Geek Swagger.
Microsoft
Sequelitis?
May 22nd
Last week there was a blow out of gaming news due to the ramp up. Usually around this time we're hearing about the blockbusters or new titles our favorite developers are working on - basically games that we (hopefully) will be seeing around this time next year at the earliest. It's one of the best times of the year to be a gamer, and I know I for one am eager to hear what's new. The only problem is that, this year anyways, there doesn't seem to be much in the "new" category.
Whenever a business or industry begins to be successful there's always much less pressure to innovate. The heads of software publishing firms at or (just two examples, I realize ) generally look at market trends, see that they can rake in tons of cash by putting out a sequel to an established franchise that is proven to sell, and are more likely to disregard new games in the space as a result. For example, why make a game that seems sort of interesting but is relatively unproven when you can instead focus your efforts on - a game that will sell even if it's not that great based on its reputation alone. Gears 2 was previewed last week and I'm not saying that it doesn't look good, it does, I'm just pointing out the fact that I think the gaming industry has reached a point of stagnation. Of course there are always caveats, for example Nintendo's Wii which is basically a console designed to promote innovation (and yet it seems like you're wagging your wiimote to and fro in every game for some reason...). Still from the major developers, for the most part, it would seem that this year's E3 will be more of the same. , , , , , stop me if any of this starts sounding familiar...
Where as usually I would come out of E3 week (in the past it was held in the beginning of May, so last week's media blitz kind of makes sense) with a slew of new titles to look forward to, this time around it seems like there isn't much besides the standbys. No surprise announcements really so far, no old series being brought back or updated (at least none that gamers actually want, anyone?). Still to kill some of the negativity in this post I do want to point on what's on the horizon that I'm looking forward to. This list will, for brevity's sake consist of three games (I could probably round it out to 4 or 5 if I wanted to make a longer post) - all three are from traditionally PC-exclusive developers who have made transitions to the console market for various reasons.
I'll start with the two I'm most familiar with first. has been working on a game called for a while now, and last week after some game reviewers got their hands on it my interest was completely renewed. I'm a bit of a Valve fanboy anyways (the Half-Life franchise remains my favorite in gaming) so I guess they could say they're working on a Barbie game and I'd be at least moderately interested. The game's premise is one that's familiar to a lot of people out there - zombie breakout. Okay, so maybe not familiar in the literal sense but chances are you've seen at least one zombie movie in your lifetime, be it a classic movie or the more recent /. Left 4 Dead is a 4-player multiplayer game (cooperative, of course) in which a rag-tag group of people try to make it through the zombie apocalypse intact. They're outfitted with a significant arsenal of weaponry and they're trying to make their way from spot to spot in a city in the hope of escaping. Cooperative play is definitely stressed - if one person wanders off chances are they're a goner which leaves the rest of the squad weak and overall kills your chances of survival. A cool feature is that once one member of the squad goes down they can come back as a zombie and terrorize their still-living mates. Not only that but the threat level is random - depending on how you play a level (how well, I should say) the game will dynamically change up the quantity of enemies. I'm totally hyped for this, please check out some trailers of it to get a much better understanding then I can provide.
Next up is a game that's actually a prequel to one of my favorite games of last year, . In you play as a stalker prior to and during the Chernobyl accident, so as you can expect there's a whole lot of potential for cool things to happen there. From the gameplay videos I've watched it seems like this time around they're stressing the squad-based combat a lot more which should be fun. One of the best parts of Shadows of Chernobyl was the interactions between the different factions in-game (go Freedom!) so hopefully they integrate that into the story and show how each faction came to be. It looks beautiful too and the environments have really been spread out. If they bring it with more of the same for the most part (plus an addition to the story, of course) I'll be right as rain.
The last game is one that I'm pretty unfamiliar with, aside from the developer's promises and a proof-of-concept tech demo video that was released not too long ago. The game is called Mirror's Edge, and it is being put together by DICE software. I just mentioned DICE not too long ago when I was talking about Battlefield: Heroes, so let me just go over their track record quickly by saying they are behind all of the Battlefield games that are so near and dear to my heart. I heard about Mirror's Edge several months back before everyone was buzzing about it, and at that time the promise was that DICE was working on a new game that would revolutionize character movement and physics in a game. My first reaction was "Okay, you'd think by now you guys would have movement down pretty well..." but now that I've seen the video I see what they mean. In the preview video we see an in-game character from the first person perspective making their way across rooftops like something straight out of The Matrix. They're performing all different kinds of Parkour (free running) moves as they maneuver their way through the beautiful environment and you can see that there's actually some weight to the character. You can't just be standing still and jump across a gap, you have to get a significant amount of momentum while running to be able to make it across. Honestly you just for yourself to understand, but I'm interested. At the same time I realize that this is just a tech preview so by the time the game comes out it could be totally different - still the main concept is solid and did I mention was developing it? =P
So those are the three games I'm excited about. There were some other announcements that kind of got me buzzing, especially the confirmation of a Doom 4, but I realize that for the most part those are a long ways off. We'll see more from them at next year's E3, no reason to get too excited now. Maybe I'm becoming a grumpy gamer?
Enter the Dragon
May 15th
This is a different post than I would normally make, a bit of a public service announcement more than anything. HP, for the entire month of May, have decided to give away one of their laptops every day this month. That's a total of 31 giveaways for those counting. The only bad part about this is that I'm sort of late to the game, so if you haven't heard of the contest until just now then we're almost halfway through the month so you've missed out on a few chances to win one. That being said, there's still 16 more chances to go.
If you haven't heard of these machines they're the epitome of a mobile desktop replacement - in fact it might as well be a mobile desktop computer. It has a 21" screen that has two hinges so that you can adjust it up and down plus back and forth. It comes with a full keyboard number pad and all, plus has room for a remote control dock. Did I mention the Dragon is an awesome media machine? Besides having the 21" widescreen, it also has a blu-ray player and co-ax hook up so you can easily get your cable TV rocking. It's perfect if you're a fan of Windows Media Center like I am.
Although you can outfit the Dragon with different hardware on HP's site (they also refer to it as the , Dragon was the codename) the one in the contest is absolutely stacked. A Core2 Extreme X9000 processor clocked at 2.8ghz, 4 gigs of RAM, Vista x64 so you can take advantage of that 4 gigs, a GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card so you can play a stack of games, 500 gigabyte hard drive...that's really just the beginning. Not only that but it comes with software, 3 games (Gears of War, Viva Piñata, Microsoft Flight Simulator X), and 3 blu-ray movies to boot - all in all the package is worth $5100 if you bought it in a store. Not a bad deal at all, plus with so many chances to win it's really worth some attention.
So how do the giveaways work? Well HP shipped out the bundles that included not only the HDX Dragon laptop but also all of the accoutrements (software, games, moves, etc.) to a bunch of different blogs. The people who run each blog were charged with the task of first reviewing the machine and then finally deciding how to give it away. Everything has been in their hands really, they can create a contest, have people submit stories or really anything you can think of. Once that's all done they choose either randomly or based on the quality of entry the person who gets the HDX Dragon. That makes for not only a lot of interesting contests but also a wide array of contest types. For example, some blogs might have you just answer a few questions then out of the people who answer the questions correctly a winner will be chosen at random. Others will ask for some sort of entry which can be judged against the other entries, and whoever submits the best work will win.
I've participated in 3 or 4 of the contests so far and I have to say it's been fun just getting excited about the potential to win one of the HDX Dragons even if I don't win (I haven't, by the way =P). The first one I tried out was over at , John Obeto who runs the blog decided he wanted people to send in stories about how the HDX Dragon would improve their lives and why they needed one all while being funny and canning the sob stories. I entered roughly a week before the winner was announced and I wish I hadn't, because if I had put more time into my story I probably would have faired a lot better. Some of the stories people came up with were full on fiction novels and I didn't really expect that. Still, being apart of the community (chilling in , mostly) during that week was pretty fun, and besides if you don't win one of the contests there are still 30 others, right?
Next up I tried out the contest at which was a little more straight forward. All I had to do was search through the posts on her blog for a hidden picture and then answer a few questions about some of the topics she's blogged in the past. There were only 4 questions and it took me maybe a total of 15 minutes to answer them so I was able to get my submission in right away. Of course the easier the contest is the more likely it is people will enter so despite getting the answer right I wasn't the one chosen (she used to select a winner from all of the people who got the questions right) but it was still fun.
I have a couple of other entries into two other contests going right now, the winner hasn't been announced for those particular drawings yet though. I just wanted to blog about this so that if anyone wanted to try it out they could, and it might drive a few extra hits to the people's blogs who are doing the contests. If you plan on entering one of the contests, good luck! You can find a list of the
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Microhoo – The Aftermath
May 6th
. Microsoft showed interest in acquiring Yahoo around the beginning of February, and since then there has been a lot of drama and discussion about whether the move would be good or bad for Microsoft or Yahoo, what it implied, and whether the deal would ever get done. At least one of those three questions has been answered now - the deal has not been completed. On May 3rd one Steve Ballmer to Yahoo's Jerry Yang expressing his appreciation to the Yahoo staff for their cooperation during the proceedings, and also admitting his remorse that the acquisition never happened.
Late last week everyone was absolutely sure that Microsoft wouldn't be backing down. In fact, I listened to over the weekend and a notable Microsoft pundit and author of "" - - said that she was positive the deal would be done the day after the podcast was recorded. I think they said the recording happened on May 1st, so that would be May 2nd that she was sure it would go down. Much to our (and her) surprise though, it was not to be. Why was everyone so sure though? Steve Ballmer held a at Microsoft presumably speaking about the situation of the acquisition. Ballmer isn't noted for his subtlety or willingness to submit, so the natural assumption was that he was speaking about how he planned to go the distance and do whatever needed to be done to get the deal done. As it turns out, that was not the case.
Microsoft recently upped their bid for Yahoo to 47.5 billion dollars (or 33 dollars a share) in order to urge Yahoo along. That's a significant amount of money over the original bid which was 31 dollars a share (44.6 billion). In the end though, Jerry Yang insisted that they would not sell for any less than 37 dollars a share, which calculates to be a whopping 53 billion dollars. That's a huge sum of money, much more than Microsoft has ever spent on a company in the past, and so as of today Microsoft has stopped seeking Yahoo. A lot of people assume that the reason Yahoo increased their price was because , offered some help to Yahoo, and urged them that they were getting a bit of a raw deal from Microsoft. If that's the case then I have to question Yahoo's commitment in that case as Google is a direct competitor to Yahoo. Not only that but it's absolutely in Google's interest that this deal was not completed.
It's no secret that the reason Microsoft wanted Yahoo in the first place was to compete with Google. Steve Ballmer is dead set on making a play in online advertising, and of course Google dominates that particular market. In joining with Yahoo the hope was that Microsoft would be able to pick up a lot of the search technology that Yahoo has developed over the years, and as a result become a better competitor for search. Also, just for reference, Microsoft is also competing with Google in other areas. For example they just unveiled a which enables file management and computing in the cloud (read the internet). The important thing to note about Live Mesh aside from its potential to be a really powerful tool is that it is poised to compete with Google's online suite. What I mean by that is Google's document and spreadsheet application available as . Computing in the cloud is the next big thing and despite these rather modest beginnings it's important for Microsoft to get moving in the field as soon as possible so they aren't blown out like they were with online advertising.
With all that said I sort of feel like this was the best move for Microsoft. There was already so much criticism aimed at Microsoft for wanting to get Yahoo. Yahoo, although they're a fine company, isn't exactly doing these days. Not only that but it was assumed that a lot of the most talented people at Yahoo weren't really into working for Microsoft, so the potential for Microsoft to let a lot of valuable engineers slip through their hands was a consideration. So really, it's a good move to hold off. Like I said at the beginning of this post though, Ballmer isn't known for backing down. What I mean by that is that I wouldn't consider this issue "down but not out." Now that Yahoo has denied Microsoft the acquisition their stock is expected to drop off while Microsoft will see a bit of a boost. Therefore, there's a possibility that Microsoft will just wait for Yahoo's stock price to drop a bit and then they'll come back to Yahoo and say "hey, remember that deal? See how bad you're doing now that you didn't accept? We can't offer you our original bid but we're still interesting in acquiring you so that you can recoup some of the costs."
We shall see...
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Vista SP 1
Apr 1st
Alright so this past weekend I was working on my Vista laptop, trying to get some homework done as a college student is ought to do on a Sunday afternoon, and I noticed that I had a new available. It just so happened that this update in particular was the much-anticipated Service Pack 1 for Vista, so I promptly installed it and I have to say if you were waiting for SP1 to get Vista I don't really know why. That's not to say that SP1 isn't a great addition to Vista, but there are no groundbreaking features or anything for people to get excited about. What there is, however, are some under-the-hood performance boosts as well as a lot of fixes.
So if you're familiar with Windows service packs at all, you know that the reason they're so important is mostly that they offer a roll-up of all of the fixes that have occurred since the last service pack (or the launch of the operating system in Vista's case). What this means is that you can slipstream in all of the updates from the past year or 2 so that when you install Vista on your computer you have the bulk of the updates from the get-go. This is great for easing bandwidth use so that you don't have to download 5 gigabytes worth of updates when you first install. Also back in the day when Internet speeds weren't what they are today (the dial-up era I'm talking about) it could take hours if not days to download the mass of updates you would need for a fresh install of Windows. The service pack side-steps the process of downloading all of those updates so that you only have to get maybe a few of the newest updates instead of every update ever released for the OS since its launch.
Now I started out by saying that there are no flashy additions to Vista found in the service pack but that's okay. The real reason most people like to wait until SP1 to jump into an operating system is the bug fixes. Sure, any early adopter of Vista (myself?) has been getting these fixes in small increments over the past year and a half or so, but now a lot of the initial complaints about Vista have been fixed via patches and they're all available in SP1. Whether you were worried about driver support (that issue is still there by the way, just not nearly as big of a problem as when Vista launched) or buggy software you don't have a whole lot to worry about anymore.
"But I haven't gotten SP1 yet! What's the deal?" Well trust me I feel your pain. I have 2 Vista boxes, one desktop and one laptop, and I still have only received SP1 via automatic update on my laptop. The reason for this is that SP1 has been a slow rollout, not just a "flip switch" update. What I mean by that is that Microsoft is slowly releasing it out to Vista users instead of just making it available to everyone who uses Vista right off the bat. There's a few reasons for this, the most important of which is that there are still a handful of incompatibility problems with Vista software that need to be patched before SP1 can be installed. If you're running Vista on a new machine that you purchased with Vista installed on it and it's Vista certified, chances are if you launch Windows Update you'll be able to download and install SP1. If you upgraded from a pre-existing machine, for example your old Windows XP machine, you might have to wait a bit longer. Either way make sure you have all previous updates installed, including updates that are marked 'Recommended' in Windows Update, because SP1 is only available once you have installed all of the updates that led up to it. It's important to install updates as soon as they come out either way because it secures your system. Make sure you have automatic updates on, that Vista will automatically install 'Recommended' updates along with 'Critical' ones, and install all available updates.
For example on my laptop which has SP1 I had to install an Office 2007 service pack before I could install SP1. On my desktop however, which is a computer I upgraded to Vista from XP (my laptop was purchased recently, is Vista certified, and came with Vista installed when I bought it), I still have not been able to download and install SP1 through Windows Update. I think the main problem is that I might have failed to install some of the previous updates and so I obviously can't get SP1 yet. If you don't want to use Windows Update by the way, you can always download Vista Service Pack 1 from Microsoft's website.
So that's my Vista SP1 post. I'm going to include a list below from Paul Thurrott's website where he gives a great rundown of everything that you get in service pack 1. Go ahead and check out his (as well as his website in general, it's great stuff) for more information.
Q: What features are included in Vista SP1?
A: The following end-user features are included in Windows Vista Service Pack 1:
1. A collection of previously-released and new security fixes, bug fixes, and other minor updates.
2. An update to the Windows kernel to bring the Vista kernel (version 6.0) up to date with the version in Windows Server 2008 (version 6.1).
3. A change to the Kernel Patch Protection ("PatchGuard") feature in the Vista kernel that prevents security companies like McAfee and Symantec from integrating as tightly with the OS as they could in previous Windows versions. This will include a set of APIs aimed at helping developers write code that interacts with this security feature.
4. A change to Vista's Instant Search feature that will allow third party desktop search product makers to more closely integrate their products with Windows Vista. In the initial shipping version of Vista, the Instant Search indexer still runs at full speed even if a third party product is installed, reducing overall system performance.
5. A change to Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) that will remove the Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) and Non-Genuine State (NGS) mode for Vista installs in expired non-activated and non-genuine states. See for more information about this change.
Again, you can read the rest of Paul's Vista Service Pack 1 rundown
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I won’t!
Mar 13th
I'm sitting here, it's about midnight on Wednesday, and I have a post due for tomorrow. The problem? I can't decide what to write about. That is to say, I can think of at least one thing to write about, but I really don't want to write about that. What is that you ask? The . Yeah it's great, finally after a year of the iPhone Apple gave in to the community and announced the SDK. However, I'm getting a little tired of covering Apple. I talk about their events, I talk about their new products, and I'm starting to become concerned that this blog might be turning into the unknown Apple propaganda site of the internet. I don't want that.
So what am I going to write about? Well, I watched an interview from Microsoft's event this week, where-in famed Apple stalwart was Guy Kawasaki was invited to . Now, I like Ballmer. All else aside, I think he's a charismatic guy who's very passionate about Microsoft plus he's a straight shooter who avoids giving BS answers when at all possible. He did a good job defending his company (including Vista and the potential Yahoo acquisition) plus gave a lot of information about where Microsoft is heading in the future. To be honest, I really liked a lot of what he said and he got me excited about what they'll do next. I think at this point Microsoft realizes they can't just rest on the laurels anymore. They see Apple gaining market share and popularity because they are very good at delivering what their customers ask for. Now, of course, that's a much easier job for Apple as a proprietary hardware OEM, but I'll expect Microsoft to act much in the same way in the future.
He also got me excited about . Up until recently, Silverlight just seemed to be yet another browser-based flash video player. Some of the stuff that was shown off at Mix though, particularly the (if you watch this video in particular, skip about halfway through the video to get to the goods), has me genuinely interested in where the project will go from there. They've integrated Silverlight 2.0 to have a lot of .NET functionality and tools, so we'll see where that goes. Microsoft has partnered with NBC to have rights to the upcoming Olymic Games website, so I'm interested to see what they'll be able to do with that. Honestly, just watching video on the Mix website with the Silverlight video player is pretty nice. The most important thing about all this is that it doesn't matter unless Silverlight becomes a standard and it still has a whole lot of competition - Flash, in particular. Still their commitment to NBC shows that they're trying to promote Silverlight as a viable development platform and in the future as a "quasi web developer" I'd love to play around with it. If you haven't yet, go download and install it and then search around using The Google for some Silverlight web apps. If you get a chance to watch the Hard Rock demo, all the better. Actually scratch that, just got to and try it out for yourself. It's worth it.
See, now that wasn't so hard was it? Sure Apple dominated the news this week, but I only had to mention them in glancing and I feel kind of good about it! Anyways, this is my last post from Spring Break '08 so the next time you see a new post it will be straight back to business. I swear.
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Microsoft rolls out its “YouTube of games” at GDC
Feb 28th
A lot of came out last week as a result of GDC, otherwise known as the . Microsoft had a nice keynote of sorts, where they announced among other things their new integration of developer games into Xbox Live. if you don't know what XNA is, it's basically a development kit for Xbox Live arcade games. They make it so game developers (mostly indie companies) can develop a game for PC and quickly port it over to the 360. The tools include all of the functionality you need to have an Xbox Live Arcade game, and if you're so inclined you can check them out .
Why this is important to gamers is that we'll be seeing a lot more games on Xbox Live in the future as a result. Even though the service doesn't roll out until this holiday season, there are already some demo games up on Live that I encourage you to try out. Because the XNA developers community is easily accessible to most would-be developers (entrance is only $100 annually and the tools are free) we can hopefully expect a whole new batch of fresh games with unique gameplay and original ideas because of this announcement. Here's how it will work.
Say I'm an independent game developer, and I have this really cool idea for an Xbox Live Arcade game. I download the XNA tools, create my game, and then submit via a peer approval process. This is one thing I didn't really understand about the whole deal at first - one of the biggest problems about getting a game on Xbox Live Arcade has always been the ridiculous amount of Microsoft certification a game would have to go through before being put up for download. So before I would finish a game, submit it to Microsoft, and then maybe see the game on Live 6 months later. At the same time you don't want any schmuck uploading bad code directly to Live and bringing down the service. So instead, the developer submits his work to a "jury of his peers" as it were, basically the XNA developer community gets access to my game and puts it through the ringer before it can be seen on Live. That way all of the kinks are worked out before users get to play it and the process is sped up at the same time. Okay, great. I've developed a game and submitted it to XNA for review, and now it's been put on Live for people to download. What's next?
A couple of things. I mean, you could stop there without a doubt but why would you want to? The XNA tools make it so that you can easily convert your game to a PC-playable version if you would like to do that or, alternatively (and this is what really piqued my interest) you can port it to the Zune. Now, I've been sort of vocal about my opinions on the Zune. I think it's a highly underrated device that kicks the pants off of its competition (remember, the is meant to compete with the 80GB, NOT the ) and so I was already set on picking one up sometime this Spring. This announcement only solidified my decision. You mean I can play the same arcade games on my Zune that I have on my Xbox 360? Bank.
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My new passion
Dec 11th
A lot of people these days tend to hate on . In some cases their gripes are , in others they're . Regardless, there are some areas where Microsoft is doing some great things and, unfortunately, they tends to go somewhat unnoticed. The newest thing I've started to really dig is a product of Microsoft's initiative. This isn't like (though that's great too) but instead it's a suite of online and desktop applications that revolve around Internet activity. Namely , , , and . I've talked about Windows Live Writer before (I still think it's the best blogging tool there is, I'm using it to write this) but the rest of the Windows Live experience was sort of under my radar. That is until I heard interview from the Windows Live team, and they were able to discuss a lot of the current and upcoming Windows Live applications.
I had seen the latest revision to Microsoft's hotmail which I liked, but that alone wasn't enough to topple . Then Dave Fortin talked about the calendar they have integrated with Hotmail and the new SkyDrive which is basically virtual storage space. You only get a gigabyte through SkyDrive right now but if you've ever needed to host some documents, music, or pictures online where you can have access to them from any computer with an internet connection I think it's a good way to go. With these breakthroughs in mind I went ahead and created a Live account and I was impressed from the start. You're offered a -like page with a clean interface allowing you to access your upcoming calendar events, your email inbox, your SkyDrive so you can upload and downloaded media, your Windows Live "Space" (think MySpace + blogging), and so forth. This is all offered in an extremely tidy little page that I think is pretty attractive. One thing I never liked about Google IG is that when you start adding all of your extra little doodads and widgets the page can become cluttered fast. That's not so with your Windows Live homepage. You can't really add anything extra (no RSS feed support or anything like that) but I think that's a definite benefit. There is however one-button access to composing an email, adding a calendar date, and starting a session (plus more). Think of Windows Live as your professional online presence where as Google might be your personal.
My favorite part of the package has to be hotmail's new interface. You no longer have to use a hotmail ID (though you can use one if you have one, or create a new one). You can instead sign up for an @live account which allows you to access all of the other features I've gone over already. Hotmail now looks a lot like Windows / looks on the desktop - except it's in your browser. If you've ever used an webmail account you'll be right at home and probably even more so since you can customize the look of your inbox easily. If you haven't used exchange what this means is that you can get more robust access to your email. For instance you can get email previews, little snapshots of your email without actually opening the message. This comes in incredibly handy when you just need to check a message real quick. There is also a lot of contact integration. The other shining star here is the calendar application. I think it destroys personally - it's easier to manage and much more appealing to the eye which, with a calendar, is key. Again it's similar to Outlook calendars you might have used in the past but it's encapsulated in the browser. What the Windows Live team has successfully done is come as close to replicating Microsoft's email client in Vista and XP, only now you can access it in your .
Still - what if you're just not one for webmail? What if you absolutely HAVE to have a desktop email client? Windows Live has you covered there too with their app. Live Mail is nearly identical to Live Hotmail with one caveat - you can access multiple accounts simultaneously. After you install Live Mail it will ask you to create or sign into a current Live account (this includes Hotmail), and once you do that you'll have all of that account's email right in front of your eyes. If you want to check a different account all you have to do is click the account drop-down in the top right, click 'Change Sign-in ID' and bam you can login to a different account. The best part about this is that it keeps all of the different accounts in the left pane of the application so you can access messages from different accounts with one session (and one window). It doesn't sound like much but it's another handy feature.
So that's my Windows Live post. I'm really getting hooked on it and I wish it would take off and have more success then it currently has. Windows Live is a shining example that, although Microsoft gets a bad rap online, they're still doing some pretty cool things. Give it a look and let me know what you think. If you're feeling particularly adventurous you can go ahead and send me an email about it at dmkemick(at)live(dot)com! I'm trying to get used to using that account more and more as I move forward. I don't know if will completely replace Gmail for me but at least it's a nice change. Also, when I came back to link this post a few hours after I wrote it I noticed that the colors of my Live homepage had changed to a nice darker color to coincide with the weather displayed in the top left corner. Earlier today the color was a lighter blue and now that it's night it has changed to a dark blue/purple. Just another nice little aesthetic touch.
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The new social.
Oct 23rd
Microsoft finally announced the much anticipated follow-up to the Zune, tentatively called the . That's not what they're really calling it - they're actually naming the new units by their capacity (the , , and - the original model will be known as the ). There are some pretty cool upgrades both to the hardware and software side of Microsoft's MP3 player which I'd like to discuss. Honestly I haven't been very excited about lately aside from the , but even that's hard for me to justify. I'm glad to see Microsoft is stepping it up and, who knows, if the Touch doesn't receive a price drop or capacity upgrade sometime soon I might just end up picking up an 80 gigabyte Zune instead. Let's get started.
The most noticeable upgrade to the Zune 2 is the fact that there are now 2 different skews of the model - a larger hard drive based unit that is similar in size and look to the and new flash based models which are smaller, much like the 2nd generation . The smaller units come in 4 and 8 gigabyte capacities while the hard drive model has been upgraded from 30 to 80 gigabytes, showing that Microsoft is trying to compete with Apple's most popular iPod models. There were also some physical changes to the Zune line-up, most notably a new scroll button called the "Zune Pad" which is touch sensitive and lets you through your content. Also, in the case of the Zune 80, the player has been made 27% thinner.
As far as the software goes, Microsoft is starting from the ground up. The is being completely overhauled by adding audio and video and new . They're also giving their users access to a new feature called the Zune Card. Zune Cards are much like Xbox Live gamercards which show what you've been playing except they work for what's been playing on your Zune. Therefore you can place a web badge on your site, MySpace/Facebook page, blog, anywhere really and let people know what you've been listening to. Along with this Microsoft is launching a specifically for the Zune. Finally, and this is a big one, they've finally made the wifi do what we all want it to do - Wireless Sync. Now you can bring your Zune into your home, connect it to a power source (this is done for stability, so your battery doesn't die in the middle of a sync for example), and automatically your content will be moved wirelessly to your Zune. This is a feature that even Apple hasn't been able to execute yet. In addition to the wifi upgrade they've enhanced the wifi sharing feature, letting the songs you share remain active for longer than the 3 days from before. You still only get 3 plays with licensed music, but for content like podcasts you can share them with your friends and they can keep them for how ever long they like. It's pretty cool. Also, did I mention that if you're already a Zune owner all of the software upgrades will work with your current Zune? That's right. Microsoft is going to release a firmware update for the Zune 30 that will unlock almost all of this functionality. This is an awesome move on Microsoft's part, move that you would never see Apple make. I guess when you only have you value your current customers just as much as your potential new ones.
So now that I've hyped the dang thing up so much how much does it cost? Well, the 4 gigabyte model will be $149, the 8 gigabyte model will be $199, and the 80 gigabyte model will cost $249. If you keep track of iPod prices you can see that they're almost exactly the same as the prices of comparable iPod units. At this point I think they should have undercut the iPod a little bit, maybe by $50 or so, in order to gain market share. It's almost like when they were newcomers to the gaming console market with the original Xbox - the key goal is to gain market share (as opposed to profit). Still, given the upgrades I think the prices are reasonable.
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The value of Vista DreamScene
Oct 18th
Okay so one of the Vista Ultimate Extras that I was excited for since I first heard about it at CES '07 was . In case you don't know about it, DreamScene is an extension to desktop backgrounds. It lets you use a video file as your desktop wallpaper. You can either choose from some stock videos that come with DreamScene or use your own video. From what I can tell though, the video you use has to be mpeg...no .avi files or quicktime. When I first installed (I was using previously) there were two things I was excited to use - the built-in and DreamScene. For some reason the thought of having a waterfall as my desktop background excited me.
I've used the beta and the final release - but both times I ended up removing it after using it for a day or so. Since then Microsoft has released DreamScene content packs that add additional videos for you to use and they finally released the video background that was shown during the of DreamScene. So now I'm using it again, and I kind of like it. It's totally gimmicky but for some reason I've kept it around. So basically I've ended up asking myself what the value of using DreamScene was. I don't think there's much more to it than aesthetics.
My first concern with using DreamScene is that I'm a gamer, and I'm fairly stingy with my computer's resources. That is to say, I don't run any extra applications than I have to - I close down IM, my web browser, and pretty much everything else whenever I don't absolutely need them. You would assume then, since DreamScene offers even less value than say my , I would want to get rid of it instantly. That's how I felt at first, but to be honest DreamScene is pretty good on memory. Surprisingly good actually. With it running I don't notice a performance hit at all, and that's not just because it's a lightweight application - Microsoft has built in some very simple but sensible features that really prioritize your system's resources (ram, CPU usage, etc.). For example: the only time you're really going to notice the DreamScene playing is when you're doing something at the desktop. If you're just going to the desktop to launch then, that's when you want to see DreamScene. Therefore, when you have a window maximized and can't see the desktop at all, Dreamscene pauses itself. This way it's not sitting in the background eating up CPU cycles and ram without you benefiting from it. So at least it doesn't hurt your machine's performance.
So will I still be using DreamScene in a month? I don't know. It's something nice to look at and it's something different but the novelty may wear off. I think there could be some better applications to this type of program in the future. One idea I thought would be to make the background an application. You could set an RSS reader to be your Windows background and then there would actually be a benefit for using something like this. In fact, there already might be something like that out there, but I don't know if it would be as efficient as DreamScene is right now. No one wants to have a slow machine just to save themselves a couple of clicks. Any purely aesthetic feature like DreamScene has to be almost transparent. You should never even have to think about if they're running, what they're doing, and especially how much memory they're using. If you've got Vista Ultimate I'd say you should at least try out DreamScene. Microsoft has been pretty slow to release like DreamScene so you should take advantage of those extra features you're paying for.
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Windows Live Writer
Oct 9th
About a week ago I found a post on where the poster mentioned WordPress clients. I use for my blog so I figured I'd give what he had to say a read. Basically he was trying to find a decent Windows application that served as a stand-alone blogging client, something he would be able to use to write blog posts separately from WordPress' WYSIWYG editor, and then upload to the server. He rounded up about 5 different alternatives, none of which I am currently using. The reason is that in one of the comments a Digg user suggested trying out a free program Microsoft has called . I installed it, set it up, and now it's what I use to create all of my blog posts.
Having a program like this is pretty essential if you work with WordPress because their editor is...well...garbage. Don't get me wrong, WordPress as a whole is an awesome CMS with a lot of valuable features that are relatively easy to use but when it comes to content creation it lacks quite a bit. With something like Windows Live Writer though, you're able to work in an almost Microsoft Word-like environment which makes things much nicer. What I have the most trouble with are both finding and including the images I put in some blog posts as well as going through after the fact and linking all of the words I want to have linked. It's not that these are particularly difficult to do with the stock WordPress editor, but they take longer than is necessary to complete. Now I find myself finishing up posts a lot quicker than I was before.
Live Writer is easy to install, just like any other application you might find on the net. There's no verification required or Microsoft updates that need to be applied, so it installs just like a normal program. Then, once it installs, it walks you through a few steps so it can sync with your blog and you're good to go. That was the part that impressed me the most about it. Live Writer is meant to be able to work with a lot of different blogging services like Windows Live , , and of course WordPress. All I had to do was give it the URL of my blog and it went ahead and pinged it, found out automatically that it was a WordPress blog, and then - after prompting me for my login information - it pulled down my theme and everything right into the program. Because of this I now have a true WYSIWYG editor, because the "document" for lack of a better term which I work in while writing the post has my blog's theme pre-applied, so without even saving and especially without publishing the post I already know what it will look like once it's live. That's pretty handy.
The only problem I have left is that now I'm stuck on my Vista box whenever I want to write a post. I used to use my laptop exclusively for this, I'd write in an app called , copy and paste what I wrote into the WordPress editor, and then add the images and links. Now I have to be sitting at my desk to get anything written which is much less desirable than sitting in front of the TV on the couch. So here's where I do a bit of crowd sourcing (I just made myself laugh a little, comparing my blog's audience to a crowd was a bit of an over exaggeration I think). If anyone knows of a good OS X or Ubuntu 7.04 WordPress blogging client I'd love to test it out. Post your recommendations as a comment, and keep this couch potato where he belongs! =P
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