Category Archives: General

Play all your favorite classic games with the Ultimate Arcade by the Chicago Gaming Company. Made by a real coin op game company the Ultimate Arcade has all your favorite games from Atari, Capcom, Midway, Golden Tee Golf and Universal. It even has a deactivated coin door so you play for free!

Features legendary arcade games, authentic in every detail, including Asteroids, Battlezone, Berzerk, Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, Mortal Kombat, Mr. Do!, Street Fighter ll, Tempest, Mega Man, Super Breakout, 1942, and more.

Features:

* Commercial quality cabinet
* Commercial quality 19” monitor
* Tempered safety glass protects the monitor
* Lighted marquee
* Bar tough finish
* Coin door is permanently deactivated (Commercial use prohibited)
* Arcade quality controls for 2 players
* Dimensions: 2’ W x 30” L x 5’ H

Now this would make a fine Christmas present, although with the 250 lb weight, your local UPS guy won’t be begging to deliver it unless they want to cash in some sick time. For those of us that fed more than our share of quarters into a Pac-Man, Seawolf or Asteroid machine, the $2300 price tag seems more than reasonable! If I could get those quarters back, I’d own two, at least.
Available at Costco.

Not too long ago there was an AP story about Wal-Mart and RFID technology. With RFID technology Wal-Mart has found ways to keep stores stocked up in an efficient and productive manner. While that’s great for Wal-Mart it means nothing for smaller business’ because none of them can buy RFID chips and software in bulk packages the way Wal-Mart can. RFID can do a lot for a business (Wal-Mart has proven that), but right now only a mega-business can afford it.

Enter: Open Source RFID
A group RadioActive is the first and only open source platform for RFID applications. Currently in the design stages these applications will allow for RFID technology to reach its fullest
potential. “We have a philosophy that RFID technology..is going to be as big as the Internet where RFID tags are like URLs.

The consequences of an effective open source application for RFID
would be pretty interesting. Here are some things I would do for fun.

On a serious note, it would greatly increase the ability of regular people to have RFID technology (is this a security issue of any kind?). But more practically, open source RFID would help small business’. Now your local hardware store could use the same tech as Wal-Mart, and don’t they deserve the same technological advantages.

So there’s no shortage of Xbox 360 content out there since the console’s launch on November 22, but I wanted to give a shout out to the fellas at ArsTechnica; they put together a superb review of Microsoft’s latest gaming console, addressing many of the questions mulling around in the heads of us who weren’t part of mob scene out last week.

Aside from the spate of media coverage surrounding unit problems (crashing, not connecting to Xbox Live, etc.), the piece hits a number of important points any prospective buyer should consider. I know I’m on the fence for several reasons; you should definitely check it out. Some points:

• The role of the HD display – if you don’t have a fancy screen you won’t come close to experiencing the console’s potential.

• Xbox Live is a great, intuitive, stable (eventually!) service. Offering cheap online games is a major plus. There are negatives, however, like being kicked out of games when live disconnects (even if you’re not playing a network game).

• Overheating is a serious concern. Just look at the power brick. Give the thing plenty of ventilation.

• Launch library – decent but not groundbreaking. Project Gotham Racing & Call of Duty 2 are two of the best.

• Backwards compatibility – this is something of a toss-up as the console gets more time in the wild. Currently MS lists 200 games as backward compatible.

Conclusions? Check ’em right here.

These specialists estimate that 6 percent to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million Internet users in this country have a dependency that can be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction, and they are rushing to treat it. Yet some in the field remain skeptical that heavy use of the Internet qualifies as a legitimate addiction, and one academic expert called it a fad illness.

Skeptics argue that even obsessive Internet use does not exact the same toll on health or family life as conventionally recognized addictions. But, mental health professionals who support the diagnosis of Internet addiction say, a majority of obsessive users are online to further addictions to gambling or pornography or have become much more dependent on those vices because of their prevalence on the Internet.

But other users have a broader dependency and spend hours online each day, surfing the Web, trading stocks, instant messaging or blogging, and a fast-rising number are becoming addicted to Internet video games

Here at Live Digitally, we’re definitely hooked!
From Doc To Doc.

Having recently witnessed Nintendo’s 20th anniversary, I’ve gotten into retro gaming. I wander around electronic stores that specialize in 80’s collector gear, be it Atari games, large computer-like systems or accesories like Nintendo’s long-forgotten Power Pad. Perhaps I’m feeling nostalgic, but I find a beauty in their simplicity and planned obsolescence.

Yes, buying classic games and such can be done online for relatively the same prices, but actually going to the retro store, browsing throug their treasure trove of archived games, it’s like going into a techie pirate shop. There is no greater satisfaction like breathing in 20 year old dust off a long lost Atari game.

Instead of going on with this post in an attempt to remind you of your gaming youth, I’ll just direct you all to a great Flickr collection based on 80’s video game advertisments.

A picture is worth 1,000 words.

Hoping to loosen Apple Computer’s grip on the digital music player market, Microsoft is rallying consumer electronics companies to form a common link.

The software maker is part of a working group launched last week by the Consumer Electronics Association to develop a standard port for connecting gadgets like music players to audio systems in homes and cars.

“It is important for the industry to create an open, industrywide standard for docking connectors that will give consumers greater access to the digital entertainment they have stored on devices,” Jai Jaisimha, the lead program manager in Microsoft’s Windows digital media division, said in a statement.

It’s the latest in a series of moves by Microsoft to try to unify the many device makers and music sellers that use its technology.

Apple’s popular iPod already has a standard dock connector that allows all recent models to connect to speakers, car kits and other devices.

However, other music player makers, such as Creative Labs, Dell and iRiver, have designed their own ports. That makes it difficult for accessory manufacturers, which need to design add-ons that will work with the multiple formats.

We’re seeing iPod connectors in a number of places, but we need to remind ourselves that it is a proprietary connector. This is what kept Zip discs, and Betamax videotapes from ever reaching their full potential. While some autos, like BMW and Volkswagen ship with a connector for an iPod, many of us would welcome a competing standard. Same goes for those speaker docks that accept only an iPod. Wouldn’t it be great if they could just use something like a universal USB connector? I think that Microsoft may have found the chink in Apple’s armor if they can get the rest on board this standards train. In the meantime, Apple is running away with this segment with over 80% of the MP3 player market, and stores running out of iPods already this holiday season.
From CNET.

“Idle hands and idle time give kids the urge to commit crime.”
-lots of old people have said this to me

What’s wrong with having a regular crew of teenagers and pre-teens hanging outside your neighborhood liquor store, smoking cigarettes, stealing candy bars, and badgering patrons?

Everything if you’re the sucker that owns the store! What are you to do? Get a mosquito of course! Studies show that younger people can hear higher ranges of sound waves, hence the high-pitch pulsating-noise-emitting-device deemed, The Mosquito.

This concept in theory would work, except our buddy Steve Jobs has the mass marketed the perfect sound canceling device -that’s right, I’m mentioning it again, iPod. Whoever doesn’t have an iPod of some color, shape, size, generation, or form will most likely get one this holiday season. And then out with the annoying high pitched teen deterrent, and back to the zit lamp (a light that accentuates whiteheads and blemishes). What will they do then? Wear ski masks?!

RSS is what we’ve all been looking for. Really Simple Sindication or Rich Site Summary, is great! but what the heck does it do?

RSS is a faster, easier, way to check your favorite websites for updates. If you were looking for a “free bookshelf” on craigslist, on way to search is the old method would be to keep checking back every day to see if anyone has posted a listing with those key words. Or you may just set up an RSS feed, and as soon as that free bookshelf listing pops up, you get notified via your RSS reader, which can double as your email client.

RSS isn’t new, it’s just a difficult concept to grasp for those who only have one email address, and don’t know the speed of their computer’s GPU. It’s ok.

Yahoo has made it easier, so I hear, to snatch your RSS feeds. Yahoo email users will notice a new folder dedicated to RSS. As you can see, I wasn’t part of the elite few who were able to test this new feature out. But keep on the look, this is the next big thing.

Two new search engines offer to do for podcasting what Technorati does for blogs by letting users search podcasts by keyword to single out audio that suits their interests.

Podzinger and blinkx scour audio content for keywords by translating the audio into text and creating an index for quick searching. It’s a significant step above traditional search engines that identify only keywords in a podcast’s metadata, such as the headline and introductory notes describing the audio file’s general content.

Podzinger, in beta until mid-December, lets users jump to the spot in a podcast where their search term appears, rather than forcing them to scan an entire program for pertinent parts as blinkx does. Its minimalist design has an uncluttered search page, à la Google. And Podcasters can link to a searchable index of their content in order to sell sponsored links to text in the index provided by Podzinger.

Both Podzinger and blinkx include information about the source of the podcast and excerpts of text translated from the podcast with the relevant search terms highlighted. But Podzinger’s information is more extensive and the results include a counter indicating where in the podcast the snippet is located. And Podzinger allows users to click on the Play button to hear the excerpt and determine its relevancy before clicking on a link to download the entire podcast.

With the explosion of podcasts, users need a way to find the one of relevance. These podcast search engines are first attempts to bring some order to the chaos of finding a needle in a haystack. If this takes off, how long do you think it will be until we see Google Podcast Search?

From Wired.

The Washington Post (and others) report today on New Orleans’ launch of the first-ever city-owned WiFi network available for free.

Apparently Louisiana law prohibits localities from offering connection speeds above 144 Kbps (telco lobbyists getting their way in the name of “preventing competition”), but the 512 Kbps speed predicted by city officials currently gets the green light because the city remains in a state of emergency, temporarily removing the teeth of said telco-friendly laws.

Intel and Tropos Networks were among those who donated the equipment required for the WiFi infrastructure, currently up and running in the city’s central business district as well as the French Quarter. Outside of the public, city officials believe the network will see regular use by law enforcement and likely emergency personnel, as well as other city government functions. Might not be enough to get your game on, but it’s perfect for e-mailing and other light web work. Anyone reading this from said network should give us a shout.