Portal 2 and what it has achieved…

Posted on 30/04/2011 by Scott

Portal 2 LogoMost gamers will have heard of it. The majority (excluding Xbox hard-cores) will be wanting to play it. So then, it is no suprise that Portal 2 is possibly my most favourite game of all time. This is odd really, because in general – I hate puzzle games. So then, what makes Portal 2 different?

Well… I’ll begin with the simple fact that Portal 2 has an intensely gripping storyline, and hilarious comedy no other puzzler has got. That’s a great achievement in its self. Then, there’s the style that Valve, the creators of Portal 2, have decided to use for the game. The controls, and layout on-screen are all tediously similar to Valves first-person-shooter games. That’s because Portal 2 is running on the Source engine. An engine that was primarially developed for the FPS game Half-Life.

Not only is Portal 2 a great success in my mind, but I feel it has also made a breakthrough in gaming today. In a time of hard-core, shoot-em-up killing sprees, Portal 2 has managed to branch away from the gruesome, death-ridden genre of the FPS. In truth, the most dominant game category of the current time is dead. And nobody knows.

I don’t simply say they’re dead and end it. I have my reasoning. I’m a big fan of shoot-em-ups, but not only is the FPS game becoming repetitive, it has also started to be disgusting. A recent example of this is the uproar over the new game ‘school shooter’. You played a psychopathic student who goes on a killing-spree during lessons, with the game being very graphic. In this case, the game was removed from all websites advertising it, and it’s torrents taken down. This proves that the games industry have become hell-bent on FPSs with blood, guts and gore.

Concluding, Portal 2 is an excellent game. I give it 5 stars, and the rest of the games industry could learn a thing or two. You don’t have to make a game bloody to make it good.

Posted in Gadgets & Games | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Article Refinement

Posted on 29/04/2011 by Hgat

Guidelines for making good articles

All articles must be of good standard, otherwise users will leave the website. After reading an article we want them to read another.

An article has to be of decent length. There is no point of going it to something if you don’t give enough detail. Explain more and go deep into topics. It’s much better to write one article that you have put a lot of effort in, than lots of small half-hearted articles. If you are covering a few topics in the article you may want to consider splitting the article in two.

On guides and informative articles, you shouldn’t use first person; it makes what your saying sound more like an opinion and less like a fact. If your writing a review then it’s fine, but always write with an authoritative, unbiased tone.

Get straight to the point at the start of your article. “Here is an article on…” is not how to start it, just go into it straight away. Readers may leave if the article is not what they are looking for in the first few sentences. Ending with something like a nice “I hope this helps!” sounds amateurish.

Any articles that are crappy instead of happy from now on will either have to be edited for improvement or removed.

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Royal Wedding

Posted on 28/04/2011 by Tom

William and KateThis week I have been looking forward to the four day weekend in the UK. There have been many holiday promotions such as “take three days off and have an eleven day break”. I think this is morally wrong because we are having a day off to celebrate the royals, and that’s what we should do! You probably think I’m a royalist nutter, but really – I’m not.

Talking off royalist, in the early hours of this morning I was watching BBC breakfast where they were interviewing some old ladies. They have been staying in London since yesterday morning! Now that’s a few royalist nutter’s for you, and compared to them I am like John Lydon.

For those of you who are not 100% on John Lydon he is a famous anti royalist and former Sex Pistol.

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The PSN crysis…

Posted on 28/04/2011 by Scott

PlayStationNetworkAll tech heads and gaming fans know about it. It is, of course the current PlayStation Network downtime. At the moment, there’s a load of information floating around about the downtime, why it happened, and what the concequences are. In this arcticle, I’m going to sum up all of that raw info, and make some easy to digest, bitesize chuncks in the form of bullet points.

The PSN Crysis – The Facts

  • Late evening on Wednesday the 20th of April 2011, the PSN was shut down, leaving users with the message that ‘The PlayStation Network is down for scheduled maintainence’.
  • Sony later confirmed, on the 26th that the downtime was due to an ‘external intrusion’.
  • Sony also sent a letter to all PSN users, informing them that ‘While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, we cannot rule out the possibility.’
  • They also reported that users full postal addresses could have been obtained.
  • On the 28th of April, a vague rumour appeared on the net suggesting that the entire downtime was due to a custom firmware (called Rebug) being used to pirate games on the PSN Store.

Those are all the ‘facts’. As it says above, there is no stone hard evidence to say that details have been stolen, but Although a fair bit of information has been released, I at least think that Sony are keeping a few cards close to their chest. As we have no law governing how we report anything, I can be bias…

Sony – You’ve really mucked up this time.

Edit: Sony have confirmed that their credit card details were stored in an encrypted database file, and that their is no evidence to show that the 77 million users of PSN have had their details stolen. The question now is how encrypted was that database file?

Edit 2: Sony say an extra 25 million users were hacked, on top of the 75 million already known to have been. This could affect the time they said it would take to get the network running again. They promised it would phase back in this week. More as it comes.

Source: http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2011/04/26/psnqriocity-service-update/

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What free Facebook app should you get for your iPad?

Posted on 28/04/2011 by Tom

facebook for iPadEarlier this month my recent purchase of the latest iPad arrived at my door. I was ecstatic when I held it for the first time and yes, I was impressed, but I was disappointed to find out that Facebook had yet to make their app available for iPad! Luckily there are other alternatives, such as Friendly, My Pad, Friended and a few others. I am not a computer whizz, but I really liked the layout of Friendly and I liked that when you post something, a small picture of an iPad comes up next it.

I also enjoyed the interactive framework of My Pad and Friendly. However, when I decided to test drive the FB Chat feature, I was alarmed to find there was no such feature in the apps. Suddenly I was not impressed. In fact, I was very unhappy. After all my frustration, I later discovered that to get chat I would have to buy the full version of these apps… It was an outrage.

So then, if I was advising which Facebook app you should get, I would tell you to get Friended. This does what all the others do, but Friended doesn’t have a paid version, so there’s no way of ripping you off to get simple features like chat! Everybody’s happy…

Posted in Guides | 2 Comments

Make money at school or online as a teenager

Posted on 28/04/2011 by Hgat

As a teenager it is very desirable to start making money, and there are many ways you can achieve this! Let’s start right away.Cash

1. Selling products at school.

Selling products at school can be very profitable, with good days making £10. The first step is to find what product to sell. What would you like to buy if you were at school? Sweets and chocolate are popular, and once people have bought the food they will come back tomorrow to buy it again. So, you need to find a product that you think will sell well in your school, and is cheap to buy. If you live in the UK, a good website to go to is mysupermarket.co.uk. This website compares all the supermarkets to find the best deals. Only buy products that you will be able to sell for a profit, and preferably you will buy them for much less than what you sell them for. If you live elsewhere, check various supermarket websites to find the prices. Then, go and buy the item!

Make sure you record what you buy, how many items and what it costs. This means when you go to sell your product at school, you can keep track of how much money you’re making. Try different products and find what works best. A really excellent thing to sell is fizzy drinks, especially in the summer. At a school of 1500 pupils I managed to sell over 40 a day when it was hot, buying for 25p and selling for 50p. (Get multi-packs that are on deal). That’s over £10 profit a day, £50 a week! Sell a few sweets with that to make even more. However, bringing in 40 cans a day can be tiresome as they’re heavy. You will need to put them in a separate bag.

You could also try going to a wholesalers if there is one near you. These are large stores that sell stuff cheaply. Some shops get their stock from wholesalers. Most require a membership, and some require a membership fee every year, so try to get your parents to help you with that.

If one day your stock is being bought quickly, raise the sell price to maximize profit. You could also try promotional stunts. For instance, keep track of who buys stuff from you, and the person that buys the most at the end of each week wins something.

 

2. Writing articles.

You may be wondering why I’m sharing these methods with you. Well, it’s because you reading this has earned me a little bit of money! Some websites will pay for you for your writing skills, like helium.com. There are others as well, like associated content owned by yahoo, but it doesn’t pay people who live outside the USA. If you think you can write a decent article then sign up to one of these sites and get writing. The hardest part I find is thinking of things to write about, so try to get as much inspiration as you can. You don’t get much per article, therefore you must write lots in order to get good money. A nice aspect of these sites is that you keep getting money for the article after you wrote it for each person that views it. You could of course write articles for Rasoti and get paid. If you are interested, please click here.

 

3. Freelancing.

If you have a special skill, you should sign up to a freelance site to offer your services. The best things to be good at are web design, video creation and animation, programming and other computer-related things. A big site is elance.com. Update your info and bid on contracts you can do.

 

4. Currency trading

This may seem silly but it can make lots and lots of money. However, you can also lose money. There is a much to learn if you are new to currency trading. Luckily, there is help on the internet for beginners. You will need a platform to trade with, and one that’s optimized for beginners is etoro. They have a free trading guide here. To trade with them you must create an account, and then either log onto the webtrader platform or download the desktop platform. The great thing about this software is that there is a practice account, where you have control over $10000. After some practice you may get to know what the exchange rates do and make some profitable trades. Even better: copy from the pros. Etoro offers an open book, where you get to see all the trades made by real people. If you click on “Top 100″ you only get the trades made by the top 100 ranked members. There is a button next to each trade that says “copy”. If you press this you automatically copy the trade! You could be making loads of money just from copying other people.

Important note: I strongly suggest you do not invest real money until you have proved that you can actually make money and not lose using the practice account. Don’t base this on one successful trade, carry out lots and lots and lots of trades to make sure you won’t lose your money. You will have to convince your parents that investing is a good idea, so as well as proving to yourself you need to prove it to them.

 

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