Watching TV the other day I watched a really cool Gears of War commercial. The song in the commercial is “Mad World” by Gary Jules. The song although not what I would have picked for a song in a Gears of War commerical really made this commercial amazing. This really shows off the game well, even if it is just a small clip. It is incredible the amount of graphical power the Xbox360 possess, that they can put a commercial on tv made ingame footage and people would think it looks good. Not too long ago, video game commercials if they did exist.. would have been pre-rendered FMV sequences that wouldn’t reflect the real game at all. Take a look at the link to the video no youtube.
Youtube
Monthly Archives: November 2006
Google Surges Past $500
At about 9:50am this morning Google Inc. (NASDAQ : GOOG) shares raced past the $500 milestone. This is an amazing milestone for the company to surpass having been publically traded since August 2004. Shares continued their long rise for the company as investors feel that the stock can only head higher. So far in today’s trading the stock is at 504.22 and is up 1.85% or 9.13 per share.
Pilot Snaps Photos of World’s 2nd Tallest Tower above Clouds!
These are some rare photos, taken by Russian pilot Letchik Leha, of the Ostankino Tower in Moscow which sneaks above the clouds. The pictures look funny with the top spire of the tower as the only piece that is above the cloud line. The CN Tower in Toronto is taller but nobody has ever taken a picture of it above the clouds like this!
Microsoft could save 45 mil. tons of CO2 emissions with a few lines of code
Microsoft has already announced that they will build aggressive, energy-saving technology into Vista. But that’s not enough. Redmond should issue a software upgrade to every computer running Microsoft Windows worldwide to adjust each machine’s energy-saving settings for maximum efficiency. Energy savings would be worth $5 to $7 trillion dollars.
There were a few good points made in this article. It seems as though as we are progressing into the future we are consuming more and more. If Microsoft did implement the sleep mode on all existing windows machines, I’m sure it would save some money in the short term but the long term is another story. Computers are getting more and more powerful, and to create this power they are having to use more and more electricity. The author of the article should take a closer look at the hardware developments and see how they can be improved to reduce electricity usage. If everyone did their part and reduced their energy usage, I’m sure the world would be a better place.
Air Canada shares fall in Market Debut
Shares of Air Canada (TSX : AC.A) slipped in morning trading during its market debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The recently spun off IPO of ACE Aviation Holdings was priced at $21 per share, but the stock fell by about 6% to trade at $19.75 as of noon EST. The IPO raised C$605 million with $325million for ACE. When the IPO is complete, ACE will continue to control 75% of the company and Air Canada will have $2 billion in cash or cash equivalents.
An interesting side note, the last time shares of Air Canada traded publically, they were going for 6 cents back in August 25, 2004. That was the day they got delisted from the stock exchange, after having been in bankruptcy protection for 16 months.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo all Agree?
Well when it comes to sitemaps, Google set the standard and everyone is going to follow along. The standard that they released under a creative commons license was the Sitemap 0.84 XML protocol. My blog currently automatically creates a sitemap using this standard whenever I make a post so I will benefit from more search engines using this technology. With things like sitemaps, I find that there is no reason for each search engine to create their own standard and thus this standard from Google is such a great idea. I’ll have to watch my logs to see if Microsoft or Yahoo’s crawlers will pick up on my sitemap, and actually use it.
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Youtube and NHL strike Content Deal
Google’s Youtube and the NHL have struck a deal which will see NHL video content distributed through Youtube’s site.  The NHL and Google will share the ensuing ad revenue generated from these videos. The videos themselves are said to include highlights of regular season games (up in under 24 hours after the game), as well as other on and off ice clips. This should be great for sharing highlights of the games with friends or just checking up on your favorite team. This is the first deal that Youtube has created with a professional sports team and I’m happy that the NHL is leading the way.
Student tasered at UCLA library for not having his ID
Don’t you hate it when you forget to bring your ID to Library… and the CSO or UCPD end up zapping you like five times with a stun gun? What is happening in todays universities now a days? I think that with the advancing of technology and the availability of video camera devices, everyone should presume that everything they do is being recorded. With all this evidence to support what actually happend, the real wrong doings should be punished. I am hoping that these “police” officers never work again in law enforcement. Stunning someone for talking back is very uncalled for; I could see it being used if the person was being violent, but in this case I believe the person was just being an idiot. I am sure some sort of inquiry will happen, at least that’s how we would do things in Canada.
Finally $5 bill receives an upgrade
The Bank of Canada released the new $5 bill into circulation yesterday across Canada. The new bill will match the other bills in the series with its holographic strip, as well as numerous other security features. The other bills in the series had received their facelift long ago, and this bill finishes that series of changes. They say that these new bills will reduce counterfeiting, but I don’t see how this is going to help. Since in Canada, we continue to use older bills that haven’t been made in decades, what is to stop the counterfeiters from using their old style bills? I guess for people that see the new style bill they will have an easier time checking to see if it’s legit. At least the new bills are all matching now, and look futuristic with their holographic strip.
Google moving on up
The past couple days has seen Google Inc’s (NASDAQ : GOOG) stock rise to its highest point ever. It is very steadily creeping towards the $500 per share plateau and could easily get to that point in the next few days.  Already today it has reached as high as 498.29 around noon. This isn’t the only search engine company that is on the move up though. Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) has also been increasing steadily since their Ebay announcement. As well, Baidu has announced a partnership with a six antivirus firms. Stock in Baidu has also risen to its highest ever levels, with share prices getting up as high as 106.12 per share. It seems that if you are a search engine and you control your market your stock is going to head up but if you do not control the market, like Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), your stock is going to creep downwards and stay basically unchanged. These are exciting times in the technology front with the powerhouses pushing forward and leaving the competition behind. It’s better to partner up with the big guns than be left behind.