BlogAllAlong » Internet

Toy Story 3 Video Game, Just How All Movie Games Should Be

Bashar — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:49:37 +0000

How many movie games are released each year? How many movie games have you tried in your life time? How many did you really like? The answer would be I bet very close to zero! Well I can say I added one to mine. The moment I saw Toy Story 3 video game trailer it felt like something different. Like something with a hope of enjoying it. Having gone through the story mode game now, the game really delivered the promise, setting an example of how video games should be made.

First of all, voice actors are all real not a replacement like many other Disney games I tried, this by it self tells you the company is taking the game seriously. Graphics was really great as well, and the game followed the real story to a very good extent, and added some extra fun levels as side stories that won’t really spoil the game, but rather add extra spice to it. Yes there were some critical scenes I thought should be included, like what happened to the bear. They made it look like he was no evil or anything, just a side character you pass by. Other characters were also missing, but nothing that spoiled the joy in my opinion.

What’s the best part for me was the multi-player mode. For the first time I’m really able to enjoy a game with my kid, playing together through the story mode, making our through the obstacles, helping each other, and most of the time, the lack of one player doesn’t hardly affect the other. You die, the other player resumes play until you respawn at next point. So this was for real a family + gaming time in one. I was kinda pushing him to play it over other games toward the end really :).

Is this because of the Avalanche Software? I never liked THQ games, but UP demo sounded a bit nice for kids.

Either way, I hope this isn’t an incidental success but a sign of better Pixar movie games to come. And why don’t other movie studios give such focus to their games? Have you ever heard of a good Harry Potter game? Yes Lego version was probably fun for kids, but that’s a lame shift after the successive failure the movie games have seen. I guess massive movie game failures have given them a bad reputation. It’s just something they have to get done, get quick cash from and leave.

NOTE: Zurg character is playable on PS3 version of the game.

Amazon Kindle for $189

Bashar — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:07:03 +0000

Like it?

Monkey Island II Tie

Bashar — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:23:20 +0000

Remember those Monkey Island sneakers? You do? Wow.. your life must be so empty! But anyways, I got an email that seems from the same shoes designer and you can now wear ties that match your shoes while going to work.

You can read her Spanish page if you like (or use Google Translate). And to bid for the Monkey Island tie (currently standing at 99 EUR!), you can do that here.

Don’t you wish now you wear formal?

Aardvark Spam

Bashar — Mon, 24 May 2010 09:37:46 +0000

Aardvark is a social community site to help people ask and answer questions, easily even through your messenger. Isn’t that great? At least Google thought so when they acquired it. I tried it for one question, got a couple of possible good answers. And then I thought of giving back when I opted to answer an e-mail question.

Consider it noted! So what happened here? A guy is changing his email, sending notification to all his contacts, Aardvark gets the email as a question, and intelligently marks it as e-mail question, and I fall for and try to answer it?

I guess so, and if true, there is no way I’m keeping that thing to spam me.

Google Communicates with Saddam

Bashar — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:54:36 +0000

Some of you might have already heard about this. The Google Native Client SDK is an effort by Google in bringing the Native Client to the web, helping developers put real rich web applications, without heavy server call backs.

Besides the promising future in this short video, you would see the automatic speech recognition in effect, failing first to distinguish C from See.

But that’s really alright, they are both pronounced the same, I’d be surprised if it got it right. Unless we keep in mind geeks developing it tend to prefer their common sense over the rest of the world. The second one blew me apart laughing.

Hope CIA doesn’t take this seriously. Otherwise they will show interest in links with Bin Ladin!

Anyways, here’s the video, still worth every minute of it.

Google Chrome Super Fast

Bashar — Sat, 08 May 2010 10:01:11 +0000

Google Chrome is taking up the challenge against fired potato, sound waves, and lighting in speed, showing amazingly high rendering speeds in splits of a second.

And for the geeks, this is the behind the scenes video.

Now imagine if I do this same test here in Kuwait. Bake a toast Vs Google Chrome. That might end up in a tie!

Google Chrome (MUST) RSS Subscription Extension

Bashar — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:11:42 +0000

Know this little icon that appears on the right of the address bar?

This is what tells you that there is an RSS feed to this page that you can subscribe to. And this is what you don’t get in Google Chrome browser for some reason. To get it, I have to search for RSS link on the page, copy it, open Google Reader and subscribe to it. How lame is that?

But here is the simple solution.

Why would something like the RSS auto-detection be just an optional extension, while the page translation is a built-in can’t disable feature?

Quake 2 on HTML5

Bashar — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:43:33 +0000

Unbelievable huh? If you know me very well you’ll know how much I hate April Fool, and this video was released the same day. But so was Gmail! I hope Gmail isn’t a long time joke as well cause I’ve been swearing my life on it for years. So anyways, this is the official Google Code page for the project. There are people saying it’s April Fool, and even TechCrunch was confused about it. But if you look at the Wiki and people’s comments, you will see people really trying and building it. No single comment from someone who tried it telling it’s a fool. So it seems pretty real, an for the sake of the future of the web, I really hope it remains real. This could be a serious threat message to Flash.

Google Chrome’s Built In Translation

Bashar — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:30:03 +0000

Have you seen this in your Google Chrome? It’s a new feature recently added to Chrome that keeps asking you whether you want to translate non-English pages. It will allow you to easily and quickly translate any non-English text on your page. And yes, I say keeps as I think it’s annoying to have such a thing pushed on my browser without any notice. Most people would visit pages of their own language, while others might find this feature useful. Now for those others, you may want to promote it on Google Chrome default page, or one time notice. But to have it by default open in every non-English page, or English page with littl non-English text in it until I tell it not to do so is not the best way to promote it.

Apparently this Google Buzz incident is going to be a trend now. Do you know why? This is an excerpt from Google Chrome Webpage Translation page.

At this time, it’s not possible to totally disable the translation bar. To control the display of the translation bar for specific sites and languages, click Options at the end of the bar.

Google couldn’t figure a way to completely disable it? Didn’t have time? Or didn’t wanna?

Mac Vs PC The Movie

Bashar — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:31:44 +0000

It’s been going for too long now… a war that dates back to more than quarter of a century, and the final battle is about to unfold.

Judgment day is coming.

But where is Google I say? Maybe those people are just playing for the runner-up.

Google Opt-Out Privacy Feature

Bashar — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:04:27 +0000

To all those who question Google’s ethics, fear their privacy violation, and have DOUBT about “Do Not Do Evil” motto, Google proudly gives you this.

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

Seriously Twitter? You Wanna Share My Phone Number?

Bashar — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:31:34 +0000

No really? You wanna share my email address and phone number so that my friends can find me? And you’re setting it to default? Here are two simple words for you Twitter SPAMMERS & PRIVACY.

For the first time Twitter has really failed me. It seems the Google Buzz is doing it’s things already on them.

Ruins of “Friendster” Civilization Uncovered by Internet Archaeologists

Bashar — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:35:24 +0000

I really sit down and ask my self from time to time, how would future generations if we get wiped out uncover us?

It was Ramadan!

Bashar — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:45:47 +0000

I was reading this ResearchBuzz article about searching for duration since Star Trek – Trouble with Tribbles episode was released, reportedly on 29th December, 1967. And not that I ever watched Star Trek or know anything about the episode, I just tried what she did and searched the date 29 December 1967 on Wolfram Alpha when I noticed this Islamic Hijri Date, 27 Ramadam, 1387, which is the equivalent Hijri date of the episode release.

Now that I think is pretty useful, you can use it to easily convert any date to the Islamic date (or any other popular kind). What’s even better is, Wolfram Alpha seems to try and give you the date most relevant to you based on your location. Try that from Kuwait, or any Arab country, and you’re likely to get the Islamic date. Try it from UK address, and you will see Islamic date doesn’t show up.

Try and see your birth-date in Islamic calendar :).

Use Sprixi to find free images

Bashar — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:32:46 +0000

It’s always frustrating for me when trying to find an image to use, and I have to keep searching forever to find a license-free photo. I usually go to Wikipedia and see what they have, and I know of some search engines specific for that purpose, but none seems to compare with Sprixi. What Sprixi does is it searches Flickr and OpenClipArt.org for publicly available pictures, and there is quite great amount of quantity in there.

New searches will initially return unsorted results. Based on your usage and mine, Sprixi will learn and enhance it’s sorting. But the really good thing about it is how it clarifies the usage right of each image for you, and tells you the terms of use, which usually involves giving back some credit. So often do I find photo and keep investigating what rights does it hold. Not here.

The fun part is where the name comes from, which they say is a combination of “picture” and “wiki”. Where the S & X came from remains a mystery even to them I guess :), but I like it as they do.

“The inspiration for the name “Sprixi” came from the words “picture” and “wiki”. We can’t remember how it evolved from there but it had a lot to do with what domain names were available! We think Sprixi sounds fun and a little magical :)”

[via: ResearchBuzz]

Have you tried Google Living Stories?

Bashar — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:49:47 +0000

I heard about this last week and just tried it out. Google is working with New York Times and Washington Post on a new revolutionary way to read the news. Timeline based news called Google Living Stories. Take a look.

Just amazing isn’t it? It’s a lot easier to get in late and know exactly what the news is all about. It’s supposed to remember and gray-out the stories you’ve read, but I don’t seem to see it happening. Also, the one thing that’s easy to notice missing is the search. But perhaps that’s because it’s still in very early stages in the Google labs, and there aren’t many stories to search for anyways.

Just wait till it takes full scale, and Microsoft tries to clone it :).

Teambox Online Project Management Now Available

Bashar — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:20:59 +0000

Teambox is a newly opened to public open source online project management tool built using Ruby on Rails. The service is available for free, and unlike others, with an unlimited number of projects for you to use and collaborate with others.

Features of the tool now are limited to messaging, tasks, and pages, but it’s quite fast and convenient to use, I’d have to say faster than Basecamp.

You can get a branded version for a fee however, or hire them to do custom installation on your servers.

Here is a quick brief video of the service.

and you can learn more about it here.

If you want to get your hands dirty with the code, this is where to get it.

I like how quick it is so far, and the fact that it is free allows me to save few bucks per month. But I end up relying on simpler stuff like Google Tasks for quick todo items, Basecamp (or similar) for tasks that will stick there for sometime. I’m mostly working alone right now so Google Tasks lack of sharing isn’t bothering really.

8 More Bugs To Go for Mac Chrome

Bashar — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:10:51 +0000

Few days ago, Mike Pinkerton, from the Chrome Project for Mac, tweeted Chrome for Mac release is really close now, with 8 more bugs to go, then signaling just mostly Flash issues remaining.

I’ve personally lost patience as Firefox fails to meet my expectations, and jumped to the developer version of Chrome for Mac weeks ago. Been using it since then magnificently. It crashed few times, but it can restore, and it’s times faster and more memory efficient.

Clicker – What’s On Online

Bashar — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:37:19 +0000

Lots of online TV shows are being broadcasted, and lots of other movies, documentaries, and other video material. Clicker.com is the place to “find the right show, right now”. It will group the shows for you, and then show you the sites showing the specific show/episode you’re looking for.

Now ofcourse for most of us living outside the US, there will be a lot of disappointment, for lots of shows are from sites like Fox and HULU, which are US only. But I can still find other material available from public open sources. And while you can filter your search results by source, it would be more neat if I could get results available for my geographic location, or to say the least, US, UK, and Other category might do just as good.

[via All Things Digital]

BBC Earth Collection Bluray One Day Amazon Offer

Bashar — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:09:43 +0000

The great Planet Earth documentary in Bluray plus Earth: The Biography from BBC is on one day sale from Amazon.com.

Finally, a possible good YouTube revenue model

Bashar — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:41:03 +0000

When Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion just 3 years ago, many argued about the value of this purchase, with YouTube’s high running costs and the lack of any revenue model. And it did fail to stop losses for the past 3 years as well, and all Google got from it was new lawsuits, now that the video service is under the big G umbrella.

Eric Schmidt wasn’t showing any concerns, to the press at least, claiming YouTube monetization is not really a big problem. But when they started their attempt, this is how the YouTube page looked like:

First, most people going to YouTube are mostly interested in watching videos and won’t click non-related ads on the side. Second, this ad popping at the bottom of the video is more than annoying, and people are less likely to click it (intentionally). Not to mention Arabic ad text is unreadable as it’s showing disconnected characters.

But now finally, YouTube is offering YouTube video ads on the side of YouTube search results, thus enabling YouTube publishers to delivery targeted ads and spread the word about their videos. Now as to why people might wanna do that, I bet many would love to have their video spread and are willing to spend few bucks for the sake of it. Others are trying to reach for wider audience to attract attention to their skills through this media.

I hope this really picks up as it will eventually mean better YouTube service, and result in removal of those silly ads showing above the videos we see now. See the video below to familiarize with the service.

Monkey Island 2 Special-Uber Edition

Bashar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:20:09 +0000

I can’t believe I call my self Monkey Island fan and I haven’t heard about this proof of concept for Monkey Island 2 Special Edition with 3D environment. And I haven’t even played the Tales of Monkey Island yet. I shouldn’t blog about this or else… Err, what do you mean I just did? Umm… back to topic.

Enjoy the videos.

What is this GROG Argentineans drink?

Bashar — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:32:37 +0000

OMG, I kept reading comments over Grumpy Gamer for someone to tell me it’s a joke, but this is what a prank ended up causing in Argentina! And what’s SCUMM anyways?

And this is the Dr’s official page.

ImHalal.com – First Islamic Halal Search Engine

Bashar — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:22:13 +0000

For the first time now, there is an Islamic search engine which aims at providing a general purpose search that is free of “haram” content, i.e. offensive contents that contradicts with Islamic laws and beliefs. The search engine is wisely called ImHalal.com, and I bet we will see widely increased interest in such a service from conservative people, and parents who want to keep their kids off the harmful web contents.

To reach it’s Halal goal, the site seems to be using two methods. One is by filtering out “Haram” sites and contents, and this can be seen clearly from the Image search, which is still in Beta. When searching for various keywords or celebrity names for example, results from ImHalal.com are much more decent in this regard than Google and Yahoo in their strict mode.

The other method, which I don’t like as much, is the black listing of keywords, ranking them with “Haram” scale of 1 to 3. If the “Haram” level is 1 or 2, you get a warning plus an option to move forward.

Annoying but bearable. The bad thing about it is, it seems to have no intelligence in it, as it blindly blocks Haram words disregard of the actual context or full search or purpose. Example?

Breast is a black listed word, disregard of what you’re really looking for. Even “Wire Stripper” is a level 3 Haram word for including Stripper. I love wire strippers :(.

And the devil word Haram is also a level 3.

Now here it completely misses the point. There is a difference between doing wrong, and reading about what’s wrong. And trust me, offensive sites won’t use the word Haram anyways. It doesn’t help their marketing. Add to that that you can actually search for Haram in Arabic حرام and it works. I have also managed to pass through several bad words, and reach some blocked sites eventually. So this paradigm isn’t the best. Some intelligence needs to be built-in.

Now as to where does this magic come from, It’s still unclear. Is it an engine built in-house? If so, credible search engines usually list their IPs and spider name for webmasters to allow or deny it. But I couldn’t find anything in my log reports. I wasn’t able also to tie it to any of the famous search engines. Is it powered by any of them, or any other service? Usually there would be some information about the source of those indexes, but not here.

[via Social Media Portal]

PS3 120 GB Slim Officially Released for $299

Bashar — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:19:37 +0000

Today is the official release of the new slimmer PS3 120 GB Blu-Ray player, which can also play some awesome video games. At the cost of $299.99, I really find it a smart buy.

The Force Is Strong With This NERD!

Bashar — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:26:33 +0000

I think we should have large scale game of this style. That would be the only fighting game I’m really interested in!

TwittARound – Augmented Reality Twitter Client & more

Bashar — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:29:30 +0000

This is a new upcoming Twitter App for the iPhone called Twittaround. The app works by pointing your iPhone at any direction, and it will show you the tweets coming from there. So if you feel your neighbor is gossiping about you on Twitter, or you feel the guys on the next table are tweeting, just point your phone there and you’ll know.

I’m thinking, you can also tell if the crazy driver next to you is tweeting or not. This could be an alarm for your safety. Funny I was just tweeting with a friend about this!

This is also another Twitter client app that is quite promising as well.

via IntoMobile.

I want a processor as fast as that one!

Bashar — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:52:21 +0000

You’d think he’s hallucinating in the end!

Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Reenactment

Bashar — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:12:30 +0000

This is a reenactment of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb. It ofcourse it has some disturbing scenes so do not watch if you don’t have the heart.

He should be named mayor!

Bashar — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:08:46 +0000

This guy took the game a bit too seriously!

Quite amazing huh?

Steven’s RCT3 Page

BlogAllAlong » Internet

Toy Story 3 Video Game, Just How All Movie Games Should Be

Related Posts:

Amazon Kindle for $189

Related Posts:

Monkey Island II Tie

Related Posts:

Aardvark Spam

Related Posts:

Google Communicates with Saddam

Related Posts:

Google Chrome Super Fast

Related Posts:

Google Chrome (MUST) RSS Subscription Extension

Related Posts:

Quake 2 on HTML5

Related Posts:

Google Chrome’s Built In Translation

Related Posts:

Mac Vs PC The Movie

Related Posts:

Google Opt-Out Privacy Feature

Related Posts:

Seriously Twitter? You Wanna Share My Phone Number?

Related Posts:

Ruins of “Friendster” Civilization Uncovered by Internet Archaeologists

Related Posts:

It was Ramadan!

Related Posts:

Use Sprixi to find free images

Related Posts:

Have you tried Google Living Stories?

Related Posts:

Teambox Online Project Management Now Available

Related Posts:

8 More Bugs To Go for Mac Chrome

Related Posts:

Clicker – What’s On Online

Related Posts:

BBC Earth Collection Bluray One Day Amazon Offer

Related Posts:

Finally, a possible good YouTube revenue model

Related Posts:

Monkey Island 2 Special-Uber Edition

Related Posts:

What is this GROG Argentineans drink?

Related Posts:

ImHalal.com – First Islamic Halal Search Engine

Related Posts:

PS3 120 GB Slim Officially Released for $299

Related Posts:

The Force Is Strong With This NERD!

Related Posts:

TwittARound – Augmented Reality Twitter Client & more

Related Posts:

I want a processor as fast as that one!

Related Posts:

Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Reenactment

Related Posts:

He should be named mayor!

Related Posts: