smoorg's reviews

Killzone 3 for PS3

2011-07-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

In a year full of pale sequels, I'm pleased to say this one's very good. I played through the single-player story on wimpy mode. The dialog is predictably "gritty," and it includes the usual storyline of the maverick soldier who refuses to leave his men behind .. but once you relax into the cheesemo, predictable "war hero" stuff, it's kinda boy-game fun.

The multiplayer is where this one really shines. Natch, you get the usual deathmatch mode, and the capture-the-flag style modes. The "operations" mode is really fun tho; it's basically a mini-story where your team completes (or defends against) a progressive set of missions. e.g. blow up the doors, take a strategic position, then destroy the mainframe. (Should they update that to "destroy the 'cloud?'")

The other interesting thing about the multiplayer mode is that the choice of "careers" for your character doesn't seem to actually include a "heavy grunt" sort of character. Everyone is specialized for something: heals, turrets, sniping, stealth &c. The talent trees for each are quite short and narrow, and different maps are better for different careers. It makes you try more than one career, and switch them up to match the map and your teammates' styles. Well done!

Osmos for iPhone & iPad

2011-03-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Osmos is simple. You're a floaty-glowy bubble, squirting around in space. You can absorb smaller bubbles, adding their mass to yours in the process, while bigger bubbles can absorb you to death. In a representative round, the goal is to "become the biggest." Off you go, absorbing bubbles to get bigger, which allows you to absorb larger bubbles, and so on ... and then you look up and an hour has passed.

The physics are great, and the gameplay is super smooth. But the other winner is the soundtrack -- fricken excellent on headphones -- transporting you into a world of groovy bubbling grooviness. The replay value is excellent .. so if you don't have a chance to listen to a level's music the first time through, you'll have plenty of other chances when you come back for more.

Super Meat Boy for PC

2011-03-06T17:39:00.000-08:00

There's a section in the Bhagavad Gita about a million deaths that are fated to happen, right? Super Meat Boy is like a pre-battle meeting with Krishna, if Krishna was a devilishly difficult platformer that packs in nods to other games, other game makers, and other gameplay styles at every possible spot. It's an epic of game playing. You'll find yourself gasping "argh" as you die just millimeters from the end of a level, only to smack the keyboard and start the level again. Just one more and you'll get it. Sure... Keep your RSI braces handy -- you won't be able to stop playing this one.

Split/Second for PS3

2010-09-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

Split/Second is a car racing game, and I'm hit-or-miss on my opinion of those, but I just finished playing this one all the way through. You know those crazy car chases in movies, where they're flying through an abandoned industrial sector, with stuff blowing up all over the place? It's like playing those scenes, yourself. You're racing on and off streets, with "real" cars -- but you accumulate powerups that let you trigger explosions in front of the competition, which plays like a kart racing game. The AIs match your skill well (if you pick slow cars, they pick slow cars) and the courses are varied enough to be interesting, but repeated enough to be familiar by the end of the game. And there's nothing like triggering an explosion moments before the finish line, to knock the opposition out and jump to first place just in time. Zoom!

ModNation Racers for PS3

2010-07-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

In the words of days-gone-by search engines, "More like this!" Sure, I'm a sucker for user-generated content, so I was looking forward to ModNation ever since last year's E3 demo, but it's lived up to my hopes. It's great!
It's a fun kart racer, with balanced power-ups and smooth controls, and a few tricks that sometimes mean the race leader loses, right at the last second. Everything you expect from a kart racer game.

But the track-creation tool is the really awesome part. (Well, that and the car creation tool, or the character creation tool, actually.) Like any good level generator, your first few are awesome because you don't care, then the next few are all messed up because you have something in mind, and then the rest after that work because you find a groove and the tools don't get in the way. Then you go multiplayer and play your maps with other folks. And then folks tell you what works and doesn't work about them. And then you make more! You gotta try this.

Red Dead Redemption for PS3

2010-05-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

OMFG this game goes forever. Red Dead Redemption is a third-person shooter where you're the gristled cowboy with a dark past who's fighting to go straight. The main story is hours and hours, the scenery reaches for miles, side quests with real stories are littered everywhere, you can collect pieces of outifts, or tame horses, or shoot horse thieves, or save damsels, or get robbed by damsels. It's a jillion things to do, and you could easily spend a month finding all the hidden bits.

Also, pardon the "gee wiz," but whoever did the lighting for it deserves a medal -- sunrise and lightning storms were my favorite. They really nailed the Western genre. The music is similarly on target, though after a few hours I turned it down so I could run Pandora on a laptop. It's a remarkably pretty game, making it good for spectators, too. Yeehaw!

Braid for PS3 (PSN)

2010-05-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

Braid poses a time-traveler's dilemma, what if you could go back and undo all your mistakes? In this side-scrolling world, you can. Biffed the timing on jumping those koopas? Back up in time and get it right the next time. Oh, but it's not that easy -- some things aren't affected by your time travel. It makes for mind-warpingly interesting puzzles that involve overlapping, but not concurrent, time lines going in different directions. Weird and wonderful!

Kometen for iPhone

2010-05-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for playable art. You don't "play" Kometen so much as you kinda hang out with it, listen to groovy music, swing around the stars and generally just kinda "chill" with it. Easy control, sweet music, seamless physics, lovely graphics and a whimsical story. Holy crap, how did thirty minutes go by!?

God of War III for PS3

2010-03-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

When me droogs and I are up for a bit of the ultraviolent, this game hits the spot. There's slashing and smashing and decapitating to fill an evening with action. (I think the producers secretly own shares in a fake blood factory, because there are gallons of it here.)

There's this story, too, about killing all the old gods of Olympus, and you get to ride on a Titan, which is pretty freakin' awesome, but mostly you kill things that gush blood everywhere. Also, there are spots where you have to pull levers in the right order to get a platform to lift you to the next area ... where you kill things.

There are boobs. Did I mention that? Some of the things you kill have breasts on them. Gorgons, I think. So, *evil* breasted-things. But boobs you can look at. So there's that.

The whole thing's actually quite pretty. I give it two thumbs up ... which I will then chop off and throw into the fires of Hades. Haiyah!

MAG for PS3

2010-03-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't think I was into the pewpew games but I can't stop playing this one. I'm not even all that good ... my aim is strafingly bad. It turns out I love this one. I keep playing.

I think the key is the tech trees. You get XPs for shooting the other guys (and TWICE as many for healing teammates) and every few dings you can afford to buy another skill.

There are several ways to go with skills. I started out favoring machine guns, and worked up to the biggest baddest one. That worked okay. But then I respec'd for assault rifles and teched-up to get the 4x optical scope, which I now totally prefer. Respecs are available every dozen or so levels, so you can try a new stuff as soon as you're bored with your last choice.

I always first get the healing and resuscitation skills -- that's how I level up. Whether spraying machine gun fire, or controlling bursts of rifle fire, my strength is in the heals.

Now my friends need to pick up a copy. A clan on headsets is a formidable force.

OmmWriter Beta for MacOS X

2009-12-03T23:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you have a couple hundred words you wanna just get written down so you can munge 'em until they fit together. You need to clear the decks, shut out all the noise and place some text on the page, plain and simple. Try OmmWriter!

New Super Mario Bros for Wii

2009-11-17T21:46:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's awesome! It's all the classic gameplay that you spent days and days playing on SNES, with some sweet new powerups and an interesting twist or two. The music is true to the original's spirit, yet hi-fi. The graphics are old school, yet cleaner and smoother. And the turtles, they do a little dance step that's unbearably cute. Plus you get these little bonus mini-games that are really fun. Two thum-bahs up -- way-ah up!

Call in sick! (How's the glaucoma?) You're gonna want to dedicate some serious time to this one.

Wolfenstein for PS3

2009-10-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

I used to love playing Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple ][. I liked how you were outnumbered, stealing ammo off the bad guys, and saving the day. It was missing just one thing ... zombie nazis. Well, these may not be exactly zombies, but they sure are supernatural nazis. And they still make "aiiieeee" noises when you gun 'em down!

Once I'd popped the disc into the PS3, it didn't come out until I was done with the single-player campaign. It's excellent! There's a goofy story. There are nazis using gateways to other dimensions. There are weapon choices and upgrade choices that let you pick your fighting style. A ton of detail makes it extra compelling. I really enjoyed it!

Gottlieb's Pinball Hall of Fame for PSP (PSN)

2009-10-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

I'm totally enjoying the Pinball Hall of Fame on my PSP Go. You get to pick from a few of Gottlieb's most popular tables, and naturally you have to beat a challenge on the simple ones, to unlock the others. But also each table comes with a snippet of the history of the machine. My favorites so far are the Genie machine and the Black Hole machine ... but I keep trying my hand on the love tester (yep, the thing that tells you how hot a lover you are) just 'cause it's, well, weird to include a machine that you can't "win" on a gaming platform. Well done!

Critter Crunch for PS3 (PSN)

2009-10-31T22:08:00.000-07:00

The launch of Critter Crunch was less than impressive -- the trades should've been heralding "The next PopCap" or something like that. This is an action-puzzle game, where the rules are simple, the controls are dead simple, and everything is just cute as hell. Plus, the music is catchy, and the goofy noises things make as you catch 'em with your tongue and spit them into the waiting mouths of predators higher up on the food chain add a cutsey percussion to the whole thing.

Oh, and there's actually a part called the "Puking Tutorial" where they instruct you on regurgitating rainbows. Kris plays several-layers-deep strategically, while I mostly mash buttons, and we both love it!

Batman: Arkham Asylum for PS3

2009-10-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

You see!? This is how you do a game based on a cartoon! The player becomes the protagonist seamlessly, rather than just riding along on the hidden track of a jungle safari ride. Plus, there's a real writer! Ryyyyyyye-tooooooor. (Doesn't hurt that it's Paul Dini fer cryin' out loud.) And who's playing the Joker? Mark Hamill. Because he always does. It's an episode of Batman the Animated Series, it's just really complex, takes longer than the usual episode, and has a lot of side quests.

The fighting is great -- you're a badass, hand to hand. But then your XP-based power-ups are things like the skill to drop down from a gargoyle and string up your opponents. For kicks I did a level entirely by sneaking around the rafters and stringing the bad guys up when no one was looking.

Harley Quin went and turned into a sexy-schoolgirl cliché, but the rest of the characters have all the depth and intriguing-weirdness you expect, plus a little extra something that you can only really convey in an interactive medium where the player is discovering them as part of the story and game.

I haven't gotten all the way through yet, but when I do, I'm watching every last line of the credits. There are gonna be names I'll recognize in future games.

Rabbit Wants Cake for Mac/PC

2009-10-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

What an interesting idea for game controls. Try Rabbit Wants Cake.

Evidence of Everything Exploding for Mac/PC

2009-10-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

What a totally weird browser game. I love it!

Zombie Apocalypse for PS3 (PSN)

2009-10-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

You are the last hope of mankind. Use the left stick to run around, and the right stick to shoot. Every once in a while, there's a human survivor, so run over and protect them until they can escape! Eliminate all the ~~robots~~ zombies to advance to the next level.

You start out with a machine gun and a chain saw -- and while the machine gun might be more effective, the chainsaw offers panache, especially when wielded over your head and plunged into your adversaries' chests! You'll collect exploding, zombie-attracting teddy bears, too -- they're like grenades but whey cuter.

My favorite part is that for a moment after a zombie grabs you, you can shake the controller to throw them off you again. This is a discombobulating mode shift, and oddly fun. It's my new flavorite laundry-time game! Braaaaaaains!

Battlefield 1943 for PS3 (PSN)

2009-09-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

I can't stop playing this one! You switch off being a japanese or american soldier trying to gain control of all the flag points (five) on small pacific islands. There are only a handful of maps, and a handful of strategies, and it's all so very simple, and that's exactly what makes it fun. You can run around shooting, or get in a tank, or a jeep, or even airplanes ... and for extra fun you can jump out of your airplane and parachute onto the other teams' positions.

This is my new laundry game. It's easy to just pop in and enjoy a few minutes of mayhem between loads of laundry.

Cogs for PC (Steam)

2009-07-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

I saw the developer of Cogs playing it, at E3; it looked moderately tricky even for him. Basically you line up the pipes and gears to make the machine run and/or avert doom. There's a free demo ... try it!

inFamous for PS3

2009-06-01T21:58:00.001-07:00

I'm enjoying inFAMOUS because it combines two of my favorite things. Like Mirror's Edge, you can run around on rooftops and listen to fox news tell you of a government consipracy. But you also have the open-world fun like Fallout 3, where you run around killing people while a visible morality index keeps track of whether the angel or the devil is suggesting your targets.

I guess it's Grand Theft Auto with electrically-charged superpowers, because when you get tired of the story line, you wander around discovering side-quests, and when you're tired of side quests, you hop back on the main storyline.

There are hours and hours of gameplay in here! And the comic-book styling of the HUD and the cutscenes and things are very pretty. Go get a copy!

Burn Zombie Burn! for PS3 (PSN)

2009-04-12T00:18:00.000-07:00

Burn Zombie Burn is practically the definition of "casual game."

Clear rules: kill all the zombies before they eat you.

Simple controls: a top-down point of view, as you run around and shoot stuff.

True to theme: while the shotgun and uzi are the simplest to use, the chainsaw and cricket bat are far more rewarding.

A twist: zombies are afraid of the burning torch you can brandish ... but if they catch on fire they fearlessly sprint towards you ... BUT point values are increased while there are zombies buring.

It's perfect for killing time (and zombies) between loads of laundry. A couple rounds coincide nicely with the wash cycle. And the price is right -- one roll of quarters!

Portal for PS3

2009-03-26T22:01:00.001-07:00

Portal is a first person platformer with a fun addition. Like other platformers, you get to run around trying to get from here to there. But it's the future now, and you've got a hand-held wormhole maker!

Can't jump up to the platform? Pull the trigger to open a wormhole next to you, then shoot to place its other end on the wall next to the platform. Step through and poof, you're there! Of course, the levels aren't suddenly a piece of cake, they get very sneaky.

It's a brainy sort of fun. You have to solve path-finding puzzles using more than just what's visible on the screen and more than just three dimensions. Oddly enough, it's pleasantly twisted when the mental map in your head is a klein bottle.

Warhawk for PS3

2009-03-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Warhawk is perfect for a quick online frag session -- if it moves, shoot it! Instant action.

The tutorials teach you the basics: First you learn to run around shooting things. (Or knifing things, at close range.) Then you learn to drive around shooting things. Finally they show you how to fly around shooting things. The basics are simple, and you start out pitted online against other noobs, so you can learn before you're completely pwned.

Once you get the hang of it, you'll find that it's fun to specialize in certain tactics. I like picking planes out of the sky with a rocket launcher. Some folks are really good with a sniper rifle. The tanks are especially fun. And I like flying, as long as there aren't too many missile launchers around.

Now that it's a Greatest Hit, it's only twenty bucks. I recommend the downloadable version.

Killzone 2 for PS3

2009-03-16T22:21:00.001-07:00

Holy crap this game is intense. The intro movie sets the stage spectacularly, then launches you right into the action. Even in easy mode it's intense -- you survive longer, but it doesn't ratchet down the intensity at all. My eyes are still bleeding.

Visually, it's smooth and detailed. Your bullets don't just leave scars on the column that the bad guy is hiding behind -- you blow off pieces of concrete, all the way down to the rebar. And that piece of corrugated steel *you're* hiding behind gets knocked out of place with every grenade they land near it. You can see rockets coming at you smoothly, not stuttering between frames. The clear graphics give you time to side-step!

Then there's the AI stuff, which is remarkable. Enemies work together, shouting things to each other. They split up to flank you and they sneak around behind you when you hide. And this adaptability means that if you're failing a level, you can try a different approach and get totally different results. Blazing down the middle while mashing buttons not doing it? Sweep around the side, draw enemies out one by one, or just see whatever works in that particular area.

In any currency (six movie tickets, eight hours of iTunes, three blu-rays...) this title was definitely worth full price.

Micro Spy Remote

2009-03-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

I now carry *two* multi-tools in my bag at all times. The Leatherman has been joined by Think Geek's Micro Spy Remote. You point the teeny little remote at any TV you want to control and hold down the mute button -- as soon as your target TV mutes, you let up on the button. Now the channel, volume, mute, input and power buttons are all tuned to control the TV you've hijacked.

Tired of watching soccer at your favorite pub? Switch it to Rock of Love Mystery Bus.

Zuma for PS3 (PSN)

2009-02-20T23:51:00.001-08:00

I guess I'm a little late to the party, but I'd never played Zuma (from PopCap Games) on any other system. I love it! It's one of those action puzzlers, which I'd compare to Tetris, where you have to match up pieces that are coming at you, making them disappear, before they stack up and bury you.

You see, while I spent my wasted college leisure-time playing NetHack, kids these days play games with graphics and sound. So if you're a thirty something, you'll find Zuma to be plenty of fun, just like Tetris was, and you'll play it compulsively until your eyes bleed. But the *real* treat is to kick back with a beer and watch a twenty-something play it ... they totally go matrix-mode. And it's a trip to watch them actually apply strategy rather than just shooting madly until the game ends in disaster.

Hey, spectacular cut-scenes and multi-million dollar production budgets must look really impressive when you present them to the executives, but maybe with a couple extra supporting charts and graphs (and executives with some vision) you could get the management to greenlight more of these types of games. Please?

Flower for PS3 (PSN)

2009-02-13T21:53:00.001-08:00

Wow! Flower is a very pretty game ... it's like art that you can play. You see, you're the wind, so you breeze around fields, and then flowers open as you blow past them. But it's not all visual -- there's chilled-out music playing throughout, with the opening of each flower adding a percussive note of a chime, or guitar pluck, or harp strum. Plus, the sound folks added awesome ambient sound, so there's rustling grass, rain, thunder, water swishing, a subtle but pervasive aural environment rendered in very nice stereo everywhere you wander.

Mister and Miss Achieveypants will immediately notice that nothing's keeping score, there's no timer counting down, there doesn't seem to be a high score list. You just drift around, opening flowers and enjoying the sights and sounds. At least you progress through "levels" -- that might be on a quiz at the end.

This was ten bucks well spent, especially when compared to the cost of a massage or talk therapy or a tasty Barbera. Now, can I get a screensaver this attractive, too? Please?

ILFORD Inkjet Photo Paper

2009-01-30T22:11:00.000-08:00

Oh ... mygod. Remember when you were in High School photography class and you had a really artsy looking print, like with contrast and texture and stuff, and you'd dip into your stash of ILFORD paper to make it look extra fancy?

Yeah, well they make inkjet paper now. No, really.

The image is totally smoother and cleaner than the crap you get from office supply stores. And the paper holds up when you abuse it by, say, spray-epoxy it onto your laptop. This stuff is totally top shelf!

Cuboid for PS3 (PSN)

2009-01-30T20:21:00.000-08:00

Cuboid proves once again that the future is inexpensive, downloadable, casual games. It's a puzzle game, played on a track of one-by-one tiles. You have to topple a one-by-one-by-two playing piece around the board, and its oblong dimensions make it tricky, some directions progressing by one tile, others by two -- it's hard to explain, watch someone play.

It's totally addictive. Screw with your friends; invite them over and let them try it. If you partake on your own, without a buddy, be careful!

Mirror's Edge for PS3

2009-01-28T22:54:00.000-08:00

On the ground and inside the skyscrapers of the city, cameras watch every move you make. The only way to keep secrets is by sending private couriers who deliver your data without asking questions. It's a surveillance state, and dissent is not tolerated. This is also the basis of the beautiful "first person platformer" game Mirror's Edge, from EA.

You're a roof-running courier, jumping from rooftops to zip-lines to steel plates on cranes to small thermal exhaust ports ... the whole time avoiding the "blues" who keep shooting at you. I love that the training mode shows you how to grab one of their guns, and the very next thing it shows you is how to empty it of bullets and throw it away.

The visual style of this game is a total win ... grab the free demo and see what you think. It's definitely worth full price!

Fallout Three for PS3

2009-01-28T22:53:00.000-08:00

I keep coming back and playing more of Fallout 3. The quests just keep enticing you to do *one more* little piece ... and the open world style of the game provides tons of side-quests that you can do when you're bored or frustrated with the main quest line. Next thing you know, hours have passed.

You can tell that a lot of imagination went into the game, it's engaging and visually very pretty. (Technically, it's glitchy, so make sure you save each time you level-up and keep three or four save files going back.) Even though I've had to roll back to a couple old save files here and there to recover from a bug, I'd recommend the game. It'll be perfect when the price gets down under $40.

Acer Aspire One Netbook

2008-12-29T18:38:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I replaced my usual spiral notebook with an Acer Aspire One netbook. I'm usually out and about when I feel like jotting things down, hence the spiral notebook, but I type *whey* faster than I write. Now I can whip out an under-a-kilo dinky laptop and take notes, without having to clear off a swath of table space.

It's perfect for working with text, taking grubby webcam clips, tuning-in to Pandora, late-night ssh connections to the office -- simple stuff. Keep your MacBook Pro for the heavy stuff ... but keep it at home!

Case-Mod Tip: To dress it up, I found (after much sticky trial and error) that printing graphics on premium photo paper and then using "photo mount" spray adhesive to attach it to the case works nicely.

Vantec SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter

2008-12-26T21:08:00.000-08:00

This thing just saved me a world of pain. Rather than try to resurrect yet another spyware infested windoze machine long enough to pull the important filez off it ... I plugged the IDE disk into this adapter, attached it to my Mac, and stuffed everything into a folder where I could burn it to a disc.

The thing handles the permutations of 2.5", 3.5" and 5.25" IDE or SATA drives, thanks to a thorough combination of power and data cables that are included.

And it was twenty-five bucks!

Ogon Designs Aluminum Wallet

2008-11-10T16:41:00.001-08:00

I haven't carried a wallet for decades. I much prefer a folded stack of bills in one pocket, and a calling card case in the other. My last card case finally got too scungy and I found this brilliant replacement that opens to an accordion of little folders. Clever!

You can fit up to thirty-six cards in it, in seven little pockets. I have frequent-buyer cards in one slot, my business cards in another, my id in one of its own, collected colleages' cards in another slot, and a whole slot for keeping my video game pre-order receipts until release day.

The Last Guy for PS3 (PSN)

2008-11-10T15:58:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of ten dollar quickies and The Last Guy is one of my favorites. It's a total anachronism -- an eight-bit-inspired game with all the power of a modern console.

You must save the humans from the zombies. You run around collecting people from their hiding places, and they follow you to rescue zones. The more you find, the longer they line up behind you ... and the more likely a zombie will spot them as you run past.

These are the sort of gameplay rules you'd give to a Z80 processor, so the PS3's Cell processor just shrugs them off. It leaves plenty of processor time for decorations. There’s a super-catchy soundtrack played on a Moog synth. There's the playing board itself ... each level is based on a satellite photo of a real city, loviningly traced and colored into a beautiful 32-bit image. The humans scream and shriek when zombies get close. And there's a smooth Japanese announcer guy.

It's a ton of small details crafted into a coherent whole that make the game totally compelling and addictive.

Resistance Two for PS3

2008-11-10T15:18:00.000-08:00

Laundry's piling up, new mail goes on the stack, my running shoes gather dust ... everything must take a back seat to fighting aliens in Resistance 2. Foremost, because it's pretty -- the graphics are stunning. Part of the fight takes place in the redwoods of north california and you just keep getting ambushed because you're looking at the lush scenery.

It's also a technical masterpiece. There are parts where you're leading a dozen guys in running street battles. They manage to keep formation around you, they fall back when you fall back, and they subtly lead the way to the next checkpoint. (The bad guys are similarly smart.) The AI is really sophisticated; it's kinda eerie.

I'm not very good at shooters, but this one comes with a "casaul" difficulty setting that a slow-twitch guy like me can handle. And the save points are close enough together that I rarely have much of a walk when I repeatedly die at the hands of an angry squid.

I just sit back and enjoy the cheesy (but fun) story line, blast aliens, and run around the smooth, detailed scenery. I can't put it down! (Which is lucky for humanity, 'cause we’re *whey* outnumbered.) Pew-pew!

Rampage Total Destruction for Wii

2008-09-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

You're a genetically altered monster, smashing your way through cities. You stomp around, you grab pedestrians and eat them, you pick up cars and toss them, you climb buildings to smash windows and pull out people and power-ups, you get on top of buildings and smash helicopters ... basically just a workaday routine in monster land.

I put a lot of quarters into this machine, when I should've been in school. It holds up to those halcyon days.

With the wiimote and nunchuck is not just brilliant ... it's therapy!

Civilization Revolution for PS3

2008-09-01T23:50:00.000-07:00

Conquer the world! You get a choice of cultures, each with its own strengths, and a starting city or group of settlers. Then you you build up your civilization. To win the game, you can either conquer everyone militarily, or you can store up tons of gold and build the World Bank, or you can build culture and wonders that culminate in the UN, or you can work on technology until you're able to launch a mission to Alpha Centauri.

All sorts of cultures. Four ways to win (which means three ways to lose). Plenty of fiddling details like roads, the overlap in the tech trees, opponents with differing strategies ... it makes for a thousand permutations.

I've played a dozen different ways and I'm still not repeating. I love it!

Resistance Fall of Man for PS3

2008-08-03T00:43:00.000-07:00

Save humanity in this first person shooter. It's the usual rules, you run around shooting crap, pick up ammo and the occasional new weapon on the battlefield ... kill anything that moves. Stewart has the best advice, duck behind rocks while they're shooting at you, then step out and shoot when it's quiet. So far so good!

What's better than the usual FPS is the graphics ... the world is lush and detailed. The lighting effects are part of the game, for instance your vision gets a increasingly darker when you've sustained more damage. The story pieces actually tell a story, enough so that I didn't fast forward through the dialog to get to the action.

I can see why everyone's abuzz about Resistance 2 getting here ... if this one looks this pretty, the next one is going to be beautiful.

Mobzombies

2008-07-05T19:19:00.000-07:00

Mobzombies: run from the undead ... using your body as the controller.

plundr.playareacode.com

2008-07-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

Plundr is a browser game (Mac/Windoze, no linux yet) where you make-believe that wifi access points are islands, with unique resources to exploit. Visit different access points during the day to ship goods back and forth.

Super Mario Galaxy for Wii

2008-07-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

Once again, Mario's eternal quest to impress the princess yields a fabulous game. It's the usual run-and-jump rules of Mario ... collecting star pieces (instead of coins), stomping on things, shooting stuff, and beating up bad guys.

You start out running around on teeny planets, like the little prince but with less French. Then there's a part where you get a pair of bee's wings. Another part and you're flipping tiles by walking over them, trying to make 'em all match. After that you might ride a manta ray down a water slide. The same wacky stuff you'd expect from a hero who collects mushrooms.

When this disc isn't *in* the Wii, it's right next to it!

Hot Shots Golf Open Tee 2 for PSP

2008-06-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Hot Shots Golf is a game that stays near the top of the stack because you keep pulling it out for a few minutes here and there. I love the "Minigame" mode, where you've got one shot to get the ball in the hole ... they're all straight shots, and the green slopes right into the hole, but you have to pay attention or you'll miss. I also like the longer-playing "Challenge" mode, where you complete a whole course.

The thing is, I really don't like golf. Tons of land fenced in, tons of water spent on a few people, super-competetive freaks who don't remember that it's a game, after all. So why does the video game appeal to me? I think it's because they've really *nailed* the scenery and the physics, making it more screensaver than game in some respects. I just enjoy flying through the different sites, and watching the parabolic course of a ball struck with a force and then deflected by gravity. It's actually kinda relaxing!

Burnout Paradise for PS3

2008-06-17T21:42:00.000-07:00

I love this game, and not just because it boots up to the rock anthem "Paradise City" by Guns 'n' Roses.

It's a driving game, where you start out with a basic car, driving around town, finding challenges. Challenges can be a race, or a challenge to destroy other cars, or a trial to do stunts in a time limit ... each time you succeed, you collect new cars and things. Some are easy, some are hard, and your choice of car and strategy change things subtly.

It's an incredibly detailed world. The challenges are varied enough you can "just pick one" and never get bored. There are persistent challenges, too, like jumping through all the billboards you can find/reach. The music that plays throughout is great.

The best part, though, are the slow-motion playbacks of your spectacular crashes. Kaaaaaaa--boooooom!

brightkite.com

2008-06-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

Andrew suggested that we try Brightkite. It's a location based mobile social networking app. It does a good job of doing what others do, letting you "check-in" at different locations and then make notes about each location. Checking in lets your friends track you; and you can see where your friends are.

Unfortunately, all these sites still suffer from the problem of figuring out what "your location" means. Pretty much the only thing I can match on is an address (although once I do that, I can give it a shorthand name) and I just don't know the address (or fancy spelling) of places like University Towne Centre [sic].

The problem of figuring out what "place" means to a user is gonna get solved ... it just hasn't yet. (And GPS is not a solution in itself.)

Namco Museum Battle Collection for PSP

2008-05-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

You get seventeen Namco arcade games emulated onto the PSP ... functionally similar to if you ported MAME to PSP. But you also get four games re-done for the widescreen of the PSP: pac-man, galaga, dig-dug and rally-x.

The re-done games are *really* well-done, we loved them! But every once in a while I just had to go retro and play Xevious, just as it looked on some old Z80 processor, decades ago.

The best ten bucks spent on our PSP so far!

vimeo.com

2008-05-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

Vimeo is a video sharing site that lets you share HD video. While the kids are posting to YouTube, and the SLR-toting crowd are trying flickr's video functionality, the professional video artists have been at Vimeo.

SimpleTODO for Mac OS X

2008-05-18T22:10:00.001-07:00

SimpleTODO is my current To Do item applet. It's pretty, and it lets you sort things into categories that can be expanded & collapsed. It's between this and Anxiety, until I give-in and purchase OmniFocus.

Quicksilver for Mac OS X

2008-05-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

Quicksilver is, well, it's an app launcher .. but it's also a customizable "thing doer." For launching apps, one keystroke (I use command-option-F1) and then I type enough of the name of an app to be distinct, and then hit return and the app launches.

Keystroke, m, a, i, l, return. Keystroke, f, i, r, e, return. Keystroke, t, e, r, m, return.

Did I mention that it learns? The first letter is usually all I need.

Facebook Lexicon

2008-04-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

Condiment competition: mayo breaks away from the pack.

tumblr.com

2008-04-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

Tumblr, FTW! Finally, another app that's fun enough I'm still using it! I mean, I *try* mobile and user-generated apps all the time ... but it's really rare that I actually keep using one after I've played with it, tried its features, showed it to my friends and crafted a quick, superficial review.

Tumblr lets me "dash off a quick note" much like I already do on twitter ... but it also accepts pictures and videos and other things that don't fit so neatly into 140 characters of UTF-16.

It's great to snap a cameraphone picture, email it to tumblr with a descriptive subject line and have it just get appended to my "tumblog" automagically. (Video too!) It's more casual than adding things to my flickr stream, and whey easier than a "real" blog, which takes engagement/attention before I hit "post."

Ambient Intimacy got a really sweet upgrade!

Nike Plus Sportband

2008-04-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

Nike introduced the Nike+ SportBand this week. It's a little USB device that stows away on a wrist strap and records the data from your Nike shoes. Later you plug it into your computer to upload stats to Nike. It includes the in-shoe transponder and it's only sixty bucks. Don't have Nikes? Ziptie the transponder to your existing shoes and use "calibration" mode to teach it how they "feel."

Some marketing genius got their wings for the up-sell possibilities, but I can't wait to see what the alternate reality gaming people think up!

Suppose you want to walk X miles per week as part of your commute ... but you never know when the bus will appear *while* you're walking to the next stop, making you wait for the next-next bus.

Now I'll bet your phone has rudimentary GPS and *some* internet capability. So you punch up www.mightaswellwalk.com and it looks up the next bus' arrival time, distance to the next stop, divides by your average morning/afternoon pace and tells you "might as well walk!" (And if you're whey under your weekly goal it could nag you, "better walk!")

This could get really interesting!

RoadID Interactive

2008-03-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

RoadID lets runners, bikers, nudists or demented/tenured elders keep emergency contact & medical information on them without having to carry a wallet. Laser-etched stainless steel threaded onto a bracelet, anklet or shoelace fob presents seven lines of text to tell paramedics who you are and what special conditions you've got. So far, not exciting.

What *is* exciting is the RoadID Interactive. Two lines of text identify you to whomever finds your mangled body, but the rest of the text instructs rescuers to contact RoadID by 800 number or web for your information, 24/7. An included serial number and PIN secure these data with a shared secret.

You tell RoadID what drugs you're popping *now* or what condition you *just* got from a toilet seat and they make sure that first-responders always get the latest info.

Does your neighbor in the changing room really need to know that you're taking antipsychotics?

HP PhotoSmart C4385 All-in-One

2008-03-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

We got one of these printers a few months ago and it's perfect. When not in use, the paper in and out tray flips closed for maximum kitty-defense. It includes wifi networking. It reads any kind of memory card. You can scan over the network -- and I don't mean the box just says you can do it -- you can actually do it, even with a Mac. And it fits fine on a standard book shelf. (Goodbye ugly table just for holding a printer and network adaptimifier!)

Anxiety for Mac OS X

2008-03-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

Part of the iCalendar specification describes "To Do" items. Apple complies with the spec, but you have to open Mail to access your To Do lists. Can't I just have 'em in a floating little window that I put somewhere out of the way, yet always at hand?

It's small, it's simple and it's called Anxiety!

seesmic.com

2008-03-18T00:04:00.000-07:00

"Incoming message from starfleet command..." because in the future we'll *all* use video voicemail. Embedded in laptops and fones, video cameras are becoming ubiquitous. Web browsers with Flash(tm) easily capture video from any device, letting web developers "just embed it." Now just add broadband internet/3G and season to taste.

Seesmic is structured as a forum for *discussion* rather than broadcast, and it's fascinating. Watch someone's comment in video, then watch others' video replies to it, then click to add your own video to the fray. The interface makes it simple to view the current threads or quickly find replies to your own comments.

I think this site's gonna succeed where others fail because it's not just another broadcasting tool ... it's about conversation. It'll be awesome to see what happens as the community gets bigger and integrates disparate voices and sub-cultures. The video flame wars should be spectacular!

Wifi Autodiscovery Soap Box

2008-03-13T20:12:00.001-07:00

Some clever attendee at sxsw set up a politically-inspired shared-device on the wifi network. (Easily done with file sharing or printer sharing settings.) When browsing the available wifi networks, their device's name appears in the menu of auto-discovered choices.

iminta.com

2008-02-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

Andrew tipped me off to iminta.com, a social network aggregator. It's the first I've tried, so I can't really compare it to anything else.

Anyways, you tell it what sites you're on; It natively talks to twitter, flickr, youtube, google reader, digg, delicious ... a bunch of others. It's *very* easy to set up. And once set, it tracks your activity on all of your social network sites.

Then your friends sign up, supplying the same infos.

All your social networking sites and all of their social networking sites stream a continuous flood of data into the tubes, and iminta happily aggregates it. Then it emails you a daily update, telling you all about how your cow orkers wasted their whole day on twitter and digg.

After a couple days the novelty wore off for me; too much information without any filtering. But I'll recommend it *heartily* to the data-addicted!

Danger Assimilated

2008-02-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

Microsoft just bought Danger.

ShoveBox for Mac OS X

2008-02-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

Note to self ...

Something to pick up at the drug store. A URL someone sent you when you were too busy to click through. The name of a new SNS you want to try. A dozen things a day you need to jot down and deal with later, not now.

The Getting Things Done (tm, r, all rights reserved, buy my book, watch my segment on a fox morning show) method says these go in your "inbox."

These days, they're going in my ShoveBox!

drop.io

2008-02-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

drop.io is yet another dropbox site ... except better. Sure, you can upload files of any type and download 'em later. Image files are conveniently displayed as thumbnails and mp3s can be listened to in yer browser. Quick text notes are easily added to your drop, just click and type ... it's even easier on the mobile version of the site. Natch, you can subscribe to an rss feed or receive email when filez are added to your drop. Hold me back.

The super-spiffy feature, however, is that you can leave voicemail for your dropbox. Every drop has a phone number (in New York, not the Indian Ocean) and an extension; call it up, enter your extension and leave a message. The system turns it into an mp3 and adds it to the drop!

Someone should create a drop and record bluetools yammering into their always-attached bluetooth headsets.

photobucket.com

2008-02-01T18:36:00.000-08:00

Photobucket is a picture and video sharing site. They seem to target teens and they appear to be primarily ad-supported. They've got the usual links to order merchandise with your pictures on it, but they aren't pushing it as their main deal (e.g. shutterfly). And they're definitely not for professionals (e.g. flickr).

It was super-easy getting photos into my online album. Their "Bulk Uploader" is a jabba app that lets you browse the pictures on your computer, shown as thumbnails, and click to add/subtract them from the queue waiting to upload. All right there in your browser.

Similarly, they make it easy to embed images in other sites' pages. Each image in your album includes the address and html code right there in the album. Copy and paste.

It's pretty slick how quickly you can create an account, upload some pictures, and then embed them elsewhere. I'm impressed!

glitterfy.com

2008-01-24T19:05:00.000-08:00

Is your myspace page loud enough?

... it's like Figlet, but not!

shutterfly.com

2008-01-17T22:07:00.001-08:00

Shutterfly is an online photo storage site with a focus on facilitating printed output. A month ago I took pictures at a family function and folks asked me to upload to Shutterfly so that they could browse the fotos and then order prints for pickup at Target.

I'm a long time flickr user; it was fun to try another service.

A couple clicks and it'd integrated into my iPhoto. Then it ran me through registration and *presto* I was uploading photos. Very slick.

It was simple to share the album with the folks from the family function. And when people added comments to photos, the site sent me a summary the next day. *Click* and there I am, reading folks' comments. Very seamless.

Clearly this is a site driven by users' feedback and usage, rather than business requirements to "monetize" and "up sell" everything. I'm very impressed!

MySQL Assimilated

2008-01-16T14:28:00.000-08:00

Sun just bought MySQL.

Sea Change

2007-12-17T22:07:00.000-08:00

A month back, Scott Beale wrote about a shirt created by Improv Everywhere; the shirt allegedly infringed a trademark of Best Buy. On Tuesday, December 11, Beale got a cease and desist letter from a Best Buy lawyer (or shell script). But by Wednesday December 12, not only did Best Buy acknowledge the first amendment rights of bloggers (their word choice, not mine) they actually sincerely apologized.

Similarly, on Friday, December 14, T-mobile stopped delivering customers' SMSes to or from twitter.com. In arrogant letters, "Executive" customer service representatives claimed that *not only* is twitter an unapproved third party application, but any attempt to cancel one's service over the issue will result in a $200 charge. But by Sunday, the issue was mysteriously resolved.

Both corporations back-pedaled; Beale and Twitter both graciously called the events a misunderstanding. Not the power dynamic you'd expect, is it?

crowdvine.com

2007-12-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

Crowdvine is a tool that allows you to create your own social network in just a few minutes. It works, but *man* is it ugly. No I mean really, it looks like a thirteen year old cobbled it together while working his or her way through a "Learning Ruby on Rails" book.

I checked; it turns out the "thirteen year old" is an industry veteran, Tony Stubblebine, who you might recognize because he wrote the O'Reilly Regular Expression Pocket Reference that some of us can't live without. But the amount of press this fun prototype has gotten is disproportionate to its utility. It's spooky, actually.

Now, sites based on crowdvine and re-skinned by professionals are pleasantly functional and smooth. But clearly a lot of time has gone in to these custom versions. Nice framework, but rapid code deployment definitely doesn't translate to rapid site launch.

VoodooPad for Mac OS X

2007-12-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

VoodooPad is a desktop wiki, recommended to me by a cow orker. It's made by Flying Meat, who describe it as a "garden for your thoughts." Some folks thoughts are ticker-tapes, others slag heaps, I like a garden.

I'm trying to replace the myriad Stickies on my desktop with a "notebook" type of app and this is the best I've seen so far. It's easy to get started by copying and pasting old notes into it ... and it's just as easy to go the next step to full wiki-style linking and templating and categorizing madness.

VoodooPad includes a plugin framework and comes standard with things like word count, alphabetize and record audio. You can even insert quick sketches that you draw right on a page using your mouse.

It's awesome! And free to download and try out. $29.95 removes the fifteen-page limit imposed on the free trial.

Various, Inc. Assimilated

2007-12-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

Penthouse Media Group has reportedly acquired Various Inc. Various runs a handful of "dating" sites including Adult Friend Finder and its anti-particle Big Church.

habbo.com

2007-12-04T01:13:00.000-08:00

Habbo is like Second Life with Lego people.

Create and dress an avatar, then walk around and chat with folks. Uh, that is if you have Shockwave installed, which doesn't run on Mac OS X or Linux. (Parallels running Windows XP with IE 6 works!)

Visit other people's rooms or create a room of your own for free. Though to decorate your room, you must spend Habbo Coins. Things like chairs and rugs are around a buck each ... and they have a many ways to collect your payment: credit cards, 976 numbers, prepaid cards, premium-fee SMS ... more options than a skuzzy porn site!

Overall a great idea, but the up-sell is sleazy. (Particularly when 90% of their users are 13-18 years old.) At least in real life you can scrounge up cinder-block shelving and cable-spool coffee tables ...

Automated Configuration Management

2007-11-19T01:58:00.000-08:00

If you've got more than a few servers, you pro'ly wish you had configuration management software. In fact, by maintaining that handful of kickstart configs for new hosts and the veritable slag-heap of shell scripts that you run on already-deployed servers, you've pretty much built your own.

But other folks have already invented this wheel:

bcfg2 (interesting...)
Lets you define what a configuration "should" look like and then have agents tell you what's actually out there; if they'd just document it, humans could use it!

cfengine (safe choice)
That for loop you're using to update your systems is getting pretty big and your shell scripts are all pretty kludgey; cfengine gives you the ultimate automated for loop ... but it's ugly!

puppet (my choice)
By now you're wondering if you can just write your own system where communication over https allows clients to run scripts periodically. So did these folks! (And it rocks.)

hi5.com

2007-11-03T23:07:00.001-07:00

Start-ups have this wacky period when they switch from the seed-funded crazy land grab, to the second-round-funded fortification of battlements.

Hi5.com appears to be *right* on this cusp. It's a brilliant idea and it's going to be interesting to watch. Meanwhile, it's fascinating to see the dichotomy frozen in time.

Crazy land grab:
* Upon login you are immediately asked to invite your friends.
* Your profile page prominently shows your stats, enticing you to add more.
* They've outsourced video to VideoEgg; avoiding capital investment in favor of higher costs per item.
* Their database is clearly a central bottleneck.

Imminent Metamorphosis:
* They're hiring.
* Some database results are apparently being cached closer to the app. (e.g. "friends of this user" is less-than-dynamic)
* They are prominently featured as part of Google's Open Social hype.

I can't wait to see how the company matures!

iSaints Day

2007-11-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

Done with hologit and imovie.

Mac OS X Leopard

2007-10-30T23:38:00.000-07:00

Here's what I keep hearing:

Bobo: "Hey, what do you think of the Leopard update?"
Momo: "Dude, it sucks."
Bobo: "What!? How come?"
Momo: "Well you know how you can tell it to give you a back-rub every time the screensaver activates?"
Bobo: "Yeah! That sounded totally great! What's wrong with it?"
Momo: "It doesn't spend enough time on my neck and shoulders! I can't believe Apple would treat its customers this way! Grrrrr!"

But here's what I see:

* The real kewl stuff is in the kernel; read the Ars Technica review.
* ZFS: *everyone* is porting it ... this is going to be interesting.
* This update *sped up* my computer; why do we expect the opposite?
* It installed without making me sit there and click a "gee whiz" button over and over.

So, briefly:

I really like it.

mippin.com

2007-10-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

Mippin is an RSS reader for mobile phones, currently in beta. I like having some reading material on my phone (for lunch time alone or when I arrive at appointments early) and I've been using Google Reader up until now. After two days with Mippin, I tossed Google out. Here's why:

* Mippin is pretty, with favicons and all. (What’s Google’s obsession with the Windows 3.1 color palette?)
* Mippin displays things compactly, yet expands for modern phones with larger displays.
* RSS feeds with image attachments include a thumbnail next to the entry’s title.
* I can ignore RSS for a couple days and not have a stack of "unread" messages. (Didn't we learn anything from usenet obsession?)

Innovage Digital Camera

2007-10-23T22:26:00.001-07:00

Oh, MYGOD ... it plays "Moon River" when you put in the driver disk! This ten dollar digital camera is going to be the best thing EVER. I popped in the included AAA battery and shot a few photos and then booted XP in my Parallels environment to install the easy-to-use patent-pending photo management software and suddenly I'm having breakfast at Tiffany's. This is going to rock!

It takes twenty pictures at high resolution: 352 x 288 pixels. It was easy to get the MY CAMERA software to transfer and save them as jpegs, but I'm still trying to figure out how to delete them from the camera. I can't wait to try capturing "several seconds of video" on it. Being able to "simultaneously send on the internet" is going to change my life, I just know it.

What? Like those Holga freaks are any better? The medium *is* the message!

Jaiku Assimilated

2007-10-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Google just bought Jaiku.

faceyourpockets.com

2007-09-25T01:20:00.000-07:00

The concept is simple, empty your pockets onto a scanner, then press your face down on it and hit "scan." The collection of people's scans is fascinating.

It's one of those weird sites where your first thought is, "wow, this is neat." Followed quickly by the skepticism of "wait, some people are staging the contents of their pockets." And then slowly, after a dozen more faced-pockets, you realize that "staged or spontaneous, there's something eerily 'genuine' about this."

I've pulled a dusty HP scanjet 4670 out of the closet just so I can contribute, because after a few dozen faced-pockets you just can't stop wondering how *your* scan will compare.

versionate.com

2007-09-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

Wikis are really great for managing text, but they suck at managing proprietary formats of data. Natch, the purists would tell you to port the proprietary stuff to open formats, but you just can't get a wiki to sum a column of values, calculate the average and display both values along with the standard deviation.

So we all have these orphaned little word and excel files that we use for stuff that doesn't fit in the wiki. If you're organized, you and your cow orkers keep those files on a server somewhere, so you can all make changes and all have the most recent version of the files.

Enter versionate, who've souped-up the wiki's ability to deal with those orphaned files. You upload a word, excel or powerpoint file and they let everyone just view it right there in a browser. No viewers needed, it just renders it in html. And then get this, you can *edit* the files in a browser too!

So there you are in the datacenter on a borrowed computer that's got nothing more than a browser. You can still get to your team's excel file that you needed in order to find a spare IP or something. You can view it in the browser. And if you need to, you can update and it and save it back in the same format it was in.

It's really quite spiffy.

pownce.com

2007-07-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

Everyone describes pownce as "the digg people's answer to twitter." And that's really what it is, a recreation of twitter-pioneered micro-blogging, but with the experience of having watched twitter evolve and scale ... plus with a couple of useful features integrated.

Natch, you post a few quick words about what you're up to and your friends get to see it on their own pownce page. Woohoo.

But then they've added the features that twitterites seem to've invented/popularized on their own. Any post can be designated a "Link" and your post will include a little chicklet to click and visit whatever site you're talking about. Designate a post as a "File" and you'll be able to upload about 10 Mb along with your text, that friends and fans can download with a click.

They've also formalized the twittermob, allowing you to designate your post as an "event." You can then specify a time and place that pertain to whatever you're posting. So in case your friends couldn't figure out what "beers at zeitgeist after work" means, they're now saved from the hobgoblin of ambiguity.

In short, it's a knock-off with a few informal "use cases" integrated as actual "features." So naturally, I hope that twitter catches up or does it differently or gets that magical "first mover" advantage and continues to survive as the "kleenex" of microblogging.

Unfortunately for twitter, pownce has something that twitter just hasn't bothered to build ... a desktop client that is full-featured, unobtrusive, aesthetically pleasing and written in-house. They use Adobe's AIR platform (flash on steroids and rebranded) to make it work on macs and pcs, and it really just works. It pains me to love it, but sheesh, have you ever tried to find a twitter desktop app that wasn't either totally busted or totally ugly? (Pocket Tweets doesn't count, that's hip-top.)

At lunch today, my cow orkers mentioned that Twitter just received a round of funding from some small players, and one of them is Marc Andreessen ... it'd suck for him if pownce turns out to be the Internet Explorer of microblogging.

shozu.com

2007-07-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

In a nutshell, Shozu extends your camera phone's capabilities to save images or video directly to your favorite blogging and picture sharing sites. It'll send stuff you've previously saved on your phone, or it'll send something you just captured. They're currently able to send to blip.tv, buzznet, any email address, flickr, an ftp account, blogger, kodak, dada.net, livejournal, metaweblog, moblog.uk, picassa, pikeo, qipit, scoopt, textamerica, typepad, vox, webshots, wordpress and youtube. They don't seem to support social networking sites yet, like myspace, facebook, xanga and the like.

In short, it works just fine. Once configured, it's just a couple clicks on the phone to send your pictures and video to any site you like. Every new picture or video you make, it pops up a menu and offers to send it to your configured sites. There's even an automatic CC (as in carbon copy) function to always upload images to the sites you configure.

To me, though, it doesn't add much value. I've already got entries for flickr, radar, rabble, livejournal and others in my phone's contact list, so it's the same number of clicks for me to send pictures to any of those sites. Plus, shozu adds their own logo to every post they make on your behalf, and it's a pretty big one. MMS or emailing my pictures into a sharing site directly doesn't add anyone's logo to my posts.

The other nuisance is that I can no longer take several pictures in a row on this N75. After every picture, it tells me to open the flip phone so I can tell it whether or not I want to send the image to one of my configured sites.

For some folks, maybe road-warriors (claims adjusters?) or maybe teens or maybe grampa, this might be a really useful utility. Plus it's the only one I've seen that lets me upload to an ftp site, which could be turned into a very interesting sort of "webcam" application, showing my latest cameraphone picture on a web page, up to the minute. But for me, I'll be sticking to direct upload with the email/MMS gateways kept in my contact list.

Nice features; maybe they'll get bought for parts.

spriteyard.mobi

2007-07-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago the mobile industry was all excited that Coca-Cola was actually going to try its hand at a mobile social networking community. So they created a Sprite-branded mobile community called The Yard. I think the name is supposed to refer to the fun place children get to go when they're not in class ... not the place prison inmates go to lift weights and shank rival gang members.

To gain access to the yard, you must text the word "yard" to 59666 (which spells "lymon") and they'll send you back a magical URL that you can access on yer phone. The site lets you upload pictures, and issue "shouts" to all of your friends. I didn't have any friends so I clicked the link to go find some.

You can search for new friends based on shared interests or location or "tag" ... and if you pick interests they give you a list of drop-down menu choices to cleanly cubby-hole yourself into a market researcher's matrix. For instance, one "interest" category is "How do you stay in touch with your friends" so you can find friends who share your desire to connect by phone, email, IM or smoke signal. I think that last one is to identify the stoners.

It's interesting to see a gigantic corporation dipping a toe in the water. The poor bastards gotta be terrified. Somewhere a marketing person is saying "how are we ever going to commercialize a medium where people just send things to each other directly, with no corporate supervision!? Think of the children!"

velvetpuffin.com

2007-06-24T22:51:00.000-07:00

Velvet puffin is a desktop app that lets you log-in to all of your instant messaging accounts all at once. It's a *really* version 1.0 app. *All* it does is log you in to several messaging systems at once and connect to friends on your different systems ... whcih is what Trillian and others did back when they were verison 1.0. So it won't replace my own version 3-plus IM aggregator, but it does do plenty of nifty 1.0 things that people will dig. Casual users might really enjoy it.

It's a flash application, so it's cross-platform, but don't try to get it to do too much fancy work without leaking memory. On the other hand, AOL, Yahoo and Google are so insistent on bundling their way onto your desktop, the memory footprint isn't all that big a nuisance in comparison. Honestly, the choice between velvet puffin's memory usage and a client that pushes flashing banner ads at me all the time ... I might take the memory hog.

Sure, I uninstalled it pretty quickly, in favor of Trillian which I already use ... but I don't think I'm typical of web users. Velvet Puffin is incredibly easy to install and use, and I think that's important.

Perhaps they'll be bought-out for parts. The cross-system log-in, by itself, is a valuable function. They also have a reasonably solid webcam broadcasting tool, thanks to flash. The ability to share photos and videos with other users rounds out its features nicely. These are pretty useful parts.

widsets.com

2007-06-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Nokia's gotten onto something here. Widsets is a java app for your mobile phone that gives you a nice, scrollable, attractive page of widgets that feed you information. Right now it's mostly just some rss readers, but they've just released their api and folks like jaiku are making some pretty functional widgets for this cute little app; functional widgets that don't just read, they publish back.

What's fun is that it's a "push" model, so each of your rss feeds' new items gets sent to your mobile right away. Each feed can have a different alert sound at a different volume level. In a parallel universe where I had to be a business development sort of person, I could see myself setting quiet alerts for my industry's news feeds, louder alerts for items from my clipping service and even louder alerts for new entries in the blogs of my competition.

It reminds me of the running ticker-tape you'd've seen in the serious business person's office when "wire service" meant an actual wire and ticker-tape meant a piece of very long paper. Plus ca change?

What *did* ever become of Pointcast?

Moo Cards

2007-06-15T20:40:00.001-07:00

I'm in love with these people. They use the pictures that you select from your gallery on flickr or bebo or fotolog or vox or livejournal or views from your second life or habbo. Then they print 'em on the front of these cute little 28 x 70 mm cards. Then you tell them some text to put on the back of the card, mostly just something static but they also allow you to include basic variables like "the name of the picture" and stuff.

Twenty bucks gets you one hundred cards. I threw together a few pictures of the cat, some flowers, and a derby dolls bout for the front of the cards; then I threw some pithy text and the URL for my podcast on the back. I handed 'em out at work to everyone who came by my desk and people loved them. In fact, I had none left after *one* day.

I think I love it because it's just a nice, simple, versatile thing. You could make some really fun calling cards with this app ... or you could make a *killer* meme initialization vector. The cards make you crop your images so narrow that the viewer naturally wants to see what the rest of the photo looked like ... so you put a URL or text on the back that lets them see the rest of "the big picture" and it's irresistible!

piczo.com

2007-06-11T00:44:00.000-07:00

This is the site where you can upload, store and manage pictures and videos ... and they're squarely targeting the tweens, from what I can tell. Right there on the main page is the enticement to upload content that is "hip and fresh" but "safe."

The experience of building a page to share by pictures and stuff was really smooth tho ... it was like the first time I saw Aldus Pagemaker. And I really enjoyed the video upload thingie. I clicked a thing to add a video to my page and they said I had to install VideoEgg ...which made me nervous, but I was actually very impressed. They found my webcam and offered me simple one-click tools to record a video, import a previously recorded video, and basically do anything it took to get a video on the site. These are very impressive warez.

What's weird is that every page of the site reminds you not to share personal information with sites you donut know ... and yet the only advertisers on the site so far are sleazy "click the monkey to win an ipod nano" sort of sites who make a living off getting your personal information.

imeem.com

2007-06-01T19:01:00.001-07:00

If i was a teenager again I'd have this site running in the background all the time.

If you like a song, you can click a button to add a blog post on blogger, livejournal, wordpress, typepad, myspace or xanga. The post it creates integrates the flash music player inline. So your adoring fans can play the song while they read the rest of your blog.

It's not easy to just hit "play" and let it drive, though, the way you can with something like pandora. You can listen to playlists that folks have assembled, but for now I'm just playing a tune and then clicking something at random from the "more music" list on the page. I tried the genre listings, but when I selected Jazz, instead I got some crappy soul music in a weird language ... then again, some folks would probably argue that's the definition of the stuff.

Yahoo Widgets

2007-05-29T00:37:00.000-07:00

I'd been using Google Gadgets on my desktop for a little while, but they weren't really impressing me. Then I upgraded to Vista (this was the biggest mistake of the year, btw) and decided I'd try out their widgets interface, I think they call it the "Sidebar." Those were pretty, but there weren't a whole lot of 'em.

So now I'm back to Konfabulator. It's officially Yahoo Widgets. But it's the Konfabulator I fell in love with so many years ago.

Wonder what I'll try next ...

threadless.com

2007-05-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

I got a couple of fun t-shirts off threadless.com, the other day. We'll see what the quality is like. What I like is that artists upload their artwork for putting on t-shirts and then the users of the site vote on which ones they would like to see actually offered for sale.

Judging from the ratings I saw, the audience is pretty tasteless, but WTF, that's democracy.

linkedin.com

2007-05-29T00:23:00.000-07:00

Oh my god I do *not* want to buy your stupid amway products.

Actually for some people this site is totally perfect and they love it. But me, I keep just getting these shotgun invites from people who think that quantity of connections is more important that quality of connections. I'll bet they're the ones with the MBAs, too.

xanga.com

2007-05-29T00:21:00.000-07:00

The dudes at xanga.com have a really solid architecture behind their app and it shows. It seems like the undoing of so many of these sites is that they just can't scale and I think these dudes have it figured out.

On the other hand, if they try to up-sell me one more thing I'm going to scream. It's so sad when a dot-com goes panhandling.

virb.com

2007-05-29T00:19:00.000-07:00

Virb is one hell of a pretty site. I really love it. On the other hand it made it so easy to integrate my other social networking sites that I don't think I've actually used virb, so much as set up a nice graphical presentation layer that reads my other sites.

Maybe that's the point, tho.

Gmail for Blackberry

2007-05-29T00:13:00.000-07:00

It's a little branded J2ME app for doing gmail on the small screen. I created a special account on gmail and set my blackberry to check it. It's handy. The actual blackberry messaging system is still my main.

radar.net

2007-05-29T00:08:00.000-07:00

Radar.net were one of the first to get a Facebook application running, so I had to check 'em out. I like it! They let you email your cellfone pix to their service, where they add 'em to a shoebox for you. Then you can add "friends" who are always allowed to see what pictures you've go on the system. Also, for each picture, you can have the service email photos off to anyone you like ... and of course when you send a picture, they make it easy to invite the person as a friend.

Curiously, their privacy policy is very opt-in. Initially no one can see your pictures.

jaiku.com

2007-05-29T00:04:00.000-07:00

Jaiku is twitter done right. I don't know what their connection with Nokia is, but it scares me. They never had a scaling issue, so there's someone behind the scenes who was willing to pay for good architecture instead of just rapid development.

They will rule the world. Lets just hope they bring socialized medicine with them.

Mobile strategy: They have an app built for the Nokia S60 that doesn't just access the site, it integrates folks' posts into the contact list on the phone! They're in private beta of a J2ME app, which is good news because the "community provided" J2ME apps suck.

twitter.com

2007-05-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

The digerati have a home and it's twitter. All the people I miss in the bay area are on here. It's like an SMS answering machine ... you don't have to listen to your phone chirp every second when a friend posts some inane thing about the new LOLcats post, you just log in when you've got a few minutes and get all their messages in a stream.

It's brilliant. Do one thing; do it well. Then publish it all with rss so it can infect other sites.

Mobile strategy: designed from the start to be SMS enabled, it's very easy to do the whole darned thing on your phone. J2ME apps are numerous and hit-or-miss ... my flavorites are tinytwitter, twitterberry, and jargong.

gaiaonline.com

2007-05-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

We tried gaiaonline.com at work. I think they basically took a page from World of Warcraft, that your app is sticky if you can make an avatar that's totally customized and there are "quests" to do that earn you quatloos that can be traded for more elite features.

But I'm just waiting for the first pedophile scandal.

The company that runs this thing is *really* smart about targeting demographics ... who knows if this particular one's going to make them famous ... they're gonna totally pwn some niches.

livejournal.com

2007-05-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

I like livejournal. It's a really clean interface, it makes it easy to update stuff, not only is it easy to get stuff pushed in to a livejournal account, it seems to be also supported in every "include my blog in my page" thing out there. I think they've really got the idea of an appliance ... one that does the job just right and also offers plenty of chrome if that's what you're into.