Listen up Scrabblers... you finally have something to brag about besides knowing what MUZJIK is, and if you think it's elevator music, put those tiles back in the bag and pack up your Scrabble board because this doesn't apply to you.
We're ending the week with a lot of big announcements and updates. To date, Google+ has updated its name policy, but is still forbidding pseudonyms. Blocking people on Google+ became even easier, and yesterday, games on Google+ launched.
As Google+ became available to more people, it started running into issues of accounts being suspended due to names that did not sound "real". According to Google+'s community standards, names that users "commonly go by" were encouraged, but not pseudonyms. Those who were using pseudonyms in their Google+ profiles quickly found themselves suspended from using Google+.
Stewart Butterfileld is one of the last great old-fashioned tech billionaires. He founded Flickr, and then sold the company to Yahoo! for a stupendous amount of money in 2005. Like Mark Cuban and others before him, he was left wondering what to do with the rest of his long and fabulously wealthy life. Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks and turned them from unabashed losers into beloved champions. Butterfield decided to try his hand at game design (something he had attempted with the ambitious ...
Different genres of social media have changed the world, but they are not omnipotent. In most cases this is a good thing, but not in the case of Operation Rainfall. It has been a purely well meaning social media movement that should have led to a great boon for the North American gamer public, but instead has served as a reminder of how stone aged Nintendo of America's (NOA) corporate thinking remains.
Pressing the button on a video game controller quickly is like running the 100 meter dash. Both require dedication and a precise exercise regime. There is also an odd quality about both in which the range between the very best and complete neophyte is tiny. Sprinter Usain Bolt holds the record in the 100 meter run at 9.58 seconds, only three seconds faster than I ran in freshmen high school track. And yet there are thousands of sprinters from a hundred years of Olympic competition in between ...
Sure, you go online to email and shop and do research. But have you ever been curious about how the internet actually works? Don't worry, you don't need a degree in computer science to get a handle on how your info gets from point A to point B. Learning the basics of the internet will give you a whole new appreciation for all those emails and chat messages that seem to magically appear. Get ready, because we're about to enter the wonderful world of digital data!
When I heard that a man wearing a pink wig and matching PVC dress won the 2010 National Scrabble Championship yesterday, I wasn't that shocked. After all, it was Halloween. But it turns out that it wasn't just a Halloween costume. In fact, it's a way of life for this champion scrabbler.
Well, we have had a pretty basic story structure in the previous couple of blogs. However, for the third act there is considerable leeway on how this story can play out. You can turn a story like this into a tragedy or comedy. Remember the line from the film Stranger Than Fiction "Tragedy, you die. Comedy you get hitched." Well in the Action/Adventure story, almost anything goes. For instance, GUY does not have to die, but CHICK could perish tragically. However, avoid cliches like someone jum...
I’m seeing a flood of posts on youth football forums and even getting a few e-mails from youth football coaches complaining about “player agents” also known as parents. Most of these unhappy coaches are dealing with parents that have non-issues, have an agenda, are misinformed, don’t know much about the game of youth football or are just people that gain great pleasure from complaining. The 80/20 rule is more like 95/5 in youth football, 95 percent of the problems are caused by 5 percent of t...
If you've checked out my SCRABBLE World, you may have read "How Controversy Changed SCRABBLE". In that case, you know that the word JEW is not allowed in regular play, because it was deemed an offensive and obscene word.
If you've read my blog "How Controversy Changed SCRABBLE", then you know that the word JEW is not allowed in regular play, because it was deemed an offensive and obscene word.
Levon Helm... The longtime drummer for The Band , Levon Helm wore many musical hats throughout his long career, including multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer, impressario, studio owner, studio engineer and producer. He grew up working on a farm in Arkansas; his first instrument was guitar, which he began playing at ag eight, but after seeing the F.S. Walcott Rabbits Foot Minstrels, he decided to ...
In an effort to prevent drones from being hacked, DARPA has been developing an "unhackable system," and seems to think they're almost there. The development team "proved" mathematically that their kernel was unhackable, and they hope to use it for more than just drones (power grids, cars, phones, pacemakers, etc.).
15Do not be feared by the title. It's for a structure i'm building at the moment!
Motorola may have changed its mind about making its devices hard to unlock by creating a tool to do it for you, but they've been slow to update it to include the latest and greatest models. Want to beat them to the punch? Just consult djrbliss over on XDA-Developers, who came up with a root exploit that will unlock all the newest Motorola smartphones, like the Motorola Atrix HD, Photon Q, and new Razrs. It's simple. Just connect your device to your computer, download and extract the zip file ...
In an office area, there is a coffee machine and a jar in which people are asked to put voluntary contributions for the coffee they consume.
Ever wonder how all of those tiny chips and components can fit inside your laptop or smartphone? If you tried to squeeze them in there yourself, your laptop would quickly become too heavy for your lap, and your mobile phone would need wheels to stay mobile.
This book surprised me. I read it for 2 reasons. 1) It seemed like one of those decently famous books that I should probably have read.
“Of a generation who remembers Tiananmen Square, 1989, I considered how some excuse – the lack of, or slow progress on, human rights in China because ‘times have changed’, or because other concerns, including making money, come first, or because rights, freedom, and democracy are somehow different issues there than in the West.” Denise Chong
Hey, hackers! Now that you've hacked/owned your first "box" in my last article, let's look a little closer at another great feature of Metasploit, the Meterpreter, and then let’s move on to hacking a Linux system and using the Meterpreter to control and own it.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server.
Overclocking is quite an awesome thing. When computer components are designed, they are made to run at a certain speed, otherwise known as their clock and bus speeds. These limits are not actually limits. You can overclock components, which essentially makes them go faster than their set limitations. This can save you a lot of cash when newer components come out and you don't have enough money to upgrade. However, when you overclock components, you must be careful and make sure that the machi...
Google+ is the greatest social network to emerge since Facebook annoyed everyone into joining, but that doesn't necessarily mean that our relationship with it is all rosy. Although Google+ has amazing innovations, like hangouts and circles, users are spending a lot of time begging for core features that take what seems to be an eternity to emerge.
Formerly ipchains, iptables is a script-based firewall that's included with both Mac and Linux operating systems. In my opinion, it's the best firewall in existence. The only downfall is that it's complicated for some people to use due to its script-based nature. But this should be disregarded, as firewalls are nearly the entire security of your computer.
Last Thursday, on October 7th, indie game developers from around the world walked down a red carpet in Santa Monica, California in the hopes of winning an IndieCade award. We previously discussed the IndieCade festival and conference, but the award show is a smaller, more inclusive event that provides finalists the opportunity to see their project on stage with rewards by sponsors such as LG, who presented this year’s ceremony.
One of the primary goals of a social network is for you to share what you find interesting with your followers and friends, but on Google+, sharing has so many layers that it can be confusing for most people to really take advantage of it properly. Some of the tools in place that enable you do deal with spam and manage your privacy aren't very clear, so this week's round up is all about how you can share what you want with who you want on Google+.
At GDC 2011 this past March, three of the world's best game designers participated in a contest called Game Design Challenge. Each presented their vision for a game that fit the prompt "Bigger than Jesus: games as religion" before an audience, with applause to determine the winner. Jenova Chen, John Romero, and Jason Rohrer all spoke, and Rohrer won in a landslide with his revolutionary game called Chain World.
When you don't have anyone to play with in the flesh, nothing beats a round of competitive online Scrabble. If you're constantly on the move, the Scrabble app developed by Electronic Arts (EA) for Android and iOS mobile devices is probably your favorite way to play. But let's face it—if you love Scrabble, you probably love all types of word games, and if you're on the hunt for that next fun and challenging logological mobile game, I've got a few suggestions for you...
Are you finding that the Google+ features you've been waiting for are still not rolling out quickly enough for you? Although we've provided many solutions to Google+ issues with different Chrome extensions, it still seems like it's not enough. Now that we've been using Google+ for almost two months, our priorities have changed, and we're finding that we want and need different extensions to make Google+ work better. From filtering to circles, these Google+ Chrome extensions will solve many of...
Both Google+ and Facebook are competing for your time and space, and your commitment to one social network. To make their spaces more attractive to you, they've both made it easier for you to deal with people you don't like or don't care for.
Over the weekend, Google made several updates to the Google+ profile. Here's how to make the most out of old and new features to make your profile page shine.
Stuck in a relationship that is going nowhere? Do you wake up and it's nine years later and nothing has changed? Do you also dream of sheep? You know, in the non erotic sense? Well welcome to Catherine, a puzzle game of non-commitment and text messaging.
Dropbox continues to make headlines with their recent programming blunder which left the accounts of its 25 million customers wide open during a four-hour time span. During the duration, anyone in the world could access any Dropbox profile by typing in any password. And seeing as this wasn't the first security failure, everyone, including the most loyal users are considering dropping the Dropbox.
The philosophy of street art is a long and complex one. This is just the first in a series of the individual street art philosophys i have come across.
Movies like to show hackers breaking passwords with fancy software and ludicrous gadgets. The reality of busting passwords open is much more mundane. Simple as it may sound, most passwords are broken purely by guesswork. Check out this infographic from ZoneAlarm, as well as this list from the Wall Street Journal of the fifty most common passwords gleaned from the 2010 Gawker hack. If your password is on one of those lists, you need to change it. Right now.
In the past 25 years, there have been five generations of home video games systems. Since Nintendo changed the world by releasing the NES in 1987, there has always been at least two consoles competing for dominance in the wild west of the games industry. This competition— coupled with rapid advancements in technology—has led to a new generation of battling systems coming out every five years, like clockwork.
Stuffing is a time and click intensive chore which, when done correctly, can bring you AND your neighbors great rewards!
Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Video Game was released on Tuesday August 10th for the PS3 (Download only, $9.99). It will be released for the Xbox 360 on August 25th for 800 imaginary points. We spent a few hours yesterday on co-op and single player and here are our initial impressions.
