The Insomniac Coder

Image via CrunchBase Disclaimer: I am in the middle of one of my well-documented encounters with Insomnia. You've been warned. Very early impressions: Noticed the Hulu plus sponsored mode on the dashboard around 5:45 AM DST .  Took me a few clicks and one failed Google search to find out how the hell to download the stupid dashboard app. Eventually found it by going to the only obvious place in the dashboard where such a thing would be. The dashboard app had an update, this was installed instantly and with no interruption. I already have Hulu Plus, logging-in was painless and did not involve going to hulu.com to authorize the device.  Usage is consistent with the UI for things like Netflix and the Zune Marketplace . It took me less than a minute to get up to speed.  Watched a Daily Show clip, looked fine even if the volume was a bit off. And yes, there are ads even if you pay for Plus, which is the same experience as using a browser or the Roku HD. Watched...

Image by Casul Media via Flickr The problem: We Xbox 360 gamers love to brag and share on our experiences playing the console, but there is simply no easy way to grab a screen capture or video. Some games have implemented this kind of feature and it is extremely popular. For example, Halo 3 let me record a game as pure telemetry, which kept the file size tiny, then use it to generate a video that I could edit for view angle (overkill). Forza 3 allows you to take captures with an in- game camera , and even allows exporting videos. Proposed solution: Implement changes to the Xbox 360 dashboard , that allows the user to: Hit the center button in the controller and quickly take a screen grab, which can be: saved to the Xbox 360 pictures library. sent to any of the members of the friends list. send it to the SkyDrive associated with the Live ID associated with the gamer tag . Optional: same functionality as #1, but as a video. same functionality as #1.2, but for other soc...

If you are sitting on the fence about Deadrising 2: Case Zero, then you gotta check this out: Related articles by Zemanta Dead Rising 2 Case Zero Walkthrough - Finding Zombrex (Part 1) (brighthub.com) Preview: Dead Rising 2 (g4tv.com) Review: Dead Rising: Case Zero a Bite-Sized Zombie Massacre (wired.com)

Yes, it misses the mark, but it is still going to make Apple boatloads of cash, and this is without even trying hard at it. I currently own two of the first generation AppleTVs, and both have been sitting idle for months. Why? We kept losing the remotes, that's $29 each and Apple did not allow an easy way to program any remote to use the AppleTV until we were fedup about it. Aaccording to my other blog, we had the two AppleTVs since February 2008, and the "new" feature to program remotes did not arrive until the 2.3 upgrade in October 2008. We probably bought four of those remotes in that period of time. Re-coding content sucks. Even with a hardware encoder dongle, which only worked in the Mac, it still meant that using the AppleTV involved a time tax for the conversion. The "hacks" available to add functionality to the AppleTV were not very consistent, so I always ended up resetting them to the official firmware. This is not Apple's fault, and sure as h...