There are rumblings that Sony will soon offer premium services for its PlayStation Network. These services might (read probably) require a monthly fee. I wanted to see if you’d be willing to pay for additional PSN goodness, so kindly take today’s poll and leave a comment if you will.
[poll id=”15″]
Yesterday I wrote about URL shorteners coming from Facebook and Google. If you want to shrink your URLs right-wing style then you ought the check out GOP.am. The web site aims to make long URLs…(wait for it)…conservative. Ha! That’s very cute.
A bunch of tech writers have accused Google of ripping off Microsoft’s Windows colors and animations with the Nexus One boot screen. As a comic-book nerd, that’s not what I’m seeing at all. It’s clearly DC Comics’ War of Light, featuring the Green Lanterns, Sinestro Corps, Red Lanterns, Blue Lanterns, Agent Orange, the Star Sapphires, and the Indigo Tribe. Am I the only one seeing this?!?
Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Dennis Miller not getting over with the WWE crowd in Texas, the Google Nexus One, or the various MLB trade moves made yesterday, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
As I mentioned last week, I’ll be counting down my five favorite games of 2009 in this week’s Coffee Talk columns and I’d love for you to join me! Let me know what your favorite games of the year were in the comments section. Remember, this isn’t about what games you thought were “best”. I want to know what you had the most fun with in 2009.
#4 Street Fighter IV — I lost a ton of quarters playing various versions of Street Fighter in high school and college. Like many players, I abandoned the series for modern games like Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive, and Tekken. Street Fighter IV
SFIV is just a brilliant combination of old and new. That only downer is that the game also reminds me of my most frustrating moments as a gamer in 2009 — trying to beat Seth when my Xbox 360 would randomly generate hundreds of vertical bars! He’s a cheap bastard as it is. Trying to beat him when you can’t see the damn screen?!? Not so easy.
Videogame and sci-fi writer Peter Watts says that Canadian U.S. customs officers beat the crap out of him. The customs officers say that Watts tried to choke one of them. GamePolitics reported:
Watts asserts that as the inspection began, he exited the car to ask officers what was going on. He claims they asked him to return to the car, at which point he asked them again what they were doing. Watts said that this act then resulted in him being assaulted, punched in the face, pepper-sprayed and thrown in jail for the night on charges of assaulting a customs officer.
Custom officials claim that Watts was “aggressive” from the beginning and refused to get back in his car. At this point Watts was about to be handcuffed, but resisted arrest said officials, and tried to choke an officer. This is when officers used pepper-spray.
As a fellow game writer, I’m a little bit scared of Canada now. Though to be fair, my work involves some of the country’s finest exports — Christian, The Hart Dynasty, Edge, etc. Still…I think I’ll play it safe and stick to this side of the border.
Services like Bit.ly and Tinyurl are extremely popular for shortening long links — so popular that Facebook and Google have launched their own versions. Facebook’s Fb.me and Google URL Shortener are vying to become the king of the…uh…shorties.
With millions of links served up by Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and plain old email, this should be one extremely competitive race. Even though these two new services are starting (relatively) small, the incumbents should be afraid…very afraid.
Electronic Arts has announced that TransGaming has partnered with EA and BioWare to bring Dragon Age: Origins to the Mac platform on December 21. The press release stated, “The critically acclaimed, dark fantasy epic will be available to Mac Players as a digital download where they can choose between the Standard or Digital Deluxe version.”
The deluxe version includes “a collection of wallpapers, in-game bonus items, the game’s soundtrack and the Warden’s Keep additional content.” Both versions have The Stone Prisoner (Shale rules!!!) content and the blood dragon armor. Really though, this eliminates one possible excuse for not playing this outstanding game. As for you guys and gals that are exclusively on Linux….
Square Enix has released a new batch of Final Fantasy XIII
James Cameron’s Avatar is going to conquer the universe this week. While I’m still not sold on the movie, there’s no denying that this thing is going to be huge. You’re all aware of the movie and the videogames by Ubi Soft, but here are some other Avatar products you might not be aware of.
Avatar…the Books!
If you want to prep for the movie then you ought to consider curling up with Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide and The Art of Avatar: James Cameron’s Epic Adventure
Avatar…the Action Figures!
Any sci-fi movie worth a damn has action figures, but Avatar takes it a step further by implementing some interesting web-cam connectivity. Here’s the official word and a photo:
Continue reading “Get Your Avatar Books, Action Figures, and T-Shirts!”
As part of Microsoft’s Game with Fame series, Xbox Live members will have a chance to play Guitar Hero 5
I usually ignore all the Game with Fame promos, but this one was too awesome to pass up. I am a huge Weird Al mark. I love parodies of all kinds and Yankovic has provided some of the best. Whether you’re talking about “Eat It”, “Amish Paradise”, or his brilliant polkas, I’m totally down with Weird Al.
Do you have a favorite “Weird” Al Yankovic song?
