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ExtensionFM Becomes exfm: An Extension That Makes The Web Your Social Jukebox

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 2, 2010Posted in: Music, Technology

I’ve had this installed on my browser for the longest time, but haven’t had time to really discover music with it yet. Part of the problem is that a lot of music isn’t in mp3 form anymore – it’s embedded in some flash media player for streaming purposes. If they could somehow make this work for ANY music on the web, I think we would have the new world order.

MG Siegler:

The Twitter integration is really killer because if you have the extension installed, you can listen to music shared via exfm inline on the new twitter.com.

Read: ExtensionFM Becomes exfm: An Extension That Makes The Web Your Social Jukebox.

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Kanye West’s Image Control and Media Spin

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 2, 2010Posted in: Music

Kanye befuddles me. I can never fully tell if anything he does is off the cuff honest or part of a calculated persona.

Ne-Yo’s quote certainly doesn’t help any:

“I think it’s a beautiful thing,” Ne-Yo said. “By now, you know who Kanye is. If he feels like he was disrespected, he’s not only going to say it, he’s going to stand on a chair and scream it. That’s who he is. He’s a master of PR. He knows what he is doing.”

And the dude is now so “big” that he can just blow off interviews:

Unsurprisingly, efforts to reach West were unsuccessful. When his publicist, Gabe Tesoriero, was asked via e-mail about West’s interview availability on a scale of 1 to 10 — with one being “not a chance” and 10 being a sure thing — Tesoriero responded with a numerical one, accompanied by a frowny-face emoticon.

Regardless, selling 550,000 CDs first week in this day and age is amazing. I guess it doesn’t hurt that he’s actually good at his craft.

Read: Kanye West’s image control and media spin – latimes.com.

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The Decemberists Do It Again

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 2, 2010Posted in: Music

I don’t know what it is about these guys, but they seem to put out great music every go round. One listen of the new single “Down By The Wate” and I was immediately hooked.

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Nintendo Wii’s Sales Decline Has Some Wondering If the Game’s Over

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 2, 2010Posted in: Video Games

My Wii gathers dust for about 80% of the year. The only time I turn it on is for exclusive AAA releases and those are few and far between nowadays. Once people have seen the Kinect in action they want no part of the Wii anymore.

Reggie Fils-Aime:

“The back half of any system cycle always attracts a higher proportion of buyers who are concerned with price, ease of use and group play.… [T]his late-adopter group is the next audience for the Wii,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

Call me edgy, but it seems to me that once you’re depending on the “late-adopter” group, your product is on its last legs.

Read: Nintendo Wii’s sales decline has some wondering if the game’s over – latimes.com.

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Rumor/Leak of the Day – Upcoming Blizzard Product Slate

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 1, 2010Posted in: Video Games

And here’s your rumor of the day. It’s a leaked slide from a probable internal Blizzard presentation a few months ago. Other than a Diablo 3 release date of Q4 2012, most of the upcoming release schedule is fairly predictable.

Well other than this:

Titan
Yeah, that’s Blizzard’s new MMOFPS and I might have hinted at that in the past but I don’t have a lot of extra information about it and the release date is just an estimation. Don’t assume that it will be released by the end of 2013 based on that document, it would be very stupid. (Edit: Titan is a new game by the way, not an existing IP. But I’m really not sure what’s the plan with it, I just know that the FPS bit is most likely here to stay)

Read: MMO-Champion – Blizzard Product Slate, Forum Titles, Blizzcast 15, Blue Posts

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Fable 3 Title Update Released For Xbox 360, Fixes Crashes

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 1, 2010Posted in: Video Games

It’s pretty ridiculous that games are shipping on consoles with egregious bugs still at large. Fable 3 was released around October 18th and it took 6 weeks for this patch to come out. I’ve held off playing this and Fallout: New Vegas because I don’t want any part of hard lockups, especially in a long game.

Read: http://lionhead.com/blogs/fable_2_development/archive/2010/12/01/patch-notes-fable-iii-title-update.aspx

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Bootlegged: DJ Shadow Shadowsphere @ House of Blues, New Orleans 11/7/10

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 18, 2010Posted in: Bootlegged, Music

You read that correctly – “New Orleans.” Normally I don’t venture out of Los Angeles much, but on this occasion I had the opportunity to catch a show at the House of Blues in New Fucking Orleans, so I had to take it. As luck would have it, DJ Shadow was in town and I had never seen him before.

I’ve heard mixed things about DJ Shadow’s live set and while the Shadowsphere show is pretty cool with its visuals and unique “sphere” set, strip that away and you have a fairly “meh” show. It’s nothing against Shadow, there’s just only so much you can do as a DJ in a live setting without getting guest stars or showering the crowd with free narcotics.

That being said, there ARE visuals and they’re pretty neat. One particular graphic made the sphere look like the Death Star which was a great “HA!” moment.

Shadow also premiered a new song from his upcoming album which is sort of a big deal since album length original material from him has been few and far between since 1996’s Entroducing…

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Video Review: New Xbox 360 Silver Controller With Transforming D-Pad

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 5, 2010Posted in: Features, Reviews, Video Games

**Updated 11/11 with fix for the mirrored video from the previous embed. Plus a neat little title!

So you may or may not have heard that Microsoft is putting out a new controller for the Xbox 360 on November 9th. It’s got a nice silver finish and has newly contoured joysticks and a magical transforming d-pad that will help you pull of shourykens a lot better.

I got my hands on one last week and have put together a mini-review video below.

TL;DW – It’s a nice improvement and worth the money if you were planning on getting a new controller or need one with a good d-pad. It’s not a ZOMG BUY THIS NOW purchase, but you won’t want to go back to the old one once you’ve gotten it.

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Happy Rock Band 3 Day!

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on October 26, 2010Posted in: Music, Video Games

Shame on you if you aren’t already click-clacking your way to plastic musical instrument heaven today. Harmonix’s Rock Band 3 releases today on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Nintendo DS and many reviews are already calling it the “best rhythm game ever.”

If you’re the poor soul that hosts your circle of friends’ Rock Band get togethers, there’s at least a $129.99 investment you have to make today to buy the game and new keyboard peripheral. On the bright side, it’s an actual MIDI keyboard so you can justify it by saying you got a “real” musical instrument, but we all know you’re just going to use it to hit five colored notes while getting drunk with your friends.

It’s alright. No one’s judging you. Except maybe your mom.

To celebrate a return to the best home karaoke platform ever, I’ve put together a Grooveshark playlist of 82 of the 83 songs in Rock Band 3. (The only song not on here is John Lennon’s Imagine, which i “imagine” is not on Grooveshark because of licensing reasons.) Enjoy getting to know these songs! It’ll be especially fun if you don’t know Spanish and get roped to sing the Juanes song. My heart goes out to you.

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The Holiday Video Game Season Is Here

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on October 21, 2010Posted in: Features, Recommendations, Video Games

It’s started a little later than usual for me this year, but this past Tuesday marked the official start of the “every week there will be an awesome new game released” season. (Yes, Halo Reach was released in mid-September, but there was just such a long gap between that and this week that I’m going to consider that like having dessert an hour before the buffet line opens.)

This week we had three solid retail titles come out: Fallout: New Vegas, DJ Hero 2 and Vanquish. Next week we’ll see Fable 3. The week after is the Kinect launch week as well as Call of Duty Black Ops. Then the storm really comes with Donkey Kong Country Returns, Goldeneye, Epic Mickey, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Gran Turismo 5, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, then OH MY GOD THIS IS NEVER GOING TO END.

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