I’m going…

This 16th and 17th June, London is going to be the stage of the next Hack Day.

Alexandra Palace is going to be the meeting place for hundreds of hackers to play with tools, APIs, data, assist some delicious presentations from some respected web developers and also socialize with very interesting and talented people from all parts of Europe.

You can find more information in the official site or take a look at the user-contributed wiki which has a bunch of useful resources for those going.

I have my ticket and my expectations are high, I’m sure it will be a blast so I’ll see you there. :)

the good, the bad, the update

Microsoft delivered yet another impressive update (for better or for worst) for the Xbox 360 Dashboard and Xbox Live (as the two are linked together), to make the list short, here’s some of the new stuff:

* Windows Live Messenger Integration
* More detail in the “achievement unlocked” pop-up
* Enhanced family settings
* New Marketplace blade
* Enhancements to Xbox LIVE Arcade
* Ability to fast-forward, pause, and rewind video as it’s being downloaded from Marketplace
* A setting for consoles to finish downloading content, before powering down
* Crappy Marketplace Region Lockdown :|

Meanwhile, the fine people at Craxtion posted a detailed full list of new features brought by the update, you can read the whole XBox360 May Dash Update (Real) Feature List at Craxtion.

But if you wish for a more visual walktrough, you can watch a video explaining all the new updated features over at MaxConsole.

The video reproduction settings and accepted formats were vastly improved by Microsoft so it’s no wonder alot of doubts were brought up about streaming speeds, resolution, sizes, codecs, etc. Luckily, Engadget sought to end these doubts and explored all the technical issues in the article Spring Dashboard - Video Hands on at Engadget.

“Technically speaking the Xbox 360 now officially beats out the Apple TV in the digital video arena, both in resolution and bitrate. (At best the ATV only does up to 720p at 5Mbps, while the Xbox does 1080p up to 10Mbps; neither supports higher than stereo audio.) ”

If you’re looking into even more details about the new video playback features, the Team Xbox Blog (FYI: MS owned blog) posted a Spring 2007 Video Playback FAQ.

Unfortunately, the update also brought new measures to restrict users from getting content from a region where they didn’t “belong”. The following is a explanation from Microsoft at the GamerscoreBlog reads:

“(…) I understand that there’s often great content that you, me and my cats want on the US Marketplace that isn’t on any of the European Marketplaces – but if people are able to download content in countries that it’s not licensed for, people get upset, content gets pulled, cool new content doesn’t get uploaded to Marketplace, and everyone ends up unhappy.”

“Q: So when will Xbox Live members in Europe get the chance to download the kind of cool content that is, for example, available to US Xbox Live members on Video Marketplace?

Michael Newey: At the moment we have made no announcements about Xbox Live Video Marketplace for Europe.(…)”

Yeah, thanks alot. Thanks for the 1/3 of the US Xbox Marketplace content (Gamerpics, Themes, Game Addons, Movies, etc) and making me pay the same price as the other users.

I’m also very unhappy with the Babelfish style translations over at the Portuguese Xbox Marketplace mixed with the rest of the Dashboard items still in English, it’s soooo fun paying for an incomplete product with half the stuff from the other European countries and waiting double the time for all of it (even though, all the games are in English, so why the wait?).

In other words, if you neglect your users they will end up forgetting you.

woohoo

Yeah, I’m having a field day. :)

On another note, Dilbert’s comic strips always manage to cheer me up. Visit the official website for more laughter and funny games like the Mission Statement Generator - with great words of wisdom like:

“It is our mission to dramatically administrate parallel catalysts for change to stay competitive in tomorrow’s world”

It sure is.

Portuga from A to Z

The following seems to be a humorous work from 4 students at Feup (Faculdade de Engenharia Universidade do Porto) and it’s really , really , really very funny (if you understand portuguese ,that is).

Claudio Ferreira, Grifu, Helena Fonseca and Nuno Martins created this mini-guide to the Portuguese world in Flash, complete with videos and music of all the best and worst that define us. A pity I couldn’t contact the authors, this was sent to me by mail.

Anyway, if you’re feeling adventurous check out the Portuga, from A to Z guide.