May 2011 Xbox Games for Cheap Bastards #xbox360 #xbox

 

Well the following bargain bin (less than $20) games are recommended games for the Xbox 360 if you have not already purchased them.

1. Mass Effect 2
   The block buster RPG/Shooter hybrid from last year, if you have not gotten it it’s time to purchase it now!
2. Alan Wake
   Great Thriller/Survival horror story game.  The story is great, I just hope they make a sequel to this one as it did not do that well in the market place.  There are a plethora of memorable moments in this game.
3. Bayonetta
   Action game in very much the same vein as Devil May Cry, great story, the skill settings allow people of all skill levels enjoy the story.
4. Enslaved
   Platformer Action Adventure type game, a bit short, very good story, the platforming is a bit dumbed down.
5. Mirrors Edge
   First person Action Platformer, great story, platforming is somewhat difficult for people with less than perfect timing.  The dificutly of the platforming, unusual 1st person perspective and female protagonist probably all contributed to the less than spectacular showing in the market place.
6. Brütal Legend
   Action Adventure with Real-time Strategy elements added to it and Heavy Metal theme.  Great game produced by Tim Schafer/Double Fine that put Heavy Metal into a game besides a music game.  Some great humor and voice acting by Jack Black.
7. Halo 3
   If you have not played this game you should hang up your Xbox as it is in my opinion the best halo game released until Halo: Reach came out.  The story is great and enthralling with several interesting twists and turns in the story as you play.
8. Halo 3: ODST
   A story that runs parallel to the story in Halo 3, you play as multiple ODST troopers during the fight for New Mombasa and discover what happened to each one during the campaign by finding bits of evidence and having a “flashback” to what happened.

NoDo released for *some* AT&T Windows Phones

Have not written much recently, AT&T finally released NoDo on April 19th for the Samsung Focus and LG Quantum … HTC Surround owners are still out in the cold.

It’s a nice update and fixes some shortcomings like long app switching times, cut & paste and the horrible Marketplace search. Other features for AT&T customers is WISPr support so that you can connect automatically to an AT&T WiFi hotspot for data if one is available. The other feature is integration with AT&T My Contacts, not a feature I care about, but some people may find it nice.

Some announcements surrounding the forthcoming Mango release are especially nice if you a developer and some nice ones for the end user.

Announced end user enhancements

• Multi-Tasking & Fast App Switching
• Twitter Integration
• Added support for SkyDrive
• IE 9 web browser for better standards support
• Improved Bing search results
• More improvements to the Marketplace
• Updated/Improved Games hub
• Custom Ring Tones (wow entering the 2000s with that one)
• App Jump Lists like on the People Hub
• Possibly a new Messaging/IM Hub (no details)

There are a metric buttload of improvements for the developers, many users won’t care about directly, but they will make it possible to do things that the developers wish the could do now.  As a person that getting into development it’s cool and I can’t wait till Mango is released late this year.

I love my Windows Phone, but where’s the %*!$&* updates? #WP7 #windowsphone

I love my windows phone, I think the UI is wonderful the live tiles are a great way of presenting information and the people & media hubs are great ideas.

The only thing that has tarnished the Phone in my opinion is slow updates that is compounded by the fact that MS can’t get it straight as to when the first updates are going to be released … first it was January, then February then early March now late March and AT&T users have not even seen the pre-update that is supposedly needed before the first update can be delivered.

Microsoft in a recent blog post about the update process basically said “it’s complex” and “we have a lot of partners that we have to make happy” well that’s kinda a cop-out.  Microsoft every second Tuesday of the month releases updates for billions of PCs and while there are a few hiccups now and then the vast majority of time there are no issues.  It would be hard to argue that the process of dealing with updates for thousands of different makes of PCs with various hardware configurations and driver updates from even more partners is far more complex. 

So why the issues with Windows Phone?

If the issue is that the partners (phone carriers) need to approve changes to low level code that effect network service and connectivity, then Microsoft should make the updates more modular like the windows updates are.  The updates for UI, bundled applications should be able to be pushed out like the updates for marketplace applications.  This way the broken marketplace search and update Bing, Maps and other non-core OS fixes could be done without having to wait for “Partners” to approve updates and generally muck things up. Possibly this is what the minor update was supposed to do, nobody at MS is saying anything useful, all they seem to be doing is pussy footing around the issue for fear of pissing off their “Partners”, maybe they need some better partners.

Winter Themed Wallpapers for Windows Phone 7

I’ve made up some winter wallpapers for Windows Phone 7 from some pictures I took last January. You can download them and copy them to the phone using the Zune player.

Windows Phone Winter Wallpapers VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL