I’m not going to say much as there are a few reviews out there already, but I would like to touch on something that the reviews didn’t mention – the volume level. The Roadster is designed to sit just a foot or so away from your face on the driver-side visor of your car. At this small distance away, the volume level far exceeds my phone’s speakerphone and in fact, the volume of the Roadster is much higher than any phone’s built in speakerphone (that I have encountered).

I’m basically using this to listen to Podcasts as I drive and for the basic hands-free features it has. It works wonderfully for those two tasks.

The FM transmitter mode is as expected… weird. I didn’t have high hopes beaming A2DP Bluetooth from my phone to a speakerphone and then back to my car’s radio, but it works better than you’d expect.

The My MotoSpeak software (a 30MB download [yes, it can be moved to the SD card]) does all that it promises, but there are one or two quirks. As others have detailed the features of the software, I’ll just say that sometimes it misunderstands what I’m saying, then thinks I said “help”. When the My MotoSpeak software thinks you said “help”, it drops you into the help menu and stops responding to voice commands and will not get out of the help menu unless you hit the home button. This happening on the Freeway is probably more likely to kill you than texting on your phone in the first place; beware of the help menu.

Even with the above caveats, I really love the speakerphone. It has replaced the failing FM transmitter I previously had in my car, is more discreet, and has a lot of cool speech features that make hands-free pretty painless.

I used to regularly share my W.I.P. images on a forum I frequented called 3D Attack (a Cinema 4D Community & Magazine). The old forum is now gone, but 3D Attack is still around in a different format. Anyway, I digress… The bike pictured above is a nondescript Sport Bike powered by something like a ZX-6R engine and built with similar style lines as the early 2000′s Ninjas and CBR600RRs.

I’d love to know what you think!

• XDA Developers Forums
• Cyanogenmod Devices

At this point if I don’t sound kind of silly it’s because you’ve heard of or enlisted the help of these communities. XDA is a collection of extremely talented developers how have normal day jobs like you and I, but spend their time trying to make their phones prettier, faster, and better. ‘Cyanogen’ is a custom ROM or Firmware that has had nothing but acclaim since the cellphone carriers started to treat your phone like a billboard (more on that in a bit).

I was recently given the opportunity to try the nightly builds for Cyanogenmod and although they are experimental, they are so much better than what Sprint and Samsung have provided me with. Certain features are still being perfected (the compass and some aspects of the accelerometer) but as a whole, it’s much faster and more stable than anything the creators and distributors of my phone have given me. Then again, it’s a business for them and like it or not, they are in the business of selling phones. They don’t want to make your mediocre 17 month old phone better. They want you to renew that contract and buy a new phone!

Now, consider these things: When a carrier sells you a mobile phone contract in the US, they use you as a billboard. They either charge you sticker price for the phone $550-$750 USD or enter into a 2 year contract with you ( roughly $1800-$2600) USD over the course of the contract plus the $150-$300 for a subsidized handset. If you ask me, it feels like at this point you’ve paid for the device and it’s yours. So why does your device have a bunch of un-removeable Verizon or Sprint Apps on it? Why does AT&T disable side-loading on some of their Android phones? Why does Sprint constantly bombard me with special deals and offers in my notification area that I can’t opt out of. Why? The answer is money. This is a business and even after paying a lot of money initially and on an ongoing basis, we’re being marketed to and nickel-ed and dime-d. Tethering or WiFi-Hotspot functionality is another rant that arguably doesn’t belong here.

The whole point of this rant is that if you have an iPhone, great. Apple cares about your experience as a user and will likely try to not ruin that relationship. However if you chose the promises of an open ecosystem (Android) and the ability to use any app you want, or make your phone serve whatever purpose you desire, but feel a bit let down by your carrier’s restrictions or attempt to “market-you-into-the-ground” then give Cyanogen a try. If it’s not available for your phone (I had to wait 17 months, but that’s not typical) go to the forums, make a donation to the good work these guys and gals are doing. You may even find a “Custom ROM” for your phone that removes some of the bloat and crap-software; you’ll get better battery life, a faster phone and less daily frustrations. At this point, Cyanogen is the pinnacle of this movement in my opinion.

• Have your customized your phone?
• How do you feel about this issue?

Summary

Beat Hazard is a difficult game to summarize, but here’s my best attempt: It’s a dual-stick, music influenced, shooter with a simple gameplay mechanic. Your selected music track (some are provided with the game or you can choose one of your own) controls the speed, number, and  timing of the enemies. The intensity of the music also dictates how powerful your weapon is. The system where your selected music track dictates the gameplay is similar to Audiosurf.

Game Mechanics

Speaking of the power of your weapon, like most shooter games or SHMUPS you can collect power-ups for your ship. The two main power-ups are Volume and Power. The Volume power-up increases the level of the music you, the player hears as well as the intensity of your weapon. The Power power-up controls the number of simultaneous streams of weaponry emerging from the front of your ship. other power-ups include score multipliers, Super Bombs and currency. The currency can be used to purchase power-ups and or other unlock-able perks. When purchased, these power ups are yours when you start a new session. The goal is to max out your volume and power meters, turning you into a “Beat Hazard”, which enhances your weapon and generally makes things more fun, louder and much more colorful.

Enemies

The enemies you’ll find in Beat Hazard are similar to the foes in other top-down perspective shooters. There are small ships that enter the screen only to serve as a distraction and to overwhelm the player. There are also larger ships that fire upon you more frequently and can release unexpected special weaponry. Often times, at what seems like a dynamically detected portion of the music track, a series of “Boss” ships will appear and start unleashing a barrage of difficult to avoid firepower on you.

See the gallery below for some of my own screen-shots of the game and the embedded official video below the gallery for an idea of how it all comes together.

Official Beat Hazard Promo Video

Waves is a dual-stick shooter with beautifully immersive visuals and a collection of very addictive game modes. To put it simply, it’s an arcade style game where you shoot things. I hate to compare it to an existing success, but if you love Geometry Wars, you’ll adore Waves. Before I get into a brief review and show a few screen shots, here’s the developer’s site: Squid In A Box, and here’s where you can buy it on Steam (if you prefer that ecosystem).

Official Trailer:

The mini review

At a glance, Waves seems like your typical shoot-em-up where the goal is to kill all the enemies. This would be a good description on the surface, but there are a few “rules” that make this challenging. I think that these restrictions are where the game shines and the difficulty (on the road to mastering the game) sort of begins to accelerate rapidly! The visuals are stunning and the music from artists on the 8bit collective is very fitting and addictive.

Here are some of the “rules” that set Waves apart from other shooters I’ve played:

• You can slow down time with a buffer of saved “time” and kills during that period are double the score. The buffer can also be used to avoid enemies when they try to box you in.
• You can use a bomb to destroy all the enemies in the region around you, however you don’t get to keep these bombs. You may only detonate one within a few seconds of acquiring it and you must kill a slew of enemies in rapid succession to get one.
• When you level up, you don’t just get the higher level, you have to pick it up. The “Level Up” is displayed as a bright blue pad that you need to roll over (your character is a sphere complete with inertial physics) in order to get it. So you need to earn your level up twice as the pad may appear underneath enemies or in a dangerous zone of the battlefield.
• When you level up, the enemies become more difficult to defeat. Nothing happens to your attack strength. This is contrary to many games (wherein you become more bad-ass and the enemies become tougher), but it works for Waves as the game is more about technique than just killing everything.

The Game Modes (My favorite is Bombing Run):

There are a few different game modes and they all have something unique to offer. Bombing run is probably my favorite. It’s slightly similar to “Pacifism” in Geometry Wars, but as with all things in Waves – there’s a twist.

First of all, you can’t shoot; there is no primary weapon. You may still slow down time for brief moments and move freely on the field. The difference is that bomb pads appear on the field. You roll over a pad to pick one up – then roll over a differently colored pad to detonate one. When you roll over an “armed” pad, a timer starts ticking. If the timer runs out before you roll over a “detonate” pad, you die. Think of it as picking up a just-armed grenade and then having to run it over to a target zone. It’s a lot of fun!

Go buy the game!

Screenshots:

Here are some screen shots from the game (including some witty copy on the menus and score screens)

Back in 2004

I was surfing 3D forums at my workplace on a dial up modem back in late 2004 and one of my forums was taking longer than usual to load (we’re talking minutes here). One of our neighbors in the building was a small web company
and one of the guys from that company noticed my frustration while hanging out in our office on unrelated business. He said, “hey if you want a faster browser, try Firefox.” I thought to myself, “Could a faster browser really make a difference?” (I knew nothing about the web back then. I was just an end user, nothing more.) After trying Firefox, I noticed (at dial up speeds) that it rendered the page progressively and that made it seem faster. This was huge… Browser loyalty began all over again. IE had crushed Netscape but a few years later, the Phoenix had risen!

Today

If we move focus to the present, the landscape is so much richer now. There’s Safari, Firefox, Iceweasel, IE, Chrome, Maxthon, Chromium, Konqueror, Iron (Chrome without the Google tracking) and many more. Some Android phones now support WebGL! HTML5 sites are popping up more often and things are crazy!

Right now, for the web, crazy is good.

At my day job I write WordPress plugins all the time. We love that platform. Writing a plugin for me is typically an exercise of utility, so when I decided to create my first “Jamie” plugin I wanted it to be almost pointless. Since Humor is one of my loves in life, I decided to create a WordPress plugin based around the often hilarious Rage Comics meme. The “Rage Comics” meme is one that has a really strong following (mostly on Reddit) and the new material just seems to write itself daily.

The rage faces were not my initial intent. My idea was to create a WordPress plugin that replaced all your commenter’s avatars with stereotypical MySpace portraits. Realizing that it would only be funny to me, I decided to shift focus to something funnier and less lame. The rage comics are funny on more than one level. To an outsider the cheaply drawn characters might seem funny just because of the sloppiness, but to the trained eye a “me gusta” or “cereal guy” image says so much more.

The easiest way to see the plugin in action is to post your Gravatar-less comment right here on this post. Enjoy, and take a peek at the plugin in the WordPress repository-why not try it out and offer a rating and or some feedback?

Rage Avatars in the WordPress Plugin Repository

The Hello Bar Shopify App’s purpose is to allow a Shopify user to:

1. Install the app from Shopify’s App Store
2. Log in/Create a Hello Bar account
3. Deploy a Hello Bar with the click of a button (instead of having to copy and paste code)

I don’t want to talk about it too much here as there’s an official blog post coming up, but it feels good to have another API notch in my belt and have worked with such a pleasant API as Shopify’s.

Related:

In this short screen capture, I show a quick use for the aforementioned feature as I try to scale a row of points to meet an existing edge of geometry.