The Beginning of a New Day

Today, the ->)Executors(<- clan is finally re-opening. Darktrooper, Piru, and Soda are back, along with a few new faces including Edge,Wildfire, and a few others. We intend to quickly become one of the top clans in our respective games, regardless of the harsh competition found in all of the games we support. Our Star Wars Battlefront 2 division is already on its feet, with our other divisions just being started up. In a matter of days, this site will be completed, and different features will be implemented into the clan, such as a dedicated server.

E3 2009 Sony Press Conference: Live Coverage

Today, for the first time ever, we’ll be offering live coverage of Sony’s E3 ‘09 press conference, with all of the notable information on their presentation. Click below to get started.

Click Here To Open The Live Coverage

Left 4 Dead: Wanted

No, it’s not the sequel of Left 4 Dead, but Valve’s new game is definately “wanted.”  The pre-orders have already risen to 40% more than the Orange Box recieved, and that was a hyped game.

 “Sales goals are hard to truly define until you get close to launch, especially with a new game property. However, we’re getting close now and it looks like Left 4 Dead may do ok.”

“Pre-orders for Left 4 Dead are currently exceeding Orange Box pre-orders by well over 40%, this driven largely by the 10 per cent off promotion being offered now for both versions.”

“And one could assume this trend over Orange will continue as the pre-launch demo hits and the largest consumer advertising campaign for any Valve game begins on buses, buildings, billboards, TV, magazines, and web sites in the next couple weeks.”

 

Left 4 Dead is released in the US on November 18th and Europe on November 21st, and it’ll be exciting to see the kinds of reviews that this game recieves. 

I’ll also be reviewing this game, as I won’t miss the lauch for my life. Pre-ordered, checking out.

Where is Battlefield: Heroes?

Are you serious EA? Pushing back a free game, when Combat Arms needs competition most?

On the official “Heroes” website, it now states:

Battlefield Heroes™ is a brand new Play 4 Free game from the people that brought you the multi-million selling Battlefield 1942™ and Battlefield 2™

It’s a fun cartoon-style shooter which caters to players of all skill levels – easy to pick up and play, but with deep character development

It will be released for the PC as a free download in 2008

Now it’s just set for release in 2008, in general, while it was supposed to be released in summer 2008, which is now over.  Shame on you EA.

Looking Good, EA. Just hurry it up!

 

Anyways, this cartoon-styled shooter reminds many of Valve’s Team Fortress: 2, and some fanboys have been complaining like children about EA copying.  This is in no way true.

Vigor Gaming Force Recon BT

Vigor Gaming’s Force Recon offers gamers of different genres a sold gaming PC, and its a great value for a general gaming PC.

It features an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX 9770 processor running at 3.2 GHz, along with 2GB of DDR3 memory and 1.6 terabytes of overall storage, plus Windows Vista Home Premium preinstalled.

The hefty price of $4,000 dollars may seem high, but it comes bundled with a Viewsonic VG2230wm.  If you’ve already purchased your own monitor, you can simply buy the rest of the package for the price of $3,700.   The PC also includes Logitech’s high-end G15 gaming Keyboard and G5 Mouse, as well.

The Force Recon BT ships with a three-year parts and labor warranty and lifetime telephone support.

A very big plus.  Strangely enough, the Vigor includes manuals to many of the components along with the standard set of system restore disks, it does not ship with an official manual.

Inside, it holds an immense amount of expandability, as it has two PCI slots and five PCI express slots.  Within it is very organized, but the layout of the interior could be greatly improved.  The Graphics system is in front of 2 card slots, obstructing it.  One of the rails supporting the power sits in the way of the external drive bays; you’ll need a screwdriver to remove the offending rail.  Also, several “drive-bays” are missing from the unit.

The Force Recon BT provides an immense amount of ports, including eight USB, two eSATA, and two FireWire ports.  Two USB ports, a microphone jack, and a headphone jack rest on top of the case for easy access, but the placing of these could be better.  If the system is located under a desk, these jacks may be difficult to access.

Overall, and compared to the test results of many other gaming PCs, the Force Recon won’t bring anything new to the market.  Although with these results, it held on its own, scoring a 126 on the worldbench test.  The computer’s duel ATI Radion HD380 Graphics Processors carried decent graphics performance tests on many sites.

Though hardcore gamers won’t be in awe about this gaming PC, the Force Recon has been pulled together as a successful PC.

Google Speaks about Why they Designed Google Chrome

To go along with our Browser month of october, we’re having features on a regular basis about them.

In this article, Google speaks about why they designed Google Chrome, and their take on their new browser.

A fresh take on the browser

At Google, we spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And like all of you, in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends – all using a browser. People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they’re doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.

Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

So today we’re releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff – the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better . By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

This is just the beginning – Google Chrome is far from done. We’ve released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and we’ll continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path. We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others – and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

But enough from us. The best test of Google Chrome is to try it yourself.

Download

Article Link: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/why.html?hl=en

Dell 30” Ultrasharp 3008WFP

DELL ULTRASHARP 3008WFP 30-inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor At a Glance High-Definition 30″ Panel – Offers ultra-high resolution and superb color for content-creators, designers, video, gaming and entertainment. 2560 x 1600 Native Resolution – Offers up to 77% more content compared to Dell 24-inch monitors. 3000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio – Produces darker blacks for sharper images, crisp text, better color saturation and greater detail for HD entertainment. TrueHD 1080 - Supports higher definition than HD Television and comes with an integrated HDMI connection. Dell TrueColor Technology – 117%1of NTSC color gamut for rich, life-like imagery that has accurate color representation better tones and hues, and can support up to Adobe 98 color standard. Extensive Connectivity – Seven connection options: VGA, DVI-D with HDCP, HDMI, S-Video, Component, Composite and DisplayPort give you a wide range of connection options.

State-of-the-Art Design – With its brushed aluminum housing, glass stand base, and Dell-patented cantilever arm, the Dell 3008WFP looks as beautiful from the back and side as from the front.

-Official Microsoft Website

This unique 30” display with an amazing 2560×1600 basic resolution, and puts this monitor in a class by itself.

Dell is firing back at Gateway’s worldwide editor’s Choice-winning XHD3000 with this new monitor, which updates its line of 30-inch monitor series that fixes all of the short-comings of the original.

Dell has included an intenal “scalar” with this new model that scales its imput resolution to use every pixel of the screen.  Photographs, games, and movies look great on this 30” wonder, and it  throbs from within the stylish brushed aluminum bezel.

This 2560×1600 3008WFP boasts a 3000:1 contrast ratio, which triples that of others in its price range.  Extreemely bright whites on the high end and deeper, stronger blacks.

The only bug that this monnitor faces is a sliver of backlight that seeps through from the top left of the screen, but many users did not report this bug, nor expierenced it.

Despite this flaw, the 03008WFP is one of the best, and by far the most versatile 30” that Dell has released.  This is a great monitor to play vivid games, and watch amazing high-quality videos seamlessly.

8.6/10

Browser Wars Week One: Internet Explorer

Welcome to the first week of Browser Wars!  This week, we’ll be looking at the features of Microsoft’s bundled Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer 7 provides improved navigation through tabbed browsing, web search right from the toolbar, advanced printing, easy discovery, reading and subscription to RSS feeds, and much more.

-Microsoft

Overview: A huge step from IE6, the previous version, the 7th version in this series of browsers offers a new, streamlined interface, which improves managing favorites and accessing other tasks that you have to complete often.

Favorites: Simply click the star icon for a drop down list of your favorites menu.  This new, changed version allows you to view your favorite websites, RSS feeds, and even your recent history.  This streamlined edition doesn’t force you to go through a complicated series of drop down lists to find your favorites, feeds, and your history.

Buttons: Simple Home and Email buttons allow you to quickly go to your homepage, or even better, your email.  With this, you can register on a forum or chat system, and simply click the button to navigate to your email host.

Tabbed Browsing: You can easily browse one site to the next through the tabs at the utmost part of the browser frame.  You can simply view all browser pages at the same time by clicking on the “thumbnail” view button.   One feature specific to IE7 is the feature to favorite groups of tabbed websites.  In this way, you can easily open up many genre-specific sites at the same time.

More Features: Internet Explorer 7 also hoists a variety of other features, including an instant search box (pretty regular these days) and advanced printing, which lets you basically edit what you’re printing in a in-depth way.  Also, simple RSS feed tracking make the free pack-in a versatile browser.

Add-ons…  although not as diverse and as many in numbers as Firefox has obtained over its life, Internet Explorer still holds its own, and allows the user to customize their browser experience to increase functionality.

Steam -vs- Xfire: A Showdown for the Ages

Although many would make the argument that Steam and Xfire cannot be compared, but I’d beg to differ.  Both have some sort of community function, hoisting some sort of communication system through text and voice chat, and allows you to create clans, or groups/legions, whatever you want to call them.

Although Steam delivers content, and Xfire delivers a different form of content.  Instead of allowing you to download the actual game content, it gives you the opportunity to actually compare games with your friends, and even has begun beta stages of stat tracking.

They are both different in many ways, but Steam heads torwards more content whilst Xfire focuses on more of a community aspect.  Xfire is better in this area, as it holds a more able chat codec.

To utilize both programs and their functions correctly, you’re able to download the games off of the Steam service, but can take videos, screenshots, and chat whilst in a game you purchased from there.  In this way, you’ll be buying games through digital redistribution and using an “AIM”-like chat with more features.

From a data-usage standpoint, Steam uses much more RAM, which can be an issue for gamers used to running their games on Very High settings.  Xfire, on the other hand, uses much less resources, allowing games to run seamlessly while chatting with friends, or taking a video of your clan’s war, etc.

Xfire offers a variety of new features recently brought out, and boasts with automatic game updates, game downloads, a simple, yet effective chat system, and integrated in-game group chatting on text and voice settings.

Steam, on the other hand, offers more content, but only supports a small group of games, mostly developed by steam, and other companies that have a contract with the program.  It focuses less on a community, and more on the actual games it supports, and the distribution of the games.

Expect further articles looking more into the features of each one.

Browser Wars: Preview

Over the 4 weeks, we’ll be releasing an overview on all 4 of the web browsers currently partaking in the “browser wars.”  This 4 week divided article will be concluded with a final article, announcing the victor in our minds.

 

In the first week, Internet explorer will be displayed along with its features and unique characteristics.  This is currently leading, as it comes packaged with all Windows operating systems.

 

 

Following the first week, it will be shadowed by Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Google’s shiny new Chrome.

 

Each week, we’ll discuss the varieties of applications, add-ons, themes, and compatibility with each browser, and what makes them exclusive.  Also, bugs, errors, and issues will be factored into the final decision.

 

Currently, the battle fires mostly between Firefox and Internet Explorer, due to the lack of add-ons that the others have obtained.  Opera was not included in any of this due to its lack of standpoint in the market.

 

Feel free to comment on any of this, and be sure to read on in further into this project. 

 

Expect the first issue of this soon, within the next several days.