Link, picture, and video basket – Modern Warfare 3

A few days ago, the first facts and screenshots as well as design studies on Modern Warfare 3 emerged on Kotaku and were almost immediately followed by four official teaser trailers by Activision. So yours truly thought of doing a little collection of what we have here, if not only for not having to hit different locations every time you want to see a trailer. So think of it as a link basket. : )

First off, the box art. Going with the standard laid back walking soldier, who can’t be bothered to duck amidst all the mayhem around him. The black and white colours remind a bit of the Battlefield covers, sans the explosion in front of him.

The details center primarily around the single player, where one of the new main chars is called “Sandman” -

Reminds me of Jim (John Krasinski) in The Office -

but that doesn’t matter. The following are the four official teaser trailers.

AM3RICA

3NGLAND

et la FRANC3

l’ALL3MAGN3 gets two 3s

IGN US does a little analysis of the four teasers

Wow, those guys didn’t know the Fernsehturm. However, the two sages did provide with a translation of Makarov’s advice at each vid’s end:

AM3RICA – Destroy the enemy’s hope of winning

3NGLAND – Use everything to your advantage

FRANC3 – Use your opponent’s weaknesses

G3RMANY – Attack from an unknown side

Also, as of a few hours ago, amazon has started taking preorders. It’ll be out on 11-08 in the year two-hundred-eleven.

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On the shoulders of giants -

John Krasinski photo by MTV.

Official Call of Duty Channel is located here.

Auf der Klaviatur des Lebens

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http://2photo.ru/en/post/23073

Nice FAILscreen, latenights!

Some time ago, mashable did a top ten list of FAIL screens (although the list is buried somewhere in the site’s depths, and its search button won’t reveal it. Way to go, Bing. In comparison, try ours here, just at the bottom of the right column. Go ahead.) And to add another one to the instant classic failwhale

and Bit.ly’s pufferfish

Google’s chrome shows this

Must have been some of the perpetrated 25% in additional web traffic yesterdays.

A new spaceport ready for business?

Just reminded me, with all the BBI talks going around, of a brand new little spaceport inside the city.

Just saying.

Second annual video mashup – japanese commercial edition

Well, of course, it isn’t annual at all, while in fact not following a regular pattern what so ever. We just liked the title up there. So there you have it. Moving right along, for this update we brought together our three favorite japanese commercials. They’re popular on the web for a reason.

Short and sweet. Basically, any commercial stipulating Gruppendynamik by providing the viewer with instructions of how to celebrate the product is a winner in itself.

Via Boingboing, I partied with this one. Pay attention to Snoopy who contributes by tapping the rhythm on his feeding bowl.

I’ve watched it dozens of times and still can’t decide which Fanta New Flavor commercial is the best one. Hot contestant is Streetgang-sensei with his TROPICAL FRUITS and Pirate-sensei.

Android 2.2 Froyo: Likes and dislikes

Now that we’re hearing some rumors about Android 2.3 Gingerbread coming to the HTCs (engadget says “june”, the official 2.3 ROM with HTC Sense seems to have popped up on the web), I wanted to do a little round up of the things that could be improved upon (dislikes). The likes are very obvious – even on 2.2, android is the ultimate smartphone os, and to me spells h a p p i n e s s.

Two peculiarities should be resolved with gingerbread: the recently launched Google android web interface lets you name your devices – a first step into a direction we fancy? – and screenshots should be included this time. Just thinking of that post back in january.

So let’s talk about Sense itself. HTC’s digital surface is a very sleek and well thought-through interface and gets constantly new widgets and skins etc. It might be because of my not activating facebook on the device (?), but some of the widgets I always use are a bit slow, change their appearance by themselves if you “match contacts” (the “People widget”) or shred your private messages (the “twitter widget”) and even obmit messages and “@ mentions” altogether (still, the “twitter widget”). These would be the albeit very few instances where Sense falls short of being perfect.

Turns out to be a very short post. Blame it on the Taiwanese and on Google.

On another note, and yeah, I’m talking to you, dear iPhone 4 using @hans_san : ), the business capabilites of said HTCs are nothing short of gewd – yes, you may setup multiple MS Exchange accounts on the same device, you don’t even need an app for that, and you can schedule peak times and different setups for push updates. So there ya go.

Ah, before you ask, the “Zombies”-tag? It is not at all related to this post, no, really, but them zombies are everywhere.

Natty Narwhal: Likes and dislikes

Two days ago, the freshest version of operating system ubuntu 11.04 codename “natty narwhal” hit the shelves hit the pipes. Alongside the usual updates and switched programs (firefox, shotwell for photos, etc.) it ditches the gnome GUI for ubuntu’s own version of the graphical user interface. It goes by the name of unity and has been in use since 2010 primarily on netbooks.

Instead of the two standard gnome panels that display notifications, app starters, applets, and the ubuntu-menues alongside open windows, it features just one panel on the upper side with notifications, one ubuntu logo button, and context menu (the taskbar) depending on your open program. Then, on your left side, the unity launch bar resides. It is home to app starters and open programs at the same time, with special launch icons for switching workspaces, files and folders, and applications. Its position cannot be changed.

I was looking forward to this update with mixed feelings. I like the distinctive quality of unity, as I like bold approaches in general, and Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth have shown that they possess the rare quality of actually handling an open source project with all its eternal naysayers and dissenting opinions while moving forward with each update. Generally, I want to go with the flow and see what’s new.

On the other hand, the gnome panels were really comfortable in their perfect simplicity, the interface became intuitive almost instantly. And unity to me seemed really geared towards netbooks and small screens (“it’s all about preserving vertical screenspace, or vertical pixels”), or even touchscreens with the relatively huge launcher icons on the left side. All this is irrelevant for the desktop and laptop versions (typing this on a 15,5 inch screen) and I have difficulty wrapping my head around the “preserving screen space” argument – the big launcher bar on the left felt obstrusive, more like letterboxes than the gnome-panels, because it seemed to me like more of an image or picture frame than the quiet panels of gnome from christmas past.

First step for anybody feeling like this should be to download

ccsm

which is the compizconfig-settings-manager from synaptic. Under the folder “Desktop” it contains the “Ubuntu Unity Plugin” which, among other things, lets you downsize the launcher-/appicon size to 32×32 pixels, which fits the bill a bit more. I still find myself undocking more and more apps from the launchbar, as I like to jam dozens and dozens of the little thingies in my panels, but that’s evolution for ya.

As of now, I’m still trying to figure out some smaller things, like where go the little apps that lived in the panel, like tomboy notes, remote notifier for android, etc. and just where’s the main menu? Boeuf.

Ah, and apparently gone are the days of Lucid Lynx and Maverick Meerkat where, at least on my laptop, you had to constantly update your sound server or my own Wifi, of all things, wouldn’t let my system onto teh internets. I’m already feeling more comfortable with the strange up-and-left frame of unity, and at the very least it is recognizable from miles away.

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The shoulders of the giants

As always, get ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal at ubuntu.com

Unity star picture by campopoly.com

and ubuntu-tan by PIRO.

A visit to the Computerspielemuseum

A few weeks ago, I went to the Computerspielemuseum with a few friends of mine. The entrance is 8 Euros, and the place is still quite small, but the visit is worth the cheddar.

Your are greeted by these statues, growing in numbers it seems. There is also a little shop with geeky t-shirts and books and the like. Then you get to do a little quiz where you may drop your knowledge on the unsuspecting viewers.

The different generations of consoles and homecomputers are presented, and after that, the big gaming franchises in these little boxes. Pick your favorite memory, and be astonished at how many there actually are.

Highlights then include vintage arcade stations of 70ies and 80ies classics

as well as truly ancient magazines

…until you reach one of the uncontested highlights: The Painstation (TM). You get to sign a non-liability-paper, while the guy handing you the paper and instructions gleefully warns you that the Painstation (TM) causes real pain and everybody watches you being whipped, zapped and burned. Then, two people opposed to each other put their hands on the station while playing an increasingly difficult game of against-each-other-Pong. Miss the ball and yout get whipped, zapped and burned:

It is a bit difficult to catch on a photo, but here is the hand of a match winner -

I lost almost instantly, four times in a row, because I couldn’t help but quickly pull the hand away at the first sign of danger, even though the first few punishments aren’t even painful at all.

Now then, in the meantime I was able to take a picture of the very first issue of classic Dungeons & Dragons:

and talk with one of the classic parsers…long time since I had a conversation with a computer.

Finally, an old acquaintance…reminded me of the TV-heads in the bar in Back to the Future II.

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Computerspielemuseum

Karl-Marx-Allee 93a, 10243 Berlin

Phone: +49-30-60988577

Mail: service@computerspielemuseum.de

Open: Any day except on tuesdays 10 – 20 h.