Nice apps it’s got:

Form factor’s a bit shit though:

I can think of so many cool things that can be done with this. Lessee how many are delivered and are easy to do. Shouldn’t go the way of the Tablet PC this.

Although at Wired they are all gushy gushy about it:

“For instance, you can take a digital camera that’s Wi-Fi enabled, put it down on the tabletop, and the machine recognizes it and downloads the photos. Then, you can interact with them much like actual physical photos—you can pass them around the table, shuffle them into piles to sort them, pull on the corners to zoom in or out. It’s intuitive, quick, and brings a fun social aspect to a task (photo editing) that can be the very definition of tedious.”

More here.

Call me a slave to my DS, but the announcement that Dragon Quest IX will appear on Nintendo DS has sent feelings of plusgood joy in me. It’s a bad day to be a Sony fan right now, which I am, to an extent, but an awesome day to be a Ninty dude.
In Japan, Dragon Quest VIII was the best selling PS2 game. Ever. Ever ever. Which means no game sold as much as DQ VIII on the PS2.
Everybody was waiting to know which console – PS3 or Wii, or maybe even X360 will Square Enix decide to bring DQIX on. What no one had considered was the little DS Lite. BY the by, the DS is no ‘mere handheld. It is on it’s way to be the best selling console in Japan, ever, and it continually sells upwards of 100,000 pieces in a region in a given week during festivities or a major title launch.
Sure, the graphics might take a little beating, but look at this:

Akira Toriyama is a happy dude.

Right after this announcement DQ Monsters Joker is set to release as well. Now an average DQ or Squeenix fan might just think it makes damn good sense to buy a DS to play DQ MJ and then wait for less than a year and play DQIX on it as well. We are talking rabid fanboys who bought more than 4 million copies of Dragon Quest VII for the PSOne, the same people who bought 3 million copies of DQ VIII for the PS2 within the first week!
Sony still has its Final Fantasy fanbase though, and that is reason to cheer enough for them. But, DQIX is on the DS man. Expect this to sell 4 million copies EASY.
With the DS getting it’s share of the Fantasies that are Final (FF III, FF Revenant Wings, FF Crystal Chronicles), not to mention the FF V GBA remake that is playable on the DS too, it may so come to pass that the DS , a little i-podish gadget with 2 little cute screens, may beat the HDMI touting, Blu-ray supporting PS3. At least in Japan.

As Chris Kohler just put it:
“I know that sounds crazy but hey, Dragon Quest IX is on DS. Welcome to Crazytown.”

Google isn’t letting the fact that it has less than 1% market share get it down. Tonight they’ve released three significant new features to the product – file transfers, voicemail and music status. Check here for the updates.

Instant Messaging and Trashing Google

Numbers show that nearly a year after launch Google is a distant, distant 4th after MSN, Yahoo and AIM. They hold a pitiful 1% of total instant messaging market share, with 3.4 million unique users in May 2006.

Are you guys freaking kidding me? The lightest and best IM to happen to you – bug free, light, pleasing to look at, and you still are not getting with the program?

I hate all of you using AOL anyway.

Bah. Don’t worry Google, you’ve got me and my posse of fellow bloggers.

Make Firefox and IE kiss more asses here

Contrary to popular belief, there exists a single answer to all of Life’s little questions.

More RAM.

Uhg, another sleepless night.

Trying to balance my time between catching up with pending reading and playing games leaves me no time for luxuries like sleep and food.
But lets backtrack…
As inevitable as me falling for the wrong girl is my vulgarly inordinate spending spree on reading material and electronic entertainment every month. So once again, Wolverine superspecial, long overdue, was mine, along with Hush, Imaginauts, Marvel Mangaverse, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Amazing Spider-Man.

I have always maintained that my taste in games, while usually normal, sometimes teeters towards the insane. Between my usual bouts of BF1942, I have been known to play deep, detailed games on, oh say, salad chef simulation. I am telling you, I must be the only person in my ENTIRE COUNTRY who relished Master of Orion 3 the way I did. I swear, I have little boxes of MOO3 running all across my living room now. God is in the detail, they say. Arun keeps warning me this is unhealthy. Infact he tries to mask his concern for me by saying sensitive things like, “You’re fucking crazy dude! You gonna die!”. But thats another story.
To fuel this sick perversion of playing games that try to fuck with my encephalon, I acquired Etherlords 2. E-T-H-E-R-Lords. Right, the second one. Delicious. Also got Commandos 3. Challenging, fun, and very atmospheric. If Andy doesn’t hijack it this weekend, I’ll let you know how it ends
To satiate my thirst for Star Wars until KOTOR comes out for the PC, I got the very mediocre, but sabre-licious Jedi Academy. Also got Freedom Fighters, a surprisingly well made Red Dawn-ish shooter, and the game mechanics play out really well. So well in fact it may have been the action game of the year, if not for…
And now Ladies and Gentlemen, let me give you two of the most anticipated games of the year…*drumroll*
I got Max Payne 2. And I got Halo. You can faint now.

Good, you’re back. So lets talk about Max Payne 2. It is beautiful. The engine is robust, the slight clipping problems of last time have gone, each shell falling out of your gun is rendered beautifully, complete with MARKINGS AND NUMBERS! Havok is seamlessly integrated, and character models are way better than last time. The story is interesting once again, with the atrocious Film Noir intact. And Bullet Time 2.0 is a thing of beauty. I swear, I could marry her and not complain all my life. Sometimes though, getting in, shooting at everything that moves and then getting out seems like its gonna get old, but right then, the game throws a plot twist to suck you back in.

Halo. First of all remember that when Bungie was bought by Microsoft, Halo was made a PC/Mac game to an XBox exclusive. In the process, many game mechanics, incredible resolutions, and classic save systems were sacrificed. The end-product was an extremely great game, that sold the XBox on its own merit. But it was no Metroid Prime, the game that owns the crown of the best console shooter. Gearbox directly ported the Bungie original to the PC, and the game shines. The repetitive level design is still there, but other than that it is hard to find fault with. The save system is very unconventional, and some people might find it questionable in a PC game, but the truth is it gels very well with the whole mechanics of the game. The first time you see the outdoors, I guarantee, your jaws will drop.

You still here? Good. This is going to be one long ass post. And you know why… Max and Chief need all the help they can buddy.

Getting back to the long ass post… Player representation in video games. Video game editing and studying social interaction involving video games is something I have quite a passion for. As Andy would tell you, I play a game for ten minutes then spend the next month figuring out how to break it. And that is where games like Morrowind or Tony Hawk come in. They let you customize your avatar, and make it look like whatever shirt you want it to. See that’s how I look at game avatars. As shirts. You should look good in your shirt as well as be comfortable wearing it. Let’s face it, no matter what you’re doing, the experience is soured if either of those don’t work. But its still not me. An avatar is a seperate entity that helps me in my goals rather than something that’s supposed to be a digital me. I always remember how Chun-Li players had this kind of ‘that’s my girl’ feeling when using her. And I still notice that today with any fighting game out there. If you play a female character and beat ass with her, that’s your baby. She helps you win.

When I design my personal digital representation of myself, if it’s human, I don’t really want it to come as close to my physical appearance as I can get. All I want is an avatar that while kicks ass, is also fun to play with. And of course it has to be good looking. And I am talking decent mesh and polycount, not specific beauty traits. However, more times than not, this is not possible given the limitations. So, I resort to plan B. This is where I try building an avatar as far opposite to me as I can get while still retaining a level of visual appeal. Hanging out at Polycount, I have heard fascinating accounts of people making and downloading models to suit their personal taste. Some people like, cute furry creatures, some like blonde babes with skin tights. Its about a representation of a character, and can have many existential, experiential, and psychological undertones associated with it. Its fascinating. Its not about knowing Maya or Photoshop. Its about what you wear in your game world. And as is the case in real life, it can be deep rooted in your psychology, and you attitude towards their character model, in say Jedi Outcast or Morrowind can vary with each unique individual.

Advanced Micro Devices launched its latest Athlon processors, the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX yesterday.

With the Athlon 64 and 64 FX lines, AMD seeks to encourage performance-minded desktop consumers to prepare now for a 64-bit upgrade path when a Windows operating system capable of running in 64 bits becomes available in the first half of 2004.

More reviews on the processors are linked at Blues news here.

A great article on HardOCP confirms most of our suspicions: The Phantom console seems to be an elaborate construction of lies and half-truths, an outright scam to defraud investors unfamiliar with the gaming industry.

We live in an age where technology has provided us with tools read and cross-reference any record you want. Con artists leave trails like these too, only they assume nobody will check them. Its certainly not the first time the gaming world is confronted by someone with the outright ambition to defraud gamers and the industry. Investigative journalism is something that anyone can partake in, and everyone should. I want to see a day where all such hucksters of misinformation are run out on a rail by an angry mob of Google users, Mississippi style. I want to see regular people like you and me witch-hunting the Phantoms of untruth, making them flee from a populace armed with the pitchforks of public records and the torches of technology empowered knowledge base, screaming, “KHAAAAAN” as they usher in a new age of gumption. I’m all tingly just thinking about it.

Anyhoo, 19th was Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I spent my day screaming,”YAAAARRR!” and “Avast ye Landlubbers” at people in my office. My shenanigans had to be stopped however, when I said, “Avast ye, ye scurvy dog”, while my Project Manager was around. Heh.
The next day, I caught Pirates of the Carribbean, and spent the rest of the day as a bonus Talk Like a Pirate Day. Also bought Dragons of Eden (my earlier copy is lost, sad), Prince of Ayodhya, and on a whim, Alexander: Child of a Dream. Gave me enough incentive to laze around on Sunday. AAARRRR!!

I was reading news off the net, and realized there are a lot of sites that still don’t support anything outside of IE, and that is a sorry, sorry state of affairs. This is a nice discussion on why IE is doomed, and the exhortations for using alternate browsers like Mozilla and Opera.

As for me I really don’t mind IE, but yes, it annoys me with its windowed interface, and the lack of many features which are second nature to good, alternate browsers. I use Opera exclusively, and sometimes turn on my Firebird. Now Firebird is an excellent browser, very fast, and advanced features like tabbed windows. However, many people, including me, have lamented about the woeful support for activex controls in the browser. It is thusly that I draw your attention towards NetCaptor. Its basically a shell for IE (IE needs to be installed in order for it to run), but has some good clean features just like Mozilla Firebird. Its also slightly faster (than Firebird), and unlike Firebird, can handle activex controls like a charm. Also unlike Firebird, its not free. However there’s a demo over at the site to give you a taste.

So these people are selling this watch:

The only watch that’s also a weapon- it shoots BBs, dried peas, popcorn kernels, lentils and more up to 8 feet accross the room! This stainless steel watch will be the envy of the classroom or the meeting room. Use it to “wake-up” those sleepy headed co-workers and classmates. When they look around to see who’s been pelting them with spitballs, you’ll just be casually checking the time.

Now you know what to get me for my birthday.

And, oh yes, the ebony Ask Jeeves. I have a feeling this could catch on…