Gaming deal of the week – Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions for 5 bucks

This one is courtesy of Steam.  I’ve been looking to pick up this game anyways since the news of the sequel hit the street, and this just made my purchase that much easier.  A current generation title for $5?  Yes, please.  If your machine can run it this is an awesome deal.  Even if you’re not really interested in the game it’s worth a shot at this price.  I found out about this from my boys at Joystiq:

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/27/steam-weekend-special-lost-planet-for-5/

And here’s the Lost Planet 2 trailer announced earlier in the week:

I’m tired of Twitter, kind of want to leave

I won’t, but all of the drama that has resulted from Twitter putting out a featured list of users has really put me off.  It’s even worse that the most vocal voices are coming from those that are already super users on Twitter.  Leo Laporte?  Sarah Lane?  I have no beef with them but come on, you guys already have so many followers and you’re upset you weren’t featured so you could get more?

It’s all just a popularity contest.  It seems like a lot of these people are more concerned with their own notoriety rather than the community, and not just from a followers standpoint but from a content standpoint.  Twitter is NOT about how many followers you have or how many people you’re following, it’s about the content.  To see these big names in the tech industry be so upset because they weren’t featured and Whole Foods was…it kind of makes me sick to my stomach.  Get over it guys.

If you pay more attention to getting actual value out of Twitter you’ll be much happier.  Focus more on who you’re following rather than who’s following you.  There’s no question that Twitter will be a powerful tool not only to normal users like myself but businesses and corporations, and part of that is the potential for direct connections to followers.  Still, even if I love a company I’m not going to be following them if they’re just trying to advertise to me instead of providing useful content.  Not only that but I think people are giving this featured users thing a little too much credit.  If a user comes to Twitter and follows a bunch of recommended twitterers they won’t be experiencing the site the way it was meant to be.  If you ignore that stuff and only follow those who you’re legitimately interested in you’ll find yourself in love with the site.

</rant>

Area 5’s Co-op show

I was (and am) a huge fan of the 1UP Yours podcast.  Unfortunately 1UP was hit by the economic downturn like most other companies these days, and so a lot of the guys who I’m used to hearing every week suddenly found themselves out of a job.  Fortunately a few of them have banded together to start a new video series, and in so doing have given new life to the now deceased 1UP Show.

This isn’t really news but I just wanted to give them a plug, as little as it may mean from my minuscule blog.  If you’re into gaming at all I can’t recommend their videos enough.  They’ve set up a YouTube channel, so if you have an account go ahead and subscribe like I have: http://www.youtube.com/area5media

If you’re not sure what the whole thing is about you can catch the latest episode of CO-OP below.

Just like real life

I love the Call of Duty games, especially the online multiplayer, but I can see why some people hate it.  Anyone who has played for any length of time has had an experience identical to this (some strong language):

I saw this on Kotaku and I have to admit I nearly died laughing.  =)

Original link: http://kotaku.com/5157965/the-whitest-cod-players-u-know

The Halo Wars demo

So I played the demo for Halo Wars yesterday, and I have to say it’s pretty much what I expected.  I’ve been a fan of RTS games on the PC for a long time, going back to Age of Empires whose developer also created this game (Ensemble Studios).  I’ve never been a fan of the genre on consoles, however.  To me this type of game was meant to be played with a keyboard and mouse.  I have to say that Halo Wars improves on the general clunkiness that has made up the bulk of console real-time strategy titles, but it’s still not perfect.

They’ve made it easy to quickly select all of your troops or just local ones (the ones that are on screen at the time) but I’m not sure if you can do things like select everything you have of one particular unit.  Unfortunately the demo only has the basic tutorial with the advanced tutorial being saved for the retail release (don’t want to let that amazing tutorial slip early!), so that could be a feature that’s in the game but I just haven’t seen it.  Even if that’s there though, I have to say that being able to click and drag to select both units on-screen and off it sorely missed.  Though the controls have been honed to make the game easier to play, there still isn’t the amount of precision you get from using the standard PC input/output devices.  It seems that they’ve adjusted the difficulty accordingly which is good.  I played the game on Normal and had no trouble at all.

The game also looks kind of bland.  It just feels weird playing an RTS on my TV.  The actual battles are good-looking, but for the most part you’ll be looking at small units without being able to observe many individual features.  One thing I will say is that the CG cinematics are pretty awesome.  The game takes place before the first Halo game, so if you’re into the Halo universe and the lore behind it you’ll be happy with the storytelling in this game.  One gripe I have is that the main character is voiced by the same guy who voiced Nathan Drake in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, as well as the prince from Prince of Persia.  That guy is a great voice actor but he’ll always be Nathan Drake to me, and it’s pretty distracting hearing one character’s voice coming from a different character’s mouth on my screen.

I’m not sure if I’ll purchase Halo Wars.  It depends on the gaming situation at the time because we have some high-profile titles coming out soon (Killzone 2, Resident Evil 5), and I’m still working my way through Far Cry 2 which is pretty epic in the literal sense of the word.  If I hadn’t just canceled my Gamefly account this would probably be a title that met my queue fairly quickly.

Is this the new Mac Mini? (video)

I have to say, I think not.  If Apple is going to ever refresh the Mini, I’d say they at least would give it the aluminum and black color scheme.  It looks a little homemade, doesn’t it?  Seems a bit bigger than I’d expect it to be as well.  With the way technology has progressed since the Mac Mini originally came out, you’d think they’d be able to get it about the size of a Time Capsule or Apple TV.

Sometimes I think that Apple themselves secretly release these as product mockups in order to judge what people like.  It would be a brilliant strategy…put out some fake products, then when people say “Wow that looks terrible!” or “Wow that’s awesome, except it’d be cool if they added ________ ,” they can adjust accordingly.  I guess I’m an eternal conspiracy theorist when it comes to Apple. =P

Here’s the video (orignally found on MacRumors):

Mac Mini 2009 Edition – video powered by Metacafe

This is why I love Valve

They know how to sell their games.  They’re perfect at inciting that impulse purchase by putting up a game for so cheap that even if you don’t need or want it, you can’t resist.  This past weekend their extremely popular survival horror FPS “Left 4 Dead” was available on Steam for 50% off.  That means you could get a couple-months old blockbuster for $25.  It  goes without saying that this is an amazing deal.

Because of this deal the sales numbers for Left 4 Dead on Steam went up 3000%.  That’s not a typo, three-thousand percent.  Not only that, but the game sold so well that it actually outperformed the game at launch.  Amazing.  Hey Sony and Microsoft, you want to know how to solidify digital distribution as a means of content delivery?  Start offering up some limited-time deals to subscribers like Valve does!  The only unfortunate thing is that I already own Left 4 Dead for both the Xbox 360 and PC.  It’s funny, I actually got it for PC from Steam when they dropped the price to $35 a few weeks ago…and I thought that was a smoking deal.

You can check out the article that I read about this from here: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/20/steams-left-4-dead-sale-increased-purchase-infection-by-3000/

Also on a related note I saw this in my twitter feed yesterday and I couldn’t help but laugh: http://www.electric-escape.net/node/1426.  Props to @jcallinan for linking this up, haha!

Windows Mobile 6.5 – the new WinMo user interface

This is interesting.  Everyone knows that Windows Mobile has been looking a little long in the tooth as phone manufacturers race to compete with the iPhone’s touch interface.  I’m happy to say that with 6.5 Windows Mobile will also enter the manual touch market.  The new homescreen does a horizontal scroll to move through the user’s day (whether you’re navigating through emails, appointments, text messages, or photos) – it sort of reminds me of the Xbox 360’s interface in ways.  It’s a unique way of navigating though, and from what I’ve seen it’s my favorite part of the OS.

From there you can go to the new start menu which houses your applications.  The applications are now arranged in honeycomb-shaped bubbles making each a little more accessible with your finger.  That’s cool because anyone who has used an older WinMo phone can attest that they’re difficult to navigate without a stylus most of the time.

The only thing I’m a little concerned about is that the scrolling seemed a little chunky at times.  It didn’t flow as well as the iPhone’s scrolling.  They’ve also worked in the classic “snap-back” for menus, so that when you reach the top or bottom of a menu the content will snap up or down.  I think Palm is in some hot water for incorporating that feature because Apple has a patent on it, so I wonder if Apple will go after Microsoft now too.  Here’s the video:

Windows Mobile 6.5 Running on HTC from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo.

Need a one-time use chatroom?

Well do I have the product for you!  Actually props for this go to Amber MacArthur who tweeted about it.  TinyChat is a site that lets you setup a one-time use chatroom.  It gives your chatroom a unique link identifier (similar to what TinyURL or any link-shortening site does for your links) that you can share around.  Users can either join in using a new username or by logging in with their Twitter credentials which is pretty cool.  Once you’ve logged in you get…as you would expect…a nice small chatroom for you and your friends to communicate in.

You can also do the standard fare for chatrooms, private messaging and the like.  The only thing I don’t know is how long it lasts, I’m assuming that once the final person leaves your chatroom gets closed.  It would be cool if you could save the chatroom and return to it later, that way I could have a constant chat going for this blog or something, but either way I’ve created one and will stay in it for a bit if you happen to see this post.  Just go to:

http://www.tinychat.com/ivuo and say hello!

Where do we go from here?

So if you follow my blog at all you’ll have noticed that I’ve switched format a bit over the past few days.  Rather than doing long, drawn-out posts I’ve decided to just post small tidbits that I find interesting.  I provide some commentary and a link to whatever it is that I’m talking about, and then call it a day.  This lets me put out more posts, keep my content a little more timely, and most importantly it keeps me interested in writing.

There’s definitely something to be said for long-format blog posts.  Sometimes you’re passionate about a subject, or you just have a lot to say.  However forcing these posts became something I started to dread – an unfortunate fact that led to me posting less and less often.  By keeping my posts short and concise I’ll be able to put more out, and hopefully if you subscribe to my blog (which I thank you for, very much) you’ll get a few more articles in your RSS reader than normal.  Not only that but a lot of the time long format posts are more for the writer than the reader.  When I go out of left field and write a 2,000 word treatise about Windows Live Mesh I can’t expect that everyone will want to read it.  If I wasn’t interested in the subject I wouldn’t want to.  Hell, half the time even if I’m interested in the content of a blog post, if I see it’s too long I’ll tend to skip through it or not read it at all.

I think this will be a change for the better.  I’m sure I’ll still put out longer posts from time-to-time, but I’m really hoping I can stick with this new format for the benefit of us both (myself the writer, you the reader).  I’ll stick with gaming and tech content still, since that is what genuinely interestes me, but I may also vere off the traditional subject and post things that I personally like.  After all, this is a personal blog. =)