It can't be easy for most publishers (that aren't named Microsoft) working on first-person shooters due out this fall. After all, said publisher's sci-fi shooter sequel Halo 3 is easily one of the most anticipated games of the year. However, Call of Duty is a pretty big series in its own right, dominating the popular World War II genre with excellent single- and multiplayer gameplay. And with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward has recharged its franchise by busting it out of the World War II setting and giving it a jaw-dropping graphics update.
Get ready for Call of Duty action in a modern-day war.
Perhaps the biggest news with Modern Warfare is that yes, it no longer takes place in World War II, the setting that has served it so well all these years. However, with most of World War II's major battles already featured in a Call of Duty game, it was perhaps time to move on. This new game is set in a modern-day conflict--not in the near future. While the conflict that the game portrays is fictional, Infinity Ward wanted the actual combat to be rooted in today's truth. There are no fancy prototype weapons or equipment here. Everything in Call of Duty 4 is supposed to feel as authentic as possible, and Infinity Ward talked to veterans fresh from Iraq to hear their thoughts on the modern battlefield.
The new game doesn't take place in Iraq. Rather, it sets up a conflict with a mysterious Middle Eastern dictator and his henchmen, who have teamed up with a Russian ultranationalist and his henchmen, thus giving them the media-friendly name of "The Four Horsemen." You'll play primarily as one of two different characters, though you'll occasionally see the conflict through the eyes of other characters as well. The first is a British SAS commando caught up in the Russian storyline, and the other is a US Marine in the middle of the Middle Eastern conflict. How those storylines intersect is the basis of the game's overall plot. Modern Warfare's story will be told mainly through the perspectives of these two characters, since there won't be any fancy third-person cutscenes or glossy news broadcasts. By introducing a modern conflict, Infinity Ward created a storytelling challenge for itself. After all, almost everyone understands what World War II was about, and who the good guys and bad guys were. Introduce an original story, though, and you have to spend a lot more time introducing the various players and factions.
Still, Modern Warfare is a Call of Duty game, and that means that you're going to experience an almost nerve-wracking amount of action. The missions that Infinity Ward showed us featured the trademark intensity that the series is known for, from a nighttime shipboard assault in the midst of a raging thunderstorm to a massive air assault featuring more than a dozen Black Hawk helicopters swooping fast and low over a Middle Eastern city. In fact, the action seems even crazier than before, thanks to the fact that modern weapons and equipment are so much more advanced and lethal than their World War II counterparts. Now, every soldier is armed with an automatic weapon, and there are night-vision goggles, Javelin antitank missiles, and grenade launchers. In at least one mission, you'll serve as the gunner aboard an AC-130 Spectre gunship, providing fire support for troops below; the gameplay looks eerily like real-world gun-camera footage, with radio chatter to match.
The game will feature a brand-new story and impressive new technology.
However, there won't just be wall-to-wall, over-the-top action in Modern Warfare. That tends to be a bit too emotionally exhausting, not to mention repetitive from a storytelling perspective. Instead, Infinity Ward is looking to really mix things up. "What we're really going for is massive variety of gameplay, so along with telling the story in a sort of a 24, never-know-what's-going-to-happen-next style, we're doing the same with the gameplay," said Jason West, Infinity Ward's chief technical officer. So, there will be sniper missions where you have to sneak around, or the aforementioned one-off missions where you experience life as someone other than the two main characters. You'll even get the chance to experience a coup firsthand--from the perspective of the guy being deposed.
Regardless of what you do in the game, it will look absolutely spectacular, thanks to the game's cutting-edge graphics engine. Infinity Ward spent a lot of time showing off the incredible level of detail in the game, including character models that seem as detailed as expensive, 12-inch premium action figures, right down to the shadows cast by individual bullets. Of course, it's hard to appreciate this when pretty much the entire world around you is going to hell--but even the chaos looks impressively realistic. While there's no large-scale environmental destruction, there is material penetration by weapons, so it's possible to kill someone who is crouching beneath a window, or shoot up through the ceiling to get someone on the floor above. "On Call of Duty 2 we were [an Xbox 360] launch title, everyone was learning and ramping up on beta hardware... So now, the artists have been trained up from day zero, so we think this is the best-looking game you'll see on a next-gen console," said Vince Zampella, Infinity Ward chief creative officer. "We've really squeezed a lot out of the hardware, and it looks 10 times better than Call of Duty 2. And I think Call of Duty 2 looks great."
The single-player game alone makes Call of Duty 4 seem very promising, but toss in the multiplayer and it becomes even more impressive. After all, Infinity Ward has built up quite a reputation for multiplayer. The developers note that the Call of Duty games are among the most popular on Xbox Live, and that Call of Duty 2 was the most popular multiplayer game on the Xbox 360 for almost a year. Modern Warfare won't just be Call of Duty 2 multiplayer with new maps and weapons; there are also a ton of new features designed to improve accessibility, community participation, and persistence. Perhaps the most intriguing new feature is the create-a-class ability, which lets you create your own custom soldier, armed with different weapons and equipment, depending on what you've unlocked. Even better are new special abilities that add an almost role-playing-like aspect to the game. There are potentially dozens of special abilities, but you can choose only one or two at any given time, so it becomes a matter of choice. For instance, there's last stand, which gives you a few seconds after you're killed to pull out and use the pistol to shoot the person who got you. Heavy endurance will let you sprint farther, and fast reload will let you reload faster. Or there's martyrdom, which automatically drops a live grenade if you die. Perhaps the nastiest one we heard of lets you eavesdrop on the other team's voice communications.
Call of Duty 4 will also offer brand-new multiplayer options to go with its intense action.
In terms of community, Modern Warfare will introduce a Halo-style party system that will make playing with your friends a lot easier. Best of all, the multiplayer graphics look as good as the single-player. There's no sacrifice in graphical quality that we could see, and it's quite possibly the prettiest multiplayer gameplay that we've ever seen.
Having the Call of Duty name is already enough to get the attention of most shooter fans, but Modern Warfare really looks like a huge leap forward for the franchise, and it's hard to imagine how this will not be one of the biggest games of the year. The shift to modern times has injected the series with new energy and gameplay, and it all looks great. But best of all, Infinity Ward has revealed that the game is already far along in development, and it's on track for release sometime this fall. -GameSpot
Publisher: Jowood Productions Developer: Provoxgames ESRB: T Category: Simulation Release Dates N Amer - 06/05/2007
Game Previews For PC Game
Description
Spaceforce - Rogue Universe comes with excellent graphics, accompanied by moderate hardware requirements and the full freedom of choice - in this non-linear space experience, the player is given the pportunity to master the game exactly how he/she wants. It includes trading, fighting, and raiding space stations and fortresses, but also the examination of cryptic artefacts and anomalies and, of course, mind-blowing warps through wormholes and long-distance space gates. Features
* An open ended, beautiful and innovative 3D space environment decorated with stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, black holes, star bases, and floating cities - all of which are ready for exploration, development, trade, diplomacy, or conflict
* Players will have the opportunity to explore the galaxy as a member of one of the 10 civilizations placed on different starting locations across the universe
* Non-stop action with a wealth of star vessels within beautiful constellations make SpaceForce 2 an intriguing and exiting space game
* Advanced graphics and particle features - True 64 bit HDR rendering, HDR fresnel, HDR specular, HDR bloom and glow star effect, tone mapping (adaptive exposure), HDR antialiasing, blue
* Each ship can be modified into your own creative style by upgrading: speed, target system, jammer, shield, armour, weaponry, afterburner, cargo space and weight
Try this Game, You will be enjoy.. infomation from pc.gamezone.com
In this day and age, buying a standalone GPS device isn't the only way to get navigation help. If you have a cell phone or smart phone, you can add software or GPS accessories to turn your mobile into a handheld navigation device. One such solution is the Garmin Mobile 20. Unlike some of the other car kits we've seen, such as the Palm GPS Navigator Car Kit, the Mobile 20 works with a number of Palm and Windows Mobile devices (Garmin also offers a separate accessory for BlackBerrys) and offers turn-by-turn text- and voice-guided directions and acts as a hands-free speaker system. The setup and hands-free integration isn't quite as sophisticated as the Palm accessory, but it delivers accurate directions as well as some nice extras, such as traffic alerts and weather updates. The Garmin Mobile 20 is available now, but it's on the pricey side at $299.99.
Design If there's one area where the Garmin Mobile 20 falters, it's in the design and setup. Unlike the Palm GPS Navigator Car Kit, where all the pieces are neatly integrated into the cradle, the Garmin Mobile 20 requires a bit of assembly and doesn't boast quite the same streamlined design as the Palm kit. On the one hand, Garmin conveniently built the GPS receiver, speaker, and car charger into the cradle, but then you have to attach six different plastic pieces to the backboard of the cradle that act as the arms for holding your smart phone in place. It's not particularly hard; you just have to slide the posts along the left, right, and bottom edges. It just requires a bit more setup time, and it doesn't look as pretty as the Palm GPS Navigator Car Kit, but it's certainly not a deal-breaker. Plus, the Garmin Mobile 20 accommodates a number of Palm and Windows Mobile smart phones, whereas the Palm accessory only handles the Treo 680 and Treo 700p.
In the box, you get the mount with integrated car charger, a package of six standard posts, four extra posts to accommodate larger mobile devices, a vehicle mount (windshield and dashboard), an SD card preloaded with maps and software, and three adapter cables to charge your handset. There is also a volume dial on the right side of the cradle that you can depress to activate hands-free operation.
For our tests, we used the Garmin Mobile 20 with the Palm Treo 700p. The cradle easily accommodated the device, but we had to readjust the upper left post so it wouldn't hit the volume buttons. We also had to shift the bottom post to plug the power adapter cord into the connector on the bottom of the smart phone. The windshield suction mount securely held the cradle and smart phone during our test drives, and it features a lock mechanism to reinforce the seal between the suction cup and windshield.
Features Garmin makes things easy by preloading street-level maps of North America and nearly 6 million points of interest on the included SD card, so you just have to insert the card into your smart phone's expansion slot to get on your way. You'll find the application under Mobile XT on your smart phone, and if you're familiar with any Garmin products, you'll recognize the interface and features, as it's very similar to the company's standalone in-car GPS units. Even if you're a newbie, the software isn't particularly hard to navigate or master, as all menu options are clearly identified and self-explanatory. There is also a built-in help section if you run into problems.
You can start planning a trip in a number of ways, including entering a specific address, picking a point of interest (POI), selecting a recently entered location, or choosing a name from your phone's Contacts list. If you don't need guidance, you can just have the Garmin Mobile 20 track your movements by tapping View Map, or if you're completely lost, you can go to Tools > "Where am I?" to get your current location (nearest address and coordinates) and nearest major intersections. As with the automotive units, the Mobile 20 can generate directions by fastest time, shortest distance, or off road; in car, pedestrian, or bicycle mode, among others; and you can instruct it to avoid certain road types, such as toll roads and highways. The system also features route simulation, automatic route recalculation, a detour function, and traffic alerts via Garmin Online. Just be aware that the latter requires that you have a data plan for your phone to access the information.
The Garmin Mobile 20 offers turn-by-turn, text- and voice-guided directions, but it doesn't support text-to-speech functionality. This means the system won't speak actual street names; instead, it will give you more generic directions such as, "Turn right in 200 feet." Maps are available in 2D and 3D view with day and night colors, and you can change it so north is always at the top of your screen or the direction in which you are driving. While you're in map view, you also get your next maneuver presented at the top of the screen, and your speed and estimated time of arrival at the bottom. For a total overview of your journey, there's a Trip Computer that calculates your average speed, total miles and trip time, and more.
Some other cool mobile-specific functions of the Garmin Mobile 20 includes a feature called PeerPoints, which lets you send your current location to a contact via text message. It's great for letting people know if you're running late or if you want to meet up with friends at a certain location. If the recipient of the message happens to be a Garmin Mobile user as well, he or she can even save or route to that location from their device. We tried PeerPoints several times and had no problems sending messages, and our contacts always got the messages--pretty cool. Also, in addition to traffic alerts, you can use Garmin Online (remember, you'll need a data plan to access these services) to find the cheapest gas prices based on your location, hotel rates, weather information, and more.
Finally, you can use the Garmin Mobile 20 as a hands-free speaker system for phone calls. We were able to make and accept calls, but we wish there was better phone integration with the program. For now, to activate the hands-free functionality, you have to press the jog dial on the right side of the cradle. It's located far back on the accessory, so it's hard to access easily. You can get to your Contacts list through the Mobile XT application, but it requires a couple of taps. We were also able to bring up the Treo's dial pad by pressing the Talk key on the phone, but it took a few seconds for it to appear, so we thought it didn't register and tapped it again, causing the device to freak out a bit--oops. Needless to say, it'd be nice if there was a quick icon within the program that we could tap for this functionality.
Performance We tested the Garmin Mobile 20 with the Palm Treo 700p in the San Francisco Bay area. From a cold start, it took about three minutes for the system to acquire a satellite fix under cloudy skies. Though subsequent starts didn't take much longer than the initial acquisition time, it was a bit erratic, as sometimes it got a GPS fix right away, while it took several minutes at other times. The Mobile 20 did an accurate job of tracking our location as we drove around the city running errands, although it did drop the signal as we drove through a tunnel and through the skyscraper-filled financial district.
We also used the Garmin Mobile 20 for a trip from San Francisco to downtown San Jose. The program was able to calculate a route within a couple of minutes, but be aware that if you decide to download traffic information, this will add a bit more time to the overall process. The driving directions were accurate, and route recalculations were timely. Our one gripe is that voice prompts were a bit on the soft side, even when we jacked up the volume on the cradle and handset. That said, it got the most important job done, which was getting us to our destination.
The good: The Garmin Mobile 20 accommodates a number of Palm- and Windows Mobile-based smart phones and offers turn-by-turn directions and hands-free operation. You can also receive traffic alerts, weather updates and more, and send your location to contacts via text message.
The bad: The cradle design is somewhat kludgey, and we wish there was better hands-free integration. Speaker volume is on the low side, and the kit is a bit pricey.
The bottom line: Though the setup is a bit messy, the Garmin Mobile 20 is a nice alternative for smart phone owners who need navigation help but don't want to buy a standalone GPS device.
Need for Speed Carbon Cheat Codes Even though the wingman mechanics and canyon races don't quite pan out, it's still a stylish and enjoyable street racer.
By: EA Games, EA Canada Genre: GT / Street Racing Release Date: Oct 31, 2006 Players: 1 Player PC Games
Codes For NFS-Carbon Type any of the following cheat codes at the 'CLICK TO CONTINUE' screen. Some codes may work if entered at the MAIN MENU screen. Cheat friendlyheadlocksapplied = Unlimited Crew Charge nosforeverever = Unlimited NOS slowitdownwhenyouwant =Unlimited SpeedBreaker
Review Games
Carbon continues the story where Most Wanted left off. For those just tuning in, Most Wanted ended with you recovering your stolen car and bailing out of the city of Rockport while the overzealous, anti-street-racing Sgt. Cross continued his pursuit. At the start of Carbon, you're making your way to Palmont City when Cross, now a bounty hunter, catches up with you and totals your car during the chase. Before he can collect his bounty on you, though, your old friend Darius steps in and pays off Cross. You are then put to work, taking over the turf of the other rival street-racing crews in Palmont City. It seems that you've got a history in this town that predates the events in Most Wanted. And during the course of the game, you'll learn more about that fateful night you skipped town. Different characters will give their takes on the night you supposedly ran off with a big red duffle bag full of cash. And by the end of the game, you'll not only find out what really happened, but you'll have taken over all of the street-racing territory in Palmont City.
Outside of the actual gameplay, one of the more endearing aspects of Most Wanted was the way it used live actors in CG environments for its story sequences. These sequences invariably featured plenty of actor/model types, trying a little too hard to talk tough and failing spectacularly at it. The technique remains the same in Carbon, though there are more story sequences now and a slightly more self-aware tone. The heavy use of flashbacks is an interesting idea, but the story ends up being kind of muddled. And none of the villains come off as particularly menacing. Although it's hard to really qualify any of it as sincerely good, it's just over-the-top enough that folks who enjoy stuff like The Fast and the Furious, ironically or otherwise, should get some enjoyment out of it.
Design The iLoad looks like a bloated knockoff of a Mac mini. It measures 7 inches wide, 8 inches deep, and 3.5 inches tall, and features a slot-loading CD drive on the front, a 2-line monochrome LCD screen on the top, and an array of connection ports on the back. The user interface is on the top of the box, surrounding the dimly lit 0.5x2.5-inch screen. The controls are basic (part of the product's whole concept) and include tactile buttons for power and Go (enter), horizontal arrows for scrolling through the iLoad's menu, and vertical arrows that baffled us for quite some time (read the Performance section below).
Looking at the back of the iLoad is like pulling the curtain from the Wizard of Oz. With two USB ports, an Ethernet connection, VGA monitor output, peripheral connections, and audio ports, it looks like the back of a computer. Don't tell grandma, but the iLoad actually is a computer (albeit a very basic one). Of the 13 connections found on the back of the iLoad, only 5 of them are actually used by the device. For a product designed for technophobes, the inclusion of 8 useless and confusing computer connections runs counter to the iLoad's philosophy.
Features The iLoad can serve several functions. Its main purpose is to allow users to turn on the device, connect their iPod, insert a CD, press a few buttons, and rip the CD audio directly to their iPod. The iLoad will only rip music to an MP3 file format with a bit-rate quality that can be adjusted from 32kbps through 320kbps (default is 128kbps). The iLoad can also transfer files from one iPod to another (although DRM-protected content will be crippled), and can back up or restore your iPod using an external hard drive or flash drive. While these last two features are useful, they also point to one of the weaknesses of the iLoad system--ripping music directly to your iPod leaves you vulnerable to losing your whole music collection if you lose your iPod. Ripping music to a computer before moving it to an iPod creates a backup music library on your computer that will still be there even if your Nano gets abducted by the family dog. Archiving your music collection using iLoad and an external hard drive may give you the same results, but it starts getting complicated. Suddenly your computerphobic grandparent is saddled with an iLoad, an iPod, and an external USB hard drive. One has to wonder if buying them an inexpensive laptop might have been a better option (plus, maybe they'll graduate to e-mail someday).
Performance While the iLoad works as advertised, using an off-the-shelf computer would get the job done just as fast or faster. A computer would also give you access to album artwork, music videos, lyrics, podcasts, and a whole universe of information. Still, presuming that for some reason a computer is simply not an option (let's also forget for a moment that the iLoad is, in fact, a computer), the iLoad does what it says, and the ripped MP3 audio sounds comparable to the results you'd get out of iTunes.
However, even after suspending our computer-loving sensibilities, there were some frustrations we encountered with the iLoad that may send technophobe grandparents into a tizzy. For starters, there's no clearly labeled Eject button. Let's say mom puts her John Denver CD into the iLoad, only to suddenly realize that she already has it on her iPod. Naturally, she would look for the Eject button. Try as she might, she likely will not find it. Maybe (like us) she'll try powering the iLoad off and booting it back up (wrong again). To eject a CD from the iLoad, you will need to press the "down" arrow to the right of the screen. The "up" arrow will eject your iPod.
Another potential headache is the iLoad's built-in music database, which it uses to match CDs with their appropriate artist and song title information. While the iLoad uses a database of nearly 2 million songs, it doesn't have everything, and to keep it current you must either connect it to the Internet using the iLoad's Ethernet connection or subscribe to periodic database updates that arrive on CD by mail. If you're using the iLoad to rip a collection of oldies but goodies, you should be fine. However, if the CD you're ripping is hot off the charts, or worse, a mix CD given to you by a friend, you'll need to find an Internet connection or make peace with the idea that the songs will display as "Unknown Artist" on your iPod.
Last but not least, there's the issue of fan noise. The first thing we noticed when we powered up the iLoad is that the interior fans used to cool the computer put out a constant and unusually loud noise.
Final thoughts The iLoad concept poses an interesting question: Do we need to use our personal computer to mediate the transfer of music from CDs to an iPod? I believe there is probably great solution out there for computerphobic music lovers, but sneaking a noisy, crippled computer into a lunchbox-size enclosure with a small display is probably not the best idea. Still, it is the only off-the-shelf solution we've seen so far, and despite its flaws, it does work as advertised.
God Ware II Cheats For PS2 High Definition Mode This code is entered any time before the "Sony Computer Entertainment Presents" screen. The letters on that screen will turn purple if done correctly.
Cheat L1, L2, L3,Circle and Square simultaneously Effect High Definition Mode
God of War II Secrets Bonus Play To Start a new game with all Weapons/Magic at the levels you completed the game at, simply save your game and start a new game. Choose the Bonus Play option and you can start a new game with all your weapons/Magic at the levels you beat the game with. You can only choose the Bonus Play option on the difficulty you've beaten the game on. They will be marked by a sword on the New Game screen.
Sex Mini-Game A little while into the area of Rhodes, the first area of the game, you will drop down into a bath-house/sauna type area. Instead of continuing and diving down, jump out of the water onto the area around it. There should be two screens which are breakable. Behind one of the screens are two topless women. By walking up to them and pressing the circle button, you initiate the sex mini-game in which you complete a series of button presses. When you have won, you will receive a large amount of red orbs and some green orbs. You can only receive the orbs once, however you may play the mini-game as much as you'd like.
Secret: Now I am become Death... message in the sky + extra red orbs Hall of Atropos - Upper Level - Do this AFTER the fight with Perseus. You are outside after defeating Perseus. Go back inside through the upper left door. Once in the chamber jump up on the ledge against the back wall but don't go out on the balcony just yet. To the left of the exit, in a dark area where it's pretty difficult to see there is a small star on the ground. Stand on the star and hit R1 a few times (though once is enough). Now run outside on the balcony. Around the corner to your right and under a window there is a second star on the ground. Stand on the star and hit R1 a few times (again, once is enough). Now keep going and quickly grapple across to get over the other side of the roof. Run around the corner and go all the way to the pressure switch, stand on the switch to activate the roots walkway. When the roots are nearly fully extended slow time with the Amulet of the Fates and quickly run across. Once on the center platform you will see the third star on the ground by the first tree. Hit R1 and the camera angle will shift and the following message will appear in the sky: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." As the message slowly appears in the sky a few thousand red orbs will also be given to you by the tree you are standing next to. The quote in the sky is from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. It was later famously quoted by the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to describe the first nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945.
This is a good Games for Music Mania. When we first got our hands on a preview build of Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, we found the single-player experience to be much the same as the previous two installments in the hit rhythm series. We've now had some extra time to check out the multiplayer side of the game, and we can report that--much like single-player--things haven't changed that much at all. Not that that's a bad thing--more Guitar Hero, particularly with the kitsch songs this game focuses on, is always rocking.
The three multiplayer modes we’ve come to know and love are all still here--cooperative, face-off and pro face-off. Cooperative play sees you sharing a track between two players playing either lead, rhythm or bass, a feature first introduced in Guitar Hero II. Face-off remains unchanged, and allows you to play alternating sections of notes of the same song. You can also pick two different player difficulties in case the person you’re playing with is still learning their way around the frets. Pro face-off is still limited to one difficulty for both players and represents the ultimate battle for rock supremacy.
Difficulty was one area that surprised us in Rocks the 80s, with even some tracks on Expert seeming a tad easy. We’re by no means the best Guitar Hero players around–-we’re certainly not the worst either--but we breezed through many of the tracks with the difficulty cranked to 11 and still managed to hit a high percentage of notes. As a point of reference, we scored five stars on coop Holy Diver on Expert during our first attempt. As we played an early preview build there’s probably some difficulty fine-tuning to go before release, so we’ll reserve our final judgment until the game goes gold.
Functionally, Rock the 80s plays identically to the other Guitar Hero titles, with the only exception being the inclusion of significantly more three chord note combinations. They’re tough to hit accurately, but anyone who has played Hard or Expert in GHII shouldn’t have any trouble nailing them with a bit of practice.
Our hands-on time allowed us to play most of the full track lineup for the expansion, and while we can’t tell you about the unannounced songs, we were impressed by the ones still to come. A couple of old favorites even surfaced amongst the classics. Despite the apparent easier difficulty compared to the finger breakers of Guitar Hero II, the tracks on 80s seem a lot more fun to play. Fingering can be intricate and at times a bit frantic-–but nailing the big solos makes you feel like you’re actually up there, chafing in your leather pants and leading the band.
Take your router anywhere — even in the car — if you’ve got EV-DO to power its backhaul connection to the Internet. The good, the bad and the ugly in testing the laptop 3G capabilities of one of America's biggest mobile operators.
As a recent Comcast service outage clearly demonstrated to me, many of us work in a world that’s increasingly dependent on Internet access. I have a Verizon Wireless EV-DO 3G card for my notebook to provide Internet access when I travel, but that couldn’t help my co-workers during my cable Internet service outage. Fortunately, when the outage occurred, I was in the process of reviewing D-Link’s DIR-450 3G Mobile Router for EV-DO Networks.
The Basics
The DIR-450 is a traditional D-Link router with many of the advanced features I liked when I reviewed both the DIR-635 and the DIR-655 routers. The DIR-450 is housed in a case virtually identical to that used on the DIR-635.
Only when you look at the rear of the DIR-450 will you notice that instead of an Ethernet WAN port, there’s a PC card slot to accommodate an EV-DO card.
For sharing the EV-DO Internet connection, the DIR-450 includes four 10/100 LAN ports as well as a standards-based 802.11g radio featuring Atheros’ Super-G technology. It uses traditional NAT (network address translation) technology to map the public IP address of your EV-DO card onto a private network. An SPI (stateful packet inspection) firewall protects your private network from attacks and unwanted intrusions.
Why a 3G Router?
There are many potential uses for a router that lets you share your 3G connection. Some examples might include the following:
* When working at client sites, consultants and auditors frequently are denied access to the client’s network for security reasons, but they still need to communicate with each other and with their home office. * Groups of employees can create ad-hoc Internet-connected workgroups in hotel conference rooms when the hotel doesn’t supply an Internet connection. * Emergency responders can set up an ad-hoc wireless network quickly at the scene of an accident or emergency to access vital information and resources. * On vacation, multiple family members traveling with laptops can all stay connected with friends (and, unfortunately, the office). * You might live in an area where cellular Internet access is the only service available; you can share the Internet connection with other computers on your home network.
Setup
The DIR-450 has an eight-page printed quick install guide. This guide, as well as the user manual, is also supplied on CD. However, there is no CD-Based installation wizard as was supplied with other D-Link routers. Instead, the quick install guide instructs you to plug in your EV-DO card, connect one of the LAN ports to your computer, and browse to the default IP address (192.168.0.1).
You can choose either to manually configure your settings or use the built-in setup wizard. Clicking on the setup wizard takes you to a second page where you can choose a wizard for setting up your Internet connection, or a wizard for configuring your wireless security. The Internet connection wizard lets you set an administrative password for the router, set your time zone and configure the router for your EV-DO card. I chose manual configuration. I selected my EV-DO card from the drop-down list and hit "save." The router rebooted with the new configuration and connected to the Internet after the reboot. It was that easy.
The DIR-450 currently supports a total of 19 wireless broadband (aka, wireless WAN, or WWAN) cards. Compatible service providers in the US include ACS Wireless, Alltel, Cellular South, Embarq, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless, and many others in Canada. It will work with cards from Sierra Wireless, Novatel, Kyocera and others. In fact, during the review process, additional supported cards were added via a firmware upgrade.
D-Link also sells the DIR-451, which is essentially a DIR-450 that supports UMTS or HSDPA cellular data networks. Compatible service providers in the US for the DIR-451 are Cingular (AT&T) and T-Mobile.
Though the DIR-450 ships with wireless security disabled, the wireless security wizard walks you through naming your wireless network, choosing the appropriate level of security and setting your pre-shared WPA or WEP key. Again, I selected manual configuration. You can enable Super G mode or 802.11g-only mode (this unit doesn't do pre-11n), disable SSID broadcast, and enable auto channel scan, which selects the best operating channel for the DIR-450. It supports WEP (64 or 128 bit), WPA, WPA2 and WPA2 Auto. There’s no support for WPA2 enterprise, but frankly, in a mobile router, you’d probably never use that feature.
LAN setup is quite straightforward. Out of the box, you don’t really even need to configure it, as the built-in DHCP server is enabled with a default IP address pool of 100 addresses. The router does support DHCP reservation for mapping specific IP addresses to specific computers on the network based upon their MAC address, a feature I really like; the LAN configuration page shows you a list of Host names, IP addresses assigned, and their corresponding MAC addresses.
A click on the Advanced tab reveals that the DIR-450 retains many of the advanced features found in D-Link’s top-of-the-line models, including virtual servers, port forwarding, application rules (for port triggering), MAC address filtering and Web site filtering. As you’ll find in other recent D-Link routers, the right side of the screen displays context-sensitive “Helpful Hints.” The support tab above the hints column takes you to an index page that provides more detailed information about menu items and configuration parameters.
The DIR-450 lacks the quality of service (QoS) engine that’s built into both the DIR-635 and the DIR-655. That makes sense, since EV-DO provides a relatively low-speed connection to the Internet — it's no cable modem — and you’re unlikely to be doing voice or video over those links. I did try a Skype VoIP connection through the DIR-450, and while I was able to connect and hold a conversation, the audio report I received said that it sounded like a bad cell phone connection. That’s not too surprising, considering the latency on the EV-DO network. My ping response time to www.google.com, accessed through the Tools menu, averaged 250ms, compared to the 17ms response time through my cable connection.
Information from http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com
Since we got our first look at SBK'07 a couple of months back, much of the game has now been finished. Whereas many of the menus or even track textures were placeholders before, they're now done, so we took to the road with an updated build of the PlayStation Portable version of the game to see how it's shaping up. Generally speaking, playing SBK'07 on the PSP is close to the experience of playing it on the PlayStation 2, and having gained some experience with the driving model on the PS2, we decided to jump straight into a season.
The game is designed to cater to a whole range of racers and is split into two overall racing categories: arcade and simulation. The former is for anyone and incorporates a number of driving aids to give even complete beginners a decent experience of bike racing. It incorporates three levels of difficulty, from rookie to professional. The latter is really intended for more experienced gamers and will pose a significant challenge on the higher settings.
We decided to play the game in the arcade mode and on the professional difficulty level. This gives you a fighting chance of a podium place as long as you're familiar with the circuits and understand the way racing bikes take corners: You need to lean into the apex until your knee virtually touches the ground.
There are a limited number of riders who are available for selection when you first boot up the game, but you'll unlock some of the better bike and rider combinations as you win races and progress through the various game modes. One driver who is currently available from the off is Australian former world champion Troy Corser, who rides a Yamaha, so we selected him and got the season underway.
Each race event is split into a number of different stages, including several practice sessions and two actual races. You'll probably opt to jump straight into the races, but the other sessions are a useful way of getting to know the tracks. That knowledge will also be vital if you want to compete at all in the simulation mode.
There are some fairly extensive bike setup options, which enable you to tweak various elements of your ride's performance, as well as make crucial decisions on tyre compounds and weight distribution. Getting to grips with these options isn't crucial to do well in the basic arcade mode, but if you are more serious, you'll probably want to do a fair bit of meddling and find a good setup for each type of track.
Before each race, there's a warm-up lap that you can choose to watch if you prefer, and then it's straight into the action. The first corner is crucial, as in real life, and it pays to be careful. Depending on your difficulty level, the game's racing model will be more or less forgiving of gentle nudges against your opponents, but if you go in too hard, you'll end up unseated. Getting up and back on your bike is swift, and in easy races, you can soon catch up to the pack, but you'll need to avoid getting unseated in harder races because it will likely cost you any chance of a podium.
Another aspect of the game that's scalable is the way that the bikes handle. The simplest racing model will help you with accelerating and braking. It will even feather the throttle for you around fast corners, which is great if you're new to two-wheel racing. On the other end of the scale is the completely unassisted format, where leaning back while on the gas will result in a wheelie or hunching forward under braking could see you go over the handlebars. With traction control turned off, you have to be very careful of corners, and even looking at the grass the wrong way can send you spinning off with very little effort. And that's in the dry. If you try the realistic settings in the wet, you'll be challenged just to stay on the bike--let alone in the race.
After several races, we found we had begun to get into the rhythm of racing bikes: swaying first one way for one corner, then the other way for the next corner, straightening up for the faster sections, and putting the brakes on hard for a hairpin. It's satisfying when you string a consistent lap together, and taking the right line throughout the course is the vital aspect in winning races.
Playing the PSP does feel quite different from the home console edition especially because you have no analogue controls for speeding up or slowing down. After a few races, we found that our left thumb, which controls the bike's direction, was beginning to ache. But that's really down to the PSP's design rather than something you can blame on any individual game. We also found that some of the harder simulation settings were nearly impossible on the PSP because assistance on such things as speed is needed more on the handheld.
That aside, the two editions seem to play out almost identically, although we didn't get to try out the PSP's ad hoc wireless multiplayer mode, which could turn out to be a lot of fun. Based on our experience, a race weekend could take anywhere from 20 minutes upward to complete and depends on how many of the various practice sessions you take part in, but if your PSP gaming session doesn't stretch to that, there are also plenty of quicker modes to play. A time attack can last just a few minutes, which is perfect for short trips on the bus. While taking up a lap that's been paused midway might throw you off course a bit, it's not a big problem to try to pause, but only when you're on a straight. So far, the handheld version of the game mirrors the PS2 edition in that it's accessible and fun. The game's nearly ready to ship and will be released later this month, so check back later for a full review of the game.
According to historian and author Russell Lynes, "Tennis is an addiction that once it has truly hooked a man will not let him go." Based on time spent with a near-finished version of the game recently, it appears that Namco Bandai is hoping to achieve something similar with Smash Court Tennis 3 for the PlayStation Portable. The upcoming game not only promises to offer an enjoyable match of tennis, but also adds some quite detailed character progression and a number of inventive minigames to the mix.
The well-presented menu that greets you the first time you play Smash Court Tennis 3 has plenty of gameplay options for you to choose from. The best place to start is a series of 24 tutorials that do a good job of familiarizing you with and letting you put into practice many of the game's subtleties. Smash Court Tennis 3's responsive controls aren't radically different to those in other tennis games you might have played, but they're a little more challenging in that anything but a straightforward serve or return shot requires precise timing on your part. To use the game's own terminology, "easy shots" that afford you very little control over the ball can be performed simply by pushing a face button when you want to hit the ball, but "nice shots" and "hard hits" (so any shot that you want to direct or hit with some pace, essentially) require you to hold and release your chosen shot button at exactly the right moment. Topspin shots, flat shots, lob shots, and slice shots are each assigned to one of the PSP's four face buttons, but simply mashing those buttons and hoping for the best is not an option.
After playing through as many of the tutorials as you feel you need to, your options will include playing exhibition matches, the tournament-based arcade mode, the lengthy pro tour career mode, or one of three minigames. Ad hoc multiplayer is also supported, and the game-sharing option lets you play with limited options against friends who don't have their own copy of the game. The exhibition match and arcade options let you play as one of 16 licensed top professional players, but the pro tour mode--which is where we've spent the vast majority of our time with Smash Court Tennis 3 thus far--forces you to play as a custom character. The customization options available to you when creating a new character give you the freedom to determine their name, gender, nationality, height, weight, hairstyle, facial features, and equipment choices very easily, and after settling on all of that stuff, you'll get to choose a playing style, favored hand, backhand style, service motion, and receiving stance--really making the player feel like your own unique creation. The only other option you'll need to worry about at this stage is who your main rival is going to be, and depending on the characteristics of the player you created, you'll have up to three to choose from for your first year on the tour.
You can plan your entire season on the tour-calendar screen .
The tour-calendar screen on which you can plan out your year is divided up into the 52 weeks of the year, and you can choose to spend each week playing training minigames, negotiating contracts with potential partners or sponsors, competing in whatever tournaments are going on, or simply resting up to recover stamina. The fact that you don't automatically recover all 100 percent of your stamina before entering a new tournament or starting a new training exercise adds an element of strategy to the proceedings, because there's little point entering the US Open against the world's best players if you're still exhausted from competing the week before, for example. With that said, in the early stages of your career when winning the US Open would be a tall order, your ranking and financial interests might be better served by winning a smaller tournament that most of the higher-ranked players aren't even bothering to take part in. Doubles tournaments with a strong partner are also a relatively easy way to earn cash, and we were pleased to find that it's possible to assign net, baseline, normal, or I-formation roles to partners at anytime simply by pushing the directional pad in one of four directions.
At the end of each tournament, assuming you weren't eliminated in the first round, you'll be awarded a number of experience points that can be used to enhance your player's skills. Initially you'll need to spend most of your points on improving basic attributes that lend themselves to certain styles of play, such as ground stroke, technical, footwork, and serve and volley. As you improve those parameters, you'll unlock new skills that can be purchased in exactly the same way--many of which unlock new moves for your player. Some of the skills that we've put to good use so far include additional stamina, stronger forehand shots, and a sneaky underhand serve. The improvements that you make to your player are instantly noticeable the next time you take to the court, so it's really only a matter of time before the top-ranked players who feel unbeatable at the start of your career get what's coming to them.
All three of the non-training minigames are fun, especially against a friend.
If you feel like taking a break from the busy tournament schedule of a professional tennis player, Smash Court Tennis 3 has three (that we know of) minigames in which you can hone your skills. Bomb Tennis drops bombs that can be detonated with a well-placed shot on your opponent's side of the court every time they miss a shot. Galaga Tennis tasks you with destroying spaceships and rescuing abducted tennis players while playing an otherwise quite conventional match. And Pac-Man Tennis challenges both players to avoid ghosts while running around the court and using the ball to collect Pac-dots. We've had a lot of fun playing all three of the aforementioned minigames, and we're hopeful that one or two more might be unlockable as you progress through the game.
Smash Court Tennis 3 is currently scheduled for release this summer. We look forward to bringing you more information as soon as it becomes available.
PPC ADVERTISING: HOW TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS "CLICK"
Friday, June 1, 2007
PPC stands for Pay Per Click - a popular advertising technique on the Internet. Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser's web page.
In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services - the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it "keyword auctioning"). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.
PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:
· Pay per placement · Pay per performance · Pay per ranking · Pay per position · Cost per click (CPC)
PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:
1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.
2. Creating a keyword list.
3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.
4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.
5. Writing out an ad copy.
6. Setting up the 'landing pages' for your ads.
7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.
There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business 'online'. Some of them are listed below:
· Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly - they can go 'online' within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.
· Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into 'qualified' people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer - those who are more likely to become a 'lead' (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.
· Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or "organic" search engines.
· Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive - the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).
Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:
1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).
2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.
3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right - a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.
4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program - if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.
5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.
6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:
7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple - designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.
Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.
