Nintendo Launches MyWiiStory.com

By David Peralty
Contributing Writer, [GAS] 

First Nintendo shuts down their forums, saying that they will bring something better out, and then they launch My Wii Story? Seriously!?

While I love the Wii, despite not being able to play it often due to my wife loving it even more than me, I don’t see this as a real community effort, but instead another way for them to spin their wares to a wide variety of people.

I know the Wii is for casual gamers, but I’d really rather them bring back their forums. Where is a die-hard Wii fan supposed to communicate with other die-hard fans? My Wii Story doesn’t seem like that platform, but judge for yourself. Here are some details from Nintendo’s press release, “It’s a place where Wii owners and their friends and family have been gathering to post real-life anecdotes about the way that Wii has changed their social dynamic or even their opinions about video games. Men and women, young and old, kids and grandparents — people of all types have posted anecdotes, photos and videos of their experiences with Wii.”

This definitely isn’t what I had in mind for a Nintendo Wii community. Back to the drawing board Nintendo.



Crysis to Require a Monster Computer

Crysis to Require a Monster PC

With everyone looking forward to what should be one of the most beautiful video games, Crysis, I was wondering if I would be able to play it when it came out, and much to my surprise, the required and recommended specifications have just been released, and while I do have a system that meets the minimum requirements, I am a bit behind on the gear needed to meet the recommended system requirements.

Minimum System Requirements
OS – Windows XP or Windows Vista
Processor – 2.8 GHz or faster (XP) or 3.2 GHz or faster* (Vista)
Memory – 1.0 GB RAM (XP) or 1.5 GB RAM (Vista)
Video Card -NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT 256 MB / ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (X800 Pro for Vista)
Hard Drive – 12GB Free Space

Recommended System Requirements

OS – Windows XP / Vista
Processor – Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.2GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
Memory – 2.0 GB RAM
GPU – NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS/640 or similar

Does your system meet the minimum requirements? How about the recommended requirements? Are games starting to ask us to drop too much money to keep up with the visuals they want to push to us?

I am not really a console gamer, but these types of requirements mean that I will be playing my Xbox 360 until the recommended video cards come down in price.

source: 1up.com



5 Tips to Get What You Want From Technology Retail

By Fred Roth
Contributing Writer, [GAS] 

In my daily sweep across my favorite tech news sites (next to [GAS], of course), I read an article listing 10 behaviors to adopt in order to get what you want from customer service centers.

With the holiday shopping season fast approaching (believe me, we employees are already hearing it at retail stores), I thought I’d offer up a list of things to do if you want to get what you want while shopping for technology, from someone who will be selling it to you!

Continue reading ›

Xbox 360: Holiday Bundle includes 2 Games

Christmas Xbox 360 BundleIf you haven’t got an Xbox 360 yet for some reason, and you are interested in purchasing one, then check out the new bundle that Microsoft is putting out for the holidays.

Buy either the Xbox 360 Premium ($349.99) or Elite ($449.99), and get two games, Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I haven’t had the opportunity to try either of these games yet, but in lieu of a price drop, this is still a pretty darn good deal. Including the two games, if you would have purchased them, saves you around $70-$90 depending on the current pricing in your region.

Personally, I wish they’d drop the Forza and give a second controller for free in the bundle, but I have to admit that Microsoft is very aggressively promoting their Xbox 360, so much so that I wonder what kind of bundles they will be building next year.

Both bundles will be available starting sometime this month, with no current notice of its end. I wouldn’t bet on this bundle being around after Christmas though.

What would you like to see in a reasonable Xbox 360 bundle? I would love to see it include the wireless dongle, and a second controller as I think that would make the Elite version match its namesake better.


Google Buys Jaiku

Google Buys Jaiku

The Twitter-like service from Finland, Jaiku, has been purchased by search engine behemoth, Google.

My first thought after finding out about this was, “why?” Google doesn’t really need a micro-blogging platform, and if they were going to purchase one, why take what most people consider to be the second best or third best, at least in popularity.

Some people are saying this is just one of many mobile phone related services that Google is either buying or building to increase their market penetration in the cell phone, iPhone, connected devices market.

It will be interesting to see how much they paid for the service, as it will most likely add credence to the continuing growth of the Web 2.0 bubble that has been mentioned increasingly more often.

Here is the blog post on Jaiku’s home page about the acquisition:

Wonderful Jaiku users,
Exciting news, Jaiku is joining Google!

While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now.

But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku. We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition.

Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders

Do you Jaiku? Have your say about Google buying Jaiku in the comments.

Google and IBM help students reach for the clouds

By Sterling Camden
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

 It’s always a challenge for colleges and universities to keep up with advancing technology.  Back when I was hiring people, I was often disappointed by the lack of exposure to current practice obtained by new graduates during the course of their matriculation.  Technology advances so rapidly that unless you get your degree from one of the schools that create the new stuff, you’ll probably be five to ten years behind the times when you graduate.

Now imagine that you’re hiring for a company that defines the leading edge, like Google.  How do you find graduates who can work with your technology, when your technology isn’t being taught anywhere?  Answer: push your tech out to the universities.

Google has teamed up with IBM to create large data centers for students at six universities to learn “cloud computing” — the type of computing that uses thousands of processors and huge data stores to drive sites like Google.com.

These data centers will use “an open-source version of Google’s data center software” — a most interesting arrangement.  Obviously, the kids can’t learn it if it’s closed, but Rich Miller asks how much of Google’s secret sauce will be given away in this version?  There would seem to be a dilemma between wanting the students to have as rich an understanding as possible of the technology, versus protecting Google’s trade secrets from competitors.  But perhaps Google understands that any given technological advantage is fleeting, and that continued dominance rests more on the people they cultivate than on the algorithms they protect.

iPod pants on fire: liar liar?

Even though this was first reported two days ago, we couldn’t call ourselves “Geeks are Sexy” if we didn’t write about a case of iPod-induced pants on fire.

Danny Williams was working at his kiosk at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport and listening to his iPod Nano, when suddenly the music got a little bit too hot. Apparently the lithium ion battery (yes, the same kind of battery that produced several cases of exploding laptops last year and, um, “sparked” a recall) caught fire right in Danny’s pants pocket.

According to Williams, flames shot up to his chest before he noticed anything was going on (I don’t know what he was listening to, so maybe that extra warm feeling in his pants didn’t seem out of the ordinary). But he avoided having his meatballs broiled, thanks to an amazingly fire-retardent piece of glossy paper in his pocket. As one commenter on engadget said,

Ah yes, we all know the life saving properties of a “glossy piece of paper”. After all it’s what all flak jackets are made of.

Lots more great comments over at Fake Steve and Gizmodo.

Perhaps Danny’s story has been exaggerated just a wee bit. But I don’t doubt that the unit actually did overheat. After all, it’s happened before. Apple has reportedly offered to replace the year-old Nano, but I’m betting that Danny (or his lawyer) might be looking to cook up something more than that.