August 2009 - Posts - Play Things

August 2009 - Posts

A Complex Situation: Videogames and Gay Rights

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
Shadow Complex is a new action/adventure title for the Xbox360 Live Arcade, a game that attempts to combine fast-paced side scrolling a la Metroid or Castlevania with crisp 2.5d visuals. That combination, of course, is an incredibly enticing one, and Shadow Complex has garnered quite a bit of critical acclaim for its gameplay and mechanics, with an...

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How Twitter saved my holiday

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Around 1:00 PM last Friday I was standing in the lobby of The River View Retreat somewhere inside Corbett National Park in Uttaranchal. There are glasses of welcome drink arranged on a table outside the resort's lobby, along with biscuits, but I rush past it in my eagerness to check in. The idea of course was to spend a longish weekend in the resort...

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Grab your screen with a single click

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
For all the fancy hardware that goes into modern computers sometimes the simplest tasks can stump you. For instance suppose you’ve made a blog for the entire family and want to tell your uncle in Vancouver how to embed a video in his post. One option could be to send him a long, patiently written email with every step put out in excruciating detail...

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Microsoft Word's 60 Day Ultimatum

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
A Texas Judge has issued an injunction against Microsoft - ordering the software giant to stop all sales of Microsoft Word , that piece of software we spend most of our working time staring at. The point of contention seems to be an alleged patent violation held by i4i , a Toronto-based document management firm. i4i claims that it holds a patent for...

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The Q1 to beat all Q1s

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
Remember that little list of games you were planning to finally play sometime this year? Games like Starcraft II , or Splinter Cell: Conviction , which have been in development since the Paleolithic, and have seen a veritable blitzkrieg of trailers, promos and PR since e3? Well, fiddlesticks. The vagaries of annual results and the deadening thud of...

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Working Through the Night? Don't Forget this Neat Little App

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
The pitch black room. The single white glow of a computer screen. Most of us are familiar with the droop-eyed persistence of working through the night on a tight deadline, and the way the sunlight next morning seems to pierce a little too brightly. Most monitors today, especially some new laptop screens, are way more bright than they need to be, and...

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The first UID project joke?

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
(Received last night via email forward) When we all have the UID card this could be one such conversation?. Operator : "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut . May I have your..." Customer: "Heloo, can I order.." Operator : "Can I have your multi purpose ID card number first, Sir?" Customer: "It's he..., hold..........

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