So, can’t stand the view of the wall from your windowless office? Wish you could see something else than a featureless landscape from your drab bedroom? Enters Winscape: Because waking up in the same place every morning is just too boring.
Winscape features include:
Custom Winscape software with configurable screen parameters
Two HD plasma displays for great contrast and wide viewing angles
Video playback resolution of 1920×1080 with sound
Still-image resolution of 4096×4096
Fully embedded in the wall for aesthetics and silent operation
Tracking of one person in the room for proper perspective presentation
Scheduled on/off
iPhone and web control of sleep/wake/scene selection
Paying for extra game content is becoming an increasingly common business model. It makes a lot of sense, really, and it keeps games like Puzzle Pirates away from subscription fees for those who would rather play for free – and lets those who don’t mind shelling out the cash do so too. (Though if you spend $1400 in month on Farmville odds and ends, you might have a problem.)
World of Warcraft hasn’t done a lot of this, probably because they already charge a monthly subscription fee, and because selling anything that gives some players an advantage would certainly cause an uproar. But vanity items are something else entirely; after all, it’s not going to improve your gameplay at all to have a cool pet, but if you really want a Pandaren monk trailing after you, you can plop down $10 for the privilege.
For those of you not familiar with the game: Particularly with so many players hitting the level cap and grinding away at end game content needing new goals, collecting mounts has become a popular past time – especially since most of the really cool looking ones are really hard to get (if not nearly impossible).
Enter the best money-making idea I’ve seen in a while: the Celestial Steed. It’s a sparkly pony. That flies. And it doesn’t take endless hours of grinding to obtain – just a credit card number (and a willingness to part with $25). Within a couple of hours of going on sale on April 15, the queue number (since you have to wait in line to purchase) indicates that Blizzard made a million dollars in the first couple of hours. Apparently there’s already at least 140,000 or so trotting around Azeroth.
Granted, the players are only interested in the vanity items because they’re spending so much time in the game due to the quality of the entire experience – but it’s still interesting to note that they’re making nearly the same amount on the sale of one of these mounts as on the sale of a single expansion pack.
The last day of PAX East, I was exhausted. I didn’t feel like putting on a dress or pantyhose, so I went with something simpler: my bright pink cardigan, jeans, and an I <3 Steampunk shirt my awesome friend and artist Brigid Ashwood gave me. Then I put my glasses on, turned to my husband and asked, “How do I look?”
“Like a geek girl,” was his response.
I stared at him for a second. I wanted to argue. But you know what? He was right. For the last few days I had noticed there was a certain… well, dress code among the women at PAX (to say nothing of the men, of course).
I’ve always considered myself something of a fashion stand out. I don’t tend to buy to trends. I like wearing glasses and cardigans, with hints of punk rock here and there (and the occasional corset), as well as some dresses. Not much has changed since I started picking out my own clothes. I also love thrift stores and vintage clothing, as well as curious shoes and jewelry.
But looking around at PAX, I realized many of us had come to the same fashion conclusions: dark rimmed glasses, red lipstick, hair often dyed a shade of auburn or red. T-shirts, cute shoes. (In other words: impeccable taste, ladies.)
Wait a second! How did we all come to this same conclusion?
Now, I’ll preface this with saying that I don’t hang out with a lot of girl geeks that dress like I do. I’ve noticed the trend among guys, which has only been exacerbated by the presence of Splitreason and other t-shirt companies (how I wish we could get them to dress in something other than t-shirts!).
But being at PAX made me feel part of something, sure. As Wil Wheaton said, I felt like it was home. Still, a little part of me kind of squirms at the idea that we’re becoming so recognizable, we geeks. Is it subliminal media messages? Have we come to a point where we need to recognize our own by dressing alike? Am I over-reacting? Is this just coincidence?
We geeks tend to approach the mainstream with trepidation, and that’s understandable. They cancel our shows and ruin our franchises. But as we are becoming larger and larger, are we homogenizing ourselves?
It’s probably a safe bet that most geeks grew up as fans of the Guinness World Records books. (If you want to know if you’re a true geek, reading reference books as if they were literature is usually a sign…)
But the problem with the Guinness book is that, to maintain its long-established authority, it’s a little staid. In this Internet age, some people call for records which are a little more… well… stupid.
Enter the Universal Record Database, a site which works on the uplifting theory that everyone has the capacity to be the best in the world at something. Unlike the Guinness system, the only URDB rules are that records must be quantifiable, breakable and legal, though there’s a preference that record attempts should, where possible, have a positive rather than negative impact on mankind and the world.
Participants are encouraged to get witnesses to verify records wherever possible and provide evidence; where there’s doubt, site users can vote on whether a claim should be accepted.
I came across the site after the Guardian newspaper’s tech correspondent Jack Schofield took the crown for the most unread e-mails in an inbox with a staggering 30,422. But that’s utterly conventional by the standards of the site: recently broken records include:
the most number of times you can get a Mattress World employee to say “mattress” in a single phone call (12);
the most number of rows inserted into a single table in a database (10,053,958,867);
the most number of times a relative of Sarah Palin can be punched (39); and, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed,
the largest group of people to inhale helium and sing I Think We’re Alone Now while hogtied (18).
This is Samsung’s awesome new viral video promoting their brand new line of 3D TVs. The ad takes a second look at some details you might have missed when looking at some of the world’s most popular paintings. Check it out:
Paying for extra game content is becoming an increasingly common business model. It makes a lot of sense, really, and it keeps games like 
