As if we needed more ways to waste precious LEDs, Art Lebedev has finally released the first group of Optimus Maximus keyboards. After it’s initial announcement in July of 2005, many geeks have been severely dehydrated from drooling over the mere thought of having one of these delightful devices.
Just a thought, but why in the world do cell phone companies not include simple RSS tracking as a native service to their devices? How cool would it be to have your cell phone follow a bidding war on eBay through RSS only to have it notify you of any new bids much like an SMS message arriving. Maybe have it track your favorite sports scores (not that I’d be interesting in that one) or even follow an RSS feed of your calendar of choice. Make a Yahoo Pipe of whatever and follow that! Why is this not a given? It would be the most useful feature on my cell phone if it were present. Does this already exist and I’m just missing something? I’m talking about basic cell phones not PDA cell phones.
I just received an e-mail from the Lebedevster himself stating that they will be accepting pre-orders for the Optimus Maximus keyboard on May 20th. The original listing price about a year ago was around $300. Now, thanks to our ever-trustworthy (not referenced) friend, Wikipedia, a new number has surfaced: $1564.37. Hmm, seems a tad high to me. Let’s hope that this is not the case.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I’d like to inform you that on May 20, 2007 at 3 p.m. Moscow time we’ll start accepting limited pre-orders for the Optimus Maximus Keyboard.
Watch the countdown at http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/.
All the project news are published at
http://community.livejournal.com/optimus_project/.
Artemy Lebedev
So, now we sit and wait to see how all of the rich people like them. Per the website, this keyboard should be out later this year. Then again, that would not be the first time I’ve heard that about this product.
Production schedule
I just spoke with a representative of Fantasy Flight Games who tells me that the next expansion for the World of Warcraft board game will be released later this year. The Burning Crusade expansion will include two new races, just like its online counterpart, a Draenei Shaman (Alliance) and a Blood Elf Paladin (Horde). The expansion will also include an entirely new board that will act as an extension to the existing board: the Outland. As part of the new Outland addition, purple creatures will be added to the already existing, green, red and blue creatures. I expect that these will act as quest creatures (as opposed to independent creatures) yielding rewards from new Outland quest cards. Lastly, characters will now be able to reach a maximum level of six. This expansion is believed (per the rep) to cost $49.95.
I also was able to get some great information about the upcoming Starcraft board game. Apparently, this thing is as big (and expensive) as the World of Warcraft board game is. With an $80 price tag, this 2 to 6 player game should be good. Players start by alternately placing two planets each, teams strategizing. Unlike the World of Warcraft board game that has two factions no matter how it is divided, it only makes sense that the Starcraft board game (having three races to choose from) will divide neatly into three teams of two players each.
The thing that struck me most about this game is that it has no dice. That’s right, this means a diceless combat system. How it is done - I have no idea, but after playing the World of Warcraft board game many times over and experiencing “diceful” combat, if I may, diceless is a welcome change. At the moment, some friends and I meet somewhat regularly to play the World of Warcraft board game. It appears as though we might have a new addiction to cling to soon enough.
It seems that the guys at Rupture are still at it!
They just made it possible to auto generate a nice banner with the click of a button for each of your World of Warcraft characters. I think this is really funny as I had just submitted a feedback for not even two weeks ago with this exact suggestion. 
Our first child, Ava Lee, was born on 3/28/07. I know that most parents think that they have cute kids, but some… um… don’t. To that end, I will make a disclaimer that you might not think so, but I think she’s adorable! Albiet a tad disgruntled.
Feel free to take a look at more pictures on flickr:
Recently, Blizzard released a website, the Armory, that gives users access to character information ranging from what profession skills they have to what they are currently wearing. This is an ability that Rupture had recently made available through it’s service.
So, what are the differences between these two services? There are a few that are quite noticable, let’s take a look at the Armory first. The obvious advantages are that Blizzard is providing the data, so it’s going to be accurate and clean (versus other sources that might not be so trust-worthy). The most notable advantage is easily that the data is being pulled directly from their servers, so no add-ons are necessary. The downside to using the Armory is the lack of information. Sure, it has overall profession numbers (i.e.: “175 of 250″) but no specifics like what patterns that character has learned. It also does not show a character’s inventory, which to come players might prove to be a good thing.
Rupture on the other hand, does show things like what patterns a character has learned and what items they have in their bag and bank! It also allows for user interaction such as uploading images, befriending characters or leaving comments on other character and player profiles. It’s a lot more like Facebook or (/cringe) MySpace in those ways. The disadvantages are that you do have to install an executable which has two functions. The first is to upload gathered data to update the website, the second is actually a really neat chat client. It uses Jabber multi-user chat so one can use iChat or Meebo to talk with friends on the Rupture network. This executable also installs an add-on, the one that gathers the data about your characters as you play. Further, the executable even keeps the add-on up to date, so you never even have to touch it! So that part can be viewed as both a negative and possitive.
Overall, if Blizzard wants to stay competitive, they will have to implement some sort of user interaction (like being able to have a page for each player where the player can choose whether or not to claim all of their characters on a page. Meaning, they could claim all of the characters that other players know belong to that player, but if there is one or two that the player plays in secret, they don’t have to claim them on the player page. Uploading images seems to be a must to be so that proud players can show off their hard work. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, if Blizzard were to expand on the amount of data that was shown for each character and gave some sort of chat interface into the game (like guild chat only or the like), then they would be WAY ahead of the game.
This really is meant as a test, but it is also a review, in a way. I just found a new service called IMified (http://www.imified.com/). This allows one to access, and add information to, services like 30 Boxes, Stikkit, Basecamp, and Google Calendar through an IM client. The obvious feature that I didn’t mention is also the ability to add a blog post through your IM client! In my case, Meebo (http://www.meebo.com/). It can also remind you of upcoming appointments from the calendar-related web applications.
IMified is as easy to setup as adding a new contact to your IM list and really seems to be the type of tool that, if stuck with for a week or two, could become an invaluable resource in the arsenal of productivity tools any well-organized person may have.
Well, everyone else has talked about it. Maybe I should too. I’ve been trying to find someone with a Rupture account by searching the website since it’s still in beta. In order to obtain an account, someone who already has one must invite you. Not as fun as it sounds. I’m really wanting to give my guild the ability to sign up for the service if they want to.
While searching the Interweb for someone with an account, I found another website which might prove to be interesting: Warcraft Social. I believe this site to be more for actually finding people to play with and announcing the presence of your characters on your MySpace page whereas Rupture is more for maintaining the stats of your characters like WoW Roster does. I enjoy the thought of being able to go to a website in order to see if any of my guild members knows how to create a certain piece of armor or perform a certain enchantment. Now I would like to enjoy the ability to do that instead of just the thought.
Overall, I believe Shawn Fanning’s new website to be a very sharp-looking piece of work. Now if they would just open the doors a little wider to allow those of us who truly want to help test the site, the world would increase in its “better place” points, if only by a few.
Once upon a time, when one called a company’s automated phone service to get to a representative, one might hear “for Spanish, press 2″ spoken in Spanish, presented in a very non-intrusive way. If nothing was pressed, the greeting proceeded.
Recently, I’ve noticed multiple companies following a new trend. Instead of offering Spanish so those who speak it could go through the menu in Spanish (which I think is a great service), now I am told to “press 1 for English.”
Many might think I’m overreacting, but I refuse to press 1 to do business in not only my native tongue, but the native tongue of the country in which that company does it’s business! If I went to Germany, I would most certainly not expect to contact a company only to hear that German speakers had to press a button to proceed in German. That would be stupid! So why must we? Spanish is not equal to English in the United States regarding which is the first language, it is a second language.
I must clarify something. I love the spoken language. In fact, I had considered minoring in linguistics in college at one point. I think they are a beautiful part of our world culture. I would never wish for the absence of Spanish, even in the culture of the United States. All I’m saying is, don’t encourage companies who seem to think it should equal with English here in the US.
To that end, I would encourage you to not “press 1 for English” when prompted. Just hang on, let it repeat it once or twice, then it should continue through the menu. That is unless you enjoy pressing 1, in which case, go for it!
Recently Played Music
