Category Archives: techtonicc
BioShock Infinite developer shutting down
BioShock Infinite developer, Irrational Games, has announced that they will be closing their company. The company’s Co-founder, Ken Levine, told people that he will be starting a new company at Take-Two. This new company will be focused on “narrative-driven and highly replayable games” that will more than likely all be digital. Due to the company closing, Irrational Games will be laying off most employees beside the select 15 or so that get to stay. Irrational Games has been nice throughout the situation by allowing employees to use the studio in order to make portfolios and even having other studios come visit to speak to the team members leaving to give them a new opportunity. Unfortunately, there will be no more work on the BioShock series. It was handed off to 2K so that Levine and his company could focus on new projects.
Irrational was founded in 1997 by Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier. The three were former employees of Looking Glass Studios, the creator of the Thief andSystem Shock series. Irrational’s releases aside from the BioShock series includedSystem Shock 2, Tribes Vengeance, and Freedom Force.
Have any thoughts about this? Leave a comment below!
Grocery shopping becomes even easier
Normally I wouldn’t write on something like this, but I found it to be an interesting thought.
Phillips has recently come out with new “smart light” technology that tells customers in a store where they need to go in order to gather all of the ingredients necessary for the recipe they are looking for. The technology uses light-based communication to create a positioning grid for your phone. This grid will tell your phone what route you need to take through the store to get everything for your recipe. The lights can also point customers to location-based discounts or other products throughout the store that are on sale. This seems like a great idea and hopefully it catches on and Phillips is already testing their new smart lights in a few stores. These lights may start gaining popularity pretty fast so prepare yourselves for the next generation of efficient shopping!
Google Says Merry Christmas
Google’s holiday Doodle has finally arrived after being spotted around the world over the last two days. The early timing of the festive logo in Australia, was unusual and unexplained, but there seems to have been be two versions it – one static and, today, one animated, which also plays jingle bells. Some people were having trouble playing the animation in their web browsers so here is a video of the animation in action.
Besides Google’s animation, they have also provided us with multiple other holiday surprises this year. There is the “let it snow” Easter Egg, as well as YouTube now has a snowflake button to make it snow along with your video. If you have trouble finding the button on YouTube, just search “let it snow” on YouTube and see the snow appear!
As mentioned in another one of my posts, Google has also set up a Google Voicemail where you can send an actual voicemail to Santa! If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a shot, it’s pretty fun.
Use all of these holiday features Google has set up for you and have a happy holiday!
Twitter Receives a Interface Update
Social-networking hub Twitter will roll out a significant redesign of its Web and mobile platforms in coming weeks that promises to be “faster and simpler.”
The layout looks a lot cleaner by featuring Home, Connect, and Discover tabs across the top of the page. Home hosts the main feed of Tweets from other users; Connect is where they can directly contact others; and Discover is where they can find popular topics or hashtags and view the activity of followed users.
The new design will become available in the next few weeks but mobile users can access it now by downloading and logging into Twitter on either your iPhone or Android device.
Here is a review of the new design by YouTube partner, MarquesBrownLee.
2011 Christmas Wishlist
Having trouble thinking of what to buy for Christmas? Look no further as this is the top 10 most desired Christmas gifts for 2011!
Follow me on Twitter in order to receive updates on some more popular Christmas electronics!
The iPod touch is a great device for storing music, video, podcasts with multi-touch screen technology. It is the number one handheld gaming device and is a great Christmas gift for 2011 for both kids, teens and adults.
The new generation of the device allows you to take pictures, record HD quality video, and even offers video calling.
The Apple iPad Tablet is probably one of the coolest gifts you can buy this Christmas season. It is an exciting to use new piece of technology. There are so many apps available for the Apple iPad such as fun games and interesting ways to access information on the internet.
This long awaited addition to the Xbox 360 system is one of the most asked for gift this holiday season. The Kinect console for Xbox 360 enables voice activation for your Xbox 360 system. You can tell the Xbox to play or pause and the Kinect allows it to recognize voice commands. The Kinect also offers remote free operation of Xbox 360 video games.
The Playstation Move is the newest component for the Playstation 3. It enables game players to really get into their game play by bringing motion gaming to PS3 console owners.
The Kindle is an electronic reading device for downloading, storing, and reading electronic books, which are also known as e-books. The Kindle Fire is the newest model for 2011. It offers WiFi, web browsing and thousands of Apps and games. Any avid reader would love one of these for a Christmas gift.
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a long awaited new video game. The Call of Duty series of video games have been wildly popular and this one is no exception. Just about any teen would love to get this as one of their gifts.
7. Samsung LN40C630 40-Inch LCD HDTV
What better gift to give than a tv? This is a top seller in the tv “section”. The screen is 40 inches and has full 1080p HD resolution. It also includes the ability to connect a thumb drive or digital camera with ease. If you are considering a TV as a Christmas gift this year this one is the one to buy.
8. Canon Powershot 12.1 MP Digital Camera
A digital camera is always a great gift to give during the holiday season. This digital camera by Canon is the world’s thinnest digital camera with a 24mm ultra wide-angle lens and 5x optical zoom along with optical image stabilizer. The Canon Powershot offers high speed shooting for a point and shoot camera. It has improved lighting in low light conditions and has 32 predefined shooting situations.
This Garmin portable GPS is sunlight-readable and offers a 5-inch backlit TFT color touchscreen display. It is preloaded with City Navigator NT data for the lower 48 states, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, with nearly six million points of interest. It has free lifetime map and traffic updates for the most up-to-date maps, POIs, and navigation info, along with constantly updated traffic information.
10. ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light Black Laptop
Many people are asking for laptops this year whether it be for school or just for the portability. The Asus thin laptop is one of Amazon’s best selling laptops. It offers a high-gloss 13.3 inch HD display with 1366 x 768 resolution. The 8 cell battery has 12 hours of battery life. The laptop comes loaded with Windows 7 and has a 1.3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor.
Haters of Facebook Changes Build Up
In a recent survey of over 1,000 people conducted by Sodahead, a social-voting-based site, it has been shown that Facebook users aren’t too happy with the recent changes the social network has made.
According to this survey of 1000 people, about 86% of the social network audience said that they strongly disliked the recent changes Facebook has made.
The most disapproval for the new features came from teens, with a whopping 91 percent of that group saying that Facebook should nix the changes. Seventy-nine percent of young adults said they disapproved of the new changes, although the site does not explicitly lay out who constitutes a young adult.
To narrow down the results even more, it appears that women are more upset about the changes than men. Eighty-nine percent of women called for scrapping the new Facebook, while only 78 percent of men have said they disapprove of the new features.
Through all of these upset Facebook users, there is a small portion of them that actually enjoy the new changes. These users, according to the study, tend to be information technology employees, or people who had an income of $100,000 or more per year.
This of course is not the first, nor the last time that Facebook users have been upset about changes to the site. And like always, over time, users will love the new changes.
PlayStation Prices Falling Rapidly
Due to a desperate attempt to regain sales, Sony has now lowered the prices on their PlayStation products.
Resulting from the massive hacking (75 million accounts hacked) on PlayStation’s network a while ago, Sony’s sales have fallen dramatically. Sony is now hoping to regain these sales by dropping their prices for their PlayStation product(s). Starting on Tuesday, the 160GB version will fall from $299 to $249 (Prices in different countries will also drop to 249 euros and 24,980 yen) and the 320GB version will fall from $349 to $299.
These changes in price will take immediate effect in Europe but Japan will have to wait until August 18th.