JordanH.net

Television

// September 27th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Myself, Technology

I’ve been waiting ages to get a High-Definition Television, and yesterday the wait was worth it! I went to Tesco and eventually decided on buying an LG 32in Television (32LG3000). I got it home, set it up in my room and I was stunned by the awesomeness of HD!

The picture quality is really good. It’s not 1080p, but it has a sharp, stunning picture and a 15000:1 contrast ratio. It’s got a brilliant backlight and the screen seems huge in my room!

I’ve got my Xbox 360 and my PS3 hooked up to it now, and I’m on my second attempt of downloading the new Burnout Paradise updates for PS3. I’ll be reviewing those later!

Twittelator Pro Review

// September 23rd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Technology

Last week I bought Twittelator Pro for my iPhone from the App Store. Having searched left, right and center for a decent iPhone Twitter app, I found the free version of Twittelator pleasant to use. Now here are my thoughts on the paid version:

Compared to other paid Twitter apps, Twittelator retails for a measly £2.99 on the UK store, compared to Twitterific’s mighty £5.99. This seems much better value, especially when you consider the many more features you get in the paid version of the app.

The app has a clean interface, and has four different themes to use. From the main screen you have the option to choose to view your friends’ tweets, replies, your tweets and view your favourites, as well as your friends favourites. In addition to the standard options, you can view the trending topics and you can conveniently store searches too.

Sending tweets is easy using the large button on the bottom bar on all parts of the app. You can send maps of your location (very useful indeed!) and pictures which get uploaded to TwitPic. I have found these features great and reliable too.

The overall reliability of the app is good, I’ve not experienced a crash yet (and I’ve used this a lot over a week or so). You can have multiple Twitter accounts which can be switched at the touch of a button.

Overall, this app was definately worth buying. It goes above and beyond what any other Twitter app does at the moment. This is the first paid app I’ve bought and if all apps are as good as this then this certainly won’t be the last! (:

Actually, I Like the New Facebook

// September 13th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Technology

Well, it’s the most controversial change in the history of Facebook, but I’ve decided where I am in all of this. I like the new Facebook. Why? It’s clean, consistent, and developed around the user and the masses of applications that have sprung up over Facebook’s Developer Platform.

The old Facebook was great, but it was never designed to deal with the millions of apps which were made, and the result was that every profile was cluttered with an app here and an app there. It all looked quite messy, like MySpace. The new design, however, was created to cater for applications. For example, the wall now actually pulls the latest information from the user’s apps, and can actually keep the page readable. Seperate tabs for information is a good idea too. If I want my friends to view my Flickr pics in a full page, they can view the tab instead of going to the website.

If I was given £1 every time I’d rejected an invite to join a group against the new Facebook, I’d truly be a millionaire by now! One thing that strikes me is the lack of peoples’ common sense – instead of creating hundreds of groups for the same thing, create one and have an overwhelming number of people there! In fact I’ve had quite a chuckle at some of the names of these 300+ groups – “The NEW Facebook SUCKKKKSS – Change it BACKKKK“, “1m Against The New Facebook” (which oddly has less than 2,000 members), “Bring back the old Facebook or we’re off to MySpace”.

The last of these group names pretty much sums up the whole divide. Before the changes, Facebook was turning into something as cluttered as MySpace. One of the main aims of the redesign was to try and stop the clutter from getting out of hand. The problem is that the people who want the sites to be organised and clean are the web designers, the developers, the “webbies”. But the people who are protesting against the new Facebook are precisely the opposite, the “MySpace crowd”, the ones who actually like their pages filled to the brim with messy apps.

The overall issue is how to handle the conflicts of interest between the 100m users who use Facebook.

Spore

// September 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Gaming

If my calculations are correct, then Spore came out exactly 8 years and 7 months after The Sims took the world by storm. From what I’ve played so far today, then it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Spore did for the new generation of games, exactly what The Sims did to the previous generation – reinvent the game.

Spore is a combination of many things. In case you hadn’t realised yet, the man behind this epic is no other than Will Wright, the creator of the other epic I mentioned above (: The game has the personality, relationship and skill aspects of The Sims at its heart, but branches out to have the SimCity element of gameplay along with a great amount of customisation options.

In the game, you start off as a cell, swimming around in a very big ocean. You can be a herbivore or a carnivore, and as you eat more food (and other fish if you like), you earn more DNA ‘bits’ which can be used when mating to expand your character. Soon you end up on land, and your creature can be seen in its full 3D glory. Your creature develops land-life-like features like legs, hands, and even wings. Your task is to work your way up, by either creating alliances with other creatures, or killing them off and having them for supper. (The herbivores among us will be glad to know that there are fruit trees around too!)

The game moves on to the city-like aspects, with the “Tribal Phase”, “Civilization Phase” and lastly the “Space Phase”. The latter of these phases is like all Sim-games, never ending. There continues to be a wealth of things you can do when flying between planets.

The character customisation is amazing. You couldn’t create two characters the same if you tried. The way you can develop your character, and how your character can develop personality-wise too. There is just too much to mention to fit it in this article!

I bought the Galactic Edition from GAME for £39.99. It includes an Art book and two DVDs, plus a poster and an expanded manual. I also picked up the Prima Guide, which was £12.99. So far I’ve only managed to play the first two phases (mostly owing to the fact that my sister decided she wanted to play on it all evening), but the game seems so intuitive and new, pushing boundaries where games have never gone before.

There’s only one gripe that I have with the game – the gameplay can be a bit slow. There are times when you feel as if you’re repeating yourself a lot (mainly in the second phase), continuing to do the same things – alliance or kill – over and over.

However, I’m really looking forward to playing the further levels and creating buildings, vehicles and even spaceships too! (:

A year on…

// September 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Myself

Well, JordanH.net turns the grand old age of one this week. It’s been a long year, many ups and downs and twists and turns along the way. But it’s still here (apologies for the downtime last week btw) and there’s nothing to suggest that it’s going anywhere soon!

Here’s to another great year!