PlayLegions.com - Strategic FPS Tutorial and Timetrails
PlayLegions.com Time Trials
Fallen Empire: Legions is a strategic FPS+Z shooter, the spiritual successor to the Starsiege: Tribes series, and a blast to play.
Although the full game is (at least currently) located at instantaction.com, the new playlegions.com site offers a brief single player tutorial, in a very Portal'esque fashion to teach basic movement skills, which are all but; movement is so much more essential to Legions and Tribes than arguably with any other game.
Introducing new players to what is a fairly complex game brings all sorts of challenges with it. The approach the developers have taken here is commendable; let new players figure out the controls, give them a challenge and teach them attack routes at the same times using the time trials, and whet their appetite for more.
Once these new players decide to join the multiplayer mayhem over at instantaction.com, they won't be nearly as lost as they typically are these days. I'd be curious to know what the player retention has been so far, and how this change is affecting it.
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NBC17 News engages audience with Twitter
Twitter on NBC17
In what may be a TV station's first, NBC17 is using Twitter to gather feedback from the local community in the greater Raleigh, NC area. I was fortunate enough to be included in this experiment, although I was unaware how my tweets were going to be used.
@MyNC, mync.com's twitter presence, asked about pay as you go (PAYG) cellphone plans. Some of @MyNC's Twitter followers responded with their experiences and suggestions. The responses were not just casually included in their report, but specifically called out and highlighted on the air.
All in all, this is a bigger deal than it may seem at first. TV stations are realizing that embracing the near instantaneous interactivity that social media users are enjoying is an important step in preventing their own irrelevancy. By targeting the younger always-online audience and taking advantage of social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook, traditional media is not only proving their ability to adapt to new technologies, but it could very well rekindle interest to watch the evening news in the next generation of viewers wanting to see their own messages featured.
Additional benefits for TV stations to embrace tools such as Twitter, Qik, etc. is the ability to reduce response times to local key events and augmenting their reports in cost effective ways.
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Less or Equal in Erlang
Just noticed that Erlang does not understand <=. It requires =< instead.
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HP Mini 1000 - Where is the VGA Adapter?
I've been eying netbooks for a while now. In particular, the HP Mini 1000 seems to be a good candidate. I've seen it in person and I like it. It has a decent keyboard, full size right-hand shift key, it's pretty to look at, and the price is about right. But there's one thing stopping me; the VGA adapter.
Although HP has advertised the ability to connect an external display via the VGA adapter add-on cable, that cable is nowhere to be found. There are all sorts of discussions going on, and this thread pretty much sums it up. There's no adapter yet, and a number of folks who've already bought the HP Mini are waiting for it impatiently.
That's also the deal breaker for me. As soon as I can order the vga adapter, I'll consider getting an HP Mini 1000, unless we're already looking at the next generation of netbooks, perhaps with built-in HDMI.
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