Megadget

Video: an animated history of GIFs! Love it.

browneyedgirlmw — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:21:29 -0500

Video: an animated history of GIFs! Love it.

Walking Dead Game: Do Your Choices Matter?

browneyedgirlmw — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:10:00 -0500

I discovered the Walking Dead game by Telltale, Inc. a few weeks ago. I’m a huge fan of zombies (although anyone who knows me agrees I will be toast on day 1 of the zombie apocalypse) and I enjoy the show enough, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The game is a choose-your-own-adventure type where you can choose between 2-4 actions or reactions in a given situation. The result is that the choices you make affect your character, Lee, and his relationships, but not the outcome, which is essentially the same no matter which choices you made over the five episodes.

So now the question is: if you and 100 other people play the game in different ways, making vastly different choices, yet come to the same ending, what’s the point?

As a child who loved choose-your-own-adventure books and would sit there flipping through and discovering all the different endings (“If you choose ‘talk to hobo,’ turn to page 14”…”page 14: hobo killed you, the end” etc.), I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated. The fun with that type of game is that you can get so much play out of it, as soon as you finish you want to start over and see where you’ll end up with different choices. I don’t really have a desire to do that with this game, especially because it’s a very long game with lots of conversation portions I can’t fast forward through.

Nevertheless, the game is very entertaining and exciting at times, so I would still recommend it in spite of my gripe. It got me comfortably through several hours of Thanksgiving car travel, as well.

Available via the App Store at $4.99 an episode.

Poor Battery Life Since Updating to Mountain Lion? You're Not Alone

browneyedgirlmw — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:46:00 -0400

Hoo boy, it has been a long time since I last posted. New job + grad school starting = time management that made me feel guilty blogging for fun.

Anyway! In the interim between posts, I bought a Macbook Pro with Retina Display, my new favorite thing ever. It has the most beautiful and crisp resolution I’ve ever seen, and I’ll constantly find myself just admiring the screen. It has a SSD and is thin, light, sleek and sexy. It’s a dream! I was so excited to receive this that I actually camped out at Macrumors with a bunch of like-minded fellow nerds and traded flight info based on our FedEx departure times. By the time it arrived to my office, I was actually out for a meeting (I KNOW) but there it was, gorgeous and waiting, when I got back:

(had to give it the Instagram treatment obvs)

Shortly after purchasing this, I updated to OS X Mountain Lion, Apple’s latest OS and another step closer to a full-on OS X and iOS hybrid.

I take care not to overcharge my gadgets, so I quickly noticed the shortened battery life. Lest you think that I am very observant and made the connection instantly, let me assure you that I did not notice the connection whatsoever and lazily assumed it had always been that way, and I only figured it out in hindsight after reading this at the Mac Observer:

10.6.8: late version of Snow Leopard; 10.7: Lion; 10.8: Mountain Lion

What the!!!

That is really, really bad. Apparently it amounts to about an hour and 45 minutes lost! The next update has only been released to developers, so if you depend on battery life for your regular use and are still using Snow Leopard or Lion, the Mac Observer advises to wait for the public release of 10.8.2 before you upgrade.

Check out the full article here to read about their methodology.

Tupac "Hologram": Not Actually a Hologram

browneyedgirlmw — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:10:00 -0400

You know the Tupac hologram that no one has talked about, ever? Turns out it wasn’t even a hologram.

The creator of the be-sixpacked graphic kept mum about the actual technology used, but Ars Technica now reports that it wasn’t a hologram at all; rather, it was a 2D illusion first utilized in the 1800’s.

Ars Technica:

So here’s how it works: the audience needs to be able to see into the main room, but not into an adjacent hidden room. In the case of the Tupac “hologram,” that’s the main stage where a real-life Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre were sharing the limelight. However, hidden on stage is a piece of glass, where the images can be reflected from and pushed into a target area that makes it seem like a single room. But off to the side, behind the glass, there’s a hidden room that has the original object being projected.

Pepper’s ghost illusion

I was looking (in vain, I now realize) for whichever archival footage was used for this posthumous performance, but it turns out that Pac was totally animated. This technique is nothing new — it’s been used a handful of times even in the past decade — but it is arguably the best executed to date, thanks to advances in digital rendering.

NY Times: Just One More Game ...

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:38:13 -0400

NY Times: Just One More Game ...:

This is a really interesting article about the infiltration of games into the everyday lives of the least likely gamers.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (Deluxe) I lived for this...

browneyedgirlmw — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:11:07 -0400

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (Deluxe)

I lived for this game as a kid. My parents liked it because it was fairly educational, and I used to love running back and forth between the computer and our Encyclopedia Brittanicas digging up clues. I would play this game again in a HEARTBEAT. Already trying to find abandonware that will run for me.

“Back in my day…”

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:36:32 -0400

“Back in my day…”

Link: megadget.nyc??? I Will Pounce on That Like a Tiger

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:01:17 -0400

Link: megadget.nyc??? I Will Pounce on That Like a Tiger

It's Here! The "Resolutionary" 3rd Gen iPad

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:21:00 -0500

Everything you need to know about the new 3rd generation iPad HERE.

This is a bit of a lazy post, I know, but I didn’t follow the announcement that closely and Gizmodo has a much more detailed list than I could ever give.

By the way, I stand corrected. They upped the ante with a 5 MP camera!

Big enough dork to register on the Hunger Games Capitol website,...

browneyedgirlmw — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:44:00 -0500

Big enough dork to register on the Hunger Games Capitol website, too ashamed to actually use my real Twitter/Facebook. Go ahead and follow my new handle @MeggieW1, her only purpose in life is to get me a District ID.

Your iPad 3 Will Have an Updated Camera. Love, Captain Obvious

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:46:00 -0500

iPad 3 rumors have been getting louder and louder in the past few weeks, with many predicting a March launch date.

So, upgrades: the camera. This is a no-brainer. Here is something that Apple does that never ceases to annoy me: they create a device, say the iPad 1, missing a certain feature like a camera. When they released the iPad 1 they were months away from the release of the iPhone 4, which boasted a 5-megapixel camera with 5x digital zoom, yet the iPad had no camera whatsoever.

When they introduced the iPad 2 one year later, there was a front- and rear-facing camera, greatly increasing the things you could do with it via apps, including “so-cool-I -had-to-have-it-but-I’ve-used-it-exactly-three-times-in-one-year” app Star Walk. However the camera itself was LAUGHABLY low megapixel-ed. 2? 1? Oh, no, you’re far too generous. 0.3 (front), 0.7 (back). Are. You. Kidding me. Come on.

Clearly, the iPad is not a camera and should not be anyone’s primary photo-taking device, but I expect a little more quality for something like this, especially if I’m using it to video chat. I mean, my online banking won’t even let me use it to take images of checks for deposit; I have to use my iPhone (#firstworldproblems).

Apple made a strategic move in making the camera so ridiculously weak. By holding out on us year after year, they don’t even need to come up with any groundbreaking technology to make last year’s device look like Teddy Ruxpin next to this year’s RoboTron 3000 (don’t bother Googling that, I made it up). They just need to upgrade the camera to something 1/8 the capability of their top-performing device. It’s GENIUS.

Regardless, I won’t be upgrading this time around, especially because a faulty backlight meant that my iPad 2 was replaced 2 months ago, giving me a brand spanking new device. I hope those of you who do — assuming it’s really happening — enjoy your 1.3 MP camera (among other much more impressive and exciting upgrades, I’m sure).

February 1st is An Important Day

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:20:54 -0500

Because it is ~~my birthday~~ National Change Your Password Day (it is also my birthday).

Protect yo’ stuff.

2 Things I Miss About My BlackBerry

browneyedgirlmw — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:51:00 -0500

Ok, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE my iPhone. I’ve been waiting to get one since they came out. First, I had to wait because I didn’t want to leave Verizon, then because I wasn’t due for a new phone. I was utterly thrilled to finally get it, and it trumps BlackBerry and the dying RIM in almost every way possible. BUT, there are a few things that I miss about it, and that have become glaring omissions from my iPhone after four years of BB use.

1. Indicator light

People who never really used BB’s don’t get the big deal on this, but this little convenience was so freaking nice. I hate that if I leave my phone for a little while, I can’t glance across the room and see if I’ve been contacted. I’ve been so conditioned to be used to that silent little red light that it’s always a bit of a shock to pick up my blank, black iPhone only to turn it on and see I have 2 emails, a text and a missed call.

2. No alarm vibrate

Ever since I went to college and started getting drunk dials from beloved high school friends at 4am, I have put my phone on silent before bed. Any phone with a built-in alarm will know “silent mode” doesn’t apply to the alarm, but I need a little something extra. I have a problem where I hate being awakened by loud noises but generally sleep too soundly in the morning to wake up by something gentle. My solution for this in the past has been to add a vibrate to the alarm tone, usually guaranteeing that I would wake up just based on the sound of the vibration alone. Well, iPhones don’t allow you to do this unless you turn “vibrate” on for the whole device. Which means: not only do you have to remember to do that each night if your general preference is to have it off when you’re silent, but it also means that I was woken up this morning before my alarm for this text:

Isn’t he the best?

I’m sure there are probably apps that will work around this, maybe, but I prefer to use a native app for something like an alarm/scheduling.

Anyway, iPhone > BB for me, but I’d like to see something in the future that addresses these things that I, an Important Person, have outlined. If I have missed a magical app that cures these problems, please tell me!

Gawker: How Old Does Google Think You Are?

browneyedgirlmw — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:08:00 -0500

Gawker: How Old Does Google Think You Are?:

As for me, “No interest or demographic categories are associated with your ads preferences so far.” I am a sly internet fox.

I hate it when websites try to use young, hip lingo instead of...

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:13:52 -0500

I hate it when websites try to use young, hip lingo instead of the standards. Case in point: “Ok, cool.” Don’t put words in my mouth, Incase. The “ok” in my head is more like, “ugh, annoying…ok.”

SOPA is dead. Nice work.

browneyedgirlmw — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:08:16 -0500

SOPA is dead. Nice work.

Gizmodo: iTunes U Puts Entire College Courses on Your iPad This...

browneyedgirlmw — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:25:00 -0500

Gizmodo: iTunes U Puts Entire College Courses on Your iPad

This is pretty sweet. I just downloaded a ton of lectures and videos. I’m already having flashforwards of myself torturing my kids by playing these on long car rides.

Apple Launches iBooks 2

browneyedgirlmw — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:23:00 -0500

And they happen to be right around the corner from my office at the Guggenheim! Oddly, I wasn’t invited (rude).

Calling this an “Education Announcement,” Apple had many anticipating a Textbooks app, and instead they presented an allover update of iBooks as well as an app for authors. iBooks 2 will add textbooks to the iBookstore, and iBooks Author will give any publisher the ability to create an interactive learning platform, complete with videos, custom flash cards, and multitouch gestures. There will be instant quizzes built in to the textbooks, and you can highlight anything you like (like current iBooks) and take notes.

Apple is also launching an app called iBooks Author, with which educators and book publishers can create content for any kind of book. A very cool feature of this is the ability to integrate Keynote into a book’s text. iBooks Author is available now and will be free.

So far, the textbook subjects are Algebra, Biology, Chemistry, Geometry and Physics, via McGraw-Hill and Pearson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will be next). They are all $14.99 and for grades 9-12. I cannot tell you how tempted I am to just buy one to see what it’s like…I’m pretty sure I will end up doing that. I anticipate Biology being the most attractive…in the meantime, E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth is available for free, so download it. Now.

One of the most important takeaways from this is that Apple has partnered with textbook publishers, and planning to work with more. Many who anticipated this move were concerned that Apple would make themselves a competitor.

Check your updates…the new iBooks should already be there!

*One day I will be important enough that I can just tell the press, “Meghan has an announcement on x day at x time” and they will just show up in droves. It would be awesome if sometime Apple was just like, “And the annoucement is…we got new desk chairs! They’re ergonomic!”

All Things D Live Blog

NY Times: In Tech, Starting Up by Failing

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:59:42 -0500

NY Times: In Tech, Starting Up by Failing

See tomorrow’s SOPA blackout list here.

browneyedgirlmw — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:18:20 -0500

See tomorrow’s SOPA blackout list here.