Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Final Fantasy VIII Released – Initial Impressions

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Final Fantasy 13 Review

So the latest instalment of the Final Fantasy series is upon us, I’m sorry to say I’m not hardcore enough to have completed it yet (it does come on 3 discs!), but thought I’d share my initial impressions:

The game seems to remain fairly true to the previous titles, with lashings of gorgeous visuals, scantily clad female heroins, some extremely bad chat in the script and even the little white hand as the selector in the menus. If you’ve played any of the previous titles you’ll certainly feel right at home, not that it’s a necessity. The beginning of the game is nicely set up for people who are new to the series.

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Iron Man 2 Trailer Released

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Iron Man 2

So I now know what I’m doing on the 30th April (take that all you Americans who don’t get it until the 7th May!), this should be rather tasty! Just found out about this new Iron Man 2 trailer so thought I’d share it with you in case you’ve been missing out.

For those who haven’t seen the original… shame on you! I can’t speak for the female demographic (well I could but it wouldn’t be particularly well researched…), but if you’re male and have nerdy tendencies, you’ll love it. It’s the ultimate blokes film, now go rent it or something before I find out you’ve not seen it.

The new film (the second of of a planned trilogy), deals with a second ‘uber geek’ who creates the expected rival suit. In fact many suits from what I can see in the trailer. Then he annoys Stark by stopping him from winning a car race he’s in so they have a massive fight or three. Now I’m sure that’s not really going to be the story line but who cares! It’s all about the visual effects (which incidentally look rather tasty), story line’s a bonus in my opinion – can I hear you say Transformers 2?

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5 Desktop Applications You Didn’t Know About, But Need

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Open-Source Logo

A lot of the time, when people but a new PC/laptop, they just don’t know what software to install on it. There are a few key bits of software that everyone should have, that tend to make life a lot easier – in fact, many seasoned PC users won’t have even come across these, but I’m going to share some of the best bits and pieces with you today. I’d say that a decent amount of the best desktop applications available today are ‘open source’, meaning that instead of being developed entirely by one self-contained company, the software is open and available for anyone to work on and contribute to. It’s both a cool philosophy, and conducive to the production of very user-friendly and user-orientated software. So here are a few of my favourites:
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Use FlashHacker To Keep Your Video’s Full Screen On Your Second Monitor Whilst You Work

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Anyone who uses multiple monitors has tried to have a video running in one full screen whilst working in the other. Needless to say it doesn’t work, which made me sad. Fortunately help is at hand in the shape of FlashHacker. It’s all very simple, download, close all of your browser windows, run, then click on Hack My Flash. That’s it, you should now be able to watch video on a monitor in full screen whilst working in the other – simples!

(For whatever reason I had to hack, unhack then re-hack my Flash to get this working… No idea why but if it’s not working certainly something to try… copy blindly! (I apologise, that’s a bit of an ‘in’ joke). Anyway, just a little something for my fellow multiple monitor users out there, hope it’s useful.)

Via – Lifehacker (A fantastic site – if you haven’t it’s well worth a read!)


Remember The Milk – Web Based To Do List

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Remember The Milk - New age to do lists

My memory is horrendous, no worse than that… Put it like this, I’m one step away from writing whatever I wish to remember in permanent ink on my forehead. Now, what was I talking about again?

All jokes aside, if I find anything that can aid me in my quest to be able to actually remember something, I’m certainly going to check it out. The other day I found out about a website called Remember The Milk which promised to do just that with a web based to-do list.

First things first – it looks nice and friendly. Who wouldn’t want to use a website with a cool logo like that?! The whole interface, right from the sign up page, makes you want to use it. All you need to do to get started is go through a standard “enter your email here” etc. and you’re set.

Right, so you’ve signed up and logged in, now what? Well that obviously depends on what you want to use the site for. I think there’re two main ways to use it; as an out and out to-do list, or as a replacement for your main calender. I already use Microsoft Exchange to sync my Google Calender to my phone and so am only really interested in the to-do list part. It works fairly well as a full calender, but Google tend to take some beating.

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4 Free Applications Every Nokia Smartphone User Should Use

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Applications for Nokia Phones

Mention the iPhone and people can’t help but talk about ‘apps’. What many people don’t seem to realise is that similar applications have been available on Nokia’s smartphone OS – Symbian (s60) – for years. The problem is they’ve never really had an App Store equivalent, even the recently created Ovi Store doesn’t do much mustard cutting.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t great applications out there for Nokia phone owners in 2010, they’re just harder to find. Once you’ve found them though, you’ll be pleased to know that s60 supports multitasking (so you can laugh at iPhone users who have to quit one application if they want to check something in another :) ). I’ve included a list of applications I feel everyone should use (all of which are free), and if you’re the proud owner of a new phone which runs s60 you really should check them out. All the applications I suggest work for the E71, I’m sure they’ll be fine on the majority of others as well but I don’t own the phones to check!

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Facebook App Released For Zune HD – Doesn’t work

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

ZuneHD

So Microsoft has finally got around to releasing a Facebook app for the Zune HD, something I think all owners have been clamouring for since its release. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work, well at least not yet. At the moment all I can access through it are my notifications, the albums I’ve uploaded and my basic info. Microsoft are certainly aware of the problem as you can see from Zune’s twitter feed, so fingers crossed it shouldn’t be that long until it’s fully functional.

I’ll do a proper review once the app’s up and running in a way that’s actually works but initial impressions are good. The UI is nice and clean, as you come to expect when using the Zune, and as far as I can tell includes all the functionality you’d want from an app like this.

Now come on Microsoft, as far as I understand it the reason you’ve not opened up third party app support is so you can control the quality of the apps. I imagine someone’s getting a fair old face-slapping somewhere right about now!

P.S. To all you iPhone/iPod Touch owners, I know you’ve had a Facebook app since time began, forgive me for getting excited about something so mundane! :)


5 Great Games That Now Cost Less Than Lunch

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Sat in the confines of my hideously cramped lair (or intimate boudoir as I refer to it when I try to kiss girls), wallowing amongst a sea of macaroni cheese encrusted crockery, desperately trying to conserve body heat by positioning myself in front of my PC’s heat extractor fan, I realise one thing; the chances of me purchasing a games title released anytime in the last six months are akin to those of Mr. Berlusconi adopting the lifestyle of a monk. I therefore have the choice of attempting to resurrect my floundering social life and congeal into the corner of my local watering hole with a pint of tap water, or of dusting off a few retro titles and reliving some of my personal pinnacles of gaming experiences. Needless to say I deployed a good old fashioned sense of reason and spent the last week or so doing just that (the latter, of course).

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Facebook App For iPhone Updated; Contact Sync & Push Notifications

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Facebook App Icon

Hello interweb, my old friend… I’ve come to speak to you again. So it’s been a while, huh? My apologies! Cyber-slapping in retribution aside, today I’ll be talking about one of the more useful iPhone apps – Facebook – and  more specifically an interesting update it has recently had.

So as I mentioned, the Facebook app had a major update, around a month ago (I know, I’m behind the times…. shocking effort…) which included the ability to receive ‘push‘ updates & synchronisation of the important bits of your Facebook contacts with your iPhone. In case you don’t already know, a ‘Push’ update is one that doesn’t require you to connect to anything to get it, i.e you can have your iPhone in your pocket and as soon as you get a wall post/ comment etc, it will instantly notify your iPhone and pop up a little notification – not unlike a text, for example. I wrote an article a little while back explaining push and so-forth for GMail on your iPhone, you can find it here.

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Use Dropbox To Backup Files, Share With Multiple Computers And Access Them Anywhere

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Dropbox

Dropbox is the ultimate solution for anyone wishing to backup their files, share them across a range of computers or access them anywhere via the web – and the best part is that it’s free! I know I’m late to the game (I’ve been using Windows Home Server to share files over the web) but this solution is so much more elegant. I just started using it a couple of days ago so thought I’d write a review to share my experiences.

Supported on Windows, Linux and Mac, it basically creates a folder on your computer, automatically syncing anything in it to a secure location on the web, updating files as soon as they change. These files are easily accessed via the website and will immediately update on any computer you’ve installed Dropbox on. It really is as good as it sounds, bet you’ve wanted something like this for ages yes?

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