Have Laptop Will Travel

Play Quake on your browser via HTML 5

Originally posted on April 6, 2010 @ 8:48 am

This here is the future of gaming, folks. One day in the not-so-distant future, we’ll be playing games on our browsers – without any plugins of some sort.

Played Quake Live before? If you haven’t I suggest you do it – it’s an excellent port of Quake Arena with better graphics, and you play on your browser. However, it uses a plugin, so it’s not exactly the most optimal way to play games on your browser. Same goes for Flash-based games like Farmville.

So what if you can play Quake 2 on your browser – with no plug-in needed? All you need to do it woud be HTML 5 and WebGL. And Google has pulled it off, apparently. Check out the video demo:

According to Download Squad:

They started off with Bytonic Software’s Jake2, a Java port of the open source Quake engine. From there, they re-compiled the engine using the Google Web Toolkit (also OSS), created a WebGL renderer to display the graphics, moved multiplayer communications from UDP to WebSockets (part of the HTML5 spec), and bolted on an emulated filesystem to allow game and preference saves.

However, I’ve looked for the download link in the Google Code page. I can’t find it anywhere. [Read more…]

Are 3-D display laptops the future?

Originally posted on December 11, 2009 @ 12:24 pm

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Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it. It seems that Acer has come up with a laptop that has a 3-D display effect. The 3-D effect is achieved by a transparent polarizing filter overlaid on the screen, which splits images into separate streams for each eye. You would need a pair of special polarizing glasses to get the effect, and if you look at the screen straight-on, you’d get the 3-D effect. Looking at the screen at an angle may actually not show the 3-D. [Read more…]

CrunchPad is not dead, could cost $400

Originally posted on November 17, 2009 @ 6:55 am

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So the world waited with bated breath this November for Michael Arrington’s much-awaited $200 internet tablet, the Crunchpad. And it never arrived. In fact, the way it just disappeared from the zeitgeist made people speculate about its premature demise.

Well Arrington came out and said that no, the CrunchPad is not dead. In fact, it’s going to be out sooner or later and it’s going to cost between $300-$400, with sponsorship (probably like Google sponsoring Firefox by being its default search engine). [Read more…]

Litl Easel

Originally posted on November 9, 2009 @ 8:09 am

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I know what you’re thinking: what is the Litl Easel? It’s apparently a “webbook,” or an internet appliace. It’s designed to get the clutter of an operating system out of the way. The custom operating system will take you straight to the browser and open up multiple windows to do tasks straight in the cloud. [Read more…]

Halo 3 cases scratches game disks

Originally posted on September 26, 2007 @ 11:44 pm

Say what you will about Sony and the Playstation 3 — high prices, delays in top tier titles, the snafu with the rumble feature — at least the company releases products that have a measure of quality that assures customers. Look at the rushed release of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the immediate complaints about its powercords, overheating issues and the dreaded ring of death. Playstation 3 may have been left at the gate but from the initial reviews of the unit, it was relatively quiet (compared to the 360’s industrial level drone) and overheating issues were very few, if at all apparent.

Microsoft seems to have built a reputation for always coming out with rushed products. You just need to look at all of their software, which are technically working betas than final releases, the aforementioned Xbox 360, and now Halo 3. I have yet to hear about glitches on the software itself but, predictably, complaints are being posted on the internet about the game case scratching disks.  I’m not wholely blaming Microsoft for this fiasco because they surely have contracted a third party to manufacture the cases but shouldn’t these things also be tested? In fairness to Microsoft, they have acted quickly about this complaint, not like their very slow acknowledgement of the ring of death issue.

I know I’m going to get a lot of hate mail from Xbox fanboys for this one…