THE Wrath of the Lich King

Unfortunatly I must take advantage of the moment even though the gamers blog should be doing this, the best selling game in the history of gaming is coming out with its new expansion Nov. 13. Many of you might play/know of the game called World of Warcraft. If not it is a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game. The reason I say its best selling is because as of right now there are 11 million people who own the game before this new expansion to the game is coming out. thats about 1/10 of the population of the united states if im not mistaken maybe more. Thats a lot. Anyway I take advantage of shouting this out in the blog because im one of those players too. I do also think that this is a great time for technology too. Blizzard entertainment which is the creator of WoW, has totally dominated the gaming market for years and this mmorpg has up the gap between them and other companies. With everything they have done i wouldnt be suprised if they are the first ones to invent real time virtual reality games where you too can be in it. With the revenue they pull in ( 120 million dollars in one quarter) i wouldnt be suprised if sooner or later they will become just like a google where they start diving into other markets like phones and other things of that sort.

Trooptube

What’s his third article gonna be this week? I know you are all asking yourselves and can’t wait until I answer it. You just have to sit here, worried about what it might be. Is it some cool new phone? Or a way to make college life easier? Or is it something else? Is it perhaps something that he has already written 2 articles about this week? Well, if you guessed the last option, you are correct. My third article this week is once again, about youtube.
Last year, the US military shut down the use of Youtube by its soldiers, for two reasons. Security, and the use of bandwidth on the network. So, all of the troops overseas right now have nothing to do in their downtime. What did the military do in order to cure the boredom? They created Trooptube. Trooptube is a site which allows you to sign up as a branch of the military, or friend or family of a member of the military and watch videos.
What is the benefit of this? Well, it will allow family members to place videos of their ever-growing family on the site, so the military members have something to look forward to when they get home.
The military does watch over the site, and watches each video before it is sent out. This way, they can prevent obscene material going over the site and will keep the troops focused on family, and their duty.
Personally, I think this is a great idea for all the troops we have overseas. Say that there is a brand new parent out there, and is worried how their baby is doing. With trooptube, you are able to see how the baby is growing and how their significant other is as well. It’s a whole new world of communicating across thousands of miles.

Movies on Youtube????

For those of you out there who use the wonderful creation of Youtube.com, you are in luck. Many movie companies do not think that it is a wise financial decision to place their movies onto Youtube, because they will not make money off of it. Youtube has been pleading with them but to no avail. Today, however, some companies have backed off, and are putting some of their “back-of-the-catalog” movie titles, such as MGM’s Bulletproof Monk”
So, for all of you fans of the movies that nobody has ever heard of, you are in luck. Youtube is playing to your needs, and allows you to watch the movies on its site. MGM is the first major movie company to allow its movies to be placed onto the “small screen.” MGM’s co-president of worldwide television said, "I don't think you are going to be seeing a James Bond movie on YouTube. That's a very special franchise for us. We are very cautious about where we put those movies." So, the big titles are not released as of now, but perhaps, in the future, we can find these movies and enjoy them just as much.
As more and more movies are placed onto Youtube, the company will grow, and the site will evolve. The site will switch from videos of teenagers doing stupid things, to a worldwide source for all of you movies. In essence, with this move, the world is changing, and it’s all thanks to youtube.

Pimp My Ride!

Im sure most of you have used or even thought about using your phone (texting) while driving. Well your arent alone approximatly 70% of the world uses some sort of electronic device while they are driving weither its texting friends or e-mailing for work.

At this years consumer electronics convention experts are saying cars are going head on into the future and you could see these new inventions very soon in your own car.

Now I know of people who already dive into there car and supe it up weither it be connecting there stereo's to a subwoffer or connecting there iPods up to the stereo's so you can listen to your iPod through the cars sound system.

With the cars that could possible come out after possible 5-10 years you wont have to tear up your car to do it and it will have it built in already. Something you might not have thought about but might want in your car is mobile internet service for those long car rides that you might get jitters from if you arent on facebook or talking to your friends over IM. Well that was one of the idea brought to the convention.

The company AutoNet Mobile has created a kit for you to place in your car where ever you like so you have Wi-Fi on those long trips that you might have and want to use the internet. I've personally wanted one of these in my car for those long rides. All the steps are is screw the base into your car somewhere, power up the device and start up the cellular based broadband and your good to go.

Another device brought up is the well know PC into your car. This computer is supposed to hold 160 GB of storage which is quite a lot to store movies, songs, videos, etc. So if you have a built in monitor somewhere in your car which comes with the PC you can watch whatever you want on thsoe car rides.

HD In Your Pocket

A recent news article states that the big company down in silicon valley called Pure Digital created a new product called the minoHD. It's not much different then their original product which only produced standard definition, but now its in HD.

This product is if you havent seen one before is a simple pocket sized video camera obviously on which you can produce video. It has a simple USB connection on the back to download into your computer and it also has a screen on the front so you can play back anything you have recorded.

Now everyone knows that HD is the best screen you can look at. It is closly related to people who want to watch there football but it can also be used for movies. Obviously if you wanted to carry around movies that you wanted to watch in HD, bam! you have your minoHD right there for you. It is quite facinating when you look at it too. Because you may think, doesnt the technology to make TV's play HD huge. Well, no the people wanting to watch the football game in HD also want a kick ass big screen to go with it. All the HD technology takes is a board that changes a few things in the signal coming in and you have yourself a better picture.

Now on another note this does look very close to how a video iPod works. It just so happens that this can play HD. I wouldnt go out and buy one of these because Apple Inc. will probably catch on and add HD into their own line of iPods.

Youtube

I like to write articles about the things we take for granted in technology. One of those articles was about “facebook”, and another was about “google earth.” Both of these are awesome to use, and many of us use them quite frequently, without thinking about the history of it, or its future. Another such topic I’m going to write about today, is the joy of Youtube.
Youtube was created in February 2005, and was made so users could upload movie clips, TV clips, and music videos. One extra thing the creators allowed was the ability for users to upload their own personal videos, allowing for amateur filming to begin rising. Shortly after the creation, in October 2006, Youtube had gained enough popularity for Google to become interested. Google made a deal with the three creators, and the three men sold the rights of Youtube for $1.65 Billion.
Youtube has the ability to create an account name, so that you can add your own videos, or “subscribe” to videos. When you subscribe, the site realizes the type of video you subscribed to, and allows you to view other videos similar to that one, or by the same author. Many of the videos do not require you to be registered to the site, but some, which might be potentially offensive, require you to put in your age to determine if you are legally an adult. At the age of 18, you can watch whichever videos you want.
The amount of videos, and subscribers on Youtube is quite astonishing. According to a study in January 2008, there had been over 3 Billion video views, and considering its November, it’s quite safe to say we are well past that. Another study in April of 2008 has shown that Youtube has over 80 Million videos loaded onto its site, and its constantly growing. A third study, this one done in 2007, says that over 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute. In this same study, the amount of bandwidth used strictly by Youtube in 2007 was more than the entire internet had in 2000.
I’m not sure about you, but I have spent many nights not doing homework, and watching youtube instead. With all of the videos that youtube has, its impossible not to enjoy the something put onto the site. Youtube has an extremely wide range, including funny videos, music videos, clips from movies and tvs, political videos, news videos, and just weird and odd videos that probably should not be put on the internet, but are anyway.

Microsoft Cracking Down Through Hacking

Microsoft is in the news again but this time it is not about Windows 8. It is about Microsoft getting into trouble with Chinese citizens. Well a few months ago Microsoft sent out an update to all Windows XP Professional Operating Systems throughout the world to help them find any copies that were counterfeit. This update would install a program that had to have an authorization code of a legal copy of the operating system to stop the program from running. The program was designed to start up with a black desktop and then every hour it would refresh back to black in case someone changed the background. So anyone with an illegal copy of Windows XP would have a black desktop and not be able to do anything until they bought a legal copy of it from Microsoft. There also would be a permanent notice that would appear in the bottom right hand corner of the screen warning users that they had an illegal copy. Luckily Microsoft made it so that all other programs would run normally while having the black desktop.

Everything was going fine until a survey conducted by Tencent, one of the largest Internet service portals in China, protested the Microsoft campaign. Most of the people who took the survey were Chinese citizens who had illegal copies of Windows XP. They claimed that the legitimate copies of Windows XP were too expensive which turned them into counterfeiters just so they could enjoy the product. In China, a legal copy of XP cost 2,578 yuan which is roughly $376. I think this amount is ridiculous and I can understand why some people might want to ‘borrow’ Windows XP.

Guess what happened next, a lawsuit followed Microsoft’s campaign. It was lead by Dong Zhengwei (do not worry I could not pronounce his last name either), who is a lawyer, specializing in consumer rights protection. He said that it was illegal for Microsoft to potentially sabotage private computers and suggested a billion dollar fine against the cooperation. Dong said that the anti-piracy program would pose a threat to personal information and was considered a crime. This is because it is equivalent to hacking someone’s computer. Microsoft would easily take any personal information they wanted from anyone who owned a pirated version of Windows XP. The lawsuit ended up falling through but Microsoft agreed to try to find better ways of finding counterfeit software so that it does not endanger the personal information of its customers.

Yes, we all do have something that is illegal on our computers but just remember, that does not mean someone is not trying to find you. So keep ‘your’ items safe and be careful who you get it from.