Results tagged “Google”

Uh oh, Mac Fans! Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads have been on airwaves for a good while, so long that a random person likely couldn't tell you precisely how long they've been on unless they've been analyzing them carefully. Well, Apple is officially done with them. The ads sent plenty of mixed messages, and it was uncertain as to whether it actually sold Macs or merely irritated people. The ads are already gone from Apple's website, and have been replaced with ads telling you why you want a Mac.

The manga industry has fallen on hard times lately, along with the anime industry. The most recent casualty is CMX Manga calling it quits. They will officially be a memory in July, though fate of the ongoing titles you're collecting from them have an as-yet unknown fate. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of Tenjho Tenge manga fans cheering right now, but it's never great when people lose their jobs, or when the manga industry shows further signs of weakening.

(Not to defend their silly censorship, of course.)

The PSP may be the best selling console in Japan this year, but its life has been tough outside of that country. Sony knows this, and they're not about to give up. They're currently prepping an ad campaign to let people know that this thing still has some life left in it. Hopefully they're successful, because its upcoming lineup is very good. They realized they needed to keep it alive long enough for XSEED to localize all of those Falcom games!

Pac-Man had its 30th birthday last week, and Google celebrated by having Pac-Man playable on its home page during Friday and Saturday. Chances are anyone who worked on a computer outside of the house during those two days got absolutely nothing done. It was one of the most evil, despicable things Google has ever done. And it was great.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project set the longevity record for operating on the surface of Mars Thursday with it's still-operating rover: Opportunity. "Still-operating" is in that sentence because NASA also had another rover on Mars called "Sprit," which they lost contact with on March 22nd. Opportunity is passing a record set by NASA's Viking 1 Lander back in November of 1982. 

A happy year of the Tiger to everyone!

Well, a happy year to everyone except those who were butthurt over the Google logo of a luger that was posted and then taken down again.  As much sympathy as I have over the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili (whose name is so hard to spell, I had to copy/paste it), there are people who would consider such a logo to be a tribute to his death.  Besides, the logos are done up in advance, and we can't blame Google for being insensitive.  Perhaps it is those who drink too much from the cauldron of Olympic cheer complain about such logos who are really the insensitive ones.  (Oh no, I very nearly said something negative about the Olympics!)

It looks like I wasn't the only one who decided I had better things to do than watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games.  Over in Port Alberni (which is close to my neck of the woods), a video gamer was logged into the Xbox Live network when he noticed someone on the network talking about a school shooting he was planning, saying that the headlines would be remembered forever.  The gamer called the police, who contacted Microsoft, and soon enough, the kid uttering the threats was tracked down to San Antonio and arrested.  What the kid probably should've been playing was a single player game.  Nothing spoils a killing spree like telling people you're going to go on a killing spree.

Here's a single player game for you: Adventures in Sex City.  According to the articles that have suddenly sprung up about it, the game must've just been released.  I can tell you right now that the game would be rated AO if the ESRB got their hands on it.  While I'm on the subject of endorsing stuff, there's a gaming centre in Arizona that's promoting friendly competitive play on the PS3 and Xbox 360 and providing a place for gamers to go to play.  If you happen to be in the vicinity of Tucson, give Arcade-in-a-Box a try.

Microsoft has been pulling out all the stops to steal Sony's Final Fantasy XIII thunder.  Not only does a special FF XIII edition 360 exist, but they've also been advertising the game heavily and not bothering to mention that the game is cross-platform, possibly hoping that gamers will be fooled into buying their system instead of a PS3.  A special edition 360 would be awesome to have; I've already made my decision on which system I'm going to buy for Final Fantasy XIII: it's a secret.

There are more colours available for the Wii remote: blue and pink!  Personally, I want a pink one.  It'll go well with the lilac PSP I don't have yet.  Hey, there's something Sony needs to do: release a completely pink PS3!  There's a Wii gamer down under who won't be able to afford such accessories for quite a long time: he currently owes one and a half million dollars for pirating New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Last but not least, the Church of England is still crying about violence in video games.

I hope those Chinese characters say what I want it to say.

The iPad is probably the most talked about new gadget right now.  This may or may not be good for the device.  My thoughts on this device are: I don't care, let's talk about games.

Yoshinori Kitase revealed that part of the delay in development for Final Fantasy XIII was due to the PlayStation 3's arrival on the market.  In other words, it's all Sony's fault.  It makes me wonder what effect the decision to create a version for the 360 had on the development time for the game.  So what Kitase is saying is that if they'd just stuck with the PlayStation 2, the game would be out by now?  And speaking of March releases on the PS3 for games that are also available on the 360, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City is being ported to the PS3.

Mass Effect 2 is out for the Xbox 360 and it's been selling very well.  Unless you live in certain places that, for some reason, haven't received copies of the game yet.  This doesn't seem to be Microsoft's main worry, though, for they have other fish to fry.  Microsoft's lawyers have filed a motion to dismiss an anti-trust lawsuit filed against them by Datel, a company that made unauthorized memory cards and game controllers for the Xbox 360, citing an earlier precedent set by Apple.  An observation: it seems like the only times anyone working for Microsoft are brutally honest about their products are when companies like Datel threaten the dominance that Microsoft tries to get on the market.  One could argue, though, that it's not really a monopoly as long as there's competition, and it's not like anyone's allowed to make unauthorized games for these systems.

Is it possible that video games can improve your sex life?  That's what Lara Roberts is saying.  She is a mother of two who says she lost over a hundred pounds while using Nintendo's Wii Fit software, and claims it saved her life.  And trust me when I say there is a major difference between her before and after pictures.  And come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if this is why Jann Arden looks like she's lost weight on the cover of her new 2009 album, "Free".

And last but not least, Google Street View seems to have caught some illegal tree cutting in Vancouver.  Given that a lot of this kind of thing happens over there, it's good that some of it happened on camera.  And since I missed last week, stay tuned tomorrow for more geek news!

Happy new year, everyone!  This year's geek news starts off with a murder in New York, most likely over a video game.  The victim had just received a PlayStation system for his birthday (probably a PlayStation 3), and was playing a video game starring Tony Hawk (my best guess is it was probably Tony Hawk Ride).  He only got to enjoy it for a week.  Meanwhile, his attacker has been revealed to have a history of mental illness, and shouldn't have been around the kid in the first place.  It's shocking that the news would report on this, rather than try to blame video games as is the norm.  I don't approve of people being stabbed to death, but if this is how the popular media chooses to report news this year, it looks like 2010 is going to be a good year for a change.

I completely missed anything related to Child's Play this year, which sucks.  Speaking of awesome things that gamers do, Child's Play is an annual charity drive with a video game theme, and this year, the charity event smashed their old record and raised $17,000.  They almost made it over $9000, twice.  Despite the tight economy, people donated more than ever before, and once again made the event a huge success.

In order to keep from being censored in China, all of the major search engines voluntarily restrict the Chinese from making certain searches that their government doesn't approve of.  Well, Google has finally grown a set and told China that it's no longer willing to turn a blind eye to the plight of an entire nation of people, after the company detected a series of cyber attacks on human rights activists who currently live in China.  And simply by reporting this story, we've probably been added to the famous Chinese firewall.  Meanwhile, Google's competitor in China also got hacked.  What, does the whole world hate China or something?  (Yes.)

The open beta of Star Trek On-line has started, which adds yet another game to the long list of MMOs already in existence.  What sets this game apart, though, is the fact that you get to play in an established universe with a long history that you can draw from, and you can just bet that Star Trek nerds will make reference to obscure Trek events while playing the game in order to score some points with no one but themselves.

Spider-Man got rebooted today.  Expect an article from me over the next day or two about science fiction reboots.  Anyway, Sam Raimi pulled out of Spider-Man 4 because he felt that he was being rushed during the production of the movie, and so the film franchise is being tossed out and restarted.  Damn.  I was promised a big Bruce Campbell role in the new film, and now look what happened.  Ah well, at least I still have Burn Notice.

And finally, it's not geek news (unless you dive into the science behind it), but our sympathies to any Haitian readers caught in the recent earthquakes.

As a fan of Numb3rs, and of mathematics in general, I know that you can do a lot of interesting things with an equation.  Well, add forecasting certain kinds of war to the list.  It seems, from the way it's written up on Slashdot, that it works similar to the way probability theory and statistical analysis was used to predict bank robberies in Maryland in 2004.  Unfortunately, the actual article requires a subscription or a fee to get into.  Suffice to say, mathematics strikes again.

Google, meanwhile, faces opposition in its quest to create a database of millions of public domain books, or books whose ownership is unknown.  Apparently, when you're a big enough company, everyone will think you're being evil when you want to index more data.  Meanwhile, Firefox users will no doubt use the latest data on browser usage to crow victory over IE.  It's shown that Firefox 3.5 is currently the most used web browser.  I have a few criticisms, though: multiple versions of the same browser are included on the graph, Chrome isn't even listed (I'd be curious to see how many people are using it), and if you add up the three versions of Firefox listed and the three versions of IE listed, Microsoft's browser is still number one overall.

The new movie Avatar looks like it's going to be very successful.  Well, as long as theatres don't have any more problems with its DRM protection.  A preview screening in Germany was canceled due to a problem with such protection, and critics of DRM are using this as proof that invasive copy protection does not work.  Another kind of avatar looks to make life harder for fat gamers.  Apparently, rather than do what the Wii did and come up with an Xbox 360 version of WiiFit, the company wants to take games away from fat people unless they exercise.  In a way, it's like Microsoft is trying to say, "Stay away, fatty.  No one wants to see you on Xbox Live."

Remember COFEE?  Well, this past week, a couple developers came up with a tool to counter COFEE and keep it from doing its job.  Then a few days later, announced that they were just kidding.  The current message on the official website speaks of selling the code to someone else.  Whatever the purpose of DECAF was, it's helped to remind everyone that COFEE exists.

And finally, coming soon to theatres: a movie written by the guy who made the video at the head of this article and uploaded it to YouTube.

It used to be thought that health care reform in the United States would happen when pigs flew.  Well, this is the sound of one ham flapping.  The United States still has a long way to go before they have the level of health care that I have as a Canadian, but it's a start.  The bill itself is long, very long, and apparently getting longer (mentioned at about 4:12 into part 1 of the episode).  If the biggest complaint you have is that it's big, then that must mean that War and Peace, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Bible are the worst books ever.  Kinda kills your enthusiasm for NaNoWriMo, doesn't it, when an entire party can enter and already be over 1900 pages ahead of you?  I'm only at 13054 words for the month.  Stupid Democrats, showing off.

This week has been a week of milestones.  Sesame Street has celebrated its 40th anniversary, and at the same time, Wallace and Gromit has been around for 20 years.  In fact, if you go to the official Telltale Games web page, you can download a Wallace and Gromit PC game for free!  Hope you hurry, though, because the special offer ends very, very soon.  Within hours of this post, in fact.  Also, speaking of special days, November 5th was Flux Capacitor Day.

There is some good news for injured or crippled pets: they no longer have to fear for their future.  Just ask Andre the dog.  All it takes is one person (or team of people) to decide that something's possible, and something like this can happen.

Flash was never, in anyone's wildest imaginations, the best thing to happen to computers and the Internet.  And when Windows Vista came along, it really showed how awful such an idea was.  Well, welcome to the future.  If such an idea catches on, I hope one day that Flash will go to the same technological graveyard as the Geocities school of web design and the Zip disk.

COFEE has apparently leaked all over the Internet and despite one site's efforts to keep the mess from spreading, by now it's available for pretty much anyone to download.  What this means, of course, is that a piece of software that can break passwords and check your on-line activity has not only been given to regular users such as you and me, but it has also been in the hands of police for quite a while now.  I hope the police haven't abused the power of the software, because I'm sure the rest of the world certainly will.  But it's not like you have to be a rocket scientist to break passwords these days.  A lot of people don't bother changing the generic password they're given when they start using a service or a piece of software.  Take iPhone users, for instance.  If they jailbreak their iPhones, many of them make themselves vulnerable to attack.  iLaugh.

It's never too early to learn, as a baby's cry can tell you.  Apparently, you can cry in French and German, depending on where you were born.  I imagine this means you can cry in other languages as well.  (And no, I'm not kidding, despite the presence of this on the Internet.)  Myself, I remember recently hearing the cry of a young kid who couldn't get their way, and it sounded a lot like an ambulance.  I'm still not kidding.  But even after leaving the womb, a child doesn't stop learning.  Apparently, this is because of the presence of comic books in their lives.  I believe it.  I used to read Tintin and Asterix a lot and look at how I turned out.  But, and this is the important thing, you can't own me.  I'm sorry, but it's true.  And don't bother asking Google this, because I don't think they know either.  (Bonus material: read this.)

Sony finds itself in a lot of legal hot water, lately.  First of all, blind gamers want to enjoy games, too.  And although "visually impared" can mean a lot of things, it makes me think of all those people with no eyesight who can't enjoy games in the first place.  Unfortunately, visual media doesn't come in braille or large print editions, and this means that it's very hard for the visually impared to enjoy a game.  And increasing font size on the screen will do nothing more than overcrowd an already overcrowded menu system on most modern games.  I know I have a hard time seeing the font on some games, but that's because I'm stubborn: you can't really use a 20-year-old television to play a game like Final Fantasy Tactics without being directly in front, squinting at the horrible translation so that I can read it.

Second of all, Sony was finally sued over their firmware updates, and I have to say, it's about time.  An interesting thing to note is that one of the things they're being sued over is the fact that they require certain firmware updates to be present in order to play games you've purchased for your system.  It used to be that you could buy a game and it would run automatically, no extra stuff needed.  Not now.  For those of you who still haven't purchased a current system, here's how it works: when you purchase a PS3 or PSP game, if your system doesn't have the most up-to-date firmware, you might be prompted to update before you're allowed to play the game.  Also, you're not allowed to access certain functions of your system once the new firmware is available, which forces you to download and install it if you still want to use your system the way it was designed to be used.  It's possible, as has been demonstrated, that a system update will brick your machine.  It's worse when it's a required update and it feels like your console is being held hostage until you install it.

I'd better get back to my NaNovel before the day's completely done, but before I go, I wanted to mention that the Large Hadron Collider is still not going to destroy us.  This time, it's because a bird dropped some bread on it.

It's relatively geeky to build your own weather balloon, but an entirely different thing to accidentally let it loose with your son inside.  The nightmare unfolded Thursday and the world watched as the weather balloon sailed through the sky, the status of the boy inside unknown.  Would he be alive?  Would he be dead?  Would he have turned into a cat?  But seriously, since the safety of a child was at stake, naturally every single media outlet was scrambling to be the first to report more details about the story.

Eventually, the balloon landed, and it was found that the kid was not, in fact, inside the balloon.  So did he fall out somewhere?  It turned out that the kid was hiding in the attic.  He feared his father's famous wrath, so he was hiding there for five hours.  His father gave a heartfelt apology for that in front of news cameras.

That would be it, if not for the revelation that the police were working behind the family's back, and behind the back of the news media as well, to investigate whether it was a hoax or not.  While the news media were falling over themselves trying to drum up ratings by reporting everything they could about the real life Hot Air Henry story, police interviewed the husband separately from his family, and got enough to issue a warrant.  Apparently, the family were hoping this would help their goal of being reality TV celebrities.  Well, staying true to crime show tropes, the family has now lawyered up.

But the news didn't have its head completely in the clouds this week.  In an update to a news story we touched upon last week, Microsoft had originally reported that they lost all the data that Sidekick users had entrusted to them, but now it seems they took a peek in the lost and found box, because they've revised their statement significantly.  Considering this is Microsoft we're talking about, people who supposedly should've known what they were doing in the first place, this kind of miracle isn't even in the same ballpark as, say, feeding five thousand people with five loaves of barley bread and two fish, or getting eight days of use out of one day's worth of oil.  Also interesting is the timing.  They announced their miracle right when Windows 7 is launching.  Hmm.

Apparently, Nintendo is the best company in the world.  BusinessWeek magazine used factors such as sales growth and value creation over the past five years.  In other words, to be listed as the best company in the world today, you have to have been the worst company in the world, five years ago.  Or close to it.  If my impressions of the list are correct, then if Nintendo had constantly been at the top of the video game market since it hit a home run with the NES, it might not have even been mentioned in the magazine.

And in other news, Eugene Kaspersky wants to end anonymity on the Internet, and is willing to cut off any country that doesn't agree with him.  Obviously, this guy wouldn't get my vote for President of the Internet, even if he thinks, in his mind, that he is President already.  While he's rubbing his hands together greedily at the thought of all that personal information being available, Google is rubbing their hands together greedily at the thought of their Street View expanding further.  A couple weeks ago, they finally added Canadian cities, and now they're calling on Americans to choose where their Street View Trike goes, since there are so many notable landmarks and other such destinations that cannot be visited by car, but are interesting enough to be documented.  But the quest for more information may become pointless if doomsayers are correct, for the Large Hadron Collider, that machine that was supposed to suck the Earth into a black hole last year but broke before anything could really happen, is finally repaired and cooled back down to operating temperature.  Cue the doomsday warnings in 3, 2...

One of the worst economic recessions in recent history has nearly dragged on for a year now. Even if the recession were to end tomorrow job growth and creation would still be a lagging indicator. In others words, job loss would continue for a while even as the economy steadily improved. Many college graduates across many fields have been hit hard as they've left school only to be laid off from a job or are completely unable to find work in their respective field. One New York college graduate was so upset by her jobless situation that she took matters into her own hands by suing her school to recover the $70,000 she spent obtaining her degree. Call me unsympathetic but many of us are unable to find field related work after college and we're not suing our universities-- yet.

In news of a less frivolous nature, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is resigning from Apple's board of directors as the companies increasing find themselves in competition with one another. Unfortunately Schmidt's resignation from Apple comes too late to avoid an FTC inquiry into both companies. Better late than never, FTC? If having the CEO of one major IT company sit on the board of another IT company doesn't raise a few possible anti-trust red flags I'm not sure what does. On the upside for Apple, rumor has it the upcoming Apple tablet tentatively called the "MacBook Touch" could act as a gaming console. I personally feel it's silly to call what is essentially a tablet a gaming console at heart, yet denying the possibility of it also being used for gaming would be foolish. If the upcoming "MacBook Touch" was first and foremost a gaming device rather than a personal computer/multimedia hub, a price point of $800 would be way too high. If viewed as a PC/multimedia hub that also happens to play games a mere $800 is very reasonable.

To be fair I'm certain the upcoming MacBook Touch (or whatever it'll eventually be called) will be used a fair amount of times to check up on Facebook and Twitter. Unless the said popular social networking sites are down due to distributed denial of service attacks. On Thursday that is exactly what happened to both sites to the detriment of heavy users. Unsurprisingly, security experts are not shocked about the DDoS attacks. In a brief world without Facebook and Twitter people can always find other things to do like take the time to learn to play Guitar Hero while solving not one, but two Rubik's cubes.

While I'm on the subject of games, there has been an update in the Activision lawsuit against Double Fine. The lawsuit over Brütal Legend was settled, and thankfully Activision received little to nothing in terms of compensation.

The anime distributor 4Kids Entertainment has put itself up for sale after several years of steady profit loss. Outside of the Pokemon anime the company was not very popular with anime fans, as 4Kids often lived up to its name by editing (or butchering) anime series never intended for kids. And in a case of either "too little too late," or "what the hell took so long?!" 4Kids has begun releasing subtitled episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! on Youtube. The anime distributor had originally released the first 12 uncut and subtitled episodes on DVD in 2004 and never picked up the project again until recently. Uncut and subtitled Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes are awesome (in my opinion), but having to wait five years for the project to resume is just madness.


Image courtesy of Gizmodo.

Solid numbers for the Japanese release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete are in. On the first day of release various Blu-ray bundles sold roughly 100,000 copies. So far this newest Advent Children release has sold over 274,000 copies, in addition to pushing sales of PS3 systems upward. Apparently selling the Final Fantasy XIII demo and including a Blu-ray release of Advent Children is great for business. It'll be interesting to see how Advent Children Complete sells when it is released domestically on June 2nd. If that wasn't enough Final Fantasy proliferation news, then how about the fact that  Final Fantasy games have sold around 85 million units overall? The number is probably unsurprising, given how many times Square Enix re-releases some of its Final Fantasy titles. Personally, I've lost track of how many ways it's now possible to play Final Fantasy. (Actually, I haven't but I doubt anyone reading this blog cares to be reminded.)

Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't having a great time of it in this economy. Sales of the Xbox 360 may be up 30 percent, but overall revenue is down 6 percent. It's been proven again and again no company or industry is really recession-proof. At the very least, if you still have the income to splurge every so often Microsoft's new 360 Elite Bundle looks to be a pretty good buy. I'm certainly welcoming the re-inclusion of game bundles with consoles, and Halo 3 and Fable II in the same box is a good deal. If you already own a 360, or the two aforementioned games, how about $10 dollar games at Best Buy? You can't go wrong with Soul Calibur IV, Infinite Undiscovery, and Devil May Cry 4 at those prices.

If you're a member of Atlus Faithful you've probably already recieved the notification that Atlus.com was hacked a few days ago. The site is now back online, but it's possible that vistors' machines may have been compromised by malware. We know the feeling, ouch.

Google is experimenting with news ways to search for images and news, while Portfolio.com predicts the end of the cell phone. Given how popular VoIP (Voice over IP) is becoming, we'll probably look back on this article and agree Douglas Wolk was on to something. Although it's doubtful cell phones will be going the way of the dinosaur any time soon.

Remember when Cartoon Network's "Toonami" block used to be good? Now Toonami will be little more than a memory. On Saturday Cartoon Network announced that it was ending the program's 11-year run. It was mostly good while it lasted in the early years.

Canadian commercials are so much more interesting than their US counterparts. Take for instance, this shot of a Haruhi Suzumiya poster in a Tylenol ad of all places.

On the presidential campaign trail, this week had to be one of the most amusing ones in recent memory. Al Gore may have "invented the internet," but according to a supporter, Republican presidential candidate, John McCain invented the BlackBerry. Meanwhile, Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, had her Yahoo! mail account hacked by a college student who claimed that it was easy.

The real creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, expressed concerns over making it easier for people to separate fact from fiction on the internet. The savvy would call it common sense, but an alarming number of people are still duped. Just like the many people who still open e-mail attachment files from unknown senders. 

Abroad, the EU called anti-trust on a recent Yahoo!-Google deal, and at home finanicial companies took a beating.

On Tuesday Google released Chrome. Considering how much work the company put into helping Mozilla's Firefox browser, the move comes as a surprise to many. And to the dismay of none, many can already see Internet Explorer's share of the market shrink a little more. 

For many in the Caribbean browser wars were the least of their concerns last week. To be honest, there's not much to like about Ike as it left a path of destruction in the islands and is currently barreling toward the Gulf Coast.

On the domestic front some unhappy iPhone users are threatening to sue AT&T over the poor performance of their 3G Network. Even with AT&T's poor network performance the iPhone still remains extremely popular. Speaking of geeky things and possible obsessions, Wired.com rolled out their reader's best geek tattoos. Ctrl, alt, del, indeed.

In films and entertainment Hayao Miyazaki predicts that he will oversee his next movie in about three years from now. Of course his latest work, Ponyo can be enjoyed now in Japan and will arrive in the U.S. and Europe next year. Spider-Man 4 seems far off in the distance with a tentative release date of May 2011. At least we'll get to see Tobey Maguire reprise his role as Spider-Man, hopefully with less emo.

Image courtesy of Google.