Top 3 Boardgames on the iPad

Posted on July 29, 2010 by admin

Here’s my top 3 recommended boardgames that translate well to the iPad, enjoy!

1. Small World

Small (iPad only)

A graphically stunning and highly addictive 2-player only and slightly smaller version of the full board game, recently updated to enable 1-player games with an AI opponent.

The concept of Small World is a fantasy land where you take control of various races of sentient beings, each with their own special ability which is combined each game with a random power, as they prosper and waver into decline through 10 turns of game play. You gain points for the land you conquer, as well as bonuses from special powers. Each game offers a new set of race and power combinations, and you’ll quickly learn which combos are the strongest, or the best defense against another combo, or the best choice in such and such a situation ….

The most difficult part of Small World is understanding the idea of sending your race into decline. If you feel your race is no longer serving you as best as it was (usually after 2-3 turns), you can choose to send it into decline, essentially getting rid of their bonuses and losing control of them, but also letting them live on as spirits in the land they conquered (until someone else conquers it of course). You then choose a new race and begin a new civilization from scratch. You can only have one active race and one race in decline at any time (except for certain bonus powers which allow more). It sounds hard but the tutorial mode is excellent and you’ll have the basics down in no time.

The game just lends itself so perfectly to the iPad format – conquering land is a satisfy swoosh of your finger dragging your pieces to the area. They could have made it so that you simply click on the land you want, but it feels so much more physical, as well as giving you a visual clue as to how many pieces you need to play to conquer the land.

The developers have also put serious consideration into the boardgame conversion aspect by allowing players to place the iPad in between them as you would a real boardgame, flat on the table (and autodetecting it, to boot) instead of forcing a round-robin pass-the-iPad style of gaming. It works wonderfully. The game is fairly quick, around 30 minutes with two human players, even faster with one AI player. There is no option to play over the internet or with with two iPads, though, if that is your thing.

My only gripe is that having never played the physical version of the boardgame I had no idea that it took one more race card to attack a mountainous area, and having scoured the tutorial and quick rule set I see no mention of it at all. Still, if that is the only bad thing I can say about it, then I’d say we’re on to a winner here! The game is so good, it convinced me to buy the real boardgame the next day from Amazon, along with 3 expansion sets to add even MORE variety in races and powers. Hopefully the developers will add some of the expansion sets in the iPad version too in the future.

2. Blokus HD

Blokus(iPad only)

Blokus is an incredibly simple board game that’s easy to pick up by both children and adults alike, as well as those new to designer board games such as Small World and Carcassonne. You start with a set of Tetris-like blocks (I guarantee every new player will be compelled to say “oooh, it’s like Tetris isn’t it!?” when you sit down to play), the goal being to place as many on the board as you can. The only rule is that your pieces must and indeed can only touch at the corners (see the screenshot). After a few rounds, space becomes a little more premium and you’ll start blocking each other off, trying to find weak spots where you can creep through he opponents’ carefully laid walls of defense. A full game should take no more than 30 minutes.

The iPad implementation of this classic boardgame is just as fun, though the interface feels a little gimmicky. It takes a while to get used to the on-screen control for orienting and flipping your pieces over – something that we do intuitively in real life but needs a lot of thought to implement properly on a touchscreen device. It’s easy once you get used to it, but turn off the time limit if you have players who’ve never played it on the iPad before, or with children. Playtesting with my wife, she got frustrated a few times as she tried to flick and twist the piece how she wanted, only for the countdown to end and the computer places a random piece somewhere for her instead! It’s a minor gripe and a quick learning curve, though.

There are of course local and wifi multiplayer options, though the local multiplayer isnt quite as sophisticated as Small World, and the only way to play is to hand over the iPad to the next player or spin it around for them. There is an internet play option too, but when I tried to join a game it said none available.

The addition of various challenges through a tournament mode play and achievements are a nice touch, but somewhat irrelevant.

3. Carcassonne

Carcassonne (iPhone, compatible with iPad and free HD update available later this year)

Though not officially an iPad optimized app, I’m including it in this list because Carcassonne still looks great when run at 2x magnification, and an iPad HD update is promised later this year along with a price increase (unless you buy now, in which case it is free).

Another classic, Carcassonne has remained one of gamers’ favorites for years now. With up to 5 local or AI players, you take it in turns to randomly draw terrain tiles, place them on the board and claim different features of the landscape for points. Each tile must match other tiles on the sides, and you cannot claim something which has already been claimed. If you connect to a road for example, which no one has claimed yet, you can place one of your “meeples” (little game pieces representing your people) and when the road is finally finished you’ll get 1 point per road tile. A castle gets you 2 per tile, or half points at the end of the game if you couldn’t finish it; a church gives you 9 points once all the surrounding tiles have been placed; a meeple placed on farmland will get 3 points per completed castle within connected land when the game ends. Again, it sounds difficult in words, but you’ll understand after a few turns and the in-game tutorial isn’t bad either.

One especially strong point of Carcasonne is the internet play option, which “just works”, without any registering with websites or further steps on your part. It also gives you an estimated time until you find an opponent, which I assume depends on the average wait time. The latest update adds support for multiple internet games and push notifications, so you can play in a number of games or do other tasks while you wait for your opponent.

Honorable Mentions:

Zooloretto:

Zooloretto™ (non-iOS4 iPhone, iPad compatible)
A relatively unknown contender in the euro-boardgame space, Zooloretto is a game about making a nice Zoo with paddocks full of animals. I won’t go into the game play details, but suffice to say it isn’t just a game for kids so don’t be fooled by the graphical style. Sadly, the sprites and icons look quite horrible when magnified on the iPad, and the game crashes on iOS4, so that’s why it didn’t make it to the top 3. My wife doesn’t seem to mind the pixelation though, and she’s been playing every night before bed for the last week or so.

Catan:

Catan(iPhone only)

Yes, Catan is on the iPhone too. Sadly, the graphics look bad enough on the iPhone, magnified on the iPad just made me wince in pain. The game mechanics are basically all there, but I just found the interface (especially for trading cards) to be leave a lot desired. Frankly the Nintendo DS version was far better, and included the SeaFarers expansion, which the iPhone version doesn’t.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the full-content site RSS feed if you haven’t already (don’t know what a feed is?).

Want to me to consider your game for inclusion in this list or any future ones? Send me a download voucher and I’ll be glad to give an honest review!

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WifiRobin Tutorial

Posted on July 9, 2010 by admin

Since I found the instructions on the WifiRobin website a little lacking, I decided to write my own tutorial on getting the WifiRobin auto-hacking router device to actually hack a network and rebroadcast it for your personal use. Hope it saves you the 4 hours I spent trying to set it up…

1. Plug the USB interface and network cable from the WifiRobin into your computer. Do a factory reset from the device menu to ensure we’re on the same settings.

2. Manually change your network settings to IP address 192.168.4.21, Router/Gateway as 192.168.4.20, and DNS server to 192.168.4.20 also.

change network settings manually osx

If you’re on windows, you can do the same by right clicking on your network connection and selecting properties, or search for “change network adapter settings” in Windows 7. Write in the comments if you’re having trouble and I’ll make a little video for you.
3. Open up your internet browser and navigate to http://192.168.4.20, and login with the username and password admin/admin. You should be presented with a screen similar to this.

wifirobin main router interface screen
4.Go over to the device…Select the menu option Wireless Scan, choose your network, and wait for packets to be collected. This might take up to about 30 minutes.

NOTE: You can only hack WEP networks, and only when there are other clients connected. If no one is currently connected to the network, you will need to select another network or wait until someone is connected.

wifi robin router lcd screen network selection process
5. Assuming you’ve managed to connect to a network, go back to the online router interface and click on the LINK tab.
6. Change the Wireless Mode to STATION.

7. Click on SELECT button to open up a pop-up box of the networks in your area. You cannot do this unless the device has finished cracking the network you targeted, so wait if it hasn’t. If you try to click on select before the router has finished collecting packets, no networks will be displayed.

8. Select the network you just hacked. Router should still be displaying the “Success: connected to …” screen. If you happened to unplug the USB power cable for your device, dont worry.  Although it wont display “connected to..”, the password will be stored in memory, so go ahead and select it anyway.

9. Scroll down and see if the password has been filled in for you. If it isn’t there, click once back to the main router interface, then click back to LINK tab.

10. In some cases, it might be listed in hex and you may have a problem connecting. To be sure it connects fine, and in order to be able to use the password on other machines, copy the hex code and paste it to this website.

11. Click to convert the Hex to Ascii, and a plain text password should appear. Copy this, or write down, and go back to your wifirobin link page…

12. Change the Key Yype to Ascii, and paste in the plain text password. If the password is just 5 characters long, leave the WEP key length at 64bit, otherwise if the password is longer you’ll need to also change the WEP key length to 128-bit.

13. Scroll up – you’ll notice the ESSID of the wifi network your device will repeat for you to use will be named by default as “WFB-[name of the hacked network]“. This might be a bit blatent to the actual owner of the network, so change that now before we restart the router. If you wish to secure your network with WPA2 , type your password in the “WPA PRESHARED KEY” box.

14. Scroll down, click change, then click apply when the page asks you. The device will start rebooting.

Connect to your new open Wifi network, and enjoy! Remember you can always connect directly to the hacked network now that you have the password, but if you have many devices and you end up changing networks at a later point, it’s easier to just keep the same open network that WifiRobin creates and change the hacked network through just one device.

Please ask in the comments if you have any more questions or can’t get something working.

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Review of WifiRobin Auto-Hacking Wifi Router

Posted on June 25, 2010 by bitmaster

I recently purchased a Wifirobin auto-wifi-hacking router from China, so I thought I’d share my thoughts about it in case any of you are interested in one also. You can purchase online via wifirobin.com for about $120 US.

Note: Antcor also produce an identical router with model number AW54-SC, available cheaper than the WifiRobin brand model from dropshipping sites such as DHGate.com, so this review can be considered accurate for that model too. The only difference I can find is that Antcor already have a firmware update out that presumably fixes some of the problems mentioned in this review. As of writing there are no updates for the WifiRobin branded device.

1 paragraph conclusion:

In my tests, the device was only able to perform attacks on WEP-secured networks when there were also clients present and data being transmitted. Clientless attacks are not built-in, though they may be added in a future firmware update. Though the device claims to be able to attack WPA-secured networks too, it refused to hack my own home network saying “No clients” despite the fact that I had a few computers connected to it and transmitting data. I also found it incredibly difficult to set up and understand the router interface – I spent 3 hours fiddling with settings before I had a useable network hacked and retransmitted for my own use. But for that one use case – hacking a WEP network with some clients already connected, then retransmitting that network for your own use – it does actually work, and that in itself is quite an amazing accomplishment. I can only imagine it wil get better via future updates.

Interface issues:

I guess regular routers are hard enough to set up – one such as the WifiRobin that acts both as a regular wifi/3G (supposedly) router and an embedded wifi-hacking system just complicate things a million times over. It doesnt help that the online manual in incredibly basic and clearly written by a non-native speaker. I’ll write a better tutorial soon for anyone having trouble.

First off, you need to plug the thing in via USB and ethernet physical network cable to actually turn the device on and access the interface. You also have to configure your wired ethernet connection to a certain IP address manually, there is no DHCP plug-and-play in this thing. The online interface can then be used to set up most of the functionality, though the manual only describes a tiny subsection of it (for instance, I can’t for the life of me figure out what the claimed 3G network function is supposed to do). Curiously though, you can’t actually hack a network via the online config – you have to perform the actual hacking functions (such as scanning for networks and choosing your target) from the tiny LCD screen on the device itself. Once the device has been able to hack a network, it seems to say it to a shared memory area, and when you choose that as the network you wish to use in the online interface, it grabs the networks password from the shared memory and fills it in automagically.

The hacking:

As I said, I couldnt get it to work with my own WPA network, but it handled most of the WEP networks around me just fine. It doesnt inject packets though, so you’ll have to wait for it to collect enough crackable packets from the existing traffic (about half an hour).

Hardware:

It’s cute but plasticky, and while powering itself via USB might seem nice initially, the whole point of a router is to be put in the corner of the room and run by itself without the need of a physical machine. I’m thinking I’ll use the regular electrical socket to USB plug that came with my iPhone to power the thing more permanently. The Antcor model comes with a real power adapter, though it probably isn’t correct for your country unless you live in China, so thats just as useless.

Should you buy?

If you live somewhere with a *lot* of Wifi, then go ahead, it is bound to be able to hack one of them. If you have one particular network you wish to access, or you’re thinking it would be useful when you’re on the go, I’d give it a miss. I’d also say wait for my tutorial unless you’re really tech-capable, as the interface is hard to figure out at first, even for a geek like me. For the price of 2-3 months net access though, you can potentially get free wifi for life.

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iPhone OS4 includes new Japanese style "smilies"

Posted on June 11, 2010 by bitmaster

Just noticed this today, on the iPhone OS4 (sorry, iOS4) Romaji-Japanese input method, after you click on the number keyboard entry, there is a new cute little [^_^] button for Japanese style emoticon smileys. For those of you who don’t know, you’re probably familiar with the Western style emoticon commonly known as a smiley, or like this :-) , but did you know Japan has their own style of smiley which is written from full width roman character set to produce a vertical (right-way-up) smiley (as opposed to the on-the-side style of Western smilies). Generally the Japanese smiley is used on the internet rather than in phone messages, since all Japanese phones have a built-in set of real picture-like emoticons (that Apple also introduced in the 2.2 software update), and typing them into a Japanese phone would be rather cumbersome. On the iPhone though, it’s incredibly easy!

When you click on the new button, it brings up a standard replacement dictionary choice with your most commonly used smilies,

japanese smilies for new ios 4

or you can simply click on the button for more choices to see the full library of Japanese smilies! Awesome!

The full library of Japanese smilies in the new OS4…

japanese smilies for new ios 4
japanese smilies for new ios 4

japanese smilies for new ios 4
japanese smilies for new ios 4
japanese smilies for new ios 4




Sadly, it doesn’t (yet) auto-suggest a smiley if you start typing one, as it would with Kana->Kanji conversion. Still time to fix that Apple… but I wonder if this great new feature will make it into the final version of iPhone OS4.

Here’s a pretty good page with a lot of Western smileys and their Japanese equivalents.

If you enjoyed this story, please DIGG/soc/favourite/like this article or whatever the your latest social bookmarking fad of choice is (good old fashioned browser bookmark still work too, by the way), and I will be your virtual friend forever and ever. For more articles on Japan related tech and beginner tutorials in the future, subscribe to our feed too. Cheers!

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3 ways to play games in 3D on your PC, now

Posted on March 17, 2010 by bitmaster

Last week I introduced you to some of the basic technologies involved with displaying real 3D images, and this week I’m going to show you how you can actually be playing games in 3D on your computer, right now. Best of all, it doesn’t cost as much as you think – the cheapest solution here goes from around $150. What are you waiting for? Read on.

NVidia 3DVision:

COST: $200-$600
REQUIREMENTS: NVidia GFX card 8000 series or better, 120Hz LCD monitor or CRT monitor
BUY: @Amazon US
, @Amazon Japan

MORE INFO: NVidia Website

3DVision from NVidia has actually been around a long time – I have fond memories of playing Unreal Tournament on an old version of these LCD-shutter based glasses about 7 years ago. Back then, the glasses had to be plugged in for power and to get a signal, but the newest model is completely wireless and rechargeable for about 40 hours of 3D gaming goodness. The basic package of just a pair of 3DVision glasses and USB signal box costs about $200, but they probably aren’t compatible your current flatscreen monitor (for reasons I outlined last week). You’ll need to either get your hands on a big old CRT monitor – which you can probably pick up for free if you hang around dumpsters enough – or spend another $300-400 on a new 120Hz capable flatscreen LCD monitor. You’re also going to need a fairly powerful NVidia GFX card in your gaming rig, but you probably already do. Bear in mind that playing your games in 3D is going to take twice as much effort for your machine, so you’re going to get about half the framerate. This is unavoidable no matter what solution you choose. I personally chose the 3DVision route as I’m a cheap bastard and people are forever trashing huge CRTs at work, so if you can get your hands on one then $200 is really the cheapest option out there.

If you prefer really big screen gaming, you can also use the 3DVision glasses with a good number of DLP projectors, or with newer 3D capable projectors.

The downside to shutter glasses is that they do flicker, especially if you’re using a CRT. If you’re prone to headaches, or your eyes really hurt after watching Avatar 3D, you should probabaly look at getting a passive polarized solution like…

Zalman Passive Polarized Monitor and Glasses Set:

COST: $400
REQUIREMENTS: NVidia GFX card or proprietary drivers like TRIDEF for ATI cards
BUY: @Amazon Japan
MORE INFO: Zalman Website

Zalman offers a complete set of 22″ flatscreen monitor and 2 pairs of polarized glasses for a reasonable $400. Before actually using one of these, I thought that polarized glasses might result in a lower quality 3D image with a lot of ghosting, but I have to say I’m pretty pleased with the Zalman set, and they certainly have no more ghosting than the average 3DVision setup. Because the glasses are polarized, they don’t flicker either. The set comes with drivers for 3D gaming if your using NVidia, otherwise you’re going to need to purchase a special set of drivers from IZ3D or Tridef.

I’d recommend the Zalman set for anyone who really has issues with headaches, or if you can’t get hold of a free CRT monitor to use NVidia’s 3DVision, or if you really must have flatscreen 3D on a budget.

DIY: Two projector / Silver Screen / Polarizing Filter setup:

COST: $150+
REQUIREMENTS: 2 projectors, same kind is best.

If you happen to have 2 projectors lying around, or think you could source some on Ebay for cheap, this is probably the best way to go for big screen gaming and movies on the cheap. I’ll detail the build process next week, but basically you’re going to need:

  • A big flat surface, like a cheap plastic sheet
  • Some silver coloured spray paint to cover that surface
  • 2 projectors, preferably the same type; and some way of mounting them on top of each other
  • Some polarizing filters (25cm sheet cost me about $10
  • 45 degree polarized glasses

If you already have some crappy old projectors, you could put it all together for under $150. Unfortunately, you’re not going to get anywhere near the quality of viewing on a LCD monitor or with with shutter glasses, but you’re trading the quality for sheer size.

Which to choose?

Just so you know, as of writing, Tridef drivers under Windows 7 aren’t working with a lot of games because the drivers still don’t support DirectX 10. This is promised for future updates, but for now I’d stay clear of the Tridef or IZ3D drivers if you’re using Windows 7 for modern gaming. Under XP, or just playing old games, you should be fine though. So which to choose?

If you’re looking to play modern games in Windows 7: Choose 3DVision with a monitor for best quality at $600, or a Zalman set on a budget $400.
If you get headaches while viewing 3D, or have an ATI graphics card: Choose a passive solution, like the Zalman monitor set. And next time you upgrade your GFX card, get an NVidia one instead.
If you’re using XP, don’t mind playing old games only, on a really tight budget, or absolutely must play really big screen: then put together your own DIY 3D projection rig for $150 and up, assuming you can source some cheap projectors.

Subscribe to the feed for details on how to build your own 3D projection rig next week sometime.

Feel free to ask any question you have about 3D gaming in the comments, I’ll try to reply soon. Also, I’d really appreciate a digg! Thanks!

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Overview of 3D technologies

Posted on March 12, 2010 by bitmaster

As an assistant researcher with a big budget, I’ve had a chance over the past few weeks to play around with all the various 3D technologies currently on the market. Today I’d like to give you a brief overview of all the various technology behind this years 3D revolution, then next week we’ll take a more in-depth look at specific products that you can buy and be playing games on your PC in 3D now.

Introduction:

The concept of viewing something in 3D is remarkably simple – instead of just looking at a single flat image, you’re actually looking at 2. The amazing part is that your brain can combine these 2 images into 1 single 3D view of the world. Even without any crazy glasses, your brain can do this. Look at the side-by-side pictures below of my messy-as-hell desk, and slowly cross your eyes so you vision goes all doubled. Now line up those two images somewhere in the middle, and suddenly your brain will identify them as 3D and you’ll be blown away.

So how are all these new 3D TVs and displays going to work, and how do those funny glasses you put on in the cinema make the movie 3D? The same concept applies to all of them – the movie theatre/TV screen needs to deliver a slightly different image to each eye. So let’s take a look at the various methods to do that:

Just so you know, I’m not including “analglyph” (red/blue glasses) in this list as the tech is incredibly old and bad quality.

Passive Polarization:

Science time. Light is quite chaotic usually – it travels in all directions, until it hits something or is reflected back. When it gets reflected, off a mirror for instance, it becomes polarized. You can also polarize light with a special filter. The clever thing with these filters is that the polarized light that passes through one can then only pass through another filter if it’s aligned in the same way as the first filter. So, by putting together two of these filters, you can control the amount of light that passes through all the way from 0% to 100% just by adjusting the angle of the second filter.

So, can you see how we might use these polarizing filters to deliver a different image to each eye, and hence make a 3D image to the viewer? Essentially, we need 2 projectors, each with a different filter on them, a screen to reflect the image back at us, and then a pair of glasses fitted with another set of filters (the same as the filters fitted on the projectors). This is how all IMAX theatres work. One projector produces light for the image of one eye (polarized on particular direction), which only one of the filters will allow through, and the other projector produces the light for other eye. Combined in our minds, we get 3D.

The advantages of the polarizing method are that the glasses are incredibly cheap to produce and easily replaceable – perfect for large scale movie screenings and such. Unfortunately, a special screen is required (a “silver screen”) which will preserve the polarization of the projected image – normal white screens just bounce the light back off in a different direction – so it can’t be used in just any theatre without retrofitting a new screen. It’s also not really viable for use at home, because of the cost of purchasing 2 projectors and the silver screen.

Active Shutter Glasses:

With active shutter glasses, each lens has a tiny LCD screen in it. With a small amount of power, the LCD screen can be completely blacked out. This means that if we syncronized the left and right lens to turn on and off alternately, and then displayed a different image for each eye alternately at the same exact time on the screen, we can deliver a different image to each eye of the viewer. Try it now – focus on something, then blink in each eye alternately – the image is slightly different, which is why you get 3D right? Now, if we speed up the whole process so that each lens is turning it self on and off maybe 30 times a second in time with the alternate frames of the movie (syncronized generally via infra-red signal), our brain would simply merge the two images together and make a single 3D image.

Using shutter glasses to view 3D is actually not new technology. Around 10 years ago when shutter glasses were first introduced, bedroom PC gamers were having a blast with affordable shutter glasses that could be used with those huge old CRT monitors; but then the flatscreens took over the world. Flatscreen monitors, nice and small and thin as they are, are sadly quite slow. Slow enough that you could no longer use shutter glasses, which pretty much destroyed 3D gaming. Now, flatscreens are finally catching up to be fast enough to use with shutter glasses again, which is why there is a sudden resurgence of 3D technologies and movie this year. The key number is 120Hz, at which point using flatscreens with active shutter glasses becomes a reality again.

What about projectors for cinemas? Well, most projectors are actually just the same as flatscreens, only instead of putting a back on the screen they shine a light through it instead, so the same applied. Newer, more expensive projectors use a different kind of technology called DLP, which is basically a series of tiny little mirrors, one for each pixel, which move to display a different colour – most of these can also be used with active shutter glasses. Again, these kind of projectors have hit a consumer price-point this year too, so you’ll be seeing a lot of 3D capable projectors as well as new TVs.

The downside to active shutter glasses is that the glasses are quite bulky (remember, there’s a battery and two tiny LCD screen in there!) so some people find them uncomfortable. The glasses themselves are also quite expensive to replace, so the ones you get at the cinema tend to be rather heavy duty to withstand public use, and hence heavier.

“Holographic” 3D displays:

I’m not sure if holographic is the official name for this kind of 3D imagery, but I’m going to call it that as it’s the easiest to understand. You can be sure that each company will give it their own name though. Holographic 3D requires NO GLASSES, so it’s what most people might aspire to as being the ultimate in 3D technology. Though this kind of technology might actually sound a long way off, it is here, now. Though there are a myriad of competing technologies, they all boil down to the same basic method – remember though holograms you got in cereal packets as a kit? Yeh, pretty much the same… Only, instead of having to wave the thing around to see the left and right view, the TV automagically displays each image at the same time, and depending on the angle it is viewed from (ie., your left and right eye) displays a different image.

Having had the chance to play around with one of these displays, I can honestly say I’m not that impressed. Ok, this kind of 3D technology is still in it’s infancy, so I’m sure the quality will improve, but it just doesn’t seem to have a lot of depth, even at the highest convergence settings. You look at it, and think “well, it’s kind of 3D I guess…” Another problem is that the angles you can view these TV screens at is very much set in stone – moving your head a little left or right will ruin the effect. Again, I’m sure this will improve with time, but I would stay away from them until then.

One good use of the holographic screens is on the back of 3D cameras – the screen is so small that the lack of depth isnt really an issue, but it gives you a good idea of the 3D image you’re taking without having to wear glasses. Again, we’ll take a look at an actual 3D camera you can buy in the next article, coming soon.

So there you go. I hope you have a slightly better idea of the kinds of 3D technology out there, and coming to your homes this year. My personal preference is the 3D shutter glasses, as they seem to give a better quality picture with the most immersive feeling – but 3D viewing style is very much a personal preference. Some people get headaches in minutes, some can sit 30cm from the screen and play for hours. In fact, 1 out of every 10 people can’t even see in 3D…

Next week I’ll introduce you to actual products available to buy, so you can experience 3D games and movies on your computer, right now. Stay tuned, and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed. (What is an RSS feed?)

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Top 3 ways to get your fix of Japanese media

Posted on February 22, 2010 by bitmaster

This is my entry for this months Japansoc Blog Matsuri, hosted by muzu-chan. The theme this month is Japan Toplists, so here’s my toplist of how to watch Japanese TV and movies without actually owning a TV, ranked by awesomeness.

Torrent sites:

Most torrents aren’t legal, but they’re still the best way to get Japanese movies and TV, often with subtitles! If you follow my previous guide on securing your connection for Windows or OsX, you needn’t be worried about being caught. If you’re not familiar with torrents, go read up on the whole concept first; then register on these sites for all your Japanese movie, anime, and j-drama needs:

Tokyo Toshokan is free and requires no registration. It mostly focusses on anime and music, but the archive is so huge it’s difficult to find random new content. This is the best site to go if you have a specific anime or album in mind, and the anime releases often have a number of different quality and fansub versions, including a lot of HD/Blu-ray content. No login required.

Asian Torrents is the best asian movie site out there, I think. A ton of movies are uploaded every day, but the blog does an excellent job of highlighting notable movies and always including a synopsis, cover art and trailer – so it’s a great way to discover new movies. The site requires free registration and you must login to download.

Akiba Online (NSFW) is down right now due to server issues, but the forums have a small Japanese media related torrent section, though it’s not regularly updated. The site has a decidely otaku feel to it and there’s a large amount of Japanese idol, porn, and hentai content in there too so be careful where you click.

SELECTION: 3/5 - Tons of movies and anime, though TV broadcasts are generally limited to the most popular
EASE OF USE: 4/5 - Once you get the whole torrent thing down, it’s as easy as browsing a website!
QUALITY: 5/5 – much better than streaming, and TV shows are usually recorded in HD too where available!
SUBTITLES: 4/5 – Most Japanese torrents will come with subtitles written by fans or taken from the DVD
TOTAL: 16/20

PPStream:

I wrote an English guide to the Chinese-only software PPStream last week. For me, it’s the best way to get TV and movies on demand semi-legally (you can feign ignorance because it’s all in Chinese!), but it’s far from perfect and even less so for Japanese content. You can read all about it and try it for yourself with my previous guide, but here’s a summary review.

SELECTION: 4/5 - All the latest and popular dramas
EASE OF USE: 2/5 – you’ll need to know the Chinese title of movies
QUALITY: 3/5 – varies, generally tv quality or DVD for movies
SUBTITLES: 1/5 – Well, they are subtitles, just in Chinese!
TOTAL: 10/20

KeyHoleTV:

KeyholeTV is only legal way to get Japanese TV, as it’s an experiement in p2p sponsored by the Japanese government. As such, it pretty much sucks – but what do you really expect from the Japanese government? You’re also going to need a TV guide. There’s a good guide at xorsyst.com to getting the app running and configuring it. It streams live, so you going to have start adjusting your schedule to watch what you want, and there’s no way to record anything or access content archives. In additional, warn you now that 99% of Japanese TV really, really sucks; every show can categorised as the following:
1. Food
2. Onsen
3. “Talent” (or lack of) discussion panels
4. All of the above.

For example, a group of talents travel to an onsen and eat something, as we are treated to them saying “kimochi” (that feels so nice!) and “oishii” (delicious) over and over again. This is the pinnacle of Japanese TV.

SELECTION: 1/5 – limited, live-streaming of crapy Japanese TV in Japan time, some password protected areas
EASE OF USE: 4/5 – doubleclick on a channel
QUALITY: 2/5 – streaming, live
SUBTITLES: 0/5 – none
TOTAL: 7/20

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Awesome p2p TV and Movie Streaming from China

Posted on February 7, 2010 by bitmaster

Let me show you the latest killer software that has taken over all my media needs – I haven’t touched a single tv or movie torrent for months now, it’s so good. The software is called PPStream, but it’ll take a little work to get running and registered, and it’s not perfect. But if you need a reason to download, then let me just say “The A-Team”.

What PPStream is:

- An incredibly easy and fast way to stream popular tv shows (new and old), music videos, and movies; for free, from China.

The downsides:

- The interface is in Chinese and cannot be changed. However, if you memorize some key locations you really dont need to worry. I’ll show you where the important bits are.
- There is a 15 second flash based ad before most items play.
- Chinese subtitles on everything, of course. Stop reading now if this bothers you.
- The quality isn’t great. Most movies are DVD quality (I expect HD streaming soon), but TV shows are very much “TV-quality” and will ofcourse look pixelated unless played back through a TV (which will blur it).
- Searching for TV shows is easy because the name is written in english, but movie names are not. It’s easy enough to browse through the latest movies or by genre to just find something you like the sound of; but searching for a specific movie is not easy unless you look up the chinese title or use the online interface. Having said that, I’ve never been too bothered by that, I just watch what is new or what is available. Think of it as a giant un-navigatable free video rental store – you’re going to walk out with something.
- Windows only. I was holding off on writing a tutorial for it as it wasn’t compatible with Windows 7, but the latest release fixes this. Still, OsX users are stuck having to use Parallels.

So if you have any complaints, please keep quiet about them. You have been warned.

Click on any of the images for a full res version if you can’t read the chinese characters.

Prepare your computer

Because the interface is only in Chinese, you’ll need to install the East Asian font if you’re using XP, and change the default-language for non-unicode programs to Chinese (PRC). This is simple under Windows 7 – just go to the language section of control panel, and then click on the last tab labelled “Administrative”. There should be an option for “Change System Locale”.

Download, install, and create free user account:

Download the .exe installer directly from the site and run it. The default options should be fine. It works on x64 version of windows too. Open up PPStream and look for a button in the top right hand corner like the one I’ve labelled in the screenshot below. That’s the login button, click it to bring up the login dialog, then click on the link for create new user (check the screenshot):

That’ll open a new screen in Internet Explorer (even if your default browser is Firefox). Fill in the form by referring to the translation below. You needn’t put your real email address – there is no verfication – but as yet I haven’t got any spam either if you’re worried.

Once you’ve done that, you’re registered as a free VIP user and the English tv-series option is open to you. If you skipped through the tutorial and just went straight for the main interface translation, you won’t be able to find them because the option isn’t there.

Main interface:

Go ahead and click on the same button again to bring up the login screen, then type in your new username and password. Check the little checkbox to have it login automatically from now on (though it does forget your password sometimes). Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see a screen similar to this one, with your username in the top right instead. It might have automatically expanded one of the lists already, so click on the mius sign to collapse the list, and you should see this screen. Here’s what all the Chinese means on the left sidebar. If you know some Japanese kanji, you might be able to recognise some of the characters, like the 日 for Japan, the 欧 for europe, 音楽 for music. If not, just remember pictorially – you’ll probably only ever use.

(Can’t see any chinese characters? Only got gibberish and punctuation? Then your system locale for non-unicode programs is set wrong – go back to step 1)

TV shows:

TV shows are easy, you don’t a screenshot for that. Just click on the plus sign next to the characters I labelled above as “western dramas” and a long list will come down. It’s not in alphabetical order, so just scroll to find what you want. They even have the A-team, and Knightrider (the original). You can also use the search box up the top to find a particular show, but I find it’s not so reliable and searching by hand is best. The numbers next to a show indicate how many episodes there are, and the number next to an individual episode indicate how many users are available to stream from. 2 or more users is usually enough for smooth streaming. You should be able to figure out the labelling of series number and episode number, it’s not too hard. Double click to start loading, and your episode will play after a short advertisement. The player will automatically move onto the next in the series once the episode has finished.

There’s also a sports section under the main interface, if you really want to watch the Superbowl… but I’ve never bothered to look in there and doubt I ever will, so you can figure that bit out for yourself.

Movies:

Click on the dvd-rips movie section to bring down the following list.

Figure out what genre of movie you want to watch, then expand that list. Hovering over a title will show you a DVD cover. Double click if you find something interesting.

If you really want to find a specific movie, head to the main PPS site, and type in the movie title keywords into the search box. The link will lead you to an example where I search for “pride and prejudice”. The results will usually contain both the english and chinese title, so if you copy and paste the chinese title back into PPStream software, you can search directly for that. Here’s one of the results from my example search:

pride and prejudice傲慢与偏见（注意：英文字幕，供学习英语所 351 M SWF 2:05:39 1082

See where the chinese title (傲慢与偏见) is listed next to the english? Copy that. You can also use the web interface to watch the movie file online, so look for a result that looks good. The number next to the M (351 M) is the size of the file, M meaning Megabytes. SWF indicates the file format – it’s a flash file. Next is the total length of the movie, obviously some of the results are split into two parts, so try to find a long full-length version for no fuss.

So there you go, free tv and movie streaming from China. Awesome. Post any problems you have in the comments, and I’ll try to be helpful.

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Install Windows 7 in bootcamp on MacBook Pro with broken superdrive

Posted on January 18, 2010 by bitmaster

I’ve been wanting a copy of Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro for a while now, just to play games and experiment – but sadly the superdrive is trashed. The firmware of my Macbook Pro (fairly old Core2Duo model, 2007?) doesn’t allow booting from USB, so memory sticks and external DVD-Drives are out of the question. After hours of crawling forums for what seems to be quite a common problem, I finally got a solution so I’m going to repost it here. This method is originally from InsideTheBrackets and was designed for use on a MacBook Air which has no internal SuperDrive. It basically involves installing Windows from within OsX using Parallels virtual machine, then restarting half way through the install, messing around with some seriously hardcore bootsector files, and carrying on the install from the hard drive natively. This is not for the feint hearted, and you could make your computer unbootable if you don’t follow exactly what I’ve written here.

NOTE: Windows 7 64 bit will install using this method if your computer can handle it, but when I tried to install the bootcamp drivers it said not compatible. UPDATE: Apple has released Bootcamp 3.1 which includes drivers for Windows 7 64-bit (if you’re computer can handle it). Get the latest drivers from here, and put them on your USB too prior to installing.

YOU WILL NEED:

- Something to back up onto, like an external hard drive.
- A USB stick, any size (we just need to save one small file somewhere that isn’t on the computer)
- Parallels virtualization software (amazon.jp
, official demo version, or pirate it)
- A DVD-image of Windows 7 32-bit, a bootable USB install, or an external DVD drive and install DVD
- A bootable USB install of OsX, or an external DVD drive and install DVD.

1. BACKUP:

I recommend SuperDuper to clone a bootcopy of your entire hard disk as it is now to an external drive, so even if you do screw up you’ll have something to boot off later.

2. RUN BOOTCAMP:

Bootcamp must be used to partition your hard drive else Parallels won’t recognise it later. Run the bootcamp utility until it says to insert your windows install disk, then just close it.

If bootcamp gave you errors like mine did, you may need to do a clean install of OsX on a freshly created single partition volume first. This can occur if you’ve been messing around with partitions like I do all the time, but if you did step 1 and took a backup you can easily restore your system once you’ve run bootcamp again.

3. CREATE A NEW PARALLELS MACHINE:

Make a new parallels machine. Skip detection of DVD media, and make no hard disk yet, we will configure these manually. Once your virtual machine is made, open it.

Click on the menu item “Virtual Machine -> Configure“, then on the Hardware tab. There should be no hard disk listed at the moment. Click on + to add a hard disk, and select “Boot Camp” option. If you are unable to select the Bootcamp option, it means it cannot find a bootcamp partition, probably because you thought you’d be clever by partitioning your hard disk yourself. Well, that won’t work. It has to be made by the bootcamp application for Parallels to recognise it, so backup your data, do a fresh install of OsX and go back to step 2.

Configure the DVD to point to either your external USB drive or your ISO image and start the install. Go ahead and format your bootcamp partition if Windows requires you to.

4. STOP INSTALLING WHEN IT SAYS IT WILL RESTART:

Once it’s gone through the file unpacking etc it will start a countdown of about 30 seconds before it restarts. DONT LET IT RESTART. Shut down the virtual machine before it does that.

5. FIND THE MASTER BOOT RECORD OF THE VIRTUAL MACHINE:

Explanation from Jono @ Inside the Brackets, because even I didn’t really know this stuff:

If you were to reboot now and try to force your Mac to boot Windows it won’t work. A typical PC’s hard disk has code right at the beginning of the disk which tells it where to find crucial operating system files – the MBR. Windows has gone ahead and installed the MBR but it’s installed in its VM, not to the real hard disk. We have to copy this MBR to the real hard disk and at the same time be careful not to mess up the Mac install.

So, first we need to find the virtual machine file; in a default install this will be in “Documents/Parallels” folder. To extract the MBR from it, right click your VM and choose “Show package contents“. Inside there is another file named after your hard disk (for example: SAMSUNG HS083HB.hdd), so do the same “Show package contents” for that too. Inside there is a “PhysicalMbr.hds” file, copy it to your USB drive.

6. WRITE THE MBR TO THE BOOTCAMP PARTITION:

Restart from your OsX install DVD as if you were going to install. We need to do this because the partitions are protected under normal conditions.

Once you’ve booted into the install, click on the Utilities menu -> Disk utility. Click on each of your hard drive partitions (your main OsX install, and your bootcamp drive) and click on “Unmount”. Don’t unmount your USB drive.

Now run Terminal, again from the Utilities menu and type in the following commands.

cd /Volumes
ls

Identify which is your flash drive, for example “USB-MEDIA”. Then type “cd” and the name of your USB drive. In my example, this would be:

cd USB-MEDIA

Now we’re going to back up the old MBR. Be careful typing these commands. By the way, these assume you didn’t rename the VM MBR when you copied it to your USB drive, and that you don’t have more partitions that simple an OsX install and bootcamp. If you do, you will need to customize them.

dd if=/dev/disk0 of=backup.mbr bs=512 count=1

This will back up the MBR to a file called backup.mbr on your USB drive.

Now we replace the physical MBR with the one copied from the VM.

dd if=PhysicalMbr.hds of=/dev/disk0 bs=512 count=1

Hint: If something bad happens and you need to restore your MBR, type the same command as directly above, but substitute PhysicalMbr.hds for backup.mbr.

Now that we’ve replace the MBR we need to check it looks ok. Type

fdisk -e /dev/disk0

Type print to view your MBR. The most important thing to check which Windows may have stuffed up is the id of each partition. Your first partition must have an id of EE, your Mac Partition must have an id of AF. If either of these is wrong you must change them (don’t worry, this doesn’t modify the data on these partitions). For each that is wrong, type setpid n where n is the number of the partition whose id you are changing. Then, when prompted, type the correct id.

When you are done with fdisk, type write and then exit.

You can quit the Mac OS X Installer now.

As the computer boots, just after you hear the chime, hold down the option key on the keyboard. Windows should now be one of the options in your boot menu, so choose it. Windows should start and continue with installation. When Windows restarts, remember that you will have to hold down the option key again and choose Windows.

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Newbie tutorial: How to read your favourite blogs without going to the site, automagically

Posted on January 17, 2010 by bitmaster

RSS is possibly the bestest thing the interwebs have thought of in the last 5 years and I’m here to tell you what RSS is, why it’s so damn cool, and how you can use it without geeking out too much. By the time you finish this article you’ll be set up with a free newsreader program that automatically delivers you new content from any site you subscribe to (for free). It’s a great way to read fresh content from all your favourite sites without actually going to their website!

Background:

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and it’s a nice way of gathering content automatically from any site that creates it’s own RSS “feed”, (like this one). Pretty much every website in the world that publishes content regularly (like blogs or news sites) has an RSS feed. Some contain the full article content, and some are just a short taste of the full article so you can sample it before clicking through to the site to read the full version. Some even have sound or video files embedded in them, at which point they become Podcasts that you may already subscribe to in iTunes. Read more about RSS on wikipedia. Yep – Podcasts are just regular RSS feeds with sound or video…

Get some RSS reader software:

Honestly, there are lots of free Windows or OsX software based RSS-readers, but by far the best way to subscribe and read RSS feeds is with Google Reader. If you already have a google account (with gmail for example), then you can head straight over to the Google Reader site and get started. If you don’t have a google account, create one here.

Finding and subscribing to feeds:

Most website will display the standard orange feed symbol fairly prominently, and clicking on that will give you the various subscribe options. Just click the button for google and it’ll transfer you to the google reader interface to confirm your subscription.

Sometimes you’ll see this kind of screen instead. In this case, select the “google” option from the drop-down box instead. You can also click on the link that says “always subscribe using google” and it’ll remember your choice.

If you’re using Safari, then you’re going to have to copy and paste the feed address manually because Safari tries to hi-jack the link for it’s own built in feed reading abilities (which are lame, at best). Get yourself a compatible browser, like Chrome or Firefox.

Google Reader Interface

The interface and functions of the online google reader application are what really make it stand out above the rest, so let’s take a quick tour of the best features.

Basic Interface and sharing:

Your feed items all appear on the right hand side of the screen. There are quick buttons to navigate long posts at the bottom of the page, allowing you to quick scan back and forward through all your items. Just as with mail conversations in gmail, you can “star” individual items to favourite them for later. You can also share them easily with the facebook buttons etc, and if your feed item only has sample content, just click on the “read more” link or on the bold title of that item. If you need to add a subscription manually, just click the button in the top left.

Organize your feeds and browse by category:

Once you’re subscribed to a few sites, the ability to categorize them is crucial. You might also like this if you’re subscribed to NSFW sites, as you can put them into their own category and keep them separate to read when you get home. Click on the “manage my subscriptions” link to start assigning categories and to delete any you’re bored of.

Explore the Recommended Items:

This is another great feature that uses Google’s data of popular feed items and can also recommend other feeds you might be interested in, determined by what you’ve been marked or shared. If you feel like you don’t have enough feeds, this is a good place to find more and I’ve found a quite a few from sites I’d never heard of before.

Here’s one I made earlier!

Now, let’s practice this subscribing business. Click on this link, which is the RSS feed for TokyoBIT and click on SUBSCRIBE in Google Reader. Now, whenever a new article or post appears at TokyoBIT, you’ll be the first to know!

If you’re living in Japan, I also recommend my own money saving strategies / self improvement and occasional cultural insight post over at Frugalista Japan. As an added bonus, once I reach the 500 subscriber target, I’ll be making another $50 donation to the Kiva fund for micro-loan projects in Asia.

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