No more Xbox?

This is an interesting article that I came across on Yahoo. The article is previewing a new gaming system called OnLive. It is from a company out in California and is designed to eliminate the need for older conventional gaming systems such as Xbox, Playstation, and even gaming PCs. The basic premise for the system is an online game system that streams games right to the users television without the need for a separate counsel or game disc. In theory this sounds like a great idea... The company advertises that it saves space, money (no need ot buy countless disks or replacing damaged ones), and no need to buy multiple gaming system. However, I do have some concerns and questions.



I will preface all of this with saying that I am not a gamer and am very bad at most video games. My first concern is bandwidth. This product works by being plugged into the users internet connection (i.e. cable modem). There are obvious problems with this. 1)You are limited by bandwidth, so if the connection is bad the games are going to be shoty. 2) It will most likely use so much bandwidth that no one else in the house will be able to use the internet. 3) ISPs most likely will not like the constant bandwidth being pumped to the house. 4) If the internet drops in the middle of a game there is not recovering. A second issue, is there a way to save game? Since it is all played online there is not memory to save it to. Finally there is concern with price. The company has yet to release any pricing for the product, but says that it will be competitive with Xbox Live. I can foresee this getting very expensive quickly if users are not careful.

In theory this product sounds like it could be a great thing, but there are still many kinks that need to be worked out.

Web Site design practice

My Favorite Things

I'm going to write out some of my favorite things, so you can learn more about me.

• Spring weather


• The color red


• White Sox Baseball

Ooops: Gmail undo.

This is an article I found that addresses one of the most interesting, and I think practical, new additions to gmail. According to the writer, Google has been putting applications into gmail for about a year that, for lack of a better phrase "save you from yourself". These applications attempt to insure that the mail being sent is how the user intended it.

For instance, there is a feature that searches for the word attachment in the email and checks to see if there is actually a document attached. There is another feature that prohibits people from sending drunk emails. I am not sure how many people actually do send drunk emails... perhaps a feature the prevented drunk phone calls or texts might be better used. Nevertheless, if a person tries to send an email at the early hours of the morning gmail has them solve a simple math problem first. While, it sounds like these feature might be somewhat annoying there is of course a way to deactivate them.

However, the newest feature is the one that I find to be most helpful and intriguing, the undo function. This feature allows the user to unsend an email up to 5 seconds after it has sent. I can remember countless times when I have sent an email and then realized that I misspelled a word or typed in a wrong phone number. The undo function is a great idea and I am surprised that no one thought of it earlier. However, if there was one change I would make it would be to give a larger window than 5 seconds. Google officials say that there is an option to increase the interval to 10 seconds, but I still think that is a little short. As the author suggests it would be nice if gmail put the emails into an outbox queue and held them there for a minute or two. Gmail officials did also say that they might increase the interval depending on feedback from users, but they did not want to make it too long so as to delay to email substantially. Regardless of whether or not they choose to increase the interval I still think it is a great feature and another indication of how Google is on the cutting edge of enhancing applications that we normally take advantage of like email, web browsers, and word processors.

This is the album cover I made using a random hit in Wikipedia, a random quote and a random image from flickr. The name of the band is People's Budget and the album is "To be successful." In order to create this image I took an image and cut out the roses so that they would be visible in original form. Then I added a cutout filter to the background. I used a lighting filter to create the shadows. I then added the text and put drop shadows and outer glows over them. Finally I added noise to the band's name. Below is also the original image.