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Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Facebook Apps – The next best/worst thing?

July 27th, 2009

2009-02-18_03-04-43_facebook

Facebook Apps – if you are like me than you have no idea how you got into even playing with these apps… I normally only use Facebook for keeping in touch with college friends. However, I see these as a new way to stagger through my work day.  Some of these apps are meant to just take your mind off of what you were currently doing and waste a little bit of time.  Others are so addictive that you just find yourself now checking your Facebook for updates with these apps and freak out because your co-worker or some friend you haven’t seen in 3 years just beat your Chain Rxn score by 32 million…and you need to sit in an imaginary bubble for just 10 minutes while you try and beat this gloriously high score…I’ve been there already.

1) Farm Town and Farmville (they are both basically the same): Pretty self explanatory, you plant seeds and trees and watch them grow. Then you harvest and sell them for money. The more you plant and harvest, the more experience you receive and then higher your level will be. You can also get animals and fences, buildings, the list goes on. You can also send plants and animals to your friends for their farms. The only down side I have yet to see is you either check your farm too late and have to delete the withered left overs or wait 3 days for your corn/wheat to grow, some plants take 4 hours and some take 3 days.

2) Chain Rxn: This is a super-massive addictive game, no lie. The object of the game is to click anywhere on the screen to start a chain reaction of balls as they bump into the other balls that have explodedfrom the initial ball. The longer the chain goes, the higher the score for each ball that bumps into another exploded ball. I have nothing bad to say about this except that it is the new crack, it’s that addictive.

3) Mafia Wars: I cannot really review this only because I have never played it, though I am going to review it now because it was the first app that made me cringe at using any other app. I used to have about 40+ new updates about my friends’ Mafia and always got invites to join the crew. I am sure that within the next few months, I will probably give up and join. I am a lemming…

4) Bejeweled Blitz: Come on, my generation and even those who may be a little bit older certainly remember the game Bejeweled. I would play that game like it was then end of the world, if I even turned my head away, the Earth would face certain horrifying death. Yeah, I know, I had issues. Either way, Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook is basically Bejeweled 2 with a 1 minute time frame, thats pretty much it. I adamantly tried to burst all of your bubbles there to save you the annoyance, because that is what happened to me.

Hopefully, this little tidbit of highly important information will either have you interested in playing with some of these Facebook apps (there are a TON more out there.)  If you do happen to get into most of the apps I mentioned…send me something for my farm…please…

gmFunkd Blog, Review, Web, gaming , , , , ,

Windows 7 “XP Mode” – built-in, virtualized sandbox?

June 1st, 2009

Microsoft Windows 7One of the new features that will be introduced in certain skews of Windows 7 is an application knows as XP Mode, a virtualized install of (generally) Windows XP that allows users to run Windows XP apps side by side with programs running on Windows 7.   This seemingly opens up a whole new world of potential when it comes to using virtualization as security.  Having a program running streamline with your main operating system while being completely isolated from the system itself would be quite a boon.  Unfortunately, however, Microsoft may come through and chose convenience over security and leave a few holes open.

Read more…

MG_Chris Laptops, Windows, technology , , , , , , ,

Why Blizzard is losing the race for account security (and what free alternatives are doing to win)

April 15th, 2009

Blizzard's Authenticator

Any gamer knows that the biggest fear in an MMO is having your account hacked and all of your gear, gold and potentially characters stolen or removed.  On a daily basis we hear stories from our fellow gamers about having their accounts hacked and gear sharded and sold off.  Blizzard has made a solid effort with their authenticators that definitely do add a great second factor of authentication, but there are other (free) games that are seemingly ahead of the game with their methods of authentication, and they don’t require you to carry around a big blue key chain (or pay an additional $7).

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MG_Chris MMORPG, entertainment, gaming , , , , , , , ,

Empire State Building going green

April 7th, 2009
via http://www.howardmodels.com

http://www.howardmodels.com

With support from Bill Clinton’s foundation, Mayor Bloomberg has announced a plan to massively cut the carbon dioxide emissions of one of the more recognized landmarks world-wide.  This project is one of the first steps in the Mayor’s plan to cut New York City’s total carbon footprint by 30% before the year 2030.

Clinton spoke on the subject, saying “We have to prove it’s good economics, and we have to prove we know how to do it” and by retrofitting something as well known as the Empire State Building, it sends a message around the world that “going green” is more than a just a hippy fantasy.

The upgrades to the sky scraper are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2010 and will, if everything goes as planned, will reduce the building’s carbon emissions by 105,000 metric tons – about the equivalent of the annual emission of 17,500 cars

[via Telegraph]

MG_Chris environment, technology , , , ,