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 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.
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:
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.
Chatsum allowed a massive group of new testers into it’s ranks today stating that “if all goes well we’ll open Chatsum up to the public after
you’ve had it for a week.” This is fantastic news for those of us who enjoy seeing larger steps being taken toward building a community around the Interweb.
