I just visited Tim Schafer’s DoubleFine news page and read about the Video Game Live concert that took place on the 21st of September 2006. The fact that the concert was somewhere in the Western U.S. — most probably California — made any prospect of me attending extremely remote, but still it would have been […]
In the era of CRTs, cleaning a computer display was somewhat easier than it is today. While CRT coatings also required special cleaning agents, glass was tougher, easier to clean and more durable than the plastic coatings of TFTs. Things are not the same anymore. TFT computer screens have coatings that are reactive to many […]
King Kong director Peter Jackson has agreed a deal with Microsoft to create what he describes as a "new form of interactive entertainment".New? It's been here since the late 70s and it's called Adventure Games. And guess what, it's dead.
When Native Instruments first announced Guitar Rig in June 2004, I more or less dismissed it straight away as yet another failed attempt towards the holy grail of software amp/fx modelling. I took the animated NI executive’s enthousiastic presentation at Apple’s WWDC as the archetypal marketing talk, and I obviously didn’t get a feel for […]
Yesterday, Microsoft launched Zune, it’s latest attempt at dethroning Apple’s iPod as the portable übergadget of the future. While it looks like a decent attempt, compared to the previous ones by Creative et al., it is probably a bit too late unless Microsoft manages to lure both studios and consumers to its media platform very […]
Η κατάσταση με την εμπορική παρουσία της Apple στην Ελλάδα είναι αποκαρδιωτική. Πριν από μερικά χρόνια μάθαμε πως οι τιμές προϊόντων Apple στην ΕΕ είχαν ομαλοποιηθεί, ώστε να μην υπάρχουν διακυμάνσεις. Προφανώς δεν υπολόγιζαν την Ελλάδα όταν έκαναν αυτή την ανακοίνωση. Σαν να μην έφτανε η απόλυτη ανικανότης όσον αφορά στην προώθηση και πώληση προϊόντων […]
Το 2002 αγόρασα τον πρώτο μου μάκιντος με τη βοήθεια του πατέρα μου. Ήταν ένα Powerbook G4 στα 550MHz. Σπανίως χρησιμοποιούσα το iTunes τότε· πρωτόγονο και αποκλειστική εφαρμογή για Mac, μοναδική πραγματικά χρήσιμη λειτουργία του ήταν η διάθεση και ομαδοποίηση διαδικτυακών ‘ραδιοφωνικών σταθμών’. Μέσα από τον κατάλογο ‘σταθμών’ του iTunes έμαθα τη Magnatune, λίγους μήνες […]