General Gaming Article |
- EA Acquires PopCap Games for $750 Million
- Google+ Passes 10 Million Users, Could Hit 20 Million This Weekend
- No BS Podcast #176: Keepin' the Dream Alive
- 9 Gadgets and Services That Deliver Sports Everywhere You Go
- Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Review
- Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB Review
- Supercharge Your Desktop with these Dream Machine 2011 Wallpapers
- Awesome Steampunk Flash Drive Uses Mechanical Locks For Security
- Game Theory: Forever Wasn't Long Enough
- Anonymous Releases The Email/Password Combinations Of 90k Military Employees
| EA Acquires PopCap Games for $750 Million Posted: 12 Jul 2011 03:06 PM PDT
PopCap was previously rumored to be investigating the possibility of an IPO for late this year, but EA apparently made them a juicier offer. PopCap hopes that EA's scale and deep pockets will help them get their games in front of more people. EA is gaining additional mobile gaming expertise as that sector continues to explode. EA launched Origin in June, a direct-to-consumer digital storefront akin to Steam. We expect to see PopCap games available in that service soon. Hopefully the games PopCap puts out continue to be as compelling as they have been in the past. But now that the company is flush with cash, what about Plants vs. Zombies 2, guys? |
| Google+ Passes 10 Million Users, Could Hit 20 Million This Weekend Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:30 PM PDT
Allen used surname analysis to arrive at his figures, with the US census data as a model. By comparing the proportion of various names on Google+, it is possible to extrapolate the total number of users likely to have accounts. In the analysis, Allen controlled for non-US users amongst his sample of a few hundred names. Allen claims the model sound, and no one has yet to call shenanigans. 20 million users would be a real accomplishment, but that's nothing compared to Facebook's 750 million worldwide users. By adding hints of Google+ throughout the Google ecosystem, the search giant is hoping to hook users and encourage them to invite their friends. It is worth noting that Google+ only just opened up to any and all users. Is this just the beginning for Google+, or is it going to peak soon? |
| No BS Podcast #176: Keepin' the Dream Alive Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:26 PM PDT
Attention Maximum PC fans and/or other people who are mistakenly on this website: It has come to our attention that we have not posted a podcast in quite some time. Luckily for everyone involved, all that time was not wasted--it was spent building the 2011 Dream Machine, the fastest PC we've ever put together. Today, we've got a brand new podcast, with Gordon, Nathan and Alex discussing the Dream Machine, the Star Trek PC, Google Plus, and more. Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are not standing by. Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337
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| 9 Gadgets and Services That Deliver Sports Everywhere You Go Posted: 12 Jul 2011 12:47 PM PDT Technological progress grows at different rates depending on the industry, and few industries have gained as much growth in the last several years as sports entertainment. With companies like ESPN leading the way in HD and then 3D television, the sports industry has pushed the rest of the entertainment business to improve and innovate. There are a variety of ways to watch, listen, and follow your sports team these days. Things are almost to the point where a simply having a cable TV service isn't enough to really get the full experience. We're going to take a look at a number of services and gadgets that will both enhance your sports viewing experience and provide more flexibility in how and where you watch your sports.
ServicesSports related services are a microcosm of the technology industry as a whole. There are some free services, some subscription-based and some that are only available with a subscription to another service. We'll take a look at some of the services that are available from different providers, but be aware that these services are subject to change, and blackout restrictions often apply. LEAGUES
The national pastime is also one of the most difficult to follow on the professional level due to the sheer number of games in a season and the wide range of times in which the games are played. Fortunately Major League Baseball has a number of different services that will allow you to keep up with your favorite team or fantasy players. MLB.tv is baseball's streaming video service, and allows you to watch both live game broadcasts and full game archives. Premium and mobile services are also available for MLB.tv at different price points. The Premium subscription will allow you to view both home and away broadcasts, and offers live DVR-type controls as well as the ability to simultaneously watch multiple games using split-screen or picture-in-picture. We're rapidly approaching the start of the NFL season, though whether the season is played as scheduled remains to be seen. Regardless of what happens between the owners and the player's union, the NFL has a couple of different services that will allow you to keep up with your favorite team. Though the NFL doesn't stream game video live in the U.S., NFL Rewind will let you view games on-demand and commercial-free after the fact. NFL Audio Pass is a live service, allowing you to get play-by-play announcements in real-time with commentary from home, away, national, and even Spanish language broadcasts. If you happen to live outside the U.S. or Mexico, NFL Game Pass allows you to watch live HD video broadcasts. Right now we're sandwiched between one of the most exciting NBA seasons in recent memory and a potentially delayed and shortened 2011-2012 season. Once Lebron and Kobe get back on the court, the NBA will have you covered with their NBA League Pass services. Though the details of specific services are up in the air during the offseason, typically the NBA offers both live audio and video streams of their games. Visit the NBA League Pass home page for more details and to sign up for notifications as new information is released. Thankfully the NHL is not currently going through a labor dispute, but it's still the offseason. When the teams get back on the ice the NHL has several levels of service for their Gamecenter product. The baseline Gamecenter product allows you to watch postgame highlight videos and track the scores. Gamecenter Premium adds the ability to listen to live broadcasts and watch in-game highlights. NHL Gamecenter Live provides live and archived game video, as well as access to over 800 classic NHL games.
CELLULAR PROVIDERS Smart phones are a great way to follow sports events when you are away from the TV, and mobile providers are using sports-related services as a way to entice new customers. A perfect example is Sprint, who has partnerships with both the NFL and NASCAR. Through these partnerships Sprint customers get exclusive applications and access to live audio, video, and statistics. Other cellular providers offer similar features but availability is sometimes limited on a phone-by-phone basis. Check with your provider to see what may be available to you.
ESPN We mentioned it at the top of the article, but ESPN is one of the most technologically advanced companies in the entertainment industry. In addition to their TV services ESPN offers live streaming of their various channels through ESPN Networks, based on partnerships with traditional television providers. ESPN also broadcasts much of their content through ESPN3.com. Access to ESPN3 is determined by your internet provider and their partnership with ESPN. In addition to streaming video ESPN is a great source of audio commentary both through ESPNRadio and the ESPN PodCenter, which provides a huge number of podcasts covering all different sports and leagues. ESPN Insider gives users premium-level access to ESPN content and comes bundled with a subscription to ESPN the Magazine.
GadgetsSports fans have been buying new gear to complement their fandom for years. Binoculars, FM radio headphones, portable Televisions, and satellite radios have all made the rounds as the latest and greatest gizmo. Times change though, and technology waits for waits for no man.
BOXEE BOX As set-top boxes go, the Boxee Box has to be one of the most intriguing. Boxee itself is an offshoot of XBMC (Xbox Media Center) and is available for Windows, Linux, and OS X. The Boxee Box hardware is a joint venture between Boxee and Dlink, and features one of the most distinctive profiles you will ever see. For the sports fan the Boxee Box supports MLB.TV, bringing the experience to your living room and allowing you to watch the full complement of games on your big screen. Hockey fans get both NHL GameCenter Live and NHL Vault, which gives you access to classic games. The Boxee Box can be found at a number of online retailers in the neighborhood of $200.
ROKU XDS Though Roku hardware isn't nearly as edgy as the Boxee, The Roku XDS offers similar functionality for a lower price. Like the Boxee Roku integrates with NHL GameCenter Live and the NHL Vault. NBA fans can get their game on with Roku, watching League Pass games live. Even UFC fans get some love from Roku, getting live and on-demand match video and more. The Roku XDS can be purchased from Roku or other electronics dealers for $99.99.
XBOX 360 We all know of Microsoft's Xbox 360 as one of the premiere gaming systems on the planet, behind the PC of course. But if you have an Xbox Live Gold account and a qualifying ISP your Xbox has access to all the sports video that ESPN3 has to offer. ESPN on the Xbox also fully supports Kinect, meaning you can control the entire experience with your hands and your voice. Kinect also facilitates a social watching experience, allowing your Xbox Live avatar to interact with those of your friends while watching your games.
SAMSUNG EPIG 4G Though the Epic 4G isn't the only Android device that supports Sprint's exclusive applications, with the 4" SuperAMOLED screen and 4G connectivity it's certainly one of our favorites. The Epic 4G gives you access to Sprint Football Live and the associated news, statistics, video, and insider information that every sports fan craves. Fantasy Football die-hards will get their money's worth with the wealth of information available through Sprint Football Live. If neither Football nor Racing are your thing, Sprint doesn't stop there. Sprint TV offers ESPN MobileTV, SPEED, and NBC Sports on your mobile phone. The best part is that on Sprint all of the previously mentioned apps are free with a data plan. As an Android phone the Epic 4G has access to thousands of apps in the Android Market. There are a host of sports-related apps from ESPN, Major League Baseball, Yahoo, and countless others.
SLINGBOX A Slingbox is a device that "place-shifts" your TV signal, or allows you to watch your TV signal from somewhere else. The Slingbox itself is a device that connects to your home network and your TV connection and currently comes in two models, the Slingbox Solo and the Slingbox Pro-HD. The hardware talks to a service that allows you to watch a live stream in your web browser or within a smart phone app. Best of all the device is smart enough to communicate with your satellite, cable, DVR, or other set-top box. Simply configure the device once and you will be able to view all of your TV channels while on the go.
APPLE IPAD 2 Apple's iPad devices certainly have their limitations, but there is a place for them in the sports fan's bag of tricks. Even for simple web browsing there is a lot of value to having such a lightweight device as a companion while watching games on the weekend. Scores, statistics, and fantasy trades are a couple of taps away with an iPad. The real benefit to using an iPad instead of an Android tablet or one of the many competitors cropping up these days is simply a matter of apps. Almost all of the usual suspects in the sports world have built apps for the iPad, and most of them have made good use of the larger screen. Most are free, though there are a few that will set you back a few dollars. ESPN makes use of its various services by offering multiple iPad apps. ScoreCenter XL is ESPN's standard app for tracking scores, news, and statistics and allows you to log in to your ESPN.com account in order to remember your favorite leagues or teams. WatchESPN allows you to watch live ESPN streams on your iPad, though it was a bit buggy and only played audio when headphones or external speakers were attached. Many of the sports leagues themselves even offer viewing of their streaming video services through their iPad apps, though regional blackout rules still apply. Your favorite sports magazines are available on your iPad through ESPN the Magazine and Sports Illustrated apps. Podcasts offer another wealth of free content that spans all niches. Fantasy sports lovers will find a massive array of apps that support their favorite leagues and services.
Technology enhances every facet of our daily lives, and sports entertainment is a perfect example of an area where this is true. Regardless of what sports you follow there are a plethora of ways to enjoy your favorite team. The key is to know where to look for services and gadgets that will give you access to more games, or provide increased flexibility to follow your games while on the go. One difficulty for sports fans is the college sports. College football for example has no single league to fall back to, and games may not be scheduled for a time or specific media outlet until a week or two before the game. Fans are required to take this on a game-by-game basis to determine the best way to follow a particular team. Also different conferences such as the SEC may have their own method of delivering games on-demand after the fact. The key is to educate yourself on the various outlets that are available to you for the specific league or teams for which you are most interested. We know this isn't an exhaustive list of every sports-related technology out there, and would love to hear what you use to get your game on. Let us know in the comment section what sites, services, or gadgets enhance your life as a sports fan. |
| Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Review Posted: 12 Jul 2011 12:02 PM PDT Seagate's Barracuda line has long been a contender in the 7,200rpm drive space and—7200.11 firmware snafu notwithstanding—has generally vied with WD's Caviar Black line for the 7,200rpm crown. The Barracuda XT 3TB is a five-platter 7,200rpm drive with 6Gb/s SATA and 64MB of cache, just like the Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000. So what's the difference?
Like the Hitachi drive, but unlike WD's Caviar Green, the Barracuda XT ships sans hardware adapter, instead offering a link to rebranded partitioning software. In this case, Seagate offers the Seagate DiscWizard, powered by Acronis. Again, it doesn't offer much functionality beyond that provided by Windows, but it is easier for novice users. Those with 64-bit operating systems, UEFI-enabled motherboards, and GPT partitions won't even need that. In our low-level disk benchmarks, the Seagate Barracuda XT offered sequential read and write speeds exceeding 120MB/s, while random-access times lagged a few milliseconds behind both the Hitachi Deskstar and WD Caviar Green 3TB drives. In Premiere Pro and PCMark Vantage, though, the Barracuda's scores were slightly slower than those of the Hitachi Deskstar—12 seconds slower in Premiere Pro and around 600 PCMarks (whatever those are) behind the Deskstar. The Barracuda XT is a wicked-fast drive with a helpful software wizard for legacy users. But with an MSRP of $270 and real-world scores slightly lower than those of the cheaper Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000, it's not necessarily the best bang for your buck. $270, www.seagate.com |
| Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB Review Posted: 12 Jul 2011 11:58 AM PDT Alas, poor Hitachi; we knew him well, Horatio. Hitachi's Global Storage division might have been gobbled up by Western Digital, but it's still putting out product, at least for now. Hitachi's latest addition to the Deskstar line is a five-platter, 3TB, 7,200rpm drive with 64MB of cache and a 6Gb/s SATA interface. Yeah, we can deal with that.
Hitachi's Deskstar ships with a piece of paper directing users to download the Hitachi GPT Disk Manager from Paragon Software. The boot solution for legacy users seems to be to just divide the disk into separate partitions. We expect Maximum PC readers can manage the same with Windows' built-in tools—although we're not sure how many Maximum PC readers want to boot from a 3TB partition in their desktop rigs. On our Sandy Bridge test bed, which has UEFI, we had no problem creating a 3TB bootable partition and installing 64-bit Windows 7; we didn't even need to load F6 drivers. We ran our standard mechanical-drive benchmarks on the Deskstar and found average sustained read speeds of around 119.5MB/s and write speeds around 118.5MB/s. In both our Premiere Pro encoding test, which writes a 20GB uncompressed AVI to the disk, and the PCMark Vantage HDD subtest, the Deskstar performed faster than the Barracuda XT, despite having largely the same specs and despite the Barracuda's faster average read and write speeds. The Deskstar's random-access speeds were fully 2ms faster than the Barracuda's. With an MSRP of $250 and faster real-world scores than the Seagate Barracuda XT, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 is a real winner. $250, www.hitachigst.com |
| Supercharge Your Desktop with these Dream Machine 2011 Wallpapers Posted: 12 Jul 2011 11:57 AM PDT Now that you've had a chance to check out the 2011 Dream Machine, we wanted to take another chance to show off our prototype Cooler Master Cosmos II case and its killer Smooth Creations custom paint job. That's why we put together 5 1920x1200 Dream Machine wallpapers for you to use. Click through to check them out! Click on the links below for the full-sized wallpapers! |
| Awesome Steampunk Flash Drive Uses Mechanical Locks For Security Posted: 12 Jul 2011 11:37 AM PDT
The flash drive itself is nestled inside a tube made of some sort of silvery polished metal. We say "some kind of silvery, polished metal" because the guy who made the steampunk flash drive only speaks Russian, and Google Translate didn't list any material details. The silvery tube was then placed inside of a combination lock sleeve – which looks to be made of brass – that keeps your files hidden away unless the correct five number combination is entered. The designer, a guy who goes by Tarator, drew up the whole shebang in AutoCAD before building the custom drive. Want one of your own? Too bad. Tarator isn't selling any steampunk flash drives – this seems more like a one-shot novelty hobby project than any sort of commercial product. That's too bad. The steampunk flash drive would've been a great accessory for that steampunk laptop we talked about a little while ago. Thanks to SlashGear for pointing it out.
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| Game Theory: Forever Wasn't Long Enough Posted: 12 Jul 2011 11:03 AM PDT Nothing is less edgy than someone trying really, really hard to be edgy. I can imagine the Duke Nukem Forever team working late into the night in Red Bull–fuelled sessions trying to come up with lists: lists of offensive things, lists of gross things, lists of old action movie quotes, lists of ways to objectify and degrade women, lists of boob and penis jokes. At some point, someone says, "Let's make a mini-game called Alien Abortion that's played on a picture of a naked, terrified rape victim!" and everyone thinks that sounds just grand.
All of it is in there, and all of it is so very tiring. Duke is over the hill, out of date, and completely skeevy. If this game was a person, he would be a paunchy middle-aged man with a bad comb-over and a silk shirt open to the waist to reveal the cornicello tangled in his matted, graying chest hair. It is so desperate to be Super-Alpha-Male-Plus-with-Extra-Testosterone-on-Top that it winds up merely sad and sickening. Duke has become the thing he once parodied. Neither the gameplay (which is uniformly awful) nor nostalgia (which is a cheap coin quickly spent) kept me playing: only grim duty.
There is nothing edgy or even shocking about how far the game travels into the realm of bad taste. Bad taste is easy if you have no sense of shame. It doesn't take skill or courage: just a broken moral compass and a sexual development that was flash-frozen at the age of 14. It's nothing an adult should be proud of, but in our increasingly juvenile society, actual adults are getting hard to come by, and none of them worked on Duke Nukem Forever. Thomas L. McDonald can be found online at stateofplayblog.com. |
| Anonymous Releases The Email/Password Combinations Of 90k Military Employees Posted: 12 Jul 2011 10:43 AM PDT
Anonymous announced the creation of the torrent on its OperationLeakS Twitter account: "A wild release appears: http://bit.ly/pcOk4H It's Military Meltdown Monday! Booz Allen Hamilton pwned for ~90,000 military email/pw #AntiSec." Eweek reports the torrent contained address/password combos from several branches of the armed forces, including the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and more. The shady hacking collective taunted Booz Allen Hamilton with nautical references in its description of the torrent. Even though the military contractor is engaged in critical work with the government, Anon says their cyber defenses were pitiful. "So in this line of work you'd expect them to sail the seven proxseas with a state- of-the-art battleship, right? Well you may be as surprised as we were when we found their vessel being a puny wooden barge." They then began erasing source code and "plundering booty," such as the email addresses and various "maps and keys for various other treasure chests buried on the islands of government agencies, federal contractors and shady whitehat companies." Some people call Anonymous hackers with a cause, but this new "treasure trove" doesn't sit well with us. Regardless of what you think of US policies, don't the individual servicemen have enough people targeting them already? |
It is official; Electronic Arts has 
Google Plus is looking like more of a hit with each passing day. Independent analysis by Ancestry.com's Paul Allen indicates that Google's new social network has already passed 10 million users, and it is 
Thumb drives are cool and all, but hey, let's face it – most of the memory sticks out there aren't exactly eye-pleasing. If you're the kind of person who likes a little flash with your USB drive, look no further – there's a steampunk-inspired thumb drive making the rounds on the Internet that's sure to catch the eye of every geek you know. If the polished brass(?) exterior doesn't do it for you, maybe its security will; the Steampunker flash drive includes an actual, working mechanical combination lock to keep prying eyes out of your virtual diary.
The LulzSec ship may have sailed off into the sunset, but Anonymous lives on and continues hitting government and corporate targets while flying the flag of the #AntiSec movement. After laying the smack down on the Arizona police and IRC Federal last week, Anonymous' hit the servers of military contractors Booz Allen Hamilton. In an stunning display of jackassery that proves that Anon does not, in fact, support our troops, the group released a torrent containing 90,000 military email addresses and passwords that it swiped from BAH's databases.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's 
