Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
SimCity Soundtrack Now Available On Spotify, iTunes, Might Just Make Your Day
Like this, but just the music.
Nothing sets the tone of a SimCity game faster than the music. Whether it’s the clever sounds of a farty MIDI track from SimCity 2000 or the string sections of this newest game, hearing the lightweight plucking and sheer optimism of their score is an uplifting experience. Available now in most places you can legally acquire music (and probably many places you can’t), you can relive the urban planning experience wherever you are.
Consumer Camp: How Microsoft’s MVPs Want To Educate The World – The Marques Lyons Interview
Near a Microsoft Store? Check for one of these events. Photo credit: Consumer Camp
For those unaware, Microsoft makes a lot of products. Some are pretty successful, others not so much, but all work together, especially with the advent of their new Modern UI and new releases of Windows and Windows Phone. Amongst those who know the ecosystem best, Microsoft promotes “MVPs”, or Most Valuable Professionals, to evangelize their products. A few years back, I wrote for Zune MVP Marques Lyons’ site Inside The Circle, which made sense considering my passion for the player, but he’s since retired the site to focus on his newest creation: Consumer Camp, a nationwide tour of sorts in which Microsoft MVPs converge on your nearest Microsoft Store to meet with the masses. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Marques about Consumer Camp and his thoughts on Microsoft’s new direction in general.
Rock Band Network Receives Last New Songs On April 2, Is Sure You’ll Be Crushed
The Rock Band Platform will still be available, though! Don’t you worry!
One of the keenest examples of Harmonix’s foresight when creating Rock Band was in having a unified downloadable content platform available from day one: the Rock Band Platform. Regardless of game, of which there were many, you could purchase new songs not included on the disc and play those songs in any version of Rock Band that you had. New songs were added on a weekly basis, but those days are soon coming to an end. Harmonix has announced that their last update for Rock Band will fall on April 2 with a song “fitting” of such an event.
Did Nintendo Send The Wii U Out To Slaughter, Dreamcast-Style?
I’m still sittin’ in your stores, bogarting your palettes.
Whatever timid performance the Wii U was pulling off this holiday, it appears to be doing even worse now. Per NPD’s five-week reporting timeline for January 2013, the Wii U sold 55,000 units against the Xbox 360’s 281,000 units. These look sad on paper, but then you have to factor in that the Wii U is new hardware that typically continues to sell out through the New Year, but Wii U consoles can still be found in every store on demand. Worse still, compared to the four week period after the Wii launched in January 2007, the Wii U pales further with a paltry 46,000 units compared to 348,000 Wiis. This spells gloom and doom and in any other environment, the Wii U would have some room to grow. Unfortunately, Microsoft and Sony have other plans.
I’d Welcome Harrison Ford Back As Han Solo Any Day
You’re telling me I’m doing… what?
Word around the internet is coming that Harrison Ford will be reprising his role as Han Solo in the upcoming J.J. Abrams-directed Star Wars: Episode VII. There’s some element of surprised reaction floating around this rumor, but the real surprise would be if Mark Hamill or Carrie Fisher – Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia respectively – weren’t going to be in the upcoming trilogy in any capacity. In Lucas’ on-again, off-again flirtation with a sequel trilogy, as you’ll remember, he wanted to have geriatric versions of those characters he’d filmed decades before strutting on-screen to impart advice or otherwise be on the screen for gravitas, especially in Hamill’s case as he would be a legendary Jedi tasked with rebuilding the Order. But yeah, sure, Ford. Makes sense.
Kum & Go’s Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza Review: It’s Delicious
“I knew the night I saw you on the showroom floor, you were meant for me.”
Unless you live in the American midwest, a Kum & Go is not within reach. In short, it’s an upscale C-store/gas station where smiling employees in pressed white shirts and khakis greet you from their dais. They started opening a number of these in the Springs just recently and they came to my attention primarily because of Kelly’s unbridled love of breakfast-themed foods, including the legendary Breakfast Pizza. (We even made a quick stop last year on our way to LA for E3.) One whole wall in each Kum & Go is a dedicated kitchen where you can have said pizzas and other foods made, including the number you see above: a gorgeous pickle-tinged Bacon Cheeseburger pizza. My heart was simply incomplete until I had one.
Lying About Tesla’s Model S Will Result In CEO Elon Musk Wrecking Your Junk With Facts
Tesla records all review drives, so they know exactly when you’re telling the truth.
I wager that New York Times reporter John Broder didn’t see this coming. A few years ago, BBC’s Top Gear program ran a segment on the Tesla Roadster, the all-electric company’s first car. I enjoy the show thoroughly, so it was a bit of a surprise that the crew had such trouble with it, including running out of juice well before the advertised range and the car breaking entirely, unable to operate. Back in the shop, Tesla discovered that the show had no such issues and had, in fact, scripted the entire disaster. Not only did a court case follow, but Tesla began to log the telemetry of the vehicles they sent out for review. When the Times published Broder’s negative review of the car, featuring a picture of the car being pulled onto a flatbed tow truck, Tesla was more than a little skeptical. Then they pulled out the logs… and the results weren’t pretty.
Google, Just integrate Lookout Security Into Android Already
I don’t know why this isn’t integrated into the OS.
I love Lookout. I had convinced my friend, we’ll call him Jerry, who then convinced his friend, we’ll call him Kramer, to pick up Lookout Security for his Android phone. Sure enough, in less than a week Jerry is telling me about how he and George had gotten home without George’s phone. George had lost it somewhere. No matter! The phone had Lookout Security running and just a little bit of battery left so they whipped open a laptop and pulled up Lookout’s web site. Sure enough, they found the phone resting in a bed of snow outside the bar they’d just left. For a free app, it’s pretty amazing.
Because You Asked For It, Vertu Is Releasing A Bizarre $11,000 Android Phone
It’s delectable, but stupid, yet amazing.
Vertu phones have always been a bit of a joke. Here’s this incredibly expensive mobile technology artifact that takes the finest of Nokia’s Symbian OS and marries it with luxurious, hand-made hardware. Their designs were exquisite, weird, and it was hard to imagine an actual human purchasing one. Now that Vertu has unveiled their Ti model, I might have to start a Kickstarter donation drive to own one. You see, Nokia sold Vertu last year, freeing them from the obligation to Symbian, but also a further note to Windows Phone. Vertu picked Android for compatibility and while the specs are pretty admirable, but there are enough lukewarm bits in here to throw even the most casual Android fan off.
Nike Says No Fuelband Android App In The Works, Decides We Shouldn’t Be Friends
Oh sure, it looks like a magical pantheon of fitness from here, but…
Like many Americans, fitness isn’t a thing I do. Oh sure, it’s classy when you live in urban areas without a car and any long distance can be destroyed with public transportation and some legwork, but unless you’re some kind of superman, I enjoy working out as much as the next guy. Which is to say, I don’t, or at least I need some incredibly large amount of gamification. So it may come as no surprise that I’ve recently been looking at one of these new fitness bands to incentivize more trips to the fridge or 7-eleven, such as Jawbone’s Up, the new Fitbit device, and Nike’s Fuelband. Well, all except the last, now that Nike has publicly said they have no plans for an Android app.
