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New Strokes Single Is Available To Some People

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on February 9, 2011Posted in: Music

I was going to use Sony’s embedded code to share the sign up form to download the new Strokes single, “Under The Cover Of Darkness,” but the damn site doesn’t work. If you can even log onto http://www.thestrokes.com/download/ to try to sign up for it, a suspicious-looking login box pops up asking you for login credentials to Sony’s back end servers.

So I’m just going to direct you to your favorite torrent site or this convenient YouTube stream:

PS: It’s a fun little song, sounds like Is This It era Strokes if you were into that sorta thing.

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Huffington Post and AOL: Why the Deal’s a Mess

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on February 9, 2011Posted in: Technology

Dan Lyons can be a prick sometimes, but I could not agree more with his assessment of the AOL/HuffPo merger.

Dan Lyons:

The other problem is that AOL’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong, is a sales guy. He ran sales at Google before he came to AOL in 2009. Nothing wrong with sales guys, except when they start telling people how to do journalism. Sales guys deal in numbers. But journalism is about words. Sales guys live in a world where everything can be measured and analyzed. Their version of journalism is to focus on things like “keyword density” and search-engine optimization.

Journalists live in a world of story-telling, and where the value of a story, its power to resonate, is something they know by instinct. Some people have better instincts than others. Some people can improve their instincts over time. The other part of storytelling is not the material itself but how you present it. Some can spin a better tale out of the same material than others.

But no great storyteller has ever been someone who started out by thinking about traffic numbers and search engine keywords.

Read More: Huffington Post and AOL: Why the Deal’s a Mess – The Daily Beast.

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New Airborne Toxic Event Single – “Changing”

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on February 2, 2011Posted in: Music

I gotta say I’m a little nonplussed by the Airborne Toxic Event’s new single, “Changing.” A couple of years ago, “Sometime Around Midnight” really connected with me. It had the perfect blend of melody with emotional gravitas and an amazing climax. (“then you walk under a streetlight…”) I still get chills listening to that song today. “Changing” just makes me think of a generic mid-nineties modern rock band.

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Dead Space 2 Hand Cannon/Foam Finger Hard Core Mode Unlock

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on February 2, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Wow, can’t say I saw this Foam Finger weapon coming as a reward for finishing Dead Space 2 on the hardest difficulty. It’s both the coolest and most annoying weapon I’ve seen in a game yet.

PEW PEW PEW BANG BANG BANG PEW BANG PEW BANG

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comiXology Announces Digital Storefront for Brick and Mortar Comic Shops – ComicsAlliance

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on February 1, 2011Posted in: Comics

The problem with this is that many comic shops don’t actually have a significant web presence, much less a full online retailing solution. These are the stores that stand the most to lose if the brick and mortar comics retailing apocalypse happens.

That being said, I’d be more than willing to support my local comic book store if they were a part of this initiative. There needs to be a way to combine both paper and digital comics sales in a sensible way for the consumer. I sure as hell ain’t going to pay a premium for a la carte digital comics.

“By having a ComiXology-powered store and reader integrated with our existing new and back-issue comics website, we will provide our customers with even more access to the comics they love while increasing their loyalty to us,” said Chris Powell, General Manager and CRO of myccomicshop.com. “Having seen comiXology’s Retailer Tools and Pull List services, we trust comiXology’s technology to help us thrive in a market where customers are interested in both print and digital comics. ComiXology will help us provide the one-stop shopping that customers are looking for. Digital comics can be a great tool for reaching out to new or lapsed customers, and retailers should not be afraid of this new format. Instead, they should look for ways to make the digital format complement their existing print business.”

Read more: comiXology Announces Digital Storefront for Brick and Mortar Comic Shops – ComicsAlliance | Comics culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews.

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Sony NGP (PSP2) Announcement Reaction, (Or How I Got A Nerd Boner Last Night)

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on January 28, 2011Posted in: Cutting Through The Potty, Features, Reviews, Video Games

Originally published on Lalawag

Last night during their Playstation Meeting 2011 event in Tokyo, Sony announced their next portable gaming device, the PSP2 “Next Generation Portable” (NGP).

This baby’s got almost every gaming and technological innovation from the past 5 years, including dual touchpads, dual analog sticks, dual cameras, six-axis motion sensing, a high resolution OLED display, 3G and WiFi connectivity, and heck why not throw in that built in GPS. There’s a laundry list of features so we’re going to windmill slam that spec sheet right in front of you here:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Sony’s NGP (PSP2) Press Event

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on January 27, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Hideo envisions using the exact same game on the PS3 and the NGP. You play the game on your PS3 at home, and out and about you play the same game and same save on your NGP. A beautiful dream, indeed. “This dream is going to come true in the near future, and right now I’m working on this project. I’m sorry right now I can’t disclose further information, but I’d like to present what we’re doing at E3.”

I think I just soiled myself with delight. That would be so goddamn cool.

Read: Live from Sony’s Tokyo event — Engadget.

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Bulletstorm Demo Released On Xbox 360

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on January 25, 2011Posted in: Video Games

It’s a free demo bonanza today on the Xbox Live Marketplace!

I will say, though, that I am very excited for Epic Games’ Bulletstorm. We need a good arcadey, lightning-paced first person shooter and this looks like it fits the bill perfectly. If any developer can do it it’s People Can Fly, who earned their chops with Painkiller earlier this decade.

Play through the incredible ‘Collapsed Building’ level in Bulletstorms high scoring ‘Echoes ‘ mode. Arm yourself with the PMC, Flail gun and Screamer pistol and unleash Bulletstorms unique combat mechanics and skillshot system to annihilate your foes and, more importantly, top the leaderboards! Fight your way through a towering high rise hotel that has fallen on it’s side, providing you with a unique and beautiful canvas to splatter with your enemies insides! Utilise Gray’s kick, leash and sliding abilities in combination with outrageously large guns that feed into Bulletstorm’s distinct ‘skillshot’ system to produce unprecedented levels of frantic gameplay and yell-inducing satisfaction.

Add the free demo to your Xbox 360 download queue

Demo: Bulletstorm – Xbox Live’s Major Nelson.

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Crysis 2 Demo Available For Xbox 360

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on January 25, 2011Posted in: Video Games

I’ll give this a shot, but Crysis to me has always been about the unbelievable visuals more than anything. The fairly open world gameplay of the single player campaign is what’s made the series stand out.

That being said, Nanosuit deathmatch could be interesting…

Aliens are decimating New York City, with a full invasion force bent on the annihilation of mankind. Neither paramilitary law enforcement nor the might of the US military can stand against the invaders. Only you have the technology to survive: with the unique Nanosuit 2, tackle the alien menace in ways a regular soldier could only dream of. • Nanosuit 2: Customize your Nanosuit and weapons then adapt your combat tactics in real time using Stealth, Armor and Power abilities. • New York, New York: Crysis® 2 is set to redefine the visual benchmark for console and PC platforms in the urban jungle of New York City. • Amazing Aliens and AI: Lethal enemies employ best-in-class AI with unique group coordination and behavior for realistic, challenging responses to your actions. • Multiplayer: The next big leap in multiplayer gives you nearly unlimited ways to approach the dynamic combat environment

Add the free demo to your Xbox 360 download queue

Demo: Crysis 2 – Xbox Live’s Major Nelson.

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Why 3D doesn’t work and never will

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on January 25, 2011Posted in: Movies

Never thought about 3D films as it related to human vision, but this makes a lot of sense. I do feel very strained watching a 3D film.

Walter Murch, Oscar-winning film editor:

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the “convergence/focus” issue. A couple of the other issues — darkness and “smallness” — are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen — say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.

Read: Why 3D doesn’t work and never will. Case closed. – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

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