Playing on the Go

Android, the brainchild of the Open Handset Alliance(OHA) has released their prototype low-end model running the most recent Andriod release. While it’s encouraging to see that OHA, after all their hype, has made something physical, it doesn’t strike me as overly awe-inspiring.

The Android SDK, along with its inept documentation, featured an Android emulator to debug the developers’ works. This emulator is a carbon copy of OHA’s phyical prototype, which was ported with apps and the background origionally on the emulator. The protoype utilizes an ARM9 mobile processor which means decent, but not ready to run any intensive programs.

The only improvement that I can see with this realease of a phyical phone is that……it’s finally physical! Google and OHA have achieved a marginal success, but I believe that it’s time to save the bottles of celebratory bubbly and work on getting Android into the hands of the consumer.

Sony off-handedly made a statement last week that they would be making
a skype for the psp handheld gaming system. My response….nice
thinking sony, you just killed the only edge the mylo had over the
psp, the unpopular mylo costing around $200 compared to the psp’s $120
price tag.

In this move by Sony, they slapped mylo owners in the face and gave
the victory to the homebrew kiddies because they’re really the only
ones still using the, what was it called? PORTABLE GAMING System! When
it came out that was the intention I got no idea what mechanized
horror it has mutated into. Maybe I’m being harsh but it’s the harsh
truth.

I myself am a semi-proud owner of one of these purpose-confused
buggers and am still considering a downgrade to run homebrews. I
scoured the Internet to find a decent voip app but failed the hunt.
This news of SONY supported voip might actually drive me to dust off
my PSP now turned bookend and start chatting with some skype
buddies but don’t hold your breath….

Vista, the “bloated” successor to XP, is now beginning to gain ground on the gamers market. Many XP gamers were and still are speculative about Vista’s performace in running their precious games. This uneasiness comes primarily from the fact that the Vista operating system is a memory hungary BEAST. In fact, the minimum memory requirement to install the monstrosity is 512mb compared to XP’s meager 64mb. One cause of this lust for memory is the Vista sidebar which runs the gadgets and contently sits off to the side quietly slowing down the computer’s performance.

Now, games also need an exceptional amount of memory to perform at the highest frames per second. All the memory sucking native features in Vista amount to very little left to run Half-Life 2 or Counterstrike. The only benefit of Vista is that it offers the new DirectX 10 graphic acclerator which, when used with compatable video cards, dramatically improves gameplay. This is possibly the only advantage Vista has to offer over XP and its deficient DirectX 9.

Bearing these facts in mind, Valve, the creator of Half-Life 2 and Counterstrike, shows that customers using Vista have tripled from 5% to 15% from June to November. The supremacy of XP in the gaming market will doubtlessly continue until Microsoft can appease Vista’s fervor for memory.

Due to all of the madness that was E3 as well as some personal items on my side (I’ve been moving), I’ve had to delay the announcement of the winner of the previously mentioned banner contest for quite some time. After all was said and done, I unfortunately received only one banner submission. But the one that I did get was a pretty good one…

Magdalena sent this one in to me a while back, which more than gets the job done. It should be seen in the heavenly graces of the top section of the site in the next day or so. But should any of you still like to send in a banner to be featured on this site, please don’t hesitate. Feel free to send me a submission in to danielhorton[at]gmail[dot]com. Remember, the banners should be in either .jpg or .gif format, must be under 50k and have a pixel count under 728 x 90. I’ll even go as far as to guarantee that any submissions will be featured on the site.

Thanks again, Magdalena!

Ever since I’ve taken the reigns of this blog, one of my goals has been to make it a fun place accessible to everyone. Of course, one of the best ways to do just that nowadays is through podcasting. I think it would be an excellent way of getting more in depth on the news that you read here, as well as a great way of getting more information out there in a fun and entertaining way.

But one thing that I do not want to do is produce a podcast that would, if you excuse the pun, fall on deaf ears. So my question for you is simply this. Would you listen to such a show? It would tentatively run once a week, probably releasing on Mondays. If there is enough interest, I’ll be tickled pink to do it. If not, maybe it will just be an experiment once or twice.

If you would be interested, leave me some feedback in the comments section. Either a yea or nay would be greatly appreciated.

podcasting

Thanks to some of the higher ups at 451 Press, each site on this network now has the ability to cram in a custom header into the default Word Press template that each 451 blog shares. Hopefully, this will help you to seprately identify each of our sister sites. Because frankly, they all pretty much look the same without a good banner.

I’m no slouch with Photoshop myself, but don’t really have the necessary time to devote to do the banner justice. So with that in mind, I’m opening the floor for any submissions any of you may have for it. There are a few requirements, however. It must be in either .jpg or .gif format, must be under 50k and have a pixel count under 728 x 90. And of course, in theory it should be related to handheld gaming. But I’ll be happy to take any other creative banners as well on an individual basis. If your banner is selected, I’ll give you props by whatever screen name you choose along with a link to your site if you wish. Also, just because I will be selecting one to begin with doesn’t mean that I won’t use others in the future. Any banners used in the future will also get said props as well.

Once you’ve got your banner ready to go, email it to me at danielhorton[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject header of “Playing on the Go Banner Contest”. (Of course, replace the [at] with a “.” and the [at] with an “@”. That’s just to protect me from spam.) The tentative deadline is two weeks from today on July 3rd. If there’s a slow flow of submissions, I’ll extend it by one week. But hopefully that won’t happen. I’m looking at you in the back.