Information came out yesterday that Microsoft is releasing a new 512 MB Memory card for $50 and lowering the price of the 64 MB Memory Card from $40 to $30. You can read the full details here. In the process they are increasing the 50 MB limit for Xbox Live Arcade games to 150 MB. I have no complaint with them releasing a larger memory card, but I’m curious who actually uses a memory card. I know at least a dozen people with Xbox 360s and none of them have a memory card. Everyone I know has the premium package that came with the hard drive. Even if someone didn’t have the premium system the 20 GB hard drive for $100 is a much better value than $50 for 1/2 a GB. For the extra $50 you get 20 times more storage.

This news lead me to my rant. Where is the 100 GB, or preferable 200 GB, hard drive? The ability to download high def shows or movies to my Xbox 360 is a great option, but the 20 GB hard drive only holds a handful of shows or a couple movies. I want to be able to download a weekends worth of movies during the week and then spend all weekend watching them. Instead I can download two. It is not like larger hard drives are hard to find. There are tons of different 100 GB drives on the market that could easily be adapted for the Xbox 360. I can buy a 100 GB hard drive for my laptop for $75 without spending any time shopping around. I have trouble believing that Microsoft can’t put that in the casing for use with an Xbox 360 for 10 bucks and then sell it for $100. Charging $100 for a 20 GB hard drive is ridiculous.

Microsoft you get so many things right about the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. Why can’t you figure out how to get a decent amount of storage for it?

A lot of times when I start writing a blog post I only get part way through it when I get side tracked. Or, I have an idea for a post that I don’t want to forget but I’m not in the mood to write the whole thing. I’ve been using a Word Doc to keep my notes and ideas in, but it has started getting long and it is a pain to keep a current copy between work (If my boss is reading this I only blog on my breaks) and my house. Sure there are a lot of options to remedy that. I could email it to myself or use a USB drive, but then I have to remember to take that extra step at the end. I also tried using Blogger’s New Post option and just saving my partial posts as drafts, but I kept accidentally posting half finished ones so that option is out. I decided using an online word processor is probably my best option. It lets me work on my partial posts from home or work without having to keep track of where the most recent copy of each one is since the most recent copy is always stored online. I checked out Zoho’s Writer, Writely Google Docs, ThinkFree, and AjaxWrite since they seem like the most common ones. I should specify that I tried all of these in Firefox and not Internet Explorer because that is my preferred browser. So, if you use Internet Explorer you may have a different experience.

Zoho Writer
To start with it has a very nice interface. They have a couple rows of buttons and drop down options across the top toolbar. Along the left side bar is a listing of my documents . There are options for templates, sharing docs, publishing to blogs, and exporting. They allow you to customize the interface to look how you prefer it. All of these additional options are nice, but what really makes this my preferred online word processor is the simplicity of all of. There are tons of options, but they don’t hit you over the head with all of them (couge*google*cough). The options are there if you need them, but it still has a clean streamlined interface. The more I use Zoho Writer the more I find things I like about it. For example, a lot of the standard Word keyboard shortcuts work. Without even thinking about it I just ctrl+S to save and it saved my document. It has contextual options that show up on the right side of the toolbar depending on what you have highlighted. The whole thing is very well designed and laid out. Documents open in tabs and it is a very quick to respond to commands like saving or creating a new document. In my experience it is faster to load and respond to my commands than the other online word processors. Zoho Writer is in Beta still, but I was looking through their forums and they have a very active team working on peoples questions and issues there.

Google Docs
It has the standard Google interface that I’m use to seeing in Gmail. They provides tons of options for collaboration and publishing. I’m not a huge fan of the interface for actually editing documents, but it works well enough. I think the issue, for me, is that I’m use to using Word so the lack of a decent toolbar takes some getting use to. Also, you can only have one document open at a time. Opening a document from the main start page opens a new window with that document in it. As far as I can tell there is not simple way to have multiple documents open in tabs like some of there other online word processors. The other thing that bugs me is that a lot of the different options don’t just pop up on the main edit screen but instead open a unique interface for that option. For example, when I open the Revision option it opens a new interface specific to only the revisions that have been made. Then, when done in the revisions section I have to go back to the editing portion. Why these aren’t in just one simple interface I don’t know.

AjaxWrite
It loads fairly quickly, but it does open in a new window. Documents are opened in tabs so it is easy to switch between open docs. It has a simple toolbar and interface that is clean and nice. However, I quickly ran into trouble when I tried to save my first document. I could not get it to save as any of the 5 supported formats. It game me an error every time. So, I quit trying it right there because what good is it to write up a document if I can’t save it.

ThinkFree
ThinkFree is probably the closest an online clone of Microsoft Word. It does open a new window for documents which I don’t like, but at first glance it looks remarkably like Word. The menus and toolbars are almost identical. I also like that you can very easily make folders to group your documents in. Due to the complexity of the interface it does take almost a minute to open a document and have the full interface load. Since I’m just looking for something quick and easy to write my thoughts and ideas ThinkFree is just not quite right for me. It does have a lot of potential and I’m looking forward to the improvements the make as it comes out of beta.

So. that really means it is down to Google Docs and Zoho Writer. Google Docs will probably ultimately become the standard online word processor because they are a heavyweight in the industry, but they really could use the help of a good designer. Even though I’m a Gmail user their interface takes to much effort to use. It is because of the interface that I will be doing my writing with Zoho Writer. It is very well laid out and runs very smoothly. The only issue I ran into with Zoho Writer is that you can’t make folders for grouping documents (or if you can I can’t figure out how to do it). However, it is still in Beta so I sent in a request for this to be added. Still, Zoho Writer is the best choice for what I need. If you have experience with any of these online word processors leave a comment and let me know how you like them.

Three Reasons I Hate Crackdown: My Crackdown Review

• I got a hernia trying to move a car that was blocking my driveway
• I got fired for putting a hole my office roof while checking for agility orbs
• According to my lawyer “Skills for Kills” does not have any legal precedence

Who am I kidding, none of those are real and I love Crackdown. Not a lot of games properly pull off the feeling of being free to do whatever I want. A lot of games tell you that you can do whatever you want, but then the map only gives you a couple places you can go. In Crackdown you can literally run/drive wherever you want as soon as the game starts. You may not live very long because you’re abilities have not been leveled up, but you can still go anywhere you want.

The size of the city is pretty big when you’re driving around, but it gets even bigger once you realize you can climb any building. The vertical size of this city makes it huge. According to LiveEye I’ve played Crackdown for over 7 hours, and I’ve only scratched the surface of one little corner of the city.

I know some people are not fond of the graphical and musical style of the game, but I really enjoy them both. The game is set in the near future so the soundtrack is not the normal Top 100 sample pack. It is all fresh stuff. The graphics are an arcadey cartoon style which I think works well.

The gameplay is simple but addictive. There is always one more enemy, one more agility orb, or one more race to do. It is nice to be able to run around the city and do whatever I want. It makes it easy to sit down and play for 30 minutes on my lunch break or for hours on end late into the night. I don’t need to make it to the end of a level to save. I can play as much or as little as I want, save my progress, and then pick up where I left off next tine. Another addicting aspect is the balance between the weapons and hand-to-hand attacks. It is fun to walk up and kick a guy half way down the block and then pick up his car and throw it at him. But, it is just as much fun the stand 10 stories above him on the top of a building and shoot at him. There is no limit to the number of ways you can take out the enemy gang members so each one is a chance to try something new.

Even though I really enjoy this game there are a couple things that are annoying from time to time. First is the targeting system. When you pull the left trigger it locks on to an enemy. Instead of locking on to the closest enemy that is in the general area I’m aiming it instead locks on to whatever enemy is in the center of of the targeting reticle no matter how far away they are. You get use it it after a while, but it can be frustrating when you’re surrounded by enemies and it locks on to someone a couple blocks away.

The other annoyance I have is that it is hard to tell what weapons are lying on the ground to be picked up. All of the weapons have a blue circle around them indicating you can pick them up, which is nice, but unless you know the name of the weapon it is really difficult to tell what you’re getting until after you pick it up.

Even with these annoyances the game is great. I’m not sure how much lasting appear it will have a few months from now once I’ve beat the game and found all the orbs, but right now it is a lot of fun. I’m giving it a definite 2 thumbs up.

The other day I received and email from Xbox.com letting me know that I was “smart enough to buy an Xbox 360 and register it.” As a result I was getting rewarded with a free copy of Robotron, Frogger, & Joust. A little searching around the usual forums and I found that these emails started going out to everyone who bought an Xbox 360 and registered it. I appreciate that I’m getting free games, but why do they have to be these games specifically? They are some of the oldest games and anyone who wanted to play them probably already bought them. In every forum where people were talking about getting this email at least half of them already had at least one of these games. Personally, if I had wanted any of these I would have picked them up months ago.

The Xbox Live Vision Camera Gold Pack Bundle has a similar issue. It comes with Uno and Robotron as well as 200 Marketplace points. However, by the time the camera was released the majority of people interested in Uno or Robotron had already purchased it.

Instead of giving out specific games like this why don’t they give out Marketplace Points that could then be used to buy whatever Arcade game was desired? The Vision Camera bundle already has 200 points in it. Why not just raise that and leave out Uno and Robotron? If someone wanted those games they could use the points to buy them, or they could use the points on any other game they wanted. It is not like I can take the points to another service and use them there. I have to use the points on the Xbox Live Marketplace. So, what harm would there be in giving points, instead of specific games, so I can pick whatever Arcade games I want?

Personally, I did not have Frogger or Joust, but I did have Uno and Robotron already. So, I propose a contest to give away my Uno and Robotron. To enter all you have to do is leave a comment letting me know what Xbox Live Arcade you are most looking forward to playing. To sweeten pot a little bit more I’ll also include a One Month Gift Certificate for GameznFlix.com. I received as a gift from my in-laws but I never used it since I switched to GameFly.com.

So, for those of you to lazy to read the whole post here are the contest details.
Entry: Leave a comment with what XBLA game you are most looking forward to.
Prizes: Uno, Robotron 2048, and one month Gift Certificate for GameznFlix.
Dates: The contest starts today and runs through March 31st.
Rules: Include your Gamertag in your comment so that I can contact you if you win.
Uno and Robotron will be awarded as Redemption Codes.
The Gift Certificate for GameznFlix will be awarded as a Gift Certificate Key that can be entered on the site.
The winner will be chosen by random drawing.

Since Ubisoft is planning on releasing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW 2) just one year after the release of the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) there has been a lot of talk about whether this will be just an update to GRAW or if it stands on its own. Fortunately, they have tried to show us that it is not just a half baked update to GRAW by releasing both Single Player and Multiplayer Demos. So, is it really worth of the name GRAW 2 or should they name it GRAW 1.5?

First the Single Player Demo. It was fun for the most part. I’m not a fan of the cover system. Who thought it would be a good idea to get into cover by running into an object, then keep running into it and you use it as cover? It is a terrible way to do a cover system. It is hard to get into when you want cover and other times you accidentally get into cover when you don’t want to. Setting aside the lousy cover system I did have fun playing through the single player demo a few times. The new improvements are nice, but not off the chart great. I found the demo to be very easy. Partly because with the drone you can pretty much always know where all the enemies are. This information used with the map makes it pretty easy to flank the people you need to flank, but, for the most part, once you get the new sniper you can just sit back and pick everyone off since it will go through walls. The single player demo seems like this is a bit better than just GRAW 1.5, but I’m not sure there is anything here to push it to GRAW 2. The new additions are nice and the graphics look great. So, somewhere around GRAW 1.7 is a more accurate name.

I played the Multiplayer Demo a few times. Each time I used the quick match option I got thrown into a team game so that is all I played. If I can quit playing Crackdown and Rainbow Six: Vegas I might try to find someone to play some co-op with. The team matches I played were fun for the most part. I do like that I can have one of my teammate’s view in the upper left corner of the screen. Also, the medic class added a little depth to the game. In all the matches I played only once did anyone play as a medic, but in that match it was nice to have him come heal me. Even though I do not like the cover system in the single player the fact that they took it out for the multiplayer is really annoying. I have no idea why they would do that. Also, they, apparently, made all of the bushes out of concrete because you can’t walk through them. If they wanted to setup waist high barriers do what every other shooter does and use crates. I don’t expect to be able to walk through a crate. My only other complaint about the multiplayer was the controls seemed a little off. It could have been the guy hosting the matches had a bad connection, but any time I tried to walk forward at an angle I ended up strafing instead. Also, the controls seemed a bit touchy. Not all the time, but when I first would change directions it seemed like it would turn really fast at first and then return to a normal speed. Not sure if that was just me or what. I did not play a lot of multiplayer on the original GRAW so it is hard to compare really well, but from the bit I did play I am not seeing a lot of major improvements. So, I think the multiplayer is probably also about GRAW 1.7.

Personally, I plan to rent GRAW 2. I’m interested to see where they take the single player story and there are a good amount gameplay options available with the co-op and multiplayer modes. If it turns out I was wrong and it does deserve the name GRAW 2 I can always buy it later, but I don’t expect that to be the case.

I’m almost glad it is Monday today because now that football season is over Sunday afternoons are so boring. For 6 months of the year I have a nice Sunday afternoon tradition of watching football with the family and possibly some friends. Now that the NFL season is over there is no more fun with friends and family. Just me flipping through channels while the wife naps.

Why is it that the NFL Season is so short? They play so few games and the season is over very quickly. Why don’t they start the season earlier and let it go longer. Maybe they are worried about injuries. It seems like football players have a lot higher probability of getting injured than players in other sports. Probably due to the nature of the game. So, it stands to reason that a longer season would mean more injuries. This could probably be offset with a larger roster size. However, that would require a higher salary cap. Also, second string players don’t generally play as well as the starters so games would probably not be as good later in the season when more players are injured. If they did extend the season the teams and the league would probably make more money so from a business standpoint it sounds like a good idea. Then again, if all your best players are injured do you really want to extend a lousy season? Maybe not.

Either way, it doesn’t help me the other half of the year, but I suppose I can suffer through it until next season comes around.

I’ve been looking around the internet for way to make sure my blog is listed when people are searching for it (or for related topics). Since I’m pretty new to blogging I wanted to make sure there was not some sort of obvious thing I was missing. I already was using FeedBurner and a couple of pinging services so when I update the various search engines get notified. While I was in this process I stumbled across the idea of traffic exchanges sites. For those of you not familiar with them basically they work like this: I visit your website and in exchange you visit mine.

The idea seams a little like speeding. Everyone seems to be doing it, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right. It seems a little like I’m whoring out my blog to whoever will look at it just to boost the number of hits I’m getting. However, just because traffic exchange sites increase the quantity of hits to my blog they don’t necessarily increase the quality hits my blog gets.

As I was looking at the various traffic exchange sites I noticed that some of them offer “targeted traffic exchanges.” These allow you to surf only sites you’re interested in the effort to help not only increase the quantity of hits, but do so with people are interested in what you’re site is about. Hopefully this would allow for an increase in quality hits. So, it is still speeding but only to the extent that I’m following the flow of traffic. This sounds a lot better to me. It put my web site in front of people interested in the topics I post about, and I only have to surf sites that I’m interested in.

So, I narrowed my search for traffic exchange sites to ones that allow for target surfing. I checked out each of the following sites and found the best to be BlogMad.net. It offers the best ration of surfing to visits with targeted traffic.

Here is what a brief review of each service I tried out.
BlogMad.net
They allow for surfing of by category. It is not specifically a targeted exchange because by default every category of site is turned on to surf, but users can go in and edit the categories they want to surf. Most of the sites I surfed were personal blogs. Not a lot of them were in the same category as mine, but there were a few cools ones. They have a 1:1 ratio for surfing. For every site I visit one person will visit my site. Their website is one of the nicer ones that I found and the return visits come in pretty quickly after I surf.

BlogAzoo.com
This was not my least favorite exchange sites but it was not that great either. It does not show you very clearly how many sites you’ve surfed. Also, the only have a 2:1 surfing ratio so for every 2 sites I visit one person will visit my site. They do give you bonus credits at after surfing 25 sites, but not enough to get the ration anywhere near 1:1. Their site is not the best I’ve seen, but it is not the worst either. The return visits come in about an average speed. Not right away like some, but not as slow as others. All around an average traffic exchange site.

BlogSoldiers.com
This site is very busy. Once you login all of the options are listed on buttons on the middle of the page. There is no easy button to see your stats, but it is very easy to get started surfing quickly. My first complaint about this site is that the return visits take quite a while to come in. If I surf 25 sites today through BlogSoldiers it might take 2 or 3 days to get 25 visitors back to my site. My guess is this is because they don’t have a lot of users. My other complaint is that their return visitor ratio is only 4:3. So for every 4 I visit I only get 3 visitors back. If you don’t mind the return visits trickling in this site is ok, but nothing special.

BlogExplosion.com
After signing up over a week ago my blog is still pending Admin approval. I’m loosing hope that it will ever happen. If it does the site has potential. It is nicely laid out, but the ratio of site surfing to visitors is only 2:1. They do have some options for users to specify what category of blogs they want to surf and what categories they don’t want to surf so it is somewhat targeted, but it looks like you can only specify one category for each of these options. So, while it might be a good site it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort given that other sites have better surf to visitor ratios.

BlogAdvance.com
This site is one of the better ones I’ve seen. The surfing to visitor ratio is 1:1, but the return visits come in very slowly. Again, if you don’t mind the slow return visits then this is not a bad deal. My only real annoyance is that BlogAdvance resizes the browser window, for some unknown reason, with each site load. I prefer my browser to be maximized, but each site drops it down to a smaller size. Also, I don’t see any way to do targeted surfing, but with a good ration it is still a pretty decent site.

I also tried out some Traffic Exchanges sites that were not Blog specific but are targeted. TrafficG was the first one I tried and it is probably my favorite. They start out with a 1:1 ration and the return visits happen within minutes. Over time, by surfing sites, you can get up to a 10:11 ration. So, for every 10 sites you surf you get 11 unique visitors back. The only thing that bugged me about this one was that a lot of sites seemed to be miscategorized. So, the sites were not all ones I was interested in but most of them were ok.

Overall, I’m not sure that any of these are worth the effort in getting quality traffic, but if you have a little extra time and don’t mind surfing random sites you can easily get a lot of hits to your site or blog.

Not that everyone has not already tried them out, but I wrote this up a while back and never posted it. So, for those few of you who have not had a chance to play them yet here’s what I think.

Raven Down
At first I did not really like this one because, until you get the hang of the layout, it is hard to know which side the enemy will come from. However, it grew on me very quickly because it is a tiny map which makes it very fast paced and frantic. Also, due to the size it lends itself well to a rapid flanking attack. I also really like how it splits the teams up into two groups of two at the spawn. It is different in that way and it makes it good for teams that work well together. I also like that the only additional weapons on the map are frag grenades. Plan on practicing up on your shotgun skills for this one.

Old Bones
This map is BIG. If it is down to a one-on-one match up it can take a while to find the other guy if he is camping. The only minor annoyance I had with the map is that it takes some practice to roadie-run from the spawn to the middle because of all the obstacles and turns, but it is possible to do. Old Bones has all the power weapons, except torque bow, evenly spaces in the middle of the map which makes for some nice initial rushes for weapons and the crazy battles that ensue.

I like both maps as well as the original ones. They both have their little quirks, but then so do all of the rest of the maps.

My Friends list filled up for the second time today. It first filled up about 3 weeks ago. At the time I was annoyed, but I had some guys on there I had not played with in years so I removed them and freed up about 8 spots on my friends list. Today, when I went to add another Rainbow Six: Vegas player I got a message saying it was full again. Now I’m pretty upset. All of the people on my friends lists are either close personal friends, people I play regularly with, or members of a Rainbow Six: Vegas league that I play in. The majority of the people on my list are AGE (Adult Gaming Enthusiasts) members. They are either in the Rainbow Six: Vegas League with me or people I play Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas with during the Weekly AGE Game Nights. Every Tuesday is Gears of War and every Thursday is Rainbow Six: Vegas. So, how do I choose who to delete? I know I’m not the only one with this dilemma because we’ve been discussing it over on the AGE Forums for some time.

Having a full Friends List brings a few problems. First is the obvious, who do I delete to make room for new friends. This is getting harder and harder to decide as I slowly whittle down my list to people who I play with regularly. Any given night I probably have 30 to 40 of my friends playing online. How do I remove guys from my list that I play with on a regular basis?

The second problem is one of organization. It can be hard, especially late at night, to remember exactly which friend has which games and who prefers to play what. As a result I end up inviting people to play Gears of War when they only have Rainbow Six: Vegas, and vise versa. Sure, it is only a minor annoyance, but one that could be easily remedied. There are multiple ways it could be resolved. Allow for Friends to be tagged/categorized and then sorted those tags. Or, add a folder system where I can make folders of “Friends,” “AGE GoW,” and “AGE RS:V.” Then I could put the friends on my list into the corresponding folder and keep track of them easily that way. Either of these simple enhancements would take care of this issue.

The final problem is one of bandwidth. When I have 30 or 40 friends online and I’m trying to go through and invite, or message, those playing a specific game it can take a few seconds for each name to pull up. Multiply this by 30 or 40 and it can take a couple minutes for the list to completely populate. A lot of this delay has to do with the speed of my DSL, but only one speed of DSL is offered where I live. I know that I’m not the only one who has this problem. It seems pretty common for those of us who have a larger friends list and a generic DSL connection.

I know Microsoft keeps stats of what the average number of friends people have on their Friends List. They don’t give the exact number, but it is reportedly less that 20. I can believe that, but using that statistic to determine how best to enhance the Friends List does nothing to help those of us who are most active in Xbox Communities and have larger Friends Lists.

Microsoft, please, find a way to streamline the Friends Lists so that they can have over 100 people and add some organizational tools.

I saw today on IGN that THQ is releasing a new Tetris game called “Tetris Evolved.”

“Tetris Evolved adds two new modes, Go Low and Eraser, for both single and multiplayer gaming. The multiplayer modes support local and Xbox Live play for up to four people and Xbox Live vets can use the matchmaking system to vie against same-skilled Tetris players and track them via a newly implemented ladder system. Tetris Evolved also offers achievement points, “high definition” graphics, and adds video backgrounds as well as customizable themes, skins, icons and soundtracks.”

I do like Tetris. So, the idea of a release for the Xbox 360 with support for four people locally or over matchmaking sounds like it could be fun, but at the end of the day it is still just Tetris; another retro game. The price and release date have not been announced, but if they charge more than $25 for it I do not expect that they will sell that many copies. On the other hand, if they were to add it to Xbox Live Arcade for 800 points ($10) I think quite a few people would download a copy. Even though I don’t like a lot of retro games I know that we would be buying it at our house because my wife loves Tetris. We use to play on the Nintendo 64 with some friends and she would school the rest of us. With the addition of the video backgrounds, themes, skins, icons and soundtracks it sounds like Tetris is taking a note from Lumines Live. Hopefully they don’t take after the Lumines Live pricing scheme as well.

So, THQ, please release Tetris Evolved as an Arcade release and don’t waste our time trying to charge for a full retail release or with a Lumines Live pricing plan.