X-Box Natal looks like fun but will most games be rehash of previous releases?

I finally had a chance to catch up on a little back reading and watched a demo video of the X-Box Natal.  Of course I was wowed by the technology but will it perform as demonstrated when it actually starts to ship in November?

Last Christmas, my husband, seeing me lingering over sale ads for the Wii, finally told me to go ahead and get one for myself.  Although I have played PC-based games casually for many years, I was intrigued by a system that incorporates motion.  After I purchased my Wii, however, I was a bit confused as to why so few games were available that actually did incorporate the motion sensing capabilities of the Wii. 

 I found Wii Play great fun and actually very physically demanding if you perform the same motions that you would if you were playing the sport for real.  When I played baseball I did a full wind up for a pitch.  I played golf for real for many years so it was natural to fully swing when playing the golf game and I discovered I actually seem to have a knack for boxing which I never knew about - knocking out my first opponent.  I also loved the fact that when I played tennis, I never had to go fetch an errant tennis ball.

I had also purchased a high-end fishing game.  I have always loved to fish since I grew up in a little town on the Oregon coast that had limited entertainment venues.  Bandon, during the time period when I was growing up, only had a small movie theater.  Teenagers could attend a ball game and go to the dance but younger kids only had the theater and their own imagination.  My father had taught me to fish when I was not much older than a toddler and as I grew older, I spent many afternoons fishing from the banks of Ferry Creek that was within walking distance from my house.  I occasionally fished from the docks in the harbor but preferred stream fishing for trout.

The love of fishing has stayed with me all these years although climbing down into ravines to find the best fishing spot is almost beyond my physical ability any more and I discovered a number of years ago that this Navy man's daughter gets terribly seasick on a charter boat.

On a trip to visit my daughter in the early 90s, I was introduced to a new PC-based Bass fishing game from Sierra.  I was "hooked" (pun intended) and stayed up until 3 a.m. playing that game.  Of course I bought my own copy when I got home.  But I always thought it would be great if you could actually feel the fish bite.  I got my wish with the new fishing game I bought for the Wii.

Recently, I bought another game called "Endless Ocean: Blue World" that is a scuba diving simulation that I like very much.  Although it doesn't use motion as much as I would like (I would prefer to swim by having the system detect the motion of my arms) I enjoy swimming about looking at the fish, whales and other marine life and exploring the ocean looking for treasure.  I even learned to "whale ride".  Then last week I bought a Firefighting game that uses motion in its controls.  But dozens of Wii titles are just ports from other consoles and do not take advantage of the Wii capabilities.

From what I have seen of the new Natal X-Box, motion-controlled gaming is going to take another giant leap forward when the hardware is released in November 2010.  But are we only going to see mostly ported games that do not fully utilize the new full-body motion sensing and face and voice recognition capabilities?  This new system could be a major factor in the battle against childhood (or even adult) obesity but hardware is relatively useless without software. 

I noticed that Microsoft claims over 80% of third party developers are working on Natal titles but are they really trying to incorporate the new functionality or just "rebranding" existing titles?  I would like to see games rated on degree of physical activity level (not just an icon denoting "Motion Plus" aware) so we can truly see which games make best use of the new technology and which ones just basically run on the console hardware. 

    

Machine voice used for Zamzar text to MP3 conversion surprisingly good

Today's Computer Guy's Tech Tips mentioned an online text to MP3 conversion service named Zamzar and, since I'm a multimedia kind of gal, I had to try it out. I took three paragraphs of a blog post (203 words), saved it in Notepad as a .txt file and converted it. The result was a 311 kb .mp3 file that I opened in iTunes. As I listened to the .mp3 file I was pleasantly surprised to hear a voice that changed pitch and cadence with enough variation to be considered quite usable for things like closed captioning or even podcasting. It even did a good job of interpretation of proper names too.

Zamzar was obviously using a conversion tool with capabilities of the more advanced current text- to-speech software. Like many free services, free gets you the basics including conversion of a file up to 100 Mb. For $7/mo the file size maximum increases to 200 Mb. They also toss in 5 Gb of file storage. For $16/mo, the file size maximum increases to 400 Mb and storage to 20 Gb. For $49/mo you can convert a file up to 1 Gb in size and they give you 100 Gb of storage. Your file conversion priority in their processing queue also increases with each successive level of service.

Available Apps Driving Consumer Phone Choice

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about the popularity of music games that are now available for cell phones. Today, I read a new article that pointed out how the availability of thousands of new apps is becoming the determining factor on which phones consumers ultimately purchase:

"...With the advent of touch-screen technology and faster wireless networks, the new competition and cool factor [for cell phones] revolves around thousands of fun, quirky (and even useful) programs that run on the phones.

The popularity of such applications for Apple’s iPhone, the leader of the transformation, is driving a fierce competition among the makers of the BlackBerry and Palm devices, and even Google and Microsoft.

It heralds a new era in the allure of a mobile device — the phone is no longer a fashion statement but a digital bag of tricks...

...Since July, Apple has posted more than 10,000 programs to its App Store; 9 out of every 10 iPhone users have downloaded applications — more than 300 million over all, though those include software updates and repeat downloads. Some applications are free (like Stanza, which lets you download and read books) while others typically cost $1 to $10.

Other applications help users navigate roads, find friends and local restaurants, and play odd games, including one called Sapus Tongue, in which the user swings the phone to see how far he can fling an animated monkey on the screen.

Recognizing the business opportunities, the other major cellphone and software companies are getting into the app act.

Google recently introduced the Android Market, selling applications based on Android, its operating system for cellphones. In the spring, Research in Motion plans to introduce an application store for its BlackBerry devices. Palm is thinking of retooling its software strategy, while Microsoft is in the early stages of creating its own store for phones running Windows Mobile." - More: New York Times

I liked the application called Shazam that "lets users hold the phone up to a radio to identify within seconds what song is playing and by whom — and then give users a way to buy it on Apple’s iTunes Store, of course." Google also offers one that sounds really helpful called ShopSavvy, "in which users scan the bar code of any product using the camera built into the G1 smartphone from T-Mobile. The application, which is free, then searches for the best price online and delivers the information to the phone."

As usual, though, especially with a predominately young audience, the most popular application is a wacky simulation of the sound of flatulence available for 99 cents. Hey, at least they keep us from taking ourselves too seriously!!

I see that cell phone application development is also starting to attract some serious venture capital money. Apparently, Kleiner Perkins operates a $100 million fund for iPhone application developers.

Web-based database system opens up Baltic museum collections

I see some of the museums in the Baltic states are banding together to create a public database of their collections. I wonder if they'll allow non-commerical use of the images for teaching and education, though.

More and more museums are providing online access to their collections, making it possible to visit great cultural and historic treasures from the comfort of your home or office. The key to simple use is well-structured information, data access and site architecture. The EUREKA E! 2918 ONLINE CATALOGUE project has developed a cost-effective and easily configurable database system, simplifying access to almost any type of museum collection.

This web-based approach was developed to widen and deepen cooperation between museums in the Baltic States by improving functionality and ease-of-use, enhancing research, education and training. The system is already providing Internet access to museum collections in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia for European and world citizens. The resulting open-architecture system will be marketed worldwide.