Entries tagged with san francisco - Channel 10

Games on your Zune!?! What? How? When?

Laura — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:08:00 GMT

There are many happy Zune owners right about now. At GDC last week Microsoft announced that XNA Game Studios games can now also be made for the Zune. If you didn't know, XNA is a game development toolkit available to "do it yourself" enthusiasts for about $99 / year. You don't need to create your own games, simply take advantage of XNA games created by the user base. The XNA team also made some cool announcements about Xbox LIVE community games. I got all the good dirt- take a look.

Jailed Video Journalist: 226 Days In The Slammer...

Laura — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:05:00 GMT

Irene McGee, our San Francisco contributor, talks with Josh Wolf, a blogger who has spent more time in jail for not revealing his sources than any other journalist (Josh considers himself a journalist, rather than a blogger or even "citizen journalist".) Josh Wolf shot video of a protest in 2005 which got out of hand, and got his hands cuffed when he refused to turn over the video to the authorities.

Y Pulse Mash Up: Bringing Teens and Technology together

Laura — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:06:00 GMT

Anastasia Goodstein knows about generation Y. She created Y Pulse which is an independent blog which recoginizes and promotes the relationship between today's youth and technology. At their mash-up this year I got to speak to a TON of internet companies all targeting the Y generation demographic, and a few die-hard Y generation enthusiasts. Take a few minutes and get to know some of them in this clip.

DayZ Loop
Gorilla Soap Box
MTV's The N
Imagine Marketing
Mind Oh!

The next generation of Wikipedia

Laura — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:51:00 GMT

Irene McGee, our San Francisco reporter (who you may recognize from MTV's RealWorld), is bringing us her first report. She managed to steal some time with Jimmy Wales who founded Wikipedia. He's up to something new and in this clip you can learn all about it.

Justin.tv

Laura — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:43:00 GMT

Have you ever seen the Truman Show with Jim Carey? Well Justin is the real life version of that except he agreed to it and made it happen all on his own! Justin decided one morning to attach a camera to his head and stream his world live over the internet for all the world to see. I ran into him and found myself being broadcast as I was filming him. It was very meta, check it out.

Web 2.0 Expo: All these virtual worlds

Jesse — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:30:18 GMT

One of the most interesting talks at the Web 2.0 Expo came late on the last day, and it was clear from the people occupying the back wall and the floors that the title, “Reality Bites: The Future of Gaming + Virtual Worlds 2.0” had caught a lot of eyes. Susan Wu oversaw a panel of enthusiastic men who were each very compelling when they spoke about their creations.

Lane Merrifield of Club Penguin showed off a kid-safe Antarctic wonderland for young children to make friends and socialize. The entire team behind this world consists of parents who couldn’t find an age-appropriate place for their kids online, therefore compelling them to build one. This fact, combined with their sole priority of security, makes Club Penguin a great example of a well-executed small idea.

Ginsu Yoon from Linden Labs made a short presentation about the state of adoption of virtual worlds. According to the team behind Second Life, only in the past couple of years has the concept of virtual worlds reached the Gutenberg Press moment on the timeline. There are miles and miles of uncharted territory and development left, and the definition of a virtual world is still very much hot liquid sand at this point.

Craig Sherman of Gaia Online gave an energetic talk about his project, which allegedly made its rookie conference appearance at Web 2.0 Expo. The tried and true method of using Anime-style illustration to create Gaia to appeal to American teens has proved extremely successful, with on average 50,000 users online at once. The most interesting part of Gaia was certainly the creativity shown by its users, who have created towns, banks, shoppes, and even live theaters all on their own. These destinations and activities all make Gaia more than an augmented 3-D chat room.

Joi Ito of Creative Commons and Neoteny gave the talk that contained more, “Ah-HA!” moments for the audience than anyone else. If you subscribe to the belief that, ‘Japan is the future,’ then what Joi delivered is right up your street. In a few early slides he illustrated the difference between content and context; music is content that is valuable to a large number of people but offers very little interaction, whereas text messages are highly contextual and demand interaction, but are essentially valuable only to the recipient. Ito spent the back half of his talk discussing World of Warcraft and the real world skills that can be learned while playing. Pointing to John Seely Brown’s digital learning concepts, specifically on the important differences between simulation and metaphor, Ito stated that character traits that are developed and displayed in-game fully translate into the real world.

To close the talk, Susan asked the panel a handful of questions, the most interesting of which was focused around how the market of virtual worlds will mature (the ‘who will win’ question). The panel all seemed to agree that the market is so very young that there’s nothing but growth ahead for the next few years. Beyond that, the obvious analog, at least for us, is virtual worlds are the television channels of the new generation. There will be numerous worlds that don’t necessarily have to connect or interoperate, so long as they have sufficient followings.

Web 2.0 Expo: What’s the takeaway?

Jesse — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:53:00 GMT

Last week the O’Reilly machine cranked up a storm in downtown San Francisco, pulling as much of the light of the internet as possible into the first annual Web 2.0 Singularity Expo. Moscone West was washed over with a sea of people anxious to be a part of the conversation around how everyone can be a part of the post-bubble phenomenon. We attended simply to see how the ecosystem has matured since the term was coined back in 2004. Over the next few days leading up to MIX07, we’ll go in-depth on our own ideas about Web 2.0, but for the moment, enjoy some of the photos we snapped while walking round.

OptiTrack offers you Motion Capturing you can do at home- and affordable!

Laura — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:21:00 GMT

Want to be in a video game? Want to do your own motion capture for your own animations? Well Optitrack allows you to do just that! OptiTrack cameras work with a range of software toolkits, all the way from Point Cloud tracking, Rigid Body tracking, up to Full Body Motion Capture. In addition, stop the fastest motion with high-speed grayscale video at 120 fps. OptiTrack provides the tools to create your ideal solution. Watch this clip and see just how simple the future of motion capture can be.

GDC '07: EyeTronics

Laura — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:53:00 GMT

Have you ever been blown away by the realism and accuracy of a 3D facial skin? Well then the chances are you were looking at an Eyetronics creation. Check out this clip to see how its done.

Introducing the Novint Falcon

Tina — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:36:00 GMT

The Game Developers Conference of 2007 was filled with cool new peripherals and demos. This one I found particularly interesting. It's a company called Novint and The award-winning Novint Falcon is the first controller that makes high-fidelity interactive three dimensional touch possible and practical for consumer computing applications. Being introduced initially as a PC game controller, the Falcon is, in essence, a small robot which lets users feel weight, shape, texture, dimension, dynamics and force effects when playing enabled games.

It's a bit of learning curve for shooting and such but I give you a demo of it while playing through a little known game titled Half Life 2.

GDC 2007 - XNA Challenge; Four Games in Four Days

Nic — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 23:29:00 GMT

Yep - that's not a typo in the title. The GDC XNA Challenge saw four teams of independent developers create four games in four days, completely from scratch, using XNA Game Studio Express. Sound tough? Well to make it just a little bit more interesting the developers had to code their games in the middle of the GDC foyer surrounded by thousands of conference attendee's, snap-happy media, Xbox 360 demo stations and a fully stocked bar. The end result? Four amazing games - all playable and all fun - including a 3D action RPG with two player co-op. Be sure to check out gamerscoreblog's extended coverage including links to download the source code for each project.

AMD at GDC

Tina — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 23:41:00 GMT

Our non-stop GDC coverage takes us next onto a tour of the AMD booth. AMD is taking the xbox 360 chip, shrinking it down and putting it in phones. They're also working with developers to make some great games. Nic Fillingham our Singapore rep for channel 10 does an indepth interview to bring you the scoop. 3D graphics on Mobile phones in a few years...hey, that's what they're saying. :)

GDC '07: Penny Arcade the Video Game!

Laura — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:04:00 GMT

Hothead Games and Penny Arcade teamed up to create the first ever videogame based on the much loved comic strip. The first game is entitled Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. The game will be released in episodic format, delivering new installments of the adventure to Penny Arcade fans every few months. I grabbed Jerry from Penny Arcade and Joel from HotHead games at GDC this year to get some more info about the game straight from the horses mouth :)

And if you've seen my last interview with Penny Arcade, sometimes getting a straight answer from these guys is not as easy as you'd imagine.

Game Developers Conference - a total success!

Tina — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:45:00 GMT

So I spent last week in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. This week was great for those who are interested in working in the gaming industry and what's happening in the gaming industry. Every major developer and publisher showed up. The week was filled with presentations, workshops and announcements from game makers like Shigeru Miyamoto to Cliff Bleszinski. Talking about next-gen to graphics to storytelling. Microsoft came to the table with some solid stuff this year.

They held an XNA competition where four community game developer teams from four different countries each set out to create an original game in just four days. At the end of GDC, the XNA Game Studio Express Challenge teams unveiled their completed games to the public at the Game Developers Conference. We snagged an interview with two of these community game makers which you will see in the near future.

Microsoft also made a few announcements:

Microsoft Announces 512MB Memory Unit for Xbox 360 and Increased Xbox Live Arcade Game Size Limit
512MB Memory Unit enhances storage capabilities and choice for Xbox 360 gamers; increased Xbox Live Arcade size limit provides additional flexibility for game developers. Read the press release.

Microsoft Unlocks Game Development and Encourages Everyone to “Dream-Build-Play”
Providing the opportunity for game developers to create visions in a world where they make the rules, Microsoft Corp. today kicked off the Dream-Build-Play game development contest, offering a $10,000 (U.S.) grand prize and the opportunity for a winner’s game to be published on Xbox Live® Arcade. Read the press release.

Laura, Nic and I got some great interviews with the guys from XNA, Penny Arcade, and tons of cool peripherals. We will be bringing you all of these videos soon.

For more information on what went down at GDC 2007 check this out.

Xbox Live stats are announced! And the winner is?

Tina — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 16:51:00 GMT

There is no doubt that Xbox Live has been an enormous success for Microsoft. But just how successful is it? Microsoft announced that more than 6 million Xbox 360 owners are connected to Xbox Live, a target that was projected to be hit in June. Xbox owners have spent more than 2.3 billion hours playing Xbox Live since the system launched in November 2005.

The worldwide top 10 most played Xbox Live titles are:

1. Halo 2
2. Gears of War
3. Hexic HD
4. Call of Duty 2
5. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
6. Call Of Duty 3
7. Oblivion
8. Project Gotham Racing 3
9. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
10. Perfect Dark Zero

The top Xbox Live Arcade games are:

1. Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting
2. Bankshot Billiards
3. Marble Blast Ultra
4. UNO
5. Doom

Other stats to keep you up at night:

There are 2 million text and voice messages sent every day on Xbox Live.

The average Xbox Live Gold subscriber has 22 friends on their friends' list.

To date, Xbox 360 owners have unlocked nearly 300 million Achievements, creating a grand Gamerscore of nearly 7.5 billion.

Nearly 70 percent of Xbox Live users have downloaded at least one Xbox Live Arcade game.

More than 70 percent of Xbox Live members are downloading content from Marketplace.

Xbox Live hosts more than 7,000 pieces of gaming and entertainment content.

More than 5 billion Microsoft Points have been activated on Marketplace to date.

Nearly 50 percent of Xbox Live members in the U.S. log into Xbox Live Marketplace every time they turn on their console.

Microsoft announces 512MB Memory Unit for Xbox 360!

Tina — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 22:24:00 GMT

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco Microsoft announced plans to launch a 512 MB Memory Unit for the Xbox 360. YEA! Who doesn't love more memory? The 512 MB memory unit will become available worldwide April 3rd, 2007. Price point looks like $49.99 in North America. It will also come pre-loaded with one of the most popular arcade games ever - "Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved" from Bizarre Creations. Meanwhile, the original 64MB Memory Unit will drop in price from $39.99 to $29.99. But wait, there's more, there will also be an increase in the official size limit of Xbox live arcade games from 50 MB to 150 MB - that starts right now.

Flight Simulator X: Expansion Pack to be released this Holiday Season!

Tina — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:00:00 GMT

With the Game Developers Conference finally underway so are official announcements. The ACES team has been slaving away at the next two updates for "Flight Simulator X". The DirectX 10 update and Service Pack 1. But hold onto your wings, flying enthusiasts, this holiday season Microsoft Game Studios is officially releasing their first expansion pack in years: "Flight Simulator X: Adrenaline". New features will include multi-player air racing, who doesn't want to fight head-to-head at fifteen thousand feet? There will be new missions and all-new aircraft, including the P-51 Mustang. It's going to come out on both Windows XP and Windows Vista and will include both the Game Explorer and Parental Controls.

Virtual Earth 3D Launch Party....what people are saying

Laura — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 22:42:00 GMT

If you haven't checked out Microsoft's Virtual Earth yet, you definitely should. I swung by their offices and got a preview of it about a month ago and I was utterly impressed. In fact, I liked it so much that I headed down to San Francisco to celebrate with the team and some esteemed journalists at their launch party. While I was mixing and mingling I decided to bust out the camera and get on tape some peoples first impressions about Virtual Earth 3D. Take a look and see what other people are saying and then try it out for yourself and let me know what you think!

Hellgate: London - I head to Flagship Studios for the scoop

Tina — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:45:00 GMT

So, one of my favorite things to do whether I'm working or not is to visit video game companies. A few of my favorites are Epic Games, Red Octane, and now Flagship Studios. Which is located just off the water in beautiful San Francisco. A few of my lady gaming friends work there and with a little begging and pleading they were kind enough to give me a sneak peek into Hellgate: London for the PC. I sat down with their Chief Visionary Officer David Brevik and if any of you are Diablo fans, he not only named the game but was one of the masterminds behind it. He also talks openly about his road to Flagship Studios. So what's the deal with HellGate: London. Besides the fact that it's real, real pretty...I'm gonna tell ya, or David is. :)

Alex Albrecht talks about the creation of diggnation!

Laura — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:00:00 GMT

I went down to San Francisco to check out the release of digg V3 and I ran into my old buddy Alex Albrecht. Alex is currently the co-host of diggnation with Kevin Rose while also pursuing his acting career down in LA. We laugh, we cried, we talked about old times on G4 and Tech TV- but most importantly, we learned how diggnation came about and the amazing success story behind digg.com. Watch and learn.

Digg V3 launches complete with categories, visualization, and over-exposed excitement

Tina — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 20:00:00 GMT

The launch party for DIGG version three was the place to be in San Francisco this weekend. The new version will include visualization of the Digg organism in real time, not to mention many more categories including a separate space for videos, all of which can naturally be experienced separately through the aggregator of your choice. In honor of the white-hot amount of excitement around this site revision, we present our interview with Kevin Rose in white-hot excitement mode.

Links: DIGG, Do you Digg it?, Kevin Rose

Maker Faire: Putting a StreetDeck PC into your car

Laura — Mon, 22 May 2006 13:00:00 GMT

Cars, cars, cars. It's all about making your ride custom to your needs. At Maker Faire I met up with Damien Stolarz, author of Car PC Hacks, and he introduced me to the all-in-one mobile electronics package StreetDeck. StreetDeck delivers all the extras you want (GPS, Music, DVD, the works!) and need in your car, so you can go from zero to loaded with one installation. It's pretty sweet...

Links: Decked out car on Flickr, Maker Faire, MP3Car.com(everything you need to do it yourself!), StreetDeck, StreetDeck video on CNET

Mythbusters at Maker Faire!

Laura — Thu, 18 May 2006 17:00:00 GMT

Have you seen Mythbusters on the Discovery channel? Well, it's a tough job separating truth from urban legend, but the MythBusters are here to serve. Each week special-effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman take on three myths and use modern-day science to show you what's real and what's fiction. I ran into them at Maker Faire for this behind the scenes interview.

Links: Maker Faire, MythBusters, Snopes

CalCars... Taking a Prius Hybrid to 100+ MPG!

Tina — Wed, 10 May 2006 20:00:00 GMT

So Laura heads to Maker Faire and gets indepth information on those ridiculously high gas prices. Okay, well kind of. She talks to the founder of CalCars and learns how they can convert a Toyota Prius so that it can be charged using your household electricity ... power that is a whole lot cheaper than the gas a normal Prius uses to generate all of its electric power. Learn how they make this work, and how much easier it would be for Toyota to make their hybrids work this way in the first place. Enjoy! Oh and Laura's not so bad either.

Links: CalCars, Felix Kramer's Blog (Power, Plugs and People), Maker Faire, Toyota Prius

What is Maker Faire??

Laura — Mon, 01 May 2006 17:00:00 GMT

Join me down in San Mateo, CA as I check out Maker Faire! I chat with Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make Magazine, to find out what this event is all about, and I learn about the Maker's Bill of Rights from Mr. Jalopy himself!

Want to see more? No worries, more Maker Faire coverage coming soon!

Links: Dale Dougherty on Wikipedia, Maker Faire, Mr. Jalopy, Owner's Manifesto (Maker's Bill of Rights)