Sometimes, paying for the whole Xbox LIVE service might seem like a waste of money. You're constantly experiencing lag, you've got people modding and cheating, kids are being loud and obnoxious over the mic, and your kill-to-death ratio is getting dumped on. Basically, the whole multiplayer experience just isn't cutting it anymore—you want to go back to the classic world of single player. Well, there's always downloadable content—simply known as DLC.
There was a huge ban wave recently on Xbox Live. In the unfortunate event that you decided to do something against Microsoft policy, and have consequently gotten yourself banned from Xbox Live, you may have come to the realization that doing whatever got you banned from Xbox Live in the first place was not worth the risk.
Time-lapse photography used to require expensive and dedicated equipment, but in today's futuristic world, we now have easy access to universal machines like the iPhone, which are pretty much tricorders.
Null Byte is looking for moderators. More threats to computers exist every day. Not only do we have computer viruses and malware, but we have rootkits and other nasty pieces of code that can log your keyboard strokes or even add your computer to a botnet to attack other websites. Your computer can be infected even if you have anti-virus software installed. I can't stress enough how easy it is for a hacker to write a piece of code that gets around every piece of anti-virus software.
Nearly everyone has the capacity to be a cheater. Sometime or another, all Xbox users have yearned to get their gamerscore to unimaginable thresholds—for bragging and egotistical purposes. I can relate to this desire. However, I also don't want to mod my gamerscore, because it's just unfair and not nearly as much fun as doing it the honest way. To me, it's synonymous to entering the cheats into a game after you've beaten it. Cheats can add new life into a game once you're done, but since the ...
Christmas just wouldn't be the same without cookies. Besides the gifts, it's the one thing that keeps the family (not to mention Santa) coming back each year. As with any family gathering, there's bound to be some chaos this holiday season, but as long as you've got a good supply of Christmas cookies, there should be peace and harmony.
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.
BANSHIE n pl. -S banshee 62 points (12 points without the bingo)
The battle between first-person shooters is officially underway with the release of Battlefield 3 today. Who will win? Most experts are already declaring Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 the champ of the holiday retail clash between EA and Activision, despite MW3 not coming out until November 8th.
The Humble Indie Bundle has become like an unpredictable little gamer Christmas. It helps indie developers get their games exposure, helps gamers get cheap DRM-free games via the most user-friendly online purchasing process ever, and helps the world at large by raising money for Child's Play and EFF.
We've covered Glitch before, the oddball indie social MMO involving the minds behind Flickr, Katamari Damacy, and Game Neverending. Yesterday, the game officially left Beta and entered general release. Anyone can create an account and start playing for free, although there are freemium elements in the form of real money purchasable clothing items.
Oh, yeah. I was a skeptic, too. A few things are worth noting, though. 1) This stuff is cheap. You can get started on a project for very little money. Even advanced fabrication tools are reasonably priced.
Most kids who play video games will never become professional gamers. Those that do are part of a very select group— it's like being a professional actor or athlete. It's nice work if you can get it. For everyone else, the sad realization usually arrives sooner or later that time spent playing games might not have the practical rewards that homework or working hard at your job might deliver.
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...
Children under the age of 13 possess insight that can blow the minds of their elders, but not the wherewithal to make important life choices for themselves. This is exactly why there are strict rules against marketing cigarettes to them. In 2000, a law went into effect called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that institutes similar consumer protections for our youth's online identities, prohibiting companies from soliciting personal information from children under 13 years of age ...
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...
Generally, summer is a slow time for video games, but not when it comes to Xbox Live Arcade where it's harvest season! In the last month, there have been at least four great games released on XBLA, with Bastion getting the lion's share of the attention. But the remaining three are pretty awesome, as well, and should help you while away the time spent indoors away from the brain frying heat sweeping the U.S.
These days, there seems to be an endless amount of music player apps accessible on the web, from Pandora to Cantio, and the amount available in the mobile market is constantly growing. If you have an Android device, you're probably well aware of Jukefox, which lets you listen to your music collection on the go and provides you with a new way to interact with your songs, with 2D and 3D mapping of your albums. But as good as Jukefox is, it has problems (mostly technical).
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...
Localizing a game is a task many do not fully understand. Not only do localizers have to translate the games they work on into a different language, but they have to translate it into a different culture as well. Oftentimes art assets, plot elements, and menu systems are changed to suit regional sensitivities. Japanese media tends to have their common drunkard characters removed or censored in American versions, for example.
If you're lucky, your digital camera has a built-in intervalometer that lets you operate the shutter regularly at set intervals over a period of time. Why would you be lucky? Because you can create some very awesome time-lapse videos, like the horribly beautiful eruption of a volcano or vivid star trails in the night sky. You can capture the stunning display of the northern lights or even document the rotting of your favorite fruit.
Got a knack for speeding? Like running red lights? Believe or not, the police have better things to be doing than pulling you over, like catching real criminals. That's why more and more cameras are popping up at known speeding zones and on street corners—so the cops can clean up the streets, compared to just ticketing them.
It's typically not the kind of video game you would see on WonderHowTo. Instead, you'd learn about games with gruesome zombies or beer guzzling dwarfs, even a controversial, dystopian war. But Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure deserves some serious praise.
One of the biggest advantages iOS has over Android as a mobile platform is how readily and fully it has embraced mobile gaming. There are over 200,000 games available in the Apple store, compared to approximately 100,000 in the Android Marketplace. As an Android-using gamer, this has always bothered me.
For most street artists, it takes a considerable amount of time to paint large art installments on the walls of urban structures. The more time it takes, the better chance there is of getting caught, since nearly all of the rogue artwork is slapped on the sides of city and privately owned buildings.
Shoot-em-up games, or shmups, consist of lone or small groups of players shooting at and being shot at by hordes of colorful enemies. The genre is thought to have peaked in the mid-'90s, but recent games in the indie world may be saying otherwise. Geometry Wars and other twin-stick games kicked off the trend, but newbies Trouble Witches NEO, Outland and just-released Gatling Gears have brought some much needed originality into the modern shmup scene—making it something worth exploring again. ...
In case you haven't noticed, I absolutely adore video games. Most of my friends don't, so to get my fix of knowledgable video game conversation I have turned to podcasts. They're free, they feature the smartest people in games journalism, and can be enjoyed while doing just about anything. Working. Walking the dog. Crying yourself to sleep. Whatever you're into.
After stumbling across an interesting article by Hanne Blank—(apparent) hobbyist chef and widely known activist on the issues of weight, bisexuality, and sexuality—I've become even more fascinated by kitchen shortcuts. Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold's recently released Modernist Cuisine also spurred a similar interest, particularly after reading a WSJ piece in which Myhrvold attests —by law of science, of course— that a ¼-inch-thick sheet of steel is more than adequate in place of an ex...
It's amazing how the years seem to slip by. One day you're a dreamy, starry-eyed college student. Hopeful intern the next. Before you know it, you're just a hard working stiff like the rest of them. Even though those college years don't seem too far in the past, it's always a shock when you come across an old photo and see a somewhat fresher, baby-faced version of yourself. Think about how shocking it would be to see a time-lapse recording of years gone by, each day incrementally displaying t...
Hello readers again! Sorry about the long wait (scary computer problems). Today I am going to talk to you about security problems on Wizard101. I have recently encountered many security flaws on Wizard101, including hacking, frauding and other crazy things. Wizard101 is the target for many online predators, many of who are fully-grown adults aged 60 or 70. Here is the link to an article I found about it: Wizard101 Internet Predators
Any time you broach the subjects of natural or holistic health, you run into that gray murky area where you have to watch what you write and make sure you are not making any claims that the FDA does not approve.
Describe this movie in one word? Hilarious! Could you watch this movie again? Without a doubt!
Gil Adam, a student of Industrial Design in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Israel, has created a 3:1 scale model of his favorite plastic camera, the Holga. While the camera is just a model (non-operational), it's pretty fun to see the oversized object next to Adam's face, and his dog.
Yes, they are May numbers, NPD is late by a month due to "IT" problems. They might have well blamed it only oil spill crisis.
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.
Microsoft Ribbon hero is an application that turns the office into game. It is designed to boost skill and knowledge in Microsoft Office’s latest version. It is released with office 2007 as a social game for increases productivity in office applications. It is compatible with Microsoft Excel 2007, Microsoft Word 2007, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 as well as those three programs in Microsoft Office 2010, available as a beta download.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Army agreed to drop quite a big chunk of change ($461m to be exact) on 423 M1117 Guardian Armored Security Vehicles (ASV), made by Textron Systems.
Laser gun + killing mosquitoes = lots of little boy fun, but what's it all about? Quite possibly the most entertaining, thrilling, and well, downright life-saving presentation at this year's TED conference was Intellectual Ventures' mosquito death ray.
Wall studs are both critical for maintaining the structure of your home and supporting items of weight and function on the interior walls (e.g. cabinets, shelves, plasma TVs, etc.). With wall studs playing such a critical role, consistently being able to find them is important. The problem with finding them is that drywall and wallboard isn't exactly see-through.
It isn't a new gadget, but the EyeClops Mini Projector still makes a great stocking stuffer for Christmas Day. It's great for kids to play with, but for techies— it's sure to be something fun to hack and mod this holiday season.
