Without further ado

Destiny Fulfilled arrived this morning courtesy of Play. I'll be writing a short review of the album to be published tomorrow.

Kylie's collaboration with the Scissor Sisters, I Believe In You, is inspired! I'm unashamedly biased as the Scissor Sisters are fans of Michael Jackson - ergo the "shamon" vocal shows up in Laura - and the band members met whilst waiting to see Captain EO. Plus Kylie was a teenage crush of mine (alongside Jennifer Connelly).

From now on I'll be managing both Nick Smith's blog and website. I can only hope that my efforts are deserving of my friend's faith. Time for some hand-coded html (missing GoLive CS already).

Big in Japan

The holidays are coming and Panic are not averse to early gift giving! From today (and subject to availability) Mac Users can now download Audion 3 (3.0.2) sans cost. Audion's history affords a fascinating glimpse into the application's development and popularity in the Far East. Download the iTunes that never was here (complete with MP3 editor).

Whilst perusing the shelves of software speciality store Game (Electronics Boutique in the US) I took The Urbz (GBA) for a trial spin. Big mistake. The UI is joyfully intuitive and the game's highly addictive. Keep your eyes peeled for a G4 Cube and Apple Cinema Display in the tower offices.

March of the M-Pire and Gmail plays POP3

Next March witnesses the ultimate Star Wars prequel merchandising blitz and Mars M&M's are getting in on the act too! However, I'm in the mood for nostalgia. So, here's a photo depicting Hasbro's diecast spaceship series.



Remember these Kenner gems from the 70's and 80's? My parents bought me a Star Destroyer (with Blockade Runner), Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, Snowspeeder, Slave 1 and Millenium Falcon over successive gift giving seasons. Detailing was superb and I hope that the TIE Bomber is released too! The original is highly prized by collectors and memories of seeing it on the shelves of Exeter's Pram & Toy shop only compounds my frustration at never owning one.

Talking of consumables. This holiday's must have is, again, the iPod. And there's plenty of GBA content to keep everyone amused from the upper Manhattan chic of The Urbz: Sims In The City to The Legend of Zelda The Minish Cap, which looks great.

Google is upgrading Gmail accounts to include POP. The rollout has yet to reach my inbox.

Out of Sight

After further exhaustive investigation, it appears that my keyboard may be the culprit behind recent system freezes, and not a broken installation as reported previously! This is actually good news because a replacement keyboard from the Apple Store is relatively inexpensive. In other computer peripheral news, my new Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 works a treat and breezily accesses power user features in Microsoft Office 2004. Neat.

Firefox 1.0 is now available and anyone (especially Windows users) would be advised to download and make it their default browser! Will this branch of the Mozilla code metamorphose into the Google browser? The gauntlet has been thrown down and, in the Mac User community, eyes are now on Safari 1.3 and 2.0. Exciting times.

New UK digital television channel ITV 3 starts showing Karen Sisco tonight! Ms Sisco was played to perfection by JLo (Out of Sight, 1998) and the small screen incarnation is depicted by model/actress Carla Gugino. With the likes of Kathryn Bigelow (a former Mrs James Cameron) at the directing helm and co-stars Robert Forster and Bill Duke, the series has been well received by press plaudits.



No sooner has Apple opened its online doors to the iPod Store. You can now checkout the Amazon iPod Store from today!

Grievous Bodily Harm

As an addendum to the teaser trailer post. Count Dooku and General Grievous (soon to be merchandised to death) are conspicuous by their absence! The former makes a noted appearance in the Revenge video game trailer, which contains a possible spoiler (read on at your peril). Dooku duels with Anakin as an entrapped Palpatine goads the two combatants (shades of Jedi?). This epic encounter is aboard a Confederacy starship.

Hm, the Emperor's line in Jedi "Strike me down with all of your..." has always puzzled me! Will we see Anakin striking Sidious down, thus completing his journey to the dark side?

Serendipity

The response to the alumni working in the media feature, published in The Talbot (Summer 2004) magazine, has exceeded my expectations and it is very flattering.

Things are afoot! More news soon...

The Bonfire of the Vanities

It's Bonfire Night in the UK. A celebration of Guy Fawkes' abortive Gunpowder Plot, which would have culminated in the destruction of the Houses of Parliament. This morning, somewhat aptly, I've had the opportunity to view THAT teaser trailer...



Last evening’s online debut of the Episode III teaser teaser lead to Lucasfilm’s servers overloading and their licensing division issuing cease and desist orders left, right and centre to sites posting images and links to the trailer (only available to paying Hyperspace and AOL members at time of writing).

Clearly a work in progress, as evinced by incomplete CGI shots, the trailer inspires obvious elemental comparison with The Return of the King (yet fails to evoke the same sense of scope). Much has now been made of the ANH/TPM/AOTC montage at the start (32 seconds) and Obi Wan’s voice over. From a subjective standpoint it reinforces the patchiness of the Star Wars saga since the prequels were unleashed from the hallowed halls of Skywalker Ranch (the current DVD release typifies this and lacks the cohesiveness of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings).



Highlights include Darth Vader’s awakening a la Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a screaming Darth Sidious (genuinely unnerving) and an enraged Anakin Skywalker. The attendant space battles are incumbered by too many elements on screen at once - ROTJ Death Star battle magnified to the extreme.



Overall the teaser affords insight into the dark core of the story and coupled with John Williams’ score, so long as Lucas’ incessant tinkering is minimised, Revenge may yet stand alongside Empire as a darling of both critics and fans.

As a footnote. The Episode III banner was composited in Photoshop Elements 3.0 and the screen grabs were captured in QuickTime 6.x Pro (with a light dusting of Photoshop magic).

Fort Knox

The NSA has released a public paper concerning security settings for Mac OS X 10.3.x. Although the majority of Mac Users have little need to run a fortress as it were, it is at least worth a casual perusal and you may learn something too. At the end of the day no computer, irrespective of the defense level (virus scanner, firewall and on the fly encryption), is 100% impregnable on a network. And we need to keep some perspective as moral panics* need to be put into context.

As Apple continues to seed developer builds for 10.3.6, I've bitten the bullet and performed a clean install. Most of my applications are now reinstalled and Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 is fantastic.

[*‘An episode, condition, person or group of persons’ that have in recent times, been ‘defined as a threat to societal values and interests’ generally fueled by the dominant mass media - what Stanley Cohen has termed ‘The Moral Panic’ (Cohen 1972).]

Mac OS Xbox

During my tenure as a reviews writer for IMG, it was frustrating that Mac ports of AAA titles arrived many months after the PC/console releases (if at all). However, Blizzard is the exception and continues to develop its award-winning StarCraft and WarCraft franchises in tandem. And Blizzard enjoys a dedicated and vocal fan base in the Mac community.

Yes, Mac releases can benefit from further bug fixes. But even this isn't guaranteed as evinced by my experiences playing Sim City 4 and Jedi Academy! The latter was unplayable out-of-the-box, and Aspyr hurriedly issued two patches (a further patch is under consideration). I'm not trying to single out, or be overly critical of, Aspyr as their programmers are known to revisit games years after the retail release and write an improved patch. American McGee's Alice (2001) was a recent beneficiary. This compelled me to play Alice (1.1.1) again and experience the title as McGee originally intended.

Both Microsoft and Sony will leverage IBM's G5 PowerPC architecture in their next generation games consoles! This leads me to conclude that Apple should start to push the message that Mac OS X (running on G5) is a viable gaming platform. The shared architecture should translate to a more seamless and faster porting process - indeed the Xbox 2 Software Development Kit (SDK) is Mac-based. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger has the potential to cement this with its rich audio and graphical capabilities.

With the holiday season almost upon us. iPodlounge has released its free buyers guide (direct link to PDF). So, if you're wondering what to buy me this year... ;)

Destiny's dawn

Have you seen the teaser trailer commercial for Destiny Fulfilled? The next release from Destiny's Child is being ushered in with a pomp and circumstance once reserved for a Michael Jackson release!

The teaser poster for the final Star Wars prequel was released last week! Honestly, upon first glimpse I laughed out loud because the superimposed image of Vader in a cape/cloud of smoke looked ridiculous! Are those bags under his eyes? The Episode I poster remains by far and away the most successful teaser campaign to date! The marketing division should be shown the door George! Lets hope the teaser trailer sets sparks flying before Guy Fawkes (in the UK).