If birds aren’t enough, now your dog can tweet too!

I’ve never been that curious as to what my dog’s really saying. I’m pretty sure Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoon figured it out. However, I guess most people don’t think like I do. Or at least enough people to be profitable. Mattel has a new invention expected to hit stores in Fall that allows your dog to tweet on his very own Twitter page. Puppy Tweets is a small plastic device you can attach to your pet’s collar that syncs to a USB device you attach to your computer. Then you just create a Twitter page for your dog and voilà! Your dog will now update you to his activities. If he’s running in circles, it might have a tweet saying “I finally caught that tail I’ve been chasing and…OOUUUCHH!”

Maybe it’s just my dog Minnie, but this device seems phenomenally useless. Random tweets are boring enough when written by people, but do you really want to know the exact minute your dog pooped in your azaleas? If I’m ever excessively curious about what Minnie is doing, I sit down and reconsider my life because something is clearly wrong to make me less interesting than a dog. Though I suppose those “gangstas” can finally keep up on where the bitches at.

5 awesomely useless gizmos

The year is 2010. Only five more years until we get to laugh at Back to the Future II. I’m still waiting for my flying car and self-drying jacket, but at least we can rest easy knowing our scientists are hard at work making some crazy stuff to distract us. Thanks to www.gizmag.com, I was able to search their 2010 posts and find some pretty silly stuff. So in no specific order, here are 5 bits o’ tech that serve almost no function.

5. The $160,000 diamond-encrusted cell phone.
Really? Do we need to pimp everything we own? I mean it was bad enough when people started wearing gold braces, but this is a bit excessive. According to Gizmag, “The sparkling unit is encrusted with 12.5 carats of pink diamonds, resulting in approximately 1225 individually set gems arranged around a whopping 3-carat navigational button centerpiece. As if that weren’t enough credentials to enter the Blinged Out Phone Hall of Fame, the Nokia Supreme also packs solid platinum veneers and screws, amounting in a total of 83g of platinum. The phone has been crafted in a limited edition run of only three, and of course sells with the obligatory granite clad case with leather interior.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’d get it if I had 160k to blow. As useless as it is, it’s pretty awesome.

4. The Xrocker Vibe platform.
Do you like playing Guitar Hero or Rock band? I sure do. Ever wanted to play it in an earthquake? Well now you can! The Xrocker Vibe platform is akin to playing while standing on a subwoofer. It supposedly tries to emulate a real stage experience by playing the bass through your feet to simulate the stage vibrating to your rock. This is all pretty swell, until you miss a note and hear an obnoxious plunk and notice your score multiplier drop. I’m sorry, no matter how hard you try, you’re holding a plastic toy with a virtual crowd. For the “real rock experience,” learn guitar. That said, I’d totally use this all the time. How else could I truly rock out to “Livin’ on a Prayer”?

3. The pocket knife/garage door opener.
You ever get so tired of having to get out of your car and lift up your heavy garage door? No? Oh yeah, that’s because everyone on earth has a garage door opener clipped to those little sun-blind thingies right next to that C.D. rack. Well now you can inconveniently store that device in your pocket so you can fish around trying to reach between your cell phone and iPod to get it out. Hey, but it can also turn on that outdoor light you set up so that it turns on automatically when someone drives up. While I’m all for cramming things in other things, this just seems a bit more useless than awesome. Though if they tacked on a cell phone, mp3 player, camera, and microwave I bet Verizon would pick it up.

2. Custom laser-etched tires.
Two things still disappoint me about lasers. They aren’t in gun form yet and they aren’t spelled with a “z”, as spell-check often reminds me. Despite these vital flaws, however, we’ve found some pretty cool uses ranging from pointing at things to carving the bad out of your eyes. However, we didn’t have enough car pimping lasers yet. Until now. Now people can custom-make their tire treads, supposedly so you can better experiment with traction, but mostly so I can drive with flaming skulls on my wheels. You can even illuminate it with that awesome neon glow you’ve got going on there. Spinners eat your heart out, I want to carve “awesome4life” 100 times on my treads.

1. The iSwing app.
Ok, I suck at golf. I’ve gotten the two best hits possible and now I never need to play again. One hit a branch and landed back on the tee, and the other went backwards. But now apparently my cell phone can help me out. The iSwing allows you to record your swing, then play it back and you can even draw lines to show where you need improvement. The main flaw I see is you need to be able to recognize where you need improvement. Now call me crazy, but I have this little feeling that just watching your own swing won’t exactly get you on the PGA. However, it’s apparently pretty popular in Japan and Korea, and it might just let me see how I managed to hit a ball the wrong way. Whoever you are though, you’re not gonna be the next Tiger. You need the iSwinger app for that.

Avatawesome

Wow. I mean, really wow. This movie is beautiful. Rather, this experience is beautiful because it’s more that than it is just a movie. If you see this movie, you must see it in 3D. Preferably 3D Imax, though I just saw it in a normal 3D screening. The environments are absolutely fantastic and gorgeously rendered to the point where you can feel the humidity in the forest and feel the wind from the helicopters flying by. With by far the best CGI I’ve ever seen, this movie would be worth seeing even if it were an instructional video.

That said, this movie did have some issues. The dialog was a bit better than I expected and the characters felt very real, but the whole story might as well have been written by early Native Americans. Humans, with the exception of five good guys, are all evil, greedy, murdering warmongers who want nothing but to kill everyone in their way. It’s very reminiscent to Disney’s Pocahontas. A soldier is sent to communicate to the natives and get them to move. He meets up with this native woman who teaches him how pretty flowers are. They fall in love, yadda yadda, the entire plot basically seems to boil down to nature is pretty and the bad humans hate flowers. Though it may seem like I didn’t enjoy the story much, I thought it did work well and was entertaining as long as you didn’t get too caught up on the hippie message.

There were also a few “oh come on” moments. Like when someone shot a bow and arrow through re-enforced future bulletproof glass. Really? Arrows can pierce futuristic space ships? I have a bit of trouble accepting that. They’re also a bit inconsistent as to how long people can breathe in the alien atmosphere. Sometimes they seem to be able to walk outside for a minute with no trouble at all, and others it seems to incapacitate people much faster than they supposedly should.

Ultimately though these are minor gripes with a overall awesome film. An Interesting story, a fantastic world, stunningly beautiful effects, and really a truly unique experience make this move a must-see in 3D. Go watch it.

Guess what I forgot?

I forgot that my laptop has a broken wireless card and can’t access the internet! I couldn’t blog for the extent of my Christmas vacation! So, sorry about that. On the plus side, I did see Avatar and I will have a post up about that tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Not The Last Airbender one.

When I first saw the movie “The Last Airbender” which is the live-action version of the award-winning Nickelodeon animated series, I was wondering why they didn’t call it Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is the proper title. I quickly learned that this was because they already had an Avatar movie. At first, I was a bit peeved that some elf-like things that look like the Zora from Zelda had forced a movie I was looking forward to (hey, Nick’s Avatar is awesome even if it is a kids show) to alter it’s name. However, after watching a few trailers, I noticed that this new Avatar looked pretty awesome too. Some sort of fusion between sci-fi and fantasy. Needless to say I’m pretty psyched to see it, so watch for my review which will be coming out whenever I’m able to get to a theater. Hopefully it’ll be up in a few days.

Steam Cloud makes gaming a bit clearer.

It’s always a pain playing a game on a friend’s computer. There’s always the one guy who has inverted controls so up is down, or a PC gamer who set “c” as crouch instead of shift. You can either struggle to get used to your friends play style, or switch back the the default controls you spent so long editing the buttons to avoid. Fortunately, Valve has found a way to fix this dilemma.

In comes Steam Cloud, Valve’s newest little trick on their Steam gaming platform. As long as your friend has Steam installed on their computer, you can simply log into your account and Steam Cloud saves all your key bindings, controls, and other preferences along with the rest of your account information. Any change in the game options will be transferred between computers. Valve’s tradition of innovation and customer convenience lives on.

Sagan Sings…sort of.

Anyone who likes rap, knows someone who likes rap, or has heard that “I’m on a boat” song probably knows about T-Pain. He’s become popular because of his unique use of pitch correction, a digital process which allows singers to use programs like Auto-Tune to correct any mistakes they may have made by changing the note of a sound. This can be used to create flawless vocals on an album, add a unique sound to your voice like T-Pain, or to make a song from basically anything.

My favorite use of this technology so far is the Symphony of Science. This music project describes itself as “a musical project by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.” Boswell takes clips from scientific movies, such as Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” or speeches given by Richard Dawkins (even Bill Nye the Science Guy makes an appearance) and uses pitch correction to make awesome songs and music videos. Check it out, download the songs, put them on your iPod, whatever. Definitely my cup of boiled Camellia sinensis.

Bordering between genres

I’m generally not a big RPG guy. I’m more of a shooter fan with games like Call of Duty or Team Fortress 2 in my repertoire. Like most other twitchy, head-shot junkies (NSFW: Naughty words), I lack the patience to spend a weekend killing spiders in World of Warcraft in order to level up. This is why I was excited about the new game by Gearbox Software that came out October 20th (October 23rd for PC players) called Borderlands. It combines the real-time shooting of an FPS with the level-ups and progressive improvement of an RPG. As the trailer says, “The RPG and FPS made a baby.”

This idea of combining two genres is really starting to pick up in gaming. While plenty of games had elements of a different genre, like Tomb Raider combining platforming with shooting elements, they usually could be classified in a single area. However, a true hybrid like Borderlands is rather rare.

Still, the self-titled “Role Playing Shooter” is awfully reminiscent of Fallout 3 (a bit graphic), the 2008 game developed by Bethesda Game Studios. Both had a level-up system to improve your skills, quests given by Non-Player Characters (NPCs), random drops of money, weapons, and armor, they even both took place in a barren wasteland populated by random bandits and monsters. The main difference between the two is the tone. While Borderlands has a light tone with silly little robots, screaming midget psychos and cartoony graphics, Fallout 3, while still having it’s silly moments, goes a more serious route, taking place in a post-nuclear apocalypse Washington D.C. called the Capital Wastes.

Ultimately which game style you prefer depends on personal taste. Fallout 3 looks a lot better and feels more like a shooter. It’s also a lot more realistic. Borderlands feels more like an RPG with numbers popping up when you shoot something and different guns having elemental damage types. It’s much lighter with it’s crazy characters and it’s 87 bazillion guns. Borderlands also supports 4-player co-op so you can play with your friends if you like, just like WoW! Perhaps games like these might make us shooter fans branch out a bit and explore new genres. For now though, I need to go play some more Modern Warfare before my adrenaline rush goes away.

I now pronounce you man and pixel.

Aah, remember how romantic your first date was? Your first kiss? How about your first level up? Well, apparently that last one holds more significance for some than it does for others. Brad Smith thought of a creative way to ask his girlfriend Lisa to marry him by reprogramming a Super Mario Brothers level so a series of coins spelled “Will You Marry Me?” Lisa must like Mario, because her answer was yes. All together now: Awwwwww!

As unique as this might seem, it isn’t the first time someone’s proposed via video game. Another couple got hitched via the classic RPG Chrono Trigger. According to the man’s Youtube video, she said yes as well.

But why stop there when World of Warcraft offers a great selection of dresses and rings? They even have specific guidelines as to how you can get married in WoW like this lovely Korean couple did a while back.

So, to all you bachelor gamers out there, how would you propose to your dream bride?

Mods: Internet Play-Doh

Who makes the games? The developers right? But who makes the games fun? I would say the players do that. While the developers choose what your restrictions are, but it’s the players who decide how to play. At first this meant things like glitches and secrets, with people seeing how fast they can play, or seeing if they can fight the last boss before even beating the first one, but game developers now recognize this and are starting to offer choice in their games. From games like Bioshock, simply choosing whether you’re the nicest goody-two-shoes to grace the land or the most monstrous horror in the pixilated realm, to games like Grand Theft Auto, full do-anything sandbox games, developers recognize that letting people play their own way is important in a game. And the best way to do this is with modding.

For a long time mods have been a part of gaming. Modifying game files for download is so popular there are entire sites (FPSbanana.com, moddb.com)dedicated to nothing but having lots and lots and lots of mods for download. From simple skins, like making your grenades look like watermelons, to full-blown brand new games, user-created content is becoming increasingly respected by game developers. The Playstation 3’s hit game LittleBigPlanet is proof of this, a simple platformer whose main selling point was the ability to easily create your own maps and make them available for online download. Before even that was Halo 3 with its Forge map editor, allowing you to create custom maps and game types. Back before console online, in the days where PC gaming was king, games like the 1998 Starcraft had deep map editors allowing people to create their own battlefields and even make new game types. In the professional Starcraft leagues in Korea, the only maps used are user created, since the developer Blizzard didn’t make their maps very fair to all three different races you could play. Some games actually started out as simple mods before being picked up by big name developers and made into official releases. Team Fortress was a Quake mod, Counter-Strike was a Half-life mod, and Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) is a popular professional game made from modding Warcraft III. The game Garry’s Mod is a game that allows you to put any item from any game on the Steam gaming platform in any setting from said games. The entire purpose of the game is to give user-created content an easy interface to use. Kind of a “baby’s first modding” if you will.

Of all the game developers, VALVe has probably been the most receptive of user-created content, as they damn well should be considering a significant chunk of their games (Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Garry’s Mod, Team Fortress 2) started as mods. They’re well known for making their source coding readily available and easy to find for anyone who wants to mod. They’re also very supportive of it, with their updates for games like Team Fortress 2 consisting of mostly fan-made content they decided to make official.

As people become more computer literate and games become more mod-friendly, I think we can expect to see some really innovative stuff start coming out. From minor time-wasters to the next big gaming revolution, the modding community keeps biggering and biggering and biggering and I think we can expect to see a lot more cool stuff to come.