Xbox
Obligatory Tech Prediction for 2009
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If not only for the attempt of looking cool, here we go;
More companies will start joining Twitter
Recent news showed Dell making a good $1M, now, compared to the rest of the income, that is not necessarily a large quantity. But it was enough to show off, to both fan and exec’s, how useful advertising deals and the like can be.
Apple TV/ Mac Mini upgrade:
The Mac Mini has not updated in over an entire year, which at least in comparison to the iPod, looks like its death. Apple has been treating the Apple TV as more a hobby project, but has been doing well with it. Also, with the recent update to the HP MediaSmart to work with iTunes and Time Machine, a relative upgrade would seem appropriate, but since the Apple TV and Mac Mini are so similar, upgrading both would be redundant.
The iPod Classic won’t fit any more songs
A rule of thumb where buying an iPod, is that if its been a few months since the last update, wait a week or two and the iPod will be upgraded. When the iPod Touch was introduced, they dubbed the next generation of the iPod Video’s as the iPod Classic. The second generation of the Classic, if you can call it that, denoted the hard drive space from 160gb to 120gb, but what they really did was take out the 160gb hard-drive and replaced with a dual 60gb solid-state drive. The rumors of a iPod Touch-esque, tablet-esque Apple product just prove how whole-heartedly Apple is going towards the touch interface.
Kevin Rose will re-publish Pownce
To much anger and confusion, SixApart bought Pownce and hired the devo team. Although they did publish their plans to incorporate the Pownce software into their products like Vox, MoveableType and TypePad. But why did they close the original website? Well, SixApart has said that, in the new year, they will be releasing the Pownce engine for either purchase or beta. A large portion of the Pownce community was there just for the affiliation with Kevin Rose, and he definately has the cash to pick the software back up.
SMS in Canada will come back to Twitter
Or imma beat some ass, beat some ass real bad.
More countries will be turned into more TinyURL websites
Because we dont have enough; b65.us, c-o.in, dn.vc, faceto.us, fly.ws, hurl.it, is.gd, Just.as, x.se, LNK.IN, turo,us, Twitty.ms and Xil.in, and that is just the ones that use county URLs…
Sony PS3 will team with Blockbuster (or someone like that)
With release of Microsoft’s NXE for the Xbox 360, they included a NetFlix client; letting you order and stream their entire catalog of movies for no price in addition to a normal NetFlix account service. I dont use it for reasons that are legal in Canada, but I have heard nothing but praise from friends that do use it. Recently, it was announced that Blockbuster was (finally) doing an online service, and besides the fact that both of their main colors are blue (OMFG COINCIDENCE?!) I would not be alone in assumption that the PS3 will follow suit, as the only thing the PS3 has over the 360 is space, and movies take space. And people that bought a PS3 are going to be looking for cheap rentals for a while now…
9 Podcasts for 2009
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Although these all like to the iTunes Store, they shouldn’t be hard at all to find them on other Podcasting services by entering the same name.
Scene Unseen Movie Reviews is a new podcast that offers a unique spin on the movie review process. The catch? Every week one of our reviews sees a new release… the other does not. Also featured - “Letterboxing” banter, DVD picks and special guest appearances from professionals in the film industry.
Vancouver’s top comedy podcast? Hosted by Graham Clark and Dave Shmka, with weekly guests. Hilarious weekly guests? Yup.
EPIC FU is what happens when tech and culture get it on. It’s your weekly geek-out to the coolest art, tech, and music from the online and offline world. Subscribe to get a fresh new episode each week!
Mars Hill Church: Mark Driscoll -
Mars Hill Church in Seattle lives, breathes and is generally OCD about Jesus. Pastor Mark Driscoll is the lead preaching pastor for Mars Hill and regularly distribures video content via this channel, including sermons, event teaching and the occasional one-off video created for our internet audience. You can find more content like this by visiting our web site at www.marshillchurch.org
By Tech Fans, For Tech Fan! Product reviews, tech tips, viewer questions, gaming and great guests, all brought to you by Robert Heron and the DL.TV crew. We go live every Thursday, then we encode and make available for download.
Diggnation is a weekly tech/ web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories.
The Totally Rad Show is the summer blockbuster of geek news shows. Every week, hosts Alex Albrecht, Dan Trachtenberg and Jeff Cannata rip into the world of movies, video games, tv, comics, and more and pull out what’s rad.
Embrace digital technology. Join the Tekzilla cew and make your tech work better for you. Or you can go live in the woods with an axe. Every Saturday, Patrick Norton and Veronica Belont deliver product reviews, computer help, tech tips on everything from Ipod to camcorders, HD to the Internet, plus do it yourself projects.
The Hour with George Stroumboulopolous
Want a different look at the news? Watch to The Hour. The Hour isnt your average newscast, its more lik hanging out with someone whos really interested in the world. The Hour - a current affairs show hosted by George Stroumnoulopoulos. Watch new video clipos every weekday.
Pownce == Perma Ackbar’d
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It was not within the first fifteen minutes of my logging on that I heard the news from the (former?) !leahbasskitten, a friend of mine on Pownce. It was nothing but a sad face and a link to this rather disheartening post by Leah Culver, for sake of brevity this is but a section of that post;
We have some very big news today at Pownce. We will be closing the service and Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.
This came up just after I had thought that morning of ways to integrate Twitter into my own Pownce account, as Twitter had a plethora of external programs, some of which would allow me to post via SMS. Also, it was the few days after another friend, Neha friend asked me which I use more, Twitter or Pownce, and why that was.
I use both with Ping.fm. I much prefer the Pownce interfact and community and layout, but I use Twitter and all its mad gadgets. I prefer Pownce on its own, but Twitters’ uses
For months I have been praising the usefulness of Ping.fm, a service I got into a closed Beta a while ago that lets you post in an excess of 15 different services. But really, I used it for Twitter and Pownce, the extra were a nice bonus. In the back of my head, I was looking for a simpler method, and I guess this really does do it.
The aforementioned uses of Twitter are far from a mystery to anyone, I may cover them in a later post, but if you are wondering I am sure you can Google yourself a few dozen. The popularity of Twitter, and thusly the API, made it a very good idea for anyone with an idea to stick with, the ample audience.
So, it is on this day I remove myself from the Ping.fm bots and stop with my terrible netiquitte. Today I go from a former “Twitter is stupid”ite to a perma “Twitter is stupid”ite.
As Neha said in he reply to this fiasco, “I know that Leah will be a great addition to SixApart, and will create some social networking tool that is ever spiffier for all of us.” it will still not be the same. Pownce had the niche market that Digg used to, and Twitter never did. Perchance I was just lucky, but during my months on Pownce I met some really cool people, a majority of which are now pleading for some form of adequate replacement.
On my way out, I leave you with some links to websites for the troubled Pownce’r, hoping to keep in some contact with those we once did; Poll: Pownce Exile - Where To Next? and teh similarly named FriendFeed room, PownceExiles.
The wake of Oblivion’s Fallout…
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I have only spent about 5ish hours on my Fallout 3 copy, a combination of school and my brother playing it as well have encumbered my playingability. But shit-damn, its amazing, and it looks fantastic.
Now, by no means am I saying this is the most attractive and graphically insane game ever, Gears of War would be a good comparison as it shares the same gritty theme as Fallout. But Gears is no where as utterly massive as Fallout 3, it has been heralded as being thrice the size of the already-way-too-big game Oblivion. Part of the beauty of this game is, as was the case with their previous blockbuster Oblivion, how damn big it is. You can spend hours and hours just… traveling around this post-Apocalyptic USA, offing Ghouls and retarded Fire Ants and never find an invisible wall. And this is why the Fast Run feature (also from Oblivion; takes you to any city you have been to before). I know this because I am currently lost.
I find that non-linear games, in too many a case, turn very linear when you start playing. I mean, wasn’t that a huge selling point of the GTA games? For whatever reason, my friends and I ended up doing the same stuff. What I really like about Fallout is that although my brother and I are at the same level, our games are entirely different. However as reviews have said, its missing a lot of the gritty stuff from Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, and I haven’t seen any Molotov’s yet, wtf@that.
The V.A.T.S. system (aiming at specific parts of a target) is awesome, when I first saw the video on IGN, I thought it was a really cheap way to do FPS, but they didnt mention the AP in that video. It is kinda how I feel about, in Tales of Vesperia, where you can skip the post-battle dance or setting your entire team to AI - its a fast and simple way to take out the random flying bugs or dogs that chase you around without feeling ‘cheaty’
Its Oblivion II with pretty good FPS to it, just-as-bad jumping and some really annoying glitches and, most of all, a great long-range system. When I played Oblivion as someone other than a Mage, my brother was surprised, and as was Oblivion just had a horrible FPS system. Especially for an RPG/ Adventure type game, the FPS system is spot-on.
Sometimes my right stick wont work, or my right buttons wont work, or I cant get out of 3rd person. Be that as it may, as glitchy as I do find it, the saving works around that pretty well. I am not saying it is perfect, and I am not saying a save-anywhere save system should be used in the stead of glitches, but considering the grandiose world this game presents, and how much of it works flawlessly, and how much damn fun it is, I shall excuse these glitches. For the most part, they do not interfere with the actual experience, and so far they have all shown up after Auto-saves. But can you imagine the elephantine task of debugging a world that would take the better half of your wifes entire pregnancy to walk through? And I mean straight, no pee breaks no nothin’.
And there are far too many good games coming out now, I have yet to get far in ToV, then Fable II is being gotten soon, and THEN the new Portal game (XBA) and Web of Shadows. My 360 is becoming a strain on my attention receptacles, it is not fair.
In my closing, this is a damn solid video game. I recommend you getting it ASAP.
Tales of Vespery-well-done
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When I say Tales of Vesperia is easily the best ‘Tales’ game, I do not mean to ensue that heralding that medal was anything but an act of God. When I say easily, I mean in direct comparison to other games of the series, because even with that in mind, it is not an easy task.
Okay, I apologize, I still have that buzz from playing for a few hours straight.
I admit myself a bit late on this one. After falling in love again with Tales of the Abyss this summer I was sure to get Vesperia the day it came out. Or at least a day after it came out. The problem was that not long before that, Assassin’s Creed dropped in price. I remembered two things that day: I haven’t played it yet, and I should. And so I did, with vigilance. It is a fun game, real fun, but does get tiresome, I mean, there are like 6 types of missions in the entire thing.
I will first give a bit of a prelude to this. I was talking to a friend about my amazing RPG idea, the idea that is more amazing than everyone else’s ‘amazing’ idea. Two of my ideas were the ability to, when grinding, to skip the finale dance sequence a really nice and even, proper HD-resolution cell shading that really does look like animation and. This is about as close to the latter point I have ever imagined getting.
As I am not very far in this game I am not going to comment on the already stellar story, a trademark of the Namco Tales team. At least in the realm of (J)RPGs, I believe the two to be allowed separate grading. As opposed to the entire FPS genre that plays practically the same, and in the rare case the story is not WWII, that part is the only real distinguishable quality. That is why I like RPGs (besides the part where I don’t play against people better than me, and no one will know what a potion-whore I am) they tend to play very different than each other, outside of series at least.
- Graphics: his is about as obvious as the odds of Miley Cryus dating a man 5 years older than herself. This game and the last, Tales of the Abyss, holds the same difference in age, and if there were no graphical revs up I would be disappointed. Even after playing AC (gorgeous!) for a while straight, this game really blew me away. The backgrounds are sometimes blurry, but I excuse that for the fact that the game has done such a great job with the Anime - the animated scenes and CG scenes sometimes take a second look to notice the difference. This is no photo realistic game, but it has done a great job doing what it has tried to do during the entire series.
- Cooking: as small as it is, I think I totally missed this in the last game. They just do a really nice job of showing you what the heck you are doing.
- Synthesis: this was a staple part of one of my other, religiously followed franchises, Dark Cloud by Level-5. It was not something I felt missing from ToA, but I really have fun doing it. I mean, it is no WoW Smithies, but you can create items, weapons, armor and potions (which come up in the story) out of drops with a simple (but not too) building scheme.
- Grinding: there are two things I hate about grinding; repetition and button pressing. As mentioned before, this game has the option to skip the finale dance, which is freaking amazing. Really, I am trying to level up, I don’t care how far or how close I am to whatever, I just keep doing it until I start to glow in funny places. And sweet mercy, they even have an ‘AUTO’ button. Most definitely not recommended for bosses of any sorts, but when you are running through a forst (or three) of generally weak opponents, is it not nice to just be able to sit back and blog? I am not cheap, I am lazy.
- Skits: the skits are really cute. You get to see some of the side-story, quicky kinda stuff about the characters. But damnit, I dont wanna read them all! They are still animated profiles (that now look like from a Manga print) that shake around the screen sometimes, but now you dont have to read as much. Ironically, I hate reading.
- Battle System: Tales of Vesperia works with an evolved form of ToA’s battle system, aptly called ‘Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System’ Flex-Linear Motion Battle System was used in ToA. To its benefit, it is a more open battle system than before. Essentially, you run around more while bludgeoning less-androgynous-than-final-fantasy-but-still-kinda-androgynous boss battles. Also known as LATFFBSKABB. La-tiff-bss-kab. La-tiff-bss-kab.
- Linked Encounter: I am not sure if this is actually a good thing, as it just makes it more difficult. If you encounter an enemy in the game and while the signature glass is shattering another one walks in, he joins the battle. So its usually twice as many giant boogers or something.
- Repede: he is a freaking dog with a freaking cigar. How bad-ass is that?
As for the story? Honestly, I am not that far. Honestly, story quality in this series is a guarantee enough that you would buy this game already, before the awesome new features. Let me just tell you that so far, the story is great, and so far this game is amazing. Thumbs up for Namco again.
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