eMusic Raises Mp3 Price With New Site Design

Pricing Raise

eMusic has decided to increase their pricing plan for new subscribers. The new price will apply to all members but there’s a few additional benefits if your account was active before July 17th. New members will have to pay $11.99 for 30 Mp3s.

Older member will have to pay $11.99 for 40 Mp3s.  On August 17th, all older members will also receive an additional 10 track booster for 30 days.

Design Raise

Since the past week, eMusic has changed their site design to reflect the Web 2.0 style ( which has now become standard).  This includes larger easier to read fonts and bigger graphics.

Album Pages

Albums now have a huge graphic of the album cover to the left. The track list is now displayed to the right. Below that are some newer toolbars like “Discover” that take you to other critically acclaimed albums and stories in your music genre. Below that is “Dig Deeper on the Net” where you can see videos from Youtube users that relate to the artist and a wikipedia entry. Thats if your artist has a unique name, otherwise you’ll see some strange unrelated videos.

[via eMusic]

Most of the other pages have not been updated to fit with the new design, so if they do, this article will be updated to reflect that.

Catching up with The Sims 3

So in the past few weeks several fan sites were able to see a glimpse of The Sims 3. No EA didn’t ask me to attend. Anyway we’ll take a look at whats been announced since the last time we covered it, and summarize all the major details from the fan sites.

Seamless Neighborhood

All fansites pretty much agree there will be no loading times from place to place. Everything is done seamlessly so you can play inside your house, zoom the camera out and get a glimpse of whats going on in your town. By that, you select where you want to go and your sim will reach there by walking, cab, or car. The location of the neighborhood is alongside a rocky shore and mountains off in the distance.

There will be many places to visit in the neighborhood, including civic areas, the beach, the café, and more. Certain buildings will act as jobs which you can plop inside the neighborhood. One of the most requested additions to the Sims 3 is the abilities to place objects in any direction without grids. This will certainly add to the realism that fans want.

Seamless Lives

As you play the game, everyone around you no matter where they are will be doing something and aging alongside with you. Each action they do will have a purpose and their behaviors will be dictated by each traits they have. You will start out with a few traits and expect to gain some more as you play through. Social interaction will play a much larger role, and even “negative” actions might make someone more happier.

Screenshot Analysis

For more detailed information about The Sims 3, you can visit the fansites at the bottom of the article. Now we’ll take a look in some new screenshots to see whats been improved since the game was first announced.

Fat is in! The new body shape adds more variety to the people you’ll likely meet around the ‘hood. Talking on the cellphone is now a base game feature that everyone will have.

The trailer showed off some of the new seamless neighborhood transitions by zooming out. We do know that this may be a huge struggle for lower end PCs. Fan sites have said that developers will be able to solve this problem by making the neighborhood smaller for PCs that struggle. Still I would recommend buying a new graphic card to support this game. Nvidia 8800+ seems to be a surefire way to make this game run smoothly.

The whole neighborhood will transition into day and night at the same time. Some sims may come out at night to do some mischief.  This sunset along shows off some shadow mapping that is based on light from the sun.

Sims will be aware of others actions and may get irritated by them. This was in development for The Sims 2, but it wasn’t so apparent as they made it sound once the base game was released. So we hope they can enhance this even further in The Sims 3.

The Sims 3 will be released on June 2nd, 2009
  On PC then later on MAC

[ via Sims 3 Resource, Eyecandy for The Sims 3, and forum posts]

Catching Up With Cities XL

CitiesXL is expected to bring some new life to city simulation games. The game isn’t expected to release until 2009. In the meantime, the team at Monte Cristo has given an inside look at the game development process. There’s been a few new announcements since the game’s name has been changed from Cities Unlimited.

The MMO Aspect

Cities XL introduces an online component called “Planet Offer”. Players will be able to interconnect with other cities and influence various aspects between them. Mayors can share economic resources by trading with others.  Citizens can travel back and forth between other cities and experience venues and other major events. Players will also be able to walk through different cities and experience the game through a person’s eyes.

This online component has brought up a new issue we’ve never seen before in city building games, an online fee. The details of the pricing plan has not been decided yet, and many fans have decided $10 a month would be good, or perhaps a one time fee might be a more practical solution.

Zoning And Transportation

In regards to zoning, Monte Cristo built a mass placement tool that automatically sets each zone around the roads. Since there is no grid format for zone placement,  the zones would be automatically configure to fit within its confines.  A blog posting on CitiesXL site shows a rough concept on what the zoning tool may look like. Zone placement was certainly faster than Simcity4, but it felt that we did not have total control over where roads are going. I do stress that this zoning tool was only a concept, and I’m sure they will make it more intuitive once the game officially releases.

As for transportation, only roads were shown so far. The only features they did show off were multiple types of roads with 2 lanes or 4 lanes. Roads can be curved and the zones will attach itself to it. In the screenshot above you can see that diagonal roads have zones in front of them.  They do plan to showcase more methods of transportation before the end of this year.

Cities XL is expected to be released in 2009. It will be for the MAC and PC, and will have an unannounced online fee for the online component.

[via citiesxl.com]

Xbox360 new dashboard borrows WiiMii, CoverFlow, and Playstation 3.

In a step to make Xbox 360 more friendlier to the casual audience. Microsoft has unveiled a completely new dashboard experience taking away everything you know about menus.

Borrowing From Nintendo WiiMii

Nintendo Wii has been known for its unique avatars known as Miis. Microsoft didn’t take any steps to differentiate from that style. From the eyes to the blocky heads, everything just screams Nintendo. The customizations and details may be a big step up from the Wii, but we hope that next time Microsoft will come up with its own unique avatar.

Borrowing From Apple and Sony

Coverflow; while not as practical on Ipod Classic as it is on Ipod Touch, is one of the most unique ways to search through a catalog with ease. In the new dashboard system, every game and option, comes towards the screen at a slight 45 degree angle. As you flow through, each game has its own cover which may also feature some minor animation as you select it.

Primetime Games

Xbox Live will feature a new category of games called “Primetime”. Essentially you will be able to play in multiplayer games that starts at specific times throughout the day. The first Primetime game to be announced is 1 vs 100. Based on the TV gameshow. You and 100 others will be competing against each other for the most money. They have also unveiled other Primtime games like Uno and Trivia.

Verizon vs T-Mobile: Choosing a Carrier from the Tech standpoint.

We’re back with newer more updated information for each carrier. Since this article was last updated, we have seen the introduction of the iPhone. The iPhone has set a new standard on what a cell phone should be. The iPhone will be used as a measurement of quality between teh two carriers. The closer the capabilities are to that of the iPhone, the better the score will be.

Glossary

WAP: This will be the internet for low budget phones. T-Mobile calls this Tzones, while Verizon calls it Verizon Mobile Web. WAP is very limited but you will be able to surf web pages.

JAVA: This refers only to T-Mobile’s gaming capabilities.

BREW: This refers only to Verizon’s gaming capabilities.

Texting Plans

The most hottest features on the market is texting and data. Thanks to the iPhone, full HTML browsing is a must. But if your under a strict budget, you’ll just have to deal with what you get.

T-Mobile Text Plans

• 400 Text Messages for $5.00/Month
• 1000 Text Messages for $10/Month
• Unlimited Text Messages for $15.00/Month

Verizon Text Plans

• 250 Texts for $5.00/Month
• 500 Texts + Unlimited IN Text for $10.00/Month
• 1500 Texts + Unlimited IN Text for $15/Month
• 5000 Texts + Unlimited IN Text for $20/Month

OR

• Unlimited Text + 450 Minutes Free N/Wk For $60/Month

Verizon Wireless has two types of unlimited plans. The Basic voice plan has the option to choose Unlimited IN text. Unlimited IN Texting only applies to messaging other Verizon wireless customers for free, this does not apply to AIM/YAHOO/MSN text messaging. If you have the Select voice plan, all your text messages will be unlimited meaning AIM/YAHOO/MSN is included.

Data Plans

T-Mobile Wireless data plans

• Blackberry Unlimited Add On $20/Month
• T-Mobile Internet Plan $20/Month

Verizon Wireless bundles data together with your voice plan.

• Blackberry for $80/Month
• Smartphone for $80/Month

T-Mobile Phones

Low Budget T-Mobile cell phones are very limited in capability. You won’t be doing much gaming and web surfing since your your hindered by your phone’s memory allocation. Each phone has a different amount of internal memory set for those applications. As such, do not expect too much out of the device as it will be crash under heavy acticity. The bare minimum for techies will now be the Motorola Razr. You should avoid all FREE phones and stick with $19.99 or above. We recommend Nokia 6133, Motorola W490, Samsung T729, Samsung SGH-T339. These phones were selected for their gaming, wap, and music capability.

High budget T-Mobile smart phones are just barely on par with Verizon. The network speeds are slower than Verizon’s 3G service for low budget phones. We recommend T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl & Blackberry Curve. For windows mobile we recommend T-Mobile Shadow and T-Mobile Wing. These phones are capable of running full HTML browsers and can use wi-fi to access the internet.

Verizon Phones

Verizon has been playing catchup with the iPhone ever since it came out. Don’t be fooled by Verizon’s new touchscreen capabilities on their cellphones. They are nowhere near iPhone, and are quite limited to touch and flick.

Verizon replaces the original operating system installed on the phone. This creates a unified approach to most of their cellphones. You can think of it as installing Windows on different computers. They all can run the same applications no matter how cheap or how expensive. Of course if you buy more higher end phones you may get touch capabilities, bigger screens, and TV. But essentially, my 29.99 phone can run the same applications as your 149.99 phone.

Since we are techies here, when selecting a low end phone please avoid the following: Samsung SCH-u340, Verizon Wireless CDM 8905, and Verizon Wireless Coupe. These phones do not have Verizon’s operating system installed, and are pretty much similar to the way T-mobile phones function. Samsung Juke is now the new base phone. This is a huge upgrade from all the T-Mobile phones you get for free. The Juke however does not support downloading music wirelessly. However there are many other phones that can. You can purchase these songs from your phone and download them straight to it. You can also play music on a non-music themed phone, however sound quality may not be good, for example Motorola W755 has substandard music quality based on C|Net’s review.

For Low End Phones we recommend Samsung Juke (No V-Cast Video), LG Chocolate, Motorola Moto W755, and LG VX8350.

For High End phones we recommend LG Chocolate 3, LG Dare, Samsung Gleam, Blackberry Pearl, any Windows Mobile phone.

Gaming

Verizon runs games in BREW. BREW is a great but locked down format. Unfortunately for you, games are much much more expensive than T-mobile’s but you won’t need certain phones to run certain games. BREW is capable of running stunning 3D games. They run very fast with no noticeable slowdown at all.

T-Mobile runs games in JAVA. Java has one plus side over Brew in that you can actually transfer the file from the computer to the phone through USB. Java is really tied down to how much memory your phone can handle. So older phones may not be able to handle more demanding games. Slowdowns can occur quite easily.

Is Aim Going to Start Charging to Register Janurary 1st? Who is Mark Jenkins?

It appears that today, there has been an IM circulating around to every screen name. The message is as follows:

Dear AIM USERS, Because of our overloading of our servers, we are being forced to extract our non-active AIM users. Because this is a free service, AOL has exceeded the budget for the AIM service. We are asking that you send this exact message to 20 other AIM users to ensure us that you’re an active AIM user. Our system tracking devise will pick up this message to keep you on our active list. You have 72 hours to complete this task or your service will be cancelled immediately. Starting January 1st, 2009, we will be charging a small fee for registering of a screen name for AIM. Thank you for your time and for using AOL or AIM. Sincerely Mark Jenkins.

We regret to inform you that although we sent out a warning telling all aim users we are cutting accounts that we see are not being used regularly people have not been responding.So as warned we shall begin cutting accounts starting Friday July 18. Forward this message to 30 or your account as well shall be cut. Thank you for using AOL Instant Messenger

Dear AIM users, Because of our overloading of our a servers, we are being forced to extract our non-active AIM users. Because this is a free service, AOL has exceeded the budget for the AIM service. We are asking that you send this exact message to 20 other AIM users to ensure us that you’re an active AIM user. Our system tracking devise will pick up this message to keep you on our active list. You have 72 hours to complete this task or your service will be cancelled immediately. Starting December 10, 2008, we will be charging a small fee for the registering of a screen name for AIM. Thank you

Is this message True or False?

False! This is actually “chain” instant message to scare users into thinking they must send this message to everyone they know.

What happens if I send this message to other people?

AOL has been flagging this message as spam. This means that if you do send that message, you will likely get kicked off of aim and your account may be suspended. If your account has been suspended by sending this message, please login through my.screenname.aol.com and select forgot password.

In the future please disregard any IMs that are similar to this. Every few months, chain IMs are sent out giving false warnings about various things. Most of the time they want you to send it to everyone you know.

I don’t believe you, this must be true!

If you believe in every IM you get, you will most likely get your account stolen. There are people out there pretending to be AOL staff that will IM you for your password. Once you give it to them, the account is no longer yours and they can change your password in a moment’s notice. Besides, Mark Jenkins does not work for AOL, he is actually an urban artist.

Aim 6.8 Skin Packs

In the upcoming weeks all skins on this site will be converted over to Aim 6.8 format. This also allows us to group selected skins together to make it easier to download all of them at once. The following skins have been grouped together into one pack:

OS Pack

• AimXP
• AimXP Blue
• Leopard OS X
• Leopard OS X Frost
• Vista Basic

Bump X Pack

• BumpXRed
• BumpXBlue
• BumpXGreen
• BumpXPink