Voice Chat Made Easy?

I just heard about a nice little communications programme that could replace IRC, IMchat and Voice Comms (such as vent and teamspeak) in one package. Initial reports sound good, I'll post more once I've tested it out, or feel free to add you own coments if you know about this package already!

Here's some info from their website

GameComm
brings your computer game to life by integrating voice with instant
messaging, file transferring, a bulletin board, and much more, into a
single program. Using these features, you can handle all of your gaming
business with one program instead of having to swap between several.
This keeps you organized and allows you to focus on your game. Included
among our features are:

• Clear Voice Communication


• Instant Messaging



• Bulletin Board


• File Transfer System


• Server Broadcast System

Neo yuppie Scum

Hohoho.... merry Christmas. Hope you all had a good one. And if you don't celebrate it... I hope you enjoyed the 25th of December as much as the next guy.

Here's a link I picked up which I thought was quite amusing and went some way to addressing the erosion of good ole Christmas to the politically correct police:

http://www.illwillpress.com/xmas.html
not work safe. Needs sound.

Project Entropia

I downloaded Project Entropia last night. Because it sounded interesting. You may remember it was on the news not long agon when somone bid $100k USD for an in-game item: www.project-entropia.com/.

If I think of anything positive to tell you about my experience I promise you'll be the first to know.

Here instead is what WIKIPEDIA has to say about the game:

The game can be downloaded and played for free, however "newbies" when they first start playing are not given any other items or clothing beyond a bright orange jumpsuit. As such, although you can play for free, more involved gameplay is very difficult. Players with little or no money are limited to the following actions:

* using the game as a chat room.
* an in-game process called "sweating" or "sweat gathering" where you spend time using your in-game mind force concentration abilities on a trapped creature in exchange for bottles of "Vibrant Sweat"from the creature, which can be sold to other players for (very low) PED value.[1]
* gather "dung" and "fruits" which also can be sold to other players.
* perform numerous "jobs" where you can: act as trader, selling other players stuff for provision; act as a "runner", helping other players to hunt. (Note: the Version Update 6.1 introduced a new AI system, making "runners" ineffective...)

One major difference in Project Entropia from other MMORPGs is the ability to convert real world money (via a credit card or similar) into in-game money and vice versa. Money within the game is represented in Project Entropia Dollars (PED). The PED has a fractional currency called PEC (Project Entropia Cents), valued at 1/100 of the main currency: 100 pecs = 1 PED. The exchange rate is fixed at 10 PED to one US Dollar. A transaction fee is charged for converting the currency both ways.

Players may kill and loot tougher creatures which contain a higher than average number of items or PED. Players may also be paid for actions in the game; most of this sort of payback comes from guessing locations for minerals in-game. Similar to gambling, the payback is usually much less than that which is required to be contributed.


On 14 December 2004, the game creators MindArk announced the conclusion of the first "treasure island sale". This is a virtual island put up for auction. The winning bidder, Zachurm "Deathifier" Emegen, paid 265,000 PED (US$26,500) for the island. At the time this was believed to be the highest price ever paid for a virtual item. According to the article, it is "a large island off a newly discovered continent surrounded by deep creature infested waters. The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property, an old volcano with rumors of fierce creatures within, the outback is overrun with mutants, and an area with a high concentration of robotic miners guarded by heavily armed assault robots indicates interesting mining opportunities."

24 October 2005: Asteroid Space Resort was bought by "Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs" for a sum of 1,000,000 PED (100,000 US Dollars), greatly surpassing Treasure Island.
"

Twisted Christmas

Ok - so here's the first of some Christmas funnies for you - get headphones or speakers turned up and have some fun:

Jingle Bells Reversed

When it All Goes Wrong for a MMORPG Title

If you ever need a definition of vapourware in MMORPG terms, the obvious (or not so obvious if you don't keep up with MMORPGs) is Mourning.

Mourning is used whenever anyone is asked to pay for cash without seeing the title (as Dark and Light have done).

Here's wikipedia's story - it makes for good reading

And here's a couple of screenshots from Dark and Light so you know it's not vapourware....

Getting a new PC or Broadband from Santa....?

If you are gettinga new PC and/or broadband at Christmas time, make sure you're protected.

Not from Santa, he's a jovial fun loving character who enjoys eating pies and drinking brandy. He shouldn't give you too much trouble, unless he has turned into a l33t hacker since 2004.

Here are three useful links for free software, which will keep everything but the most persistent and skilled techy-troublemakers at bay

1) Malware- a-squared (a-squared) is a complementary product to antivirus software and desktop firewalls on MS Windows computers. Antivirus software specializes in detecting classic viruses. Many available products have weaknesses in detecting other malicious software (Malware) like Trojans, Dialers, Worms and Spyware (Adware). a-squared fills the gap that malware writers exploit.

2) Anti-virus The excellent AVG scanner

3) Firewall - Zone Alarm - the first time you install this you will be plagued with pop-ups asking you to validate each programme that attempts to connect to the web.


All of the above will try to convince you to take out their paid subscriptions and/or "pro" license key. Ignore these requests and you will have free software to protect your computer.

You'll probably need around an hour to set up all of these programmes. Most are well documented, so you shouldn't have too many problems.

Enjoy your surfing this festive period.

So now you're through the archive

I thought I'd give everyone an opportunity to get through the archive before I started posting again ;-). Perhaps not so good for users of RSS readers who like to get through their daily dose of blog over cornflakes and coffee, but hey-ho.

I picked up an interesting article on the The Register. Apparently the X-box 360 isn't doing too well in Japan. Boo hoo. I'm not surprised Japanese don't like it. The Register give some pretty sound reasoning for it.

My personal opinion is it's too expensive for what it is, and there are no games I want to play on it.

For the price of a top of the range graphics card (to twin an existing 7800GTX for an SLI rig) I could have a next gen console? No contest. The answer why is Point 2.

There are no currently available games on the XBox 360 that I want to play, and of the ones that I do (such as Oblivion) they will be out on the PC anyways.

So if I'm gonna be spending £400 on new console rather than upgrading my PC, I think I'll wait for Nintendo's Next gen - which seems to be offering a different gaming experience from PC, 360 and PS3. Time will tell.