Epic WoW Meal Time [Video]

Epic Meal Time gets parodied World of Warcraft-style.

Oh Yummy: Wampa Arm Cake [Pic]

Marzipan “bone”
Vanilla pastry cream “fascia”
Chocolate cake dyed red (recipe) “flesh”
Coconut Cream Cheese icing “fur”
Toblerone “claws”
Twizzler “veins”

Many thanks to Kelly for giving us permission to post a picture of her awesome cake!

Oh, and while being on the subject of Wampas, be sure to check this rather attractive version of the fearsome beast.

Amazon Offers Unexpected Triple Treat With its New Tablet [The Kindle Fire]

We all knew Amazon would be launching a new device today. In fact it’s launched two, cut existing prices, and very firmly told Apple that it’s game on.

The expected release, the Amazon tablet, is to be named the Fire. It’s already on pre-order for $199. It’s an iPad style 7 inch only color touchscreen (though using infrared sensors rather than a capactive screen) instead of electronic ink, runs a custom version of Android, and is WiFi-only.

There are three main differences between this and the countless other 7 inch Android tablets on the market. The first is that the browser is connected to Amazon’s cloud computing service, which will pre-cache popular webpages to speed up access, a process Amazon certainly believes will work smoothly, hence the browser name Silk.

The second is that the device comes with free access to Amazon’s cloud storage, though only for Amazon content such as books and digital media. (The device itself has 8GB of storage.) And the third is that users get a month’s free trial of Amazon Prime, with the device being compatible with the unlimited movie and TV show streaming from that service.

Without having seen the Fire in action, it looks like the best market is going to be the casual non-techy person who likes the idea of the iPad, isn’t willing to spend $400+, and wants a brand they can trust. What remains to be seen is whether the user interface and performance is of a suitably high quality: to do that for $199 seems a stretch, but Amazon may be operating a loss-leader, a theory that looks more viable with the attempts to sell the Prime membership.

The company has also unveiled a new edition of the Kindle, and broken the $100 barrier. The Kindle touch is effectively the same e-ink device as the existing model (albeit “smaller and lighter” as with most new editions), but in place of buttons there’s an infra-red powered touchscreen.

The touch is $99 for Wi-Fi only and $149 for 3G. At the same time, the existing button-based Kindle is being cut to $79, which (in my opinion of course) brings it firmly into the category of gadgets that you shouldn’t think twice before buying. It’s also smartly-timed as the new price, which makes it much more viable as a Christmas present.

Glitch is open! Go pet a pig.

Have you heard of Glitch? It’s an MMO, or a “social game,” just not like the ones you might traditionally think of. I’ve seen it described as not World of Warcraft and not Farmville, and it maybe falls somewhere in between, with a big dose of whimsy that you don’t see in either.

Having been open in bursts of hours or days at a time since early this year, the game already boasted 27,000 alpha/beta testers – all of which have now been busted back down to level 1, though I haven’t seen much complaint about that, since we did see it coming all along. I’ve been doing some exploring myself for the past few months, and I can recommend Glitch on three major points: (1) It’s different; (2) It’s gorgeous; and (3) It’s adorable.

In an early interview, the president of game developer Tiny Speck described the target demographic of Glitch as those in their twenties and early thirties with intelligent tastes… the intersection of game players and NPR listeners. It’s not just a cute version of WoW; there’s no combat at all. And nor is it a ramped-up version of Farmville with endless grinding in a fixed space. Glitch is about exploring and building a world, and now that it’s open to the public, the world is still in its infancy.

The game mechanics are simple, and it’s only flash, playing easily in a browser. It’s the kind of game that you can pop into for fifteen minutes at a time, or that you can play while doing other things. There isn’t a set path that you take inside the game. You can walk around and look at the world around you. You can pet pigs and squeeze chickens. You can level up skills so that you can interact more with the world, and complete quests that get increasingly complicated. You can interact with the other players, and collaborate to create things and accomplish goals. The world is weird. It’s surreal. And it’s the sort of gameplay that you can really only understand by jumping in and experiencing it. I can tell you that it definitely isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. There’s something about it that you kind of just have to “get”, like The Sims, which is rather impossible to explain to someone why it’s fun.

But now that Glitch is officially open for business, you can just try it out for yourself! It’s free to play, with a typical subscription/credits model for additional features (which as far as I can tell mostly relate to avatar customization). I’d like to see this game succeed if only to show that an independent game developer can get away with something different and artistic, and the world will embrace it.