Thursday, August 30, 2007

Deal of the Day: Fatal1ty Pro Gaming Mouse

Looking for a kick-ass gaming mouse without spending more then on one of those crappy generic mouses? Well this is the deal for you. Buy.com is offering the Creative Fatal1ty 2020 Laser Mouse for a mere $3 if you do everything right! Sure, it may not be the prettiest thing out there, but what really matters is what it does when covered by your hand.

The list price for this bad boy is $48 on the site, but with a $35 mail-in rebate that ends September 2, a $10 discount for signing up for a new Google Checkout account, free shipping, and luck that you are not in one of the states that has tax, you can walk away with this mouse for dirt cheap. I did, how about you?


Monday, August 27, 2007

Pass the Eggs, Hold the Bacn

There seems to be a new email term slowly making its way across the internet, in hopes to be as widely used as "spam". That term is bacn, which has the accepted definition of, "Email you want, but not right now."


The term seems to have originated from the Podcamp Pittsburg podcast, and since has spread by blogs and twitter. There is even a site up to promote the term: http://www.bacn2.com/

Apparently, this will be used to identify all those pesky notifications, updates, and mailers we don't want to get rid of, but don't want to read either. AKA, all those emails sent to you by people you don't know... that's not spam. Who knows, it may actually get somewhere, it has that Web 2.0 lack of a vowel, and enough of a food reference to relate to spam.

Get a new daddy...

Only a week out, and people are already falling in love with Bioshock. Here is a prime example, someone made a life-size representation of the Big Daddy character from the game. I would make a joke about a non-existant girlfriend playing the part of the little sister, but it just sounds wrong...

(Picture from Kotaku)

Time to DEFRAG

I know what you FPS (First Person Shooter) fans are thinking, "OMG, lyke, he said frag in the title and that means he got a kill).

I'm sorry, but defragmentation is MUCH better for your health.

Apparently not a lot of people don't know how to defrag their computers, but also don't even know what it is or haven't even heard of it.

This quick article from BusinessWire gives some numbers...

Click Here

Those of you that haven't defragged your computer in a while or have never done it, we here at Devicing suggest you should, because your hard drive will fall in love with you right after you do it. It's like a cure for Hard Drive Alzheimers, it works wonder and your computer will run as fast as it did when you first got it.


Sunday, August 26, 2007

Unlocking the iPhone

The news has been full of stories of people unlocking the iPhone, that sexy little cell phone that people just can not shut up about. Now once again, all eyes are on a 17 year old named George Hotz who put his $500 phone under the knife and can now make calls using T-Mobile's network, and not AT&T who is the exclusive carrier for 5 years. He has even posted a blog containing step-by-step instructions on his process, that can be viewed here.

However, this is not the only hack out there. Many others are claiming of software only hacks that can be done to have the same effect without the use of soldering... which as we all know can do more harm then good for some people. One such site, iphonesimfree.com, claims that by just sending them your iPhone's, and probably for a small fee, they can unlock the phone to work with any service provider. They currently are opening it up for publications for free to show off that it works.

So for all those that want an iPhone but want your own provider, definitely keep an out out on these, and even more developments, in the future.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Next-Gen Report: Wii is Now on Top


The latest sales figures for the next generation of consoles were recently released, and it gives a good status report of the attempts of Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony to create buzz in the month of July. It would seem all the consoles got a nice boost of sales due to exciting news and price drops alike.

First up, the Nintendo Wii, which is still very hard to find even 9 months after its initial release. In July, 425,000 systems were sold in the U.S. alone, and thus leaping them forward over the total Xbox 360s sold. And so, it is as everyone has predicted, The Wii is now the dominant console in less than a year’s time.

Speaking of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, their sales were actually down from June, only selling 170,000 systems in the U.S. even after a slight price cut and a huge anticipation for games like Halo and Bioshock.

Lastly, Sony is seeing a bit of good news, with sales up about 60% due to their recent price cut, no matter how controversial it may be. They sold 159,000 systems, and even though it may not be as good as the Wii and 360, it shows a good healthy rise in popularity for the PS3, and at least it already out-sold the Dreamcast.

DS and PSP sales are also doing quite well, selling 405,000 and 214,000 unites respectively. Even the old PS2 got sales of 222,000 units surprisingly.

It is still early on in the life cycles of these systems, so there is still some time for any of these consoles to rise or fall.

Digg Search vs. Google Search

I use google to search for digg articles instead of the digg search, and I'm sure you do too.

Example:

enter in digg search: taken with flash pic

enter in google search: taken with flash digg

RESULTS:


Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Do Graphics Matter? I Guess So

One of the most prominent conversations in gaming is the long-running debate (at least as long as the Wii has been around) on whether graphics really do matter or not. According to this article, it looks like it does, and it gives a damn good explanation for it, comparing it to things like our fascination with art and beauty, and yes, proves that Nintendo-fanboys like good graphics as well.

Monday, August 20, 2007

HD-DVD Gains Some Momentum


The Blue-ray camp must be having the most chaotic day in a long time. It seems that 2 more movie studios dropped Sony's format, and have drank Toshiba's HD-DVD Coolaid. Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks animation will now exclusively offer future titles on HD-DVD, while having been before on both camps. And it could not have come at a better time, since several summer blockbusters, including Transformers, is now only going to be on one format.


Blue-ray had a good lead, outselling their rival 2:1, having more players out there thanks to the Playstation 3, and even Blockbuster giving them a little more recognition. Either way, this just proves that the war is still on, and the only people getting hurt from this, the consumer, are getting tired of it. We may not see the end of this for awhile.

Find out more here!

Best. Game. Ever?

For those of you that don't know, Karl Rove, George W. Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff, is about to resign. Us here at Devicing know exactly why.....

Karl Rove is preparing to play Bioshock.




This super-sequel is being released TOMORROW for XBox 360 and for the PC (gamers everywhere rejoice!). The game has been welcomed into the world of the living with the usual slap and then superb reviews from nearly every magazine, website, and person that has played it.

GamesRadar.com -

GameInformer.com -

1Up.com -

MetaCritic.org -




These are just SOME of the reviews. Just about every review has given it above a 9.5 or 95 or 95%

There is that ONE guy though who writes for SonyDefenseForce who gave the game a 5/10. Either he can't count or he's just not happy that Bioshock isn't on PS3 already. There's always THAT GUY (......party pooper....)

Alien Abduction Brightens your Desk, Doesn't Probe

I love Alien Abduction Lamp. This creative design sports a pulsating tracker beam for a stand/shade, and little Abucting Aliens. Also available are abductable add-ons. Did you order one yet? I did, two actually.

Mod your PS2 without a Solder Gun or Memory Card!

Okay so a lot of websites are running the article about how a company created a way to play burned games using your memory card; that's sweet and all but it wasn't the first solder-less way to mod your PS2. I'm talking about Swap Magic.

Swap Magic has the PS2 owner put a disc with a pressed image on it that overrides the BIOS telling the PS2 "You dun look fur burnt game no more k?". Then by opening your PS2 without resetting it you can pop in your burned game and voila! You are now a pirate (ahh errr of the backing up kind). No soldering, memory cards or nothing.

To Swap the discs without resetting requires a simpl
e slide of a card card for the old PS2 or some plugs you stick in the reset switches for the Slim Models. The whole system costs anywhere between $20 and $40 depending on what PS2 you have. Is it worth the price to be able to play all the burned games you want without voiding your warranty? Well just ask John

A Close look at Vista without drinking Haterade


Since it's suddenly cool to rip into Windows Vista; I'd thought I'd give my take on it. I've had Vista Basic for close to a month now and I've gotten the recent security and compatibility updates. After getting everything just the way I want it I have to say that's it's a Love-Hate relationship with Vista. I'll go on....

I unboxed my copy of Windows Vista with much glee and excitement (after crying about having to pay for Windows, that's another story) and read the manual. Simple enough to install, within twenty minutes my home built machine was brewing something of the Vista variety and I was pumped. I was greeted by a fresh crisp GUI that was easy to navigate. I uploaded a few programs (Avast, Spybot, VLC) to get myself started. Everything went nice and smoothly.

I ran into my first annoyance when I went to open these programs and was told that as an Administrator I needed to okay the running of said program. No biggy, I'll adjust the account settings later. I uploaded all of my music in little to no time flat.

I installed some games and for the most part they went great; DX10 really is worth it for visual intense games that support it. I did have the occasional random slowdown on some games that was only fixed by rebooting the machine. These slowdowns would even affect navigating menus! I was very annoyed.

These complaints and compliments come and go like every other budding iteration of Windows. Driver incompatibilities, new graphic support, random problems that cant reproduced and others are to be expected. My only really bug with Vista is the amount of privileges Administrator accounts are given. As an Administrator I expected to be able to do anything I wanted, not have to wait in line like everyone else. I upside though is that Vista "claims" to offer improved security. I haven't run into many problems yet but I think most of it is geared towards anti-piracy, yarrrr.

For the power users on the other hand Vista may just seem awkward and unresponsive for some things. Drivers and security problems are annoying, but nothing users can't find a way around after awhile. Given the nine months since Vista's launch these users are getting hungry for more support and are quite happy to stick with XP for now and I'd agree with that decision.
My take is all about where you and your PC are currently. I think that you should take the plunge to Vista if you

1.) Just got a new computer with the recommended requirements
2.) Really want to show off your Directx10 hardware
3.) Just upgraded your current machine to a Multi Core Processor

I would wait to upgrade to Vista and stick with XP if you...

1.) are a power user
2.) don't plan on getting or upgrading your machine for some time
3.) are not a big PC Gamer
4.) are constantly installing programs and want to make sure they are supported

For me I'm quite happy with Vista. Sure there are times when I wish I was still running XP, but there are times when I'm glad that I have Vista. I'm not WOWed by Vista, but I am definately satisfied; even a little pleased. At the end of the day it all comes down to what you want to do on your computer; and only YOU can answer that

Snoring Spouses Begone!

This interesting little number is for those who are
A.) Paranoid of being robbed
B.) Sleep Battle invisible Gladiators
C.) And need something to put their alarm clock on

Meet the other Editors!

Here are the other guys that are writing for Devicing, we'll call them editors cause it sound professional. On the top is John, a Pre-Dental student who loves playing F.E.A.R with the lights off and cuddling up to watch Evil Dead. On the bottom (lulz) is Aaron, a stapping young lad who doesn't mind tearing it up on Guitar Hero or relaxing to some band we've never heard of. We are Devicing and we're happy to clog the internet with lame tech stories.


The ONLY Lindsay Lohan News you NEED to know!

If you were planning on getting an Iphone, you might want to get a Razer instead....the firecrotch has picked up the Jesusphone, I repeat Firecrotch has grabbed the Jesusphone.


Sunday, August 19, 2007

The WOW starts when?

Windows Vista has been a tough sell to most who knew it was actually released recently, so soccer moms with a new Dell are not included. Vista shipped with some broken promises of functionality, compatability, and Ultimate edition features (Texas Hold’em???).

Now we have another semi-horror story, this time coming from the now former PC Mag editor-in-chief Jim Louderback who mentions his frustrations in his good-bye letter. He states...

“I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won't bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it.”

Sure this is just one opinion, but it has been shared by far too many. In the end, the decision is unanimous, Microsoft better start fixing Vista and deliviering on the promise of that WOW factor, or else maybe more and more will move to other OS’s, like the one Jim mentioned… Linux.


Thursday, August 16, 2007

Best Game You Never Played - Penumbra: Overture Episode 1


Adventure gaming is struggling desperately to grab the attention of the modern video game market after a supreme command in the 80s and 90s. Thankfully, developers are inventing new ways of interpreting an adventure game from its point and click roots. One of those innovations is Penumbra. Starting out as a tech demo from yet unknown Swedish developer Frictional Games, Penumbra adds a fully 3D environment as well as a chilling horror setting to really bring something new to the table.

With game play innovations like using real time physics to slowly open doors and drawers with mouse movements, to AI enemies actually thinking of how to reach you in seemingly “safe” places, Penumbra offers an experience that draws you in and scares the hell out of you at the same time.

Like with any game that tries to be unique, some would be quick to point out flaws that are really only misunderstandings. Like how your character is too helpless against the environment, making even attacking an enemy with a pick-axe very frustrating, but this was purposefully done to make you use your head and the environment to progress through the game, and tries to teach you that hiding is sometimes a better option than fighting, just like if Penumbra’s situation actually happened.

Overall this game is a bit on the short side, but at $20 retail, with an eerie horror setting, a sense of helplessness, interesting and innovative puzzles, a good use of physics, and decent graphics, all from just a handful of developers, Penumbra is a game that should be experienced by anyone willing to play something a bit different. Bring on the next two episodes!

To learn more, visit the official site at www.penumbra-overture.com

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Yacht Nose Dive!


This comes to you from Gizmodo.com.......and yes it's real. Click the pic to read more.

Go to Jellyfish.com and you have Great Success!

Where are my deals!!

Well you'll have to head over to jellyfish.com for the After Hours Smack Show to find out! I'll be Co-Hosting the "Bling for your Desktop" show where awesome accessories for your computer can be bought; keyboards, mice and mointors oh my!

What's a Smack Show?

It's where Jellyfish.com gives back its shoppers by allowing discounts on items run as long as the crowd can hold out without buying, all the way to 100%!

I dunno, sounds fishy...


Not fishy at all, check out the Razer Tarantula keyboard I got, the highest deal is shown to the right, amazing!

Alright, I'll play your games...

Good! Click on the picture below and get started. Happy deals!

One more time

It's After Hours Smack show at 8pm central, 9pm eastern. Clink on the pic below to get started



Crysis Hands on Preview- Not so Great

The Guys over at Bi-Tech.net got their hands on Crysis for a preview and they were left underwhelmed. Plagued by poor AI and a lack of balance the game feels odd; hopefully these problems will be fixed before its November 16th release, read on

45nm Chips on the Way

The Penryn line of Intel chips utilizing the 45nm manufacturing technology ships Novemeber 11th, 2007. The new line of dual and quad cores sport a 1333mhz FSB, up to 3.0ghz clock speed and a whopping 12mb L2 cache.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

You Spin Me Right Round Baby…

Players are sooooo yesterday, at least until you do something crazy. Yong-Seong Kim is the designer of this piece of art simply called the Dual Music Player. If put into production it will have the capability to play mp3 files & music CDs!




It looks like a butterfly knife but can sting like a bee because it duals at a hand held buzz saw as well. Chances are we will NOT see it in production, but we can always dream.

Deals of the Day

You didn't ask for them so I posted them, enjoy



Frys.com has the flipping sweet (yea I said flipping so what?) OCZ Platinum 2GB memory kit for $54.99 after a mail in rebate. It's PC6400 and runs at 800mhz with a solid set of heat spreaders on each stick for you overclockers out there.



Most keyboards suck for gaming, seriously. They can get you by but not actually improve your game, the Logitech G15 however can. With programmable keys and display this keyboard is suhweet. Availalbe from Buy.com for $47.99 after MIR



Keeping this one short, Newegg has the Evga 320mb 8800 GTS for $259.99 after MIR. Its badass, you want it, you buy it, you love it.

Wii Closing in on Xbox 360

The console wars are getting a little close quartered now that the Wii is closing in on the Xbox360's sales. NextGenWars says the Wii has sold a 9,870,153 units since its lackluster launch (\sarcasm) and the Xbox360 selling 10,991,992 units since its 2005 launch. In less than one year since its initial release into the Wii has closed in on the 360s two year head start. Unless Microsoft can sell units full of cash I doubt they can hold the lead much longer.

Bioshock- Get Steampunked next Monday

Steampunk has been all the rage lately, but none pull it off quite like Bioshock. Bioshock features lush visuals, unique environments, oh yea and something about revolutionary gameplay.

Taking place during the 1960's you assume the role of Jack, a man who recently survived a plane crash in the middle of the ocean. Finding a lighthouse (in the middle of the ocean), Jack takes a sub to an underwater city in hopes of salvation. HAH salvation never works, we all know that.

Arriving in the underwater city known as Rapture, Jack is met by its humble citizens who have incredible mental and physical powers. The story behind Rapture involves Sea Slugs that secrete stem cells (that's a mouthful) called ADAM. Long story short the stem cells enhance people's abilities, causes a war and now everyone has gone flipping nuts.

What sets Bioshock apart from say Pac Man, is that it allows you to kick ass your way. The steampunked weapons look cool and all, but Bioshock's awesome factor goes through the roof with the ability to customize your character using Plasmids bought spending ADAM.


My Roommate: "Wasn't this done is Deus Ex kinda??"
Me: "No"
Roommate: "No it definately was, I played it last semester"
Me: (breaks chair over roommates back)

You can spend your ADAM to upgrade one of four types of abilities; Weaponry, Engineering, Active, and Physical. Abilities range from shooting fire, telekinesis, electricity, camouflage, and loads more. Along with these abilities you can also modify your weapons to hold more ammo and different types of rounds.

Here's a full list of System Requirements for Biosho
ck

1 Xbox 360 or Playstation 3

or

Minimum requirements

  • Processor: 1.33 GHz CPU
  • Memory: 1 GB of SDRAM
  • Graphics: GeForce 7xxx or Radeon X1xxx

Recommended requirements

  • Processor: 2.66 GHz CPU
  • Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
  • Graphics: GeForce 8800 series or Radeon X1950 series
Mac Requirements

  • No way
  • Leave
  • You still reading
  • Shoo!
  • Stick Head in Bucket and pray for a port

The game is due out for PC August 21st, 2007 (next week!) and is expected to sell faster than even "special" hot-cakes. The game will also appear on Xbox 360 or PS3.








Researchers create Paper Thin Batteries, Super Models feel Fat

Researchers from RPI and MIT have created batteries that are not only paper thin, but are also biodegradable. Two problems that face the cure slew of batteries are size and waste. Batteries today are one of the huge limitations on the size of many electronic devices and disposing of them is hazardous to the environment.
Using a combination of carbon nano-tubes and silicon substrate, the gaps between the tubes were then filled in with cellulose (psstt, that's paper). So not only are these batteries small, their incredibly flexible, so goodbye brick phones and hello banana phone.

AMD ups the Game to 3 for Quad Cores and Crossfire


This may be old news for people, but there's a little bit more than meets the eye. AMD at Sunnydale on July 26th revealed news about their new cpu and gpu technology. Dubbed "Phenom", the monster quad core had a bus speed of 3.0ghz (yowzas!). The other neato news from AMD was the Phenom powered rig showing 3 HD2900 cards in Crossfire. Talk about some serious firepower, although the HD2900 has been quick to fall behind the 8800 series, 3 cards in Crossfire might be enough to surpass a pair of 8800 GTX in Sli.

There's a little bit of confusion here upon viewing the Phemon Rig. After hunting around I learned that the third card in Crossfire will be used to compute JUST physics calculations. I noticed this when this when there was a apparent lack of another Crossfire type dongle shown below. The effects of having one cards devoted solely to physics are unknown but it is sure to improve performance somehow.
What this means is that it's not truly splitting the load equally amongst 3 cards, it's two cards in crossfire with a third working on something else. This will probably take a lot of work off of the other 2 cards which would be ideal allowing the other 2 cards to work on other tasks. I'll have to rummage around for more info on this but I'll keep you posted.

Funny Pic of the Day

Monday, August 13, 2007

Deals of the Day

Collect your money from your "clients" early cause here are some sweet deals!



Here's a sweet 22" Samsung monitor for only $239.35 after a MIR with free shipping from Buy.com. If you already have a monitor, forget it. This one is way betterer and gooder than you have right now with 700:1 contrast ratio, a 16850x1050 native resolution and DVI inputs.





Newegg.com has the incredibly sweet and definitively sexy Logitech G5 mouse for $45.99 with free shipping. Featuring on the fly sensitivity adjustments and a customizable weight cartridge; this is definately on Mighty Mouse! lolz





The Apple Store is having a limited time offer on refurbished 2gb Ipod Nanos for just $99.99 with free shipping. It's the newest generation and looks very sexy, when it arrives you two should probably kiss to break the tension.

Vista Service Pack leaked; twiddling thumbs until a later update

The first Service Pack for Windows Vista has been leaked and reports are what you'd expect; a bunch of performance updates and bug fixes. I'll let you all know what I find with a detailed update later on. Until then this should hold you over.

The New Renaissance- A Game for All Ages



It's been awhile since I first sat down and squealed with glee when Little Big Planet was debuted to the public for the PS3 and I have some thoughts. The title reflects what I feel is a New Era of video games that we should all can be excited about.


For those of you who don't know what Little Big Planet is and for the other smaller half who's been living under rocks; Little Big Planet is a game developed by Media Molecule in which the object of the game is to build, play and share simple levels where the only object is to reach the end. The game features a robust creator in which players can create levels seemingly straight out of a children's books and then share and play over the internet or in the comfort of their own home.

Simple fun gameplay is Little Big Planets motif and quite frankly I'm glad. Not for Little Big Planets sake (Yes, I'll buy a PS3 just for LBP) but for the game industry at large. Video game developers have been throwing flashy, hardware intensive games at us and we the market have been eating up. While ingenuity is often praised, there was for a long time only ho-hum sequels to franchises and renditions of older styles. We as video gamers began to finesse over the subtle differences between games that had one time gimmicks or fancy visuals when really the same ideas have been around for at least 5-10 years.

But over the past 3 years or so a new crop of games have arisen that put the focus back on simple gameplay and not on graphics. These games have always been there, but from I can remember they first became readily available around 2001 when ICO was released. It was the first time in awhile when you had to just save the princess; that was it. The game received good reviews commending its easy to use design and focus on action and not glamor.

Over the following years more games would be released that put the focus back on new and s
imple ideas; where leveling up or customizing weapons wasn't the focal point. Games like Katamari Damacy, Shadow of the Colossus, and Lumines later followed and although they weren't Halo-ish blockbusters; they both earned a respectable amount of sales and awards.

Of course the culmination of this trend came with the Launch of the Nintendo Wii which was so successful I feel because it brought games that anyone could play with small learning curve. Sure it has graphics that pale in comparison to others, but the people have spoken and beauty truly is on the inside (and on the wii-mote).

The new renaissance is starting to makes it way to the PC market as well. So called snobby PC gamers have been enjoying the old classics such as Myst, but also applauding new ones like Penumbra.

I for one am happy to see this once neglected market starting to thrive again alongside the hardcore gamers of the world. I do enjoy extremely technical games like Supreme Commander, but rolling my Katamari into cats and people brings a child-like smile (not the durrrrrr durr type smile) to my face and gives me a chance to just relax while playing a game. I expect to see games being developed and released by lesser known developers with smaller budgets become more and more popular.

To sum it all up I feel that the video game industry is redefining itself. Often viewed as a nerdy hobby; its now cool to play video games. "Normal" host parties just drink and play the Wii. People now can choose from games for all types from many different backgrounds without being ridiculed (or shoved into lockers....*sniff*). And these games are now fun for everyone! I don't care what you think some people just won't understand what's exciting about World of Warcraft. And all of this is because video game developers are being creative in the simplest of ways. I guess much like children, video games are
starting to embrace the simple pleasures in life and now give everyone a chance to be friends and just play.