Monthly ArchiveSeptember 2008
Tech Paul on 04 Sep 2008
Google Chrome
It seems pretty obvious if your entire business depends on the interpretation of your content through a particular type of application then you’d want to influence that application type. Thus Google has entered the “broswer wars” with Google Chrome. It ensures at a minimum that if Apple, Microsoft, and the Mozilla foundation all decided to change their browsers and wreck Google’s applications (all browser based) there’d still be one browser that works.
Additionally it allows Google to influence Safari, IE, and Firefox by bringing focus on things that they care about (i.e. fast rendering of JavaScript). Since they make their money off of the content and advertising they make all of their browser work open source and free. The more Firefox, IE, Safari, Flock, Opera, et. al. take from Chrome, the better Google will be. They don’t really care which browser you use to look at their apps and advertisements.
As for the broswer itself it seems fine with a very unencumbered interface, but I’m worried that they EULA may not be as “do no evil” as Google would like you to think.
Games & SotS Paul on 04 Sep 2008
Too Many Games
The floodgates are opening and I only have time for the highlights:
- Castle Crashers is a fun game for $15 and a download. Too bad they desperately need a patch to fix the online multiplayer.
- Mercenaries 2 is an easy game to pick apart, especially the interface. It’s also a great example of your ability to go nuts in a sandbox world. If you liked Crackdown, if you think GTAIV was too story driven, this is a game for you.
- Spore is out this weekend. Reviews are mixed, but just from a pure technology standpoint I’ll be picking it up.
- For $5 you can rip almost all (5 songs missing) of your Rock Band tracks to your hard drive. Yes it takes up 1.52GB of your precious hard drive space but it will allow all of those tracks to be used in the upcoming Rock Band 2 out on the 14th.
- I’ve been spending most of my game time playtesting the next Sword of the Stars expansion called A Murder of Crows. It’ll be out through GamersGate before the end of the month and adds some real game changers, more (IMO) than the first expansion did.
Travel Paul on 04 Sep 2008
K.C. Inbound!
I’m scheduled to give a talk at a conference in the K.C. convention center sometime between October 5 and 8. Email me at my firstname dot lastname at gmail dot com if you’re in the area and you want to go out for dinner or something. I’ll know more details (specifically when I’ll be there and when I’ll be free) by the end of Friday.