So Sonic the Hedgehog's birthday passed by the other day, which willed me to coast through the XBLA version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Hey, what better birthday gift can I give one of my favorite characters of all time other than handing his arch-enemy a good solid ass kicking? Especially in one of the best games the "Blue Blur" has ever starred in. That birthday party was good for everyone except Robotnik. He just so happened to have a very bad day that day.
Now all fandom aside, that run through Sonic 2 brought up memories of internet buzz that I'd seen awhile back. So I took a run through the Sonic Retro forums to see if the work they were up to was still going strong. Their work on making a HD version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 started back in 2008. Now I've crawled many an online community dedicated to making huge projects like this one happen, and many times I've seen something that could have been amazing scrapped due to drama. The last time I'd checked on this project I thought that was the fate of this one. To my surprise, that was quite far from the truth.
Development of the game has had its hurdles, but still seems to be going quite strong. I'm very excited to see this game flesh out. I've played other games made by this community and judging from work like Sonic Megamix, I can safely say that these guys can come together to put out something great. And judging from some recentartwork ofthe progress, I think it's pretty safe to say that once the alpha goes around, the outcry to see this game finished will just get stronger.
If you're feeling inspired to contribute, I urge you to get involved, and help out where you can. If enough people get behind this project and start submitting quality work, the ball can really get rolling, and the gamers can be playing this sooner, rather than later.
Okay, DC. Pat yourselves on the back here because this is a HUGE step in the WRONG direction. This blogpost, along with issue #600 of Wonder Woman came around yesterday, and it seems as though they're trying to take the Wonder Woman we're used to in a different direction. While I am all for reboots when they're necessary, I can't say that I like to see reboots take the direction like this one is taking.
"Suppose someone went back in time and changed one thing, and it changed your life to the point that you had little or no memory of what life had been like before the change happened. What would you do to get it back? Should you get it back? Who did it? And maybe more important…why did they do it?"
Congrats Wonder Woman fans, this looks like your run-of-the-mill amnesia arc. From reading the blogpost about what's to come, it seems as though this storyline coming up is as bland as her new design. And taking the time to eyeball the comments left on the post, the general consensus seems to be in agreement, that this is a huge mistake.
Is there a reason to try to bring closure to offhand comments like "how does she fight in that thing without all her parts falling out?", or "where does she carry anything in that outfit?" I'd say there's not. That's like trying to find out why Superman's costume doesen't bag at the knees. Moral of the story is, don't go trying to fix what's not broken.
Most of us techies are pretty much already used to using Hulu to keep up on our favorite TV shows. Now Hulu is offering a way to make keeping up much much easier. For about $10 dollars a month, Hulu is offering the "Hulu Plus" service, offering more content and the ability to stream from several devices. At this time, the only ready devices are certain models of Samsung brand TVs and Blu-Ray players, the iPad, and the iPhone. Soon to follow the TV/Blu-Ray treatment are Sony and Vizio. Also Hulu Plus is set to come to the PS3 and the XBOX360.
My first thought was that Hulu may be offering up some competition to Netflix. After looking over the current list of currently avilable content, the lack of movies made me think otherwise. What this does change in my eyes however, is the way people watch TV. Personally there's only a few shows that I even bother to follow. If it's not on [adult swim], then chances are I don't go out of my way to keep up. Now being able to start a stream on my PC, and be able to pick up watching where I left off from my iPhone while I'm out and about, and end the day with the last of what I haven't seen on my XBOX sounds pretty amazing to me, and if this picks up well enough, it's cable that should be worried.
Sure there are a lot of cable consumers that actually watch a majority of their channels that they pay for, but if Hulu can manage to pick up enough momentum to offer a majority of subscribers all the shows that they care about following for for only $10 a month, versus something more along the lines of $60-$80 for a basic package. I'm interested in seeing what else will be affected by the convenience of being able to watch every episode of Arrested Development from wherever I am. Time will tell.
When I found out that I could update from my phone, images and all, I nearly lost it. So this quickie is a test post to see just what this email my blog thing can do.
If you want to stay updated on when new posts come, but you don't have a Blogger account to be able to follow me, the best way to keep up is to follow me on Twitter. There's a full post to come after the break.
"Ok, umm huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitior very soon "Google Me", very credible source."
All it took was Digg's founder, Kevin Rose, to slide one tweet on Twitter. One simple tweet, and over a million followers got that bit of gold on their timelines. In between Saturday night, and this afternoon, the Google Me rumor spread all over the internet. And curiously enough, the tweet in question has disappeared. (from Twitter.) Rose has a history of spreading rumors that turn out to be true after the initial leak. He's also a very well connected individual, so this "very credible source" may very well be speaking the truth, and Google could be taking yet another stab at getting into social media.
Thus far Google hasn't commented on all the speculation, so there's no real confirmation there, but if you've poked around at the assortment of things you can do with a Google account, they already offer all of the core features of a social networking site. If Google Me just ends up being an essential combination of these current things, with some new flair added on, they could have something on their hands. Whether or not Facebook should be worried about this can't be said as of yet, but it definitely is worth noting the fact that if having a Google account linked Google Me to things like Gmail, Buzz, or Orkut, saving current users the time and effort to create a profile and add things to it, it could start out with around 200 million users.
Keep in mind that 200 million is only around half the monster user base that Facebook already boasts. On top of that Facebook is showing incredible momentum, having had time to grow from something that just linked Harvard students together, into linking people together internationally. Since privacy has been a huge concern for a very long time, it's also worth noting that Google has already gone through it's own privacy shitstorm, and lot of people aren't quite ready to give Google another shot with their information.
That being said, if Google can really pull it together this time, and launch Google Me (should Google Me even exist) smoothly, and offer a privacy policy that the users of the internet can cope with, then there may actually soon be some real competition for Facebook. All we can do in the meantime is speculate, and wait for a Google rep to come out and say something official, so we can have something more tangible than a deleted tweet.
Okay to quote the description of the video found on the youtube page:
"Apparently even with the new Xbox 360 "slim" , disc scratch errors are still present. I wonder if M$ fixed rrod or E-74, and many other hardware failures associated with the Xbox 360? Remember disc scratch errors doesn't occurs on Wii, PS3,laptops,dvd/blu-ray players or even 10 years old portable cd players. Even with the new redesign, errors/problems from older models are still present, so there is no need to upgrade to the Xbox Valhalla 360 250gb , and fanboys please stop defending M$."
Now, while I have been hearing on the grapevine that some of the guts of the new XBOX360 slim are the same as the flawed original XBOX360, can you REALLY blame the system for the disc scratch in the video above? Does anyone with common sense pick up and waggle around a console when it's powered on and the disc is moving? Get angry at "M$" when your XBOX360 eats your disc when it was sitting still, not when some jackass comes up and practically shakes your system while the game is still in it.
The trendy thing to do as of late has been to openly hate sites like Facebook and Twitter on other niche areas of the web, mostly having to do with privacy issues, most of which could honestly be avoided through responsible use of the internet. The fact of the matter is, the majority of people love to use these sites, and will check them SEVERAL times a day. There once was a time where you had to look something up on yellow pages. This evolved into looking places up online on Google. What we're seeing here is the next evolution in that process.
Do you like Miracle Whip? Like Miracle Whip on Facebook. Do you shop at Old Navy? Follow Old Navy on Twitter. With the rate that new people are joining up with these sites, and the amount of time spent on said sites on a daily basis, businesses are starting to have a presence in social media on the internet. Ways to profit from social media can be found all over the place, and businesses both big and small are starting to make the leap on this bandwagon, BIG TIME. With Twitter and the like being just a cellphone app away, its not hard for a business to have some presence on the internet, and grow at a rapid pace simply because it's so easy to remind you that they're there all the time.
Social Media is not the enemy. It's a tool whose usefulness increases by the day. The more and more time and energy people pump into it, the more powerful it becomes. Keep your eyes on the prize, it won't be long until you can start asking the Burger King questions on Formspring.
With yesterday's release of Apple's iPhone 4, the massive debate over which is better, iPhone or Android continues to be the rage of the internet, as users of the smartphones pit their egos against one another in heated combat. Trying to throw out a "who is better once and for all" is practically impossible, no matter how many facts that you lay out on the table, the hardcore fans will refuse to be swayed, and the ego battle continues. If you have already chosen a side in this "war", then this article is not for you. I'm talking to the people who are coming into the money to buy a smartphone, and are looking for something nice to put into their pockets, so they can call their friends, and take pictures of themselves in the bathroom mirror.
First of all the most important thing that you need to keep in mind when you go shopping for cellphones is forget what everyone says, thinks, and or feels, the only thing that matters right now is what you like and what looks good to you. It's YOUR money. For all I know, you might like the latest Blackberry model. In which case you can go ahead and stop reading this, and go buy your Blackberry and be happy. Second of all you need to figure out just what it is that you want in your smartphone. What kind of user will you be? Do you like to burn time playing games? Are you buying a smartphone because you want to look cool because your phone can do everything from make fart noises to check the stock market? Or do you do business to the point where you seriously cannot slide by with a Motorola RAZR anymore? (Yes, people do in fact still have those.) With what you want in a phone in mind, we can compare Android versus iPhone on a few key points.
-Battery Life-
How long your phone is going to last while it's in use is probably the most important thing to ponder on when you're shopping for a phone. There are plenty of different Android phones to choose from. When it comes to battery life, most of them fail to hold up to the iPhone. One of the complaints I hear about the iPhone in fact, is how the battery (supposedly) doesen't have the best lifespan in the world. Fun fact: Smartphones are practically computers when it comes to the possibilities that they have. Using the various apps will put a good drain on your battery life. It's going to cost you much more battery to e-stalk that hot chick on facebook than to make a quick phone call or send a few text messages. Use your common sense here. While the iPhone does have a leg up on the battery life, it's not as though iPhones are going to last hours longer than an Android, they last longer in most cases, but the extra time you get isn't so much that it's worth writing home about.
-Applications-
Okay for all of you hardcore iPhone fans that are ready to stand on top of your chair and proclaim absolute victory in this field, you need to first realize that the iPhone had a 2 year headstart, and that quantity does not equal quality. Yes there are WAY more apps avilable for iPhone than Android. However a good majority of the stuff you can add to your phone from the app store is complete crap. When it comes down to apps that are actually USEFUL it doesn't matter which you choose. If there was something major that was left out of the App Store/Android Market, and it's something that you already know about, chances are you've already made your decision on which you think is "better", and you probably should already be on your way to buying that new phone. There is one notable thing that I can think of that iPhone would have over Android. If you're into gaming, and you have an interest in gaming on your mobile device, the selection of games that the iPhone offers is better than that of the Android, but I'd say that this won't last forever, and it's a niche-within-a-niche because not every gamer wants to play games on their mobile. Again, whether iPhone or Droid is better depends on the user.
-service providers-
This time there's no way I can hand it to anything but Android. Android phones are avilable in several different models over several different service providers. iPhones dont have different models really, they have the new iPhone that's better than the last iPhone that came our. Now unless you jailbreak your iPhone, you can't have any service provider that is not At&t. Keep in mind also that a lot of people aren't too happy with what At&t has decided to do with their data plans. Unless you are already with At&t, and already have a data plan, there's no way to pay for unlimited data anymore. On top of that At&t is charging an extra monthly fee to use tethering. Mind you, not everyone needs to use all that much data a month, and even less people NEED to use tethering. At the same time, this alone is enough to make people turn away from the iPhone to buy a droid.
-operating system-
Out of box, this one easily also goes to Android, and is one of the main huge arguments against the iPhone that I see people throwing around when debating "who is better". Android's OS is pretty much fully customizable, due to it being open source. The iPhone OS, while is rather easy to learn and use, is very limited when it comes to customizing your phone. With the new OS, the most customization you get is your background and what apps you put on it. Sweet. However, if you are bold enough to jailbreak your iPhone, you can put whatever you want on it, even go so far as to be able to run the Android OS on the iPhone. Most would argue that you shouldn't have to jump through hoops like voiding your warranty in order to do what you want to your phone. I can agree with that whole-heartedly, it is quite silly to have to go so far to mess with options that should be quite easy to change. At the same time, it's quite silly to ignore the possibilites that arise when you DO jump through those hoops.
-conclusion-
Long story short, If I had to say that one type of smartphone was better than the other, I'd have to say that by a small margin, Android is better, due to the fact that on a few key things like design and customization, Android offers you more choices. Happy shopping, consumer!
To put it short, you are going to spend quite a bit of time in your life waiting your turn. It could be for anything under the sun. You might need to grab some cash from an ATM. You might need to wait for awhile before you see the doctor. You wait in a line every time you visit the grocery to fill your fridge. Hell, there are even times where you have to wait to visit the latrine.
If you are reading this, it's because you fit into a niche. You enjoy tinkering with gadgets. You probably have been called nerd on more than one occasion. You'd probably rather be playing a video game, or the latest episode of your favorite anime, than give half a care about that playoff game. Yes these are generalizations, because we the nerds and geeks of the world come from all walks of life, and we all have our different side hobbies.
The aim of this blog is to give you readers an objective view on some of the goings on in the world of technology, while also giving you entertaining things to distract your brains with. If you have to spend a lot of the downtime in your life waiting in line for something, you may as well know ahead of time just what it is that you're getting yourself into when you join the single file.
