Gaming, techy stuff, everything else, by Chris Till
The good news is it looks great. The bad news is the above, May 2007. 11 months away for more than a minute of it. I can understand that with all the CG that goes into making the spiderman films but you still wonder how much more they have to do if they have enough to release this trailer.
It starts today and after weeks of great weather it rains on the first monday of the tournament. Pretty typical.
When the weather does get better as it looks like it will it promices to be a great championship this year.
Wimbledon plus The World Cup makes a great sporting summer.
Like many baby boomers, even Xbox chief Peter Moore is getting a little confused by all the buttons and joysticks being crammed onto modern gamepads, and some recent comments he made may indicate that Microsoft is actually working on ways to dumb-down the increasingly complex controller. In an interview with Gamertag radio, Moore seemingly put the “shoulder buttons, triggers, analog sticks, and d-pads” on today’s controllers in a negative light compared to the “old Atari 2600 button-and-stick, which everybody could pick up and have some fun with.” Even Moore’s 14-year-old daughter reportedly finds the 360 controller somewhat confusing, with the man himself mentioning that Microsoft is “doing a lot of stuff there,” but that they won’t release a product that’s not “intuitive and innovative.” We’re all for input devices being as intuitive as possible, but instead of wasting time trying to innovative, maybe Microsoft should just cave in and adopt a certain technology that’s already proving to be pretty popular.
Microsoft planning simpler controller? - Engadget
I thought when Microsoft made the controller s to accomodate smaller hands they had put their control pad woes to rest. However, Nintendo, by doing the predictable and yet again reinventing the controller with the upcoming wii-mote have possibly caused the Xbox team to think about how they can make their controller a bit easier to use and a bit more comfortable to hold.
Nintendo have always in my opinion have always been the great innovator in gaming. Especially in the controller aspect. From the N64 onwards the controllers have been comfortable and easy to use. The PS2 pad is good and easy to use but the Gamecube one just makes it seem ordinary. It feels as if people have put a lot of work into making it comfortable and simple to use. The size of the buttons, the way it fits exactly to your hands. You know where every button is and don’t have to stretch to reach any of them.
Great
Good
Not so good. Bulky looking.
The new Last.fm Beta (currently subscriber only) looks shiny and new. It comes in a choice of…..
Classic red……
…..and sleek black.
Both look great, the new layout and style is impressive even though it probably was overdue.
Theres a new Audioscrobbler beta out too but currently windows only. Hopefully a Mac version is on its way soon. Then again, saying that there isn’t much the current Mac version doesn’t do, and there isn’t really a need to support many other players because the vast majority will use iTunes.
I’m fully switched over to using beta.last.fm and hopefully they make it the default site soon.
The Flock extension Flocktails (provides hCard recognition to Flock) is now available for the beta release of the social browser.
It’s quite a useful extension on pages with loads of info on. Plus having open standards for this sort of information is a useful thing anyway.
Get an hCard here.
Too bad you can’t get the extension on the Flock site yet. They do have a good selection of extensions though if you havn’t looked yet. Or havn’t even downloaded Flock yet.
Rating: 7/10 - It’s not too useful on pages with only one hCard on, except for novelty purposes.
I’ve spent some time today just figuring out all the features of QuickSilver and setting it up just how I want it.
Check out the below screen as well as the other ones in the set for the coolest way to browse your iTunes library and play tracks.
Is that not cool?
Rating: 9/10 - It takes a while to figure out how to get the special advanced features working but once you do its a great app. Oh yeah its also a great app without the iTunes feature above.
The original point of the app was purely an app launcher saving the time spent opening the apps folder in finder and double clicking. It’s so much quicker to do ctrl space and typing the first two letters of the app’s name and hitting enter to open it. Heres a pic of it doing what it was originally intended to do:
Get Quicksilver here. Get a good tutorial on how to set up the advanced features here and here.
A review of UNO, the Mac OSX skinning app
UNO is a very nice skinning app. There are a few plus points to it. Let me highlight them quickly.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the brushed look of finder and the different look of itunes. However, with UNO you can provide the system with more consistancy and give more of a mac feel to apps like firefox which don’t give that feel by default.
Rating: 10/10 - It does the job, simply, with style, without being obtrusive or greedy for your money. Perfect.
Opera 9 has just been released. I have to admit, I have never liked opera up until now. Before it had adverts from google making the whole thing look uncool. Not only that but it had a bad, “classic” interface and colour scheme.
The new version however, has some really nice features. Most of them were in the last one but a few things I like are:
Ok, so the new Opera is good (or at least the Mac version is). It’s good I have to say but I just don’t feel like I can move away from the Mozilla combo, Firefox and Flock because I’m so used to them. Still, a good browser and a huge improvement from the last version.
Rating: 8/10
Where is it?
I have been looking for an open source alternative to Dreamweaver recently and I found nvu. Yes, its got big shoes to fill if it’s going to compete with Macromedia / Adobe. However, from what I’ve seen of it so far from screenshots it does compete well.
The one problem I have is no one seems to have released a universal binary of the program yet for the new intel macs. I want this now because right now my mac crashes completely every time I try to open it. I will download it on windows later and have a play but I really want to complete my collection of open source programs on my mac.
Photoshop = The Gimp (even though I prefer the photoshop interface).
Dreamweaver = Nvu (even though dreamweaver is one of the best tools around).
And whats the difference in price between them? Obviously it’s mind blowingly huge. From FREE to THOUSANDS of pounds / dollars.
Great album. Tons of tracks and addictiveness. Dani California is my favourite but maybe thats because its at the top and I keep playing it?