Hasta La Gadget!

People aren’t likely to tell you how bad your photos are, or how much your photo stream is boring them to tears. So I’m here to help. Not to help you, to help them, by teaching you which pictures you should not post. Following is a list of my absolute least favorite photos to see. Everything else is fair game. Beyond this list, feel free to shoot anything and everything that would make a good photo. But if it’s on my list, please stop. I’m begging you. I’ve had enough.

Bad Food Photos

This is my number one pet peeve for online photography. Don’t post food photos, unless it’s something absolutely amazing to look at, AND you can take an excellent photo of it without disrupting the diners around you.

Sunrise, Sunset, and Bad Weather

Stop shooting sunrise and sunset. It’s a cheap thrill. Just enjoy the beauty of the moment. Sunrise shots wreak havoc with a camera’s white balance, and that makes them unnaturally dramatic. While it produces a cool image, it isn’t a fair representation of what you see. And sunrise/sunset pictures are just as boring to folks who aren’t there as baby pictures when it’s not your kid. Also, photos of giant thunderclouds or blustery wind never turn out well. It’s impossible to see the weather in a photo like you experience it in person.

Excessive Baby Photos

I’ve been very cautious of this in the last few years, since my son was born. I like seeing baby pictures, especially from my friends’ newborns. But don’t duplicate photos of the same scene, the same action, or the same expression. Shoot thousands of photos, then pick less than 1% to actually show off. The rest are just to embarrass your child later.

Ugly Photos of People

Don’t make your friends look ugly in photos. Don’t take photos from bad angles. No pictures from below. Nobody looks good from that angle. Shoot people from above, looking down on them. Don’t shoot people from the back. Nobody likes how they look from the back. Don’t shoot people at their ugliest moments. I don’t just mean your friends. I mean people you see in public. People who are poorly dressed at WalMart. People who fell asleep on the subway. Definitely not people in a fight. That’s what video is for.

Giving the Finger

“You look like a jerk, not like a punk rocker”

This one irks me so much I gave it its own spot. I joined a Facebook group for a summer camp I attended in Middle School. I didn’t have a great time there, but I thought I’d check in to see the people I actually did like. Almost every photo from the old days had people giving the camera the finger. It reminded me of everything I hate about them. It’s not funny. It’s not fun. You look like a jerk, not like a punk rocker.

Action Figures Doing Stuff

How many photos of G.I. Joe figures, or Star Wars figures, or Lego minifigs have I waded through? Thousands. All with captions. In my life, I think I’ve seen 1 funny action figure shot. If you don’t work for Robot Chicken, you’re not funny enough to post these pictures. Move on, try something else. Tie them to a sparkler and light them on fire, like a normal kid.

Photos of the Stage (if you have bad seats)

If I can’t see the band clearly in your photo, don’t post it. The band Phish has an amazing light show. It can produce photos that are occasionally cool. But they all look the same. Plus, it just depresses me that you couldn’t get better tickets. I hate having horrible seats at a concert. Your photo just reminds me of the worst concerts I’ve been to.

Screenshots of Twitter or Text Message Conversations

Once I learned that it was easy to fake a text message chat, DamnYouAutocorrect.com lost much of its charm. But that only proves that the only text message conversations worth reading are usually fakes curated by a good editor. Also, you don’t need to show me your thrilling, ironic conversation on Twitter. I don’t need that kind of proof. Just tell me about it, that will do.

Photos of a TV Screen or Monitor

Don’t take photos of a misspelled caption on the TV. Don’t use your phone to take a photo of the error message on your computer. I get it. The Blue Screen Of Death can strike anywhere. I believe you. You don’t need to prove it by posting a photo of the Jumbotron.

Expensive Stuff You Just Bought

Be humble with your purchases. There is a fine line between collecting and bragging. There’s no reason to be embarrassed by success and wealth, but taking photos of your new diamond ring or your expensive watch can be off-putting. Unless you’ve found a rare collector’s item that nobody with a huge wad of cash could walk into a store and buy, you’re essentially just duplicating a page from a catalogue, and I hate getting catalogues in the mail. Except Victoria’s Secret. Please, never stop sending those.

Anything From Your Office

“I will steal your lunch”

Home office. Company headquarters. Unless you work at Google, your office is very dull. By day, I work for a major technology manufacturer. We have cool gadgets floating around all the time. But I can’t post pictures of anything cool. You’ll just see cubicles. And conference rooms. And people you don’t know doing silly things that are only funny after 8 hours of plastering my butt to a seat. Definitely do not post signs hanging in your break room. I have my own break room, and it has its own signs. If you show me one of those signs in a photo, I promise I will steal your lunch, especially if you make a tasty sandwich.

The Average Old Thing You Found in a Cardboard Box

Hey, I found my old Palm Treo! Here’s a picture of it. Look! It’s a miniUSB cord! Remember when we all used those instead of microUSB? Wow! A ribbon from an old typewriter! We were so silly back then. Blech. If it wasn’t important enough to photograph then, and you weren’t alive before NASA faked the moon landing, then I don’t care to see it in pictures.

Nothing

Seriously. No photos of nothing. Look at your photo. Is there something there? Can I see it? Is it interesting? If you could not answer yes to these questions, please do not post your photo.

Bonus: Things I Will Begin to Hate Very Soon

Feet

I have to admit, I don’t mind feet. I’m not a fetishist. I just have nothing against feet. Feet in a photo can add a little drama and perspective. Feet on a beach, not at all interesting. But a work friend just posted a photo looking down at her feet, and she was clearly sitting in the middle of the street at the top of a hill in San Francisco. That’s a cool shot. So, I’ll give feet a pass for now, but consider this a first warning.

Writing

It seems stupid to post a photo of a handwritten note as a way to deliver your message, but somehow I don’t yet mind the style. This is only cool for one more month. As of September, 2012, you are no longer allowed to do this.

Tickets

I like tickets because of what they reveal about you. You may think your airline ticket is only showing me where you’re going. But I also see whether you get to sit in first class. Whether you’re a window or an aisle person, or the loser stuck in the middle. If you have good seats to the concert (and if not, NO PHOTOS). In excess, these will surely drive me crazy, but for now I’m not against ticket photos.

[Image credits: Simon Carr; Sergey Alifanov; Michael Lockner]

Learning Photo Posting Social Skills is written by Philip Berne & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft’s success in the gaming market has been nothing short of astounding. From starting out as a company with little knowledge about how the market works to becoming the leading console maker for over a year, Microsoft has cemented itself as a major player.

However, the one thing the company is missing right now is a deep first-party game lineup. 343 Industries will undoubtedly help with the Halo 4 launch, and every now and then, something good comes out of Microsoft Game Studios, but I think it’s about time the software giant acquires a major publisher.

Of course, acquiring a major publisher won’t be cheap. Microsoft will need to once again dig down into its massive cash coffers and dole out billions just to get its hands on a major company. But in so doing, it can go a long way in finally establishing itself as a credible threat in software.

Don’t think that doesn’t matter. Part of Nintendo’s success, even during its current downturn, is due to its ability to deliver compelling first-party games. Although the third-party lineup hasn’t always been up to par on Nintendo’s consoles, franchises like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda have kept it propped up.

Microsoft right now really doesn’t have that. As noted, it has Halo, but it needs more. And acquiring all or at least part of a major game publisher could help it become more like Nintendo in all of the right ways.

Luckily for Microsoft, it might have an opening. According to a recent Bloomberg report, Vivendi is considering dumping its equity stake in Activision for $8.1 billion. What’s more, the company has reportedly already talked to Microsoft about it.

“There’s a market out there to invest heavily in gaming and get some real value”

Whether Microsoft should take the deal is decidedly up for debate. But it underscores a broader point: there is a market out there for major companies, like Microsoft, to invest heavily in gaming and get some real value for its cash outlay.

Of course, Microsoft has been spending a serious amount of cash as of late. The company acquired Skype for $8.5 billion and offered up $1.2 billion for Yammer. Add that to the cash it’s spending on patents, and Microsoft appears to be willing and ready to write checks.

Unfortunately, the company really hasn’t done enough in the gaming space. It’s about time for the software giant to find a suitable target and start spending some money.

The issue is, which company should Microsoft consider acquiring? It’s not as easy as one might think. Electronic Arts is probably off the table and Activision Blizzard can’t be bought outright. Ubisoft might be a suitable choice, but who knows if it’s willing to be let go. Perhaps Take-Two Interactive, which would come in more cheaply, could be a fine option.

Exactly which major publisher Microsoft should acquire is up to the software company. But it’s time for Microsoft to make a choice.

Why Microsoft Should Acquire A Major Game Publisher is written by Don Reisinger & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Earlier today, Verizon and GameTanium released info on their new game subscription service for mobile devices, this once again proving that the world is still, despite all other greatnesses, unable to reconcile with the high cost of smartphones and tablets. We’re in a place right now where it’s actually quite normal, at least across the USA, for a person to own a mobile device that has access to the internet. What isn’t normal is the idea that a person would own one of these magical tiny computers without a little bit of some video game action embedded within.

The service that Verizon and GameTanium have released today is one in which you can add just a bit more to your monthly data bill in exchange for unlimited access to a vast set of games that would normally cost a one-time fee. This makes access seem invisible while the cost shows up on your monthly bill. Much in the same way that the world has become addicted to using credit cards because you don’t physically see your money leaving your account, so too has carrier billing become an awesome way for carriers (such as Verizon) to create a friendly environment for max cash transfers.

This game hub they’re promoting is part of a much greater wave of similar techniques.

NVIDIA did it, Qualcomm is still trying to do it, and several other groups have their own game hubs for Android devices in an effort to make the whole app-finding experience easy enough for the common person to access. At the carrier level, it’s set to work, leading skeptical prospective smartphone buyers to see the value in owning a device that costs them tens of dollars a month rather than fives.

If you’re on the fence about buying a smartphone instead of a feature phone with nothing more than text and voice, a package full of games is just the ticket to drive you in. Smartphones have had one or two games on them since the dawn of the smartphone in general, now Verizon and GameTanium are taking this method up a notch.

Will it work?

It sure as heck is working for NVIDIA.

As for the carrier end of things, we’ll see over the next few months. We’re staying in close contact with Verizon on this one, so we’ll let you know!

Video Games drag us kicking and screaming into the mobile future is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Kickstarter has its latest king, and the Ouya Android console has found itself at the eye of a perfect storm of geek-appeal. Satisfying the retro lusts of console gamers with the open-source idealism of Android aficionados, all wrapped up in a minimal casing the designer cred of which should satisfy all but the most staunch of minimalists, Ouya has unsurprisingly blasted past the $3m mark and, with 28 days left to run, could well become the next poster-child of crowdsourced funding. Make no mistake, though; if previous Kickstarter heroes like Twine and Pebble thought they had problems, Ouya faces a nightmare along with all that cash.

If you’ve been buried beneath a WiFi-shielding rock for the past few days, here’s the recap. Ouya arrived on Kickstarter looking for $950,000 to create the perfect 21st Century console. Android-based, running NVIDIA’s capable Tegra 3 quadcore processor, and with a list of hack-friendly credentials, the coup de grâce was the compact Yves Behar design which suddenly made mainstream consoles look bloated and ugly. In contrast, Ouyo looks expensive and “premium”, all the more surprising when the eponymous team responsible for it said the target price was just $99.

Cue frenzy. Within the space of around seven hours the initial goal had been met. The $2m pledge mark was passed in less than 24hrs and now, only a few hours later again, Ouya is beyond $3m and shows little sign of slowing. The team has had to dramatically increase the number of consoles on offer, boosting the $99 tier to 80,000 units (of which, at time of writing, a quarter have been taken).

“Thus begins the headache”

Thus begins the headache. Ouya sensibly gave itself plenty of time to translate money into product, and the first consoles aren’t expected to ship until March next year. That also leaves plenty of time for arguments over what, exactly, Ouya will and won’t do to flourish. The comments section over at the Kickstarter page is already seeing pulls in different directions, with some demanding more agile hardware, others wanting a device that mimics a Google TV or even a full Android computer, concerns that the top-tier of games will be too much for it, or that Ouya is already behind when it comes to cloud gaming or emulation.

Twine and Pebble were broad in their scope, certainly, but nowhere near as flexible as Ouya could be. That’s a blessing and a curse when you’re trying to concentrate on getting hardware out of the door as a start-up.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are, with their respective consoles, the obvious targets. None of the three has done particularly well in pushing “mini games” or challenging the casual gaming market in the same way as we’ve seen flourish on smartphones and tablets. Sony has only really begun to explore PlayStation Certification for mobile devices, while Microsoft’s few forays into Xbox LIVE-connected games on Windows Phone are limited not least by the comparatively small audience of actual Windows Phone users. Nintendo, meanwhile, resolutely refuses to license much-loved (and thus inevitably popular) classic titles like Super Mario for iOS or Android.

What all three companies know, though, is that being a player in the mainstream gaming market is hugely expensive. $3m, though impressive for a Kickstarter campaign, is a drop in the proverbial ocean for a console. That’s before you take into account the presumably tight margins involved when you’re selling your fancy box for $99 rather than double or triple that.

Ouya is yet to reveal exactly how much it expects to make in profit on each sale, but a topical comparison is Google’s Nexus 7 tablet. That, IHS iSuppli suggested today, costs around $152 in materials, with Google charging $199 street price. Obviously the console lacks a display, touchscreen and battery, so we can knock $75 off that BOM from the start, though the quality casing (versus the Nexus tablet’s plastic) and wireless controller will add their own costs.

“Ouya can’t afford not to keep track of Android OS updates”

Ouya and the Nexus 7 face another similarity: software updates. Android has a well-established reputation for fragmentation, something that has driven a cottage industry of ROM-tinkerers flourish around phones and tablets running the OS. In comparison, the traditional console market is stagnant, both in software and hardware; the Xbox 360 is relatively little changed since when it first went on sale in 2005, for instance, and Microsoft have suggested that it won’t see a replacement until 2015. A ten year product cycle in mobile devices is unheard of.

What the Ouya team can’t afford to do, however, is mimic that slower pace: they need to keep track of OS updates. As we’ve seen on Android phones, apps intended for the more recent versions often won’t play nicely with the older versions; unless Ouya expects developers to code special titles solely for the console – which undermines part of the reason for picking the widely-adopted Android in the first place – it will need to maintain pace with the rest of the market. That’s something big OEMs like Samsung, HTC and Motorola struggle with at the best of times, never mind a niche console manufacturer.

Long before the “#firstworldproblems” meme, my mother used to have a similar saying. If she caught me agonizing over an ostensibly pleasant problem – how to pick between two toys at the store, for instance – she’d remind me that “it’s a nice problem to have.” The message, of course, is that there are worse situations to be in than having to decide how to spend $3m+. Ouya’s celebrations could well be short-lived: promises are cheap, but building a successful business in a cut-throat segment is very, very difficult.

With $3m Ouya’s problems are just starting is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I have played Diablo III for dozens of hours. I have beaten the normal difficulty level with one of my “Heroes,” and I have made solid progress with a variety of characters representing each class. I came to the new sequel already a fan. I played through and beat Diablo II perhaps a dozen times, at nearly every difficulty level with every type of character. But now I’m done. I’m moving on. It finally hit me: Diablo III is the worst game I’ve ever played, for hours and hours and hours.

There is a moment playing Diablo games when it hits you. Why am I still playing? It’s a tough question to wrestle with, since this is the same question that could ruin all video games for you. What’s the point? So, I started to think about my favorite games. Some games have a great story line. You can make different choices each time, and affect the outcome, subtly or drastically. Some games are interspersed with amazing set pieces so massive in scale that you cannot wait to reach them. Some games offer challenging puzzles, with multiple ways to solve them, so you can constantly replay to try each permutation.

Most of all, though, the best games are simply fun to play. Video games run with the idea that “half the fun is getting there.” In the best games, that’s almost all of the fun. There are very few games that I replay continually just to see the ending. The actual gameplay has to be very fun. In fact, the gameplay has to be just as fun when you lose as when you win. I have a maxim of gaming that you should never expect to complete a gaming task once. Even the most difficult feat in gaming will often be repeated. So, it must be fun. Losing has to be almost as enjoyable as winning.

Diablo is simply no fun. The gameplay is beyond repetitive. It’s inane. It’s completely lifeless. It is mouse clicking with a few keyboard shortcuts thrown in. The entire game boils down to: look at that monster, I’m going to click on it until it’s dead. There is very little skill, or even thought involved in playing the game. There are no puzzles to solve, no riddles, no mysteries. There is a plot, but it is almost entirely revealed in high-quality cut scene movies between the action. Almost nothing you do in the game feels like it is contributing to the storyline.

It used to be that Diablo was about collecting cool weapons and leveling-up your character. You play more and you gain more awesome toys and cool abilities. To a small extent that is still true. But Blizzard has made serious mistakes in the game design and, at the risk of sounding cynical, it seems that much of the problem comes from the new auction house. Users can now buy and sell items in the game with real money. Blizzard takes a huge cut, of course, but you’re still making money from playing the game.

“Blizzard has strewn its virtual world with tons of virtual garbage”

However, look where this has left the game experience. Items are now worth money, which means that Blizzard needs to create an entire level of items that is at once nearly-unobtainable and also very valuable. This pushes down the value of almost all other items in the game. Any item that is not ‘magical,’ which is to say the overwhelming bulk of the items you find, is completely worthless to the player. These items do not add to the gameplay at all, and you can’t sell them. Blizzard has strewn its virtual world with tons of virtual garbage.

Characters gain new abilities as they gain experience, but often these seem like a step backwards. I get new powers that add or augment my existing abilities, but these are often less interesting, or less powerful, than the powers I already had. The special effects look cool, but the action on screen can be jumbled and confusing at times. So, no matter how cool it looks, you are essentially just clicking on a massive pile of bad guys, and repeating this simple act until they all stop moving.

So, Diablo III has some very fundamental flaws, but it is the little things that bother me even more. Some of these are endemic to the hack-and-slash dungeon crawler genre, but the genre, and gaming in general, has grown up significantly in the 11 years since Diablo II was released. While competitors are creating deep virtual worlds and immersive environments, Blizzard has taken the laziest route possible with Diablo III.

Here are some of my favorite examples. In the game, you might have to kill a swarm of bugs. That swarm acts like one single enemy, but looks like a swarm. So, you just click your mouse on it, and your character starts shooting at flies with a crossbow. Some of these flies are so scary your character will run away from them, even though they look like all the other flies, and you wouldn’t know they strike such fear in the hearts of men unless you read the description, which says simply “nightmarish.” Okay, fine, your character kills these nightmarish flies and is rewarded with . . . a suit of armor? What?! Seriously, I’m supposed to believe that this swarm of flies was carrying a suit of armor? What the heck were flies doing with armor? And 80 gold coins? Where did they keep them? I suppose flies in Diablo III have pockets.

There are a few non-player characters, and you are forced to listen to the same repetitive dialogue from them over and over again. It has nothing to do with the plot or the action on screen. You could be fighting a nest of giant spiders, and the Enchantress character will ask if you think one of the boy characters likes her. You could be literally descending into the depths of Hell, and the Scoundrel character might talk about the women he’s taken advantage of. It’s boring and nonsensical, and worst of all, it’s repetitive. Each character has maybe a dozen lines or so that they spew at the weirdest moments, but over the course of a 20 – 30 hour game, you’ll hear these lines over and over again. And you can’t kill these characters. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Diablo III is simply an example of the laziest form of game design. It is as though Blizzard tried to imagine the least effort they could put into improving Diablo II while still calling this a new game, and then cut out half of those ideas. Blizzard has created a world that will make you feel worthless for revisiting. Why am I still playing? I’m not. I’m done.

Diablo III is the Worst Game Ever Made is written by Philip Berne & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.