Max Zuckerman

Guitar Hero: World Tour up close and personal-like

MaxPowerhouse7 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:32:00 GMT

I’ve been sitting on this one for a little bit until closer to launch… that’s right, it’s almost Guitar Hero: World Tour time (October 26th to be exact).

“But Max, I already have Rock Band… what’s the big deal with this?!?” I don’t know which one is better yet, but based on what Brandon told me about the track editor where you can make your own instrument tracks for your own songs and share them online, this might be the killer “must have” feature of the video-console-rockin’-out-style-games. I also really liked the symbol additions to the drums, the pressure sensitivity, and not mentioned is the ability to use the drum header to plug in a real electronic drum set to rock out in some real style………… ohhh man I must do that!

So here’s the question ladies and lads: are the new features of Guitar Hero: World Tour compelling enough to get you Rock Band owners to buy another set, or did you all just wait for this game anyway??

Lead Designer of Rock Band tells all.... ok not all, but a lot

MaxPowerhouse7 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:28:00 GMT

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Rock Band by Harmonix (which by the way has a pretty cool web site design sporting a picture at the Central Square T stop in Cambridge, MA). At this year's Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), I found the Rock Band 2 stage and man, people were really rockin' out.

And, of course, watching from backstage with a smile on his face was Dan, Senior Designer at Harmonix and the lead designer of both Rock Band 1 and 2. We saw some game play, talked about the development process, hit on some new features, and had a little jam session. This releases for the Xbox 360 in just a few weeks, so get ready to rock out!

C8: Zune Rocker shows us Zune Social and the new FaceBook application

MaxPowerhouse7 — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:06:00 GMT

From Channel 8:

"Cesar Menendez (my favorite Zune Rocker) has shown me how the Zune team has taken music back to its pre-digital roots when people used to gather at record stores and tell each other about the latest and best ways to rock out--or mellow out, depending on your style. It's called the Zune Social and it really is an interesting concept that leverages the back end from the XBox Live infrastructure and allows you to create a profile that displays your songs played, favorites, and friends. From there you can find out what others are listening to, get a taste of it, and share it with others... very cool stuff."

Cesar also demoes the integration with FaceBook in a new app which you can download by going to your Zune Social homepage.

Check out the video on Channel 8!

See the Windows Mobility Smackdown at TechReady 6 on Channel 8

MaxPowerhouse7 — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:31:00 GMT

From Channel 8:

Every 6 months, Microsoft holds an internal-only conference called TechReady for our technical team in the field. It's an amazing convergence of people from all over the world coming together to learn about our technologies directly from the product teams as well as to give feedback about what customers are saying. In fact, it is not uncommon to see a product manager and a technology specialist getting into a heated debate about what's working, what's not, and where things should go in the future.

Although this is usually for-Microsoft-eyes-only, I managed to get you guys a sneak peek at one of the most highly anticipated sessions every year: the Windows Mobility Smackdown! This draws a huge crowd that literally lines up an hour before the session starts just to get a seat at all... and man do people go nuts for this one. The product team unveils some of the coolest Windows Mobile features, literally throws prizes into the crowd, and some lucky few walk away with a brand spankin' new Windows Mobile device.

Check out the video over on Channel 8.

Is this the future of Software and Services? It could be...

MaxPowerhouse7 — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Other than jetpacks and freeze dried food, there may be some other things to look forward to in the future. OLED displays, surface computing, and of course a robot that walks your dog for you...

Some of us, however, believe there could be more to how technology progresses. Will new genres of devices emerge or will we continue to converge and overlap in capabilities? How will these devices work with each other? What will the interface be like?

Check out this video to catch a glimpse at what software and services could potentially lead to in the not so distant future...

Windows Mobile 6.0 Devices for your Shopping List

MaxPowerhouse7 — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Windows Mobile 6.0 was released a little under a year ago... so when I heard one of my favorite Mobile Specialists, Jason Langridge, was in the US, I had Laura Foy kidnap him in her truck and bring him to our studio for a little WM6 devices showcase.

He saw what she did to Tina, so he ~~screamed for help~~ happily complied. Smooth move, Jason.

My two favorite features he showed were the USB connect Windows Mobile 6 as a data modem (6:00) and the Windows Live Search via Speech (4:30).

This is my first on10 video, so go easy on me... also feel free to check out my stuff on Channel 8. Really, go ahead. Don't make me send Laura after you too!

Enthusiast AND Student? Win a PC!

MaxPowerhouse7 — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:13:00 GMT

Ever feel like even though it's a jolly good time reading about all the latest and greatest cool technologies out there and seeing the ins and outs of how people are using it, you would love to get your hands on some of this tech yourself?

Well if you're a student... chances are 3 of your last 3 meals had the words "Ramen" or "noodle" in it and it's not just because you love the smell of boiling water. Gadgets cost MONEY!

So in the spirit of kicking off my joining the Channel 8 team, I have begun a series in which you (the student enthusiast community) help me decide what computer components to you, and in the end I'm going to build it. Ready for the crazy? One of you will WIN this shiny new piece of hardware and you can save all your holiday cash for more noodles ;-)

So if you're a student, head on over to Channel 8 and "jump in." (yeah I stole that from X-Box).

Hacking a Media Center DVD Library

MaxPowerhouse7 — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:52:00 GMT

If you're like me, one of the inputs on your TV is your desktop or laptop computer. It's one of the best ways to surf the web or share pictures and videos with others.

But my favorite feature, hands down, is the ability to have my entire DVD collection available to me in a very intuitive and slick-looking interface all on my TV. The best part is I don't have to physically insert a DVD every time I want to watch one. I can just browse my collection very easily all on my TV/monitor and hit "play!"

See how I set this all up in my tutorial on Channel 8.

Like having 2 graphics cards? How about 4? And why not add 4 CPU cores too...

MaxPowerhouse7 — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 05:00:00 GMT

About a year ago if you asked a PC building enthusiast what processor to use, he/she would probably have pointed you toward a slick 64-bit AMD chip which at the time was some of the best performance at a sweet price, win-win right?

That all changed when the Intel Core 2 Duo chips came out with better performance and even lower price points. The Intel fanboys rejoiced as the top spot had returned to the chip making giant. To this day Intel has remained in the lead with multiple iterations of the Core 2 Duo architecture with increased speeds and even doubling the cores (Quad Core chips) thus solidifying their top dog status.

AMD, however, has not given up... not by a longshot. While we all have waited to see the results of their ATi acquisition, today I had the chance to check it out firsthand. That's right, folks, AMD has its own triple-play to show off: new true quad core 64 bit CPU--the Phenom, a new Radeon 3800 series set graphic cards, and to support it all... a fancy new chipset known as "Spider."

One of the key differences with the AMD Quad Core architecture versus the Intel is that the cores are all capable of communicating on-chip. Intel's solution requires communication through the chipset since it is actually two dual-core processors on the same die.

The Spider chipset brings some fun toys to the table like a faster hypertransport bus and more importantly, the ability to connect up to 4 graphics cards in crossfire mode. And to top it all off, these new ATi 3800 series cards support Direct X 10.1--yeah before you all say "so what?" I agree that it may not be the most useful feature today but when Vista becomes the standard gaming platform and games leverage DirectX 10.1, then you'll be happy you have it.

So how well does this new platform fare in Vista? Let's just say I have never seen so many 5.9 ratings... ever (pop in a couple of Western Digital Raptors and even the hard disk rating could join the party). Keep in mind the system rating is determined by the lowest score, in this case the hard disk.

Having used this machine for 2 days I have to say I am very impressed with what I can only call SNAPPY behavior. Opening and closing applications just feels downright smooth... even when I opened 56 instances of Windows Explorer, Expression Web, Expression Blend, 11 Internet Explorers, Windows Movie Maker (playing a movie), and notepad. Why did I have so many instances of Windows Explorer open you ask? I just think it's fun to hold down "win+e" and watch the windows fly open and cascade along my screen... and it's even more fun when the system just does it without hesitation. It's important to note that while this machine was equipped with 4 gigs of RAM, the machine entered an infinite reboot loop with 64 bit Vista (AMD claims it will be fixed by launch) so I had to resort to 32 bit which while theoretically can address up to 4 gigs, that would only happen if there were NO other memory addressing space taken up by devices like graphics cards etc.

The only hiccup I had was during video editing in Windows Movie maker, it seemed like it took longer than expected to play through tracks when I dropped them into the timeline. My guess is that movie maker isn't taking advantage of either the multiple CPU cores or it is not hardware accelerating via the 4 graphics cards. When it came down to publish my video, it handled a 1 minute 30 second video from MPEG4 to 1080p WMV in under 2 minutes.

With this new platform, AMD has also introduced a new overclocking utility called "OverDrive" that combines voltage setting, status, benchmarking, and stability tests all in one tool. My favorite part is the novice mode which allows you to "safely" (meaning overclock at your own risk with proper cooling) automatically adjust your settings for better performance. For those of you who laugh at the word "novice," there's an expert mode where you can ~~burnup~~ overdrive your processor for some nice performance gains over the standard 2.3GHz stock clock speed.

All in all, this throws a few new options into the decision making process these days for those of us building or buying a new high end PC.

So what do you think, is this AMD's big comeback?

Get a yourname@live.com email now!

MaxPowerhouse7 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:23:00 GMT

Ever since we came out with live.com I have been a huge fan of the domain name. You say "Google it" I say "Live it!" To each his own.

Either way, for a long time I have been asking the product teams to use username@live.com instead of user@hotmail.com as my email address... and today they have delivered! Starting right now you can go here and register a name, like clownmember.f4r7@live.com.