Binary Game for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Binary Game is a fast paced highly addictive iPhone & iPod Touch puzzle game with simple easy to pickup gameplay.

The basic idea is to match the number your are given at the beginning of a round by turning ON or OFF switches. Scoring is based on accuracy and speed. Submit your scores online and see if you made any of the high score lists!

There are two main game modes.

Challenge Mode: You gain points by quickly completing rounds and levels. Complete 5 rounds in succession to get to the next level.

Speed Mode: Get through 15 continuous rounds quickly. How will you rank against the world?

The most exciting aspect of Binary Game is the local and global online high score list. Send your high scores to the Binary Game High Scores site and see how you’ve managed to do against other players around the world. There are Daily High Scores, and All-Time High Scores to complete against.

Binary Game is now available from iTunes.

Columbia Pictures (shhh! It’s Sony) Stops Netflix from streaming their movies and shows to the Xbox 360

Later today NXE is launching. I got in the preview a bit early and had the pleasure to play around with it. It’s really a very big improvement over the original 360 interface! I also tested and played around with the Netflix streaming, which is one of the highlights of the NXE launch. I’ve used the Roku Netflix Player in the past so it wasn’t anything too new, but 360’s interface is nicer. The 360 is also the first device to offer HD content streamed from Netflix.

So now, just a few hours before the official launch of the NXE, Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony) has blocked all their streamable content on Netflix from being able to be viewed on the XBox 360. You can still view all their content on the Roku Player, your Windows or Mac, just not the 360. It seems that some licensing issue has materialized just mere hours before the launch.

This whole situation annoys me to no end, and wether it was intentional as some childish scheme to try and hurt the Microsoft launch of the NXE on the 360, or just simply bad timing – it looks awfully bad for Sony.

Here is some coverage on some other sites: Kotaku, Engadget, Destructoid, Aeropause, Joystiq, Kombo

XBox 360 freezes when you sign into live? Read the solution here!

Does your Xbox 360 freeze as soon as you sign into live? This started happening to me last night. The second I would sign into XBox Live, the system would freeze. Only thing I could do was power cycle. If I unplugged the network cable it would boot up fine. It would then freeze when I’d plug in the network cable and try to sign back into Live.

At this point I assumed my third 360 was about to Red Ring, as I am sure anyone else who has ever had to send back a 360 would think the same. However, as it turns out my Xbox 360 is not quite ready to die, yet — probably has a few more months of life left.

Here is the problem. When I first signed into Live last night I went to the market place and started to download the “PES” demo. At some point while it was downloading the demo in the background I decided to play a game and booted up Halo 3, which when you go into Matchmaking the 360 stops any active downloads. This is also the first time my system froze. From there, anytime I would boot up and sign into Live (it automatically signs in) my 360 would freeze.

Solution:

1: Unplug your network cable or wireless adapter
2: Go into the system blade, then memory, then hard drive
3: Delete the “PES” demo download (it has the exclamation mark contained within a yellow triangle)
3a: You might need to delete ANYTHING that has the exclamation mark)
4: Plug in your network cable or wireless adapter
5: Sign into Xbox Live or reboot

Obviously something is funky with that specific demo when it tries to resume your download, or something is going on behind the scenes with the live service. Maybe something was overlooked during their big update a few days ago and a bug as introduced.

Hopefully this has fixed your issue and you can resume killing newbs.

Freddy Wong rocks out at Guitar Hero 3 (SXSW 08)

While at SXSW 08 I had the chance to watch Freddy Wong, the US Guitar Hero 3 Champion, rock out at a few GH3 songs. It’s very entertaining to watch.

Check out the video:

Hide an image inside of Text! CSS3 magic!

This is really cool!

Type a bunch of text, and point to an image. Then select (highlight) all the text to reveal the hidden image within the text.

While your at it, digg it too!

Walmart cancels Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii orders; Claims requests for cancellation were made by customers

After reading on Kotaku that Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii was available for pre-order from Walmart for $19.82, I quickly jumped on the site and placed my pre-order.

I, along with a few other people who also ordered this morning, just received the following email from Walmart:

Walmart.com Request for Order Cancellation
from: orderfulfillment@walmart.com
to: [censored]@gmail.com,
date: Jan 11, 2008 9:44 PM
subject: Walmart.com Request for Order Cancellation
mailed-by: ndc-fulmail3.walmart.com

Dear [censored],

We have received your request to cancel the item(s) listed
below from your order (#267730xxxxxxx).

We will attempt to cancel this order, however, we may
already have processed your order for shipping. If you need
to contact us about this order, please call us at 1-800-966-6456
between 6 a.m. and 1 a.m (CT), seven days a week.

===========================================================
ITEM(S) REQUESTED TO BE CANCELED
-----------------------------------------------------------
Order Date: 11 JAN 2008 08:41
Order Number: 267730xxxxxxx

ITEM QTY PRICE TOTAL
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii 1 19.82 19.82

===========================================================
Returns
If we are unable to cancel your order because it already has been
processed, then you can return any unwanted items to us after you receive
them. You will have the option of returning the item(s) to us via mail or
directly to a Wal-Mart store, whichever is more convenient for you.
Instructions on how to return items will arrive with your order.

Help
If you have any questions, please visit our Help section:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=5436

Sincerely,

Customer Service at Walmart.com
http://www.walmart.com

Hey Walmart, wtf? I can definitely understand that you probably made a huge pricing error and don’t want to ship out these games for under $20, but it really pisses me off that you are not owning up to your mistake. Sending customers an email indicating they have requested to cancel their order is bullshit — WHY would anyone want to cancel their $20 SSBB order?

This isn’t going to fly to well, how about an apology?

Frustrating XBOX Live Problems during the Holidays

I am expecting to see huge numbers from Microsoft’s Video Gaming division this holiday season. It’s hard to say if they’ve dropped the ball or not with their XBOX Live service, during what is likely the most important time for the service to be 100%. But we’ve already seen comparisons such as “XBOX Live starting to have the stability of the 360 systems” pop up all over the place.

It’s not good when a paid service experiences issues during the whole holiday break. We’ve seen a bunch of updates from Major Nelson reassuring us that “the service was never completely offline.” The problem with that statement is that while it’s great for people who where not affected, it’s sort of a smack in the face for the rest of us. Everyone that I know that uses the service has experienced some sort of issue during these last 10 days, including myself. Most of us have had problems quite a few times during the last week, and it’s damn frustrating.

I don’t doubt for a second that when Major Nelson said “The entire LIVE team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great LIVE experience,” he was not exaggerating. The LIVE team understand they need to provide exceptional service, especially since it’s paid.

All that being said, I honestly believe that Microsoft needs to offer some compensation to all the LIVE users for these very frustrating problematic times. A free week or two of Live? Maybe 800 MS points? I have no idea what, but it would certainly be a shame not to take responsibility and make this right.

Assassin’s Creed reviews are starting to roll in and TV spot video

This is yet another game that has been hyped to no end and is now just mere days away. Some reviews are starting to roll in, and from the looks of it “Assassin’s Creed” is most likely going to live up to all the hype.

GamePro gives Assassin’s Creed: 5/5 (100%)
Game Informer scores Assassin’s Creed: 9.5/10 (95%)

A very solid start. More reviews should be available by the end of the weekend.

Here is the TV spot:

Super Mario Galaxy Review [Game Trailers Video Review]

The wait in the US is almost over. Just a few more days and you’ll be playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. So far the game has been getting very high scores from around the net, and has sold over 250,000 copies in Japan the first week alone.

Here is Game Tailer’s video review of Super Mario Galaxy:

In just a few days you will too be dusting off your Wiimotes and firing up Super Mario Galaxy. If you haven’t done so yet, pre-order it from Amazon now, or if you are the adventurous type, you can walk into a Toys R Us on Tuesday evening at 5pm, fight off(or step over) the herd of little kids, to pickup your SMG copy along with a $25 gift card.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare [Mini Review]

This is my no-crap-quick-review of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

I have been playing through the CoD4 single player campaign on the XBOX 360 over the past few nights. The campaign on regular is a bit of the short side, roughly 6 hours or so, but it’s really hard count much against this game. The enemy AI on “regular” isn’t completely dumb, but they also tend to miss a whole lot at close range, while the friendly AI seems more accurate and helpful. At times the game feels very guided as the AI leads you ahead on missions.

There are two more difficult skill levels to choose from, “Hardened” and “Veteran.” While “regular” is fairly easy and you will probably end up getting wasted a dozen or two times or so, Veteran will straight up kick your ass. You better know what your objectives are, and how to complete them because the enemy AI is now extremely accurate. Don’t stray away into the open, or you will be head shotted. Your aim better be top notch and you need to expect the enemy to flank you from all sides. You will see enemy troops jump down from rooftops to try to come around open areas to flank you. Expect to spend an extra 3-6 hours going though the hardest mode.

Once you have completed the game you unlock the “Arcade” mode and the “cheats menu.” Play the arcade mode to get scored and see how you compare against your friends and the rest of the XBL community in the leader boards.

Then there’s the XBox Live side of the game. Anyone who has played the beta knows that this is the most solid online “Call of Duty” game ever made. It was probably not too difficult to improve on crap, so this is a huge leap forward for the series. While there are no achievements for the live portion of the game, Infinity Ward did a great job rewarding you for playing. You gain experience points for playing, and with experience points you unlock different weapons and abilities. You will unlock the ability to create your own class of soldier with what weapons you want to use, and which extra abilities you think you might need. Expect to spend a whole lot of time playing CoD4:MW online.

So with one of the most solid campaign modes on the 360, and an extremely solid multiplayer mode I score “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare”

9.6/10

Buy Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from Amazon now for $59.99 or buy the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Collector’s Edition for $69.99, either is FREE SHIPPING with Super Saver Shipping.