L.A. Noire is the newest Rockstar (GTA4, Red Dead Redemption) game created by Team Bondi ( The Getaway). The game is set in the late 1940’s in Los Angeles. The main character, Phelps, is a war veteran rising through the ranks from police officer to detective. The game is presented in mini episodes (one case per episode) and flashbacks. Once you finish a case, you go straight to the next one. Having played four cases where the character moves from police officer to detective, here are my initi...
Have you ever been in the situation where someone whose taste in books you respect and generally agree with recommends a book that you have seen from time to time and you’ve always thought it looked just “Meh” and then you finally read War Dances which is by the same author and it’s amazing and funny and sad and you think, why didn’t I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, like, three years ago? No? Is that just me?
A Self-Protection Guide 1) You can help protect yourself from violent crimes.
Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty are some of the most horrific fairy tales ever written, but over the course of nearly 200 years they've become watered down and sugar coated for innocent children everywhere. The original tales by the Brothers Grimm are virtually opposites of how we know them today, because they were never really intended for unsullied youngsters. The folk tales came from storytellers across the German countryside, recounting the terrors they've heard ove...
It's a question I've been pondering a lot lately. Technically, children under the age of 13 are not allowed to join Facebook. But according to a Consumer Reports in May, 7.5 million children 12 and younger are already on the site. Currently, federal law prohibits websites from collecting personal data from children without parental permission. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, as it is more commonly known, has been in effect since 1998, but has not been updated since.
Here we have a unique piece of work. Miley Cyrus, the girl that started out as a 12 year old acting on Hannah Montana, is now 17 and showing some skin. Do we care? Apparently, parents do. So it seems as if if Cyrus wasn't able to do what she wants in her music videos because of these complaints parents are making. Of course, those complaints are natural, I mean, 8 year old girls look up to her, which really pressures her being a role model.
Outside the realm of politics, where opposing sides are quite passionate and quite disagreeable, there are few areas in our society quite as divisive as Twitter. People who like Twitter love Twitter and are relentless in trying to co-opt the people they know into joining (this is both altruistic and an unsubtle attempt to boost followers).
WikiLeaks. In recent weeks, it's been the hottest topic on the web. It's been attacked on a multinational level by political influence peddling.
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
Banksy, Cope2, Invader, Retna, Mr.cartoon, They all have a few things in common. Firstly, they are all extremely talented and well known urban artists. Secondly, they all have very memorable and very, very cool names.
Mark Burnett is, financially speaking, perhaps the most successful television producer today. While I had launched America's Most Wanted and COPS a decade earlier, Mark exploded onto network television with Survivor, the glossy and fantastical innovation to reality television. With Survivor now entering its 11th year, I recently interviewed Mark at the Los Angeles public radio station KCRW, where the podcast will be made available. Below, Mark's 10 steps from soldier-to-nanny-to-premiere-Holl...
RESPECT - What It Means (in the picture above are my parents, both of whom I respect and cherish dearly)
By Ethical Traveler As the world becomes ever more interconnected, being an ethical traveler becomes both easier and more urgent. Travelers today have access to far more information than we did even 10 years ago. We can observe–almost in real time–the impact that smart or selfish choices, by governments and individuals, have on rainforests and reefs, cultures and communities.
Perhaps one of the greatest embodiments of urban exploration lies in a disturbing and volatile mental health facility in Massachusetts, and its story starts with...
Red Dead Redemption is hard to pin down in game play and story. The game offers this massive multi-layered world in which the player can roam freely, offering plenty of challenges, beautiful graphics and atmosphere for the player to experience. Yet after some point the whole world feels barren and unchangeable, and your achievements are nothing more than a trophy that does not matter in the sandbox world the player resides in. The story, told in three arcs, offers an inconsistent narrative of...
Now that it's been a week since Google+ rolled out pages, we've gotten over our euphoria at finally getting the feature after a long wait, and reality is starting to sink it. It's not as flexible as a Facebook page, it seems to be time consuming, and you can't even get a unique URL. On the other hand, your Google+ page will show up in Google searches, and help bump you up a bit. Here's how the search stacks up when I search for "WonderHowTo" in Yahoo! vs. Google (Note: I've turned on private ...
Time to confess a personal bias: I love Gmail. I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. I try to be impartial when I write about software and online services, but seriously -- of all the free email services out there, why would you use anything else?
In America, football has become religion. And that religion has blossomed into an unstoppable juggernaut, which has rocked the very foundations of both television and business. In an era where fragmentation has savaged traditional network television, the NFL's Nielsen ratings (both the season games and the Superbowl) have defied gravity and actually increased.
In our media-enriched world, past and present, SCRABBLE has made a name for itself, whether deliberately, subconsciously, or influentially. You may have a read a book that had the popular word game within a chapter, watched a movie that showed your favorite characters bringing out the SCRABBLE board, or even listened to a rap about this word or that word. SCRABBLE is everywhere, even if you don't realize it.
Recently, buyout talks between Google and Groupon ended with Groupon turning down Google's $6 million offer. But with Amazon backing LivingSocial, should they have? Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing's for sure— Groupon has a great voice, and they're sharing it with the world via their Public Groupon Editorial Manual.
