For more than a decade, free-to-play games with microtransactions (also called In-App Purchase or IAP) by which players can pay real money for in-game content have been the industry standard for online success in Asia. Mainstream American gamers have long resisted these "freemium" games, with World of Warcraft and other subscription based online games reigning supreme, and being seen as more AAA than their free-ish counterparts. Casual games developers have encountered no such problems, and m...
It's been a great year for video games, kind of. Sure, the AAA release lineup has been a trainwreck and hacking has been a bigger problem than ever. But two things have happened involving the federal government that have made video games more legitimate in the United States than ever before. The Supreme Court ruling establishing that video games were the equivalent of movies and books, not porn, was the more significant decision. But in May, the National Endowment for the Arts made another si...
One of the things I consistently notice amongst fellow internet users is that many people don't know how to properly search for stuff. Google may have served you well in the past, but I'm going to share a few little tricks with you to help make your search results even spiffier.
ARGs have taken the concept of video games to some odd and wonderful real-world places. Socks, Inc. might not be the first ARG, and LittleBigPlanet might have defined the sock-puppet-based game archetype, but it is the first game to combine ARG and sock puppet elements into one package.
Great controls are the most important and difficult part of game design. Games with vector graphics and non-existent stories are classics because their creators managed to create a system where using buttons to control a shape on a screen was intuitive and fun. This is the tradition that Pac-Man has left us with, a gaming world in which controlling the character onscreen in an engaging way is the crux of the game's enjoyment.
Youtube.com is one of the most visited websites in the world, and has been for years now. Ever since it's creation in 2005 people have been making videos for every purpose, including the infamous "How to Boil Water" video. But how can one make money from posting videos on Youtube? Well, it all comes back to Google Adsense. Yes, I know, nowadays it's hard to make money on the internet without using Google Adsense here and there, but Youtube is a great medium to attract people to ads that gener...
Mildew can be the bane of a beautiful exterior paint job, marring its appearance even when the paint is otherwise in good shape. And while there’s no way to guarantee that mildew won’t eventually rear its ugly head on any home exterior, there are ways to fight it. Here are six steps you can take to combat the problem:
PETA wouldn't consider James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau's ingenious flypaper clock very eco-friendly, but I might beg to differ. The clock doesn't require any electricity or batteries. Instead it captures flies and converts the bodies of the dead insects into energy. Eight dead flies makes for roughly twelve days of power. Not bad.
The United States is a hierarchical country where the weak ones are at the bottom and the powerful ones are at the top. Garment workers are at the bottom of the list although they are the most important. Without them there would be no fashion industry. They sew and cut the garments that people buy, the raiment that models wear on the runways. After the garments are sewn, factory owners send the garments to contractors to get make the clothing. Contractors make sure the garment workers sew the...
National Geographic recently published a retrospective of the lovely Jane Goodall, one of the world's most accomplished conservationists. The feature includes every image of Goodall to ever appear in the magazine for the past fifty years.
And Dumbfounded Most Watching Game 1 of 2010 World Cup I just finished watching the Mexico - South Africa 2010 World Cup opener and boy was it a good one. The finish of a tie, wasn't totally cool to me, until I realized what I missed.
Written by JD Coverly of WonderHowTo World, LoadSave:We've spent the last week with Sprint's new phone, the HTC Evo 4G. Specification wise, it's better than Verizon's Incredible and T-Mobile's HD2. Apple has unveiled the new version of their phone this week and thankfully it's debatable as to which phone is better. The iPhone has better battery life and a more robust App store, but it suffers from a smaller screen, smaller camera resolution, no HDMI out, face talk only on wi-fi networks, and ...
Windows Live SkyDrive which is initially termed as Windows live folders is one of the parts of Microsoft Windows online service. It is a password protected service that allow users to store file and share them with others. Here the windows live id is required to access the users profile. Anyone can make his/her files private or public. Public share file are easy to access without requiring any Windows live id.Initially it was available only few states in United States. But nowadays it expande...
BPA: Why Plastic Ain't Good For You BPA or Bisphenol A is in many of the products we use. Everything from Ziploc bags to shower curtains, we are exposed to BPA all the time.
So, you've made your first zine. Now what? That depends on a couple things:
The guidelines you should follow for writing your resume are simple and effective once it's presented. Watching this how to video will walk you through resume format, writing your resume to be reader friendly and how to describe your qualifications and accomplishments. Write a winning and successful resume today.
Tol Barad sounds pretty exotic, but really, what doesn't in World of WarCraft: Cataclysm? If you're a WoW: Cataclysm player and haven't heard of the Tol Barad zone yet, then what in the hell have you been doing? Letting a bot play your game? Maybe the WoW Glider? Tsk, tsk.
Shooting technique: Locking your ankle and pointing your toes down when striking the ball is probably the most important factor in developing the proper shooting technique. It is probably the hardest skill to learn in soccer, but not anymore because I am here to guide you through and help you improve. Down below I have put down some steps to improve your shooting ability and I have also applied some pictures to make it easier for you to understand and apply while shooting. Enjoy the rest of t...
Paul Deacon, scrum half for the Bradford Bulls and Great Britain, shows you the punt kick. The punt kick is a great way of gaining ground in attack or defence. Here are his tips.
The abdominals can be considered one of the best signals of fitness and strength and is one of the most sought-after muscle groups to develop by both men and women. While the abdominals are very desirable, it can be one of the most difficult areas to distinguish and maintain. This article's purpose is to give you the hard truths, advice, and workout for gaining a hard body and new look.
I know there are many students going for their first job that are new to the whole interview process. This is why I’m writing this article—to provide some tips on making your first interview experience simpler and hopefully successful. I’m currently in a university, but I had my first job when I was in ninth grade. I’ve held a few jobs and have undergone interviews many times. Sometimes they didn’t go so well, but I did learn from my mistakes. As I learned, I became better at interviews and s...
Social Profile Change the privacy settings on your social profile (Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, etc.) so that the following information can't be found by a random person who you didn't accept you as a friend:
With FarmVille being one of the hottest Facebook games on the market, it's no wonder it's the primary target for scams and virus downloads. Anyone playing FarmVille is at risk, but the primary targets are those looking to improve their gameplay and build their farms and neighbors up. These "farmers" are the ones seeking quick hacks and cheats.
Since the invention of the mechanical clock, enclosure of the commons, and proletarianization of labor, the alarm clock has been the bane of our existence. While not actually evil, it does represent the constant and uncompromising glare of our owners shaking a patronizing finger at us, telling us to get to work so they can use our labor to grant themselves bonuses.
First Things First Before you can begin to work on a damaged panel, you must determine what type of material that you are working on. For instance, the panel may be mild steel, high strength steel, aluminum, plastic, sheet molded compound, or a number of other types of material.
Kick Ass Review Part 2: Gameplay and Design In the game, you can play as Kick Ass, Hit Girl, or Big Daddy. Each charater has a light and heavy attack that can be strung together into small combos. Each character also has three special attacks assigned to the Square, Triangle, and Circle buttons requiring different amounts of MP. For bosses, each character has two finishing moves.Kick Ass
Hobby rockets are tons of fun. Vicarious astronaut adventures abound with every launch. What if you want to be closer to the action though? What if you want to feel what it's like to be in a rocket at takeoff? With the discovery of tiny keychain cameras, we have technology small and cheap enough to fit inside a model rocket!
Solar panels are an amazing invention. Catching energy from the Sun before it even enters Earth's food chain, photovoltaics are like an all-natural nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, the constituted parts of a solar panel are rare, valuable, and subject to the coercive forces of market competition.
Another week has passed on the online battlefield as the CISPA legislation continues to grind away at our freedom. Here at Null Byte, we try to keep our community informed and knowledgeable at the same time—and that means creating content for them to learn from.
Hello, nubile young Photoshop explorers! As we all know, besides design, Photoshop is best used for revenge, as will be demonstrated below. This is my ex-girlfriend, Cassandra. She dumped me because I had "poor bone structure." I'll bone her structure! Well, not anymore, I guess.
If you're a frequenter of Null Byte, I bet you have at least some interest in information security. Furthermore, you have a hobby that if applied in certain ways, will get you arrested. I've received quite a few messages from the community here about federal cybercrime law and how it applies to them, so I decided to get together with my lawyer to come up with some answers.
Did you know there is hidden data in your digital pictures? Well, there is, and that data might be a security risk to you. Think back at all of those pictures you're in and are connected with. I'm sure some of those you'd like to distance yourself from. And surely you wouldn't mind checking out the metadata in a few of those images. In this article, we'll be going over how to do just that.
Continued from Organize Yo'sef Part One!
THE ODYSSEY is an epic adventure, a world first, a race against time, an entire year of living dangerously.
Skyrim is an enormous RPG recently released by Bethesda. After many long years of waiting (I had 1000's of hours clocked into its predecessor, Oblivion, way back in 8th grade) the game is finally out and it surpasses everyone's expectations—save for removing custom spell crafting... Why, Bethesda?
At Kaplan University, our main focus in developing our online MBA programs is career development. We believe the time and effort that is required to obtain a master’s degree online should be apparent the first day the student begins their new career. Earning an MBA could be a step in the right direction towards a fulfilling and satisfying career.*
XSS stands for cross-site scripting, which is a form of web-based exploitation that uses client-side vulnerabilities in a web page to execute malicious JavaScript codes. JavaScript is referred to as "cross-site" because it usually involves an external website containing the malicious code. That code is most commonly used to steal cookies with a website that the attacker created and hosted on another server. The cookies can then be used to escalate privileges and gain root access to someone's ...
Every year at the big video game trade shows around the world, like E3 and gamescon, the big three console makers each do a hot-ticket exclusive press conference to let the media know what's coming for their system. Computer games have no such press conference. Who would give it if they did?
It's a hell of a lot easier to make money selling an indie game now than it was four years ago. But it's still a rough game.
If you follow indie games at all, you've probably heard of Bastion. During its development, it took home numerous Best in Show prizes from E3 and other game conventions while building up an incredible amount of buzz in the games press. Part of what is intriguing about Bastion is its cool art design, which in the last couple months, peaked my interest more so than the gameplay or the much-ballyhooed narration.