Tech'd Out
Review: Motorola Milestone
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good phone that I can call smart. My last quality phone as the HTC S640 running Windows 6.1, so that’s not saying much.
I decided to pick up the new Telus Motorola Milestone. It’s a pretty awesome looking phone right out of the box, seems sturdy. It has a huge 3.7″ WVGA multi-touch screen, with a slide out keyboard.
The Milestone is running Android version 2.0.1, which is hella-fast. It honestly feel like pure power in your hand *Tim Taylor grunt*. Compared to the other interfaces I’ve used on phones, I’m loving the customization options that come with Android. The click, drop and drag is pretty. I’m using DxTop as my Home replacement right now. It gives an extra bar at the bottom for running and recently opened processes, and gives it a nice look at that. Compared to the other home repleacements (such as open home, panda home, or sweeter home) I find it also leaves the system running smoothly, without lag when I jump back home. I’m quite the fan.
As a newbie to actual Android use as a whole, I’m finding that there really is an app for everything. Right now my top apps are Astrid, Personal Assistant Free, Asurion Address book, Shop Savvy, Fring, Adobe Photoshop Mobile, Shazam, Slacker Radio, Urban Spoon, Where’s my droid, Wordpress mobile. I’m not going to go into everything (right now), but I’ve yet to find a realistic thing my phone can’t do.
It’s running on Telus’ 3G network, which has pretty good speeds. I’m not seeing a huge differences between that and my wi-fi. Though I will say that Telus’ data plans leave something to be desired, $50 for 500mb isn’t too great.
If there was anything to complain about, it’s that the App Market is still limited to free apps. According to some reports, we’re supposed to be getting access to the paid apps soon, so it may not be all bad.
An update I just read today is that Motorola purposely made the Milestone difficult to root, which I find is retarded. I’m dissapointed that I’ve gone out and paid full retail price for this phone, and now need to hope that it eventually can be rooted. Oh well, still a great phone.
eRepublik: The New World
Have you ever wished that you could live your life all over again? I have!
The idea behind eRepublik is that you can create an account and live it day to day as you would in real life. Boring? Nah.
After inital sign up you’re forced to pick a job and horrible wages and work. Sucky? For now. After you work two days you’ll level and get something a little better as well as join the army and train. At level 5 (I think it was 5) you can participate in any wars your country is in. Eventually you can vote for political parties and what not as well.
Personally I’m still pretty newb at this, but looking into the future of the game with user-created political parties, different countries and regions and fluctuating economies it can hold a lot of potential. A key factor that interests me is that the game is based on real-time logic, so those with more time on their hands won’t overrun the game.
I’d recommend to give it a try for a week or so, see how it plays out. I like the idea of being able to represent my region. Look me up while you’re there, name is Egen.
Games: No More Heroes
Right off the bat, this game is SO not a kids game. If anything, No More Heroes
UBI Soft’s No More Heroes’ gameplay is a typical beat ‘em up, but with a very adult-oriented theme. Instead of trying to save a princess, you’re killing other assassins so that you can be number one. That’s it. Along the way, you’re forced to do odd jobs like collect coconuts and mow lawns to earn money so that you can enter the battle against the next ranked assassin. This keeps the game from getting too boring too quick. (Imagine his resume: Travis Touchdown, Assassin and part-time lawn mower)
The style of this game is strange at first glance as it seems to have a choppy-anime’ish look. After around 15 minutes or so, they seem to smooth out and you realize how incredibly amazing the look of this game really is. The dialoge between characters in the cinematic scenes are fantastic and incredibly witty. However, during the game the taunts get quite repetitive, and could use some fine tuning (even if that just means being removed completely).
The controls are generally just push the button or hold the button down to attack. You can either attack with punch/kick and wrestling moves (B) or with your bean katana (A). an interesting twist on the controls though is that for wrestling moves you have to move the wiimote and nunchuck in the same direction to do the attack. Also with the beam katana when in a draw, you draw circles to win it. It’s strange, but to be expected for the Nintendo Wii. Overall fairly easy controls to get used to.
One of the coolest things about this game is that he has a cell phone. Whenever you get a call on his phone, your wiimote vibrates. When you push the button to answer it, the voice (other person on the phone) comes through on the wiimore speaker, not the TV speakers. So you actually have to hold the wiimote up to the side of your head. Strange? Yes. Entertaining? You betcha!
Though only about 1/3 of the way through the plot, I’m having one problem with this game when it comes to the missions. If a mission is failed, you can not simply ‘retry’, you have to go all the way back to where the mission was picked up, get it again, then go try the mission once more. This is frustrating when it takes you 10 minutes to travel between the two locations. Though the missions are pretty easy for the most part, it would be nice if they didn’t waste my time with the odd one that I mess up on.
The game is fairly cheap to pick up (Amazon has it for $20) so might be worth adding to your collection. Given that 95% of the games currently out for the Wii are targeted at family/children this is a nice change. I’d recommend it if not just to be able to say you own it, it’s right up there with Conker’s Bad Fur Day for N64.
Tools: Live Labs Thumbtack
At first glance, Thumbtack from Live Labs looks pretty interesting (see video below). It’s supposed to allow you to highlight anything on webpage, copy it, then paste it on to (essentially) a virtual cork board. My first thought was “great, I can use it when collecting ideas for content to blog about”. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
For the purpose of testing Thumbtack, I decided to imagine that I was planning a trip to Egypt. I was able to copy text, so I could get an idea of the terrain and what the weather would be like. I even managed to copy the lyrics to the national anthem. However, when I tried copying a picture, I was told “Your browser security settings have prevented us from accessing your clipboard. Please paste again by pressing ctrl + V”. Doing this doesn’t allow pictures.
Examining further into the issue, it seems you can only copy and paste text using Mozilla Firefox. To be able to do anything further, you must be using Internet Explorer (IE). On top of not being able to copy images, when pasting it doesn’t even keep format of the text copied, it is often unformatted.
Thumbtack does allow users to publish and share their notes, however given that it is simply just text at this time if fails to be of service. If I have to email them a link to text, I might as well just email them the text itself.
A simple conclusion is that this service falls short of being useful, just as Google Notebook was before support was canceled. If you truly need to keep notes, just use notepad.
Games: Battle of the Bands
As promised last week, today we’re going to take a look at
Battle of the Bands
At first glance, this game looks like it can be a lot of fun. Well, it can once you get past the lack of content in the game itself. Lets have a look at some of what the game has to offer:
- A decent variety of songs (of course, no where near some of the more costlier games on the market)
- The joy of rhythm based games without the need to have any extras hanging around
- A quirky variation to the plain old ‘hit the notes and you win’ formula
Battle of the Bands offers some classic favorite songs such as Black Betty and Jungle Boogie; mixed in with some fun songs like Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillaz and Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones. Though the songs are few, they’re good to play.
Unlike some of the other rhythm games, Battle of the Bands uses only the wiimote to hit notes (left/right/down/stab/shake). It’s a fun concept, though a little tiring on the wrist at first on some of the higher difficulty levels. Also, if the wiimote is tilted it often doesn’t hit the note. Once you get used to this though, it’s a fantastic workout for your wrist.
Above all else what makes this game worth playing is the presentation itself. The game is one big battle, so you’re always in a versus mode against either an AI or a Player. Each band gets to choose a style of music, for example country and hip-hop. While playing, if the country team is in the lead the song which they’re playing will be done in a ‘country version’ (IE redneck accent and banjos). As the teams battle, the song jumps between the two bands’ type. It’s a riot when the types are conflicting as they switch seamlessly.
Another cooky part of this game is that you can attack the opposing player. Teams get the option of 3 weapons to use, all with different steak counts. Once a team has a streak to the length of the weapon, it will fire causing the other player to miss a beat if not blocked (hitting B). It’s quite off tilt to have a battle of the bands where you can shoot lightning at the drummer on the other team, but a blast none the less.
Overall, I can understand why this game is so cheap (I got it for $15) because though the concept of it is amazing, the final execution of it is lacking. If they had access to a larger library, or even if they had more modes or unlockable content it may have made it a little more interesting. For what the game is though, it was worth the cash and I’d suggest it to any music lover out there if not only for the music player feature that allows you to switch between styles without having to actually play the game.
Christmas Clothing
With the holidays now coming to a close, I’m sure many of you are cleaning out your closets to make room for the snazy (or fugly as it often is) new clothing that friends and family bought you this year. I know myself I got a pretty good selection this year…and a bunch of socks. I think I’ve been wearing this hoodie the most lately, love the style of it.
But like every year, you know there are some cool things you see that you just don’t get. For instance, lets start with these Freehands gloves. What makes these different from other gloves on the market is that both the pointer and thumb part of the gloves can be easily folded down. This is a great idea allowing those that need to use their fingers for things like texting and typing while outside this winter. No more need to take off the gloves (or type with your nose!). I’ll be getting a pair of these myself, they look fantastic. How about you?
But now with warm hands you need a warm head. How about throwing some top secret tunes in there as well with the Headphone beanie from ThinkGeek. What’s cooler than being able to listen to music at work? Tricking people into thinking you can hear them of course.
And last, but surely not least, you have your jacket. I’d suggest a jacket from Ardica [Via Gizmodo]. Not only do they come with built in heaters, but they can also charge your electronics while you wear it. What better way to stay warm while waiting outside the movie theater for the next superhero film right?
So that’s my quick winter recap. So what did you guys get for Christmas this year? Let me know in the comments below.
Games: Rock Band 2
Today we’re going to get some rock off with our socks off with a quick review of Rock Band 2
For those of you unfamiliar with the ‘musical gaming’ genre, Rock Band and similar products often use controllers shaped like guitars or drums. You simply hit the colored buttons on the instruments in time with the colors on the screen to play the notes. A simple concept, but incredibly fun none the less.
What first made Harmonix’s Rock Band stand out in comparison to it’s nearest competitor Guitar Hero is that it allowed players to not only play guitar, but drum and sing as well. Though this has been evenly matched by the most recent Guitar Hero World Tour
Aside from just hitting the buttons to match colors, I think a huge part of the appeal of these games is that you can be part of a band, not just somebody playing a game at home on a Saturday night. Rock Band 2 takes advantage of this by giving players the ability to not only form a band with friends at close range, but to join with anybody online. This, for me, is a huge factor as the people online can’t see you dancing around in your PJs while playing We Got the Beat by the Go-Gos.
Rock Band 2 has also capitalized on the character creation factor of games, giving users the ability to make their avatar as normal or bizarre as they want it to be with everything from ripped jeans to a Viking helmet. Along those lines, users are able to register their bands online and put their custom bands into cool looking photos. They can even print out stickers and make t-shirts! (Check out yours truly rockin’ out here)
![Games: Rock Band 2](http://www.rockband.com/img/2976740/422" "Games: Rock Band 2"){kind=small}
But what good is playing when you don’t know any of the songs? Rock Band 2 has a ton of good songs, and (whenever Nintendo gets around to it) will feature downloadable content (DLC) to allow aspiring musicians to enhance their library even further.
The only fault I’d say (if anything) this game is lacking compared to Guitar hero is the ‘oddity’ factor. This is just playing songs, where as in Guitar hero there are ‘battles’ where you can throw off your enemy and random encores through out the game. It makes it good to spice up. Rock Band does this with ‘benefit shows’ and ‘TV recordings’, but the game play is still just playing the songs. It would be nice to see a mode to make it a little more interesting in Rock Band 3. (I have picked up another musical game today completely based around being strange, keep an eye out for a review)
So are any of you rock legends? Let me know in the comments below, maybe we can do some face melting some time. Rock on!
ATT/Dish Network Sucks
I’ve never had sattelite TV, ever, and I hate landline phone. That said, I tried so hard not to hate this. But I can’t get cable where I am, and that sucks. But, you live with it. After receiving a $1030 bill from ATT Wireless for 7.5 GB of internet usage, I didn’t think my week could get any worse.
Then ATT struck again.
First, my home phone stopped working… and hasn’t started working yet, for three days. Now, my dish is all pixely and sucky. And me without any Family Guy DVDs to keep me company, what’s a girl to do? Call ATT and bitch? Yes. Cancel Dish Network immediately? Yes. Order DirecTV in the morning? Yes and Yes.
Yay for fucking everything up before I leave!
As a side note, I promise all of the IR Blogging reader(s) (Hi Del) to prod Eggo with a cooking spoon until he writes blogs while I’m there earning my money err.. distracting him while I steal his Rock Band cooking and cleaning for him. 
’cause Webnotes stick on me!
Now with invites and annotations!
Ever wish that you could have a cheat sheet for a webpage? Get through all that useless junk that the author wrote? I’m sure that most of my readers do. And thus comes Webnotes.
Webnotes is a new web-working tool designed at letting users add annotations and highlighting to websites. They combine two of my personal favorite things: Post-it notes and websites, it was just a matter of time. The utility is easy to use, just install the toolbar (Firefox plug-in FTW) and you’re set. There is a button to create a sticky note, button to highlight text and a button to share what you’ve done. It’s that easy.
Once you have that done, it’s easy to place sticky notes around. I know I’m going to have the bad habit of putting them on every site I visit (I have 29 of them in sight right now around my desk offline, yikes!). The good use for this is that you’ll be able to see a site, put your options on it then send it to your friend so they can see it how you see it. Here, check out I R Blogging with some annotations I put in (I may have put a few too many…).
Some uses for this that I came up with:
- Looking at somebody’s website and giving them pointers.
- Studying notes and highlighting the parts that would be important.
- Adding reminders for the next time you visit the site (like checking out a certain link that you know will be a time-sink)
- Being used as a bookmark when going through archives.
The only thing I can think of right now that this is missing is a social aspect of this. For example, if I could make my notes, send it to a friend then have them add some of their notes and send it back to me (displaying both sets of annotations) it would make it a great collaboration tool. Also, being able to select the color of sticky note would be pretty cool as well.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on a few invites (Thanks Ryan!), so for those of you interested in some just leave a comment to this post. Be sure to include your email address when filling out the comment form, I’ll be using it to know where to send it.