ZIZZY’s blog

While gaming may not be one of the Mac’s strengths, it’s about to get two very important games - according to Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 are coming to Macs. You can see the video where it’s revealed on GameTrailers.com, or watch the important part which I’ve embedded above.

Gears of War had been an Xbox 360 exclusive until recently when it was announced for PC - and now Apple, one of Microsoft’s biggest competitors, will have it too. While details may be sparse, and there are plenty of questions (Will it include the extra content? When will it be available? What will the requirements be?) just the fact that one of Microsoft’s biggest games is coming to the Mac is a pretty big deal.

[Via TUAW]

There are plenty of Firefox plugins that do everything from blocking ads to helping you make grocery lists. However, this list focuses on plugins that do much simpler tasks, but can also be just as useful, if not more. Here they are, 5 plugins for the simple things.

Fission

If you’ve used Safari on Mac OS X, you’ll be familiar with this. Fission “makes the progress bar more visible and allows for a nice visual effect,” so as a page is loading the address bar fills up, and is basically just a loading bar for the page. It is useful to see how much more needs to load, and is a nice, simple, and unobtrusive way of doing it.

Smart Link

You know when someone posts a URL, but doesn’t actually make it a link? Instead of simply clicking on it you’re forced to copy and paste it into your address bar, making it more difficult than it should be. This solves that problem. If there is a plain text URL, you merely select it, right click, and Smart Link adds an option to either open it in a new tab or a new window. It can be quite useful, and saves a little bit of time and effort every once in a while.

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If you want to stream anything from your PC to your Xbox 360, there are a number of options - unless you’re using a Mac, in which case Connect360 is the only simple option. However, the newest 360 dashboard update disabled Connect360.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for Nullriver, the company who makes the app, to fix it - and add on some nice new features while they’re at it. It’s now been updated to version 3.0, and added support for H.264 and MPEG4 video streaming to the 360, along with Podcast streaming from iTunes.

With this update here are all the formats you can stream using Connect360: Pictures (from iPhoto): JPEG, RAW, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF. Music (from iTunes): MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF and Apple Lossless. Video: WMV+WMA, H.264 and MPEG4. If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and a Mac, this is a must have. Forget AppleTV, this is the way to stream all your porn right to your TV.

There are a lot of things that can tear married couples apart. Drinking, having sex with anyone besides each other, arguments, the list goes on. While many people who have marriage problems just deal with them, they have to draw the line somewhere. There are some things that are just too much. For example, taking your husbands precious Wii and hurling it into a lake. Breaking it would have been bad enough, but throwing it completely into the water? That abominable act is exactly what a man recently had to endure. He details his wife’s insanity in an e-mail received by Kotaku yesterday:

Buying a Wii was a big deal for me. Seeing those 250 hard earned dollars and some change go flying from her hand and into the water was painful. We would probably be together right now if she had not thrown my beloved Wii… but alas, you cant talk a crazy woman out of an idea of such magnitude.

She’s lucky she is still alive after committing such an act. Her husband decided to go easy on her though, and is merely seeking divorce:

Anyways, divorce is imminent. I’m talking to a lawyer tomorrow to get the process started. I’m not divorcing her just because of the Wii throwing. That was just the rather large straw that broke this dromedary’s back.

Now, without a wife, all that is left for him to do is play with his Wii alone. Pun definitely intended.

You may have played NewsBreaker before, where you destroy blocks and attempt to catch the falling news stories from MSNBC.com. Now, this game is coming to movie theaters where the audience will work together to play it. And as if a few loud, annoying movie goers who stand up in front of you, can’t seem to sit still, and generally disrupt your peaceful theater experience wasn’t bad enough, now the entire audience will be participating. The press release (found after the jump) explains:

“NewsBreaker Live combines live msnbc.com RSS newsfeeds, the movement of the audience as a human joystick, and the big screen as a game board to bust audiences out of their pre-movie doldrums with an interactive game that delivers real-time news headlines to kick start the moviegoing experience”

The audience will move as one to control the game and break the blocks, using “groundbreaking motion-sensor technology” they call “CrowdGaming.” The news headlines they try and catch will come in real-time from MSNBC.com, so not only are you trying to get points, but to “accumulate knowledge.”

While this does sound like it could be more interesting then the usual stream of repetitive advertisements and useless movie trivia (along with annoying songs in the background) that plasters most screens before the movie, it sounds like the kind of idea that might not actually work as well as it appears on paper (or in this case, on your screen). Even if the game actually picks up the crowd’s movements accurately, there will be groups of people who choose to play the much more entertaining game of ruining everyone’s fun by moving in the wrong direction and failing to catch anything.

[Via Kotaku]

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You can already hook up two screens to one computer, doubling your screen space. Now, Microsoft Research in India is working on doing the opposite, and splitting one screen into two. Each half of the screen would run it’s own operating system, with separate desktops, applications, cursors, keyboards, and everything else an operating system uses. The processor is split, so that two copies of Windows run on either half of the screen. That way, two people could use one computer simultaneously.

Each person can even move their cursor to the other side, so it is now much simpler to annoy the person working next to you or ruin/steal their work.

They hope to cut computer costs for schools and businesses, or even families that share one computer. Now instead of waiting your turn, you can look at porn on one side while your mother does her work on the other.

[Via Download Squad]

While most countries are moving forward with the Internet, China is going backwards. The Internet could never be what it is today without the freedom it provides, the ability to access anything at any time. China doesn’t seem to understand this though, and censors much of what shows up on the Internet. They would like to “purify” it - and their idea of purification is spreading the Communist Party doctrine and anything that “adheres to correct propaganda guidance,” while censoring everything they don’t like. Their latest move (from CNN):

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to rid the country’s sprawling Internet of “unhealthy” content and make it a springboard for Communist Party doctrine, state television reported.

With Hu presiding, the Communist Party Politburo — its 24-member inner council — discussed cleaning up the Internet, state television reported. The meeting promised to place the often unruly medium more firmly under propaganda controls.

[Via Download Squad]

Everyone is going on about Web 2.0 or Web 3.0. Why not Internet 2.0? That’s what some university researchers want (with the government’s backing). They believe we need a clean slate, and should get rid of the established internet and start from scratch.

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A recent survey of media and entertainment executives reveals that they see user created content as somewhat of a threat. Of those surveyed, 57 percent cited it as one of the top “issues” they currently face. Over 70 percent believe social media will only continue to grow, while 3 percent seem to be in denial and think it is nothing more than a fad. There is a simple solution to this though, which is creating quality content.

There are so many low quality films, movies, TV shows and games being pumped out that it doesn’t surprise me they are worried they can’t keep up with the users. There is so much new content made available every day completely free, and so when you’re being charged for what they do it better be good. They should be helping users create what they want - and some do, through contests an things like that. Not only do they get something out of that, but it can give the creator a much vaster array of resources. Let’s hope they realize that it’s not just being a big company that gets you recognized, but instead making something awesome whether you have a background or not.

It’s obvious to me that the internet is the future of media. Most internet users realized it long ago, and the popularity of file sharing proves that it definitely works. Most networks make some of their most popular shows available to be streamed from their sites soon after they air, which is a start.

Some companies have decided to skip television all together though, and have made new shows specially for the web. Comedy Central’s website has a bunch “Web Shows”, and there are various others whose success is based solely on what they’ve created for the internet. The newest addition: Fox Reality’s new TV show “Nightclub Confessions.”

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I’ve been hoping that The Colbert Report would be made available on Xbox Live Marketplace for so long. Comedy Central has had success with their shows on the Marketplace so far, and it would make sense to add one of their best shows. So when I saw that Stephen Colbert Presents: Stephen Colbert’s Alpha Squad 7 - Tek Jansen the New Adventures is coming to the Marketplace this week, I was understandably excited. While this isn’t the entire show like I hope it one day will be, it is definitely a start. And if that’s not good enough for you, the first episode will be completely free. I’m sure that’s all the incentive you need, so get on your 360 and start downloading.

With Xtorrent’s recent departure from beta, I decided I might as well try out the “newest and freshest face on the block.”� From what it says on the official website, it looks like it has some pretty useful and cool features:

“Search Everywhere, Easily
Xtorrent is all about search. Type keywords in and the results show up right in Xtorrent. One click later and you’re downloading your content. It’s ridiculously easy… and it’s only in Xtorrent.

Get Exactly What You Want
You can browse the files and folders of a torrent before downloading and see its real-time swarm status. Easily narrow your search results using the straightforward media type and keyword filters.

Subscribe to Content, Easily
Xtorrent consolidates the work of many apps into one. Ditch your RSS reader and your web browser… Xtorrent lets you subscribe to RSS torrentcasts directly. Just like the search interface, you’re only one click away from downloading the latest content.

Hardcore Technology, Mac Simplicity
Xtorrent has the svelte body of a supermodel and the brute strength of an ironman. In true Mac form, it successfully marries a high-performance and advanced download core with a truly easy to use interface. Mac users deserve nothing less.

Advanced Features
Xtorrent does a lot more… iTunes and iPod support. Time and user-activity sensitive bandwidth limits. Custom download folders. Search suggestions. Watch-folder auto-download. Automatic port configuration (UPNP & Airport NAT-PMP). Seeding ratio controls. Innovative fragment status view. Growl support. The list goes on… download Xtorrent and see for yourself”

So that’s exactly what I decided to do - read my review after the jump.

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If you’re tired of entering a password to protect your files, Revo’s USB Sex Drive has got you covered. Claiming to be the “the first company to make security Sexy”, Revo goes about protecting files differently. There’s no complicated passwords - instead, when you’re ready to get your data you simply click porn pictures in the order you’ve previously selected, and assuming you get it right that’s all there is to it. This seems like it will be much easier to remember than a series of letters and numbers, not to mention more fun, and it’s nice to have an alternative to passwords.