Wii is the Biggest

So the Nintendo Wii has now topped the charts in game consoles. Wii has sold more consoles then Microsoft's XBox 360. Not only have they now sold more, but they are also still selling at about 2:1 ratio, becoming the fastest selling console in history. I personally have contributed to the Wii outselling the 360 as I now own one.

I will say this about the Wii, if you play Wii Sports like you are actually playing them, you can get a work out. If you just sit there and swing your arm...not so much. I really enjoy the motion sensing controllers. It is such an intuitive way of playing games. Since we were little playing the original Nintendo, we used the controller as a steering wheel, even though it did nothing, we would make wild motions trying to knock out our opponent. Now, it works, now we flail to knock out our opponent, we swing the controller to swing the racket, and we drive by steering. It really is fun, and I think for the coming generation, it will be a lot better than sitting statically on the couch staring at the TV...now it is truely interactive.

In my book, the Wii is the console of the future.

War Games

In 1983 a movie came out which showed the perils of the cold war, and how two kids, mistakenly started playing a game with real life consequences. Growing up in the 80’s I had lots of time to watch this whenever it was on TV. I think that might have been one of the first times I realized I wanted to work with computers. It glamorized Nuclear warfare during the Cold War, and now it is truly a game.

Defcon is a new game being put out by Introversion. The game is a replica of that in the movie, except without the real world consequences of Russia or China launching their WMD at us, while we maneuver our battleships off the coast. Basically the premise of the game is to wipe out your oppenant with your Thermonuclear devices before they can do it to you. Take out strategic locations, like radar stations, military installations, and heavy civilian areas. Turn their countries into sheets of glass, and try not to let too many of your own people die.

Brutal…Yes, Disturbing…More than likely, Showing the truth of Nuclear Warfare…Defiantly. It’s games like this that I enjoy playing, but at the same point, kind of scare me because this sort of thing could possibly happen. So if it does, I want to be able to call the Pentagon and say, “Look, you need to take out the radar station in Uzbekistan first, put a couple battle groups in the Mediterranean to draw there attention south, then attack from Alaska and from Northern Europe at the same time…I’ve run the simulations, I know it will work.”

Robots...

There is a new robot on the market, specifically designed for the Lazy American or Lazy European or Lazy whoever. The robot is called Roomba. Roomba is the next generation home appliance, a housewife’s (or househusband’s) dream come true. No longer do you have to worry about sweeping the floor, simply program Roomba to clean your kitchen floor, or any floor for that matter. Just turn it on and watch it go.

Now there are a couple different models, one is your “Typical” vacuum robot, which will do a decent job and clean entire rooms. But one of the models actually has a scheduler, so you can schedule when you want to have it clean. Which is great, because then while you are napping, you can actually be doing house work. The best of the models also has a remote control function, so you can send it after a particularly stubborn piece of trash, or after a particularly annoying pet or child. From the reviews that I have read, the vacuum capabilities are better than its predecessors, but still aren’t the best in the vacuum world, but hey it’s a robot.

Gamer Search Engines go Head to Head

A new gamer search engine was unveiled yesterday, Genieknowsgames.com. It is in direct competition with Wazup. So I decided to play with them both a little more and give up my review. So here we go, Real World Computing jumps into the fray, let’s see who comes out on top.

Starting out with the new kid on the block, I checked out genieknowsgames.com. It is a pretty straightforward layout, a search bar at the top, their top blogs and videos listed below, user friendly looking, just type in your game or request and there you go. Now Genieknowsgames.com looks for game based sites so it is much better than a general web search which will just look for keywords. I happened to put in “Wii” for the search, and the first result was a news story of how a hospital is using the Wii for physical therapy on patients who are recovering from strokes. And they go on, some are reviews of the Wii, some are blogs, but they are all actually related to the Wii. When you get more specific with your request, you results get smaller, so overall, it is a decent little search engine for gamers.

The Defending Champ came into existence last June, so he shows all the signs of a veteran. More options, a tad more complicated, but for gamers, it will be a lot nicer. There are different searches you can do that search for different things. One is your typical Game information search. It will search for reviews, comments, and ratings. The next search you can do is all about cheats, walkthroughs, FAQs, articles, and downloads. There is a new search that is about to go live that searches eSports and MMOGs. With all of these options, Wazup defiantly has a leg up on the competition.

So between these two hitters, genieknowsgames.com is kind of like that guy that got brought up from the minors because the top 3 guys on the team got suspended for juicing. He has potential, but he just hasn’t had time to prove himself or develop the right skills to play in the big leagues. Wazup is like Barry Bonds, been juicing for awhile and even though he isn’t the best in the league, he is a much better hitter than the new guy.

The Science of Halo 3

Doing some research, I found some very interesting stuff about Halo 3. The guys over at Bungie have been working hardcore on getting the first installment of Halo to the XBox 360. So much in fact that they have been running test at a facility own by Microsoft, where psychologists use state of the art tracking and observation techniques to rate the game and see how players react to it.

Can players not get past one battle? Is there one part of the Deathmatch arena that more players are being killed? Is there a certain vehicle that players are suicidal in? All of these are measured, reviewed, and then fixed. A computer maps out, per square foot, the location of players when they die. In a specific deathmatch arena, the amount of players dieing around one of the bases was much higher than the otherside, or anywhere else on the map, meaning that there was an imbalance in the map, giving one team an advantage.

With all this new technology going into making Halo 3 not only the latest installment, but the best as well.

I will reserve my review of Halo 3 until I actually get some gameplay time, although that probably means I need an XBox 360.

Google Cracking Down on Untrustworthy Advisors

Some of you may have noticed the ads on my site. These are Adsense ads, presented by Google. What Adsense does is crawl my blog entries, and deliver ads that are relevant to my blog, and hopefully in turn, my readers. Basically, if you click on one of the ads, it pays me money as a commission, something like a couple cents a click. But it also charges the advertiser per click you make. Apparently what has been happening is that some ingenious competitors have realized they can jack up the cost of someone else by clicking multiple times on a competitor’s ad. This Click-Fraud is what the new tools that Google has introduced are combating.

These tools allow advertisers to block people by IP, check out who has clicked multiple times on their ads, and even block people who have clicked multiple times, but haven’t bought anything. It also logs every click made on your ads so you can see who clicked, from what site, how many times. This helps the advertisers know who is clicking, and to see if they are being attacked. Google did some research and found that only about 10% of the clicks are invalid, and only .02% are from attacks. But Google wants its advertisers to have the tools to help them feel safe, and be free to advertise as much as they want.

So I encourage you to click on the ads on my site. The advertisers will thank you, and I will thank you, because every click you make helps pay for my continuing education, and hopefully, additions to this site. Have a Great Day.

Creative Zen V Plus 2 Gig

So here we are, the first actual post to my new Blog about technology. Now I know that I said I would try to have a breaking story from the folks over at Microsoft’s Business Unit who handle the Mac side of things. The only problem is that the contact that I had for them wasn’t able to get me the story I wanted. So instead, today is going to be my first product review.

The Creative Labs Zen V Plus 2 Gig MP3 Player is a nice little unit. I have been using a Creative Zen MP3 player for years, I happen to own the 30 Gig version of the Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra from several years back. There have been vast improvements on the players, though I think they are really in different categories. Where as my old Zen player actually uses a laptop hard drive for storage, and therefore is rather large, the new Zen V is much smaller and uses a solid-state flash drive as its storage media. I picked this unit up for $79.99 from the local Yellow Tag store. For the price, it has the largest capacity and the most features.

Features:
2 Gig Storage Capacity
MP3, WMA, WMA DRM Playback
Video Playback
FM Tuner
Voice Recorder
Picture Viewer
1” OLED Screen

Now there are several things that I really like about this product. The screen size is pretty good, and the color is pretty good as well. You wouldn’t want to watch a movie on it, but for short little clips it isn’t too bad. Pictures displayed on it are the same way, not Hi-Res, but decent. The Voice recorder on it is ok, but it does have a line-in recording feature so you could use a headset or mic to record instead of the built in Microphone, which picks up a lot of ambient noise. The FM Tuner seems to work pretty well and as long as you have a clear signal, the sound quality is just as good as you get out of a digital tuner in your car. The entire unit fits in the palm of your hand, and I mean the fleshy part, not including your fingers, it is somewhat reminiscent of the old Tamagotchi, except you don’t need to feed this. It also charges via USB, however the associates at the Yellow Tag store said they also make a wall charger for it. It is suppose to come in three color combinations; Black/Green, White/Green, Pink/White, however the store I was at only had the Black/Green model.

Overall, for the price, this little unit takes my vote. Other similar devices with similar features run from $89.99-$109.99, depending on maker, not including the iPods. So I think the Creative Zen V Plus 2 Gig gets you the best bang for the buck.

That is it for my first review, let me know what you think, or give me other ideas for products to review. Have a great day.

The First Post

Hello and Welcome to Real World Computing.

I have decided that with the slew of other tech sites available with reviews, news, and just general information about all the technology out there, that I would start my own to add to the quagmire. My idea for this blog is to have helpful reviews of products and technology that an everyday person would use. Most of those that are viewing this probably know me, and know my background. For those of you who don't, here is a short run down.

I was born at a very young age...ok, let skip all that and get to the important stuff. Starting around the time I was 10, I started messing about with computers. Programming Apple IIe with basic and graduating onto a the lovely Tandy running DOS, and even onto Windows 3.1. Those were other peoples computers. My first computer was a 100MHz with 16MB of RAM running Windows 95. After that, I couldn't stop. I start building my own PCs and gaming a lot.
I have worked in Computer tech positions for over 7 years now, mostly in education. I love new technology, and letting people know about it, and teaching them how to use it, and use it effectively.

That is the aim of this blog. Introduce people to technology. I hope you enjoy it. If there is anything you want to know about specifically just send me a comment, I will do some research and let you know. I am working on getting some new information about some new software coming out for the Mac in the first quarter of 2008. Keep your fingers crossed.