Bowser, Dr. Robotnik, Gannon and many others are starting to see a pattern.
“All we have to do is keep him from going to the right…that’s it.”
[Via Digg]
Related posts:
I would use the phrase the BBC did, but I’m sick of hearing of ___ killers in general. ( I’ll believe it when I see it, y’know?) But regardless of terminology, BBC News had a very interesting little piece in their technology section this morning about OnLive, an internet-based gaming company that essentially kicks the console out of the picture. The company promises on-demand games, and high performance even on older machines and across platforms.
Chief operating office Mike McGarvey explains: “We want to take your dollars from hardware and let you spend it on software. We are a new platform and we’re building a network and infrastructure to last for the next 30 years of gaming, not the next five years.”
I really like the idea behind this–especially the availability of games on the Mac–but I can’t buy into the whole console killer concept; it’s as dead as the iPhone killer concept, even. Why? Because many news sources have very little understanding about how geeks interact with their own consoles and/or hardware. Yes, games are important. But they are not the only reason we use consoles. In our house, the console is second only in usage to our computers—and the two are connected. We stream videos, we play games, we play music, we connect with friends. I’m not a huge Microsoft fanatic (quite the opposite, really) but I absolutely love my XBox and the XBox Live network. And so does my kid.
Cloud gaming has the potential to be a great deal of fun, but the signal always fails at some point. Sure, fast is important (I bitch at DragonAge all the time for loading too slow). But when we didn’t have an internet connection when we first moved, I was still able to play. I think that cloud gaming will be a great addition to gaming, and a wonderful opportunity for developers to think out of the console. But I’m not giving up my XBox 360 anytime soon, thank you very much.
Maybe I’m being a curmudgeon and a holdover. What about you guys? I’m by no means a hardcore gamer, so maybe I’m just reacting badly. Let us know what you think about the future of gaming!
Related posts:
Ok, this is super awesome. Since people in Inuvik, Canada, are permanently enshrouded in darkness during winter, Tropicana (the juice company) decided to bring sunshine into their lives by installing 100,000 lumens worth of lights into a large helium balloon, raising the whole thing into the sky. Check it out:
[Via Gizmodo]
Related posts:
...is not the same as obeying the list.
Do you make the list you check off, follow and work on every day? When does it get made? Who approves it? Do you identify tasks or perform them?
If you had a better list, would you do better work? If you made the list instead of just obeying it, would you be a more valuable member of the team?
Yes, asking questions is often more valued than answering them. (If they're the right questions.)
In the following video, the LXD (the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers) electrifies the TED2010 stage with an emerging global street-dance culture, revved up by the Internet. In a preview of Jon Chus upcoming Web series, this astonishing troupe show off their superpowers.
Related posts:
More than 20 years later, I can still remember the first time my mind was truly blown. While at elementary school in the mid 1980s, we were taught about the Voyager probes which had been launched in 1977 to take advantage of a rare event (“the planets in alignment”, in this situation, not being a cliche) that meant it would be possible for them to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in a relatively straight-line journey.
By the time I was sat in the classroom, Voyager 1 had passed Saturn and was now headed out on a course far beyond any of our planets. What really grabbed my attention was the inclusion of the Golden Record, an audio record containing greetings in multiple languages, sounds of human life and a collection of music (including Johnny B Goode, which may explain its inclusion as the only music heard in nuclear apocalyptic drama Threads), designed to one day inform extraterrestrials about our planet.
Eventually, though, this information was filed away in the back of my mind until being reawakened this week by a television show, Wonders of the Solar System. I won’t go into too much detail about it as I am aware there’s a danger of my GeeksareSexy work turning into a promotional outlet for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
In short, though, it’s a truly compelling show hosted by Professor Brian Cox, perhaps the only physics professor to have a number one single (though Queen’s Brian May has a doctorate in astrophysics). The first show was based around our relationship with the Sun and included a wonderful scene where Cox went to a desert and used nothing more than an umbrella, a can of water, and a thermometer to calculate the energy given off by the sun across a square meter and then, with a little extrapolation, the entire energy value of the sun itself.
Later he demonstrated the scale of the sun’s gravitational power by setting up a demonstration using jelly beans on a restaurant table to show the solar system: on this scale the Earth was a centimeter from the Sun, the rest of the planets were laid out across the table, and then Cox got into his car to show the point representing the furthest reach of the solar system… 500 meters away.
And Voyager? Cox visited the station in the Mojave desert which still receives communications from Voyager 1 (albeit it on a 15 hour delay). It has now passed far beyond even the furthest dwarf planet and is now in the heliosphere, effectively the outer shield of material blown out by the sun’s solar winds.
Specifically Voyager 1 has passed a point known as the termination shock into the heliosheath. This means that it is now in the region where the solar winds are slowed because they are affected by the interstellar medium. And what’s that? Well, at the risk of oversimplifying, it’s pretty much the bits of space in between the various planetary systems.
It’s believed that as early as 2015, Voyager 1 will cross the heliosheath’s outer border, the heliopause. At this stage, it will be in the interstellar medium.
So, to recap, there is a very good chance that in the foreseeable future, a man-made object, with which we can communicate, will be outside our solar system… at which point it will be surrounded by material which does not ultimately derive from the formation of our sun.
And twenty-plus years later, that again blows my mind.
Related posts:
Galactica: Sabotage is an awesome mashup that pays homage to both Battlestar Galactica and The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage video.
If you start the video below (at 0:34) with the one on the top at the same time, you’ll see that the mashup is an almost exact copy of the original clip, shot for shot.
[Via Buzzfeed]
Related posts:
Not only is A Gentlemen’s Duel one of the best 3D short we’ve ever seen, but it’s one of the funniest too. Enjoy!
Thanks Ross!
Related posts:
When the platform changes, the leaders change.
Wordperfect had a virtual monopoly on word processing in big firms that used DOS. Then Windows arrived and the folks at Wordperfect didn't feel the need to hurry in porting themselves to the new platform. They had achieved lock-in after all, and why support Microsoft?
In less than a year, they were toast.
When the game machine platform of choice switches from Sony to xBox to Nintendo, etc., the list of bestelling games change and new companies become dominant.
When the platform for music shifted from record stores to iTunes, the power shifted too, and many labels were crushed.
Again and again the same rules apply. In fact, they always do. When the platform changes, the deck gets shuffled.
Think this only applies to software?
The platform for healthcare changed from independent doctor's offices and small practices to hospitals and hmos.
The platform for TV changed from airwaves to wires (so HBO and ESPN win, NBC loses).
The platform for cars is changing from gas engines to alternatives.
And the platform for books is changing (fast!) to e-books and readers. Just published today: the Vook multimedia production of Unleashing the Ideavirus. The price will increase to $5 in two weeks, but right now it's 99 cents. It runs on the web and on your iphone [try this link too] (and the iPad on April 3rd.)
Here's the thing: Vook abridged it, built it, filmed it and distributed it in less than ninety days. They have a software application that they can use again and again for other titles. They've organized themselves to be profitable at a profit margin that few big book publishers can match.
Once again, the platform changes. Insiders become outsiders and new opportunities abound.
