We've all had to deal with them, the unwanted calls at inconvenient times trying to sell us things we don't want. In recently years many of us have flocked to sign up for the Do Not Call list, barring telemarketers (except non-profits and political groups) from disturbing your dinner. However, the calls still come. Companies ignore the no-call lists and don't respect your requests to be removed from their database (something they're obligated by law to do if you request it) and...
Review #2 is in, and boy is it a doozie! GameSpy took a look at the final version of the game and, let me just say, they were very pleased with what they saw. The three page review, written by veteran strategy gamer Allen Rausch, pretty much waxes poetic about the new features we crammed into Dark Avatar. A choice quote: "In my original review of Dread Lords I said "Master of Orion is dead. Long live Galactic Civilizations II." After a week of playing Dark Avatar, you...
Google, friend to all, guardian of the environment and... financier of piracy? Sounds strange, but that's the latest criticism leveled against search giant Google this week. By allowing two software piracy sites to run Google AdSense ads on their site, a few pirates walked away with over $1.1 million in ad revenue. Many media giants such as News Corp, Disney and Time Warner are screaming bloody murder over Google's apparent support of software piracy sites. Google's defense is ...
If you've been past the PC section of IGN today, you'll see a massive, evil looking robot staring at you framed by the words "Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar Review." This makes IGN the first media outlet to put up a review for the expansion to one of the top games of 2006. The review is a glowing endorsement of the expansion and a good read if you're on the fence about the game. Another indicator of how good Dark Avatar it that after awarding Dread Lords an 8.7 last year,...
Windows Home Server, the next big product from Microsoft, is slowly gathering marketing steam since the announcement at CES last month. Previously, only a handful of testers in and out of Microsoft had access to the beta, to test and try to help work the kinks out. Now however, Beta 2 is approaching and MS wants more people to get their hands on the code and put it through the paces. So if you're up to the task, and have a spare PC you can dedicate to the effort, head on over he...
The day has finally come, no longer will you have a friendly paper clip constantly offering to help make your document creating experience better. No more will you see a bouncing piece of bent metal with googly eyes bouncing at the corner of your screen, begging you to let it help fix the formatting, or suggest a particular word. Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant, has been put to rest. His smiling visage will no longer greet us when writing a letter. The Microsoft Of...
Google announced this week that the extremely popular Gmail webmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. The service launched on April 1st, 2004 as a beta product and invite-only. Gmail quickly caught on with tech enthusiasts, and a strange vortex of hype and demand surrounded it due to it's invite-only method for allowing people to create accounts. Gmail is also notable for the amount of storage space it provides to users. Starting at 1 gigabyte, the total...
Ok, so most of us remember the smiling flying people in the commercials for Windows XP, and now we're dealing with the annoying "WOW!" people in the Vista commercials, and we're more or less entertained by Apple's Mac vs PC ad campaign. Ad campaigns for operating systems are pretty hit or miss, and in the case of Microsoft, typically miss. So it's no surprise that one of their first, a commercial for Windows 386 is incredibly bad. Don't believe me? Well, Gizmodo dug up an ol...
A big deal at CES that received surprisingly little press coverage in general was Windows Home Server, the little box that would tie it all together and help you bring the power of the PC to every corner of your house. Hooked in with a Windows Vista machine running Media Center, and an XBox 360 with the Media Center connector capability built-in, the potential is definitely there for a server designed to fit in with the home media and information space. Well, Microsoft is starting to re...
Looking for a stunning theme you can use day after day? Well, with Omega by community skinner Treetog for Stardock Design , your search has reached its end! Omega will transform your drab and boring Windows desktop into something breathtaking and sophisticated. The Omega suite includes a visual style, an icon package with over 70 new icons, and a matching wallpaper. On top of that, there's an extras pack that comes along with the suite which includes matching Logon...
This Wednesday, February 7th at 4pm PST/7pm EST we will be hosting a developer chat to answer questions about Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, due for release this month. Even though this is not directly Sins of a Solar Empire related, this is your chance to chat a little bit and get a good look at the folks at Stardock behind the publishing side of Sins of a Solar Empire. Yarlen and Frogboy will be present and we might have some time to field a few Sins questions during th...
Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs knows how to pick a product and market it like crazy. The iPod, despite any technical complaints people have with it, remains the absolute dominant force in the digital music player market. Everyone wants to unseat it, but no one has come close yet. And then there's iTunes, the music store to go along with the iPod, which is also the most popular music store on the Internet, with over 2 billion songs sold. What ties it all together? FairPlay,...
Outsourcing work to cheaper locations and companies has been a cost-savings tactic of larger corporations for several years now, especially in the IT industry. Why have an American support call center when you can get one for a fraction of the cost in India? In a world of time and cost-conscious consumers, a lot of work seems to be outsourced to others. Now, however, we're crossing into a new realm; Outsource video game playing. If you've played games like EverQuest or World...
Google has been steadily encroaching on Microsoft's territory when by releasing web-enabled clones of popular office productivity tools. Already you can do word processing, spreadsheets and email through your web browser and Google's ever-growing suite of tools. Soon you'll even be able to work on presentations. Google conspiracy theorists discovered hints of just such a project when browsing through Google's massive mesh of websites. While this won't unseat Microsoft's hold on th...
Remember Netscape? The one browser to rule them all that was oh-so-unfairly unseated by the big, bad, mean Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Netscape has gone through a few rebirths, becoming the open-source Mozilla web browser, which then spun off Firefox. AOL, recently reviving the Netscape brand, is basing the browser on the Firefox codebase. Now, they're preparing the launch of version 9.0. AOL posted a little teaser to the Netscape blog alluding to the upcoming relea...