I come to you today to announce Player Versus, a World of Warcraft / Gaming blog. Unlike I R Blogging this will be a more dedicated blog to a subject, where as currently I R Blogging is just whatever I want to talk about. We do this not to make you subscribe or read another page, but to direct more of a focus. Some may care about my gaming views, but couldn’t care less about everything else.

In the near future (possibly tomorrow) I’ll also be putting up some posts on 122 Review, our blog where we give things either 122 minutes (Two hours, Two Minutes) of our time, or a 122 variant (such as 122 pages of a book). Unfortunately, it died pretty quickly when it was first launched. However, we have some half-written posts that should get the chance to see the light (even if they go unread). I encourage you to keep an eye out there.

I’ll also be attempting to update the sites to post on My Twitter account when a new post is published. Following me there may be the best bet if you don’t feel like subscribing to all the other sites.

Fret not about I R Blogging, it will still be used for posts that don’t fit elsewhere. It will likely be about updates that we have or rants. If you like that, then stay tuned, because I’m sure something will provoke another rant.

I’m not actually getting into where I stand on the scale, but will point the one fact that you all should know: Next-Gen consoles are breading gamers that don’t know how to play a game.

The definition of Game:
noun /gām/ 
games, plural
A form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

You’ll notice it doesn’t say “Everybody wins”. It requires skills, strength or luck. I would also add into this time. If you can open a game and have it beaten completely in 4 hours, you should ask for your money back.

Let’s compare two games; one from classic gaming and one from next-gen gaming.
Let’s go with Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988 for NES) and Halo 3 (2007 on Xbox 360).

Super Mario Bros. 3 was one of those games that if you beat it, you were it as a badge of honor. Heck, it’s fair to say if you even got to World 8 you were good. There was no cheat codes, you either knew how to do it or you didn’t. You either had the timing and skill down to hit it just right, or didn’t. You pressed two buttons and did it right to win. Button mashing wasn’t even an option for NES, unless the game required you to just press buttons quickly, which it never did.

Halo 3, on the other hand is often referred to as child’s play when it comes down to difficulty. This game can easily be beaten in one sitting, with time to spare, and you can save it. Throw in the fact that the game is engineered in the gamer’s favor so that they do not get stuck or have to over think (or think at all in most cases) to get to the end. Button mashing, grunting and yelling at the TV will easily get you through it. The game does have an extended multiplayer mode, but still on the same premise.

This brings up the question: Are games getting easier to please the new gamers, or are the gamers getting dumber? I feel the answer is yes to both. The current generation is used to winning all the time, because losing may hurt their feelings. We wouldn’t want somebody to be sad, would we?

I hooked up my N64 earlier today and popped in Perfect Dark. I will always love this game. It was challenging, but was fun. You had levels of difficulties and tons of scenarios to work with. It was FPS, but you needed to work through it to get to the end. This included the clunky, over-sized controllers and unrealistic graphics (and deadly paintball mode!). It took my brain about 15 minutes to adjust to thinking again, but it was there. Unfortunately, it took the younger gamer beside me 10 to decide it was ‘too hard’ and quit.
Newer FPS may have you controlling a whole platoon, but how often do you need to pull the trigger and come up with the strategy yourself?

Guess I’ll just become better by process of elimination. Everybody can’t be winners, they don’t give gold stars to losers. Wait, yes they do. Damn.

So what do you think about the current evolution/devolution of gaming? Let me know in the comments!

For those of you that follow me on Twitter (anybody?), I constantly update things I’ve found around the web with just a link. I’m planning on focusing a little more on content, and expanding that here. As well, I’d like to get back to writing reviews of sorts.

Keep an eye out, because I will be posting more content here in due time..this time.

Right now, everything that is hosted on IRBlogging is now becoming linked. Most of the individual WordPress blogs are being merged to one 3.0 database to make everything run smoother on the backend (and easier for authors to access). This could mean some broken links and missing images during the conversion. We’ll be fixing those as we come across them. Feel free to send off an email to bugs [at] irblogging.com if you find some. It would be greatly appreciated.

BIGGER NEWS: We’ve decided to take the dormant Shirtninja.net and turn it into The ShirtNinja Network. It will serve as a Hub for all of our now and future hostees, as well as any partner sites we may have (though unlikely) in the future.
Assuming that I can do it, I’d like to also keep it updated to show the most recent news that comes through the network all in one spot, to save you from jumping around to look for updates.

This way IRB can focus on being IRB, and not try to be the jack of all trades site it’s been trying to be.

SNN is very shoddy right now, as I’m just trying to fill out some of the content blocks I’ll work on it more over the weekend to make it prettier, and make the content better. Give it a look next week. I’ll throw out a tweet when it looks a bit better. Keep an eye out there as well if you’re interested in some free hosting.

That’s it for now, I said I’d post, here it is. Ta Da!

day 2

Some Quick facts were given about Android to set up the love. Android has been around for 18 months, and is up to 100k new activations around the world a day

Android devices cound for the #2 highest selling smartphones in the United States. This is second only to RIM (B;ackberry). That’s Right, Android > iPhone.. Though #2 in sales, it is the leading platform used for web access by more than 30%.

At the time of this post, there is also more than 50k apps on the Android market. At the increase rate the past few months, it will surpass Apple before the year is out.

And then comes FROYO!

This release will have JIT integrated, making it 2x to 3x faster than 2.1

Google has also improved dramatically on how you transfer from your computer. This means a new ‘Browser to phone intent’, not just push using cloud computing with your Google account. This means you send it from your PC with 1 click Iinstead of then getting an address to go to on yourr phone, it will load whatever you send, as it was on your PC. For example, google maps on the PC will automatically load the map on your phone using Navigator. The speaker made a great shot at iphones having to sync with itunes here

Turning your Android device into a portable hotspot and tethering will also be built in when Froyo is released. This will prove intersting as many carriers frown upon, or even lie to customers, about the current tethering abilities.

To solve the memory issue when having tons of apps, Froyo will have the ability to save apps to SD card. The System can automatically determine based on space left on phone, or you can move apps manually.

The Android market will also get some new tricks. Froyo will give you an ‘update all’ option for installed apps, and an ‘auto update’; allowing a Set it and forget it mindset.

Starting. With Froyo, the market will also be viewable on your PC. You’ll be able to use the ‘magic of the internet’ and android intents to start the download on the phone, from your PC aswell. Time to ditch some cords.

The marketplace will also see a new music category. In addition, plugins are developed to let you stream you PC library to your phone using the cloud, which will up space on the SD card.

GOOGLE TV

- Released Fall 2010

- Marketplace OTA Summer 2011

- Open Source Fall 2011

- Will run on Android, have google chrome and full 10.1 flash

- Will be able to access the Android market, and run mobile apps (not device dependant). Coming Summer 2011

-Will be an open platform. Android and Chrome trees to become open source in fall 2011

– Redid listen App, now works with pod casts, video casts and subscribed channels on GTV

- Merged TV Closed Captaion and google Translate for over 14 languages instantly

- Integrated Speech top TV searching and communicating Via Android device

- Android device works as remote control

- Wifi, HDMI and Intel atom inside

- Search Bar searchs TV, Apps, Web, Listen and other streaming forms (fox, hulu, amazon)

- Has a suggested Viewing option, recommended shows on TV, and those on teh web based on what you’ve watched

Integrated netflicks

Available at Best Buy

Most of Day 1 spoke about HTML 5, the advancements that it is making and what can be done with it. A few nice examples were given, such as a clickable TV.

The WEBM Project was also discussed in length. The idea behind this is to have an open source video codec (vp8) so that there is an industry standard, instead of every program and OS having it’s own. Goodle invested $125 million towards this project.

Sports illustrated is on board with this open source idea, and had a presentation of how it plans to use HTML 5 and vp8 to make their magazines interactive online. However, the CEO made a comment about it being good, so can be marketed. In my opinion, I feel he fails to see th real reason behind Open source, and just that it’s new, shiny and trendy. However, he’s also old so he’s not important.

Google Wave has also granduated out of Beta, is available to everybody without a beta invite and was also made available to Google Apps, which is fantastic.

The biggest annoucement of the day was the Google Chrome Web App Store. In short: It’s the Android Market Place for Web Apps. This is sensational, and I saw it coming once they introduced the product store for Google Apps a few months ago.

This is big news, because it will allow the millions upon millions of web apps and web games to be categorized, marketed and more importantly found by users. I can’t wait until this is released to the public, or I can find my way into a beta.

With all the web apps being developed, VM Ware discussed management tools for them. Unfortunately, yours truely had to run for work during the later half of this presentation.

To be honest, I was going into this movie with a lot of hope that it would be spectacular and it turned out to be craptacular instead. So close, but not what I wanted to see. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that it was a bad movie, but I just felt a little ripped off.

As anybody who has read my reviews before would know, I’m a stickler for format. If there isn’t a solid plot, true character development or even any good special effects: You don’t have a good movie. This is the case for Clash of The Titans.

Though the plot wasn’t bad, it felt rushed. Though it was apparent that there was a plot line, many parts could have been expanded or explained better (or at all). There was many parts of the movie where there was missing information, or more so missing character interactions, that needed to occur to pull the scenes together. The way they laid it out, the characters knew the answer to everything before it happened, which makes me feel like I’m are watching actors.

The character development…well there wasn’t any. The relationships the characters had changed from one moment to the next without warning or reason, making me wonder if I fell asleep during part of it (which is quite likely at this point). This movie attempts to capture many aspects relating to the connections the characters have to one another, but the presentation simply isn’t even to justify the fact or make it believable. It would have been better off if they didn’t try at all.

Clash of The Titans was presented in “3D”, which was nothing but a waste of an extra $3, on top of the cost of the ticket prices. I noticed 1 scene where it came remotely close to being 3D, and even then it wasn’t very good. This is one of those movies where all the cool parts with monsters and action are shown in the commercials.

Conclusion: Wait for it to come out on DVD, rent if it you really have nothing else to watch. If you’re smart, you’ll wait until it shows up on TV for free instead, you’re not missing anything.

Feel free to buy it for me. You know, only if you really love me…or something like that. Hell. I’ll let you buy it for me even if you hate me. We can have a love-hate-purchase relationship.

[via Gizmodo via Threadless via TheDailyWhat via DVICE]

I love the idea, but it could still use some work. They are heading in the right direction though which is important. I’d like to see them implement this but then put a password protection on the lock/options. This way you can give your phone to somebody else to listen to music, or surf the net without worrying about them reading your e-mails.

Pros:
• Can make use of the empty space on the lock screen and fill it with stuff.
• Haven’t seen this done much before.

Can be better:
• Can only put one widget on each screen. I’d like to be able to put my music player, bluetooth on/off and volume on the same screen.
• Loads a little slow, as it seems to load my default lock, then switch each time.

Fly Screen is available for Android (1.6 and higher) in the market, as well as Symbian (Nokia).

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. – Arts and animation videos.

[Via Mashable!]