If you can remember back to 2008, Comcast started to enforce a bandwidth cap of 250GBs. At this time, many popular “tech stars” like Chris Pirillo even revolted against the cap. Due to all the video stream we have done these past four years, a 250GB cap is ridiculous for all.

Comcast mentioned in their blog post a nice statement that they basically messed up:

So as the market and technology have evolved, we’ve decided to change our approach and replace our static 250 GB usage threshold with more flexible data usage management approaches that benefit consumers and support innovation and that will continue to ensure that all of our customers enjoy the best possible Internet experience over our high-speed data service.

However, like in any business, Comcast is out there to make money. And boy, does Comcast try to snag your money for any overages:

The first new approach will offer multi-tier usage allowances that incrementally increase usage allotments for each tier of high-speed data service from the current threshold. Thus, we’d start with a 300 GB usage allotment for our Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tiers, and then we would have increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high speed data service (e.g., Blast and Extreme). The very few customers who use more data at each tier can buy additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 for 50 GB).

But luckily, Comcast has some sense and has decided to bump all plans up to at least a 300GB cap:

The second new approach will increase our data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 per 50 GB).

In both approaches, we’ll be increasing the initial data usage threshold for our customers from today’s 250 GB per month to at least 300 GB per month.

Comcast may still be doing it wrong, but this still won’t make people happy, especially Netflix. Realistically, I would set the low-end plan to a cap of 500GBs and all other higher-end plans to a full 1TB. Capping might help to prevent users downloading too much via torrents, but to cap at 300GBs is too low; I sometimes go through 100GBs+ in one day!

What do you think of Comcast’s move? They’re on the better track, but keep in mind it’s been four years since a change!

It was national news when Facebook bought photo sharing app Instagram for a whopping billion dollars but today Facebook expands its photo enhancing arsenal. After quietly enhancing the mobile version of its applications yesterday Facebook hired the two-man-team behind the popular Android photo sharing app Lightbox. The service will be shut down a month from today, June 15th, yet for those of you who will miss the service the code behind it has been posted to GitHub.

Today’s email was filled with news about tech, including jailbreaking news, iPhone 5 rumors, and even Scott Thompson’s split from Yahoo, which preceded a list of tweets about marriage equality and other topics that have been far from understated throughout the Twitter-sphere. At the bottom you are given the option to, as you should have with any email newsletter, unsubscribe. For now, I will leave that link unpressed and see if Twitter can continue to surface what is important and maybe even show news that you or I haven’t seen before.

So will you be disabling these notifications or do you think a little news refresher might be handy?

Wacom has done it again with the new release in their Intuos series, the Wacom Intuos5. Wacom is promising a productivity increase with the new multi-touch surface along with enhanced features; let us see how the new Intuos5 stacks up with the Intuos4 we reviewed sometime back!

After having a good chunk of time to use the Intuos5 in my overall work day along with in personal design projects, I can now say I have used the Intuos5 enough to write one of the typical full-blown reviews that you all know!

Enough jibber-jabbin’, let’s get on with the all new and snazzy Intuos5!

Design

When I reviewed the Intuos4 way back when, I was very impresse with the overall design. Although, like the recent Photoshop CS6 updated UI, the Intuos4 stood out a bit too much with its black bezel and lit up buttons; a designer wants to focus on his/her project and not the tools they use to achieve such. This is where Wacom realized they had to do something, and boy, what they did was fantastic!

The new Intuos5 features a very slick, matte black finish. With its new eight impressed ExpressKeys on the sides, you can now clearly feel what button you are pressing without looking down to the tablet. Not only did Wacom make the Intuos5 easier to use, they took it one step further; the entire “bezel” of the device is outlined with a rubbery, soft to the touch finish, making the Intuos5 easier to glide your hands across like never before.

One gripe I had with the Intuos4 was the tracking area… it stopped right at the edge of the drawing area, making it so whenever you are at the edge, your hand will be on the very edge of the tablet; quite the uncomfortable feeling if you ask me. Like many other improved features, Wacom has eliminated this in their design with having a bit of a bleed to the tracking area. This in turn allows for a more natural feeling of “drawing off from the edge” like you do on a piece of paper.

With good design, one might think build quality would be lacking… wrong! The Intuos5 features a very solid design when compared with its brother, the Intuos4. Everything thing seems more tightly compacted in the Intuos5, making it a very solid tablet to draw on.

 Input Devices

Just like the Intuos4, the Intous5 features all the same nibs (pen tips), the same pen, and the same styled holder, that feels more soft to the touch compared to the Intuos4′s pen holder. One thing I would like to point out is that Wacom has chosen to not provide the mouse like they did for the Intuos4, instead, replaced with an all new feature… multi-touch!

The multi-touch features work surprisingly well, granted that the implementation is 100% custom. There are very many types of gestures that you can achieve, ranging from one finger all the way up to five fingers. Now that’s what I call options! And with the typical Wacom shortcuts dropdown, you can assign anything that your heart desires. I also have to mention, Intuos4 users might know that when using the TouchRing (which we will get to shortly), zooming in and out was somewhat choppy (at least for me that is). On the new Intuos5, when pinching to zoom in and out, it is as smooth as it can be. It honestly feels so natural to work with your hands on the new Intuos5; some have thought that it is “unprofessional”, but in reality, it is the best feature Wacom could have ever added to the Intuos5. I have four-fingers down set up as a clipping mask; it is now so easy to create a clipping mask on a layer without even moving my cursor or hands! Now that is just awesome! Wacom is da bomb!

However, I have to admit, the multi-touch features are a bit sporadic for me. Throughout daily use of the tablet, the multi-touch features can disable at the most random times along with other odd bugs happening. To re-enable the touch features, I need to turn off and on the tablet. I have emailed Wacom on this one and hope to figure out why I am getting this. I had some speculation it might be the Logitech mouse drivers (the Logitech LX8 is by far my favorite mouse… ever) getting in the way, but I still have to confirm this with the tech guys over at Wacom. Very annoying when the touch features suddenly stop working, but it is most definitely software causing it.

And just like all the other Wacom graphic tablets, the Intuos5 is compatible with all the same extra accessories like the airbrush and art pen. Thank you Wacom for not pulling an “Apple-move” and forcing users to buy new accessories (hey, we know it’s true)!

ExpressKeys and TouchRing

One of the newly updated features, the ExpressKeys, along with the TouchRing, are some of the most important functions of the Intuos5. The layout of these buttons is the same compared to the Intuos4, but what is different is that there is no indication what these buttons do on the tablet (the Intuos4 had an OLED screen next to every button).

Wacom chose an interesting path on this one… they do not want you looking at the tablet, at all. As people using any graphic tablet should focus on the work and not the tools they use, this is a brilliant move on Wacom’s part that adds little distraction (and besides, when you draw on a real canvas on the desk, you do not really stare at one point… you look at the picture as a whole). Instead, when you hover of the buttons with you fingers, an information box will pop up on your screen informing you on what these buttons do. You will most likely remember what all eight of these buttons do, especially when Wacom has labeled them by feel to with the extruding dots and lines.

On the TouchRing, this has not changed at all, except for the fact that Wacom has now placed the indicator lights in all four corners instead of around the right edge, which in my mind, is brilliant as having four LEDs close to each other is just hard to look at.

And besides, this side of the tablet just looks so slick! It is so soft to the touch and your fingers glide across it with ease.

Wireless Freedom

When you just thought that the new multi-touch features are killer, that’s not all folks’! Wacom has decided to take it one step ahead and include a full wireless accessory kit for a mere $39.95. There is not too much to say except, it works and it does it well! If you are the type of designer that loves to work while on the go (I am one of them), the wireless accessory kit is a must for you. With the versatility factor, it is well worth the small investment.

It is also very easy to turn on/off along while storing the mini-USB receiver that plugs into your computer (to the right of the power button on the right hand side)

Despite how little it is, the wireless feature packs a punch:

If you have ever used Photoshop and needed to export certain layers, groups, and slices, you can quickly find out it is the most frustrating process in the design world. Whether you are a developer clipping images out of a Photoshop file to be used in a website or even an application or even a designer sending images over to your developer to use, you know exactly how long it takes to trim everything down… too long.

In fact, I personally have an Wacom Intuos4 to help speed up the process, and with a dedicated trim button (trim is one of my favorite features in Photoshop), it makes the process somewhat easier. Sure, Photoshop may have its slices feature, but to be quite frank, it is not powerful… at all. If you want to clip out a layer, but with a white background behind it, good luck. There is no way (from my knowledge) to set up Photoshop to remove certain layers before exporting your slices via the “Save for Web & Devices” menu (okay, you could set up special actions to do so and then save out, but even that would be tedious and a pain to manage).

This is by far the major downfall in Photoshop that adds a huge burdan on developers and designers. This is why one of my favorite companies who specializes in Mac web-development, MacRabbit, created Layer Cake, an application that can take the misery away from trimming and exporting all your layers.

Now just to let you know, wen I saw this application for the first time, I felt sudden rejoice. I have literally spent hours on end cropping, trimming, and exporting layers in Photoshop. Until Adobe gets their act together and realizes there is a need for a better system, Layer Cake will be here for us. With that said, let’s get on to the full review!

Simple but Powerful

Layer Cake features an incredibly easy to use interface; there are no complicated screens or directions to follow, “it just works”. The only thing you need to do is set up your PSD correctly to work with Layer Cake, and it will do all the work for you.

No mess of configuring the type of PNG to use, quality of the JPEG, or anything else similar. And this, by far, makes this application a critical tool to any Photoshop user.

Exporting Made a Breeze

After Layer Cake processes your PSD(s), it will throw up a screen listing all of your images. Not only will it list your images, you can preview them right in the application and even drag certain images to your desktop or  wherever you wish. If you would like to save all images, you can of course do that too.

Although I do wish these images can be grouped based on any subfolders these images might lay in. Let’s say if I had a layer named “Logo.png” in “Header->Top Section”, it would be nice to have some titles in the application telling me this image belongs to this area. This way, if I wanted to export only the images in the header area, it would be possible to do so whether than picking up every image in the header manually.

Even though Photoshop is quite the complex application, Layer Cake is not and is extremely easy to use; it is nice to have a bit of relief from all the complexity of Photoshop (and if you do not think Photoshop is complex, take a look at all the menus. You’ll get lost. )

So, how does this actually work?

Sadly, you cannot plug in any ordinary PSD and have Layer Cake work its magic; you have to specify what layers/groups you want to export first. If you have any PSDs you made previous to Layer Cake, you will need to go through the PSD again and set it up to use. But no fret, this entire process is entirely simple and easy to do while you are designing.

Simply, while you are designing (or afterwards) name your layers according to what you want to call them and what file format the will be. So for example, an icon may be named “My Icon.ico” and your logo may be named “Logo.png”.

But that’s too simple. Layer Cake took it to the extra step and added an entirely new feature, slices. Simply create an “@slices” group and a rectangle that signifies where you want to slice. And the best part about this, unlike the native slices feature in Photoshop, slices do not work as a “rasterized” image; that means you can have a slice be transparent… just what I wanted! If you are wondering of a real-world use, slices are amazing for repetitive textures; so if you have a gradient that repeats on the X-axis, simply create a 1 x (whatever) slice and you will have a repetitive texture. Awesome!

Let’s face it, this is AMAZING!

I have to say, Layer Cake is just remarkable; just a dream come true for Photoshop users. Not only can it export your layers in ICNS, JPG, PNG, and TIFF, but it can even export images from slices. Even though I do wish it had a bit more features like organizing the exported layers or even being able to specify if the image should be transparent (for PNG and TIFF), I am very impressed with Layer Cake; it is a must for all developers and designers out there as no one wants to spend countless hours trimming down graphics.

One feature that I would personally love being a web developer would be a way to turn all these exported images into a spritemap (an image of multiple images). This way, I do not have to worry about compiling the spritemap myself and have Layer Cake do it all in one application.

You can find Layer Cake on the Mac App Store for a mere $20. At first glance, $20 might be a bit much for such a program, but I will tell you right now, my clients will be much more happier with me now that I do not need to spend numerous hours trimming down their designs and making it into a website. It is well worth the money granted you are going to get more out of it than what you put into it.

Thanks to MacRabbit for letting me do this review. As I am always impressed with their apps, I wonder what they have in store next time around!

To view the Layer Cake website, check it out here:

http://macrabbit.com/layercake/

And to view Layer Cake on the Mac App Store, it can be found here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/layer-cake/id512533449?mt=12

Nokia has filed for a patent for technology that uses a vibrating tattoo to tell you when your phone is ringing.

The patent application that has been filed in the US uses metal ores which would vibrate underneath the tattoo when a call was received or if the phone’s battery was running low. Users would simply have to scratch their arm if they wanted to dismiss the alert. The papers filed say the vibration would feel like a tingling sensation.

The tattoo itself would contain magnetic ink that would pick up electromagnetic signals sent by your smartphone. Any message you wanted the tattoo to pick up it would be received in a series of pulses, much like Morse code but as vibration. If nothing else it would remove the need of having to remember to switch off loud phone rings in crowded trains or in officers. A simple scratch of the arm could dismiss a call. The tattoo would involve a small surgical operation to insert it underneath the skin. Nokia says the technology would only be activated after the scars had healed. The patent also suggests that the technology could be applied like a transfer also but would be less wear resistant.

The metal ores could work via pulses, suggesting it could use different signals for a variety of different methods so if an email was received, an SMS message or social network update.

If the patent comes come through for Nokia using ferromagnetic links for users to physically link themselves to their smartphone it would certainly be a unique selling point. The idea of embedding technology into your body is nothing new. The artist Stelarc was famous for inserting an ear in his forearm. He then wanted to insert wireless technology so he could use the artificial ear as a transmitting and listening device. However the likelihood of this piece of kit actually making it onto the market is probably remote.

Yet, whether the technology ever finds it way onto the market is beside the point. As Nokia continues its campaign to gain a greater share of the smartphone market, filing for patents and coming up with new and innovative ways to use technology is a great way of engaging with smartphone users. Some might say it’s quite an Apple way of doing things, of developing creative ideas for technology and pushing the boundaries for how we interact with smartphones.

Nokia linked up with Microsoft in 2011 and proceeded to design, build and put on sale a range of Nokia Lumia smartphones, first the Nokia Lumia 800 and then early this year the 700 and 900 were unveiled. The Finnish manufacturer has already said they want to take on Apple in terms of design, suggesting that they see innovative technology as a great way of generating enthusiasm for new products.

Hardware and Set-up

Sporting two antennas and a few front lights any visitor might mistake this for an everyday wireless router yet it is much, much more. With Composite, S-Video, and Cable inputs the device is capable of streaming from any satellite or set-top  box signal as well as a total of three USB ports (for future use) and an Ethernet jack for initial set-up and those who prefer to stream over a wired network. Also included with the Broadway is the IR Blaster, for programming and sending IR signals. During the set-up the wizard has you program each number key as well as the select and power keys so while using the Broadway it will be able to successfully control your TV and/or set-top box. With that said the wizard is both clear and informational as is guides you through connecting to your wireless network, programming the IR Blaster, and scanning for, or adding, your channel list. These last two steps can be the most tedious; if you have a DirecTV or Dish set-top box you have to individually add each of your channels, or atleast the ones you plan on watching, and without any pre-programmed remote mappings for popular providers (i.e. DirecTV or Dish) the user is forced to map each button for themselves. Though these are both one time operations, they are steps that could have been taken care of and included, especially since the unit will cost you around two hundred dollars.

The Interface

With an option for both H.264 or Flash streams, depending on what device you are using, the stream is truly available on any device. Whether you are on your desktop, smartphone, or tablet by simply going to “distan.tv” you will be automatically redirected to your Broadway unit. The interface is quite simple and furthermore easy to use. You are given three tabs, after you enter your pin of course, Live TV, Settings, and Broadway. Live TV is quite self explanatory, you choose a channel and with a little bit of IR signal and some magic later you are watching TV. The Settings option gives you some more basic options like aspect ratio and stream quality, while the Broadway tab (after entering your separate administrator password) gives you access to everything else including channel lists and port settings. (See Picture 3 Above)

Unfortunately, there is no option to use more advanced remote input options. In other words there is no way to view pre-recorded shows on your built-in DVR, etc. you only have the options to change the channel. Only one person can view the stream at once too, if another person tries to eavesdrop on your TV time they will get an “Already in use.” error.

Summary

Besides the hefty $200 price tag and the lack of some basic features the Broadway box just works. It is as simply as just plugging it in, setting it up and from that point on you can just use it, simple as that. This product makes watching TV much more convenient and allows you to take the content you usually can only watch on your couch anywhere there is an internet connection.  If you would like to check out the Hauppauge Broadway or any of Hauppauge’s other products head on over to www.hauppauge.com.

The New iPad

After selling 15.4 million new iPad’s in Q4 of 11′, Apple just had to do it again. Called the “new” iPad, Apple is trying to make an upgrade that will allow the current original iPad owners upgrade to the new look with even more and better features without changing the overall design from the iPad 2. Here is a quick rundown of the differences and similarities of the two.

Retina Display

Being easily the overall point throughout the rest of the keynote, the new Retina display has a larger pixel density than the average High Definition Television at 2048 x 1536 pixels (264 ppi). Though this isn’t as much as the iPhone’s 326 pixel’s per square inch, the device is not meant to be held as close as the iPhone. And yes, it still has the 10 hour battery life.

A5X

For this iPad, the new display needed a little bit more to drive itself. Thus, the A5X chip was born. Being a Quad-Graphics-Core processor, it allows the iPad to keep it’s graphics smooth and fast.

iSight Camera

Bringing the optics of the iPhone’s 5MP camera to the new iPad, the iPad can now be used as a primary camera making the “need” of a separate digital camera less likely. The front facing camera is still standard VGA quality though.

The Rest

Being able to keep the iPad’s 10 hour battery life seemed to have been a challange with the new display which may explain the slight thickening of the new iPad to 9.4 mm thick.

Overall Viewpoint: Not enough of a reason to upgrade unless you have an “original” (1st Generation) iPad.

Apple TV

The Apple TV, Apple’s way of making content more easily accessible through your TV got yet another upgrade, except this time being more from the software end. Aside from the original, the only main hardware difference is the ability to stream 1080p content to your TV instead of the original 720p. The interface itself got a complete overhaul to now support a larger 3rd party, in house developed application set. The new system also allows for Apple’s “Genius” functions found in iPods, iPads, iTunes, and iPhones to be used in the Apple TV.

Review of the new iPad is coming soon by Marc Billow.

Past Poll Results

Question: What virtualization software do you prefer?

So the winner is, other. Make sure to post what your definition of “Other” is!

The New Poll Question?

Which do you want to see on the iPad 3?

A Retina Display, Better Cameras, An Enhanced Processor, and or Siri.

Make sure to submit your answer to the right and if your choice isn’t int he options feel free to comment down below so we can add to the current list!

Today Apple sent out invitations to various media outlets informing them that the rumored March 7th keynote is, alas, no longer a rumor. The invitation sports an iPad, assumably a third generation device, with as you will see in the image below (from commenter “maclook” on the MacRumors article) a higher resolution screen. Of course Apple is know for their photo trickery so as always we can’t be sure that this isn’t just a digitally rendered version of such a device.

Anyway, set an iCal event for March7th and we will see you then.

Nokia has kicked off Day One of MWC with a new Symbian Belle device called the Nokia 808 PureView. It features the ancient Symbian OS, which Nokia admits that they won’t be supporting it as much because of their commitment to Windows Phone 7. Looking deeper into the hardware of the phone, it features a 4-inch display with a relatively low 640 x 360 resolution, a 1.3GHz single-core processor, and 512MB of RAM. So far specs look unimpressive, until you get to the camera.

The most talked about feature about the PureView is it’s whopping 41-megapixel camera. It sounds unreal to have a 41-megapixel camera in a phone but in reality, there’s a caveat to it. According to Nokia, the phone will take 38 and 35-megapixel shots, but the quality won’t be impressive. If you want the best pictures from the phone, it’s better for you to lower the megapixels to about 5 or 8. Ouch. On the brighter side, you can record video in full 1080p, which is always welcome.

Other than that, the PureView 800 seems impressive, but it’s mostly a complete letdown.

HTC starts off Mobile World Congress 2012 by revamping their Android line with a new line up of phones called the “One-Series” and Sense 4.0, which cleans up Sense and adds some new smart features. There’s lots to talk about, so we’ve broken each announcement in peaces.

HTC One X

Starting off with the first phone in the One-Series, we’ve got the One X and it’s a powerhouse. The One X starts off with a quad-core Tegra 3 chipset, a 4.7-inch 1280×720 Super LCD 2 display, NFC, Beats audio integration, and 32GB of on-board memory. On the software side, we’ve got Android 4.0 and HTC Sense 4.0. But the main feature of the One X and the One-Series is the camera, which HTC touts it as the best camera a smartphone.

The camera is 8-megapixels with backside-illumination and an aperture of f/2.0. But possibly the most impressive feature of the camera is the speed. HTC claims that the startup time of the camera app takes 0.7 seconds and o.2 seconds to focus, which is faster than a blink of an eye. Other features of the camera includes a continuous-shot mode and the ability to take pictures while recording video.

The One X will be available worldwide in late April and will be an AT&T exclusive in the US. The most noticeable difference with the AT&T model is that instead of having the Tegra 3 chipset, it’s been replaced with a dual-core Qualcomm S4 chipset due to the inclusion of 4G LTE.

HTC One S

The second phone in the One-Series lineup is the One S, which has been leaked many times and was dubbed the “Vile”. The One S features a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and the same camera that’s found in the One X. The biggest difference between the One X and the One S is the design. This phone has a unibody enclosure and it’s razor thin, measuring at 7.6mm. On the software side, it has Android 4.0 with Sense 4.0. The phone will be available worldwide in late April and will be exclusive to T-Mobile US with HSPA+ data speeds.

HTC One V

The last phone in the One-Series lineup is the One V, which is the budget phone in this lineup. The One V has the specs of a budget phone like a 1GHz single-core processor and a downgraded 5-megapixel camera. Just by looking at the design of the phone, HTC took some design elements from the ancient HTC Legend with the protruding chin and the unibody design. The phone will be available worldwide in late April and there hasn’t been announcements for a US release.

HTC Sense 4.0

Image Credit: The Verge

Another big product that HTC announced at MWC is HTC Sense 4.0, the next version of HTC’s Android overlay. Sense has been known for being clunky and slow, making it less than desirable to many phone enthusiasts but at the same time, Sense adds value to the Android experience with smart features and endless customization options. With Sense 4.0, it adds a lot of new features and at the same time, it appears HTC has trimmed down many unnecessary features from previous versions like glossy UI elements and 3D transitions. The two main features of HTC Sense 4.0 is in the camera software and audio.

ImageSense is one of the new features of Sense 4.0 and according to HTC, it’s designed to give you perfect pictures every time. ImageSense’s technology can dramatically reduce noise in dark conditions and adjust the brightness of the LED flash. HTC also improved HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography and they went as far to compare it to the iPhone 4S’s HDR capabilities. HTC has also improved the audio experience with better Beats audio integration into apps beyond the music app. The technology will now apply to all apps and games on the phone.

The shot heard round the world; an ABC Nightline Special going inside of the Foxconn factory in the heart of Shenzhen, China. Now before I start I want to bring something we all subconsciously think about to everyone’s attention. When you see that shiny g6old sticker that denotes a products country of origin to the all too familiar location of China, what do you think about or even what don’t you think about? It is hard to fathom that a sticker or a line of text like “Made in China” could bring visions of over worked and under paid workers to mind or the really shocking part, we have the ability to ignore this thought altogether.

Everybody throw away your iPhones!

Well I mean that is what everybody on Twitter is saying right now, so lets see it. Are you willing to throw out you investment because of where it came from? Well before you answer that question let me explain what I mean by “investment.” I don’t mean just your iPhone I mean everything you have ever bought that has the label “Made in China.” You see, the Nightline special focused on Apple because they are one of the only companies that would alloy for a reporter to see their factory. That factory that you saw, those workers you saw crowding into that building for a job, not all of them will be building Apple products. Some will be, yet other will be building products for companies like Nintendo and whoever else contracts their work to Foxconn. So now are you ready to throw out your investments now?

Well Apple Incriminated Themselves, They Must Be Stupid.

At first glance it seems like they just made a huge mistake but let me explain to you why this is really a great, in terms of options you have to handle mass suicide, way to handle this situation. By allowing the truth to be placed out in the open, Apple has shown they are willing to fix the problem, instead of just shuffling it under the rug. They are paying for this audit in order to see what is wrong, a step you must take before you address a problem. At the end of the show Bill Weir noted that they were invited to do a follow up to this story later, after Apple has had a chance to help Foxconn workers and in turn China’s labor force as a whole.

They should just move back to the Good Ol’ US of A.

Well they are, as an engineering student in upstate New York my classes are starting to be crafted around an area deemed the “Tech Valley.” I will let you guys do your own research on this subject but the picture to the left is a plant being constructed under GlobalFoundries, a company based around the semiconductor industry. It has been said that Apple is very much vested in the whole program and would in tern like to move back, partially at least, to American labor.

So, instead of telling everybody on Twitter what a horrible company Apple is, take a step back and realize this problem isn’t all Apple’s fault. Really, Apple is one of the only companies willing to take a stand to end unfair labor conditions for those in foreign countries. If you have any questions of comments be sure to leave them below and thank you for reading.

Last week we wrote about the QuickWeb Supa VZ1 VPS, which sported some amazing results for the price. However, like we mentioned before in the review, we wanted to give you the feeling of how fast their SSD VPSes are. I will tell you right from the start, these VPSes are some of the fastest I have ever used. They’re really fast… and I mean it!

As we already introduced QuickWeb in our former review, let’s just get straight on to the review.

Details

The QuickWeb Supa V8 VM2 VPS is quite the bargain for how much you get. For $15 a month, it will give you 512MBs of RAM with 768 swap, two CPU cores, 8GBs of SSD storage, 500GBs of bandwidth, and a 100Mbit port speed (which is actually less than than the Supa VZ1 I have). Of course, granted the price of SSDs nowadays (okay, they are not as much as they were a year ago, but they are still a good chunk of change), you do see some limitations compared to the hard disk based VPSes, like a lower port speed and less storage.

Although I would say for $15 a month, you are getting a great VPS for the money.

Network Speed

As the SSD can download data very fast to storage, I decided to download to the disk than to sending it off to /dev/null. The results are quite amazing.

wget http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test

--2012-02-12 05:37:23--  http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test

Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 205.234.175.175

Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]

Saving to: `100mb.test'

100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 83.2M/s   in 1.2s

2012-02-12 05:37:24 (83.2 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]

83mb/s is incredible for a VPS! And as there is indeed less storage on a SSD, I am sure these nodes will be a little bit faster overall as QuickWeb cannot fit as many users as they can with the space hard disks offer.

SSD Speed

If you are looking to buy an SSD VPS, you are most likely doing it for the speed. This QuickWeb SSD VPS troops quite a bit!

dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync

16384+0 records in

16384+0 records out

1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.78825 s, 186 MB/s

root@ssdtest:/downloads/ioping-0.6# ./ioping -c 10 /
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=1 time=0.4 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=2 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=3 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=4 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=5 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=6 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=7 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=8 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=9 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from / (simfs /dev/simfs): request=10 time=0.2 ms

--- / (simfs /dev/simfs) ioping statistics ---
10 requests completed in 9009.6 ms, 4281 iops, 16.7 mb/s
min/avg/max/mdev = 0.2/0.2/0.4/0.0 ms

One might say that 186mb/s a second isn’t that much for an SSD compared to RAID, but if you think about it, this is one drive, not four or five drives combined together (RAID)! Not only are the dd results impressive, but the I/O ping is amazing at a nice 16.7mb/s a second (the VZ1 VPS got a low 0.4 mb/s). That’s like 40x faster compared to the RAID config! Hot damn that’s good!

CPU Performance

We know what you’re thinking! How’s the performance on this baby? As there is one more CPU core on this VPS than the VZ1, I’m thinking it’ll do better. Let’s see!

System Information

  Operating System      Linux 2.6.32-274.7.1.el5.028stab095.1 i686

  Model                 N/A

  Motherboard           N/A

  Processor                       Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31270 @ 3.40GHz @ 3.39 GHz

                        1 Processor, 2 Cores, 2 Threads

  Processor ID          GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7

  L1 Instruction Cache  32.0 KB

  L1 Data Cache         32.0 KB

  L2 Cache              256 KB

  L3 Cache              8.00 MB

  Memory                15.6 GB

  BIOS                  N/A

Integer

  Blowfish

    single-threaded scalar   2192 ||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    4699 ||||||||||||||||||

  Text Compress

    single-threaded scalar   3001 ||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    5844 |||||||||||||||||||||||

  Text Decompress

    single-threaded scalar   3256 |||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    6689 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Image Compress

    single-threaded scalar   2464 |||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    4827 |||||||||||||||||||

  Image Decompress

    single-threaded scalar   2439 |||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    4987 |||||||||||||||||||

  Lua

    single-threaded scalar   4269 |||||||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    8506 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Floating Point

  Mandelbrot

    single-threaded scalar   2837 |||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    5769 |||||||||||||||||||||||

  Dot Product

    single-threaded scalar   4670 ||||||||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    9902 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    single-threaded vector   5565 ||||||||||||||||||||||

    multi-threaded vector   12820 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  LU Decomposition

    single-threaded scalar   3021 ||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    6120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Primality Test

    single-threaded scalar   4885 |||||||||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar    7831 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Sharpen Image

    single-threaded scalar  11411 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar   22952 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Blur Image

    single-threaded scalar   8862 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    multi-threaded scalar   17800 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Memory

  Read Sequential

    single-threaded scalar   7839 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Write Sequential

    single-threaded scalar  12333 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Stdlib Allocate

    single-threaded scalar   5595 ||||||||||||||||||||||

  Stdlib Write

    single-threaded scalar   8842 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Stdlib Copy

    single-threaded scalar  17438 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Stream

  Stream Copy

    single-threaded scalar   7279 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    single-threaded vector   8554 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Stream Scale

    single-threaded scalar   7696 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    single-threaded vector   8242 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Stream Add

    single-threaded scalar   8067 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    single-threaded vector   9028 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Stream Triad

    single-threaded scalar   8792 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

    single-threaded vector   6686 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Benchmark Summary

  Integer Score              4431 |||||||||||||||||

  Floating Point Score       8888 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Memory Score              10409 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Stream Score               8043 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Geekbench Score            7547 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

As you can clearly see, the score is about 1.4x faster than with one core. Logically, you would of expected 2x faster, but technology isn’t that persistent. Never alas, it’s for sure something to not complain about; that’s a very fast VPS right there! We have to test the UnixBench scores though to see how it can stand up with consistent load. This should be where the differences are.

TEST                                        BASELINE     RESULT      INDEX

Dhrystone 2 using register variables        376783.7 18826207.6      499.7
Double-Precision Whetstone                      83.1     1952.5      235.0
Execl Throughput                               188.3    12461.4      661.8
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks         2672.0   338868.0     1268.2
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks           1077.0    96341.0      894.5
File Read 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks        15382.0  2533936.0     1647.3
Pipe Throughput                             111814.6  2404133.8      215.0
Pipe-based Context Switching                 15448.6   774252.4      501.2
Process Creation                               569.3    36065.4      633.5
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    44.8     1986.0      443.3
System Call Overhead                        114433.5  1811852.9      158.3
                                                                 =========
     FINAL SCORE                                                     516.4

With the UnixBench being 1.8x faster than the VZ1 VPS, I’d say the extra processor sped up the VPS by nearly two times, which realistically should happen. The performance for a two core VPS at only $15 a month is not bad at all!

Overall

I am very impressed with QuickWeb’s v8 VM2 VPS; it well exceeded my expectations on a high-performance VPS. If you are looking for a VPS that will handle database heavy applications with consistent load times, QuickWeb’s v8 VM2 VPS is for you! Hard drives might handle sequential reads very nicely, but these SSDs can handle random I/O way better than anything else can!

Overall, I give this VPS an A+ on everything. Despite the slower port speed, it is ironically faster than the one gigabit line as well; I guess that’s an SSD for you!

Application

Overall the guards are a cinch to install. BodyGuardz provides everything you need to install their products will the ultimate ease. Items like microfiber clothes, application solution and a squeegee are all included in the package. As far as actually applying the screen protectors, it is as simple as cleaning your screen, spraying some solution, and squeegeeing your screen protector on. Now, if you have ever applied a wet-install screen protector before you know how much easier it is to reorient before it dries and how much easier that makes the whole process. Also, don’t worry if you aren’t the best at applying screen protectors because BodyGuardz includes two sets of screen protectors so you can either cover two iPod nanos or have a back-up for later.

The Result

Sure, you might be getting a faster network, but for the most part, it is not entirely needed. This is where QuickWeb Hosting comes into play.

Introduction

Not only do the people over at QuickWeb know what they’re doing, they have been around for quite some time, four years to be exact. If a hosting company lasts for even two years, there is a good chance they are going to stick with it. With QuickWeb, you do not have to worry about them shutting down your VPS; I for sure never want to go through the data center to get my data again. I am not once so ever frightened about QuickWeb pulling any move like this, which adds a huge trust factor to the company.

QuickWeb is also very attractive to many VPS buyers as it seems that they always have some sort of sale going on. As for myself, I picked up the Supa VZ1 in Phoenix (512MBs of dedicated ECC RAM, 768MBs burst, 500GB of bandwidth, and 25GBs of hardware RAID10 storage). For $100 a year (when I picked it up) you just cannot beat this deal.

I have been with QuickWeb for a little more than two months now and have been very impressed with their service. But let’s not rush this review, how about a little more detail?

Reliability

Every server administrator out there knows that having a reliable server is more important than other factors. You can spend a ton of money on the fastest VPS with two dedicated cores and 2GBs of RAM, but if the server is not reliable, what is the point of even having it? With QuickWeb, the entire point of reliability won’t even come to your mind: it just works. In fact, I haven’t even rebooted my VPS since the day I set it up… now that is one reliable server!

The VPS itself is not the other thing that’s reliable, it would be their entire network as well! But we will get to that in the next section! But the main point of QuickWeb’s reliability is that it is just perfect. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Network

You know what, I think I will let this section speak for itself.

root@mirani:~# wget http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2012-02-12 05:03:35--  http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `100mb.test'

100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 64.0M/s   in 1.6s    

2012-02-12 05:03:36 (64.0 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]

Yup, that’s right, QuickWeb can download a file from CacheFly at a mere 64MBs a second! Hot damn! That’s all I have to say.. it’s quite amazing. QuickWeb even happens to download this file faster than the Rackspace cloud! That is one fast network they have there… keep in mind this is only for $100 a year!

CPU Performance

One of the most important aspects to me has to be how fast the server can compute all kinds of information. For their lowest end “Supa” VPS package, it is not too shabby. Here are the GeekBench results (32 bit):

System Information
  Operating System      Linux 2.6.32-274.3.1.el5.028stab094.3 i686
  Model                 N/A
  Motherboard           N/A
  Processor                       Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz @ 3.19 GHz
                        1 Processor
  Processor ID          GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7
  L1 Instruction Cache  32.0 KB
  L1 Data Cache         32.0 KB
  L2 Cache              256 KB
  L3 Cache              8.00 MB
  Memory                15.6 GB N/A
  BIOS                  N/A

Integer
  Blowfish
    single-threaded scalar   2080 ||||||||
  Text Compress
    single-threaded scalar   2699 ||||||||||
  Text Decompress
    single-threaded scalar   3233 ||||||||||||
  Image Compress
    single-threaded scalar   1795 |||||||
  Image Decompress
    single-threaded scalar   1445 |||||
  Lua
    single-threaded scalar   2808 |||||||||||

Floating Point
  Mandelbrot
    single-threaded scalar   2670 ||||||||||
  Dot Product
    single-threaded scalar   4290 |||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector   5218 ||||||||||||||||||||
  LU Decomposition
    single-threaded scalar   2852 |||||||||||
  Primality Test
    single-threaded scalar   4593 ||||||||||||||||||
  Sharpen Image
    single-threaded scalar  11566 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Blur Image
    single-threaded scalar   8921 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Memory
  Read Sequential
    single-threaded scalar   7272 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Write Sequential
    single-threaded scalar  11880 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stdlib Allocate
    single-threaded scalar   5255 |||||||||||||||||||||
  Stdlib Write
    single-threaded scalar   8599 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stdlib Copy
    single-threaded scalar  16893 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Stream
  Stream Copy
    single-threaded scalar   7470 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector   8336 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stream Scale
    single-threaded scalar   7294 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector   7876 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stream Add
    single-threaded scalar   7595 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector   8627 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stream Triad
    single-threaded scalar   7280 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector   6389 |||||||||||||||||||||||||

Benchmark Summary
  Integer Score              2343 |||||||||
  Floating Point Score       5730 ||||||||||||||||||||||
  Memory Score               9979 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stream Score               7608 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Geekbench Score            5582 ||||||||||||||||||||||

But you know what, that’s not enough. 5,582 is a great GeekBench score, but what does UnixBench say? GeekBench is a great performance benchmark, but UnixBench really stresses the entire I/O. How about we view the results below?

TEST                                        BASELINE     RESULT      INDEX

Dhrystone 2 using register variables        376783.7  8821539.9      234.1
Double-Precision Whetstone                      83.1     1827.7      219.9
Execl Throughput                               188.3     6025.7      320.0
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks         2672.0   189296.0      708.4
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks           1077.0    47406.0      440.2
File Read 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks        15382.0  1251688.0      813.7
Pipe Throughput                             111814.6  1223865.5      109.5
Pipe-based Context Switching                 15448.6   338243.3      218.9
Process Creation                               569.3    16766.7      294.5
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    44.8     1107.3      247.2
System Call Overhead                        114433.5  1050716.9       91.8
                                                                 =========
     FINAL SCORE                                                     274.6

The UnixBench score isn’t too bad with only one core, but it could get up in the three-hundred range. Then again, I highly doubt you will ever stress the system so much like UnixBench does. In my mind, UnixBench isn’t a good representation of the performance as stressing the entire system for around twenty minutes is quite absurd. If you do that to the VPS, on any provider, I’m sure they’ll wonder why your load averages were so high.

With the performance in mind, I have not seen any struggles in performance; it is clear that whatever QuickWeb is doing, they are doing it right. I am sure they are not being like other hosting companies and cramming as many VPSes as possible.

Overall

I really like QuickWeb for their amazing service. But in fact, Roel, the main guy being it all, is one amazing guy; he is quite active on Web Hosting Talk and just a very kind person. Unlike other companies who are just in the hosting business for the money, I believe Roel is in it just because he enjoys his customers.

Overall, I am very impressed with the service thus far by QuickWeb, They have an A+ in my book and hope they will stay in my “top hosts” list.

More Coming Soon!

Thanks to Roel, he has also given me the chance to review his new Supa V8 Solid State Drive (SSD) powered Virtual Servers. If you’re looking for some of the fastest VPSes out there, these SSD nodes will be part of it! As SSDs are quite expensive (I just installed a 120GB SSD in mine for a discounted price of $200), especially server-grade, SSD VPSes are a bit more than the regular RAID10 VPSes, but the difference is huge. How huge? Wait for our review to find out!

With just a word of warning, Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot is far from a beginners book. You should be familiar with Unity enough and know your way around things.

With that said, let’s get right into the review! But first, I’m sure you want to hear a little of my Unity background. Without boring you, I’ve been a game developer for quite some time and started to use Unity around a year and a half  ago. I was able to pick up Unity very quickly as the way the Unity team implemented scripting is just perfect. I would not call myself an expert, but I would say I know my way around.

Topics Covered

Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot provides a ton of information. With its eight chapters and four appendixes about all kinds of info, this book is one of the most informational Unity books I have ever read.

But then again, in 380 pages, you can for sure cover quite a bit. Here are some of the main concepts that Jate has discussed:

• Basics like creating a camera, 2D, physics, and sound
• Using GUI Skin to create menus and tabs
• Exporting 3D models to FPX from 3D Studio Max
• Creating control scripts
• Forming rockets and particles
• Building a smart AI
• Optimizing code using the profiler
• Constructing a ragdoll
• Loading and saving high school data from and to a server
• Differences between C# and Unity JavaScript
• Explaining all the different ways to write shaders

As you can clearly see, Jate has put a great deal of work into Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot; he really knows his stuff. From artificial intelligence programming to working with particles, this book is massively informational.

The Analysis 

I really have to say, I am quite impressed with Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot. All of the chapters and appendixes fit together so well, that the entire book keeps you interested in the content page after page. Not only is it packed with more than I could ask for, the writing is very professional and organized.

Chapter One

Unlike other Unity books I have read from Packt Publishing, this book does not take the beginning approach at all. Instead, Jate decided to jump right on in on a platformer game, or commonly known as a 2D game. Even though this might not be a beginner’s book, starting of with a 2D game removes the Z-axis, thus virtually disabling the 3D part in Unity. This way, chapter one can focus more on the learning curve and not have to worry about the 3D aspects just yet.

From the basics of creating a camera and a level to creating a special character class to handle certain functions, this chapter is always crammed with helpful, real-world information.

In just forty-one pages, Jate has guided you though with building quite a fun 2D platformer.

Chapter Two

This chapter is all about the user interface tools, specifically the GUI class in Unity. With the chapter being split into five parts, it gives the reader a gist on how to apply GUI Skin into your game.

In fact, I would say that half of the chapter is simply using the Unity inspector to customize all kinds of properties. The other half is simply the code used to control the entire menu that is being built.

With Jate’s amazing guidance, you’ll quickly learn how to populate labels dynamically and to even use the powerful Unity GUI tools to create lists that can scroll.

This chapter is so practical as in every game, you need to have an user interface; you wouldn’t want the gamer playing a game with no UI! However, as there is no set way to create an UI, it can sometimes be a bit confusing on the best way to create the perfect UI. With Jate’s code and directions that just make sense, it just makes you feel so confident that you can build any UI that you see.

Chapter Three

Chapter three takes on an important concept in any 3D game, shaders. Writing shaders is very difficult as the entire concept of Cg/HLSL programming is a bit challenging, but Jate takes you along the path of writing a nice and simple shader.

He starts out mentioning that a shader is built up of six main parts (or textures). After he has all the main textures established, he starts to write about how diffuse/specular lighting work, which are two different algorithms in shader programming that do look quite different.

He then goes on speaking up how to export a 3D model to the FBX format for Unity’s use and then programming the shader itself. The programming isn’t too difficult, but I am quite glad that Jate goes on and discusses how how the vertex and pixel shader programing come together for a full blown shader. If you never knew how shaders really worked (which I’ll be honest, I knew how to create them just not the full on technical aspects of them), I’m sure this chapter will help correct that.

Chapter Four

The next chapter, chapter four, is all about animation to make your 3D character more realistic.

If you’re going to build a 3D character that’s interactive, you will need all kinds of animations to handle running, walking, jumping, and et cetera. Jate guides you the first part adding in all the animations into Unity.

After that, you somehow need to control these animations and adjust their speed based on the current condition, which would be done by a control script. Thing is, you cannot always change an animation on the fly so he used the CrossFade() function to blend the two animation clips together.

This chapter is so useful, that if you are going to buy any Unity book before you create your super-awesome 3D project, I’d buy it for this chapter. You’re most likely going to have some kind of character, and with this chapter, you’ll know exactly how to make you character more realistic than ever.

Chapter Five

We all like rockets in 3D games; it just adds the extra flare and fun to the game. Thing is, there are many things that need to be taken into consideration when adding a rocket into your game. Throughout this entire chapter, Jate will teach you how to set up your character for the rocket launcher, making sure movement is stopped in the character, creating the animations, creating the scope target, making the rocket launcher do its thing, and lastly making an object for the rocket launcher.

Sure, it might just be a few particles and a 3D model of a gun and a character, but in order to control everything and make sure the rocket is fired at the right time is a bit complicated.

All in all, chapter five is one big chapter achieving one solid concept, firing a rocket.

Chapter Six

Artificial intelligence is one extremely rough concept in any kind of game. For most games, using any kind of random function will help mimic artificial intelligence.

To keep things a bit short, this chapter is quite the chapter in terms of learning. Designing any kind of AI is quite tough, but Jate did one heck of a job with this random-based AI

Also, one intelligent think Jate did is create a Jump() function to make sure the enemy will jump when it hits a wall. So essentially, you will create a waypoint for the enemy to travel, whether in order or random, make the enemy follow the path, and if the enemy hits a wall, make the enemy jump. And of course if it comes near the character, start to shoot at it!

Quite a simple concept that really does not use any advanced concepts. And the author even combines some already created scripts together to control the movement of the enemy.

Chapter Seven

This chapter is one of my favorite chapters as it deals with optimizing scripts for ultimate performance and a bit more. Instead of creating one huge capsule around the capsule, it would make sense to create a ray cast (picture it as a line below the character) to check if the character hit something, in this case, the enemy hitting a wall.

As the capsule was being generated on every frame when the AI was walking, it was lowing the FPS quite a bit. Generating a ray cast saves a ton of processing power, which Jate clearly wrote about. Jate also spoke about a bit on Unity Pro’s profiler, which can be used to check how much processing power and resources everything takes.

Not only is optimization a key part of this chapter, there is also an added section about replacing the character’s mesh with a ragdoll prefab, so when the AI/player dies, its body will conform to the ground. And then he even adds in some extra things like making a wall destructible and also making an object, like a wall dynamically break by a trigger action.

Along with chapter four, chapter seven is also one of those chapters I would buy this book for. Knowing why your game is slowing down is critical to every game developer.

Chapter Eight

There is so much discussed in chapter eight, that it might be difficult to review this chapter. But anyways, I’ll try my best!

Chapter eight merges into a whole different subject, creating a high score menu and sending and loading the high scores. As this chapter deals with the internet, you get a slight break from the 3D world and learning how to implement a fully working high score system in your game.

Just a really nice added chapter that is really needed for any 3D game… like you can believe, there is a good portion of code in this chapter to connect with the server in all kinds of ways.

Overall

I really enjoyed reviewing Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot. However, I have to say, this is one of larger Packt book reviews I have ever written; it did take me a good portion of time to write this entire review as there is just so much in Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot.

This is, by far, the best Unity book I have ever read. As Jate is very intelligent in Unity programming, you will learn a ton from this one single Unity book. Even though it is 360 pages, this book packs a punch for how much info you’ll get out of it. Every page you read in this book keeps you connected and almost wants you to stop reading and try it for yourself!

As this is Jate’s first Packt book, I really do look forward to reading any oncoming Unity books of his. Although I do feel that I should mention that some of the grammar throughout the book, especially in his code comments, is a bit off. I am not sure if it’s just a programmer getting lazy, or just bad grammar:

//For toggle the open and close our menu window

Despite some of the grammatical errors in the comments, the overall book is written very professionally. Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot is not a beginner’s book (which is what is mentioned in the book and on Packt’s website), so please make sure you know the ins and outs of Unity first.

With all of that said, Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot is the book for you if you’re looking for a very informational Unity book that builds upon the basic skills that you already know in Unity. There is quite a bit talked about in this book and for the money, this Unity book is very much worth it.

With all of the hype being generated about SOPA and PIPA, Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, there have been a ton of huge outbursts with many of the major companies (both positive and negative).

One of the world’s leading internet browsers, Firefox, are about to change the whole debate and flip it over once again, positively of course. According to their recent press release one of Mozilla’s press partners have sent us, they plan on redirecting their main Mozilla.com/org pages for twelve hours to protest SOPA and PIPA, but not only are they redirecting one of the most hit websites in the world, they are also changing the default look of the Firefox startup page for tens of millions to see that SOPA and PIPA are just out right wrong.

View their full press release below:

In support of the virtual strike to protest Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Mozilla will be doing two things:

Mozilla is redirecting traffic from the main Mozilla.org and Mozilla.com English websites to an action page for 12 hours on Wednesday, January 18th from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm US Eastern Time.

Mozilla is also changing the look of the default Firefox start page so that the tens of millions of Firefox users will see a black page with a call to action message to increase awareness of PIPA/SOPA, rather than the traditional white page with the Firefox logo. (The search functionality will in no way be altered by this action.) We hope the blackout of our US sites will help bring attention to this important issue and encourage users to educate themselves about PIPA and SOPA. All users will still be able to receive security updates and access our technical support website. This will NOT affect Firefox users.

The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. These new laws would give the US government and private business incredible censorship powers that would have effects globally, damage the Internet’s security and discourage innovation and investment worldwide.

Monica Caires | Senior Account Executive
Allison+Partners
505 Sansome 7th Floor | San Francisco, CA 94111
www.allisonpr.com
Facebook: Allison+Partners | Twitter: @AllisonPR | YouTube: apwest
Blogs: http://allisonandpartners.wordpress.com | http://www.naked-culture.com/
Personal Twitter @MonCaires

We are really hoping other major companies, just like Mozilla, will come out of that cave and defend against these awful laws. I can just picture how much hype the new Firefox default launch page will create; it is going to be massive.

What are your thoughts on SOPA and PIPA? As for us, like many, we are defending against it because we’re in the land of the free, home of the brave! I would do anything to protect my rights and privacy.

If you have been in school in the last couple of years, there is most likely a huge chance you have used the popular e-learning CMS program called Moodle. With the help of Packt Publishing, who is notorious from writing about open source projects like Moodle, they have taken it to the next level.

With their brand new release of Moodle 2 Administration not too long ago, Packt has now decided to offer a series of discounts towards their Moodle book collection.

• Buy any Moodle print book and get 20% off
• Buy any Moodle eBook and get 30% off

Overview of Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide

• Build fun games using the free Unity game engine even if you’ve never coded before

• Learn how to “skin” projects to make totally different games from the same file – more games, less effort!

• Packed with ideas, inspiration, and advice for your own game design and development

Read more about this book and download free Sample Chapter.

Overview of Unity 3 Game Development Hotshot

• Cool, fun, advanced aspects of Unity Game Development, from creating a rocket launcher to building your own destructible game world

• Full of coding samples, diagrams, tips and tricks to keep your code organized, and completed art assets with clear step-by-step examples and instruction

• Elite Unity programming for those looking to take their skills to the next level

I’ve been using my “new” Logitech MX1100 mouse for several weeks now, and I must say I enjoy it very much, despite a few quirks. It’s the best mouse I have owned so far.

Features

The MX1100 is one of Logitech’s higher-end mice. It features a right-handed ergonomically-shaped body, dual-mode scroll wheel with “Hyper-Fast Scrolling”, Back and Forward buttons, a DPI selector, and a hidden button in the thumb rest. The mouse is wireless, although it is not compatible with Bluetooth or the Logitech Unifying receiver, and is not rechargeable.

Ergonomics

I generally consider myself left-handed, but I’ve grown up using a computer mouse in my right hand. Thus,the “right-handed” design of the MX1100 makes me feel right at home. Although I’ve yet to appreciate all of the ergonomic features, it feels significantly more “natural” in my hand than my venerable LX8 did. The mouse has a good amount of weight to it, which makes it feel like a well-built quality product; my LX8 feels cheap by comparison even though ironically I paid more for my first LX8 than I did for the MX1100.

Hyper-Fast Scrolling

The main reason I upgraded my mouse was because of the “Hyper-Fast Scrolling” feature – which allows the mouse wheel to spin freely for up to 6 seconds, allowing me to quickly scroll all the way through a document with hundreds of pages. The wheel features two modes – the free-spinning mode and the “MicroGear” racheting mode which feels more like a traditional mouse. Modes can be switched instantly by pressing a mechanical button immediately beneath the wheel. The wheel is a high-resolution version, which allows for a silky smooth pixel-precise scrolling experience similar to that on a Mac. In all, I’d rate the wheel a solid 9 out of 10.

Realistically, the smooth scrolling (which must be enabled in the control panel) works great in Chrome and Word (the two applications I use it in most), but it reverts back to “low resolution” mode when using Windows Explorer and Notepad, among others. It also has the annoying tendency to move a few pixels’ worth of scrolling when released, simply due to its light weight, and this is quite noticeable in Chrome when I take my finger off the wheel. Hyper-Fast Scrolling has proven to be extremely useful when scrolling through long programs consisting of many lines of code, despite Visual Studio not supporting high-resolution smooth scrolling.

I also wish there would be a third “smooth scrolling” mode of the wheel – no MicroGear, but with smooth resistance – as it would allow for silky-smooth pixel-precise scrolling without the wheel being overly sensitive.

Wireless range

As with my LX8, the wireless range of the MX1100 is not particularly amazing, though it is slightly better. I can actually use the mouse from my bed 10 feet away, though this still does not even come close to the 30+ range I can achieve with a $15 USB Bluetooth dongle and a generic $16 Bluetooth mouse which I use for my laptop.

Tracking and DPI Selector

Despite touting the same 848nm “Performance Laser” as my LX8, the MX1100 is able to effortlessly track on my glossy desktop (there is a layer of acrylic over the wood veneer) unlike the LX8. This is quite convenient since I can remove the mouse from the keyboard tray and place it on top of the desk if need be. However, the mouse does not track on glass, as is expected from a standard laser design.

This mouse features 7 DPI settings, ranging from 400 to 1600 DPI; two of these can be mapped to the DPI switch on the mouse itself. I set these to the extremes and use the 1600 DPI setting on a regular basis; I switch to the 400 DPI setting to slow down the mouse cursor drastically for more precision when working with graphics. This has proven to be an extremely useful feature as well.

Buttons

The MX1100 has a total of 8 clickable buttons, all of which can be at least partially programmed via the Logitech SetPoint software. There is a “stealth” button built into the thumb rest on the left of the mouse, which was not very obvious initially, but it is in a very useful location once you realize it’s there.

Use without SetPoint

Using this mouse without SetPoint is possible, but most of the buttons cannot be used. Obviously, standard clicking and scrolling functions work, as do the browser Back/Forward buttons, but that’s it. Additionally, high-resolution “smooth” scrolling does not function. Despite my overall dislike of SetPoint, I recommend having it installed for this mouse, as it does in fact add useful features.

Quirks

Smooth scrolling has a nasty habit of turning off every few hours. All it takes to enable is to open SetPoint and click OK, but this can prove to be quite an annoyance. An even worse quirk happens when SetPoint occasionally fails to detect the mouse at all, and resolving this issue involves unplugging the USB receiver, plugging it into another port for about a minute, and then plugging it back into the original port (which happens to be mounted on my Logitech G110 keyboard).

Conclusion

For a list price of $80, the MX 1100 offers a good deal of features despite being a few years old. Would I buy one for $80? Probably not, but for $30 refurbished on eBay, it is one of the best mice money can buy.

After the massive failures from the JooJoo tablet and now the Grid 10, Fusion Garage might have disappeared in thin air. The first sign of the disappearance was that their website went down, reporting the 503 database error. As of right now, the website is barely up: certain images won’t load on the site, and when you go to their online store, the button for purchasing a Grid 10 said: “We are currently running out of stock. Thank you.” Also, Fusion Garage hasn’t posted any new content on their Twitter and Facebook feeds, due to the fact that their PR team ditched the company. Here’s a statement from one of FG’s employees:

Unfortunately, none of our efforts have resulted in any communication from the company to the customers. Given all of this, we don’t have any other choice but to cease working with FG effective tomorrow. (Source: Engadget)

While it’s sad to see a small company disappear, it’s hard to be sympathetic when Fusion Garage delivers so little to the market. A great example of this was the JooJoo tablet. It offered some features that the iPad doesn’t have, but ultimately failed because of it’s performance and the web-only UI. Best of all (not really on Fusion Garage’s part), they discontinued the JooJoo after only having 90 pre-orders for the device. Wow.

Back in March, AT&T announced that they were going to acquire T-Mobile USA, so they can expand their spectrum and enhance their network. While this sounded like a good idea, it would ultimately lower competition in the US mobile market and this didn’t cut it for many people, especially the FCC. The FCC has declined the merger, making AT&T to pull the application from the FCC and scrap the deal.

Today, AT&T has publicly made an announcement that they’ve scrapped the T-Mobile deal and will now cough up $4 billion to Deutsche Telekom as a breakup fee and an additional $3 billion. Interestingly, AT&T and T-Mobile agreed a roaming deal which will allow phones to work on both of their networks.

Here’s AT&T’s comment about today’s announcement:

The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry. It is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world, with a mounting need for more spectrum that has not diminished and must be addressed immediately. The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage. In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.

It’s been less than a year since the Mac App Store was launched by Apple, back in January. Already, the technology giant is celebrating a relatively significant milestone, being 100 million downloads. In comparison to the iOS app store, the number is completely diminished, but considering that Macs have a much smaller market share than their iPhone and iPad counter-parts, it’s a pretty impressive landmark.

The Mac App Store is “home to thousands of apps”, Apple claims – I certainly love using it, what about you?

Here’s the official press release:

 Apple’s Mac App Store Downloads Top 100 Million

CUPERTINO, California-December 12, 2011-Apple® today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store™ in less than one year. With thousands of free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the App Store experience to the Mac so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, and download and install them in just one step. Apple revolutionized the app industry with the App Store, which now has more than 500,000 apps and where customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps and continue to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

“In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.”

“With Autodesk products in both the App Store and Mac App Store, we can reach hundreds of millions of Apple users around the world,” said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Platform Solutions and Emerging Business at Autodesk. “With our free AutoCAD WS and the more powerful professional drafting tools of AutoCAD LT, we’re using the Mac App Store to deliver new products and reach a growing base of new Mac customers.”

“The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition.”

“In less than one year we’ve shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. “With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels.”

The Mac App Store offers thousands of apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews. The Mac App Store is included with Mac OS® X Lion and is available as a software update for any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard®. For more information visit, www.apple.com/mac/app-store.

Mac developers set the prices for their apps, keep 70 percent of the sales revenue, are not charged for free apps and do not have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees. To find out more about developing for the Mac App Store visit, developer.apple.com/programs/mac.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Want to get yourself delved right into the 3D gaming world but never had the knowledge to do so? With Packt Publishing’s recent release, Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide by Ryan Creighton, it is a great read if you wish to get started in the Unity world.

If you have been following our reviews for quite sometime, you might of realized this is very similar to our previous Unity review we put out not too long ago. To keep the explanation simple, Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide is an updated book especially for Unity 3.x. Not everything is all the same (like the writing), but the main parts of the book are very much the same, except edited for Unity 3.x. Some new topics have been added as well, so keep a watch out for that in the review!

Before I start the full on review, I have to give my gracious apologies to Packt on this one. I have always been very adept in reviewing their books, but this review took some more time as I have been bombarded with work for the past two months. Working on school work, physical work, and even client work is extremely hard to manage and when you throw all my other work into it (like writing for Tech Cores), it’s near impossible to find the time. I should of planned this review better… so to Packt, sorry! I love you guys and never meant for this review to take so long.

Enough jibber-jabbin’, let’s just get on to the full review!

What You’ll Get

Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide has the similar outline compared to the previous version of the book, in fact, it’s so similar you might as well base the outline on the previous version of the book as well. But to give you a general run down, a basic outline is below on what you’ll get:

• Learning the basics of Unity 3D
• Possibilities of Unity 3D
• Understand the essentials of 3D in Unity
• Taking the built in physics engine to good use
• Adding some sweet sound effects
• Coding in JavaScript for Unity Scripts
• Advanced topics like quaternions, mipmapping, and prefrabs

Introducing Unity 3D

For all of Packt’s books on beginner’s guides, the author always seems to introduce the topic in a very broad way. In Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide written by Ryan Creighton, Ryan does an amazing job getting the reader understanding the main essentials of Unity all in the first chapter.

Just like in his previous Unity book, he introduced what has been done with Unity 3D before. As we all Unity developers know, there have been some amazing games developed using Unity, especially on the iOS platform.

Not only does Ryan introduce what can be done with Unity, he also describes what is feasible for a single developer (trust me, I’ve taken on near impossible tasks). As many of the projects he describes have over fifty developers dedicated to that one game, he states what is possible. But as reading Ryan’s previous books, I know he likes to go the extra mile; he even gives recommendations on how to take a game you like that might take a year to develop yourself, and turn it into a nice mini-game that could take a month.

Unlike some other books I have read before on Unity, Ryan does not overwhelm you with introducing all of the features of the Unity interface in the first few chapters. Instead, he takes the “slow but steady” approach and disperses it throughout the book. This method is quite ideal for beginning Unity developers as you’re not bombarded with a ton of information at the start of the book. In fact, Ryan does not even cover the 3D elements of Unity fully until the eighth chapter (there are a total of twelve chapters).

Examples are the Key

As most developers learn by example, having all kinds of examples in an Unity book is the key for success. A total of four games and three main concepts make up the main examples of Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide. And as this book is updated for the latest version of Unity, Ryan also decided to add in an extra game from his previous Unity book. So in other words, you are getting a ton of examples in this book.

Ryan covers quite a bit within these examples, but I’ll just list out the main concepts of each:

Ticker Taker (game) – a varient of the keep-up games

• Learning on how to come up with a practical game idea
• Adjusting the default lighting
• Enabling the physics engine and adjusting its settings
• Using the Unity interface to adjust key settings

Robot Repair (game) – a type of matching game

• Understanding the built in GUI tools in Unity
• Adding images and buttons to the game
• Using title scenes and connecting them with the main game
• Learning on how to use arrays the Unity way

Clock/timer (element) – many simple count-down timers

• How to create a simple text clock
• Upgrading that boring text clock to a progress bar
• And taking that progress bar to a flash pie clock

The break-up (game) – very unique, more of a concept

• Using animations from 3D models
• Making flashy particle effects
• Writing prefabs to use over and over again
• Learning how to write Unity scripts to control multiple objects
• Showing things dynamically on the screen

Shoot the Moon (game) – like space invaders but in 3D

• Using all of the concepts from the previous games and taking them in one simple game
• Displaying multiple cameras
• Changing prefabs to dynamically use different models
• Applying a custom mesh collider
• Skinning a different game into an entirely different one

Yes, I know, there are a ton of things covered in a beginners book, but please don’t let that scare you. With Ryan’s funny writing style (the beginning of the book is really funny – take a read of a sample chapter!), it makes Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide a smooth but informational read.

I can’t say this enough, but Ryan did one heck of a job taking all kinds of different topics and putting them in an updated book. From the structure of the book all the way to explaining how the code works, everything will be covered eventually. Sometimes, the next part of the chapter will be later discussed in the book as Ryan added in additional chapters to help you get the more advanced parts in an easy manner. The entire flow of the book just feels right and is extremely easily to follow along with.