Global Geek News Blog

Greetings Readers!

After doing some soul searching, I have decided that July will be the do or die month for the Global Geek News Blog or at least in the format that it is now.

Last months numbers were by far the highest we have ever had on the blog but I am still not happy. The only reason that we had the highest traffic month last month was because of a couple of day spike from my post about the Tonight Show background. If you remove that spike, while the first part of the month was good, most of the month was far below normal despite all of the content I have been posting. With numbers on the decline, I am seeing little incentive to keep the blog alive.

I want to be very clear on this, this has absolutely nothing to do with the podcast. The Global Geek News Podcast will not be affected by this in anyway other than the fact that I won’t be plugging the blog anymore if I decide to shut the blog down. I am extremely happy with the growth I have seen with the podcast and the quality of shows that we have been producing and while I have some tweaks in mind for the show, at this point I see no major changes coming to that other than the fact that we need to start doing more guests again.

Anyway, if numbers don’t improve in the month of July, one of two things will likely happen. Either I will kill off the blog entirely or move almost entirely to doing the blog in video or audio form at least as an experiment. If I do kill it entirely, I will most likely resurrect the Geek News Daily Podcast so that you will still get all of the latest news from me.

If you want this blog to continue in its current from, make sure you either visit it daily or subscribe to the RSS feed.  Also, make sure to pass along the stories to your friends and family that might be interested in them through things like twitter, email, IM or however you interact with people.

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Thanks to the always wonderful Lifehacker, I have discovered a new service that can help cut down on the time I spend listening to podcasts without cutting out the number of podcasts I listen to.  What is this great service?  Podshifter.

Podshifter takes a podcast’s RSS feed and gives you a new feed to put into your podcatcher that will give you the audio at the speed you specify.  You can slow a podcast down to .6x normal speed or crank it up to 3x normal speed so you can have what sounds like the chipmunks give you that content you love so much.

Give Podshifter a try with the Global Geek News Podcast.  I will even make things easy and give you the RSS link.

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

CrunchGear is reporting that Hulu no longer works with the Sony Playstation 3.  I have heard numerous accounts of this so far although there seems to be no definite answer as to what is going on just yet.  I have heard several reports speculating that this could have been broken in the latest firmware update (2.8).  I have also heard reports saying that they have dugg deaper and found that the PS3 is being specifically blocked by Hulu.  When you try to watch a video on Hulu, you get this message:  “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform.  We apologize for any inconveinence.”

Personally, I have only used Hulu on my PS3 a couple of times because it is not a very good experience on the PS3.  As fas as I am concerned, it isn’t a great loss but I am sure there are a few people out there that liked to use the PS3 to watch Hulu content.  I have not verified this myself but I will when I get home from work and then report back on tonight’s recording of the Global Geek News Podcast.

Of the stories I have read, nobody has been able to get a comment from either Sony or Hulu on this issue yet.

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Google Operating System is reporting that Google has upped the maximum Gmail attachment size from 20MB to 25MB in the past week.  Considering the ever growing size of files, increasing the size of attachments allowed on Gmail is almost necessary.

Personally, I find 25MB still a bit small but I guess it is reasonable.  Beware of the flash uploader for these larger files though as it tends to fail on many items over 10MB.  It is best to use the old uploader.

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Greetings readers!

I happened to come across a video a short time ago showing that a cellphone can run Crysis smoothly.  This is an accomplishment for even the best of gaming computers, rather less a cellphone.

At first I thought somebody was performing a miracle until I found out that this is apparently a new service called OTOY which is a new server side rendering service similar to OnLive.  This stuff is really impressive, but from watching him use the controller, it seems a bit laggy.  I can’t wait to try out both services because I believe that if they are done right, they can usher in a whole new era of gaming.  To check out all of the cool details, hit the link up top.

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Greetings Readers!

In a headline that nearly made me wet myself this morning, according to kotaku, Duke Nukem Forever is still in development.  Apparently newly filed court documents state that despite the fact that 3D Realms apparently shut down, development on the game continues.  There is more to this story including the news of another Duke game canceled back in April called Duke Begins, so head over to kotaku at the link above and find out what is going on.  Here is hoping we will see Duke Nukem Forever in our lifetime!  Long live Duke Nukem!

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Greetings Readers!

This is your friendly reminder that if you are still running the Windows 7 beta, you need up upgrade to the RC.  Starting Monday, July 1st, the Windows 7 beta will begin shutting down every 2 hours as a way to alert you that it will expire soon and you should get all of you important data off before it does.  The beta expires on August 1st, so if you don’t upgrade by then, you could be in real trouble.

Windows 7 RC users won’t have to worry about this until March 1st 2010 and expiration on June 1st 2010.  That should give you plenty of time to get the retail version which ships in late October.  If you aren’t on the RC yet, I recommend it as it has several great features that the beta doesn’t.  I am running Windows 7 on all of my machines now and I don’t think I could be happier.

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Greetings Readers!

As promised, I am here to share my thoughts on this year’s E3.  I’m not going to address every game that was talked about, but more of my thoughts from the main press events, so here we go.

Lets start off with Microsoft.  This event was mind blowing!  I found myself sitting in my chair several hours after the event still saying “holy crap!”  The past couple of years have been a rather big disappointment from all of the major companies but this even alone makes up for all of it.  Before I address Project Natal, which was the main “holy crap!” moment from the event, lets talk games and Xbox functionality.  There were a ton of great titles that were announced at this years Microsoft press event, including Forza Motorsport 3, Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Metal Gear Solid Rising and even a Beatles version of Rock Band.  These were great announcements as many of the major titles including Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead 2 and Metal Gear Solid Rising were completely unexpected.  In terms of games, it looks to be a very bright year for the Xbox 360.  They also announced some great new additions to Xbox Live including Last.fm, Facebook and even Twitter integration.  This will do wonders for making the 360 become apart of your social network life.  They also announced better quality video streaming which is awesome too.  Finally, the biggest announcement was Project Natal.  This is Microsoft’s one-up on the Wii motion controller.  When this is released, you will be able to interact with your 360 and games with no controller at all, just by moving your body.  If that wasn’t cool enough, it can react to voice commands.  I cant say enough about this, so head here to check out the demo of it.

Nintendo was the second person to present at this years E3 and it made for a great opportunity to take a nap.  After the stellar event from Microsoft, Nintendo could have put just about anybody to sleep.  The major problem with Nintendo’s press event was that it was largely old news and not the announcements that people were hoping for.  They spent a fair bit of time talking about the Wii Motion Plus which they announced and showed at length last year but doesn’t come out until this week.  Nothing spectacular was shown with this, just another demo of Wii Sports Resort which was also announced last year.  The Wii Fit was also talked about at length and they announced a new expansion for the Wii Fit with some new exercises and stuff for those that still use the Wii Fit, all 2 of you.  Other than those disappointments, this year was the year of Mario.  A number of new Mario titles were announced including a new Super Mario Bros which allows up to 4 people to play at once and Mario Galaxy 2.  Other than Mario which didn’t seem to overly excite many people, the only other major announcement was a new Metroid game.  While it looks interesting, I am not a Metroid fan so I can’t say it had my jumping up and down and it didn’t seem to get that big of reaction from the crowd.  There was no news about a Zelda game or anything that people were expecting other than after the event, one of the Nintendo people said one was in the works.  Generally, it was a complete snooze although a 4 player Mario does look interesting.

Finally, the last to present was Sony.  Unlike Nintendo, this one was pretty exciting too although just slightly below the Microsoft event.  They demo’d a bunch of major new games that nearly all look amazing including Assassins Creed 2, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and even my personal favorite, God of War 3.  There were a ton of great looking games announced but they took a back seat to the two major announcements, the PSP Go which I have already blogged about here and here, as well as their own version of motion control that looks like the Wiimote’s uglier, more powerful cousin.  While it kicks the butt of the Wii motion control, its not quite as impressive as Project Natal.  Overall, they put on a great event.

Between Microsoft and Sony, this was an amazing year at E3 which Nintendo gave everybody a great nap opportunity.  This certainly looks to be an exciting time for gamers over the next year and I can’t wait to play the many games that are coming out.  What did you think of everything that happened at E3 this year?

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Greetings Readers!

Yesterday, I talked a bit about the PSP Go and the fact that you will have to buy your accessories all over again.  Today, I want to address Sony’s new digital direction with the PSP Go.

Like I stated yesterday, I have two PSP-1000 units and love them greatly.  While I love them and am often attached to the hip with them thanks to my carry case with a belt loop, the curse of them is the UMD disks.  Honestly, I don’t care the least bit about how much weight or size that the drive adds to the PSP.  I don’t even care how much more battery it uses by running compared to a digital version of a game, but what I do care about are having working disks.  If you have had a PSP for any length of time, you are probably well aware of the UMD breaking issues.  For those that don’t know, the clear plastic on the front of the disk has the tendancy to partially break causing the disk to be out of place and only play a small percentage of the time.  This is extremely annoying when you spend $40 or whatever on a new game.  The fact that this has happened to nearly my entire UMD collection is the sole reason that I only pirate games on the system now (I freely admit to being cheap but it has no relevance here as I have always enjoyed paying for games compared to other forms of entertainment).

I am not alone in this as many people have taken to the haven of piracy to be able to play their games when they want.  This is obvious when you look at the PSP piracy numbers.  Luckily, I think that Sony has partially solved this problem with the PSP Go and its lack of a UMD drive.  Personally, it takes away my reason for pirating games because the UMD problem will no longer exist except on my old PSPs which I will continue to play thanks to the wonders of homebrew.  Sony’s decision to go digital only is a great way of combatting the UMD issue and piracy at the same time.  Of course when it comes to piracy and hacking, this will likely mean very little.  If you have followed the hacking and homebrew scene as much as I have since the first days of the PSP, you will know that often within days, if not hours of a new firmware release on the PSP, the hackers have not only bypassed the new security measures, but they are adding the new features into their own custom firmware.  While I expect it to take a while for the hackers to break the PSP Go, I have complete faith in them that they will be running thier own code on the device within a month (this is my official prediction).

Unfortunately, the move to digital presents a new problem, storage.  UMD disks are capable of storing 1.7GB worth of information.  While not all games use that much space, when you consider the fact that the PSP Go has a 16GB internal drive, you are going to run out of space very quickly.  With Sony’s announcement that you will also be able to download movies and tv shows to the PSP, that internal drive is looking even smaller.  I believe this is going to be the main problem point for the PSP.  Sure, you will still have the Memory Stick Pro Duos that you can put in the device, but any pirate will tell you that having your content on them is a major pain.  Speaking for experience, having to put games on Memory Sticks will end up with you having a small pile of memory sticks with little knowledge of what content is on which stick.  If this wasn’t bad enough, the sticks still aren’t that cheap for larger capacities.  I will admit that they have come down considerably since the time of the PSP launch when you were lucky if you could get a 1GB stick off of ebay for $150 (same when the 2GB came out and so on), but it still adds a large chunch to the overall cost of the device.  If you only have a few games, this isn’t really an issue, but if you want to use the device for gaming like it is intended, this could be a real hassle.

Ultimately, I think this is a good strategy despite its flaws if for no other reason than it fixes the UMD issue.  While I will admit that details are still a little scarce, I think this is the direction that they must head but if they don’t do it right, it will screw the customer severely as well as themselves.  Here is to hoping that they do what is best for the consumer instead of their bottom line!

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Greetings Readers!

Over  the years, I have managed to collect more gaming platforms than I can keep track of.  With only a couple of exceptions, I have owned or still own every major gaming platform to be released.  Some of them, I have multiple of, especially Gameboys which I seem to collect for some strange reason.  With the thousands of dollars that I have spent over the years on new consoles and handhelds, there is one thing I always dread the most, having to buy new accessories.  In this case, I want to talk specifically about the PSP and the PSP Go.  This applies to pretty much every system with a few exceptions but I am going to focus on these two for now.

Like every year, I pay extremely close attention to the E3 coverage.  I have even been known to take most of a week off of work just so I can sit and watch the wall to wall coverage that all of the major gaming sites have of the annual event.  While I didn’t take any time off of work this year, I still watched nearly all of my usual coverage thanks to being alone at work.  I will write another post or two about my complete thoughts from the event but right now I want to focus on the PSP Go.  Much has been discussed about the PSP Go going completely digital with its content, something I will discuss further in another blog post and on the next podcast, but it seems that the main thing people are talking about is the price.  People seem to be complaining that $250 is too much, but clearly they need a little history lesson, so here it is.

The PSP launched on March 24, 2005.  When it launched, it was priced at $250, the same is what the PSP Go is going to sell for.  Despite this price point that people now claim is too high, that morning it still had people lined up at early openings of stores.  I know this because I stood in line and was the second person in town to get my hands on one.  Not long after, I purchased a second one slightly used although not noticeable for a number of reasons, but price was never a huge factor for me.  If it was over $300, I would have complained, but for what you got at the time, it was a decent price point and it still is.  The reason it is still a great price is because of all of the new features and the power of the device compared to the Nintendo DS or DSi.  From a technical aspect, the PSP can run circles around the DS.  Between being able to play better looking games to being able to play movies, music and even stream audio over the web, it not only justifies the price difference but it laughs at the DS while doing so.  The PSP Go vs the DSi is no different.  I will admit the DSi has some nice new features including the cameras, but it still can’t compete in terms of value with what you get in the PSP Go.  The PSP Go is not only as capable as its predecessor but it now it has 16GB of internal storage and bluetooth in a device a fraction of the size and weight of the original PSP.  While the DSi added some nice features like the cameras, the technical specs weren’t boosted to allow it to compete with the PSP.  For some reason, Nintendo doesn’t seem to mind inferior hardware as proven with the Wii and GameCube and if you really want to go back, we can put many of the Gameboy systems in that category as well considering the Sega GameGear was superior in nearly every aspect but size and battery life.  Anyway, it should be clear that I think it is worth every penny of the $250, especially when you compare it to the handhelds that Nintendo offers.

The most annoying thing about it for me is the fact that you are going to need all new accessories for your PSP Go since the ones from your PSP won’t work with it.  While I certainly understand the need of new cases since the Go is considerably smaller, I don’t understand while the miniUSB that was used in the original was taken out of the Go in favor of some kind of multi-use port.  The new port will still plug into your computers USB port, from the pictures I have seen, it looks identical to the plug in the Zune.  I don’t see any reason to change it other than to make people buy all new accessories which really pisses me off.  I am a loyal enough customer to purchase a bunch of accessories over the years in the first place, I should not be punished by having to buy all of them again just because you want more money so you change the hardware to force me to buy something new.  Accessories aren’t that cheap and if you already have people complaining about the price, just how mad do you think they will be when you make them purchase all of their accessories all over again?  If you want to catch up to the DS which has outsold the PSP 2:1, this is not the way to do it.

All manufactures need to heed this message.  Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.  If it is not a necessary change, don’t make it for the sake of making money.  Either use it to add value make no change so that the barrier of entry for a new device is as small as possible to increase the adoption of your device.  Anyway, enough of my rant.  Tomorrow, I will talk about the PSP Go’s digital download move followed by my thoughts on E3 with a few other posts splattered in between.

Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!

Follow me on Twitter!

-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray