If you have yet to give it a shot and don’t care to invest the cost to just try it out, stop by Impulse’s website and check out the newly released demo!  While it’s true (in my opinion) that the demo should have been made available even before launch, it’s nice to see that they’ve finally got one out and are trying to get some new blood into the game.

If you’re not familiar with the game, check out my DemiGod review posted a few months earlier.

Microsoft Office 2010

By now, most of us have heard bits and pieces about what Microsoft is planning to do with their next iteration of Office, 2010, including extending the ribbon interface to Outlook and any other program that were without and the collaboration enhancements allowing multiple users to not only edit a document together, but even display PowerPoint presentations in a remote web browse.

However, some interesting news came out earlier about a completely new method of access and use of (most of) the software suite – nearly full featured online versions accessible on any of the major web browsers.  This isn’t a particularly revolutionary move, which is not uncommon when it comes to Microsoft, with Google Docs being so well developed for the past few years, but there is the potential for Microsoft to make a major splash with this release… and did I mention it will be free?

Microsoft has launched an Office 2010 introduction site with videos demonstrating some of the key features, changes and improvements that will be coming with Office 2010, including a video specifically dedicated to the upcoming web based features.

With the Office online services, Microsoft is putting collaboration first.  Documents will be both accessible and sharable through their SharePoint service which will allow groups to share access to a single document, each users’ changed being clearly identified in the sidebar.  The current plan for the Office online lineup is to provide Word, PowerPoint, Excel and One Note with nearly all of the functionality that you would have access to on a normal Office install.  Of course, Microsoft is sure to make the point that you “would never want to lose the full feature set” of a purchased install, but the online versions maintain the ribbon interface and seem powerful enough.

In the video detailing the web interfaces, Microsoft provided a demo of Excel 2010’s web interface.  The dev was able to sort and filter her content as well as use the full formula functionality of the full product.  It seems to me that only the most extreme users would be able to find a major functionality of the online version of these application that was left out.

This announcement would seem to be a direct challenge to the already popular Google Docs which has been providing an almost identical service for the past few year at the same cost.  Anyone who has used Google Docs, though, knows that while it is fully capable of getting the job done, it’s not always the easiest or most efficient.  Google’s recent announcement of their Chrome Operating System (Google Chrome OS) relied heavily on their idea of creating an operating system that was able to integrate web applications as a replacement for actually installing programs in order to be light-weight and netbook friendly.

By announcing a free version of Office that is able to run on any web browser somewhat distills my excitement for Chrome OS due to the fact that Windows 7 is already very “light-weight and netbook friendly” when configured properly, and the ability to run Office without needing to

a) install software to fill the generally small hard driveor tax the underpowered processor

or

b) forcing users to spend a few hundred dollars on basic productivity software (that may cost more than the netbook itself)

As it stands, we still don’t know the full story and there isn’t any version publicly available for the general public to use, so there will still be plenty more to come about what we can expect from Microsoft’s online adventures.  Personally, I can’t wait to see what Microsoft comes up with and how much impact it will actually make.  I’m always in support of heading toward “the cloud!”

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web.”

It would seem that Google’s intentions are pretty clearly spelled out.  They want to put out an OS that users can boot into quickly and reach out to the internet/web/cloud near instantly to get done whatever work they need.  Personally, I am excited at the prospect of a new challenger in the old OS ring, especially a new one that isn’t set firmly into habits based around a pre-webcentric world and feel that coming from Google, it may actually have a chance.

Hopefully we’ll have an invite, if we do – expect an in depth feature run down to follow shortly.

ATTENTION WEB SURFER: WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!?!

Is basically the message I was greeted with after restoring a Firefox session following a version update for a few of my saved tabs on sites I visit regularly.  It seems that with its most recent version, Firefox has teamed up with Google in an effort to protect presumably unscrupulous users from accidentally stumbling upon sites that they seem to think will maliciously install software on your system (or, at least, try to).  Seeing a few of my tabs load with a “NO” icon instead of what I would normally expect was quite a shock as these sites it had flagged are not any that I’ve ever considered particularly malicious.  (I’ve been accessing them with no issues for some time now, though my continued use of Adblock Plus and No Script may be the reason for my lack of suspicious activity).

My initial thought was that a random addon would be the cause of this alert, but upon clicking the “Why was this site blocked?” button, I was surprised to see the real answer

It seems that Firefox has now teamed up with, or at least incorporated, Google’s web-safety team which maintains an up-to-date database of potentially harmful websites.  The brief bit of information provided on this screen alone spells out the basics of their operation.  The first line of information that is interesting indicates that as Google has been crawling the site, it has detected 4 pages (out of 202) that tried to install (known?) malicious software on the users machine without, in any way, asking permission.   It then continues to break down which software the site tried to install, where it was hosted and if the site had been propagating malware to other sites.

Since I have never encountered any issues with this site, and it was a relatively small percentage of the pages on the site which attempted to infect users, it would seem that a certain advertisement in a cycling group is the offender.  Again, my blocking of scripts and ads may be why I’ve never encountered any issues, but that is irrelevant to the larger picture at hand.  If, when presented with the initial warning page, you chose the option to “Ignore this warning” which they conveniently make hard to read and demeaningly worded, you are allowed to access the page… but not without one last reminder that you MIGHT be messing up, and if you get infected – it’s not their fault.

I can appreciate the intent behind what Firefox and Google are doing here, in fact, I find the information Google can collect about websites while crawling them to be fascinating!  However.. I’m not very fond of the fact that they implemented and activated this feature by default with no input from or notification to the user.  Also, when looking at the behavior at hand, one can’t help but begin to question what kind of activity may be going on behind the scenes between Firefox and Google.  It would seem that Firefox would have to scan the URL of each site we access and compare it against Google’s database of known dangerous sites to determine that the site has potential to be an “Attack Site.”  I’m sure we would all like to think that this is done anonymously, and that Google isn’t tracking our browsing habits to enhance their inline advertising or for some other purpose, but it is a hard pill to swallow that this is, in fact, the case.

If you consider yourself to be a relatively safe web surfer who has no fear of internet dangers (or if you are paranoid about data mining) they do allow it to be easily disabled.  From the Tools menu, select “Options” and on the “Security” tab, uncheck the box labeled “Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected attack site.”

In the future, let’s hope Firefox will present changes like this is a more noticeable fashion, presenting a popup alert the fist time Firefox is loaded after the setting is enabled; or, better yet, allowing us to chose for ourselves whether we feel the need to have our hands held as we traverse the internet.

It’s been about two weeks now since we’ve installed and been playing Popcap’s newest hit – Plants vs Zombies! and over those weeks, many hours have been spent vigilantly growing a monster garden to defend my house (and brain) from a never ending zombie onslaught.  As with their previous hits, most recently, Peggle, Popcap has pulled through again delivering a great game that can be played in short bursts and is full of humor, clever graphics and classic Popcap-style music.

Plants vs Zombies is primarily set in your home’s back yard where you grow a garden of angry plants which assist you in fighting off the zombies using a variety of weapons including peas, butter, cabbage, watermelons, walnuts, fire, mushrooms and pumpkin shells.. to name a few.  The main adventure mode of the game encompasses 50 levels in 5 zones: Backyard, Backyard with water, Backyard night time, Backyard night time with water and your roof where the zombies make their final assault.

PvZ is a unique take on a growing genre of short-duration gaming known as a Tower Defense.  Tower Defenses (or Mauls) started as a Warcraft III custom game (similar to DotAs – see our review of DemiGod) where players build autonomous Towers, which can be anything from actual arrow-shooting towers to a recreation of a cartoon character that shoots snowballs, that shoot mindlessly at creatures that walk through them on a static path.  PvZ changes the classic TD setting by giving the player 5 rows to fill with plants and having zombies randomly spawn in any of the lanes.  There are only a few select plants that can cover multiple lanes; so building the plants in the proper order from the beginning is important in ensuring your brain’s safety.

Overall, the adventure mode took probably 4 to 5 hours to complete and was actually a little too easy to complete in my opinion.  There were only a handful of levels that I restarted due to bad placement initially and there were no levels that I outright lost where a zombie ate my brain.  I can understand the intent of designing a game mean to be played in small increments to be easier; players would be less motivated to replay a level if they only had a few minutes to play and difficult levels that go on for 5+ minutes would be undesirable.  However, for the mode hard-core gamers among us, at least giving an option to play the adventure mode on a Hard difficulty (right now, there is no difficulty selection) for a bit more of a challenge.

Along with protecting your home, one of the primary aspects of the game is collecting money (small coins that pop up on the screen from time to time) which is used to buy a wide variety of products from your neighbor, Crazy Dave, to enhance different aspects of game play.  One of the first things you can purchase are enhancements to the plants in your garden.  There are over 40 plants you can acquire, plus additional upgrades, and at the start of each level you can only 6 (or more if you buy the proper upgrade), so there is never a lack of thought that can go into the inital planning for your garden.   For a full list of plants, check out: http://jayisgames.com/walkthroughs/plants-vs-zombies Besides new plants to grow, there are various other enhancements you can buy with the coins you collect to buy items usable long beyond the adventure.

Where the game really begins to shine is once the adventure mode has been completed.  There are a slew of mini-type-games that will keep you occupied long after the adventure has ended and a great reward system to entice you to keep playing.  Once you’ve completed the adventure, you start to gain access to Puzzles, Survival Mode, Minigames and a Zen Garden (tended by a lethargic snail).  Completing these games earns money, special Zen Garden plants and trophies and will take considerably more time to complete than the initial adventure while providing a lot of entertainment and classic Popcap game references.

Overall, Plants vs Zombies is another instant classic from Popcap that I would recommend to anyone whether a fan of classic Tower Defense games or not.  They do a great job of walking you through the initial game play without providing any type of manual or instructions, and, once you have got a basic concept of the game, allow you to create massive armies of zombie battling greenery!

EPIC!

Buy Plants vs Zombies (or get the free tiral) at: http://www.popcap.com/games/pvz/

Essentially, XP Mode runs an on-demand virtualization of a Windows XP install using Microsoft’s Virtual PC allowing programs that would normally require Windows XP to run on a Windows 7 Machine.  The name, however, is deceiving as XP Mode will let you run any version of Windows including Vista and 7.  Compared to a normal virtualization, XP mode is different in that the VM runs quietly in the background and the virtualized programs can interact seamlessly with those running on the native operating system.

Microsoft’s goal with XP Mode is to reduce bulk in Windows 7 by removing legacy code required for old programs to run.

For the full rundown on XP Mode, check out the following link:  http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/24/secret-no-more-revealing-virtual-windows-xp-for-windows-7.aspx

Recently, on an episode of Windows Weekly, Leo asked, “Why would someone want to run a version of Windows besides XP in XP Mode?” and I feel that “Security” would be a reasonable response.

There are currently products on the market that provide similar, in-line virtualization but with a security orientation.  One common example is SandboxIE, an application initially designed to isolate your web browser from the rest of your system that has been now expanded to be able to sandbox any program you would run.

It is effectively able to sandbox any program by creating copies of files that the program attempts to modify and giving the user the ability to scrap virtualizations once things seem to be going wrong.  It is a very effective tool when used in conjunction with web browsers and e-mail clients.

One thing that SandboxIE does NOT do, however, is protect information on your system from a privacy perspective.  It allows any application running within its sandbox full read access as it would normally have; the only restriction is when applications attempt to write data.

For more information on SandboxIE, visit the creator’s site: http://www.sandboxie.com

Now, with this framework laid before us, there aren’t many lines to draw for the bigger picture to come together.  Having a version of Windows 7 installed via XP Mode on your main install of Windows 7 would allow you to run your web browser, mail application or any other program in a virtualized enviroment, cutting them off from the rest of your system.

The security provided from running an application in a fully virtualized environment as opposed to SandboxIE’s methods is somewhat superior as (like we mentioned before) the programs running in the virtualization have no access whatsoever to your primary install.  And now, since these virtualized apps are appearing right in the main install of 7’s start menu, the inconvenience stigma that was always attached to virtualization in the past is moot.

Hopefully, as long as Microsoft delivers as promised, anyone who will be able to install XP Mode will also have a nice built-in security feature that they may not recognize right off the bat.  It would be great if Microsoft would recognize this as well and rename XP Mode to something that more accurately represent the capabilities of the feature.

The potential downside to this whole thought is that Microsoft may (as they have in the past) sacrifice security for ease of usability.  From the perspective of a user trying to run legacy XP code on a Windows 7 machine, the ability of applications running within the VM to read the native harddrive would be more convenient, but basically negate any security bonus.

I’m calling this a quick review because I haven’t put very much time into the game, but I feel it warrants some discussion and there isn’t a WHOLE lot to it. In fact, there might not be enough to it.. I’ll get into that later.

Demigod is the new PC game released by Gas Powered Games (demigodthegame.com)which has a playstyle that anyone who played custom games in Warcraft 3 should be familiar with. Demigod is basically a full game based around the classic Defense of the Ancients. Two teams of up to five players push through lanes and attempt to take over the other teams base by capturing strategic points including defensive towers, spawn points and walls while playing as one of eight Demigods (heroes) and being assisted by an autonomous army of smaller scale units.

I had the game installed last night and immediately jumped in to a game with computer teammates / opponents. A common complaint or point of concern among the community trying Demigod is the lack of instruction. The game comes with no manual in the box and is completely void of any in-game tutorials, they are either making the assumption that everyone who picks this up is familiar with how to play a DotA style game or that everyone despises manuals and would rather just figure it out.

Luckily, I fall into the first group, having spent many hours over the years playing the various types of DotAs that have made their way across b.net (<3 rumble), but, even still, I was a bit disoriented when stepping into Demigod.

Before I get into the game play, I would like to mention what I feel to be a major short coming for a $50 game when compared to the free versions that have been out for years and that is character selection. Both sides (light and dark) have access to the same group of Demigods, but there are only 8 total (not sure if you can have multiples of the same demigod on the same team). While I can understand that they might be trying to keep the game simple, only having eight choices for playable characters seems really lacking. On the flip side, there are also eight maps you can play on, but I would prefer more Demigod choices even if they were all on the same map.

I was caught off guard by the controls (and the inability to change some which were particularly bothersome) because I made the false assumption that a DotA game should play like a WC3 game; this was something I was fighting with the whole time I was playing. Camera navigation is done with WASD for pan and Q and E for rotate; holding down the space bar puts the camera into free mode which makes it follow your mouse. And, of course, the scroll wheel works as zoom which (nicely) allows you to zoom far enough out to see the entire map. The inability to freely use the mouse to manipulate the camera as in WC3 really bothered me, but, with time, I can see this not being an issue as I adapt to the strange configuration.

The gameplay itself is what you’d expect – simple, fun and exciting.

As your Demigod levels, he is able to learn and improve special abilities to increase his abilities on the field – see the screenshot below.  There are 4 active abilities for each Demigod and a varying number of passive abilities along with a generic stat upgrade, this was a nice boost over the original DotA’s 3 abilities (and one special) and allows for at least some degree of character customization.  There are also item shops that you can use to buy select pieces of gear (with some pretty interesting bonuses) and usable items and potions.

The games seem to last at least 20-30 minutes on average but can easily be dragged out to over an hour with 2 skilled teams who keep all their lanes strong.  Along with buying gear and potions, you can put money you earn toward upgrading both your buildings and units attack/defense, even going so far as causing new types of units to be produced.  It seems that this is in place to still give a reason for individuals to creep for gold (though I didn’t come across and creep spawns in the short time I played) instead of focusing on laning.

As it stands, I think this is a great game and have very high hopes for it.  Had a ton of fun in the short time I was playing it last night, and once I become a bit more comfortable and have put a few solid hours into it I’ll post a more in-depth review.  For now, anyone who was ever a big fan of DotA on WC3 should be picking this up and checking it out.