Lets get Digital…
Feb 8th
I have accumulated many DVD’s, Blu-rays, HD-DVD’s (yes I have a few of those) and Computer Games over time, and they are now just clutter in the lounge and something for the kids to try and grab and knock over.. I think I probably have around 600 cases sitting on shelves all containing movies, games and such. I think it is about time we all got a little more digital in our homes and download content via the internet and store on HDD.
Microsoft are trying in on the Xbox 360, Apple have been doing it with music and movies for a while now, PS3 has started doing it with games and movies as well, Direct2Drive has a pretty good library of PC games for download as does Steam and to be fair Direct2Drive and Steam at least have recent titles but it is deemed to be easier to distribute PC games, but I feel they are not pushing this enough. The games you can download for example on a console are old and have been around for a while. I would like to see new games available on day one of release in a digital format on a console. I would also like to see a price reduction in digital distribution as currently there is no real incentive to use the digital distribution channels unless you just physically can’t be arsed to either get to a shop or order online for delivery.
We don’t need boxes, we rarely read manuals (at least I don’t) so by distributing in a digital format surely there is a cost saving to the producers of the titles. There is no jewel case, there is no printed inlay, there is no printed manual and there is no disk. These must cost in terms of production and therefore there must be a saving when these are not produced. I can also pick up a movie from an online store or shop with all the above for less than I can by downloading it through iTunes, Zune Movies or PS3 Store. So why would I pay more for less, and at the convenience of saving the distributer some money? This does not makes sense to me.
The games available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for example are old titles and all priced at £19.99. WHY? GTA IV is £19.99 at the time of posting this blog I can buy this from Game or EBay for as little as a half of what Microsoft are going to charge me through the Games on Demand.
Digital Distribution of Movies and Games saves money for the producers of these titles, if they were brave enough to actually put some weight behind the distribution of titles on digital channels and pass on the saving to us the consumer then I believe more people would adopt this method of obtaining their media. I for one would happily download my games as this would prevent my shelves from the inevitable collapse they are due to have.
Internet speeds are becoming quicker and quicker allowing more and more data to be transferred in a shorter period of time, I believe the infrastructure is ready for this move to a digital download society, just not sure the masses are ready and I am not sure the greedy distributors are ready yet either.
My suggestion would be try it, why not release a “AAA” title on Digital Download across all platforms a week before the box hits the shelves. Find out how much appetite there is. But offer some value to the consumer, by making it cheaper for example.
I would buy all my movies and games online if I could, would you?
MP’s Expenses…
Feb 5th
Well once again the news is filled with the 2009 MP’s expenses scandal. I for one am waiting to see some real punishments put into effect for these obvious crimes that a lot of our trusted MP’s have committed.
I have no sympathy for them, they seem to all live a life that many of us can only dream of. I know a lot of people who have to commute distances to get to their place of work, I know that none of these people get a second house to do this, or have their first house paid for either. I know that when they go to lunch they have to pay for it themselves.
We pay our taxes to see this country thrive, and yet we are the last major economy to come out of this depression, we are borrowing money like it was going out of fashion, yet these people who run the country are living for free on us. Sick!
It would seem to me that to be an MP is like being part of a club, that has real benefits. Not only do they get paid a pretty good salary but essentially their cost of living is also given to them in expenses. Pretty disgusting really if you ask me.
Will the 4 who have now had criminal proceedings bought against them actually be punished. Probably, Maybe I assume these 4 are going to the Scapegoats to focus of everyone else and also try to appease the British public. I don’t see this as being anything more than simply a publicity stunt to try take some of the heat away.
I think the fact that 1.1 Million has been asked to be repaid shows that the fraud (which is essentially what it is) was done on a massive scale by many a MP. If they have been asked to pay 1.1 Million back then surely those who have been asked to repay something have all abused the system and therefore all guilty of the same offenses the chosen Scapegoat 4 have been pulled up on.
We have a choice soon when we vote, I am two schools of thought here. Firstly any MP that has fiddled his or her expenses should not receive any votes from anyone. Second I was wondering what would happen if in the general election, no one and I mean NO ONE voted at all. We just all stayed at home.
All those who have taken from our tax should be sacked from their posts, and also bought before the public in a court on charges of theft and fraud and I really do mean all of them.
Always makes me smile.
Feb 3rd
I know this has been around for a very long time, however some days you just need to see this as for me it always puts a smile on my face.
Also it is my wedding anniversary today and this fits perfectly:
Star Trek Online First Impressions Pt.2
Jan 28th
The Open Beta for Star Trek Online has now finished and we are only 3 day away from the head start that is available for people how have pre-ordered the game.
My initial experience was one of frustration and revelation. I liked what I saw however due to connection errors, piss poor graphic driver support and server downtime I was left wondering what the game really involved.
Well after my initial teething issues and a heft 900mb patch from Cryptic, the game suddenly came alive for me. Finally I was able to log in, finally the graphic driver issues were gone and I could really have a go at the opening part of this game.
The player creation I found to be pretty good, the detail in which you can alter your Star Trek character is pretty good and I found myself playing and tweaking with this for a good half hour before I finally decided to play the game proper.
The opening missions are pretty standard in terms of getting you familiar with the controls and guiding you to your destiny of getting your own ship.
Once you have your own ship you are sent to the SOL system, for those who don’t know that would be our galaxy. You are stationed around Earth Base. This is the player hub that allows you to get to walk around talk to people, buy items, sell items, the usual really. Picking up quests from people is pretty simple too, just go to someone who has a “Q” over the head and hey presto they will have something for you to do.
Skipping forwards and beyond the initial quests, I managed to experience space travel which I have to say the mechanics take some getting used to as sector space is like a big map that you move your ship over to reach the next galaxy. This allows for player encounters, trading ships and random missions to interrupt your journey. If you look at the Star Trek Online forums you will see a lot of fans hate this sector space approach and wanted more of a Bridge View travel and warp system. I am sitting on the fence at the moment as what is there works and serves a purpose.
The missions structure seems to be pretty much the same and I am hoping in full release to see some more variation from the what I have seen. You essentially have a space battle, then beam to a ship or a planets surface, kill some people then beam back to you ship and warp out of the galaxy. Turning in quests is pretty easy seeing as we are in the age of Star Trek we can just simply hail Starfleet and talk to the quest giver and hand it in. Saves having to fly back to the person in question and hand it in that way.
So I know this is brief as was my time in the Beta due to the hassle of getting in. However I can say right at the end it seemed to all slot into place. Now I need to play the game for real, I want to boldly go and discover new worlds and races. I hope Cryptic keep adding to this game, refining it and I hope for a real experience soon. Will let you know how get on after my first week of play, I will be in the Head Start which starts on Friday of this week.
Star Trek Online First Impressions pt. 1
Jan 22nd
So finally Star Trek Online has gone into open Beta, followed very shortly with a Live release date of the 2nd February 2010 in the US and apparently 5th February 2010 for the EU release. The Open Beta began on 12th January 2010 and is due to finish on 26th January 2010.
Those that have pre-ordered the game will be able to get a head start on the 29th January 2010, giving them a few days before general release to be able to mission up and get out of the starting zones before they are inundated with people.
I have only managed to play the game for a total of 4 hours, 2 hours on Wednesday night this week and 2 hours on Thursday night this week. Wednesday night was absolutely painful and very nearly put me off the game before I had even really got into it.
The basics are pretty easy to get to grips with and without spoiling it for those who have not played the game yet but are going to, lets just say the mission structure is pretty much the same missions structure than the original TV series had. So you on a ship, you have to shoot some other ships, beam down to a planet or onto another ship shoot some enemies, save the day and beam back to your own ship then shoot some more enemies from your ship. Space flight is pretty simple to get to grips with and I found that very laggy on the Wednesday night, when I beamed down to the first missions planet surface this is where it all went very wrong for me. With a mixture of Lag and just incredible jittering graphics, I actually had to stop playing us the game became unplayable.
After scouring the internet for people with the same issues it turned out not to be an issue as such with STO but an issue with the latest Nvidia driver set. So be warned if you are like me and update your drivers regularly then you will probably have the same problems. The fix is simple enough and that is download the 190.26 version of the Nvidia drivers or I believe they are soon to release a new set of drivers that fixes the issue. Either way revert or wait for a new set.
So on Thursday night I finally got the old Nvidia drivers installed and began to play the game again. The lag and the pausing screen has now gone and the game has started to actually look good.
I finished the starter quests and was handed the captaincy of my ship, picked up a few missions and off I set to boldly go where a lot of people playing the beta had already gone before me.
First main mission was to find the USS Azure and aid in its rescue, which involved fighting about 4 ships to get them out of the USS Azures way, quitting the mission because an enemy vessel was stuck in an asteroid therefore I could to proceed to the next part of the mission. So starting the mission again, killing all the ships this time, then guess what? I had to beam aboard the USS Azure and rescue the crew and then beam off the ship and the game kicked me off the server because it was too busy.
From what I saw I liked, I appreciate this is a BETA and expect things like this to happen, but I am scared that the game is about a week and a bit away from release, and it does still seem full of bugs.
The one bug I did find which put a smile on my face, was that when I entered a space port my player character stayed as a ship for a while before turning into my avatar character, amusing as this was the next is even better on leaving a space port and going back into space my character stayed as a man and basically just fell through space.
So that is it so far… more to come when I get some more time and of course I am able to get passed the message telling me the server is full.
Google Wave, or was it a small splash
Jan 19th
I have used Google Wave for a few months now, and the all the hype that Google managed to create around their real-tile collaboration tool was more of a little splash for me than a big crashing Wave.
Ok it is still in development phase but that did stop the thousands of people getting on board to ride the Google Wave. Now this is not the first time that Google have spat out a not quite complete package and yet again it would seem that the PR campaign which essentially this was, again has actually paid off. They had a lot of press coverage on Google Wave and a lot of buzz was generated within the industry. The question I want to pose is this:
Is Google Wave actually any good?
From what I can tell this is just a great way of getting everyone to signup for a Gmail account, those of us that do not have one of course will be unable to access Google Wave.
The idea of a real-time collaboration tool actually appeals to me however as yet I think the masses are probably not ready to have all their eggs in one big Google basket.
I am sure with development Google will once again be onto a winner with this though, whether it serves as conduit for the even more advertisement remains to be seen. Or whether it is a tool to try and get masses to sign up for Gmail and other Google services who knows?
My guess would see Google Wave change a lot over 2010 and maybe something amazing will be born, but until then it isn’t much fun and with 30 invites still needing to be sent to people who quiet frankly could not care about Google Wave, then something really special needs to happen with it.
Google Sync on iPhone, Dropbox
Jan 15th
I have been scratching around for some time looking for a good place to store my contacts and calendar events in one central place but of course on a personal budget of nothing, nadda and zero.
I have an iPhone and I hate the fact you need to Sync it with iTunes which for a PC user is a painful process. Not sure if I am the only person on the planet to feel this but iTunes in Windows is just the most sluggish application I think I have ever used.
My first port of call was to use MobileMe which in the words from the Apple website:
MobileMe is a service that pushes new email, contacts, and calendar events over the air to all your devices. So your iPhone, Mac, and PC stay in perfect sync. No docking required. And that’s just one of many ways MobileMe simplifies your life.
Well I am not sure if it was just the way I had configured this admittedly I was using the 60 day free trial which you get from here if you wish to try it, but the syncing was slow to a point of non existence, I ended up with several versions of the same calendar none of which had updated properly with the events I had entered in. Phone contacts also did not update properly which was very annoying, people I had changed or edited simply reverted back to before I had changed them. So my first experience was not really that great and knowing that I would have to pay £59 a year for this service I started to ask around if people knew of a good alternative.
A friend of mine suggested I got a gMail account which I had already got to be honest, but he then pointed out that I should perhaps try Google Sync. So I followed the instructions on the Google Sync site, downloaded the Google Outlook 2007 plugin and off I went. Well firstly the iPhone setup works amazingly however I did have to go through a couple of teething issues. Firstly when you setup the Google Exchange account to sync your mail, calendar and contacts you have to firstly make sure that your Google Account online has all the contacts and events you need already in place. The reason being is you have to be brave and when prompted to remove Contacts and Calendar from your iPhone when you switch the Google Sync on you should do so. This allows the iPhone to then get its contacts and calendar directly from Google over a 3G or wireless network, once they have been downloaded then of course they will be stored on your phone however it is clever enough to keep checking when a network is available for any changes.
As for the file storage option you get with MobileMe, again I have a solution for that and that would be to use Dropbox. Dropbox gives you a nice 2gb of space to start with and again this is a free service, Dropbox also have an application for the iPhone which I have to say works a little more slicker than Apples own iDisk application. You can also earn more space for free by referring people to Dropbox and also if needed you can pay about $9 a month of you need 50gb of space.
If you need any help in getting this up and running feel free to shout on here. So far I am impressed with it, it works and it works well.
Getting bored of the weather
Jan 13th
It has been over a week now since this cold weather hit the UK and the media hyped the “Big Freeze” and is still milking the story for everything it has left to give.
However I need to say that I am now officially getting annoyed with the weather, well not the weather specifically but getting annoyed with the lack of preparation we still have as a nation even though we are now a week or so into this. Especially the shocking service coming from First Capital Connect. Only a week a go I blogged how impressed I was that the train services are still running with some degree of reliability and now it seems that has all gone to southwards.
First Capital Connect have so far this week cancelled nearly every train into London and those that do run stop at every station along the route from Bedford picking up everyone they possibly can until the train is at bursting point and there is no longer room to stand. I have seen people left stranded at the stations looking pissed off and annoyed that they have at least made the effort unlike some to actually get out of bed and make their way to work only to be left stranded on a platform as the one train that is running is full to the brim.
I am one of the lucky ones I guess as the First Cap trains start the journey at Bedford station where I get on and thus I am able to comfortably get on the train and get a seat. However the train is taking too long to get to London and when it finally does hit London it gets cancelled at St Pancras as apparently the trains can’t go any further south. This morning we eventually got into London at 9:30am starting at 7:50am at Bedford then I walked the 2 mile walk to work from Kings Cross to Farringdon, not a bad walk but when it is cold and snowing it is just pretty slow going.
I am looking forward to the weekend when I hope the weather is going to warm up a little and lets pray that the trains start running on time.
Twitter, why so interesting
Jan 8th
There is a part of me that loves Twitter and a part of me that is still struggling to understand the world wide appeal this has. There is also a part of me that admires the people that thought of the concept and gave the world twitter in the first place as I wish I had come up with the concept myself.
What does the average person use Twitter for? I have been looking through the people I follow and the typical Tweet is about what they are currently doing, such as making a trip to work, as work, at home eating dinner, letting the world know they have just seen a good or bad movie at the cinema. Some people I know Tweet to the extreme and almost give me a 5 minute interval peak into their day which to me a little too much.
Recently I have been using it more as an instant messaging service allowing me to converse with friends about subjects and share links and items I have seen on the Internet. Other times I use Twitter to vent my spleen over something that is currently annoying me, as you will also see from my blogs this week mainly the media hype of the snow and the train service into London.
Some media outlets are now using Twitter to share with those who choose to follow them latest news and current affairs, some people are using Twitter now for a direct marketing tool as well. So what does 2010 have in store for us on the Twitter front, are we going to see the model change where you have to follow someone to be able to see their tweets. Surely there must be some value in Twitter themselves in marketing your identity to other companies, selling you as a follower to the highest bidder. We will start to see unsolicited tweets appearing on our screens direct marketing to us even though we are not following that person or company.
What about the companies as well that have boomed since Twitter took off, such as bit.ly, there link shortening service from what I gather is currently free for all. They must be doing something on a commercial level, maybe selling MI data, but how can they sustain the service that so many use without some commercial backing. Maybe 2010 we will see that we have to pay for a URL shortening service, maybe buy a pack of 100 URLS at a time for a small fee or a subscription based service paid on a monthly basis. Anyways these are just my ponderings and right now I am going to go Tweet that it is snowing again where I live.
Would you if you could?
Jan 8th