Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas

Hey everyone just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  May all of you have an amazing Christmas with friends and family.  God Bless you.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Google Acquires Motorola

googlemotorolaWow.

Engadget is reporting that Google is going to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This works out to about $40 a share and follows a $56 million loss by Motorola.

As I woke up this morning, I must admit that I was taken by surprise with this story. Motorola has probably been one of the worst Android phone manufactures and was a manufacture that really wasn’t going anywhere phone wise. I know a number of people that will not buy Motorola phones due to experiences they’ve had with them from the past. So news of Google buying Motorola was quite shocking to say the least and brings up the question, why would Google consider buying this troubled company?

After some consideration, it appears that it’s not necessarily the cell phone manufacture that Google wants, but their patents. Over the last several weeks Google has been complaining that Microsoft, Apple and Oracle have had an agenda to take Android down, as each of these companies have been filing patent violation lawsuits against various Android manufactories seeking licensing fees from them. By Google buying Motorola, Google gets their hands on a list of patents that they can in turn use to help protect their Android brand.

Also, I think Google owning Motorola gives Google more control over the fate of their Android operating system. Google in the past has partnered with other manufactures to make their Nexus line of phones. The first of which was quite revolutionary for Android phones, but the Nexus S wasn’t so much. There were rumours that Google didn’t make a better handset due to pressure from other manufactures as many complained about how far ahead Nexus One went above other Android phones when Google made it available. With Google owing Motorola it could give them more of a reason to want to push forward. But it could also unfortunately lead to more complaints if manufactures feel Google is giving Motorola preferential treatment as it comes to updates or early access to new versions of the Android operating system. This is probably why Google has stated that they plan on running Motorola as a separate company and haven’t planned to fold it into Google.

Whatever the case, I’m just happy that Google finally has some patents to protect Android. Having watched these patent lawsuits roll in for Android manufactures has been troubling to watch and so I’m happy that Google can finally protect them. What do you think? Is buying Motorola a good idea for Google?

Thursday, June 2, 2011

X-men First Class at 91%

X-Men-First-Class-Teaser-Poster-20-1-11-kcWith just a day until the release of X-Men: First Class, reviews for the film have started to come in and they appear to all be positive. As of the writing of this post, X-men: First Class holds a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with some reviewers being as bold as to say that X-men: FC is the best of the X-men films, (well, at least IGN has been that bold).

I take all of these reviews as good news for X-men: FC, since up until now I had low expectations for this film. None of X-men: FC’s marketing has really worked to draw me into wanting to see the film. I would have probably gone to see it anyways since it’s the X-men. That being said, a film like this can’t rely on being an X-men film alone to sell the film since many people didn’t really like the last film. If anyone were go off of their impressions of the last film, X-men: FC we could see a decline in people going to see it even though, according to the reviews, this is actually a pretty good film.

Hopefully, I’m wrong and this weekend X-Men: FC will make bank because I would hate to be right about this one. What do you think? Are you looking forward to X-men: FC?

Monday, May 30, 2011

Happy Memorial Day

memorialday2011I just thought I should drop in and wish our American Friends a happy Memorial day.  I hope you all have a safe Memorial day and that you honour your great soldiers that are fighting to protect your country.

Have fun guys.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

New Posts Coming



I'm back. Ok maybe.

For anyone that has been reading this blog for some time you may have found it somewhat surprising that I stopped posting. Why did I stop, you may ask? The truth is I've been working more lately and so my blogging kind of got a sidelined because of it. Also, I found that as I blogged it kind of became my second job, just without the pay cheque. For me, I want blogging not to be jobbie, but to be more of an expression of myself and perhaps even fun.

Over the time that I have been gone I found myself being reluctant to return to this blog, but now I kind of feel that perhaps it time that I return. I'm not promising to post daily, but I want to try and get some level of consistency going. So stay tuned, I should be throwing something up in the next few days.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Duke Nukem Forever Gets Delayed

No surprise here.

After 14 years of development and tons of delays Duke Nukem Forever gets delayed once again. As if we couldn’t see it coming.

For years, many of use online have joked about how Duke Nukem Forever will never be released. It’s been delayed and cancelled prior to this, and now that the game has some momentum behind it and they have decided to delay it again, albeit through a funny video.

At least no one can say that Gearbox doesn’t have a sense of humour on these sorts of things. What this says about the quality of game we could be seeing, no one knows. My feelings are that it can’t necessarily be good. With all of those interruptions and delays I have to think this may not be the greatest game when it comes out, even though it should probably be after this many years of development. Truth be told, I’ll just be happy if they release it, not that I am a Duke Nukem fan.

What about you? What do you guys think of this new delay? Do you even care if Duke Nukem gets released at this point?

VIA

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Was Christopher Nolan Robbed?

I kind of think so.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that all of these nominations are subjective as there is no scientific way to determine who was really better in a given year and thus it’s really up for interpretation whether or not someone is the best. That all being said, yesterday when the Oscars nominations were announced it was expected that Christopher Nolan would have received a nomination for Best Director, which did not happen.

This led me to the question, “Was Christopher Nolan Robbed? “ Looking at the list of nominations for Best Director (which by the way have only 5 nominations unlike the Best Picture category which has 10 nominations), it does include a list of directors from the most critically acclaimed films of the years, and so in many ways, I really can’t argue why these other films’ directors shouldn’t have been nominated. Also, I must admit that I haven’t gotten around to seeing some of these films yet, and with 5 nominations in this field, you have to think that it’s a pretty hard choice just who you nominate.

So should Christopher Nolan have received a nomination? I think so. I just don’t know who you should really bump off this list. What do you think? Do you think Christopher Nolan have been nominated?

***** Just an aside, I went back over the last ten years of Oscars’ nominations and one thing I noticed is that usually if the film’s director won for Best Directing the film also won for Best Picture. There were only 3 times in the last ten years were this was not the case. So I think it’s pretty safe to say that Inception will not be winning Best Picture this year, well at least there is something like a 30% chance of it winning, assuming that the trend continues farther back.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Its Official: February 10th

verizon-iphone-1036In case you missed it, Verizon just moments ago announced the release of the iPhone 4 for Verizon. After years of rumours that an iPhone for Verizon was going to be released, it finally happened. Truthfully, I use to place this rumour up there with the idea of Hell freezing over, but here it is.

As for when the Verizon iPhone will be releasing, it will be available on February 10. Pre-orders for the Verizon iPhone will start pre-orders for the iPhone will start on February 3rd for existing customers. Certainly for those that were waiting for a Verizon iPhone this is a big deal, but you have to wonder if they waited too long to announce this device. In a couple of months the iPhone 5 (as I call it) will be most likely announced. Anyone buying this Verizon iPhone will very shortly watch their device become obsolete by the new iPhone, which leads me to believe that it would have been better for Apple to wait for the next iPhone to make this announcement.

As for what this means for Canada, it doesn’t mean much. Every major carrier up here already has the iPhone. Our CDMA carriers actually built out an HSPA+ network to support GSM phones and so those that wanted the iPhone probably already has it. Certainly, there are people that do live in areas that don’t have these HSPA+ network and so they will finally be able to have an iPhone, but the majority of Canadians do have access to this device. The only people that don’t have the iPhone are running on the new AWS frequencies, and so a AWS iPhone would be a much bigger deal up here than a CDMA iPhone.

This leads me back to my question, did Apple wait too long to announce the Verizon iPhone? I have to think they have. What about you? Were you waiting for a CDMA iPhone?

VIA

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

New Google Ads coming to Android Phones


New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users' Ears

Just kidding.

I think the above video is just hilarious.  I could picture a company trying to come up with a service like this.   In fact I’m surprised no company has started to use this service with their customers.  There have been mentions in the past of companies considering the idea of bringing ads to your mobile phone,  and so to see it parodied like this is just brilliant.

Just kidding. I think the above video is just hilarious. I could picture a company trying to come up with a service like the one above. In fact I’m surprised no company has started to use this service with their customers. There have been mentions in the past of companies considering the idea of bringing ads to your mobile phone, but it’s never happened. The closest things we have to ads on a mobile device are the iAds on your iPad device. So you have to believe they are coming at some point. Hopefully these ads will be better implemented than the video above. So what do you think? Looking forward to ads on your device?