Hey everyone! Just a quick post this morning to tell everyone that today is Captain Picard Day! Instead of writing a whole new article for the occasion, I’ll point you to the post we wrote last year:
Happy Captain Picard Day everyone! (Click!)
For me, the appeal of video games has to do with escape and immersion. It isn’t just about gameplay. It’s about story, about investment, and about character. From the very beginning I’ve been drawn to video games that tell stories and introduce me to characters. And in the last 10 years video games have changed drastically in that respect. In fact, I’d wager that the entire formula is changing; games that immerse the player in the actual story are vastly re-writing the rules of the industry.
The first game that really made an impact on me was the original Fable. Now, I know there are plenty of naysayers out there, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was quite groundbreaking at the time. Up until that point I had never played an RPG that so fully kept my attention, that made me feel I was a part of that world. Even more so, it made me feel like I was exploring a new world, rife with possibilities. There was no single way to win. (There was, however, a way to be completely swarmed by adoring townspeople who all wanted to marry me and have my children. Horrifying.)
Having recently come to the conclusion of Dragon Age, however, I see there is a great deal of room for improvement in this kind of game. I freely admit that Dragon Age is the best RPG I’ve ever played. The storyline, the characters, the customization, the design… there really is so much that is laudable. As it is, my gripe has nothing to do with Dragon Age as a run-of-the-mill-RPG (because in that case, it’s head and shoulders above many others), but rather with what I think it could have been: and that’s so much more than an RPG.
(I’ve tried to keep this relatively spoiler free, but if you’ve never played the game and are planning on it I’d suggest turning a blind eye.)
Tags: AI, dragon age, dragon age: origins, editorial, video game characters, video games
WOW fans, this one is just for you:
Thanks Alex!
Chances are good you have a Facebook profile. Chances are even better that, if you do have an account, you check it at least once a day. You might be a professional Farmviller or the President of 100 Facebook groups, but do you really know Facebook and what you’ve gotten yourself into?
It’s time for a little Facebook re-education.
Tyler Fouche filmed an archer shooting various objects via a phantom camera at 3000 FPS. Check it out:
Spectacular, isn’t it?
Seeing mistreated books just makes me hurt inside. No, don’t drip ketchup onto that library book! Broken spines, curses! Also, I have a deep loathing for mayonnaise (yes, I realize that many of you think I’m crazy, but I really do find it gross). So reading about the capture of this serial book defiler in Idaho was just painful.
A 74-year-old woman was recently arrested in Boise after being caught pouring a jar of mayonnaise into a library drop box. However, this wasn’t her first act of trying to turn innocent books into lunch – library employees had previously found books covered in corn syrup and ketchup.
This “person of interest in at least 10 other condiment-related crimes” faces a misdemeanor charge of malicious injury to property. Released from jail, she’s back on the streets – so lock up your books! And your mayonnaise!
Those poor, poor books. What an awful way to go.
Every so often, I get dragged into a meeting that goes way beyond its original 30 minute time slot. Minutes stretch into hours, and my once thorough notes slowly become doodles of my favorite mythical creature, the Uniclops. Now as I work in a office work environment, I love unusual ties, like the Audio Cassette Tie, but I usually don’t get any extra functionality out of them. BEHOLD, the Pillow Tie!
This is a normal tie, which has a small inflatable pillow tucked inside so you can lay your weary head to rest. Surprisingly, it’s not too expensive for a novelty tie, just about $20 dollars, and who knows you might actually get to use it in that long, long meeting.
Now, if they offered a guarantee that I’d get unemployment benefits after getting fired for sleeping through the meeting, I’d be 100% sold!
[Pillow Tie | Via Geekologie]
Tags: pillow tie
By Jimmy Rogers (@me)
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Last week we talked about Betterment, the “new age” investing site, which won TechCrunch’s “Best Startup in NY” award. This week we’ll talk about the overall “Best Startup” winner at TechCrunch Disrupt.
Their name is Soluto and they sell themselves as “anti-frustration software.” Then again, “selling themselves” probably isn’t the best way to describe the Israeli startup, because their software and service are totally FREE! The price alone makes me inclined to give them a higher rating.
Essentially Soluto aims to solve one of the problems that plagues all computer users: poor computer performance. If you’ve ever been working on your laptop and experienced lagging, crashing, freezing, or generally buggy software, you’re a candidate for Soluto. They also (at this stage in their development) focus a lot on your boot cycle, more on that later.
When you first open Soluto, which has a client interface as well as a background running tool, the app is pretty sparse. It is also Windows-only for the moment. The client is primarily dedicated to analyzing and optimizing your boot. After your first restart, the client will begin visually recording each program that started in boot and display this data in a graphical interface. It’s a very nifty feature because it’s easy to remove unwanted items from your boot, but, unlike other boot optimization apps, it also gives you the option to “Delay” items. The Delay feature places the item on hold until your computer has some idle time and THEN launches the app. This shortens your boot but keeps semi-important background processes a part of your system.
After several boots you can click on the history tab for a thorough graph of changes made to your system and how long each boot took. If the boot optimizer was the only function of Soluto, it would already be a great app. That being said, the long-term goals of the startup rest more heavily on what they call the “PC Genome.”
In an email conversation, Orit Balicer Tsur, the Marketing Director for Soluto, explained the idea to me:
“The PC Genome is a huge knowledgebase of PC frustration data, built automatically through the usage of Soluto software. Its objective and statistical information, gathered and analyzed by Soluto, is also editable by the community.”
That last part, the “editable” part, is really neat. Whenever a program comes up in the client that does not register with any pre-existing record, you have the option to add the background info yourself. It’s a wiki-style editor so it’s easy to change erroneous information. If you are adding new info, a style guide pops up right along-side to help you craft your entry.
Only time will tell whether or not their project to map the PC Genome will be successful. If Soluto catches on with enough users, software manufacturers might start paying attention to the data generated. It would be certainly better than those reports that Windows sends to Microsoft after a crash! If you’d like to help map the aforementioned genome, you can check a little option in the quick launch contextual menu to participate in “ongoing frustration research” (which, as far as I can tell from Orit’s email, is a distributed computing network).
Overall, I think Soluto is a great app and while I’m not yet convinced of the PC Genome project’s future success, the boot configuration tool is easy to use and more user friendly because of the handy wiki information. Go over and grab it today!
Have thoughts on Soluto? Share them below in the comments…we’d love to hear what you’re thinking!