William Smith's Blog

The iPhone theater

Be Smart Like Me - RSS feeds demystified

Here I sit, bored off my ass in a Paradise Bakery close to my house during my holiday break from work. I figured i'd write a little blog post to help my friends out who are always asking how it is that I seem to know about all the new stuff going on - internet related cool things and the like.

It is actually pretty simple - RSS feeds.

Virtually every modern web site these days has what is called an RSS feed (standing for Really Simple Syndication). In effect, its a tool that lets you "subscribe" to a web site, so whenever new content gets posed there, you receive a link to it in what is called a "feed reader." Think of feed readers like a web browser, just only for RSS feeds instead of web pages.

First thing you will need to do is install a feed reader. You have many options here - either you can use a web based one like Google Reader, Netvibes or even iGoogle. Or, you can install one on your computer. If you have a mac, Net News Wire is a good choice. I am sure there a thousand of them on the PC. Just visit the all knowing Google to find one that you like. Some email clients, like Outlook, also have feed readers built into them.

Next thing you need to do is find some sites to subscribe to. 

For the purposes of this blog post, I'll list some of the sites I read daily. I've found that between these, I am able to keep up with pretty much everything new happening in social media, gadgets, games and tech news (things which interest me or are useful for my job)

• Mashable
• Engadget
• Lifehacker
• Apple Insider
• TUAW
• Mac|Life
• Search Engine Land
• 43 Folders
• All Facebook
• Instant Shift
• Smashing Apps
• Smashing Magazine
• Media Memo
• Minimal Mac
• Search Engine Journal
• Smarterware
• Read Write Web
• The UX Booth
• Usability Post
• UX Magazine

Resistance 2

After finishing up Uncharted 2, I decided to give Resistance a shot. How I came to own this game is actually a story in itself. When I first bought my Playstation 3, I tried out some demos. Among them were Resistance 2 and Killzone 2. Of these two different shooters, I clearly enjoyed Killzone more. However, when I went to Amazon to buy Killzone, I ended up putting Resistance into my cart instead.

So I fired up the game, and while it was a lot of fun from the outset, it quickly got boring to me.

You play as a soldier who clearly has been infected in some way by this invading alien race, the Chimera. So while you are out there blasting this insectoid looking race with a bunch of cool weapons, you also know that at some point (probably near the end of the game) you may very well end up as one of them.

Anyway, so you go through and kill a bunch of aliens in different world cities (San Fran, Chicago, some city in Iceland and Mexico, etc). Each chapter puts you into scenarios where you need to destroy these towers that the Chimera have set up. I wasn't ever really sure what those towers did, but after disabling or destroying them each time you got a very familiar message from your superiors: "It didn't work! We need to go to this OTHER city now and take down their tower/generator/base/whatever"

I've now gone through about 5 levels of this and i have to say, I am at the point where i am OKAY with the Chimera winning. This is getting really boring to me!

Graphically the game is kind of average. Its one impressive feature is how it uses size and scale to create some epic boss fights. Beyond that, i'd put it on par with say Half Life 2 visually. Actually this game plays a lot like Half Life did.

If you are really starved for a shooter it is probably worth picking up, but more so for the multiplayer which I did try and liked.

Besides money, what does Charlie have left?

I'd argue that Charlie Sheen only has his money and fame at this point. Does anyone else think that his wife, Brooke Mueller, is entirely too hot for a guy that looks like he does? Why is this guy beating up on his wife (allegedly) and threatening to kill her? Women out there -- take a cue from this and stay the hell away from this guy.

Another note about Gowalla

I talk a lot about Gowalla. I am sure it even irritates some people, and for that I am sorry. But, this is a site/app that to me is on par with say, Facebook or Twitter. These days, I hold it in much higher reverence than Twitter - both for what it is and what it might become.

There may be a few reading this which aren't familiar with what Gowalla is, so as succinctly as possible I will describe it.

Gowalla is a mobile, GPS based application for the iPhone which incentivizes you to visit the world around you. When you go out, you have the opportunity to check in at places you are visiting in the real world, in order to collect "stamps" and "items" you can share with your friends.

There was an excellent video posted by Gowalla founder Josh Williams that describes this all in better detail, I encourage you to check it out at the link below.

http://blip.tv/file/2917763/

Here is what I have found amazing about Gowalla.

To date, I have checked in at 95 places using the app. Of those, I can honestly say that at least 20 I would have never known about or have reason to see if it weren't for Gowalla. Some of them, like Lux coffee, had a featured status inside the app and a stamp I wanted to collect. Others like the Yearlings, a bronze statue of horses inside of Old Scottsdale and an amazing piece of public art, I wouldn't have known existed.

For someone like me, who doesn't get out very much and prefers to just stay close to home, Gowalla has been a transformative app. I am currently on holiday vacation and each day I've gone out to explore Phoenix in order to collect new stamps and find new locations. I can't think of many other free games or apps that have gotten me to do something like that. To some, that will sound boring but I can honestly say that I have had a lot of fun. I even drove out of my way, through a trailer park this afternoon, to find a spot located near me simply labeled "G." It appears to just be a series of streets which seen from above resembles the letter G. In many ways, Gowalla has the appeal of a geocaching game - where someone leaves something interesting for you to find.

In other ways, Gowalla is like Twitter. I think some people look at it and think "i don't get it." Big deal, you check in at the grocery store and can let your friends know - wow that is really interesting. Well, no. Not all places are epic. But i happened to find one of my new favorite tea spots by just seeing where a large concentration of people had previously checked in at - a place called Tea Infusion inside of Tempe Marketplace.

Like anything, these technologies are what you make of them. If you are interested in finding great new spots, or interesting landmarks that are right under your nose, and you have an iphone, then Gowalla could be fun for you.

Avatar Review

Just got done watching Avatar at the local IMAX theater in 3d. It was the best movie I had seen, maybe ever, for living up to the hype. You can easily watch this movie and feel that it was totally worth its price tag. It had story, and it had amazing visualizes. It also had very good acting performances.

It was interesting in that last night my wife and I watched New Moon, another movie which had a lot of hype and money behind it. Lets be real though, New Moon was a fairly crappy movie. The acting for the most part in that film was subpar, the story was flimsy and the production value wasn't in the same universe as Avatar. My wife says, "yes but it is comparing apples and oranges." Maybe so, but I sure as hell saw more commercials and reporting for New Moon.

I'd also seen Terminator Salvation recently. Again, Avatar blows this one away too. The visuals in Terminator were good, but the story was pretty weak (in fact, to this day i couldn't explain how John Connor was in the same time period as his dad, when his dad was a teen). I can generally suspend disbelief for a movie, but that one was supposed to have a long legacy with all the other prior movies.

I got into Avatar right off the bat. It is the story of a humanity exploiting the natural resources of a distant alien world. In order to make nice with the indigenous population and study the planet, "Avatars", genetically created beings designed to make the "locals" feel comfortable, are controlled by humans. The main character is a guy who doesn't have the use of his legs, so being able to control a 8 foot tall blue skin alien seems pretty cool. What follows is a long story about how he learns to love the Na'vi (the local race on the planet) and in particular, a female Na'vi he hooks up with. Of course, this leads to a confrontation with the humans who only want to get the aliens to get the hell off this valuable pile of rock their city is sitting on top of.

Won't spoil any more other than to say that the movie was great. Tremendous. Action, story, acting. I didn't feel bad at all that it cost $20 to see it in 3D. Worth every penny.

Finished Uncharted 2 - My Impressions

A few months ago I purchased the PS3. At the time, the only really good game out that interested me was Uncharted 2. Back then, I didn't think it was worth buying a system over, but I did it anyway because really I wanted the Bluray player. Now that I have finished Uncharted, I can honestly say that the game *was* worth the purchase of the system.

The things which struck me about the game were, in no particular order:

The graphics - they are superb. Better than Modern Warfare 2, a newer game, and any of the titles I have on XBOX.

The voice acting - again, top notch. No wonder 2 of the cast were nominated for awards during the Spike VGA.

The story - story is pretty important to the overall success of a game - it isn't just the action.
The action - there is very little downtime in the game. In fact, when you aren't fighting you are doing puzzles or exploring so there is a little something for everyone.

Another thing I really enjoyed about Uncharted 2 was the difficulty. I did finish the game on "easy" but played almost through it almost entirely on normal difficulty. There were a few spots that got hard, but never overly frustrating. Because you adjust the difficulty while playing the game, those few spots that were causing me trouble could be mitigated somewhat by the difficulty slider.

The game itself never crashed on me, I didn't have trouble with the camera in the game until the final boss fight which required a lot of running around trees and such. Even then, it wasn't bad.

I can't recommend Uncharted highly enough though, it was a great game.

Google Fast Flip

via fastflip.googlelabs.com

Pretty cool new site from Google

AMAZING: Students Build $150 Space Camera [Pics]

Minimal Mac