It's no secret that Apple has retail stores in China, along with a large amount of Premium and Authorized Resellers. But a recent post by blogger BirdAbroad has caused quite a commotion in the world of all things Apple, claiming that in her home city of Kunming, there is another breed of Apple Store locations... "Un"Authorized ones.
Making a video game requires an incredible amount of work. It requires people skilled in many disciplines to work together for thousands of hours merging visual art, computer programming, game design, sound design, and music composition into a fun game. The Indie Stone is a Scottish indie development studio started, like so many others, by industry vets who were tired of corporate restrictions and wanted to make the crazy games they had always imagined.
It's called a Quick Response code, but most know it simply as QR code, a matrix barcode dedicated to the world of smartphones. The information contained within the square black modules could be text, a URL, vCard, or some other kind of data. And even though mobile tagging has been around for eight years, it's just now spreading like wildfire across the globe, being incorporated into artistic portraits and wall art. And most recently... "social clothing".
Mediocre free Flash game websites are all too common. Many of them thrive off peddling the same few popular games to fans who have slim cause to pick one over the other. They thrive off the indifference of casual gamers and an environment that does not have to stand out to survive, only appeal to the lowest common gaming denominator with tower defense clones and brightly colored Peggle knockoffs. In that context, what Nitrome is doing seems downright commendable.
As Google+ is still in its Limited Field Trial phase, joining can feel quite lonely. You can't exactly get all your friends and family in during the brief periods when the invitation system opens up. You can, however, add several interesting people to your "Following" Circle to keep up with developments as they happen.
It's no secret. Professional video editors everywhere are irate at the newest edition to Apple's popular non-linear video editing software, Final Cut Pro X. As of right now, Final Cut Pro X has 503 five-star ratings in the Mac App Store. Not bad. But it also has 671 one-star ratings and 414 users who aren't sure what they think. It's such a bad update that it even earned itself a skit on Conan.
Speech recognition software made it easy to search Google on your smartphone, and Google Goggles made it easy to find answers from camera snapshots on your device. But now Google's bringing similar technology straight to your desktop, and with faster results—faster than Google Instant.
Do you know how you are perceived by your peers? In real life and online? In the physical world, you could be seen as intelligent, thoughtful and hard-working, but on the Web you could be looked at as irrational, selfish and slothful. There's just something about the Internet that takes away a person's judgement and replaces it with impulsiveness—especially when it comes to Facebook.
Nobody could predict the success of Microsoft's Kinect, not even Microsoft themselves. So, it was quite a surprise when it ended up earning a Guinness World Record for fastest-selling consumer electronics device, and an even bigger surprise to see people buying one that didn't even own an Xbox 360.
You've had a hard day at work and need to get out of the house, have a few drinks, but you don't want to go just anywhere—you want the right crowd and the right bar. For those nights, barhopping just isn't the answer, it's SceneTap.
George Plimpton may be one of the most interesting Americans ever. Foremost a sports journalist, he was also a novelist, Fireworks Commissioner for New York City and host of Mouseterpiece Theater. Some of you may also recognize him as one of the men who tackled Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. But most of you probably remember him as the pitchman for products like Pop Secret Popcorn and the Intellivision video game console. Actually, his most appreciated work would probably be a s...
Over the past few years, I have downloaded several third-party web browsers for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and the one I have found most advanced and feature rich is Atomic Web. While many mobile browsers have their unique features, Atomic Web could well be considered the professional browser for advanced web users. With each version of the app, the developer has included features that make navigating the browser more user friendly and useful for bookmarking, managing and saving website...
Yesterday's installment of a Gamer's Guide to Video Game Software featured Unity 3D; today we'll be covering one of the oldest consumer game making engines, RPG Maker.
Do you love video games? Would you devote your free time to creating your own game—one superior to the games you already have? Or at least one that has more Neil Patrick Harris jokes?
Just how private is your Facebook profile? To some extent, that's up to you. Many Facebook users share and poke their days away, never knowing about the plethora of custom privacy settings that lie just a click away. Facebook's privacy menus can look a little complicated to the newcomer, so today I'm going to give you a basic look at what lies under the hood.
Oktoberfest is the world's largest annual beer festival located in Munich, Germany! The festival starts in late September and lasts until early October -approx 16-18 days. Oktoberfest is an important part of the Bavarian Culture and has been going on for over 200 years. Each year the festival is held in an area called Theresienwiese, but often referred to as Wiesen for short. Wisen is located near the center of Munich. Oktoberfest is held as one of the world's largest fairs with over 5 millio...
In the mid '90s, there was no such thing as a widely available indie video game. Brick-and-mortar stores were the only places for consumers to buy games, and magazines were the only outlets to hear about them. For video game creators, the need for a publisher to market and distribute was logistically essential to attract players.
Spam is everywhere and Facebook is no exception. In fact, spammers are constantly stepping up their game by tricking unsuspecting Facebook users to participate in quizzes, games, apps, or "new features" that are actually dangerous computer viruses, spyware, or other trojan horses in disguise. Their attempts even trick people into unknowingly becoming spammers themselves.
Our hacked Kinect series has demonstrated amply how the Kinect is changing the worlds of business, art, medicine and robotics. But where does it go from here? That will be determined by the thousands of dedicated DIYers out there doing work like you've seen here over the last week.
Japanese people are into many things Americans find weird—like YouTube's beloved canine-hosted cooking show or Daito Manabe's light up LED grills or even more insane, a vending machine that distributes live crabs. In light of these cultural oddities, the Japanese phenomenon of visual novels (NVL, or bijuaru noberu), seems relatively normal. A meeting place of books and video games, visual novels are a sort of "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" for the new generation.
Attention all National SCRABBLE Association members: You know that newsletter that you get in your mailbox every month or two? That SCRABBLE News mailing from the NSA? Well, they're axing it. No more printed SCRABBLE News. No more ink on your fingertips. No more surprises in your mailbox. It's done for... kinda...
So the Big Surprise News of today is that The King's Speech is Kicking Major Nomination Ass with twelve count-em 12 nominations, just brutalizing stuff like The Social Network (eight - nice try), The Fighter (seven - really? seven? that's the best you can do idiot movie?) and True Grit (ten - double figures is respectable... I guess...). How come that happened? I'll tell you. It's because North Americans freaking love rich British people.
This weekend, I was on a trip to Binghamton. In the midst of unpacking my toiletries at the hotel, I found that my brand new razor blade had lost its cap. How did I find that out? Well, when I pulled my hand out of the bag, I found that my right pointer finger was missing a bit of its tip and dripping blood on everything. Thankfully, Nathan G. H. Shlivovitz was with me and knew what to do, but the experience helped me to realize that everyone needs a little first aid knowledge in life. Here a...
Huzzah! My sentences have been recorded! This is normally the most exciting part of beginning a language with this method, because you actually had another person do something for you that is really of great value. I remember receiving my first recording in Japanese. I listened to that thing about 100 times. I shadowed it, repeated it to my family multiple times and still hear it in my head from time to time.
USE WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE x64 w/ all the latest updates always OF COURSE AND... USE THE ASTON 2 SHELL REPLACEMENT, MENU, DESKTOP, W/ THEMES...
One of the common mistakes I see a lot of candidates make when they go to an interview is that they think it is a question and answer session. They approach the interview with a mindset that their role is to be prepared to answer a bevy of questions thrown at them. This puts you in a passive role, playing defense. A much more effective approach is to go into the interview with the mindset that you are a salesperson, and the product you are selling is you. You want to convince the employer tha...
This German video is amazing. A joyously analog interpretation and deconstruction of the digital gaming experience. Malte Jehmlich is as primitive and inspiring as the the Vanuatu natives who devoted themselves to cargo worship after World War II!
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...
This is my fourth (and final) installment on SCRABBLE adverts. I'm sure there's a lot I haven't found, but that's for another day. But this post features all of the remaining SCRABBLE advertisements (prints and posters) that haven't already been listed in my previous posts:
April NPD Video Game Sales Every month around the second thursday the sales chart for video games and consoles are released for the previous month. They are released by the NPD group, the main company tracking video games sales in the US. Here are the top twenty games in the month of april (courtesy of Gamasutra http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=28566 ):
L4D2: Chapter two - The Underground "Ok explain something to me, how is an under-the-river tour scenic?" - Nick
Oh, LifeHacker, we love you. You've brought us so many handy HowTo's: Hack Wireless Internet, Bypass Blocked Websites, Convert a Laptop Into a Projector, Watch TV & Movies on the Web For Free, 10 Must-Know Google Privacy Settings, and more.
When's the next full moon? Every time I've looked at the moon, I've wondered if it was full. Sometimes it looked like it was, but it's really hard to tell for sure unless you know the exact date of the full moon. Seriously, there's at a couple days before and after the full moon that could easily pass as full. At least, to someone like me who isn't naturally in tune with the moon's cycle (and doesn't have perfect vision).
It's mid-January and some of you happy tax-paying citizens have already started receiving your W-4s and 1099s in the mail. But before you start filling out your 2010 Federal Tax Return, make sure you're hip to all the tax tricks in 2011. You could end up saving some money!
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.
This is a tutorial showing you how to easily hack flash (.swf) games! You only need two things:
Does your desktop look messy and unorganized?? Are there hundreds of icons in your desktop?? And it takes minutes to just find one??
Have you ever seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? Many people enjoy watching this show, where they can see people do comedy off the top of their heads. There's no prior thought involved and it can be a lot of fun to participate in.
For most people, New Year's Eve means watching the ball drop in Times Square. It means celebrating the New Year with friends and family. Countdown parties, clocks, confetti... passing out before the clock strikes midnight because you drank too much. But there's one more thing, and it's something we usually only see one other time each year— fireworks.
Move over NASA— SpaceX is taking over. Well, not really. But today, the privately funded spacecraft company broke all expectations when their Dragon capsule fell to a soft landing in the Pacific Ocean, completing an undoubtedly successful demo flight of nearly two full trips around Earth. It was the first re-entry of a commercial spacecraft ever, bringing commercial space transportation closer to reality.
