All About Articles

Web publishers looking to capitalize on the growth in social and casual gaming just got an easier way to integrate them into their sites. HeyZap, a platform that helps syndicate social and casual games and also offers expanded features like achievements, has just launched its Social Games Bar. The bar is similar in appearance to the Meebo Bar — it sits at the bottom of the browser window and persists as you navigate through a publisher’s site. But the functionality is obviously quite different. The bar gives users access to 30,000 different social and casual games, some of which are tied to Facebook using Facebook Connect.

HeyZap cofounder Immad Akhund says that there are a few major benefits from the bar. First, it’s actually easier to integrate than HeyZap’s standard gaming widget, because publishers don’t have to worry about where they’re going to position it on their site (they just add a line of code and it appears at the bottom). And because the bar is always visible at the bottom of the page, users are more likely to click it.

He also says that all links shared through games launched by the HeyZap Bar link back to the publisher’s site, as opposed to the game’s Facebook page, which is where they often link to by default. Finally, Publishers get a rev share on any virtual goods purchased through the games (which is true of the normal HeyZap widget as well).

Source : Click Here

Earlier this week we told you guys that Windows Mobile 6.5 was going to stick around after Windows Phone 7 hits the masses. It would even take on a new name — Windows Phone Classic. With everyone sticking around and playing nice at this party, you’d think that maybe current WinMo 6.5 handsets might get a little Windows Phone 7 love. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Microsoft Mobile Communications Business Director Aaron Woodman told CNET Asia, “I don’t know if any Windows Mobile 6.5 device today meets those specifications.” It sounds like your average Microsoft move: if you want the new software, you’ll also have to get new hardware because your old junk just isn’t gonna cut it, baby.

The new handsets are getting primo parts such as Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor (no Tegra, sorry). WinPho 7, being a fresh OS and more intensive than its predecessors, will undoubtedly need hardware resources that most 6.5 devices just don’t have, but don’t fret. Unlike everyone staying on Windows XP when Vista came out, upgrading to WinPho 7 out of WinMo 6.5 is definitely a move in the right direction. WinMo 6.5 is going to stick around for enterprise and developing countries, so unless you’re tied to the OS for those reasons, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind ditching your current 6.5 handset for a shiny new WinPho 7 device when it comes out.

Source: MobileCrunch

Do not press play on the video. Don’t do it. It will hurt. This is some sort of circuit bent synth that can create chaotic music. While the folks at Make suggest its fun at parties, I beg to differ.

Short version: A competent, but unremarkable keyboard. If you like Microsoft keyboards, spend the extra cash for the fancier and cooler X6.

Features:

• Anti-ghosting (press as many keys at one time as you like)
• Six programmable macro keys with switchable profiles
• Backlit keys
• Media controls
• Calculator button!

Pros:

• Big and solid
• Anti-ghosting is good to have, even if you don’t notice it

Cons:

• Media keys launch Windows Media Player
• Only one color of backlight and two brightness settings
• No USB ports

What we have here is… well, a normal keyboard, basically, with some macro and media keys. The trouble is, if you’re the type of gamer who uses macros a lot, you probably want a little more keyboard than this offers. There are lots of options out there, including the unique and cool Sidewinder X6, which I liked a lot.

Functionality is as you see: some macro keys on the left there, which are useful in all the situations you’d expect, and the configuration thereof works just fine, though it’s extremely spartan. There’s a nice long list of handy commands you might want to use, something which developers often fail to include.

The media keys worked out of the box with Winamp, though irritatingly if Winamp is not open, pressing the Play/Pause button will launch Windows Media Player. You can’t disable that, unfortunately; there’s no option to select another default player. I’m not sure I dig the layout, either.

Doesn’t that seem a little weird to you? I think play should be in between previous and next track, though that may just be me. But why is mute attached to the play controls cluster? Shouldn’t it be over with volume up and down? Not a big deal, obviously, but if you could choose between a keyboard that has them laid out in an intuitive way, and one that didn’t, which would you choose? Right, me too.

Lastly, for a gaming keyboard, it sure doesn’t have any extra connectors, like USB or audio. That’s kind of an important part of a gaming keyboard, and really, I just realized that the X6 has the same problem, as well as a similar media key layout. Well, consider this criticism retroactively applied to that thing as well.

Conclusion

Like so many devices in the crowded “gaming enthusiast hardware” field, the X4 is simply outmatched by the competition, which is too close in price to warrant a downgrade. Microsoft’s own X6, for instance, can even be found for cheaper than the X4, and it certainly offers a cooler feature set. Logitech and Razer also offer compelling alternatives for similar prices. Sorry, X4, but there’s just too much good stuff out there.

Source: CrunchGear

I feel like I should come to Flash’s defense, partially because I gave it one between the ribs last night, and partially because, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, “to see justice done is every man’s business.” Now here we have Steve Jobs saying in a WSJ interview that using Flash for video would reduce battery life from 10 hours to 1 hour, and suggests H.264 as an alternative. Let’s just take a moment to evaluate these plainly inflammatory statements.

First, we may as well be clear about this part: Flash isn’t the best on OS X, and probably would end up occupying a good portion of the CPU, resulting in lower battery life. Whether it’d knock eight or nine hours off this theoretical ten-hour battery is, of course, the most tenuous of speculation.

And why, we might reasonably ask, is Flash such a dog on OS X? Well, decoding 720p YouTube video can be either GPU-intensive or CPU-intensive. On Windows, Flash has tunnels to your video card to let its hugely parallel processors burst-decode a ton of information at a time. It can’t do that on OS X, from what I understand — mainly because Apple doesn’t want them to.

Here’s the thing: Apple doesn’t like Flash. I don’t particularly care for it, but it’s one of the foundational technologies of the web and can’t be dismissed as trivially replaceable, as Jobs would have us believe. But Apple doesn’t like it. That’s the key. They’ve got a grudge against Flash and Adobe and they’re going to pursue that to the bitter end. They could call up Adobe and say “Hey guys, Flash is blowing it in our OS, why don’t we get a few guys together and work it out?” But they won’t. They’d rather they had an excuse for railing at it and excluding it from the table. Flash is getting punched in the breadbasket here for no reason other than that Apple doesn’t want to play nice.

Jobs suggests H.264 as an alternative. Okay… H.264 is a video codec, not a wrapper like Adobe’s FLV. There are plenty of H.264 FLVs. If what he meant was we should have direct access (i.e. HTML5 or otherwise) to H.264 files on the web and elsewhere, then okay, that’s good, but it’s not really achievable right now since Flash is the acknowledged standard for web video. Every web video site uses it, though some are working on moving to HTML5. Maybe a few years down the line you could suggest replacing FLV with raw unwrapped files, but that time is not here yet.

Lastly, while we’re on the topic, H.264 is just as closed, proprietary, and potentially inefficient as Flash. It’s owned, operated, and developed privately, but clearly Apple can only throw its weight behind one of them. It’s not good for users, but really, that’s not always Apple’s first priority.

Source : TechCrunch