Electronic Arts (EA) and Hasbro have always been a little slow at adapting Scrabble for the cyber culture. They failed to beat Scrabulous to the Facebook market by a whole year, but managed to save face by targeting the mobile market, specifically iPhone and iPod touch, making Scrabble one of the very first mobile apps in the iTunes App Store.
UTILIDOR n pl. -S an insulated system of pipes for use in arctic regions 59 points (9 points without the bingo)
Since its inception, Google+ users have been a loud, vocal bunch, and they've made their displeasure known about many issues, especially on the lack of support for pseudonyms, Google Apps, and brand pages. It's been especially galling for many Google loyalists, who found their Google+ profiles suspended, when they ended up violating the Google+ "common name" policy.
Bitcoin is a new currency built off "Satoshi Nakamoto's" (alias) 2008 Bitcoin white-paper. Bitcoin provides its users with a way to make peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions without having to use a bank as a mediator. There is no middle man, no corporation backing it, and no one has access to your money, except you. It's decentralized from government, run by the people, for the people.
PC Gamer represents all that was awesome about games journalism in the '90s, now sadly diminished. Brilliant, funny, full of integrity, and solid print sales were always present, and with the tragic exception of the latter, still are. Video game magazines were hit harder than nearly any other magazine vertical when the internet began its uncoordinated, but inevitable assault on print media. Magazines are now struggling to find their place in a world filled with more competitors than paying cu...
On October 7th, the IndieCade Conference will open its doors to some of the most innovative minds in the independent gaming industry. The three day event located in Culver City, California includes presentations by notable indie designers, workshops, galleries, and mixers. On the following day, however, the IndieCade Festival begins. Unlike the conference, the festival includes events targeted at gamers and the general public. While a $15 wristband will grant you access to keynotes, events, a...
Dead Island is known for having the most successful trailer of any game ever. It was a beautiful cinematic experience. But sadly, as details of the game itself emerged, and after it was shown at conventions around the world, doubt began to set in about whether this five-year-long project would live up to the hype.
The used video game market represents a huge portion of retail game sales. It's the only avenue in which most people can afford to buy AAA games. But game publishers aren't exactly big fans of used game sales, since they only benefit from gamers buying new ones. GameStop and Best Buy are huge corporate interests, so EA and the rest of the big publishers out there have not been able to push them around on the issue of used game sales... so far.
Studio Ghibli is the most well known anime feature film studio in the world. For over 26 years, their films have represented the peak of mainstream anime, and since Disney began distributing their films in America back in 1997, they've become a household name here in the States—not just in Japan. In 2001, they even bested Disney and Pixar, taking home a Best Animated Feature Film Academy Award for Spirited Away. Eight years later, Ghibli and Fukuoka-based developer Level-5 announced that they...
There are over 250,000 apps in the Android Market, ranging from free productivity programs to a ridiculous $200 for a vuvuzela horn effect. But chances are you don't have the vuvuzela app on your Android smartphones right now, but you are likely to have one of the ten most popular apps in the Android Market.
Crysis 2 is the current standard for high-quality graphics in video games. No other game looks so smooth, so colorful, so... ultra-real. German developer Crytek has built their reputation on PC game technology to the limit, and the CryENGINE 3 graphics engine they used to make Crysis 2 might be the most powerful tool for creating 3D video game graphics on Earth. As of yesterday, it's also free for anyone, yourself included, to download from Crytek's website here.
Last month, mobile application consultant Jonathan Stark unleashed his Starbucks Card to the public as an "experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones." Basically, he purchased a Starbucks Card and registered it via the Starbucks Mobile App for iPhone (there's an Android one, too) which allows caffeine addicts to pay for coffee and baked goods with their mobile device. He then took a screenshot of the barcode and let anyone on the web download it for...
Need to pick up some furniture, but can't find any free time in your busy schedule? What if you're just too lazy to go pick up some cat food? How are you going to feed your pet without getting off the couch? Tired of waiting in lines at the post office to mail out some last minute package?
Electronic Arts is the biggest game publisher in the world, and have been for years. And yet, their only successful internally developed games nowadays are the EA Sports mega-franchises like Madden. Most of their success has stemmed from their ability to buy other companies on their way up, squeeze the creativity out of them, and then sell them to someone else or just let them go. This week they made their largest acquisition ever when they purchased PopCap Games for $750 million upfront—as m...
There is a difference between what is possible, what should be done and what an owner manager may want to do. Decide how you want to handle payroll then determine if your desires and best practices are in agreement. Before I point out the decisions that need to be made, let me make two points. First, all personnel for your business do not have to be employees. Some entities can be run with all non-employee personnel or a combination of both. This is one of the reasons why doing a business pla...
I have been wanting to share this great menubar app for a long time now (2+ years), but I really didn't know where. Just looking at Mac How-To World made me think to post it here.
Lady Gaga and Polaroid's upcoming Grey Label Camera Glasses can record video and snap pictures, but who really wants to show the world what they're up too on those mini LCD screens? It's nothing more than a fancy gimmick between a pop star and a failing company. Isn't the intention of camera glasses to capture things around you as they are? Drawing attention to yourself with clunky video-displaying eyewear kind of defeats the purpose, but that's why they're "fashion" glasses and not practical...
With give or take 250 million cars in America, odds are most city dwellers waste time hunting for parking spots. And while a smartphone app can't make free parking spots magically appear, it can aid in the searching process.
Real-time strategy (RTS) was the most popular genre in PC games at one time. It put Blizzard on the map—one of the biggest game developers in the world. And it buried the once venerable turn-based strategy genre, the only survivor being the Civilization series. But like hair metal in the late ‘80s, RTS reached its saturation point. Many bands (games) were too similar and used ornamentation over innovation. Suddenly, the fans left. From ’95 to ’03, Command & Conquer releases were more like new...
Today we pay homage to a phenomenon. One as diffuse and amusing as the internet itself, and as pointless as dog Halloween costumes. I'm speaking, of course, of giant games.
When you look up the word free in the dictionary, you'll find a lot of definitions, but in the days of digital dependency and a falling economy, free only means one thing—expensive stuff for nothing. And if you own a Windows computer, one of the best sites to get free software from is Giveaway of the Day.
With the globally rampant use of such social networking platforms as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, the issue of privacy has become a prevalent concern for many. And for good reason—there's the violation of Facebook employing user names in ads, the Etsy slip-up, and of course, the everyman act of recklessly sharing too much information via common social media outlets: a night of drinking results in morning after embarrassment, or worst case scenario, sloppy Facebook posts and tweets resul...
There really are depths of dumbth up with which I will not put, so I won’t be spending nine coins to build a Detective Agency in FrontierVille.Historically, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was started 1850 but came into its own working for Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War (1861 to 1865, for foreigners and the home-schooled) catching Confederate spies and running their own networks in the South. The US didn’t have a national police force until the Bureau Of Investigation started up...
After getting slammed with a crazy-big earthquake/tsunami, the Japanese nuclear plant Fukushima Daiichi might be on the brink of meltdown. Not as bad as Chernobyl, but maybe as bad as Three Mile Island. Nobody wishes such a disaster on anyone...anywhere in the world. In the US, there are about 100 nuclear facilities, about 8 of which are located near hot beds of seismic activity.
Animation Training:
A couple weeks ago, I attended Photo LA with my mother, a photographer. On our way out, we came across a blind man with a seeing eye dog. It begged the obvious question-- "blind photographer" is about as oxymoronic as it gets-- but, then coincidentally, this morning I came across a video of the same man. Pete Eckert is indeed a blind visual artist, a sculptor and industrial designer in his former life, before being diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that results in p...
A common problem for many guitarists is what I call the intermediate plateau. As a beginner, you improved rapidly. You got faster and more fluid almost on a daily basis. Then it stopped. However hard you practice, you don’t seem to get any better.
Without Richard Channing Garfield the world would be a much grayer and less interesting place today, at least for all of us. He created Magic in college, playtested it throughout, accidentally found a publisher for it, and wound up the the most well-known and successful paper game designer in the world (sorry Guygax, make something new why don't ya?). He does not seek the limelight, has not had a snappy biography written about him (or his game, amazingly enough) and I thought we should pay a ...
Hey wizards! As you have read in the gardening article I put up a few days ago, it requires the Test Realm! It's pretty easy to use the Test Realm, but there are a few very important limitations you have to pay attention to before using it. Many of you reading this may be pretty agravated. Here's how KingsIsle puts it:This Test Realm is available to Subscribers.
Here you will find some excellent charts to help you master the Crafting Goods and get signs you can place on your farm! For more in depth information and ideas please see the FarmVille Crafting Building Mastery and Recipe Guide.
Describe this movie in one word? Hilarious! Could you watch this movie again? Without a doubt!
These impressions are coming from a person completely new to the Final Fantasy Online world. Never played FF 11 or the FF 14 Beta. This game is not friendly to new people. The account creation is a Kafka like experience in things that don't make sense. For the game itself, the beginning tutorial is awful and does not really teach you the basics of combat. Here is a small breakdown of my opinions, with the good points first so that they don't get overshadowed by the negatives.
Tips China is called Zhong Guo to chinese people which means "Middle Country" or literally "Middle Kingdom" but nobody calls countries kingdoms anymore, not even the chinese.
Nowadays designer jeans cost anywhere between 100 and 200 bucks (or even more). Consumers have been converted to the concept that the fit and quality is just plain better. This is old news- everybody and their mother has joined the madness. However, what surprises me, is apparently you are not supposed to wash them.
As a USC student with limited funds, I'm always trying to figure out how to make the most out of my night when I go out. LA is great because there is so much going on for little to no cash if you know where to look. Echo Park/Silver Lake definitely has the most options, see below for my breakdown.
Red Dead Redemption does not do a very good job at teaching people how to duel. It is not intuitive and that leaves many people confused because it's not easy to practice.
The Recipe A quick search online will show you that there's no shortage of homemade laundry soap recipes: Here's one from The Simple Dollar. And we've got 10 more at Money Talks News. But below is one that seems to work pretty well. You'll need:
Lifehacker posts an article on the art of cracking weak passwords, courtesy of Internet standards expert, CEO of web company iFusion Labs, and blogger John Pozadzides. Pozadzides certainly knows a thing or two about password logic. (Note: this information is not intended to hack into accounts, but rather to protect you from using weak passwords).
Tim Hawkinson is an artist who truly inspires. The Los Angeles based artist creates complex, whimsical sculptures with simple mechanics and basic materials. One of his most notable pieces is the art-world-renowned "Uberorgan", a giant football field sized, fully-automated bagpipe, cleverly constructed with plastic sheeting and pieces of electrical hardware.
Preparing answers is essential for any job interview. Completing this video will walk you through preparing opening job interview answers, example based answers, responses to difficult job interview questions and the best answers to questions about your weak areas.
