Ex-video game designer Karine Fortin, who incidentally is one of my next-door neighbors, is the voice behind Connekt. Since Karine is debuting her musical career and needs a bit of help, I decided to share her first video with you guys. Karine will surely be reading this, so if you want to leave a comment about your thoughts on the video, she’ll be there to see them. Oh, and the clip is more than geeky enough, so don’t worry about me posting un-geeky things on [GaS] ;)
Kiss’s clip was entirely shot in 2 days in her cramped bedroom on a green screen with a Canon 7D camera. Post-production was then done by her spouse, Marc Morissette, via Nuke and Final Cut. The whole project took just a little over 3 weeks to finalize.
Opera has become the first rival browser to Safari to appear on the iPhone and iPod touch. The app was approved last night and is already available for download.
It’s something of a surprise that Apple would give the thumbs up to Opera. While the iTunes App Store approval process has often seemed close to random, one constant was that the firm turned down anything which could be argued to replicate a feature offered by Apple itself.
As far as the specs go, Opera (or rather Opera Mini) has some notable advantages: it allows searching within a web page, saving of pages, and turning off images to increase load speed (and cut mobile data use). In theory, too, it also works quicker than Safari as the system compresses pages on the server and only the “lighter” version is sent to the device.
In practice though, in the brief time I’ve spent using it, these don’t translate into an advantage with the factor that really defines Apple’s portable products: how it feels. I’ve not even thought of using any of these features in the past: whether that’s because they really aren’t necessary to my mobile use, or if I’ve just not used them because they aren’t there, it’s hard to say.
To me, though, there are four main reasons why I would want to ditch any browser:
It isn’t stable and reliable.
It’s a security risk.
It doesn’t work smoothly and intuitively.
It feels too slow.
The problem for Opera is that none of these really apply to Safari on mobile devices. So while Opera may very well be objectively equal to, or better than, Safari, it isn’t really filling a perceived gap.
Where Opera might make a tangible difference is on 3G connections, particularly in areas with poor service. In such situations it could be that the speed advantages over Safari are much more pronounced.
This isn’t the first “victory” Opera has had over larger rivals. It was the main complainant that prompted a European Union investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. That led to an ongoing program by which all European IE users are being greeted with a one-off on-screen prompt asking them to specifically choose one or more of the 12 leading browsers on the continent. While its market share hasn’t noticeably gone up yet, Opera claims it has seen a dramatic rise in downloads as a result.
Call of Duty 6 (2D Remake) is an awesome 2D remake of the famous first person shooter, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Even though the game only lasts for about 5 minutes, it offers a lot of variety for time you’ll be playing. Beside the normal platform shooter passages, you will also control a stationary machine gun, swirl around with a helicopter, take a race with a snow mobile and a motor boat… and control a remote controlled missile. Check out this awesome gameplay video:
Hevisaurus is a Finnish metal band… for kids. In the following clip, they perform the song “Jee Hevisaurus”, which translates to… hmm… sorry folks, Google translate doesn’t really help in this case!
Ladies and gentlegeeks, behold: This is a bacon AT-AT Walker. Yes. You read that right. A freaking Imperial AT-AT Walker made out of pure, awesome, delicious BACON.
Accompanied by Mary McDonnell (President Laura Roslin), BSG’s actor and director Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama) gives an enlightening speech about the concept of “race” to a group of students at the United Nations. Enjoy!
It could already be said the Internet is multi-dimensional given how hyperlinks replacing linear text made up the heart of the World Wide Web. But now an Intel representative is predicting a 3D internet within five years.
The comments come from Sean Koehl, a man with the somewhat awesome job title of “technology evangelist” for Intel Labs. He told PC World that the company had initially been quick to work on 3D online apps but slowed that process to spend more time refining the quality and functionality of those apps. He said that “making 3D environments broadly accessible is probably capable within five years.”
According to Koehl, people will want to stick with two-dimensions for many online activities such as reading text (and frankly, who would want to read 3D text?), but that 3D could be particularly popular in uses such as webcasts of conference speeches. His logic is that a three-dimensional webcast would psychologically improve the experience by allowing users to feel closer to the presentation.
He also argues that many uses of 3D would be for activities which aren’t currently carried out online and perhaps haven’t even been conceived because they are technically impossible with traditional 2D screens.
The interview is short on technical detail about how Intel’s 3D technology would work. If it requires special monitors or glasses, it would face a tough challenge in taking off. It would also run the risk of widening the existing gulf between different web users, for example when it comes to access speed and cost.
I also question whether the net would really benefit from three-dimensional material. If it’s simply a case of 3D video content, it’s difficult to see how the costs would be justified unless the material was also used for Blu-ray or television broadcast, in which case why would people want to pay to see it on a small monitor?
So for a 3D internet to really succeed, it would have to incorporate interactivity as well as the extra visual dimension. Unless and until people can come up with ideas which would truly benefit from that interactivity, 3D on the web is likely to remain a technological solution in search of a problem.
While cartoonist The Oatmeal very graphically showed us just exactly how an Octopus is more awesome than your Mom, National Geographic shows us how a Sea Lion can totally own an Octopus, even dragging it to the surface to tear it into bit sized pieces. If an Octopus is more awesome than your mom, and a Sea Lion can totally mess up an octopus, ergo a Sea Lion is more awesome than your Mom.
