MTV/MS take on iTunes?

from dmxzone, via Macromedia-whatever-gator:

http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=11354

MTV Networks and Microsoft will work together to design and develop a new digital music service.

Plans call for the service to offer more than 2 million songs for download from major labels and independent ones, as well as original content and MTV Networks programs.

Unfortunately it will be part of Windows Media Player and it will be called "Urge". I've got a very strong, powerful "urge" to ignore it.

If it bombs, headlines can call it "Urge Overkill".

MyStrands

Via the Macromedia XML Blog Aggregator or whatever it's called - and Adobe hasn't chaged the name there yet either, I will probably check this out:

http://www.musicstrands.com/mystrands/download.vm

iTunes or Windows Media Player (what, no WinAmp?)

MyStrands recommends songs based on the song actively playing in your media player, as well as recently played songs. You can listen to a recommended song directly from MyStrands with a single click, or read about the song and the artist on their MusicStrands.com home page.

It's not the first thing that's done this, but those sucked. Maybe this will too, won't know till I try. This is cool too:

Publish Playlists
Publish your favorite playlists to MusicStrands, to share with the community. You can tag and publish your active playlist by clicking the edit button next to the playlist tags. When you tag a playlist, the playlist is uploaded to the website and published.

Tag songs
You can add/edit tags to your active song by clicking the edit button. When you add a tag, the tag is also added to the MusicStrands community, letting others explore and discover the music you've added.

however, I still like audioscrobbler/last.fm:

http://www.last.fm/user/kittyglitter/

Dreamcast returns?

erm, so maybe Sega is returning to hardware, even if just for a quickie retro thing in Japan. Via slashdot, which as usual walks the tightrope between insightful and idiotic...

http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/12/12/167228.shtml?tid=10

There's not much more I can say on this (if it is indeed real) that hasn't been said here:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000790071989/

I'd think it almost make sense, with 1) people making both commercial and homebrew games for the system, 2) Xbox/Xbox 360 and PS2 all being rather unimpressive and Ps3 an unknown, 3) Xbox 360 possibly bombing in Japan, and 4) the popuarity of retro games... throw in the fact that part of the reason for this is that many people (like me) are tired of the incremental, unimpressive changes in next-gen graphics and also that said graphics are valued more by many developers over actual gameplay. And the fact that the DC is still better than any current system. I'd love to see a handheld version, especially since PSP isn't any better and there aren't any games for it. Like others, I could see the DC as something akin to the retro TV game market. Since Sega has been selling keychain replicas of their old consoles, their history isn't something they're shamed of. Ha, I might prefer to see a re-released Saturn, Mega Drive or something that played all 3. Hope springs eternal for the Sega fan, although hope is usually dashed by them in the end. Course, I hope Sega makes its old games available on 360 or Revolution anyway.

American Edit

I didn't think this bootlegged mash-up version of the Green Day album was that good and I don't think organizing some kind of online protest over it getting C&D'd by the Man is the best idea. And this kind of thing was already done for Dangermouse's Grey Album (which was suckier) but here:

http://www.americanedit.org/home/ae/

I really like the "Dr Who on Holiday" with the Time Lords. There are a couple other goodies as well.

Dreamcast is 7 and other stuff...

A few game related thingies I saw over the weekend and now I have to get back to work!

There's lots of bad news about Xbox360, some of it fanboy-generated, a lot of it genuine - crashes, overheating units, a thirsty power supply that's as big as a GameCube, plus the shortages that may be hurting MS more than they help, and not to mention that about 1 in 10 of them has been resold on ebay, one assumes for a large profit. And no, the joke about Xbox360 being the new Sega Dreamcast is tiresome.

There's also that stupid PSP graffitti campaign - I hate viral marketing - that may have further damaged Sony's reputation among, well, nerds who spend too much time on the internet maybe. And apparently, their games don't sell, not compared to DS. All this stuff is on the internets so it must be true but I can't be arsed to look it up, so it's probably from kotaku or gamasutra.

Anyway from slashdot:

The Dreamcast 7 Years Old and Still Marching

Craig writes "The Dreamcast turned 7 only a few days ago but still the amateur developers and fans keep the Dream alive, only a week ago was the final of the DreamOn Coding Competition and today the announcement of a new Commercial Shootemup. The Scene centres around DCEmu with multinational support from French & Spanish sites with the majority of releases stored at Dreamcast Homebrew."

Isn't that sweet? (lots of links there too.) The Dreamcast was one of the most promising systems ever and delivered a great library of games in a short period of time, unlike say, everybody else. But esp PS2 which was really a disappointment. It was such a small, cute unit - with an internal PSU, thank you very much - and the controllers were decent, although not as good as the Saturn 3d controller they were modelled on. It honestly died before its time - purely a business decision by Sega - and it's sad. But! There's the homebrew sceners who are keeping it alive for now and I hope for many more years of DC. I have yet to check any of this out, I meant to, like a year ago, when I found out there was any such scene. Apart from the occasional Jet Grind Radio, I don't play mine much. I always hope for Sega's return to the hardware business, instead of cranking out (mostly) Sonic software for everybody else, but it aint gunna happen.

I do regret, not getting an Asian system when they came out. The Asian, and not Japanese, systems came without a modem, which I never used anyway. And they had no regional lockout, not that there were very many good Japan-only games, the Saturn it was not. I also liked the blue Hello Kitty one from Japan but it was too much! I also regret buying a PS2 so soon, purely for GT3, which kinda sucked, instead of tracking down bleemcast for GT2. It's too bad Sega did not make it backwards compatible with Megadrive/Genesis and Saturn, as a wild pre-launch rumour had it. That would have been great. Its too bad it wasn't released earlier and kept going longer, as a few great Sega arcade games never made it, like Super GT (that was fun!) and Fighting Vipers 2... actually I think FV2 was in the works, maybe it made it in Japan. But with JGR, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, ChuChu Rocket, the Sonic games and even some of the b-listers (Maken X, Berzerk) there was a lot of fun to be had. Sega even got "hip" for a little while like Sony was in the mid-90s, but you got the feeling that DC games were made for people who actually got laid once in a while.

On gamasutra's "Esoteric Beat" there is, among other nerdly things, an excellent rejoinder to Roger Ebert saying that games can't be "art". (The NY Times also had a smart, more skeptical article on Sunday.) Ooh, Roger's read a few books and seen a few movies, but this is coming from a man who isn't really taken seriously as a film critic and who's basically known for giving a "thumbs up" to most any trash that comes from Hollywood.

Blogged Out: The Rituals Of Roger Ebert

However, they do have a funny picture of The Fat One with Russ Meyer! I think it's very cool that Ebert wrote the screenplay to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls".

And finally, say goodbye to Macromedia as they get swallowed up by the Adobe behemoth. Macromedia had a great attitude and has some great products and I hope to god that Adobe doesn't cock them up.

I'm dumb.

oh, wait, I confused Slate and Salon? What's the difference? I think Salon has all the annoying ads. Maybe it's Salon that sucks and I apologize to Slate, or maybe it's the other way round or maybe they both suck. Maybe I'm just dumb.

ZOMBIES EAT GEORGE BUSH'S BRAIN OMG!!1!!!WTFLOL!!1one!!

this too from Slate:

Zombies Attack George Bush

Just when things looked like they couldn't get any worse for President Bush, here come the zombies to vote him out of office. They arrive courtesy of Joe Dante's Homecoming, a one-hour movie made for Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series that airs tonight and tomorrow and will be rebroadcast throughout December. One part satire of soulless Beltway insiders, one part gut-crunching horror flick, Homecoming kicks off when the flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq burst open and the reanimated corpses of dead veterans hit the streets, searching for polling places where they can pull the lever for "anyone who will end this evil war."

Is it any good? I dunno, I missed it. But as the article mentions, zombie movies often have a political subject and as they don't mention, zombie movies are usually awesome, unless they somehow involve Uwe Boll. Dunno about Joe Dante though.

The movie has fictional stand-ins for Bush, Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell, among others who I assume get their brains eaten and if they don't, I'd be sorely disappointed.

To be bipartisan and also somewhat videogame related, why can't Stubbs the Zombie eat the brains of Hilary Clinton and Joe Lieberman. Not to mention professional idiot lawyer/newsmax correspondent Jack Thompson, but I'm afraid he's already lost his! Probably about the time he tried to get Janet Reno to sign a piece of paper saying she was a lesbian. Just read the link, the mind boggles that this man still practices law - although he may not be able to in Alabama sometime soon! - even lawyers should be ashamed of him!

Camile Paglia knows shit about dance music

Oh, go listen to lesbian folk music, since that what you're genetically wired for anyway! (note that this does not account for the absolutely wretched state of the music that most gay men are currently dancing to these days.)

or... alternatively:

Madonna is teh suck

or...

Tired Old Biddy Takes a Swing at More Popular One in Salon Snoozer

It's the Golden Girls meets Bumfights!

Salon mostly bores me and it's always been an irrelevant wannabe website but here are a couple amusing stories from it. Note: I hate their ad policy, but its only a couple clicks to get rid of the Lexus ad and I don't know who wants to pay for Salon anyway. And damn, that new IS looks like a Solara! ick. Let's start off with formerly relevant post-neo-feminist-whatever professional ranter Camille Paglia, who having her girl crush on the prettier, more popular Madonna rebuffed in the early-mid-90's, hasn't had much nice to say about Madge ever since. (Not that anyone, bar all 3 of Salon's readers, would ever read it.) So she doesn't like the new album much, if you care to read:

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/12/02/madonna/

I personally think "Hung Up" is pretty good, although not a patch on the thousands of neo-Italo-disco tunes that had sprung up in the past 5 years - and aren't hipsters who are hating on this song because a popular (ooh, "commercial") artist has had a hit with an uninspired ripoff of disco history, aren't they just mad because it distracts from all the uninspired retro ripoffs they've been convincing themselves are so hiply awesome? (Not to mention Gwen Stefani and Kylie fans, I point the finger and laugh at you for even thinking you're too cool for school 'cos you're not.) I don't really care for what I've heard of the rest of the lp, which isn't very much.

So after a lot of words and stuff basically saying that Madonna is dumb and old and the new album sucks, Paglia drops this bomb that basically explodes any notion that, at least when it comes to music, she's doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about What is, according to Camille Paglia, great dance music? Among others, a couple of whom are actually good, Deborah Cox, Amber (freakin' Amber!?), Groove Armada and Motorcycle. She also mentions Annie, who she probably heard about from the NY Times. I grant CP her pedestrian tastes, but for fuck's sake, stay away from writing about music. Most professional pop critics shouldn't be writing about music! And I cringe when Paglia mentions "techno and trance music" like she knows what is is... oh wait, she doesn't... wait for it... she refers to Paul van Dyk as "a true techno artist" ...no lie! Ouch, that hurt. I'm sorry, Ms. Paglia, you are hereby forbidden from writing about dance music ever again.

(Note, I think that PeeVeeDee used to be good, but he's not "techno" and the "true artist" bit is so hyperbolic, I would not even apply it to Jeff Mills even if it would fit, which it does.)

Since Paglia's real favourite subject, as it usually is, is herself. (just like me!) She gives us a playlist, a "history in songs: From soul and funk to disco, 1960s-'80s." Some are quite good, some are crap, many are quite irrelevant. And without resorting to the internets to factcheck, she refers to Dead or Alive as "Dead or Alive with Pete Best?" Isn't Pete Best the ex-Beatle, and I think she really means Peter Burns. While she brags about digging through her vinyl, Paglia comes off like some old person who thinks she's hip cuz she bought a few CDs at Borders:
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/12/02/disco_list/

Ack, I refuse to believe it, but maybe disco does suck after all.

Radica Sega TV Game

I know I'm really behind on this, but I got one of those Radica Sega Genesis TV games, with the intention of hacking it to play Genesis carts. Otherwise I wouldn't bother, I don't think. The controller is cute, seems to be good quality and a good match for the original controller, but I have only owned 3rd-prty Genesis controllers since 1994. One of them seems to have finally stopped working. Ah yeah, the controller is only 3 buttons, Sega games were best with six, although none of the games you get on this one support it.

It's fun, and certainly if you don't own a Genesis, it may be worth it but it hardly seems worth it with Sega releasing Sonic collections for every console, as well as selling PC versions of old games online and yes I know they hardly have shit online right now. Sonic plays fine on the Radica game but there are issues, like the BGM is way too loud and the "Sonic Got a Chaos Emerald" screen at the end of the bonus stage is glitchy. One would have thought they would have tested the unit to ensure 100% compatibility with Sega's most famous 16-bit game (and the one people I'd assume would buy this unit for) but no. The rest of the games get a big fat "meh" from me. Altered Beast is as shitty as it always was on the Genesis (this was the original pack-in game?! wtf?!11!!). Kid Chameleon is probably pretty OK, but I don't care to look at its second-rate 16-bit platformer graphics for too long when the gameplay is still meh. (It's probably better than Toki Ape Spit, however.) Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine or whatever it's called, it's Puyo Puyo and it's loads of fun, although it barely disguises its Puyo origins. Those are still DragonQuest slimes, not beans! Golden Axe is fun, although it's probably not as good as the arcade and the Genny could do (and did) better. Which leaves Flicky, which I am not sure why is on here, looks like a Master System game if even. The manual says the game dates to 1984. It's basically a Mappy clone, except instead of being a mouse cop saving valuables from cats, you're a bird (who can barely fly) saving baby birds from cats and there aren't any trampolines or any fun, really. Maybe it was big in Japan, but Sega probably wants to keep its best stuff off of these TV games anyway, they could have at least included Shinobi let alone Streets of Rage.

Anyay, that's not why I bought it. Did I mention the power unit is cute? Shaped like a tiny 2nd-gen Genesis. (1st-gen would be better.)It takes 4AA batteries or a 6v AC adaptor, neither is included. Will post about it again once I hack it. Or fail trying.

handhelds

a quick note: Nintendo DS is actually good and PSP disappoints me. I will probably own one of each.

The horribly buggy launch of the GP2X aside, the Koreans take the prize for promising handhelds, even if they may or may not be vaporware. First this, which Macromedia devnet informs me plays Flash files (w00t):

http://www.pvp4u.com/archives/2005/07/korean_viliv_p1.html

yes indeed, PSP and iPod went and had a baby! Let's hope this comes here and Apple doesn't succeed in suing them over that click wheel thinghy. My only issue with this - cuz this looks better'n most anything out there - where the hell are the fire buttons? This is something that makes me crazy about devices that claim to play games.

But then a few days later, Korea comes through again and answers my question with this:

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/cenix-gmp-m6-gaming-system

holy fuck, and yes its tiny, so you don'thave small hands like me and Jewel? I want it! sd < CF and as commenters have noted, 50,000 games, WTF? I hope for Flash, among real games - people have also commented on the fact that it seems to be running 1942 or some derivative thereof.

myspace, bitches

ok, so I got two glitch tracks up on myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/kittyglitter

mind, I'm not the most talented person at coming up with this stuff! The first one was an attempt at sounding like AFX, the second is more chip-y and currently quiet - unmastered because I am really crap at figuring those production thingies out!