Posts Tagged “Video Games” Podcast: Play in new window | Download A nice week of recovery, some good news from the doctor and a lot of things getting done. A bit of geekery and a lot of bad humor and you have tonight’s episode. We hit everything from Google TV to vertical chess. Talk about some epic thanksgiving feasts to be had and discuss the wonders of lollipops and true fair trade coffee. Tags: chair, Chess, Coffee, mario cart, Podcasting, savor sweets, Tea, Video Games
You know… I was just thinking how much I would love to be able to play retro video games (1980′s Style), and enjoy the fine atmosphere of a night out with my friends all at the same time. I’ve talk about the Barcade in Brooklyn, mostly in hushed reverential tones. Never in my wildest dreams Had I imagined such a venue opening up in Philadelphia. But little to my knowledge one was under construction all along, and it opened up, yesterday! Much like a Death Star, constructed in Secret (Ok secret from me, apparently other people knew all along and kept the info to themselves.) the Barcade is prepared to destroy many a productive night with enjoyable retro gaming and libations. I’m feeling… Road Trip.  I put as much effort into this image as the CEO did in making his choice. How to Kill a Giant: Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix is a David to his companies Goliath.Netflix is a successful and thriving business of providing entertainment to millions of satisfied customers. No one should kid themselves here. Netflix is first and formost an entertainment company, my 5 year old kid knows that netflix, either in the mail or on the Google TV, means a bowl of popcorn and a good time is on the way.  People were a bit upset First we have the insanity of a 40 – 60% price increase. If your company makes that choice, and you weather the public relation fire storm why on earth would anyone poke the bear a second time? The powers that be have now decided to pull the massive and full catalog of DVD choices and spin it into a new company, Qwikster (not a brand similar Quixter or anything intelligent) Your que will soon move over to that site. Netflix will become streaming only, complete with their lack luster catalog and massive amount of B movies and horrible animation. yes there are a couple Gems, but who ere hasn’t looked into watch instantly and said, I swear I’ve seen every movie worth seeing. Its because movies people want to see are not available. Oh yeah they will add a video game option. Boring, and predictable move. That great feature where you can look at your DVD que and see what movies are currently available to watch? GONE. See that wonderful functionality of reviews and rating sof DVD movies used to reccommend Watch instantly titles? GONE. See that lush and full customer base? Gone…  People are still displeased The CEO has been putting out fires all night and some of the morning. But what he hasn’t done is make sense. At what point do the Stockholders throw down and find someone a bit more prepared to lead the company forward. This is a company that has spent millions improving their recommendation algorithm to increase the chances that the movies you see recommended will be good choices. I wonder what algorithmic recommended this course change? This would be like Apple saying hey, I know you love our computers and our phones. how about we change the name of our computer company to Blando and keep Apple just for the phones, no support ties, no common customer database, no brand recognition. I don’t see that one happening either. Gap clothing has one website and one common brand for all of their satelite companies. All of the discount programs and card member benifits have been integrated, to make things simple. The only simple choice is the blame the last 6 months on some bad cough syrup and fix the mistakes. The good thing is if you choose to keep the companies together no one will fall back to bitching about the price increase. Way to wag the dog there Reed. Here is Reed Hastings from 2009, talking about integration and simplicty. And a slight shout out to studio greed. This dude needs to come back
With the release of Gears of War 3 just 8 days away, what better way to get pumped up for it, then seeing a bike dedicated to Gears of War. Paul Teutul Jr., also know as Paul Jr, and the people at PJD have built a bike to for epic games in celebration of their release of Gears of War 3. If you do not know who Paul Jr. is, he popularly know as on of the sons on the show American Choppers series.
The ‘Gears of War’ bike was revealed at Comic-Con 2011. Paul Jr Designs, known for the designs of the Anti-Venom Bike and the Cadillac Bike, designed the bike for Epic Games, with the inspiration from Gears of War 3. With big wheels in the back, COG rims, and a paint job to match the Gears of War Delta Squad armor. This just one of the two bikes. Best Buy will be giving the second bike away in a sweepstakes, that will will be revealed during the launch party on Spetember 19. You can watch the bike being built on Discovery Channel’s American Chopper episode, which will air September 12, 2011. ‘American Chopper’ creating ‘Gears of War 3′ Motorcycle
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Nobody gives Cave Johnson lemonsPosted by Steve Robbins in backchannel, Design, GameRoom
Chris Myers, who makes his contribution to the cosplay world, has designed these combustible lemon grenades. Everything that needs to go into these lemon grenades is there. The only difference is that instead of it exploding, it gives you Cave Johnson’s rant about lemons. All in all, this is a great design.
It wasn’t long before an outcry for the game to be pulled began. Organizations like PETA and Humane Society of the US were some of the many voices asking for the game to be taken down. What is scary and shocking, is that the game had more than 80,000 downloads. Many feel it promoted the idea of dog fighting in reality. It wasn’t long ago that this topic was a big issue. Although it was going on for years, it hit mainstream news when NFL quarterback Michael Vick was convicted of animal cruelty dealing with dog fighting. Vick, who served prison time for dog fighting, released a statement about the app; ”I’ve come to learn the hard way that dogfighting is a dead-end street. Now, I am on the right side of this issue, and I think it’s important to send the smart message to kids, and not glorify this form of animal cruelty, even in an Android app.” The game was finally pulled from the Google app store late Tuesday night. However, the damage has already been done. A question that is boggling my mind now is, when do gaming concepts take it too far? I know it is just a game, but today’s generation takes the gaming world more seriously than we did 10 years ago. Podcast: Play in new window | Download
I have writers block, not the little kind were you can think of a special fun word for the correct shade of orange but the honest to goodness stare at a blank page and wonder where all the win went. I had so many ideas, and now i swear i hear an echo. but thank goodness for the kindness of friends and contributors. Steve and Tara filled in some great stories for this week when the words were not only not flowing but I think they migrated south. All that aside we have a metric ton of fun and interesting things to talk about today, and some more interesting stuff in the pipeline. Sponsor: GoToMeeting makes it easy to collaborate online with anyone anywhere. Try it out for Free What to Expect for today’s show. Geek Cruft
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Treyarch, developers of COD, is hiring new positions to work on the next game of the already popular Call of Duty. Some of the positions open for opportunity include Gameplay Combat Designer and Scripter. Other jobs will include working on combat systems, which means weapons and attachments, as well as perks. If you think you have what it takes, stop by Treyarch and enlist.
With the release of Bulletstorm, I had a chance to play a demo of the game before the release. To be honest, I was not satisfied with the outcome of the game. I was getting bored with it after about 15 minutes.. This game is developed by Epic Games, who is well-known for the Locust stomping Gears of War franchise. Epic wanted this game to be completely different from Gears, and they achieved it by a long shot. The storyline in basic terms is that you are a space pirate hunting down your-ex commander on a planet of mutants and monsters, with a side of criminals. The reason for the big hype for this game is the “skillshot.” This gives the player the opportunity to kill an enemy in many different combinations, and earn points for doing so. Now these points are added up and used at a “dropkit”, which is basically a pit stop to spend points and check on achievements. Another jolt to the game is, of course, the vulgar behavior and obscene language. If you have played Gears of War, this should be old news to you. In the end, Bulletstorm turned out to be flop, at least for me. The graphics turned out fantastic, even though there wasn’t much of an interesting storyline. However, trying to find out all the different kill combinations was getting pretty boring. Personally, I would save my money and wait for Epic’s next game to be released. Another demo I decided to try out was a game called Stacking. This is an adventure/puzzle game which the characters are nothing but Russian matryoshka dolls. The whole point of the game is to solve different puzzles by stacking up all sorts of russian dolls. The story takes place during industrial times. The Baron is forcing the Blackmore family children to work as slaves to pay off debt, and it is up to Charlie to save his family. Although that is the main objective, there are other tasks and puzzles that can be solved in the game. What got me interested was the fact that each doll had a certain ability. Charlie is the smallest of all the dolls. So when he would hop into a doll one size bigger, he takes on the power of that doll.So with each doll in the game having a different ability, all the puzzles could be solved in different ways. I think the best part of the game, at least for me, were the cutscenes. They are shown in the same fashion as silent films. So when the cutsecenes start up, it looks like it is all on stage. Although the main stage of the whole game is at a train station, you have the freedom to wander off to other places in the game. In the end, Stacking gave me more than what I was expecting. So in the spirit of Coffee, I feel obligated to keep you caffeinated, even with the ratings. Instead of Stars, how about we use Coffee beans. I would have to rate Bulletstorm 2 out of 5 coffee beans. Even though the graphics were well produced, the storyline as well as the “skillshot” just couldn’t bring interest to the game. For Stacking, I would have to rate it 4 out of 5 coffee beans. Although the graphics were not as good as Bulletstorm, the storyline as well as the whole concept of the game brought a great amount of enjoyment to the table. I had a great time playing the demo, and I am definitely considering getting the full version. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Today’s show has it all. Zombies, legos, dancing and holograms. From the geek chic to the scantily clad cup of coffee we find all the fun and exotic tech and caffeine laden news items and simmer them down into a coalesced audio bit of wonder. Tags: alcohol, disks, holographic icon, hp lovecraft, legislation, Lego, Tea, Video GamesPodcast: Play in new window | Download Tonights show was a fun process, I’m always working on the details of creating a CaffiNation Episode, so from time to time the hiccups in production create a happy accident. This was one of those times, i messed up the machine i use for recording only to find it better set up the new way. Hopefully the quality comes through in the end. Tags: Atari, Coffee, ethiopian coffee ceremony, gadgets, monopoly, Retro, roast, scanner, Snuggie, Tea, Video Games, wormsPodcast: Play in new window | Download Today’s Show: Web Design, Fear Mongering, Linux, Electricity, Green Tech, AP, Legos, and Cookies everyone likes cookies Tons of content, but not much energy. Having a down cycle with caffeine right now but i will bring the news and fun to you just as quick, but maybe not so loud. The news was wide reaching this half of the week with interesting tech coming out of unlikely marriages, GM and Segway? We answer the question, Do 3D desktops make sense? AP is biting the hand that feeds them and Linux starts an interesting ad campaign. All these stories and more. We’re continuing our Adopt a NewB Day celebration with More blog design guides and quick tips for blogging, living digitally and managing your online presence. Happy Passover to all who are Celebrating! Enjoy the show and Stay Caffeinated! Sponsor: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer —
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Thanks and Stay Caffeinated People Podcast: Play in new window | Download Today’s Show: Gmail, Video Games, Inbox Zero, Podcasting, Antivirus, Pharaoh, Lego, Social Networking, Hot Dogs, Coffee, Pricing, Milk Today’s episode is going to be an interesting ride, and its the first show in a while where i can’t come up with a good title right off the bat. Since we have returned to writing articles there is plenty of fodder for commentary in the shows, we’re going to try and keep up a decent pace, probably not 2 or 3 posts a day but there is a decent backlog of information that does need to get out, I’ll try to space it out so the content is as fresh as always. The content for today’s show is serious at times, light hearted at others and takes a good chuck of time and devotes it to the Consumable portion of the episode. So many great stories its hard to find a place to put them all. Please be sure to check the tumblr feed, the stories which rock but don’t quite make it are always shuffled off the there right before the show deploys. As always Enjoy the show and Stay Caffeinated! Sponsor: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer
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Thanks and Stay Caffeinated People Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Today’s Show: Video Games, Halloween, Coffee, branding, recipes, burgers Dedicated to My Aunt Mary, Who Loved to tell stories. We have a lot of great news and a few fun stories in this show. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the episode as it is. I’ve been fighting through some nasty allergies the past couple of days so my voice isn’t as clear as I like it to be but the mind is still sharp. Lots of content stretching from my adventures cooking to the crazy contraptions some people would consider flying around. Stay tuned and stay caffeinated! Podcast: Play in new window | Download Today’s Show: Mario, Legos, Cupcakes, Video Games, Art, and Amps —- Sponsored by GoToMeeting, Try GoDaddy Code Blu84 for 10% off —- Every Fall i get the same problem afflicting my vocal cords. The true problem is that coffee, my lifeline, my love makes the problem worse. So I end up being cranky and undercaffeinated. Tea is all well and good but its missing something for me, perhaps its just not viscus enough? On to the news! A huge set of data to cull through for today’s show but I think that we came up with the best of the best to share with you today.
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