FirstAdopter.com

Brothers in Arms for PS3 Video

IGN has a trailer for the real-time version of Brothers in Arms for the Playstation 3. It doesn't look that much better than current PC WWII first person shooters and it doesn't come anywhere close to the Killzone video shown last year. [Discuss]

President Bush and Steve Bridges Video - White House Correspondents Dinner

The President killed with his comedy routine with his alter ego, Steve Bridges. Watch and laugh your head off. [Discuss]

Steve Jobs will Stay at Apple

When Pixar got bought by Disney, there was a lot of speculation that Jobs was vying to take over the top job at the Magic Kingdom. Steve told shareholders of Apple he had no intention of leaving and even said he will spend MORE TIME on Apple after Pixar gets acquired. That is good news for Apple consumers as Jobs is the best at creating and managing innovative products. [Discuss]

Ctrl+Alt+Chicken Launches

I'm a little late on this one, but Revision 3's cooking show is out and is worth checking out. It's entertaining, although they have yet to make an edible food creation. It's a promising start to more mainstream IPTV shows. Anyone know who this Heather Stewart person is and her background? [Discuss]

Favorite Top 15 Gaming Moments of All-Time

Here are some of my favorite gaming moments of all-time.


-Playing Doom on PC multiplayer for the first time and crashing the campus network. Thanks iD for publishing it right for finals. I almost failed out of school because of the game.


-The opening sequence of Blood Money on the Commodore Amiga. Unbelievable.


-Watching Shadow of the Beast parallax scrolling on the Commodore Amiga. The game kind of sucked, but man the graphics were amazing.


-Unreal on PC. The sequence where the lights go out and the monster comes at you from behind. And then going outside for the first time, looking at the beautiful sky and scenery.


-Quake on PC playing CTF, using the grappling hook to jump around like Spiderman. Jumping down on the enemy around their flag and blowing away 4 of them with my shotgun. That was sweet.


-Silent Service on Commodore 64. Firing torpedoes and diving quick, hearing depth charges exploding around you. Trying to survive.


-Gunship on Commodore 64, the graphics sucked, wireframe tanks, but it sure was fun imagining the missions in your head pretending you were Airwolf.


-Nintendo's Legend of Zelda. Grabbing pieces of the Triforce after a difficult boss battle and then going above ground moving around humming the theme song. Good times.


-The opening intro for Out of This World on the Commodore Amiga. Cinematic animation.


-Playing Streetfighter II in college at the local snack bar. We would play for hours with 8-10 guys, switching turns tournament style. Da-yu-gen.

-Speedball 2 on the Commodore Amiga. That was one of the best sports games of all-time

-Kick Off 2 on the Commodore Amiga. Real life soccer dribbling.

-Rampart on Atari Lynx, wasted HOURS before bed-time


-Civilization on PC. One of the few games I stayed up all night playing when I first got it. Beat the game in 2-3 days.

-Ace of Pacific on PC. Remember playing thing on my Dad's 386. Great polygon graphics for its time. [Discuss your favorites]

MacMall Selling Macs with Windows Pre-Installed

That sure didn't take long. MacMall has become the first store to sell Macs with both OS X and Windows operating systems pre-installed. I don't know if Cupertino wants this already, but the cat is out of the bag. [Discuss]

Netflix Mailer Evolution

For you Netflix fans, the evolution of the company's mailing envelopes. [Discuss]

Piper Jaffray Says 8 and 10 GB iPod Nanos Coming in Summer

Piper Jaffray's analyst, Gene Munster, thinks that Apple will release an 8 and 10GB version of the iPod Nano this summer. He also thinks the new touch-screen video iPod has been delayed till next year. [Discuss]

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Video

I posted the transcript from this greatest commencement speech of all-time by Steve Jobs to Stanford. I found the video, which is even better than reading it. See it, be inspired. Stay hungry, stay foolish. [Discuss]

Playstation 2 Price Cut to $129

Sony cut the price of the Playstation 2 from $149 to $129 ahead of E3 in early May. Go grab one and a copy of Guitar Hero if you haven't already. It rocks. [Discuss]

Link Round Up

1) LucasArts Wants to be Number One

2) Major League Gaming will be Televised

3) Ars April 2006 PC System Guide

4) Guitar Hero II Coming Soon

[Discuss]

FirstAdopter.com Show Episode 12

This show covers the following topics:

Podcast pop filter, Free Wifi in San Francisco, Sony PSP2 Details, Silent HPTC PVR Build System, Robert Cringely Bashes Gates, Moviedownloading Day 1

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Free Wifi in San Francisco from Google and Earthlink

Google and Earthlink won the bid to launch free Wi-Fi access to all the residents of San Francisco.

"In its joint bid, Earthlink plans to offer speedier access, but for a fee. No price has been set, but EarthLink plans to charge around $20 a month in other cities where it is negotiating Wi-Fi contracts, including in Philadelphia and Anaheim."[Discuss]

Boot Camp - The Target Market

Daring Fireball talks about what the true target market is for Boot Camp.

"So even if Apple only has 2 percent of the total market today, it’s 2 percent from the best part of the market. And if they add another percentage point or two or three, that’s going to come from the juicy part of the market as well. (I’d wager a large sum that Apple’s share of the profits in the total PC industry are significantly higher than their share of units sales.)"[Discuss]

Sony PSP 2 Details

Shacknews has a source close to Sony that revealed some details regarding a new PSP in development. It will not be a redesign of today's system, but a true successor. It will have a built-in hard-drive and not use UMD disks (yay!). The source says to expect the system within the next 3 years. Nvidia has already stated they are working on a new chip for an unannounced Sony product, so this may be it. [Discuss]

New Silent HTPC PVR System Guide Build

I'm building a new silent HTPC box. I just want a basic analog dual tuner system in the smallest possible reasonable form factor at the lowest price? Also it has to be very quiet.

My first crack:

Silverstone Black SG01 Media Cube Case - $144.99
Seasonic S12-330W - $59
Hauppage WinTV-PVR500 (already have one)
512MB of PC2700 RAM (already have one)
300GB Seagate HD - $135 (probably pick it up cheaper during a rebate sale)
Zalman CNPS 7000-ACLU CPU fan - $29.99
ASRock 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250 ATX AMD Motherboard - $48.99
AMD Sempron 64 2600+ - $68.00
USB-UIRT IR blaster - (already have one)
Tivo Remote Control - (already have one)

I would love comments? [Discuss]

Apple Fixes some MacBook Pro Problems

Apple has started fixing some of the initial MacBook Pro problems. It's probably still better to wait a few more months for all the bugs to be fixed.

Movie Downloading on DVD Day One Release

Movielink and CinemaNow have announced that starting April 3rd, they will sell movies on their site on the first day a DVD is released. Movies include such big names as King Kong and Brokeback Mountain. Customers will be able to watch the movies they buy as much as they want, however there are restrictions. Customers can not burn DVDs or copy the movies onto other devices. The sites will offer a way for the PC connect to a TV for playback.

Dell Launches UltraSharp 2007WFP 20 inch LCD Monitor

Dell started selling the 2007WFP, which will replace the 2005FWP. The new monitor will support 1680x1050 resolution, 800:1 contrast ratio, and include D-Sub/DVI-D/S-Video/Composite connectors. So far it looks like 3 models with 3, 4, and 5 year warranties. It is a wide-screen monitor perfect for DVD viewing.

Dell Launches UltraSharp 2007FP 20 Inch LCD Monitor

Dell has started selling the 2007FP, which will replace our beloved 2001FP. It will run at 1600x1200 resolution with 16ms response time. The contrast ratio has been raised to 800:1 which should generate a sharper, wider viewing angle image. It will come with USB/Analog/DVI-D/S-Video/Composite Video connectors and be sold with 3-5 year warranties.

Macworld Boston 1997

This is the historic Macworld speech where Steve Jobs rejoins his company after a 12 year hiatus in the wilderness. You can feel the goose-bumps as Jobs cleans house in terms of the Board of the Directors and announces a huge partnership with Microsoft. Bill Gates comes onto the screen through a satellite downlink can gets boo-ed and snickered. Afterwards Jobs scolds the crowd in saying Apple needs Microsoft to succeed. In one of the great business moves of all-time, Jobs was able to convince Microsoft to invest $150 million in cash and promise to release new versions of Microsoft Office for the next 5 years. This was when Apple was in a precipitous decline and could of easily gone bankrupt.

Ice Age Does Well at Box Office

Fox's Ice Age debuted at $70.5 million in its opening weekend showing the world that Pixar and Dreamworks aren't the only games in town when it comes to computer animation.

Steve Jobs Demostrates Nextstep Release 3 OS

This is a great video on Steve demonstrating his OS baby. This is where many of the user interface features of OS X came from and a lot of it sure looks familiar.

Cringely Bashes Microsoft

What else is new? Cringely writes how Ballmer and Gates connived behind Paul Allen's back to get his shares if he died from his disease. He also brings back old memories how Gates even out-foxed his partner, Allen, into getting a 64% share of Microsoft. All this being said, there is no-one better in pure business skills than Bill Gates. Paul Allen may be a great guy in the Steve Wozniak type of way, however Gates and Jobs are the guys that really drove the success of their respective companies. What Paul Allen is famous for is taking a $30 billion fortune and losing most of it in bad investments down to $8 billion in 2003. He should thank Gates for his fortune.

FirstAdopter.com Show Episode 11

This show covers the following topics:

Xbox 360 Drought is Over, 2005 CD Sales, Cellphone Brain Tumor, Palm Linux OS, Nintendo Revolution Specs, Nokia Boosts Cellphone 2005 forecast, Facebook Should Take the Money and Run!

Download the MP3 Podcast

2005 CD Sales Fall Again

RIAA released 2005 numbers. After a peak of 942.5 million units and $13.2 billion in revenue in 2000, CD sales fell to 705.4 million units and $10.5 billion in revenue during 2005. 2004 was at 767 million units and $11.4 billion in revenue. Instead of whining about piracy and digital music, maybe the industry should actually think of ways to make better music?

Swedish Study says Cellphones Raise Risk of Brain Tumors

The Swedish National Institute released a study stating that heavy cellphone users (more than 2000 hours) have a 240% higher chance of getting a brain tumor on the side they use their cellphone. I guess just makes rationally sense as all the radiation from early analog phone can't be good for the human body. Everyone should get a handsfree headset or use their speakerphone.

Palm Building their own Palm Linux OS

Pikesoft has confirmed that Palm is going to build their own Linux OS for 2007. The company already has a prototype of a Linux based Treo 650. The source says their will be versions of Treos later this year based on Microsoft and Palm OS Garnet, but they will launch their own Linux OS based devices next year.

This makes total sense as smartphone companies with their own OS will not have to pay licensing fees and can better react to their customer's needs. It looks like Palmsource, which was bought by a Japanese company, will focus more on the Asia market.