthralled by the story of the turtle king.
The most labor-intensive of the apps we tried for iPad was also the most rewarding. “A Story Before Bed” isn’t a book so much as a platform for creating your own personalized bookshelf. In order to use it, you’ll need to put the iPad aside and log on to the company’s Web site. Using a webcam, you can record yourself reading one of more than 150 books. Once the video is recorded, you can access it from the Web site, the iPad and some smart phones.
It took us about 15 minutes to record a copy of “Cinderella.” Lilly lay on the bed next to me as I read to my laptop screen. It took a few more minutes to download the book to the iPad, but once it was there, we were thrilled. The video of Lilly and I reading together appeared in a small window. Pages of the book turned along with our reading. Lilly’s favorite feature? The ability to get rid of Daddy by simply pressing a finger on the small video window.
Not only do we have a digital copy of “Cinderella” to browse, but we also have a great video of Lilly and I reading together to view later. It seems like a great idea for parents, military personnel or grandparents who don’t get a chance to read to the kids regularly. The app is free but each book recording costs about $6.99 to record or $29.99 for a year of unlimited recording. A copy of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” is available to try out for free.
By far Lilly’s favorite of the bunch was Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog Read-Along” app, one of several iPad digital books the company publishes based on movies including the “Toy Story” series.
“Princess and the Frog” includes a storybook version of the movie including film clips, songs with lyrics, games, painting and puzzles. You can record your own read-along audio. At $8.99, it’s pricier than many iPad apps, but also packs a lot of entertainment into one package. Lilly quickly got hooked on the jigsaw puzzles; three are included with the app and they can be set to Easy, Normal or Hard difficulties.
We’re not ready to get rid of Lilly’s paper books and go completely digital for story time. But we do recognize that by the time she’s in middle and high school, she’ll probably be doing more reading on phone, tablet or computer screens than she will be via printed textbooks. It doesn’t hurt for her to be exposed to more interactive ways of reading and to develop a love and enthusiasm for words, music and art, no matter the format.
(This piece will run as a Raising Austin column in Saturday’s American-Statesman.)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Baby-daddy, Gadgets, Movies & DVDs
May 14, 2010
Tribes
Having a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old at home is the best excuse you can have if you’re someone who doesn’t like to go out and be among people. (Grown-up people, I mean.)
But if you’re someone who’s become accustomed to being part of a community, of connecting the threads of your life with others, starting online and picking up “In Real Life,” it takes a lot of work to stay in that loop. I’m trying.
I’ve been able to attend the last two Big (Naughty Word) Twitter Happy Hours (or “BATHH”), at least for a short bit before I rush home to face the highway and head home.
The happy hours are not unique; Door 64 and Austin High Tech Happy Hour are still going strong and events like Austin Social Media Club continue to attract a crowd month after month.
Last night’s BATHH featured the things we’ve come to expect from the events thrown by Lani and Benn Rosales of Agent Genius. Annie Ray shot photos, lots of people showed up, and the business networking took a back seat to people simply catching up and being social.
At least that’s how the BATHHs have felt for me. I’ve been on Twitter for three years (Facebook about the same) and in that first year, I met a lot of Austin people who became great information sources. In the second year, I began to feel like I knew some of my Twitter and Facebook friends, especially the ones living in Austin, very well. And in this third year, I’ve stopped resisting the impulse to call the people I associate with online what they are: friends.
In my business, if there’s a chance that I might quote someone in a story or call upon them as an expert source, the wall goes up. But the people I knew I’d find at last night’s happy hour weren’t just names on business cards or contacts in my iPhone. They’re the people who ask how my daughters are doing and who like to compare notes about favorite video games, TV shows or movies. They’re people who share ridiculous cat videos with me and who, without hesitation, tell me about a secret job interview they just had, a divorce they’re going through or a health problem that they’re reluctant to post about online.
Last August, I complained that maybe the Austin happy hour tech scene was getting a little crowded, but maybe others are having the same experience I am — the online bonds we’ve spent hours, weeks, months developing have blossomed into real-life relationships. Maybe they’re not all deep friendships — sometimes the only place I see some of these friends is at the monthly happy hours — but they certainly feel real to me. In real life we try to catch up, and online we catch up on the threads we might have missed. Sometimes, face-to-face, we ask about an incident that happened online, trying to get the background and the context we couldn’t piece together through Tweets and blog posts.
A few months ago, when I came back from paternity leave, one of the things i resolved to do was to try to reach out more and nurture the closer friendships that I saw were developing. I’ve tried to do it with a few informal lunches, an after-work meet-up here and there. My schedule makes it hard, but one of the things I missed the most when I was away from work for those weeks was that sense of belonging to a group.
I felt like a tribe was forming. I feel like it’s still forming.
I’m not sure where something like this goes and whether it can thrive through monthly meet-ups, but I know that I’ve come to value it and to look forward to seeing these friends (and, always, meeting new people).
Do you have an online/real-life tribe? How did it happen?
Programming note: I’m on vacation next week, returning on May 24. Unless there’s some major news that goes down, Digital Savant won’t be updated until then.
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March 23, 2010
Video game review: 'Heavy Rain' for PlayStation 3
Even if you’ve been playing video games most of your life, there are a few words and phrases you’ve likely not heard associated with the entertainment medium. Among them: “Emotional resonance,” “sacrifice” and “parenting.”
In the PlayStation 3 thriller “Heavy Rain,” a lot of unwritten rules about video games are broken and ultimately the game works because it takes huge risks that pay off. But to call it a pure video game at all isn’t quite accurate. The French studio behind the game, Quantic Dream, has described it more as an interactive movie with some gameplay elements included to guide the narrative.
Whatever your take on it (and some hard-core gamers will find the game’s simplified “Quick-Time Event” mechanics frustrating and limiting), “Heavy Rain” is a firm step forward for video games as an art form. It’s a dark, haunting game about a serial killer who targets young boys, drowning them in rainwater. At the game’s opening, you play a young father of two boys, Ethan, who suffers a devastating tragedy. Later, you guide Ethan through a series of grueling, “Saw”-inspired trials in order to save the life of his son Shaun.
Other characters join the mix, including a journalist, a drug-addicted FBI agent on the case and a private investigator who says he is trying to solve the crimes committed by the “Origami Killer” on behalf of the victims’ families. It’s not a particularly long single-player game (about 8-10 hours), but because of the subject manner, it can be draining when played at long spells.
There are plot twists. There are innovative bits of gameplay that at times frustrate and at other times enhance the mood of the game and your immersion into its story. There are also jarring plot twists, moments that will wrench the guts of any parent and moments of transcendent beauty — sometimes the games hazy, rainy, sepia-soaked palette makes it as gorgeous as anything we’ve seen in a console game before.
But other times, the voice acting, clichéd supporting characters (psycho rich guy’s son? Check. Victimized hooker with a heart of gold? Check.) and laborious plotting make it no better than a sub-par episode of “Law & Order” (with less competent acting).
When “Heavy Rain” works, however — when you feel the panic of a father losing his son at the mall or find yourself trying to extract vital clues from a nursing home resident as a child’s life hangs in the balance — it engages your emotions in a way that few games have before. That’s where the game places its largest bets: that it will come across as compelling instead of silly, resonant instead of contrived.
Through a combination of well-executed motion capture techniques, great art design and a game interface that mostly stays out of the way, “Heavy Rain” is a short novel that gets under your skin and demands completion.
There are a few major missteps that bring it back down from its lofty ambitions: the game’s only playable female character, Madison, is sexualized so often that she ends up mirroring the busty, butt-kicking video game vixens that game designers were clearly trying to avoid emulating. To gather information she tears her clothes and does a strip tease for a sleazy drug lord, and at one other low point in the game, she has sex with a major character who may be a killer for no particularly good reason. (The sex and stripping scenes never go beyond PG-13 levels, but they still feel gratuitous.)
Clumsily at times, the game is striving to be a truly adult interactive entertainment experience. Its themes of sacrifice, its pitch-perfect take on the grief of a mourning parent and its jarringly realistic character models make it a more mature endeavor than almost anything we’ve seen before in the video game industry. Its multitude of possible endings and the consequences of bad choices or failings as you play also make it more interesting than the hard-boiled crime thrillers it’s inspired by.
Not everyone will want to suffer through the darkness of “Heavy Rain,” but as game designer Peter Molyneux said at South by Southwest Interactive, it’s certainly brilliant in parts.
Those parts are plentiful enough in “Heavy Rain” to make it a milestone for video games.
‘Heavy Rain’
$60, for PlayStation 3
Rated M for Mature
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December 18, 2009
Digital Savant returns next year
I’m about to embark on the least-technological adventure of all: childbirth. We’re due next week.
I’ll be out of commission for several weeks, returning Feb. 1 . Of course, if Apple should suddenly introduce the tablet computer of our dreams, I’ll probably dip back in to write about it, but otherwise, I’ll talk you then. Have a great holiday season and a happy new year!
Thanks everyone for reading this year.
— Omar
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June 15, 2009
Father's Day heads-up: spa day instead of tech toys?
I’ve been a little obsessed with a press release I received last week about Father’s Day. Not because it was particularly compelling or because it prompted me to write a story (this blog entry will have to do), but because it got me really thinking, “Could that be true?”
The press release was from the research firm IBISWorld and, in a recent report, they say that dads are giving up gifts like electronics and home improvement items (hello, laser level!) in favor of “Pampering” gifts like spa days and grooming kits.
How bad is the drop? According to IBISWorld, sales of these pampering gifts are expected to be up 35.7 this Father’s Day while home improvement and electronics sales are down 27.9 and 16.3 percent, respectively.
How can that be? There’s a new iPhone! And the Palm Pre is out! “Ghostbusters,” the video game, is in stores tomorrow! Did I mention laser levelers!?
The press release for the research report twisted the knife further, saying (mockingly, I might add): “It seems dad is going from handyman to dandyman this year.”
As Hank Hill might say, “Gaaaahhaaauuughh!”
Step it up, dads. If you forego electronics, table saws and, yes, even the traditional ugly tie for Father’s Day for a mani-pedi or a gift basket of body lotions from Bed, Bath and (heaven help us) Beyond, you risk getting thrown out of the Geeky Dad Club. (I’m not just a member; I also just made it up.)
Or you could do what I did if you like to live dangerously. When asked what you want for Father’s day several weeks in advance while you’re playing video games, you could answer, distractedly, “I dunno… a stripper?”
This is a risky move and almost ensures you’ll get no gifts.
As a charter member of the Geeky Dad Club, I’m all right with that.
Make your wish list known: you want drill bits, a dorky Bluetooth headset (with a belt holster to hold it when it’s not on your ear) and a GPS fish finder.
Save the spa retreat for Valentine’s Day.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Baby-daddy, Gadgets, Phones, TV, Videogames
February 19, 2009
Games I only wish I was playing
A long time ago, I used to play video games every single day. It was my evening pursuit, something I did right before bed, a way to wind down (and power up at the same time) before hitting the sack.
Now I have a wife, a kid, a Twitter account, two DVRs, freelance assignments and no time whatsoever. I played quite a few games over the holidays, but have found myself unable to play much since then.
Here’s what I’d be playing if I had much more free time:
- “Street Fighter IV”: It hit the streets this week for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and is by most accounts a game that brings fighting games a step forward while retaining the best parts of this long-time series. I haven’t received a copy yet from Capcom (hey, Capcom! Over here!), but even if I did, I’d be sad not to have time to check it out.
- “Mirror’s Edge” for PC: I wrote a fairly lukewarm review of the console version of this game, but the PC version promises better physics and the possibility of community mods to enhance the very cool, stylized game world. It’s actually on my list to check out and I have a loaner video graphics card that should take advantage of the game’s new physics engine.
- “Flower”: This downloadable game for the PS3 sounds pretty great (and short; I like short). It looks beautiful.
- “Fallout 3”: I started this over the holidays and didn’t get very far before I had to put it aside. I loved what I saw so much that I can’t wait to get back to it, but it sounds like such a huge game world that I’m intimidated to return to it at the same time.
What are you folks out there playing? Post a comment and make me jealous.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: Baby-daddy, Videogames
September 2, 2008
Browser wars anew; holiday tech news
It was a very long Labor Day weekend; at least it feels that way when you have a 1-year-old who likes to listen to the same CD over and over. Thank goodness she hasn’t figured out how the DVD player works yet.
But, enough about me. How are you? Did you see all this tech news that happened over the break? If not, let me fill you in:
- The big talk this morning has been about Google’s sudden unveiling of a brand new Web browser called “Chrome.” As the company explains in a nicely done (but very long) comic by “Understanding Comics” author Scott McCloud, Chrome has been built from the ground up and is an open-source project. How will it do against Microsoft’s forthcoming final version of Internet Explorer 8, Safari, Opera and Firefox browsers? Early word is that Chrome is very, very fast. But will it have the plug-in community support of Firefox and build an audience as large as Internet Explorer? You can download the beta program for Windows yourself and see what you think.
- Is Dell launching an ultraportable computer on Thursday? The rumors seem to suggest they will.
- Local publisher Gamecock Media releases its long-anticipated game “Pirates VS. Ninjas Dodgeball” for Xbox Live Arcade tomorrow.
- The man of a million voiceovers has died.
- AT&T Wireless customers can automatically donate $5 to the Red Cross to help evacuees fleeing Hurricane Gustav by texting the word GIVE to 2HELP.
- Are new iPods coming? Everyone expects they’ll be announced next Tuesday.
- Nikon’s new D90 camera sounds HOT. HD video recording on top of a top-of-the-line consumer DSLR camera? Too bad I already own a D50 and just bought an HD camcorder earlier this year. David Pogue has already reviewed it and says it’s a fantastic camera, but a bit limited as a camcorder. Also love the idea of that geotagging GP-1 add-on device.
- What I’m playing: “Soul Calibur IV” for the Xbox 360, “No More Heroes” for the Wii and possibly “Spore” for the PC if it arrives in the next day or two for early review.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Baby-daddy, Computers, Gadgets, Internet, Videogames
June 20, 2008
Yes, the iPhone can shoot video. Wanna see?
When Steve Jobs recently announced the iPhone 3G, one of the few bummers was that Apple didn’t say anything about recording or streaming video on the new device. Everyone assumed beforehand that because the phone would be on a speedier AT&T data network, that sending video to YouTube or participating in a video chat with a friend would be a given. Some even suggested that Apple would add a second camera to the iPhone, one that faces the front, to facilitate that.
Unfortunately, the camera specs didn’t seem to get bumped at all. (Insert sigh of disappointment). My guess is that in an effort to keep the phone as cheap as possible, Apple decided against beefing up the camera to match pricier phones like the Nokia N95, which has a fantastic set of two camera built in.
But here’s the big surprise. The iPhone, even the current generation iPhone, can shoot and stream video. The hardware is there. You just have to unlock it.
When I heard that Qik.com, a site I’d been trying out with the N95, was working on a similar application for the iPhone (they also recently released a Windows Mobile version), I asked to be let in on the software test.
The big caveat: using the test software would require me to jailbreak my iPhone, voiding the warranty and setting it free in the wilds of non-Apple-approved software. Uh oh.
Well, I went ahead and went through with the jailbreak (sorry, Steve Jobs!). I make the big sacrifices for you, dear reader. I’ll write an entry about that a little later, but for now, you might be wondering: what’s video on the iPhone like?
Here’s a video I shot using the iPhone over my home Wi-Fi connection:
Not too bad, right? When you’re using it, the iPhone’s big, beautiful touch screen is divided into a tiny capture box at the top (what will actually be broadcast) and a large chat window below where people watching your streaming video can shoot you comments as you’re filming.
My limited experience using Qik on the iPhone is that the first video I shot seemed to broadcast in super fast-forward speed with no sound. The second video I shot (the one above) cuts out on the sound, but otherwise looks fine, if a little blurry. (I attribute that to the iPhone’s camera, not the service, which looks great with the N95.)
Bear in mind, this is a very early version of the software and the issues I brought up are being worked on by the QIk team. At the moment, the application only works in a Wi-Fi zone (of course there’s no way to test the iPhone in a 3G network yet) and broadcasts at a minuscule 174x144 resolution.
But it’s a great start, I think. If Apple isn’t keen to announce a video streaming application of its own, we can hope that developers like Qik and maybe Kyte.com will fill the void.
Make no mistake: the iPhone can definitely shoot and stream video. You just saw it for yourself.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: Baby-daddy, Gadgets, Phones, Shopping
May 29, 2008
A weekend without broadband
We were traveling over the weekend, visiting family for a big event involving my baby daughter. Even though I packed up my bags with gadgets galore (iPhone, loaner Nokia smartphone, laptop, camcorder, DSLR camera), I knew I’d be hamstrung in one big way: where we were going, there wasn’t much high-speed Internet and next to no Wi-Fi.
In South Texas, where I grew up, there’s fast Internet. But it’s in houses and businesses, not freely available in the air and for free as I’ve become accustomed to seeing it in Austin. My in-laws are still on dial-up Internet, and I found myself on a late Friday night feeling the pangs of the addicted Internet user. Sure, I still had access to the online world: I used my iPhone on AT&T’s slow, but still usable EDGE network.
But my laptop was left in its bag like a hibernating squirrel, unable to frolic and detour on the fast Web. And the Nokia smartphone, which does run on AT&T’s faster 3G wireless network, was rendered almost useless: though the company is expanding 3G quickly, it still hasn’t reached much further south than Corpus Christi, from the testing I did. I briefly considered running to McDonald’s, Burger King or Starbucks to see if there might not be some snack-subsidized Wi-Fi I could corral to feed my parched Macbook. I resisted the impulse. Instead, I stayed up late reading a book.
By Saturday, as we headed to South Padre Island for my daughter’s first visit to a beach, I still carried around a camcorder and digital camera, but I was getting used to not checking my e-mail, not lurking around Twitter, not bothering to check out the link to a particularly funny YouTube video someone had sent me.
Sure, it was Memorial Day weekend and the Web was slowing down anyway, but by the time we were driving back on Monday, I had stopped missing the Internet. I didn’t care what the latest tech blogs were saying about a fresh round of Apple rumors. If there were friend invites for me on Facebook, they weren’t being answered by me.
By Tuesday, of course, the Weekend of No Broadband was already a memory. I caught up on my RSS feeds, answered pending e-mails and groused with other users about recent Twitter.com outages. Things were back to normal.
As our wireless networks expand, as Wi-Fi spreads everywhere, as we find the very air around us surrounded in all directions by pure Internet signal, these breaks from the online world will become increasingly rare. I’m learning to savor the breaks. I don’t know when the next one will happen.
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May 15, 2008
Amazon in its Prime (and tax-free till when?)
Almost a month ago, I got an offer on Amazon.com to upgrade my account to “Amazon Prime” as a free 30-day trial.
I’d been leery of Prime since the site began offering it in 2005. For $79 a year, you get free two-day shipping on items that Amazon sells and relatively cheap $3.99 shipping for one-day.
For me, it didn’t seem like a service I’d use enough to make worthwhile. I make most of my Amazon purchases around the holidays, buying gifts for far-flung friends or items I can’t find in stores for family members. The rest of the year, I usually use Amazon for a few major electronics purchases (most recently an HD camcorder; before that we bought an HDTV via the site). The rest of the time, I might buy a CD or DVD or baby-related item, but that’s about it. No way would I save $79 worth of shipping a year, especially when I usually opt for the slow, but perfectly reliable Free Super Saver Shipping typically available for orders over $25.
But having used Prime for the last few weeks, I can definitely see the appeal. Like crossing to the front of the first class passenger row at the airport arrivals area, you suddenly feel like a slightly higher class of Amazon shopper.
If you’re a procrastinator who frequently misses birthdays by a day or two, you suddenly have some help. Gifts arrive much more quickly with free two-day shipping, or next-day shipping for a few dollars more. (You can spend the cash you would have spent on speedier guilt-shipping on Amazon’s gift wrapping.)
But even with the option for super-fast arrival at little or no cost, I didn’t find myself ordering any more items than I usually would. It allowed me to make smaller, sub-$25 purchases without guilt, but I’m not an impulse shopper and Prime didn’t make me a more frequent buyer.
Also, Prime has one big flaw: If you order items from Amazon Marketplace sellers, the shipping discounts don’t apply at all. I found this out when I ordered our camcorder: Amazon didn’t have the item in stock. I’d have had to wait more than four weeks, the estimated time before the camera would be back in stock. My kid was about to start crawling. I didn’t want to wait another month. On the other hand, a highly rated Amazon Marketplace partner had the same camera even cheaper than Amazon’s list price in stock. The shipping price was low, but could take up to five business days. That was still better than where I would have ended up with Amazon and its Prime service.
For readily available commodities — CDs, books, DVDs — Prime is a great deal for frequent shoppers. But for big-ticket items, rarities or stuff only offered by Marketplace vendors, not Amazon itself, Prime becomes useless.
Why don’t I shop locally instead of buying such items on Amazon? Well, I have a 9-month old baby and I don’t go out during the week, for shopping or anything else. On weekends, we rarely make it to San Antonio or Austin and the stores in New Braunfels aren’t typically stuffed with the kinds of items I buy on Amazon.
For things like gift certificates, I usually do make the extra effort to hit local stores. A gift certificate for Waterloo Records or Book People is infinitely cooler than one for Best Buy or Target. And I buy all my greeting cards at Sparks.
But when you take into account free shipping, no taxes and almost unlimited selection, Amazon almost always wins, especially in electronics and entertainment.
Which brings us to a sticky topic: How long will Amazon continue to be able to offer goods in Texas without making its customers pay taxes? Amazon has a distribution center in Texas, leading some to believe that they should be forced to pay taxes, like other online business with storefronts in the state.
One company has already dumped an online affiliates program in order to plead its case for a tax exemption in New York state. Will Amazon have to make a similar move in Texas?
If you’ve been thinking about a major purchase from Amazon, you may want to do it now before the tax issue puts it out of your price range.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Internet, Movies & DVDs, Shopping
May 7, 2008
Milkscreen makers and Babble Soft team up on baby offer
Two Austin companies are teaming up to offer a deal for parents of newborns who want to try out each of its products.
Babble Soft, which offers software online for parents to track feedings, diaper changes, vaccinations and to create photo albums, has teamed with UpSpring Baby, which offers several products for babies, including Milkscreen for detecting alcohol in breast milk.
Shoppers at Babies “R” Us and other retailers will be able to try Babble Soft’s software when they buy a $4.99 three-pack of Milkscreens. The three-pack will include a three-month subscription to Babble Soft’s “Baby Insights” and “Baby Say Cheese” services.
Babble Soft and UpSpring are part of a proliferation of parenting-related Web sites, video productions and startups that have taken off in Austin. It’s not surprising that some of them would partner up to continue their baby steps into the national market.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Gadgets, Internet
March 18, 2008
South by Southwest parenting co-op?
New York City blogger Jeffrey Zeldman has posted an entry on his site today suggesting that visitors to the South By Southwest Interactive Festival form a parenting collective next year to pool resources. It would allow parents to bring their kids to Austin to the festival and not have to choose between spending a week away from their children or missing SXSW Interactive.
As the fest grows (and it was huge this year), I think more and more people are going to be forming groups to deal with logistics like this. It felt as if there were more first-time attendees this year than I’ve ever seen at the fest. Now that these festgoers know the lay of the land, they’ll be much more organized next year, and we’ll see things like this come to fruition.
I can speak about my own experiences at Interactive: I live 45 minutes away and I found myself getting home anywhere from midnight to 2:30 a.m. and getting up the next morning to come right back. I didn’t see my 7-month-old that entire weekend. My wife and I knew this would happen in advance and asked family for baby-sitting help. My daughter stayed out of day care until the last day of the fest, when I decided to skip the evening events and end my SXSWi early.
Even living close to town, it was still logistically tricky to be a parent and make the most of the festival. I spoke to lots of local parents and SXSWi attendees who skipped the evening events altogether to be at home. This doesn’t seem ideal to me if you’re serious about making the most of Interactive. There were some great nighttime events, lots more networking than you’d see in panels and just a lot of fun and relaxation to be had. It’s never been clearer that South by Southwest Interactive is about more than panels and keynotes. We can expect even more parties, happy hours and socials next year: parents are going to need an action plan. Zeldman’s suggestion is an excellent start.
Parents who went to South by Southwest Interactive: What were your strategies for balancing the fest and your home life?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Internet, SXSW
February 1, 2008
Luxurious Friday links
The weekend is almost here, and you’re still chained to your desk. (Or BlackBerry. Same difference.) Let these links inform and entertain you:
- The New York Times opens a fascinating box of worms on the science behind online dating. Apparently, many think that online daters are much too unskilled to pick their own mates. The work being put into the algorithms that can predict love is an amazing subject. Given that online dating is one of the biggest consistent moneymaking businesses in the online world, you can bet that the company that gets it right first is going to make a bundle.
- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has put up its list of top PC gaming mods and the top independent games of 2007.
- DadLabs Lounge (“Taking back paternity”) will be filming an episode of their Web show “The Lounge” on Feb. 7 at the Tiniest Bar in Texas at 817 W. Fifth Street. They’re inviting dads to come have a beer or three. I got a chance to visit the new on-location set a few weeks ago and lo and behold, I ended up on video. Funny how that happens sometimes. The DadLabs fellows are giving away a $750 Mutsy stroller, so go check it out, dads.
- The American-Statesman and Austin360 now have mobile-friendly Web sites, which should make browsing the site handier. I’m hearing that iPhone users are seeing the full sites (which I thought was the point of having a full-featured iPhone browser), but as I said over here, if you just want headlines, why not subscribe to the RSS feeds?
- I’m still trying to wrap my head around a Yamaha digital piano that can download Internet radio music and play it live on the piano with accompaniment. Wow.
Permalink | | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Gadgets, Internet, Phones, Videogames
January 25, 2008
Notes from a new iPhone user
Six months later, I finally got one.
Yes, it was expensive. Yes, I have no excuse for going back on my proclamation that no phone is worth $400-$600, unless you’re a heavy corporate user. (Once you count taxes and the ridiculous piling on of an $18 service fee plus accessories, you’re talking about quite a bit more.)
But whining about the price of the iPhone doesn’t change the fact that it’s a beautiful, useful, amazingly well-designed product, a phone I was able to get up and running with in a stunningly short amount of time.
When I switched from an old Sprint handset to an AT&T account with a RAZR, it took me literally hours to get my phone number ported, to get my service plan in place and to get my phone replaced when the one I bought turned out to be a dud. It took multiple phone calls and days of aggravation.
Switching from the RAZR to the iPhone took less than five minutes, all done on my Macbook through iTunes. “Your phone is activated,” the pretty screen said in friendly large letters. I was good to go, but then I was already an AT&T customer.
I applied the most recent update and was off the the races, putting baby photos on the phone, syncing my small laptop iTunes music library and trying out some videos.
At one point I figured I could try the phone and take it back within the 14-day window if I figured out the iPhone just wasn’t for me. Unless it breaks somehow, that’s not going to happen. I’m in awe.
The good:
- The Web browser is so effective it puts any other cell-phone based Web experience I’ve seen to shame. Switching through multiple browser windows is a cinch, and being able to place bookmarks for Web sites directly onto the iPhone’s home page (some sites even have cute iPhone-friendly icons), makes it even handier.
- Wi-Fi is very fast, and EDGE is not as poky as I’d feared. iPhone-optimized Webapps like the ones for Facebook and Google are at tolerable speeds, even on EDGE.
- Awesome screen resolution and eye candy. Transitions between menus and general design are stellar.
- iPod functions, which I thought were darn-near perfect on the fifth-generation iPod Video are even slicker and more refined here. I do miss the scroll wheel and being able to operate an iPod without looking at the screen at all, but that’s the trade-off for a huge, brilliant widescreen display.
- YouTube is surprisingly speedy, even over EDGE, and it feels complete, even with the videos being translated a non-Flash format. I have yet to search for a video that is on YouTube’s Web site but not on the iPhone version of YouTube.
- Activation was speedy and trouble-free.
- Apple’s packaging is, as always, apt to give you goosebumps.
The not-so-good:
- The white dock that comes with the iPhone just doesn’t go. It could have been black and a lot slicker.
- The virtual keyboard is not as bad as I’d feared, but I still find myself slowed down by typos from pressing the wrong key with my thumbs.
- The headphones, despite including some handy remote functions, still sound cruddy (relative to nicer, more expensive earbuds). And the recessed headphone hole means you’ll need some sort of dongle or adapter to plug in your nicer non-Apple headphones. I still need to pick one up.
- The phone is very thin, but it’s still a bit big to fit comfortably in the pocket. That’s one thing I’ll miss about the RAZR.
- No iChat!? Making text messages look like instant messages is a poor substitute. Luckily, there’s a site called JiveTalk that is a handy replacement and requires no hacking to use. It would have been nice if Apple had included something like this in the phone’s software.
The bad:
- Battery life. I haven’t made any long phone calls and I can still see my battery life dwindling before my eyes with just basic Web browsing and e-mail checking. Phone calls and video are an even bigger drain.
- There’s an option to “manually” put music or movies, but if you have multiple computers, you can easily wipe out big swaths of videos or music by accident from the iPhone, as I did the other night. That stuff is easily replaced, but it’s confusing what stuff is to be synced and what stuff can be dragged manually. I’d love to pluck music from my desktop and contacts from my laptop, but so far I haven’t been able to do it without erasing something.
- Likewise, it would be nice to have an online version of iCal that didn’t require a subscription to .Mac. Instead, I’ll have to find a way to synchronize with Google Calendar, which I can use on multiple computers, with iCal, which sits on the phone as my datebook. I sure do miss the Palm Pilot datebook.
Overall, I love it, but I’m looking for some good tweaks and tricks. If you know any, post them in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Baby-daddy, Gadgets, Internet, Phones
January 23, 2008
Taking the iPhone plunge
You know how when you have a kid (talking to the parents now, I suppose), it seems like everybody in the world is suddenly pregnant or giving a kid a bottle? And how when you decide what new car to buy, you suddenly see that model parked in every garage, driving by on every street corner?
Well, last week I finally decided to get an iPhone. Now I’m seeing it everywhere: in blog posts, on the street, in my dreams.
I waited past Christmas and, more importantly, past Macworld, thinking a new version (3G? 16 GB of memory?) would be introduced.
It wasn’t.
In fact, Apple’s strategy has been to keep rolling out new features to improve the first-generation product, silencing early critics by addressing shortcomings like not being able to send text messages to multiple recipients (fixed in the most recent update) or making maps more robust, with faux-GPS locating.
So I’ve watched the product improve and become more ubiquitous, and have seen my little black RAZR get increasingly flaky (or maybe it’s that I’m just starting to notice it).
Today, I went to Jo’s on Second Street and it looked like everyone there was playing with their iPhone. Nobody was cursing at their iPhone. It looked like love.
So, I’m going back on my promise to myself (forged back in the days when I bought an easily tarnished Sprint clamshell phone) that I would never again pay $300 for a phone. Technically, I’m not paying $300. I’m paying $400.
But it’s money I’ve been saving and a product that has broken down the defenses of my fickle, demanding tech heart. It doesn’t hurt that I saw these awesome designs I can decorate you with.
I think I love you, iPhone. Let’s get together.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Baby-daddy, Gadgets, Phones
January 9, 2008
What I learned at Geek Austin happy hour
Going out on a work night has become a luxury for me, a planned, carefully coordinated event that involves more strategy than Hillary Clinton’s push in New Hampshire.
I have a 5-month-old, and I’m in charge of picking her up from day care and driving her to New Braunfels with as little incident as possible. (Remind me to tell you about the flat tire we had one time; mad fire ants were involved.)
So nine times out of 10 I turn down going to happy hours or anything else that isn’t absolutely necessary. It was only because of insistent and very humorous e-mail from Lynn Bender that I gave up quality road time with the baby to RSVP for the Geek Austin happy hour, held last night at J. Black’s Feel Good Lounge (how good? Ask me after two beers.) on Sixth Street. Do you know how long it’s been since I was on Sixth Street? I had to ask a friend whether they still serve liquor there.
Anyway, the happy hour was well-attended and certainly not a waste of my night. It was almost worth coming home, looking into my baby’s face and hearing her say, “I have forgotten who you are. Hope you had fun at your happy hour. Also: Change me.”
Here are a few things I learned from the handful of people I got to meet:
- Lynn Bender is a dude. A very nice, social dude and generous host. It has been so long since I’ve talked to Lynn face-to-face that I had forgotten not only what he looked like, but his gender. So when he and I started talking and I didn’t look at his name tag and I mentioned that I ought to say hi to Lynn Bender for inviting me and he said, “I’m Lynn Bender,” well … let’s just say it was not my best moment. I blame lack of sleep. Darn baby!
- John Melanson of Cirrus Logic Inc. is the nicest hippie-techie I’ve met in a long time. He’s shifting his focus from audio/video stuff to environmental tech and is looking for engineers. If you are an engineer who wants to save the world, one green digital signal processor at a time, you should contact John.
- Twitter friends SheilaS, ATXRyan (a former co-worker at the Statesman) and Jmetcalf27 came up and chatted, and it was nice to have a conversation with them that wasn’t limited to 140 characters.
- Philip Wheat from Microsoft Corp.’s Austin offices gave me the lowdown on the PhizzPop Design Challenge, which will have its finals held at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. I missed the Austin finals in December (SEE: Baby, Stunted Socializing Caused by — ABOVE), but I plan to see the national finals at the festival.
- Tori Breitling and Julie Gomoll are opening a coffee shop downtown near the Omni Hotel called “Launchpad Coworking” that’ll be mobile-worker-friendly. They plan to open it in early July and couldn’t have been nicer.
- Photos from the event are already up on Flickr.
- I must be able to pick it up and play it without too much fuss.
- It must not take itself too seriously.
- I need to be able to play it in short bursts in case the baby starts crying.
- No support for older Macs. Unless you have a Mac with an Intel processor, you’re out of luck. My trusty G4 iBook can’t run Joost.
- Joost requires installing an external application. You can’t just view stuff in your Web browser like you can on YouTube. For those of us who can’t just install new software on our work computers willy nilly, Joost is an absolute no-go. (Plus my work computer is a non-Intel Mac. Double strike out.)
- Channels on Joost aren’t always well defined and you can’t do easy searches on it. Joost feels more like TV channel surfing than an Internet service.
- The community features feel tacked-on. It’s unclear whether users will be able to create their own channels and share their own videos. It doesn’t seem like that’s the goal here. This is a broadcast tool (with commercials). As such, it feels less like Web 2.0 than a new way to watch TV on your computer. I’m not certain that’s what people really want.
I’ll plan to be at the next Geek Austin event, babysitter-permitting.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Food, Internet, SXSW
December 28, 2007
Tech that made my 2007
It’s list-making time for journalists, where we will spend the two slowest weeks of the year with ruminations on the year that was, with an eye toward story budgets for the months ahead.
I already named my videogames of the year, but here’s a look at some of the consumer technology that made me happy this year. (Let’s let bygones be bygones on the technologies that crashed and burned, shall we?)
The iPhone — No conversation about technology of the year would be complete without Apple’s wonderphone, which dominated headlines in the first six months of they year. The iPhone is by no means perfect, but it aspires toward perfection, something that seems anathema to the clumsy cell phone interfaces we’ve learned to live with. Sticker shock over the initial price, $600, soon gave way to wonder as Apple fans and converts learned that the phone remarkably lived up to most of the hype. It also got people to stand in lines and feel like they were part of a communications revolution. I still don’t own an iPhone (first it was the price tag and then the idea that a faster-network version may be rolling out soon), but it remains high on my list of wanted items. Unless something else comes along, I’m sure I’ll own an iPhone in 2008.
Faster, more ubiquitous wireless — We take it for granted that most coffee shops in Austin have free wireless Internet access and that a WiFi hotspot always seems like it’s just around the corner. Try traveling to the Rio Grande Valley, where you typically have to hit a Starbucks and pay for the privilege of getting online. Austin continues to be a great place to get online wirelessly. Routers continued to improve this year, with more Wireless-N products rolling out. I bought an Airport Express router and a Macbook this year and found my home network to be more stable and much faster. Let’s hear it for cutting the cord. In ‘08, here’s hoping cell phone networks catch up.
Better mapping, less getting lost — Google Maps continued to cement its status as the killer app of navigation (MapQuest who? Yahoo Maps what?), adding street views to its already robust features. New services are continuing to roll out that add GPS-like functions to even the lowliest cell phones. And GPS navigation devices were one of the hot holiday gifts this year as prices continued to drop and functionality improved. Stopping and asking for directions is beginning to feel so 2006.
OSX Leopard — Yes, there’s a lot of Apple on this list, but they had a stellar year. The latest Mac operating system soared where Microsoft’s Vista stumbled, offering an elegant, speedy computing environment with relatively few bugs. Every day that passes, more people get frustrated with Windows and decide to go Mac.
Amazon gets into MP3s — Here’s one area where Apple wasn’t the brightest light on the Christmas tree: Its iTunes store has begun to feel bloated and complacent, while Amazon.com’s upstart MP3 store is completely copy-protection-free and in some cases, cheaper. I’m looking at a list of $5.99 albums and free downloads and am impressed with the lengths that Amazon is going to woo customers. Competition is good.
HDTV goes mainstream — It felt like it took forever, but the switch to digital TVs is finally really happening. According to news from today, more than 50 percent of U.S. homes have at least one digital TV. Now the hard part: creating products that don’t force consumers to have to know the difference between 720p, 1080i, 1080p and all the other useless standards associated with high-definition TV.
HD content gets better — I hate the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray format war as much as anybody, but you know what? The movies look outstanding on a good HDTV. I just watched “Ratatouille” on Blu-Ray a few nights ago, and it blew me away. Once the player prices dip below $100, it won’t really matter: Many people will grumble, but go ahead and buy both. Everybody else will forgo high-def discs altogether and rely on downloading services, cable, satellite or over-the-air programming to get their HD fix.
My friend Flickr — The birth of my daughter in August made me appreciate the photo sharing site Flickr even more. From the hospital’s wireless Internet, I was able to quickly upload birth pictures, send out an e-mail to relatives and let them see our new arrival almost instantly. I love the way Flickr works and have yet to see anything that rivals it. (Although I do use the offline version of Picassa to store my phone and do minor photo editing.)
Storage gets cheaper and bigger — Hard drives, flash drives and memory card prices dropped so quickly that by the end of the year, you could score hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes worth of storage for about $50. It’s significant because we are becoming digital packrats: All our digitized music, photos, movies and other data need a place to live and a place to be backed up. Expect more whole-home storage solutions and something a friend just turned me on to: off-site backups. Taking the time to do careful backups to an external hard drive does you no good in the case of theft, fire or flood. Expect the next storage revolution to be safe, secure places online to stash your digital valuables.
I’m sure I’m missing plenty of items here, but it’s almost 2008 and time to start looking ahead. I’ll see you in January. Have a safe and happy new year!
Permalink | | Categories: Applications, Baby-daddy, Computers, Gadgets, Internet, Movies & DVDs, Phones, Shopping, TV, Videogames
December 11, 2007
The video game gift guide: bonus content and video
The year’s top video games were rounded up in today’s Life & Arts section with our games holiday gift guide. Dale Roe, Joe Stafford and I rounded up our top games of the year, top games by system and other goodies. In the online version, you can also see a roundup of the game systems: don’t know the difference between the Xbox 360 Elite and the Xbox 360 Pro? That’s where we tell you what to look for if you’re shopping.
We also shot a video (thanks, Rob V.!) to go with the story. I will only say that I am a new dad who has not been to the gym in weeks and the camera has decided to make the point that I not only played all of these video games, but I also ate them. “BioShock,” for the record, was delicious.
I also posted a bonus video on YouTube — we kept talking long after the initial video stopped and you can hear more of our thoughts on the year’s best below. Do not let my belly distract you:
Last games thing for now: my review of “BlackSite: Area 51,” a game produced by Midway Austin, has also been posted.
Permalink | | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Shopping, Videogames
November 2, 2007
Finally: a great PlayStation 3 game! Plus, HD-DVD deals
I know it’s “Tabula Rasa” day (see below), but the game that’s been taking up my past few nights has been “Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.”
It meets three of my current requirements for a game to be awesome:
“Ratchet & Clank” goes a few steps better by offering, in just the two levels that I’ve played, one of the best-looking and most fun games yet on the 1-year-old PlayStation 3. Sure, there hasn’t been a ton of competition for that with the dearth of quality games for the system, but this one is definitely a holiday winner. It looks gorgeous. has fantastic character animations and plays at a brisk, entertaining pace. I’ll be working on a full review, but if you’re looking for a game to pick up this weekend that’s not “Tabula Rasa” and you have a PS3, this one’s a definite buy or rental.
What’s up with all these $99 and $199 HD-DVD players? Blu-Ray seems to have the momentum with movies people actually buy (Disney animated films, stuff like “Spider-Man 3,” but lately HD-DVD has been countering with some blockbusters of its own like “Knocked Up” and “Transformers” that aren’t available on the bluer format.
You could hold out for a combo player or you could dive in now and get a bunch of free movies (all the HD-DVD players come with offers for five to seven movies by mail). I’m still eyeing the HD-DVD player that hooks up through the XBox 360 because the last thing I need in my entertainment center is another device with another set of cables looking for a high-definition TV input I don’t have.
Permalink | | Categories: Baby-daddy, Movies & DVDs, Shopping, Videogames
October 22, 2007
Getting the best video quality on YouTube
Our pal on Twitter.com, Paul Walhus linked us to this incredibly useful primer on how to upload videos to YouTube without sacrificing too much video quality in the compression process.
Though the tutorial comes from a Final Cut Pro user group, the tips can be applied to programs like iMovie and PC editing programs like Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Studio, and Ulead VideoStudio. The trick is to encode your videos at a resolution close to YouTube’s final 320 x 240 specs using the luscious “.mp4 with H.264 video format.”
Can’t wait to upload some baby videos.
Of course, if your source material is bad, don’t expect YouTube to magically spruce it up. This is most useful for going from, say, high definition video to the more modest dimensions of online video.
Still, a low-quality video can still be absolutely awesome, as this clearly demonstrates:
On a whole other subject: Apple’s computer market share is now up to about 8.1 percent of the U.S. market and growing. Watch out, Windows Vista!
Permalink | | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Internet
October 16, 2007
Babble Soft tools in the nanny world
Two Austin nanny agencies are incorporating the software that Austin-based Babble Soft makes into their services, the company announced.
“Baby Insights” (formerly called “Baby Manager”) and “Baby Say Cheese,” which I wrote about last month, are going to be used by Mom’s Best Friend and Nannies from the Heart for infant care.
In a press release, Nannies from the Heart owner Rebecca D’Amico said, “It’s great to be supporting a mom-owned business like Babble Soft, and they’ve come up with another great way to communicate with nannies.”
Kathy Dupuy, owner and founder of Mom’s Best Friend said nannies will have access to both pieces of software in all five of her company’s Texas markets.
“Baby Insights” allows parents and nannies to input information about baby feedings, medications and other information into a Web-based program. It can be accessed via PC or smartphone. “Baby Say Cheese” works alone or with “Baby Insights” to provide a photo scrapbook to help parents document their kids’ milestones.
Babble Soft was founded by software entrepreneur Aruni Gunasegaram.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Internet
October 15, 2007
Forget candy bars; your kids may start selling MP3s
One of the horrors of being a parent (or so I’m told) is the inevitable time when the kids are asked to sell cookies or candy bars or various holiday items, sold via glossy handouts and order forms. They’re always for a good cause, or so we’re told. I can’t remember a single good cause from the items I was forced to sell as a kid; I just remember that if you sold enough items, you might get a new bike.
Nobody ever got a new bike.
The joke, of course, is that most kids couldn’t sell rice cakes to supermodels. It’s the parents who end up peddling overpriced chocolate bars and cheese-laden gift baskets to co-workers, neighbors and relatives. They don’t want their kid to be The One Who Couldn’t Sell Anything. It’s a whole industry run on guilt and panic.
Frankly, I’m fearful my daughter will grow up thinking her ABCs stand for “Always Be Closing.”
There is much to fear, then, from this site. The future, we can now clearly see, includes not only peddling physical items to be delivered at some indeterminate future date, but also instantly downloadable songs, music videos and ringtones.
DownloadFundraiser.com allows organizations to sell items from the download site SharkGroove.com. After you deduct those pesky costs associated with the go-go world of music downloads, you might eke out a few pennies. Here, the site offers its formula for making money:
Download Profit = (Download Sales Price - Record Label Licensing Fee - Bank Transaction Fee) x 50%
Advertising Profit = (Advertising Revenue - Advertising Agency Sales Commission) x 50%
Eek! There are some reassuring things about the site. It only sells radio-friendly content; your kid won’t have to hustle to sell any extremely dirty Li’l Kim albums.
One other thing seems amiss, though — on DownloadFundraiser’s frequently asked questions page, you’ll find this information:
How does the sound / video quality compare to an actual music CD or movie DVD?
Download Fundraiser offers mp3 and WMA formats at 128kbps. These audio formats are compressed from the CD formats, and are comparable in quality.
Er, no. Although quibbling among audiophiles has gotten pretty annoying on the issue of bitrates, most will agree that a 128kbps MP3 file doesn’t compare with CD-quality, even to untrained ears. Sorry. it just doesn’t.
Anyway, parents, I’ve sounded the warning bell. Don’t be surprised if your kid comes home with a bunch of flyers, ready to sell downloadable goods to everybody. Start figuring out how you’ll answer the question from potential buyers, “And how is this better than buying stuff on iTunes?”
Permalink | | Categories: Baby-daddy, Internet
September 17, 2007
Hopelessly addicted to 'BioShock'
Joe Stafford’s review in today’s paper of the PC/Xbox 360 game “BioShock” is a love letter to a title that is the Catherine Zeta-Jones of video games: hard not to fall in love with at first sight. Then you hear her accent and go, “Oh yes. This gets even better.”
The analogy breaks down when Michael Douglas enters the picture, but I digress. “BioShock” is a thing of beauty, the rarest of games: one that straddles the line between art and digital thrills, a game that evokes intense emotions and white-knuckled fear convincingly, and in equal measure.
The best thing I can say about the game is that I haven’t been able to stop playing it for going on three weeks now. All other games have been pushed aside in my relentless pursuit of an endgame and of rescuing Little Sisters from sub-aquatic doom. Sure, I’d like to play “Heavenly Sword” for the PS3 or EA’s intriguing “Skate” for Xbox, but they’ll all have to wait until I play this thing through. In my house, it’s “BioShock” all the time, sometimes while I’m cradling my infant daughter in my arms.
Is the game overhyped? By this point, it probably is, but those of us lucky enough to get our hands on it when the game was merely a well-reviewed new release with some new tricks up its sleeve are caught in its barnacled grip. I know I have to leave Rapture at some point, but I dread that day. What are a skateboarding game and a sword-and-hacking game going to give me after such a rich, deep gameplay experience?
In other news, we’ve relaunched the long-dormant Arcade360 Web channel around here. You’ll be able to find game reviews, game news, videos and plenty of other stuff. It’s entirely appropriate that the channel be resurrected now: These are great times for video games and those who play them.
Permalink | | Categories: Baby-daddy, Videogames
September 7, 2007
Game developers parties: we've got photos
I usually leave the party-hopping to Michael Barnes, but last night I dragged my weary daddy bones to three different parties to see how Austin game developers party: It turns out they get naughtier as the night wears on.
At the laid-back party for Austin’s new Pixel Mine, four desktop computers were set up for an early version of the game “Fireteam Reloaded.” The simple football-meets-firearms game feels a little slow and the controls confounded a lot of the people who tried the game, but with some tweaks the game could be a really fun online experience.
The open bar and tavern equivalent of booth babes at the door meant a healthy crowd for the company’s first public event, and the proximity of 90 Proof to the Convention Center didn’t hurt, either.
A few hours later, at Speakeasy, Sony Online Entertainment presented a check for $10,000 to the very cool folks at Habitat for Humanity. I talked to Beth Krueger from Habitat and she couldn’t have been any nicer. Sony employees and their peeps drank beers as some kept an eye on the New Orleans vs. Indianapolis NFL game.
Soon after, I headed over to Fado Irish Pub for the Gamecock Media Group late-night party. I knew something was up when I saw drunk guys walking around in capes and rooster heads. Sure enough, the staid party got wild when the ladies of Kitty Kitty Bang Bang hit the stage, pasties aplenty.
Two roosters performed a song soon after, followed by a scorching tin tub dance by one of the Kitties that was enough to remind me that I have a three-week-old baby at home and that I should call it a night and clock out.
We’ll be posting a video of the parties later today, but in the meantime, you can check out this photo gallery from Tuesday’s Videogame Archive party and the photos below of two of the parties. (Sorry, no Kitty Kitty Bang Bang photos; I’m not even sure we can run the video footage I shot. Caliente!)
“Fireteam Reloaded” is played at the Pixel Mine party at 90 Proof.
Don Roach, Jr., operations manager at Pixel Mine.
Todd Raffray, community and Q&A manager, and Alan Comley, programmer, from Pixel Mine.
A character from “Fireteam Reloaded.”
Beth M. Krueger, director of development for Austin Habitat for Humanity at the Sony Online Entertainment party at Speakeasy.
A check for $10,000 is presented. Darth Vader did not contribute.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Videogames
August 28, 2007
Tales from the crib
You may recall that I was initially reluctant to write or post photos of the impending baby arrival. My wife, especially, was spooked by the online crazies (you might be one of them!) and the idea that we would be revoking an innocent child’s privacy before she’d even opened her eyes.
After going through the experience (the baby, Lilly Grace, turned two weeks old Aug. 27), we’re glad we posted photos online and even more glad that the San Antonio hospital that was our home for four days was also equipped with Wi-Fi access. Sure, we still fielded quite a few phone calls from family and friends, but being able to post a photo and send out e-mails to those who couldn’t visit was invaluable. Getting the word out to our loved ones, but having the filter to control that output — deciding which handful of photos, carefully cropped, we were willing to share; carefully wording our own e-mail announcement, chatting online only when we had some down time — proved really helpful.
We’re still finding the ground beneath us when it comes to other Web stuff: I’ve got an amazingly cute video I shot of the baby raising her head for the first time, but I’m reluctant to YouTube it, even just to share with family and friends. There are plenty of gory details about the birth and the two weeks that follow that make great stories, but not necessarily stories I’m willing to share with the whole world.
But the Web, at least in this instance, proved my paranoia wrong. Maybe we were just lucky, but there was no negative blowback, no snarky comments from anonymous jerks. It was warm wishes and love from the people we reached out to online. We were pleasantly surprised.
Permalink | | Categories: Baby-daddy, Internet
August 26, 2007
Austinite goes Omega today
While you and I are enjoying our Sunday grilled sausages, waiting on the season finale of “Big Love” and the season premiere of “Frisky Dingo” and maybe even taking care of a baby (yes, we had ours two weeks ago, which explains the recent silence in this space), Chelsea Stark is playing the warrior.
The Austin woman, who works at News 8, is competing today at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) Omegathon in Seattle, a grueling video game tournament featuring 21 geeks fighting for big prizes.
We don’t know yet if Stark will win, but she describes her nerve-jangling experience in the Jenga round (as in real wooden Jenga pieces, not a digital representation of said game) in her Omega-blog. We’ll let you know if she wins the competition, which includes the games “Quake III,” “Puzzle Fighter” and the much-anticipated “Rock Band.” The competition ends this evening
Good luck, Chelsea!
Permalink | | Categories: Austin, Baby-daddy, Internet, Videogames
July 17, 2007
Dodging a falling SunRocket
Late last year, I almost signed on for service with SunRocket, a voice-over-IP phone company.
Today, they’re going out of business.
I’m not sure what would have happened had I jumped on the $199-a-year deal. It looks like another company is eager to snap up those 200,000 customers. I’m just glad I’m not in that situation. What kept me from signing on was their aggressive telemarketing (a little too aggressive) and the nagging sense that the deal was a little too good to be true. Turns out it was.
The Time Warner digital phone service I’m using isn’t perfect. I recently had an all-day service outage that kept my phone line dead for a whole Friday, and I still get a few wrong number calls. But at least I don’t have to worry about losing my entire service permanently without a heads-up. We did have a billing snafu recently that a Time Warner rep said they’ll take care of. But the service itself has been mostly solid and calls sound great, much better than on a cell phone.
We haven’t decided if we’ll keep our digital phone line — we’ll have more of a need for it when we spend some time at home next month with a new arrival.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Baby-daddy, Internet, Phones, Shopping
May 11, 2007
Baby goes public; this Joost in
I made a very personal announcement on my own Web site today and I can’t help but feel a little weird about it.
We followed the typical guideline of not telling friends or family about the pregnancy until after the first trimester. Now we’re toward the end of the second and I’d still held back from writing about it or really speaking much about it publicly.
Part of it is that there are plenty of great dad bloggers writing about their experiences and I didn’t really want to beat the same drum.
Also, my wife is not a public person, doesn’t like to be written about online, and she didn’t really want our personal bidness out there for the world to see. For once, I agreed with her.
But the child is coming. It’ll be a real, three-dimensional human entered into the public record as a citizen of this country, on Planet Earth. Sooner or later, the reality was going to have be addressed online, as it has been in our own lives.
So it was only after taking a very deep breath that I put a very small version of the ultrasound picture up with only a negligible amount of text. I’m still nervous about it, and I don’t know why.
I live a lot of my life online, but I’m not sure it’s fair for me to put my (future) kid out there, too. I’m still mulling it all over.
Some thoughts on Joost.com.
They’re raising quite a bit of money and developing a lot of content relationships.
The site is still in closed beta, but it’s very easy to get an invitation (you could just ask someone who is on the service, hint hint).
The site promises full-screen video and lots of programming. On that, it delivers. It’s got a very slick interface and the amount of videos on the site surprised me with its variety and depth. You can watch full episodes of some Adult Swim and Comedy Central shows, some classic TV series (if your definition of “classic” includes “Who’s the Boss”) and some pretty great music videos, including stuff from Amy Winehouse and Snow Patrol.
Here’s the issues I have with Joost, though:
All that being said, Joost is very enticing, at least on first impression. Video is, on most channels, very crisp and good looking. On a good Internet connection with decent hardware, Joost blazes. The interface is sharp and most videos look great. (They do pixelate quite a bit on large monitors, depending on the video.) Navigation is a little glitchy sometimes, but for the most part, Joost delivers lots of eye candy and I can see why people are in a rush to invest in it. We’ll have to wait and see how it develops and whether people will embrace having to install a non-Web application to see Joost content. I’m not convinced that this is the way the Internet is going, but with enough content partnerships and enough money to expand their vision, Joost could end up being very hard to ignore.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Baby-daddy, Internet, TV
