Leading the pack, at least in terms of consumer appeal, is Apple’s iPhone. However, they keep updating their “mp3 player”, the iPod Touch, to be feature-complete with the iPhone. It offers a low-cost, low-commitment entry point into the world of handheld computing. It’s essentially the modern incarnation of a PDA. The iPod touch sells incredibly well. And why wouldn’t it? It has no competition.

The former heavy hitters of the handheld computer have abandoned it for phone-only versions. Palm (HP now) and Microsoft have two great operating systems that could very well compete with the iPod Touch. Just strip the phone apps from WebOS and Windows Phone 7, and there you go. Instant iPod Touch competitors. Worse yet, why is there no Android-based iPod Touch equivalent (aside from the Archos players, but those are pretty big, not really pocketable)? You don’t even have to pay a license fee to make one of those. So why are all these companies letting Apple take the whole market?

I have no idea.

First of all, there’s the whole smartphone-less (for now) youth market (kids and especially teens). Let’s face it, the Nintendo DS and the PSP have their fingers far, far from the pulse of where the handheld gaming. Their upcoming, single-purpose, portable gaming consoles will retail for more than the cost of an iPod Touch. Then, of course, they expect you to pay at least $40 per game. You know how many iOS games you can buy for forty dollars? Infinity, give or take. I could write a whole post on how much they’re screwing this up, but I digress. The point is the iPod touch can entertain the youth (and adults, myself included) with games, but not only that, it has a metric ton of social networking apps, web browser, YouTube, etc. It’s a cheap, starter “computer” for all intents and purposes. So let’s say kids gravitate towards iOS. A few years from now, when they’re all grown up and it’s time for a smartphone, what do you think they’re going to want? I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the OS in which they already have all their games on and are used to. It works the same way Microsoft gets students to use Office. Later, when they go into the work force it’s all they know how to use, thus what they need.

That’s what gets me, Microsoft knows this trick. Get them while they’re young. Yet here they are, wasting a huge market. They already have the most popular console gaming ecosystem with Xbox Live and the Xbox 360. Windows Phone 7 (WP7) has Xbox Live functionality. It’s simple logic, really. Use Xbox Live as a Trojan horse to get the youth on a phone-less WP7 device! Hell, I’d buy one. Achievements are magically delicious, you know. That brings me to my second point, I’d really like a secondary “entertainment” device. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I don’t really think the whole games/music/movies on my phone is all that great until we get some real leaps in battery technology. Smartphone batteries barely last a day as it is, let alone if they have to satisfy your Angry Birds and Netflix streaming addictions.

The “handheld-computing/entertainment-device that’s not a phone” has a lot of potential, but no one seems to care. Can we fix this now please? I really want to get a nice little smart device for gaming and MP3 player use, instead of these ridiculous 3DS and NGP consoles.

You wonder why it took so long to develop homebrew on the PS3. It goes like this: almost every console has had its security broken for homebrew purposes, and then piracy ensues. Sony had the perfect defense against this by giving the PS3 owners the ability to run their own OS on it (Linux). Therefore, there was no need for the homebrew hacker community to break the PS3′s security. For a nice little breakdown of all the different consoles’ security timelines check out a minute of the tail end of this talk about the Xbox 360′s security system, starting at 43:57 playtime. It will show how Sony dropped the ball on this.

Then, Sony went and shot themselves in the foot by removing the  Other OS option on PS3 Slims and later on every PS3 via firmware updates. Good job at pissing off your fans Sony! Now the homebrew community had a purpose! Not that much later now, we’ve got homebrew running.

It’s no coincidence that the PS3′s security was broken only after the Other OS option was removed. Sony has no one to blame but themselves for the rampant piracy that could (most likely will) result from this!

Photo by ifranz

Apple Inc. has positioned itself as an upscale brand, with stylish and reliable consumer products.  They enjoy great profit margins on their products, and have a devoted fanbase.  The majority of their customers have a certain brand loyalty.  Even though their products usually have comparable analogues made by other companies, there is a certain elitism associated with the brand.  Most people have at least some brand loyalty to the products they own, not many people like saying they made stupid purchases of course.  You like to be proud of the products you own, but Apple users take this to another level.  There’s nothing wrong with this as long as they are not blindly loyal, but I believe it was worth writing a post about.

I believe this all stems from a basic marketing tactic: Every major Apple product I can think of ships with an Apple sticker in the box.  This creates a bond with the brand. You put this sticker on your car, on your non-Apple laptop, whatever.  It’s visible.  It now represents a bit of who you are, and everyone can see it.  Now when someone speaks negatively (or positively) about Apple products, it’s personal.  You identify with the product, it becomes part of your lifestyle instead of just something you bought.  Now this is also prominently evident in their actual devices: Mac PCs, iPods, and iPhones all have a very minimal design aesthetic with a large, bold, Apple logo smack in the middle. This faces outward of course, making sure everyone notices.  This is logical marketing thinking — there’s no doubt they’re going to put their logo on their products — but Apple really built that customer/brand loyalty better than any of its competitors.  The only other brand I can think of that comes close is Sony.

This is my practical explanation for why Apple fanboys are such a prevalent part of the Apple culture.  You might think, “but it’s because the products are so good!”  I will say that yes, they consistently create good, even great, consumer products.  However, I do not think their products merit the rabid fanboys / hipster elite that they generate.  This is a product of good marketing and branding.

K-os caught me completely off-guard with a quite good show. I always kinda liked his music, but the man’s stage presence and crowd involvement brings his live performance to a few levels above the recordings. The blend of funk, rock, and hip-hop in his musical stylings is distinctive and well executed.

I was pretty new to the music of Flobots so I didn’t really know what to expect of their performance, but it was nothing short of awesome. They started off their one and a half hour long set with a percussion-only intro and started melting my face off from there. Their music is a blend of rock and hip hop with two main vocalists, guitarist, bassist, drummer, and a violist. As expected by their unique intrumental lineup, their music is quite a unique experience. That, and they really knew how to work a crowd Catchy beats with good melodies and aggressive vocals put the audience, and myself, in a state of euphoria.

So I finally got around to designing my desk on and went to Home Depot to get the necessary materials. When planning it, I also wanted it to be cheap to build so I designed it in such a way that the whole thing could be built out of a single 4×8 piece of 3/4″ wood panel. The desk would be held together by some L-brackets  and reinforced from behind by a brace spanning the width of the desk; below is a picture of my design on paper. I wanted the desk to fit my monitor, the TV, and have shelves for all my consoles, PC, and the receiver.

Click to make zoomy big magic.

The next day I started working on it with my father’s help, who has a lot of experience and is really good at this whole DIY bit (and has cool tools). After a day’s work we managed to get the whole structure built and stained the wood a darker color after a break to rest and eat. The only changes made to the design was the addition of a thin wooden panel in the left part of the desk for further reinforcement of the structure (less wobble). The next day we bought a can of varnish and applied it to give the desk a protective coat.

One more day passed, and today the varnish has dried and anxious to get my desk in my room already, I started to clean up the sprawling mess that composed my desk/tv area. About six hours later (Hah!), I finally had everything cleaned out and my new desk in place. I must say, wiring everything back up was excruciatingly tedious. Now that everything is set up though, I’m very happy and really enjoying my new spacious desk!

If you click to zoom in, you'll be astonished by its glory.

Enabling ASCII Output

To enable it you first go into the Tools menu, then Preferences. Once there, on the bottom left hit All under Show Settings. Click on Video in the sidebar, and then click Output Modules. On the right pane change the Video Output Module from Default to Color ASCII Art Video Output and save your preferences. It’s now enabled. To change it back, simply switch back to Default.

ASCII Charlie Brown is so hip and fresh!

Visually, I found the movie to be quite engaging. First of all, the fight scenes are very well choreographed and kept me excited, gripping my seat. After seeing a couple of the fights you’ll start to wonder why the movie is called Kick-Ass and not Hit Girl; they make that little girl fight something fierce. There’s so much adrenaline-pumping badassery in this film. I loved it. On another note, the color palette they used for the sets had a lot of focus on grays and browns, and it gave the film (and the city it was set in) a very gritty and run-down feel. The characters on the other hand seemed to pop with color. It’s not as dark as Christopher Nolan’s Batman series reboot, but not quite as colorful as the Spiderman flicks.

The soundtrack was one of the high points of the film in my opinion. Even though it was a licensed soundtrack and little or no original score (can’t recall any of it anyway), the songs they chose were excellent and fit great. The soundtrack actually enhanced the movie experience. Compare this to last year’s Watchmen movie adaptation where the licensed soundtrack was detrimental.

The performances were mostly great. Dave/Kick-Ass as portrayed by Aaron Johnson was pretty good and spot on to the comic book character. Nicolas Cage (Big Daddy) was awesome and he captured the essence of a grown man living his dream of being a superhero very well. Chloë Grace Moretz as Hit Girl really stole the spotlight from everyone else with a great performance of a hardly-believable character. Christopher Mintz-Plasse playing Red Mist was a good pick, but I kind of wish they would let him break out of his, now typecast, McLovin/Fogel role.

Compared to the original comic, the story stayed pretty much the same, but certain plot elements were changed to give the film a lighter and happier tone. While departing from the original story, I don’t think they were good or bad, just variations on storytelling. Although I do think they were influenced by the mainstream moviegoer expecting happier stories than a comic book geek. One thing I didn’t like was the very last scene which went on for a little too long and was a little fantastical compared to the rest of the movie (Highlight text to reveal SPOILER: Jetpack with Gatling gun WTF? ).

As I left the theater, I exited with a feeling that the flick was well-worth the entrance fee, a great comic book adaptation, and a film that can stand alone and be great. I highly recommending watching it. Also, the comic is a very good read if you have the chance.

Single Player
The game’s single-player campaign mode, while not the focus of BC2, is quite good, albeit short.  It uses a linear, checkpoint-based mission system, but it still manages to feel open. Even though you’re on a designated path to progress through levels, the different ways to move across the terrain, combined with a variety of weapons to take on enemies gives a feeling of choice. BC2 emphasizes a lot on the destruction of buildings as well, so add that into the mix and you can really carve your own path through an otherwise linear level. As for the story, it’s a take on the  ”a squad of underdog soldiers save the world from evil terrorists” bit. Unlike other shooters that take themselves very seriously, BC2 manages to mix in a lot of humor into the story. From the asinine conversations between the squad members to including parodies/references to other games, the campaign has this air of lightheartedness that is a welcome change from the grim, gravelly-voiced, one-man armies of most games in the genre.

Multiplayer
Like any Battlefield game, the real meat lies in the multiplayer modes. The two main modes are Conquest, which plays out like king of the hill, and Rush, my favorite. Rush involves a team of attackers destroying two points controlled by the defenders, either by arming an explosive or sometimes even tearing down the building. The game ends when the attackers destroy all the points, or by the defenders depleting the attackers’ soldiers. I’m a big fan of the game’s class system which breaks down into a mid-range Assault, an explosives/vehicle-repair expert Engineer, a healing Medic, and the sniper/scout Recon class. As you play more with each class, you unlock new abilities and weapons, which gives the player a warm, fuzzy feeling of progress and reward. I find that the game is very well balanced, and no class feels overpowered. I particularly like that even though you unlock tons of abilities and weapons as you level up a class, they don’t give a huge advantage over a starting player with few unlocks. The unlocked weapons and abilities are more in the vein of being able to switch up your play-style for a given situation, as opposed to getting better and better equipment.

Joining a match with friends is very simple. You start a squad of up to four people, and then join a twelve player (max) team. Playing in a squad grants certain benefits, like extra points for playing cooperatively (healing a squad member, scoring a joint kill) and being able to spawn on squad-mates’ positions. Most multiplayer FPS games put a certain emphasis on working as a team, but in BC2 teamwork and communication is essential to success. As for the inevitable comparison to Modern Warfare 2, I prefer BC2 by a pretty wide margin. It’s a matter of taste, but I rather enjoy BC2′s focus on teamwork and strategy over MW2′s fast, spawn-kill-die rhythm that rewards camping (yeah, I went there).

All things considered, the single player campaign is short but sweet, and the multiplayer is pretty much endless in it’s badassery and fun. If you don’t expect to play online much, then I suggest you skip it or pick it up at a discount later on. However, if you’re a fan of multiplayer FPS games then this game is a must-buy.

Now, let’s focus on the other details. First of all there is a loaded gun placed on a table within the reach of an unsupervised 3-year-old. Can we assume it was ready to fire with the safety off and bullet in the chamber? I doubt that little girl had the gun knowledge or the strength to manage that by herself. Someone is letting this child play shooting video games. Most of these games are clearly labeled as being intended for players at least thirteen years old.

Of course we’re all assuming the child picked up the gun and shot because of the Wii game. This is an unsubstantiated assumption. Is it possible? Yes. Is it fact? No. The mother tries to pass the buck and say it was that the child confused the gun for the game. Oh! So by this logic it would be perfectly okay to leave a loaded gun on a table next to a 3-year-old as long as she didn’t play shooting games. If you have a gun, it’s your responsibility.

Jobs started the presentation by bashing netbooks about how they don’t do anything well. Ironically, the iPad ends up being worse.

• On-screen keyboard: Really? This is the most annoying thing about small tablet devices, text entry is imprecise and slow because of  barely usable on-screen keyboards. Sure, you can say it just takes getting used to, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Some people can crank out text messages very fast on simple phones’ number pads, but no one in their right mind would say it’s efficient.
• iPhone OS: This is a blessing and a curse. On one hand you have access to the huge App Store. On the other, it’s a very proprietary and closed OS.
• Supposed full web-browser: You can browse the Web in all it’s glory! Jobs claims that as good as on a PC. This is true, if you completely overlook that most websites incorporate Adobe’s Flash in one way or another. Yes, we should stop depending on Flash content and HTML 5 is awesome, but that’s not how things work right now.
• No multi-tasking: So with all this processing power from their custom Apple A4 CPU they still can’t bake multi-tasking into the device. So I can’t use Pandora while browsing? So I can’t reference a web page while I’m writing a paper on iWork? I can’t read news and leave my instant messenger open in the background? This oversight alone is enough for me to discard the device. They can get away with this on the iPhone and iPod Touch, not on a $500-$829 device that’s supposed to replace a netbook. Netbooks are slow when they’re multitasking, yes. At least they let me do it if I want to though.
• Ho-hum features: There is no innovation in this device to make it stand out from other tablets that have come and gone aside from the pretty Apple user interface. My Samsung Q1U, released a little under 3 years before the iPad,  has a similar feature set and a lot more (dual webcams and able to connect to a monitor). Frankly, I’m a little disappointed with the 1024×768 resolution screen. A lot of 10″ netbooks ship with widescreen, HD 1366×768 screens at the same or lesser price point as the iPad. Then Apple has the audacity to claim that netbooks have low quality displays. I guess they’re just not shiny enough.
• Pricing: On that note, the price is pretty high. Like all Apple products, there is a certain premium associated with the brand so I’ll give them that. Also they can’t have pricing overlap with the iPod Touch or it will cannibalize sales. Seriously though, $499 is a lot for what is essentially a companion device that is little more than an over-sized iPod Touch. Also, the 3G connectivity is there for the sake of it, really. It’s a $129 premium plus $29.99 a month for access. They have a $14.99 monthly plan, but it has a 250 MB limit. Seriously? Watch 10 YouTube videos and you’re  already over your limit. Anyone who gets the iPad probably already has a smartphone and pays a screwdriver to the face for a data plan on that too. Add residential Internet into the mix, and think, really think, if you need that many Internet bills. Finally, at a price point that’s $500+ and netbooks rarely over $300, I think the iPad is really competing with full-featured Windows laptops. The Apple device at netbook prices is an iPod Touch for crying out loud!

I really wanted to like the iPad. I really did. Unfortunately, Apple created a ho-hum device that’s stylish to say the least, but not very compelling in terms of productivity, innovation, and price-point.