The Nexus 7 is Google’s first foray into the tablet market. There have already been a host of tablets that have utilized Android as their operating system of choice, but this one is made by Asus and branded by Google. It is therefore a flagship device designed to show off Android to its full potential. The Apple iPad has so far owned the tablet market, but the Nexus 7 has now entered the fray in a big, bold way.
The majority of us like watching movies. Sure, the genres we love differ, but there’s still little better than losing yourself in a different world packed with a story, a setting, and characters for a couple of hours. The problem is there are so many movies to choose from, with new ones being released each and every week. So what to see?!
Quitting smoking will change your life and could potentially save it too. Unfortunately it’s easier said than done. Cigarettes are highly addictive, which is why quitting tends to involve a process rather than just suddenly stopping. The majority of smokers express a desire to quit, but when it comes to actually putting their money where their mouth is things change.
Geeks are fairly well represented on television. Sure, some shows – even those listed below – are aimed at the mainstream and therefore represent geeks as being spotty, scruffy ne’er-do-wells that live in their parents’ basements, but in general geeks are shown as role models or important people who give something positive to society. Which, as geeks ourselves, we all know we do.
Owning a quality pair of headphones is very important for anyone who wants or needs to listen to music by themselves on a regular basis. In fact, they’re more important than the device actually playing the music itself, whether it be a home stereo system, an mp3 player, or a smartphone. A decent pair of headphones can make up for a trashy player.
London is a great city to visit. I should know, having lived on the outskirts of it for 30 years before I upped sticks and headed north to Manchester, another great British city. London is always a hotspot of tourism, with a long history told through the buildings, a great many attractions, and the good ol’ Royal Family that is more beloved by tourists than the people they rule over.
Many modern video games play out like movies, with strong storylines, fleshed-out characters, and action sequences that surely give even Michael Bay pause for thought. And yet when it comes to actually making movies from video games, Hollywood and its film-making sister cities around the world have failed spectacularly. There are some video game movie adaptations worth watching, but most end up pleasing neither film buffs or gamers.
Downfall, or Der Untergang in German, is a film detailing the last days of World War II in April and May of 1945. It’s an often uncomfortable portrayal of a dictator facing the end; of the war, of his beliefs, of his life. Unfathomably a meme around a particular scene from Downfall has propagated on the InterWebs like wildfire. It takes the German-spoken video of Hitler being told all hope is lost but places English subtitles over the top suggesting what is being said.
The release of Windows 8 is, at the time of writing, a mere three months away. The time to make sweeping changes has passed, and Microsoft will be unleashing a version of Windows 8 very close to the preview versions we’ve tried and tested (and in some cases dismissed out of hand) here at MakeUseOf. Microsoft has taken a huge gamble in its strategy for remaining in the game against Apple and Google in the emerging post-PC era.
Very few of us are likely to ever make it into outer space, unless the various space tourism ventures become mainstream successes. Even then the price of being flown into space will be so high that normal, everyday folk like you and I will only be able to look on with dreams of one day affording such a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
Radio has moved on considerably over the past few years. While FM (Frequency Modulation) is still the most popular platform, the combination of DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and the Internet has expanded the options people have for listening to both music and speech stations.
The history of video games is littered with the dead corpses of titles that never quite fulfilled their promise. Not because they sucked – far from it, in fact – but because they didn’t sell in anything like the number they deserved to. Critical acclaim didn’t result in commercial success. Many of these titles are slow-burners or a little strange, but those gamers who took the time to become fully immersed in their worlds became hooked.
Google unveiled the Nexus 7, its long-awaited foray into the burgeoning tablet market, at Google I/O last month. The combination of hardware, design, and price took many by surprise, with all three of these components being about the best we could have hoped for from such a device at this time. I believe the Nexus 7 is competition for the iPad and I feel competition to Apple’s stranglehold on the tablet market is exactly what’s needed.
I’m a gamer, and like all gamers I have particular tastes. I have adored some video games through the decades, and would count playing them as highly memorable experiences. I have also played some games I ended up hating, and have sought to force the memory of those to the back of my mind. Video games can frustrate very easily. Whether because they’re too difficult, too annoying, or just generally bad.
Social networking is a huge part of the Internet, providing the means for us all to connect and communicate quickly and easily. There are both positive and negative aspects to the very act of social networking, but most of us take part in the activity on at least a part-time basis. Most of us doing so on more than one site. This complexity of connectivity makes it very tempting to combine the various social networks we use.
Apple is set to drop its latest version of the iOS operating system on us in just a few months time, and with it will come a whole host of new features and the now-ubiquitous dose of hyperbole. However, we’re hearing an increasing amount of chatter about the need for Apple to do something more with iOS than the incremental updates it’s been offering for several years now.
Facebook is, by all accounts, closing in on 1 billion users. That’s an awful lot of people maintaining a profile on the site, and telling their family, friends, co-workers, and anyone else who will listen, what’s going on in their lives. Social networking probably shouldn’t be used as a replacement for real conversations and relationships, but many people appear to be posting anything and everything to Facebook.
When Halo 4 gets released on Nov. 6, 2012, it will bring with it episodic content almost televisual in nature. In order to build shared experiences that players will talk about around the water cooler, the game’s developer 343 Industries will be delivering free weekly mini-missions which tell side-stories to the main mission, all via Xbox Live. While this isn’t a television show based on the Halo series, it borrows much from the idea of mixing the two media.
Video game reviews are notoriously hard to judge, as a genre that one person loves will be hated by another. Using websites which draw reviews from numerous sources in order to give an average score, such as Metacritic, is one solution. Alternatively you could forgo all other reviews and just take the word of Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw as gospel.
Draw Something is a mobile app that started life at OMGPOP but ended up at Zynga after the latter bought the former for $180 million in March 2012. Zynga might have paid over the odds for the company in order to get its hands on the game, which at the time was growing in popularity at an Angry Birds-style rate. Draw Something isn’t as popular as it once was, with a notable drop in the number of active users of late.
Many technological advances have a scary side to them, pointing towards a future where humanity is in danger of being overrun by intelligent machines which no longer need us. If they ever decide they don’t want us around then we’re done for, quite frankly. In that nightmare scenario, explored in countless movies and TV shows over the years, I wouldn’t bet against quadrotors being the primary attack force.
The Final Fantasy series of video games is 25 years old this year, with the first title, unsurprisingly called Final Fantasy, released in 1987. Since then there have been 14 games released in the main series, with countless other spin-offs and connected sequels. All of the Final Fantasy games belong to the RPG genre, although some things have changed considerably through the years.
The Internet is an absolute wonder. I actually don’t know how we lived without it for so many years. But when you head online and see the World Wide Web open up in front of your eyes it’s often difficult to know where to head next. You’ll have your personal favorites or bookmarks (depending on which browser you use) but what about new sites you have never visited before?
The Guitar Hero and Rock Band games aren’t the force they once were. The last Guitar Hero game released was Warriors Of Rock while the last Rock Band game was Rock Band 3, both released in 2010. However, thousands of songs can be downloaded for the games so the lack of new standalone titles doesn’t mean everybody has stopped playing and sent their arsenal of plastic instruments to the local thrift store.