Devin Coldewey is a longtime tech enthusiast and photographer turned freelance blogger. He has written for CrunchGear and TechCrunch since November of 2007.
Maybe Sony is beginning to change their mind about the PS3’s punishing pricing strategy? This leaked Best Buy bundle, said to be available next Sunday, nets you a PS3, Killzone 2, and Metal Gear Solid 4 for the current price of the console alone.
That’s a slap in the face for anyone that bought an 80GB PS3 in the last month, but let’s be honest: how many of them can there really be?
Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content?
Personally, I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it’s a no-lose situation. Amazon wouldn’t risk alienating its loyal Kindle base with dirty tricks like this, so it’s safe to assume it’ll be at least somewhat opt-in.
With the flood of “Hello my dear” and “YOU ARE WINNER” emails in my inbox every morning, I’m actually beginning to tire of the never-ending variety presented by spam. But it’s mail like this that renews my faith in the bots and non-native speakers variating these strange messages.
The best part is trying to figure out how the scam works; it’s not your usual phishing or Spanish Prisoner scheme. Anyone have any ideas or fun variants of this sort of thing?
Japanese band Sour has made a music video for the ages. Shot with actual fans performing concerted actions on webcams, this had to be one of the most difficult editing jobs in history. My mind blew a couple times. Utterly insane on Yooouuutuuube as well, as a commenter points out.
This’ll be a great thing to show your family and friends over the weekend. Excellent job, guys.
In a somewhat belated move calculated to “give potential developers insight into the Atari’s gaming platform so they may possibly build upon the 7800 series,” Atari has released the source code to several awesome but rarely-played Atari 7800 games, including Dig Dug, Centipede, Joust, and Pac-Man. I’m not sure the 7800 is really competing these days, Atari, but we appreciate your contribution nonetheless.
In addition to a Mylo-esque physique and UMD-less guts, it seems that the PSP Go has a significantly improved CPU. What a pleasant surprise! Of course, this isn’t leading to some games having a “turbo mode” or any other crazy ideas you might have — it’s just making the whole PSP experience that much more responsive.
A woman was shot today at an Arlington Apple Store, for no one knows what reason. She’s in serious but stable condition and the guy is at large.
I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before: iPhones are expensive little buggers and jacking a pallet of them would be a real score.
Update: now with video.
If you just want a couple games to get you through the long weekend, today’s X-COM deal should do that for you. But if you need something a little more… substantial, which includes the X-COM games, may I take the liberty, sir, of recommending this 2K games pack? $54 is a substantial sum, to be sure, but consider what you are receiving:
Among others. Considering you’re not only getting a ton of games, but a few of the most replayable games in history, this should tide you over for a bit.
Some German researchers have conjured up a kind of battery that’s less than a millimeter thin and is made by the reactive layers onto each other like a silk screen. But the most surprising bit is that they’re planning on making them on a commercial scale within six months.
Usually we hear about this stuff and then it disappears for a couple years. Not this time, hopefully.
I’m concerned that before long, every critter out there will be replaced by a biomimetic robot surrogate. With BigDog, LittleDog, mechafish, swifferbot, and the robo-ant already on the march, it won’t be long before the pleasant tweet and buzz of nature is replaced by the noise of servos and tiny guns.
The latest fiend to come out of DARPA human-extinction research money is this Nano Air Vehicle, which flies like a hummingbird, at least for the few seconds it’s managing to stay up at this stage of research.
While I do advise my female friends untrained in hand-to-hand combat to carry mace or pepper spray, a little backup option like this might also be a good idea. The same warning applies to this purse as to a knife, though: break it out, and someone’s going to get hurt — not necessarily the other guy.
In a show of forward thinking stifled by corporate lethargy, it seems that Sony had a PSP Go planned since 2004 but didn’t think the infrastructure was ready for it.
Well, Sony, you missed the boat on that one. As usual, you took the low-risk, low-reward path and as usual I’m going to mock you for it. Because you know what else wasn’t ready when it came out? The Wii. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
I’m not joking. I would never joke about Asteroids. Yes indeed, it appears that the rock-blasting, vector-based classic is going to be a major motion picture. And what’s more, it’s helmed by the same guy doing the G.I. Joe movie! I’m sure it will bear about the same level of resemblance as that worthy film does to its source material.
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This has got to be the greatest deal in the history of deals. Today on GamersGate, you’ll be able to get the “X-COM Complete” pack for a trifling $7.49. Yes, for the cost of an appletini you will have:
…And two newer games which I have not played. Seriously, I believe X-COM: UFO Defense to be one of the greatest games ever made, period. If you don’t own it, do yourself a favor.
Just when we thought the two companies had found true love, it turns out there’s some turmoil beneath the surface. After NVIDIA’s acknowledgment of mobile GPU breakdown (and denial that the faulty GPUs were in Apple products), Apple determined that many video failures in MacBooks were in fact NVIDIA’s fault.
Okay, they worked through that. But it seems NVIDIA has been taking Apple for granted, and displaying “arrogance” in its proposals for continuing a partnership. NVIDIA arrogant? Well blow me down!
With enterprising individuals making such elaborate costumes as Samus Aran and Master Chief, I suppose it’s no surprise that the Brotherhood guys from Fallout are now being cosplayed.
Curious? Clicky for pictures.
This is interesting. GDGT launched today, and we welcome them heartily to the internet. But something in their intro video seemed familiar, as if we’d seen it recently… oh. Oh my! Oh, goodness!
We kid, we kid. But… yeah. Considering the two sites’ similarities, they should probably work that out.
In this pleasantly digressive meta-review, Zero Punctuation examines not only the newest Sims game, but the psyche of the player and the sinister commercialism pervading EA’s latest money-printer. His observation that many items you’d think would be standard (pool table, jacuzzi) are not in the game is not surprising: doubtless a “party pack” is forthcoming, right before the next 20 packs of items they’ve already made and could have included. It’s evil in many ways, and I won’t be taking part in it.
If you’re a control freak with your computers (like yours truly), you like to have lots of settings at your fingertips. For fan speed, I actually only tweak my MacBook Pro’s, using SMCFanControl, since the sucker gets hot at default settings. But if you’re concerned about the heat in your gaming rig or want to be sure the fans don’t start blasting in the middle of a quiet movie, something like this control panel might be right up your alley. Not only does it look awesome, but it’s a real live touchscreen and it actually serves a purpose. And it’s cheap!
Isn’t it cute? I’m not the biggest surround-sound fanatic, but I think that if I wanted to wire my media center up, I’d want speakers like this: compact and attractive. I’m consistently surprised by the sound small form-factor speakers can create, so I have no doubt these things would be up to my (admittedly not audiophile) standards.
Each satellite has a 65mm and 13mm driver for mids and highs respectively, and while the 8-inch, 100W sub won’t be busting any windows, it should be quite sufficient for a contained space.
Because the main reason people haven’t downloaded Internet Explorer 8 is not enough Nickelback.
Of course, if you’re a Nickelback fan and a prospective IE8 user, this is the only site you’ll ever need.
Are you rich and short about 16GB of storage? Buddy, have I got a product for you. The SolidAlliance Mnemosyne USB drive is a beautifully designed little object that not only looks money, but stores your deepest, chromiest secrets (or mp3s). What’s the catch, you ask? No catch! Unless you consider a price tag of $10,000 a catch.
Let’s be clear: it was his prerogative to put his race in the advert. I’m just repeating what I heard. But let’s also be honest. Say you wanted soccer (football) lessons. Given two identical ads on Craigslist, would you go with a guy born and raised in Brazil or some local yokel? I realize this is a sticky issue for potential Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, but for us it’s less of a problem. The Brazil guy, am I right? Because he’s more likely to have been immersed in soccer culture from birth and to have played since childhood, developing skills people like me think only exist in Shaolin Soccer.
Thus, Mr. ByunTae’s reasoning in including his genetic makeup and upbringing in an ad for training someone at a video game. Because Korea is the be-all and end-all of Starcraft.
Did you know you can switch tabs in Firefox by making a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface? I did. Turns out I’ve been doing it for months — I thought I was late to the party and was too ashamed to mention it to anybody for fear of an epic internet ribbing (”What, you just figured that out?”). But no, apparently it was top secret and highly experimental. That was in the beta, though; it looks like the official version has reduced it to a hack.
Fortunately, mastering this multi-touch-enabling technique will allow you to tweak your gestures, resulting in everlasting glory.
Allow me to admit something shocking right off the bat: I have not watched these ads. I am blogging in ignorance , because it seems pretty clear what’s going on here. As was the case with the Seinfeld ads, it seems that once again, Microsoft is barking too hard, and up the wrong tree at that.
Your browser is bad, it’s been bad for years. Sure, IE8 is way better than its predecessors, but that’s as close to polishing poop and calling it gold as anyone has ever come. But this isn’t the way to make people try it.
