Second Thoughts on the 360

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A couple of days ago, I tried out an XBOX 360 in a Best Buy. I played Fight Night and Madden. I’m pretty impressed by the quality of graphics of the 360. The shadows, the characters breathing, the facial expressions on the characters were far beyond my expectations. The controller was also quite good. Microsoft improved the controller by moving the black and white buttons and made them shoulder buttons.

I wonder if the game experience was better because I was playing against a friend of mine. Like I’ve written before, I’m not a fan of games that take hours and hours to complete. I like quick games like sports-based titles. After seeing what the 360 can do, I wonder if I’d more interested in longer games if rendered so well. Additionally, my brother has sent me some links that show WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2007 previews. It’s supposed to be available for the 360 and it would be fun on XBOX Live against my brother and others.

Plus, XBOX 360 is going to have Street Fighter 2 available in its arcade and on Live. It’ll be just like when I used to play the game in that convenience store. Play anyone. Sounds like fun to me.

The Decine of cnet.com

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A couple of years ago, when I wanted cutting edge news, I would go to cnet.com. Now, it’s lagging behind. It’s like a newspaper – it’s got good stories, but they cover yesterday’s news. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the site. They have great reviews and I think they’re moving away from standard news, instead focusing on video content. I wish they could refocus themselves on tech news again, but that may not happen with the rise of sites like digg.com.

Wii

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As you can see by my recent diggs, I’m into the Nintendo Wii. I think the name is fine, btw. It’s a game machine that people won’t be afraid of. Once I first saw the controller for this system, I thought it would be huge. I had the opportunity to pick up an XBOX 360, but I turned it down, because I thought that I wouldn’t play it enough. I’m going to save up some cash for the Wii.

It looks like it will have games that don’t take 20 hours to complete. When I put in a game, I want to play for about an hour or so. That’s why I normally play sports games. The games that take advantage of the uniqueness of the Wii remote will be quite fun.

So if anyone reading this works for Nintendo, feel free to send me a testing unit. It’d be nice.

New MacBook: Coming Soon.

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The new iBooks are expected this week, either Tuesday or Wednesday. Here’s my two cents on the new notebooks.

The iBook needs a revision badly and is going to benefit greatly with an Intel processor (solo or core duo). The 13.3″ screen that is expected sounds like a good idea. The 12″ with its 4:3 aspect ratio is too old school by Apple standards. I hear it’s going to be thin, light, with an iSight, Front Row and the Apple Remote. Plus I’ve read it’ll be offered in both black and white. All of this sounds great. A black iBook may tick off ColorwarePC (the company that offers painting services for many Apple products), but it would give the iBook a more serious look, especially if Apple wants to market the iBook to businesses.

It may or may not be called the MacBook. Fine with me.

Will I be looking into getting one? My wife has a 12″ iBook – it could be replaced… Nope. I’m not getting one for a long while. I bought the MacBook Pro about two months after it was released. I had heard about Apple’s 1st generation products – I wanted to read the reviews to find out how the MBP was. It’s a great machine, don’t get me wrong – but it ticks me off that it has a high pitched whining noise, one of the fans makes that “mooing” noise that people complain about and the battery life could be better. I didn’t find out about those things until after I bought one.

I’d rather not experience another 1st gen Apple product. Here’s hoping Apple has learned from its mistakes with the MBP and the MB runs free of annoyances.

Digital Picture Frames

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I have been interested in digital picture frames for a while. For some time now, I’ve hated stuff. I hate having big books with pictures in them. So I’ve looked into digital picture frames and a lot of DIY projects by transforming a laptop.

I can see the benefits of reusing a laptop. You could update the photos with wi-fi and remotely access a computer you have hanging on the wall. That’s great, but I had an even dumber idea than repurposing a laptop.

DVD players have gotten tremendously cheap. I’m thinking I could take a DVD player, either a portable one with a screen, or hook up a small DVD player to a cheap LCD (like a 5 inch XBOX or PlayStation LCD) and use it to show photos.

I could probably just throw a bunch of photos into iMovie and make a slideshow and set it to repeat. Some of these DVD players even have remotes, so not only do you have a cheap Digital Picture Frame, but you have a remote control, too.

Plus, I could throw small pieces of home movies onto the disc. If you put this together, you still have a decent DVD player. I’m thinking that a shadow box could hold all of the components easily. You would just have to mount the devices in the shadow box.

Even easier, I’ve seen some new portable DVD players that have tablet PC style hinges that let you turn the screen around or fold it over to have it in tablet form. Each DVD Player-based Digital Picture Frame (or just one frame and lots of DVDs) could serve as an album. One DVD player’s a wedding album, another is childhood photos, etc.

Click here for my del.icio.us links for Digital Picture Frame Projects.