Just As Sony Starts Finding Its Bearings, Microsoft Kicks It In The Balls

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the new console words should be able to recite, almost word-for-word, the arguments for each side:

Nintendo
Wii is fun for everyone, is the cheapest of all the systems, has a revolutionary control scheme, and has Zelda, Mario, and all the other Nintendo games!

Microsoft
Xbox 360 may be a bit more expensive than the Wii, but it has better games, has been out longest, has the best multiplayer, and has HALO!!!

Sony
Oh yeah? Well, Sony may be the most expensive and have the fewest games, but it has the best graphics! And Blu-Ray! Uhh… and Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII (13)!

Well guess what? Scratch off that last Sony point, because FFXIII is coming to Xbox 360 simultaneously!

Honestly, I don’t even care about this. I don’t really like Final Fantasy (*gasp!*). No, this dates back to my elementary school years, as I spent hours upon hours on my Sega Genesis.

I loved that system more than anything else. When I heard about the upcoming Sega Saturn, I could not have been more excited. Except, as we all know, The New Guy just had to barge in, punch Sega in the face, and steal the crown.

Shaken but not stirred, I ponied up for the Dreamcast, positive that delays on the PlayStation 2 would leave video game enthusiasts ready to make the move back to Sega. Alas, it was not to be. Sony’s second system sold more than any other system ever had, and put Sega out of business as a hardware company once and for all.

This is where my irrational hatred of Sony stems from. I loved Sega, and I blame Sony entirely for its lack of presence in my life. Last year, when I saw Microsoft and Nintendo gang up and beat the shit out of Sony, I wept for joy.

But the past few months have been scary. BioShock was ported to PlayStation 3. The PS3-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4 came out and received universal acclaim. Ars Technica re-reviewed PlayStation 3, upgrading its rating from a 6/10 to a 9/10. Sony added their own version of achievements, and PlayStation Home presented the possibility of challenging Microsoft’s online dominance. All that was remaining was the final piece of the puzzle: the PS3-exclusive Final Fantasy XIII.

But now, on the horizon, hope lies. The Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII will prove to be the banana peel under Sony’s foot that ends this comeback. And my Wii and Xbox 360 purchases will not be in vain.

Easter Egg in WordPress.com

On the WordPress.com post editor, there is a button that allows you to insert video. It gives instructions on how to upload your own, but also provides a special syntax for linking to YouTube, Google Video, and DailyMotion, along with some examples.

The instructions are as follows, character-for-character:

Paste your YouTube or Google Video URL above, or use the examples below.

* YouTube instructions [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgEmZ39EtFk]
* Google instructions [googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8459301055248673864]
* DailyMotion instructions [dailymotion id=5zYRy1JLhuGlP3BGw]

Any developer will recognize this as a perfect place to put an Easter Egg. Here’s what the examples they give actually link to:

Google’s Lively, an In-Browser “Second Life”

Not so sure how I feel about this offering from Google.

Essentially, web developers can embed a Lively room on their website. Then, people who have Lively accounts can log in and chat with other people who are on the website. They’ll be in a room, designed by the web developer, containing various furniture and stuff.

Microsoft Going After Yahoo… AGAIN

Microsoft: Can we have you?
Yahoo: No.

Microsoft: How about now?
Yahoo: NO!

Microsoft: How about now?

to be continued…

Flash Haters Lose a Giant Arguing Point

Before now, one of the major arguing points of Flash haters (as well as more reasonable people, such as myself) has been the fact that text in Flash is not indexable by search engines.

In English, this means that Google doesn’t understand any of the words on a Flash website, unless they’re also in normal text (HTML) as well. This made it difficult for Flash sites to do well in search results, and was a good reason for lower budget organizations (ones that can’t afford to make both a Flash and non-Flash version of their site) to consider skipping Flash altogether.

No more.

Why Doesn’t Microsoft “Open Up” Internet Explorer?

At the time of writing, Internet Explorer just finished Quarter 2 of 2008 a 74% market share among web browsers, with Firefox in second place with 18%.

If you aren’t a web developer (or a computer geek of any kind), you’ll probably look at this figure and go “Wow, Microsoft sure is dominating the browser market.” And you’d be right. But you’d also be missing a key fact. Take a look at this table of browser usage. Just four years ago (Q2 2004), IE had a 95% market share. That’s over 5% loss per year.

I think that quite a bit of this has to do with web developers. I don’t know any web developers who use IE as their primary browser. The vast majority of us do our development in Firefox, then cross our fingers and see how it looks in IE. There are two major reasons for this.