What is Napster thinking?

I have a Napster account. I pay monthly and I can download unlimited songs (thats what they say).

At first I loved the service. I got a free MP3 player of marginal quality and the music search interface for recommendations is fantastic.But then I started noticing some serious problems. Allot of songs that I wanted to download with my unlimited subscription were “Buy Only”.

For a one time monthly fee I expect that the entire library would be downloadable.Not only that but their pricing scheme is all screwed up. Below is an album by ABC, every song in the album is buy only at 99 cents. There are 9 songs. So you can pay for each song individually (Cost you $9) or  you could buy the album for $9.95. Does that make sense? 

(Napster View – Shows entire albulm that is buy only)
 

Although the service has potential I do not recommend subscribing to the service until the following changes take place:

• All songs in the library are available to be downloaded under the monthly model
• Albums should always be sold at a discount relative to buying all the songs individually (or at least it should cost the same as buying all of the tracks individually)
• Napster needs to improve the interface for mixing MP3’s you already have with songs in your Napster library. Right now its a pain to do. Under Apple Itunes purchased songs and MP3’s from your hard drive intermix seamlessly.

Looks like when the promotional period is over I might be checking out the competition.

XBox Bricked — January Gears Of War Update

My friend just had his machine brick for the second time. He had purchased a machine on zero day and that machine just bricked after the GOW update. Luckily it’s covered by MS but its still BS that MS (Hmm those acronyms share the same second letter) is going to just repair the machine again and send it back.

It seems pretty obvious by the time when it is bricking that its a problem with the firmware. Most likely MS is just going to flush it, update it with the latest patches and send the same defective machine back again to break at some time in the future when he no longer has a warranty.

MS you know the machine is defective, you know its going to break in the future, either replace the hardware component that you know is truly defective or give him a later generation machine that is less prone to these type of repeated failures.

So now he has to go 2 weeks without playing X-Box 360…..or does he? You know the best way to hit MS for its bad practices in my opinion is to hit them in the pocket books. Right now its cheaper to have the box shipped to them, not fix the defective part or replace the box, just flush the firmware and send it back to break again. That is of course assuming that they control the customer.

But they don’t. Say my friend does not appreciate 2 weeks without an XBox 360. Perhaps the better way to go is for my friend to go to Costco. Buy a box, play it till MS returns his unit, and then he returns the ‘loaner’ unit to the store. Then MS gets to pick up the tab on the loaner unit since it will get returned to them, will have to be re-tested at their cost and then repackaged and shipped (again at their cost).

So something for you folks to think about. If my machine bricks while its under warranty, well lets just say I won’t think of it as much as an inconvenience since MS is picking up the tab for the loaner unit.

Gears of War — New Maps

After releasing a new update on 1/9/07 to fix some problems with voice in multi-player games and tweak a few other features on 1/10/07 2 new Gears of War multi-player maps were introduced.

Raven Down

(Photo as featured on http://www.xbox360fanboy.com)

This is an extremely small level, lots of cover yet no place to hide. Its shaped like a giant plus sign. In each spoke of the map start 2 players from the same team. Action can come at you extremely quick and from what I have seen the only weapon available on the level are grenades (which are far less useful now to those who wish to tag).

This level looks great but overall is average at best. It brings something a little different to the table and it’s definitely worth the price (free), did I mention it’s really small.

Old Bones

(Photo as featured on http://planetgearsofwar.gamespy.com/)

This map has tons of potential. Symmetrical in design as are most multi-player maps in the game this one seems to have it all. Like the mansion level there really seems like two distinct areas where you can do your fighting. You start off in an area where there are lots of hallways with nooks and crannies you can hole up in. Or expose yourself in the giant atrium area. That’s where all the great weapons are, but there are many ways you can get flanked.

The design of this level is really top notch and there are tons of really interesting angles for those of us who enjoy the tactics in addition to the all out carnage.

If you play Gears of War on-line you really owe it to yourself to stop reading this blog and get on-line download these free maps off XBox Live and get into the action. I apologize that this blog can’t be longer or more informative but I got some killing to do.

DS Opera Review

If you want to surf the web on your Nintendo DS in US English the European version of the Opera browser is the way to go (At least until the DS launches Opera in the US). In the mean time if your willing to shell out around $60 what you get is very nice.

In fact I see no reason why Nintendo is waiting to launch this title in the US. They could literaly place the Euro version on US shelves as is and it would be a great product. The only downside and its a very minute downside is that it’s probably a bit more difficult to set up. And by bit I mean you have to figure out how to surmount such challanges as figuring out if you really want US English, UK English or one of the other European language sets. Also you need to scroll through more options for time zone. So hope your up for it.

Plenty of people have reviewed the browser, for me to do so would be just a re-hash of what everyone else is already saying. It’s great but far from perfect.  Let me be clear about what your not getting:

No Flash
No Java (Yes you will get a fairly complete implementation Java-script)
No Media (Well pictures, but no sounds, no video)

Speed wise the device can bog down on certain pages but overall when you consider the hardware its running on its pretty remarkable what you get away with.

If you got any questions fire away. Oh and by the way any of you enterprising web developers out there I can see a need for some DS specific Javascript games and a directory with links to sites that run well on the DS. Not that you can’t surf the majority of your sites, but say you want a quick movie time, a site that was designed to serve mobile content (which would probably display well on the DS) for example would be useful.

Bottom Line: If you really want to browse the web on your DS this is worth the money. Being able to watch You Tube videos would be the awesome, but it’s not possible, so people stop wishing for it, better to go back for wishing that some super hot chick is gonna want to do ya. Hell if your imagination is bad nothing stops you from finding some celebrity vagina and using the Nintendo DS’s zoom function, play gynecologist when your not playing Mario your DS won’t tell anyone.

DS Opera in English

People itching to get their hands on Opera browser for the Nintendo DS in an English version need not wait anymore. Check out these screen shots from SlashingGames of the English version of the DS Opera browser.

OK so the good news is you can buy the English version of Opera DS right now and it will work on your handheld console. The bad news is that (as of the day this article was posted) it has not been released in the US nor has a date been announced. It came out on Oct 6th in Europe.

It’s a shame but I have been itching to get a version of this software where I didn’t need to know Kanji and I think I have found it with my overpriced Euro version I purchased on Ebay yesterday. Cost me around $65 US for browser and shipping but its worth the extra $25 or so dollars for me to have it now rather then waiting an undetermined amount of time for it.

If you have been thinking of making the plunge give it a try. I’ll be reviewing it as soon as I get my hands on it. In the mean time I’ll be watching my mail. If you want to learn more about the browser check out the press release for the European version on the Opera website.

uxtheme.dll Make Windows XP look like Vista, Mac OSX and more…

You want to make your Windows XP OS look like Vista or Mac.

Great, there are lots of shareware utilities that will do that for you like Stardock’s Windows Blinds or StyleXP.

That would work except your cheap and don’t want the additional system overhead those programs incur on your computer. OK well MS Plus has some themes, but again your cheap and they need to be digitally signed and MS does not seem to want to provide you with a Vista looking OS unless you want to shell out the bucks to upgrade.

The alternative is to replace your uxtheme.dll file with one that does not require themes to be digitally signed by MS (Why should they get to decide what your OS can and cannot look like on your own personal machine?). Do that and you open a world of theme possibilities.

Steps:

1. Download the uxtheme.dll from SoftPedia
2. Do a search for uxtheme.* on your machine.
3. Rename all occurrences of uxtheme.* (ie. uxtheme.dll) to uxtheme_backup.* (Except for the one you jujst downloaded of course)
4. Copy the downloaded uxtheme.dll file over to your Windows/System32 directory
5. Restart your computer
6. Check to make sure that the uxtheme.dll file in the Windows/System32 directory has the date of the patched file rather then the original.
7. Upon success go to a site like http://www.winmatrix.com to download compatible themes.

If you have trouble replacing the uxtheme.dll file, please see this in-depth article on TechRecipies which has instructions that should help.