David Emery OnlineGrand Theft Auto V Trailer
The Grand Theft Auto series is probably my favourite set of games released by any single developer; not so much for the violence, but for the storytelling and amazing open world gameplay (without tying it down to anything tedious like levelling up or any of that rubbish).
This trailer for GTA V (which is confusing the 7th full GTA game, confusingly) looks pretty amazing to me; yes, it’s not exactly a radical departure – I know some people are disappointed it’s not in a new setting, maybe one outside US – but for me that’s not the point; the location will be actually different, with different things to find, but most importantly with a different story (and it does look like a different take this time, as it’s seems to be eschewing the “work up from the bottom” storyline the last few have employed).
I’ve written previously about how games are their own art form, and I think the GTA series is one of the perfect examples of that. Interactive storytelling, without skimping either on the “interactive” or the story.
Visit ➔St. Vincent 4AD Session
Recording these songs live for the first time, St Vincent has performed four tracks from Strange Mercy for the tenth visual installment in the 4AD Session series.
This is super awesome (click through for the full 4 track session):
Visit ➔The Horrors at the Roundhouse
More on Flickr here.
Thom Yorke at the Boiler Room
More on Flickr here.
Two Key Features Of Facebook Music: Scrobbling And Track Unification
One thing we’ve heard from a very good source is that a key aspect of the service will be “scrobbling”. The term, made popular by Last.fm, means that when you listen to a song, it gets sent to your profile without you have to do anything. I assume there will be a way to turn this off, or a way for you to selectively share songs, but this is a key to the service.
I’m loath to speculate on rumoured products like this – who knows what it’ll actually be – but this sounds like it could be massive. Facebook is already the biggest single driver to artist websites, and this will just make it even more powerful.
It also – sorry to say – sounds like it could be the final blow for Last.fm; why have a social network just for music when the biggest social network has most of the features (that mainstream users want, at least).
Visit ➔Amazon in Talks to Launch Digital-Book Library
Amazon.com Inc. is talking with book publishers about launching a Netflix Inc.-like service for digital books, in which customers would pay an annual fee to access a library of content, according to people familiar with the matter.
Or: Spotify for Books.
I think I’ve blogged before how I think this is a potential killer product; people only read (most) books once, so a rental model rather then a ownership model makes way more sense.
There’s also nothing stopping them replicating the ad-supported free service as well, or how about you get a year’s free service when you buy a Kindle? Could be very interesting indeed.
Visit ➔Sane RSS usage
RSS is a great tool that’s very easy to misuse. And if you’re subscribing to any feeds that post more than about 10 items per day, you’re probably misusing it. I don’t mean that you’re using it in a way it wasn’t intended — rather, you’re using it in a way that’s not good for you.1
You should be able to go on a disconnected vacation for three days, come back, and be able to skim most of your RSS-item titles reasonably without just giving up and marking all as read. You shouldn’t come back to hundreds or thousands of unread articles.
I disagree with a lot of the points both Marco and Jacqui are making here – mostly that it’s possible to use RSS “wrong”. It’s akin to saying that everyone should stop using SMS as that can be distracting – it’s using your phone “wrong”.
I am a heavy RSS user, but I find it immensely useful. According to Google Reader I’m currently subscribed to 990 feeds and have read over 50,000 items in the last 30 days, but I find this in no way stressful or counter productive. I follow some feeds that average over 100 posts per day, and some that don’t even post once every month. You can use RSS this way, and in fact I’d argue that it’s the best source of news you could ever come up with.
Now, that’s not to say there aren’t some good pieces of advice in their two articles. Firstly, I don’t check my feeds all day – that would be impossible. RSS is not twitter, and it’s not really best I don’t think for real time news (although you could use it for that if you wanted). What it’s best for is assembling a custom built newspaper of all your interests, or at least that’s how I treat it. Roughly 3 times a day – in the morning, at lunch and in the evening – I check my feeds, and skim through them exactly as I would a newspaper. The articles allude to a fear of marking all as read which is ridiculous – does any one really read a newspaper cover to cover, every word? RSS is the same, a source of interest to flick through and dip into, not to labour over like email.
Visit ➔