Archive for Entertainment category
Six great new features at Xbox.com
It’s been quite a while since xbox.com had a major update and today sees the launch of the new version with a clean new look and a whole host of new features that our teams here at LIVE engagement have been working on.
There are a whole great new set of features, my favourites are below… note that some of these are not available in non-LIVE locales.
1. Avatars
Avatars are no longer just for the console but are escaping out onto the web and Windows Phone 7. With the new Avatar Editor you can create your own avatar or modify your existing one with a new easy-to-use interface from your browser.
The new Avatar Marketplace lets you search and find cool items for your avatar to wear and try them on right-there in the search pages. Head on in either by game or by lifestyle (brands) (click the little grid icon to see sub-brands such as your own university’s sports team!).
Because these guys are 3D animated they require Silverlight to be installed on your machine (the streaming videos on xbox.com also require it)
2. Marketplace search & results
A brand new search function means we get much better results than before, fuzzy matching and some dynamic filtering options that appear on the left-hand side letting you dig down into family friendly games (e.g. bt game ratings).
Another cool use is to search for your favourite band and see what tracks and packs they have available. Then head to the game filter on the left to see only the ones that work with your game (e.g. Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Dance Central etc!)
When you visit the product detail page it now shows the images and streaming video inline (goodbye popups) as well as game add-ons showing which games they work with – useful for those music track packs!
3. Hand-picked promotions
Our content teams can now put together collections of themed hand-picked games, add-ons etc. that you can you filter, sort and explore from such as the new Kinect games or family-friendly fun (these will be per-region so might not exist in yours yet).
Gold and family gold members should keep an eye out for Gold exclusive offers or pricing!
4. Streamlined account creation
It’s now easier-than-ever to sign up for a free Xbox live account. Less questions, less steps and we’ll give you a randomly-generated gamertag you can change for free later when you’ve had chance to decide on the perfect name for your game-playing alter-ego. (We’ve seen some fun auto-generated ones during the development cycle including FirmJunk,
5. Compare games with your friends
Okay, you could compare games before but the new UI is better and there’s a cool hidden feature that lets you compare against multiple people at the same time.
To do this head into My Xbox’s Game Center and choose a friend to compare with. Now, notice the url at the top of the page? Put a comma after it and another gamertag to see three… or another comma and a gamertag to see all four (the maximum) side-by-side.
6. Family center
New with this update is the Gold Family Pack which lets you get four gold subscriptions for $99 a year and lots of cool family features including play time reports, gifting points, allowances etc.
There are a whole host of extra features to be seen at xbox.com including mobile-to-web gaming, improved messaging, simplified UI etc. so go check them out!
[)amien
The secret driven-development/design acronyms
We’ve all heard of BDD, DDD and TDD but that still leaves 23 letters unaccounted for.
I can now exclusively reveal more! You may recognize some from projects you’ve already worked on but didn’t know had a name much less a recognized methodology.
ADD, Agro Driven Development
Developers code features directly proportional to the amount of heat they are getting from users, sales or managers. Results in a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.
CDD, Clone Driven Design
Features and design are achieved by cloning somebody else’s product thereby removing the pesky overhead of having to come up with ideas of your own. Sure fire way to stay firmly behind the leader.
EDD, Ego Driven Design
Where the direction of the project is dictated purely on an individuals ego and their ability to shout long and hard until they get their own way. The individual involved is rarely the target audience for the product which is often the ego-bruising trigger in the first place.
GDD, Golf Driven Design
Where features and specifications are agreed on the golf course by people who neither use the software nor are responsible for implementing it but want to write off the whole trip as a business expense. With any luck they won’t check the final product.
LDD, Lunch Driven Development
Where features, goals and APIs are decided over lunch by the developers and users who care enough to meet up over their lunch-time. Lunch must not be provided or you stray into Golf Driven Design instead.
PDD, Psychic Driven Development
Where specifications are not so much decided through real communication but rather obtained via a psychic link with potential users with mixed results. Often seen in conjunction with Ego Driven Design.
QDD, Query Driven Development
Every page or screen starts with a question to the user what they want to see, writing that as a SQL/LINQ query statement and then dumping results out via a simple UI. Would likely be better off in Access or Excel but people involved want to claim they have intraweb experience.
XDD, Xenophobic Driven Development
Where the majority of development time is given over to making sure others can’t do anything BUT what the original developers wanted. Typically observed by large sets of exception messages, the absence of hooks and a sprinkling of the sealed keyword.
YDD, Yesterday Driven Development
Features added today are the ones the customers thought they were getting yesterday. Generally used in very-tight rapid methodologies.
ZDD, Zzzzz Driven Development
Every waking hour is given over to the development process at the expense of quality and design ideas that are only appreciated by the sleep-deprived. Normally observed on tight schedules such as those in the gaming industry.
[)amien
Fun entertainment online
I’m missing my DVD collection terribly and might just give in and get it shipped over now I have a Pioneer DVD player that can play region 2 titles here albeit with a poor interlace PAL > NTSC conversion.
In the mean time I’ve been entertaining myself with the following comedy gems until I can at least find a proxy server in the UK to let me back into iPlayer (BBC) and Catch-Up (Channel 4) so I can watch QI, Top Gear and Grand Designs.
Podcasts
Adam & Joe – highlights from their BBC Radio 6 show has me laughing out loud in the office sometimes to the bemusement of colleagues.
Jonathan Ross – more highlights this time from Jonathan’s Saturday morning show that is always worth a giggle.
Comics
Weebl & Bob – two egg-shaped friends make sense of a purple world that never has enough pie but an abundance of silly voices, ninja pirates and tiny bovines.
Joy of Tech – geek cartoons from some Apple loving talent.
Pictures
ICanHasCheezBurger – because there’s no such thing as too many pictures of cute cats with crazy captions aka Lolcats. (My own attempt shown at the top of this post)
Videos
Fonejacker – George just needs your bank account details and sort code for your gas refund (3 million Ugandan dollars) and the sales pitch of Internet service providings who offer a better level of Internet service providing.
MineSweeper The Movie – the only computer game left to convert into a movie. (Well, except for Half-Life which is just dying for a good movie). Some of the other strips on this site include Street Fighter: The Later Years.
Zero Punctuation – video game reviews full of more great English humor, quip and amusing animations to take your favorite games down a peg.
[)amien
Great books coming to the big screen
As you may have guessed I enjoy books and movies very much and so when I hear that a book I loved is getting the film treatment I’m filled with excitement and apprehension as to whether it will live up to the imagery in my head.
Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series were both spot on, Paycheck was very much off the mark.
Here’s a few in the pipeline or already released elsewhere but yet to hit the UK.
Stardust (2007)
One of my favourite authors, Neil Gaiman, wrote a grown-up fairytale about a star that falls to Earth (a little like 10th Kingdom but with less comedy).
Much of the cast, the directory and writing team are all English although the ‘star’ role goes to the very lovely American Sienna Miller. The film is scheduled for an October 19th release here in the UK and is already out stateside.
Neil also has Beowulf and Coraline coming out in 2007 and 2008 respectively.
Northern Lights / The Golden Compass (2007)
The first book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series will no doubt be compared to Harry Potter in that it is a series aimed at children, features magic and has a strong female character in the lead. The similarities extend to the first book in the series having a different name in the USA and England but thankfully end there.
Whilst the casting of the film looks good abandoning the religious aspects is worrying – why DO the directors and film companies feel the need to excise or alter important parts of source material that has already proven a commercial success?
Cross your fingers and hope it hasn’t lost too much for the UK release on December 7th.
I Am Legend (2007)
Will Smith is leading the role as the last human being alive on the planet after a condition turns the rest of the population into vampires. He goes hunting by day whilst they sleep and ensures his home is fortified for the nightly onslaught when they wake.
Richard Matheson penned the novella in 1954, any novel still in print 50+ years after it was written signals to me the book must be good.
One worry is that Hollywood will turn this into a massive in-your-face action flick instead of the brooding horror of the book. The trivia at IMDB notes large budgets, sets and military vehicles/extras so this is a very distinct possibility. Hollywood have done this several times with Philip K Dick’s books and just not getting the point that his stories show ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
We will find out here in the UK January 4th and Mr Matheson has The Box and The Incredible Shrinking Man due out in 2008.
The Golden Man / Next (2007)
Philip K Dick’s book is the story of a golden man, the next evolution of humanity, who can see into the near future and his attempt at escaping his pursuers (kind of like the escape scene in Minority Report).
Not technically forthcoming as it hit the UK shores in April but I missed it being that it had a totally different name to the book. Being that the guy who can see into the future is now a Las Vegas magician played by Nicholas Cage I’m not sure I’ll bother.
If there was a point to the book about how we will react to our own evolution it’s lost. Perhaps Hollywood think that’s been covered enough by the X-Men franchise.
Altered Carbon (2009 ?)
Richard K. Morgan writes the story of one Takeshi Kovacks, an ex-military elite soldier in a future where your body is easily replaced providing the metal backup device implanted in the base of your skull is in tact. Kovacks is egotistical, violent and methodical in his new job as a private investigator seeking out why his rich client apparently committed suicide (and was promptly restored from backup but lost some essential hours).
The book is gritty and certainly not aimed at children. Would Hollywood pay the big bucks required to get the imagery right for such a grand undertaking of a film that would be limited to an adult/18 category is unlikely but somebody has the rights and is penning in a 2009 release date.
If the film is a success there are two more books in the series which will demand grander sets and even larger budgets.
Rendezvous with Rama (2009 ?)
Morgan Freeman picked up the rights to Arthur C. Clarke’s fantastic novel about a large cylindrical object that enters our solar system briefly and the subsequent exploration of it’s interior but has seemingly done little since.
There used to be a web site with some renders and notes but that has long since gone and the ‘producers are still working on the adaptation’ and Morgan’s schedule seems to indicate he is rather busy on other projects.
Morgan claims that part of the delay is getting a studio on board that doesn’t want to turn it into an action movie (great news and can be a success as Contact shows) and that they are still working on the script (get David Peoples on the case).
Whilst the film is on a grand scale it would probably be relatively cheap to film as most of it could be green-screened against rendered backgrounds being that everything inside Rama is not man-made anyway.
[)amien