Matt Heston

The sandcastle Playstation I posted earlier was a behemoth. The girls in the picture were clearly hiding their fear and awe of it’s towering case and the iron fist of it’s Blu-Ray player. Thankfully, Sony has realized their machine isn’t meant to intimidate, so they’ve announced they’re cutting the price to a good $299 and slimmed it up a bit. Yes… the rumours of the PS3 Slim that have been around forever now have been validated. No one’s surprised, but with a 120 GB HDD and a Blu-Ray player for just a little more than a Wii, Sony has done something surprisingly un-evil. For anyone who wants a PS3 Slim, though, has to wait until Sept. 1st. You can also pick up a regular PS3 at the Slim’s price now, too. If you like that sort of thing, I guess.

EDIT: Turns out the PS3 Slim won’t have backwards compatibility. Sony found a way, like it always does, to add a huge annoyance to a great announcement.

So in a few weeks, I’ll be going to the most important gaming convention in this country for the first time. By that, I certainly don’t mean E3, I’m talking about Penny Arcade Expo. Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik describe it best when they say, “the best part of PAX is hanging out with other people who know their shit when it comes to games.” But before anyone thinks it’s just about a bunch of sweaty nerds gathering together to play mind numbing, emotionally desensitizing, and physically sedating video games, take a look at the schedule. With such panels as How Gamers Give: Improving the World through Games, Digital Rights Education, and a panel I swear stole it’s name from a Sesame St. episode, Losing Should Be Fun.

I can’t say how enlightening it will be, but I’m definitely going to make sure the account of my time there is spread to the rest of the Internet with as much description and honesty as I can muster. There have been plenty of Cons that had passed me by, and I remember looking for every tidbit of news I could find, just to have a small taste of the experience. I owe it to the bloggers who came before me to do the same.

And now, for no particular reason, two korean girls in front of a sandcastle Playstation 3.

So the latest buzz with Google is it’s latest project called Caffeine. In theory, it’s supposed to speed up web searches and the returns more relevant to those searches. I’ve tried it out and haven’t noticed much difference, but I think this beta test is more geared towards web developers and the like. What I’m hoping Caffeine will do is get a lot of people excited about Google’s projects. Maybe more people will discover what a great web browser Chrome is, or they could get excited for their upcoming operating system with the same name. Even if a few more people test out Google Squared or Audio Indexing, I think it will really help spur more growth from this behemoth. With all the talk of Google soon becoming a monopoly, I think some take for granted the innovations coming out now. After Microsoft secured it’s place on top, it never really needed to go any further. Vista and Internet Explorer, anyone? So if you like Google how it is right now, I beg you to help it keep changing. Test out Caffeine here

So recently, the Xbox 360 received an update. This is relevant to me because I own one of these machines, just as it’s relevant to the thousands of families across the country. But to those without a keen enough eye, some important new features may slip by them completely unnoticed. I know that many parents are still unaware of the parental controls available, as I could play Halo 3 at two in the morning on a Tuesday and still deal with a handful of preteens squeaking out rancorous trash talk. So, for the tech illiterate and parents with Xboxes, let me run down some of the features now available and the features soon to be.

1. New Stuff to Buy-
Microsoft went all out in increasing it’s virtual marketplace. More movies are available through netflix, full Xbox 360 games are available for download, and now premium items are being sold for your online avatar. Along with the fact that all of these features are now even easier to use, I’d forewarn impulse buyers and parents to keep the credit card far from your console. But for those who have a stash of Microsoft points laying around, this is an early Christmas.

2. Ease of Use-
The last update provided a much smoother interface, but there was still some difficulty in navigating through all of the Xbox 360’s functions, and Xbox Live still had a number of quirks. This seems to be fixed with the latest update. Netflix is a lot more intelligent about how it organizes it’s content, the Xbox can auto-detect the display so it can always run at the highest resolution, and the dashboard has a number of new shortcuts to the most important features. But the cleverest new features, I think, are the ability to download game manuals and a new rating system for Arcade games. This means it’ll be easier and faster to find great games and learn how to play them.

3. Socializing-
This was the aspect of the update Microsoft was most proud of, if their press releases were any indication. Multiple party invites can now be sent at once, dropped connections are now fixed automatically, and now Netflix will let Xbox Live friends watch some movies together. Its just like watching a movie together with actual friends, except without the ‘together’ or ‘friends’ part.

Oh, and facebook, twitter, Last.fm, and Zune will be available soon. That alone caused many excited squeals and annoyed groans.

Please, Xbox owners and parents of kids with Xboxes, I implore you, take a look at what’s going on with this. There are only going to be more updates, and soon this gaming console will be able to do hundreds of things you never expected.

Oh, and to the parents of L33tBR- stop giving your kid caffeine. It’s doing him no favors.