First thoughts on Google+.

Hello everyone, Chris Moody here. Tonight I’d like to discuss another tech toy that has recently been rolling out. Today we talk about Google+, if you don’t have your invite yet, I hope to see you on it soon!
If you have been following the buzz of Google+ you will realize that this certainly isn’t the first post recently about Google+. Everyone right now is debating “Is Google+ a Facebook killer, or just another competitor.

Many people think that nothing can take down Facebook, but if you have been in the social media game long enough, people said the same about MySpace, which was just sold at a huge loss. When it was hot, MySpace ruled as king in the social space, and everyone had Tom as a friend. They of course were not the first to play in this circle, though I never had anything to do with their predecessors.

So what sets Google+ apart from Facebook? As you have probably heard by now, its Circles. While Facebook has groups, those require two (or more) people to join in order for them to really work. However in Google+ circles is how you see your friends. Your able to send your message to just the people in the group. So for example instead of needing all of your Family to join a special Group, in order to have inner group just drag your family members to this circle. Then when you tell Google+ to send a message to your Family group, it instantly will go to all of them.

However probably the bigger thing to set them apart, even with the new connection between Skype and Facebook, is Hangout which allows you to have a conversation with 9 people via video / voice at the same time. This is opposed to the one on one that Facebook/Skype allows you to have. I can see this as being huge when Google+ allows businesses coming on. Imagine being able to have small intimate groups of people learning about a new product and able to ask questions. For most people however, this will make it easier to share images of babies, or plan what your going to do during your next visit. Text can only take you so far.

Now if your one of the people who spends hours on Facebook playing various games from Zynga or others, you probably won’t be to happy with Google+ unless your wanting to quit. Currently there currently no way to make a Google+ app. Many people are currently very happy with this. Google does promise an API is coming, so we will just need to wait and see what kind of things are generated from that.

For this to really be a Facebook killer, a lot of people are going to need to switch to it. This currently is the big question. People in the Tech site of things are very unhappy with how Facebook handles privacy, however a good portion of the users, don’t seem to care to their default “opted-in” environment.

So today Rockstar Games released L.A. Noire on PS3 and on the XBOX 360. While I haven’t finished the game yet, thought I would give you my review so far of it.

This game takes place in Los Angeles shortly after World War 2, during what is called Hollywood’s Golden Age. If you have seen the movie Changeling with Angelina Jolie , then you know what LA was like at the time.

As the game starts you are Cole Phelps, a beat cop. After a few successful cases where you show that you know how to think on your own you get promoted to Detective.

In many ways this game is like Hard Rain, however most of your choices is deciding if a witness or suspect is telling you the truth or not. This game does also have racial slurs that fit the time period, gun battles, F-Bombs, and several other things which tells you this is how it really was.

After I finish the game I’ll give a full review, but this is just a snippet of what I see so far.

So about a year ago I gave a new national internet provider a try, one called Clear Wireless. I figured they had to be good if they provide the 4G support that Sprint who happens to be my cell phone carrier is using.

Unfortunately once they “officially” launched in Houston service dropped like a stone to my apartment who after a year is still barely in their service range. However if I take my laptop to the nearest Starbucks which is only a mile away by car (so even less as the crow flies) I get a really good speed, using their mobile internet device.

So starting this Tuesday I will be trying the cable provider that seems to do at least quite a bit of the apartments here in Houston, its a company called Wavevision. Hopefully it will be much better, I don’t think it could be any worse. As of this writing my speed is 1.62 Mbps down and .57 Mbps up according to Speedtest.net.

Of course your probably wondering why I didn’t ask about these slow speeds? Well I did repeatably, in fact that is pretty much all I ever called them about during the last year, and it always boiled down to “you’re not really in our service area.” And after a year, there is still no plans on their site at least to put up another antenna that would serve me better.

So this past Friday I bought a PlayStation 3 160 GB and a used copy of Heavy Rain.

My first thoughts of Heavy Rain is that its very much like Interactive Fiction, which is traditionally a text based game such as Zork.  This has been fully upgraded and with the exception of having to use your fingers to play Twister around the controller its a very fun game.

About to start playing it again, this time however i hope for a much better ending. My first time through if I didn’t the worst possible finish it was mighty close.

So a few days ago I was listening to Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcast episode 185 in which she interviewed Lou Anders of Pyr. Some of the books they discussed as being recently released sounded like something I would like to read, so I decided to buy them.

These included Cowboy Angels and The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne in) along with its sequel The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man: (Burton & Swinburne In). Normally I wouldn’t buy a sequel before reading the first book, but I have been burned a couple of times by the sequel no longer being out when I was ready to go hunting for it, so decided this time I was not going to take that chance, and hope I enjoy the first book enough to read the second.

Soon I will have reviews for those of which I finish!

So recently I got an HTC Evo to replace my HTC Hero.
I really wish that I could say there was no learning curve, however that is not the case. Things such as streaming off the 3g network like I did on my Hero doesn’t work as well with many apps.
More later

So recently I finished reading the Kindle version of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. If you haven’t heard of this book yet, its a historical fiction novel written by Seth Grahame-Smith. In this novel vampires are real, though most people do not know of them. It takes historical events that are known for a fact to have happened to Lincoln and put a slight twist on most of them.

Many events from Lincoln’s life is presented here, from the death of his mother to the Civil War and then to his Assassination by John Wilkes Booth, however instead of just being humans most of the adverse people were vampires. Gives a very different light on to what caused the Civil war.

You can tell that the author spent a long time making sure that the book is plausible as far as it goes.

The only complaint I have for this book is sometimes you have to wonder why doesn’t anything happen when the vampires die? Shouldn’t the turn to dust or something?

Recently Tim Burton has started the process of directing this as a film, this should be interesting to see!

Overall its worth the read, I’d recommend you get it!

This book is available in the following formats: Kindle, Hardcover & Illustrated, Paperback

As you may know I recently got a Zoom H1 Hand Held Recorder. I don’t have a full indepth review of it yet, but I have prepared a few things for those who are interested.

First was the YouTube Video I did here:

First View of Zoom’s H1.

And then while walking to work, I decided to give the thing a test in recording.  Here is the unedited Wave form according to Audacity:

I must admit I was pleasantly surprised as to how good of a job it did with out having to touch any of the controls but record, and stop. Attached to this post is also the MP3 version of the WAV file I made. Nothing really interesting is discussed (or I don’t think so) but it was a test mainly.

So tonight, I was watching various movies on Netflix streaming, and decided to watch one it had recommended before, but I hadn’t watched. Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth, it has a very interesting premise, what if you were 140 centuries old? Would you have anything to prove you were? Would your friends be able to prove you are not?

This is a story of a professor who claims that he is one of our earliest ancestors, and he just never died. His friends, who are fellow professor’s are at first thinking he is only telling them a story, but how could you really prove that the person next to you is only 35, and not 140 centuries old?

So the Kindle has had a huge price drop its now $10.00 (if bought new) compared to the Barnes & Noble Nook. This brings the Kindle’s price down to $189.00 USD, which is still more than the price point many people had hoped for, but much better than it was. For a while I had debated, if saving up for the iPad by Apple would be worth it, as then you would get the best of all 3 products, thanks to the Kindle App, the Nook app and Apple’s own book app. However with the new price for the Kindle and the Nook you could buy both for less than what you would buy the cheapest iPad for. Interestingly enough the DX is $300 more than the normal version. Sorry Amazon if I was going to pay $489 for an eBook reader, I would buy the iPad for $10 more.

However for now, I have to admit while I’ve heard plenty of reports that the Kindle is slow compared to the Kindle App on the iPad, this is what I’m thinking of getting. Perhaps I’ll have it in time for my trip to DragonCon.