Microsoft has detailed what makes its Smart Match system for Xbox One’s online matchmaking an interesting proposition for online players. In addition to grouping players of like skill and reputation, “games will be able to share player stats with Xbox Live and each other; to learn, evolve, and provide you with the best possible matchmaking available,” according to Microsoft’s Mike Lavin.
More importantly, Smart Match frees players from wasting time waiting in lobbies by searching for players and matches in the background. “This means that less popular multiplayer modes and maps that have traditionally taken a long time to find players suddenly become playable,” Lavin says. Additionally, you can watch TV or play a one game while a friend sets up a match for you and your party in another.
While Nikita is returning for a fourth and final season on The CW, it hasn’t been clear when we’ll see it, with the show only listed as returning midseason. In addition, with the limited six-episode season, there has been the question of how it will air. Last week at Comic-Con, Maggie Q told us (check out the interview below) there was some talk of airing the six episodes in three installments, as two-hour TV movies.
However, asked about Nikita today at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour, CW president Mark Pedowitz revealed, “The game plan for Nikita is not for three ‘two-hour movies.’ It is individual episodes.” He added, “We may end up doing a two-hour finale after we wrap the first four episodes.”
Upon the recent passing of my father and the convergence of his seven sons into one place for his funeral, we were able to reflect on the times when life was so much easier. As we were all taught to work hard and be respectful to others, it hit me that even these two simple principles have disappeared in American society.
We were raised in a time when my father could actually support a family of nine on one paycheck; my mom did not have to work (and could stay home and raise us children); and welfare (which we never needed) was comprised of a book of food stamps, a large jar of peanut butter, and a block of government-provided cheese.
These were times when all of the children in the neighborhood bounced from house to house, played baseball, basketball, football, rode bicycles, and built forts in the woods. Everything was great…as long as we all came running home for dinner when my mom rang the dinner bell (yes, we had one.)
My older brothers would watch the demonstrations of the late sixties and early seventies on the evening news on a tube TV with rabbit ears and mock the hippies and beatnicks for what they were doing. These indeed were simpler times when wrong was still wrong and misdeeds in our family were still addressed with a good old-fashioned spanking.
Unfortunately, now that society has “progressed”, the hippies and beatnicks are now running things in this country, welfare is at an all time high and seen as a way of life, children seldom even play outside as video games (and cell phones have taken them over), social skills are all but dead, it now takes both parents working in order to support just themselves, and the groups being mocked now are the tea party and Constitution-loving Patriots who simply want to preserve the times when America was a moral and mighty nation. My father was blessed to live in such a time, and it is my sincere hope that I can be instrumental in restoring the simpler time that he enjoyed while he was on this earth. John J. Powers Jr., may God rest your soul; and I, your son, will make you proud! As always, stay safe and be aware of your surroundings.
From reality TV table-flipper to the slammer? Teresa Giudice , one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey , was indicted along with husband Joe on tax evasion and fraud charges yesterday. The 39-count indictment included charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, bank fraud, making false statements on loan… …read more
Pakistan on Tuesday elected businessman Mamnoon Hussain as its 12th president, state TV said, to replace deeply unpopular head of state Asif Ali Zardari, whose five-year term expires in September. …read more
The list of Norwich greats is as long as it is memorable, from Trisha Goddard to Tim Westwood, by way of Cathy Dennis, Bernard Matthews and Ed Balls. But one man stands head and shoulders above them all – TV presenter, Disc Jockey and James Bond enthusiast Alan Partridge.
Alan first entered the public consciousness presenting sports news on Radio 4 before hitting a pair of television highs via The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You, although his TV career was tragically cut short when he accidentally shot a man live on air.
Partridge has since been attempting to rebuild his career, first hosting the graveyard slot on Radio Norwich, and more recently presenting Mid-Morning Matters on North Norfolk Digital. And it’s here that we find Alan plying his trade in Alpha Papa, his first foray into feature films.
I just joined this website because I like to type up my church sermon notes each Sunday and email and post them on the internet. I do this on about 4 or 5 Christian sites and been doing it for six years.
I may comment on a question asked on a topic once in a while, but I don’t live on the internet. Sooo….once a week I post my pastor’s sermon on line, email it and mail it out to two elderly aunts. Some people are bed ridden, only see church on TV. I do believe we are in the end times, the last days that Jesus told us about. And…the last days that John told us in Revelation. A lot of people will miss the boat if we don’t keep talking about Jesus and the free ticket he gives us to Heaven. Amen…Hallelujah!! …. Thank You Jesus!
Microsoft is expanding the push for so-called “white spaces” broadband to South Africa, where it will help to deploy the technology in a pilot project serving five primary and secondary schools.
The pilot project is aimed at getting schools in rural parts of the country’s northeastern Limpopo province connected to the Internet. If successful, it could give South Africa a tool that would help the country reach its goal of affordable broadband for 80 percent of the population by 2020.
White spaces are unused frequencies in TV bands, which Microsoft, Google and others advocate making available on an unlicensed basis for wireless broadband. Advocates won approval for that use in 2008 in the U.S., which was the first country to authorize white spaces. To ensure the new networks use only the slivers of spectrum in between licensed uses, devices need to have a database of licensed users and sensors to detect other activity in the band.
Commercial white-spaces networks are just starting to get off the ground in the U.S., but Microsoft has talked with governments in at least 50 other countries about the possibility of making such frequencies available, said Paul Garnett, Microsoft’s director for technology policy.
Things are about to get even more real for two of the stars of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” Teresa Giudice and her husband, Giuseppe “Joe” Giudice, of the Bravo reality TV show were indicted today on 39 counts of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, bank fraud, making false statements on loan applications and bankruptcy fraud. The charges, which were handed down by a federal grand jury also include separate charges for Giuseppe Giudice for failure to file federal income tax returns for tax years 2004 through 2008. …read more
Dell is shipping Project Ophelia devices to early beta testers. PC sales are already suffering at the hands of mobile devices, and now Dell’s Android PC-on-a-stick threatens the relevance of traditional PCs from a different angle.
First, a little about Project Ophelia. The device is about the size of a large USB thumb drive. Instead of just flash-based storage, though, Project Ophelia packs a Rockchip RK3066 processor and 1GB of RAM, as well as both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity into that small space. It also has a microSD card slot to add additional storage if necessary.
It runs on Google’s Android mobile OS. The device demonstrated at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year ran Android 4.1 (a.k.a. “Jelly Bean”), but it seems reasonable to assume Dell will ship the device with the current version of Android before its official launch, which is expected to be the end of this year.
Project Ophelia is not a revolution that will make PCs irrelevant overnight. Android is great at what it does, but much of the business world runs on the Microsoft Office productivity suite and line-of-business or custom applications developed for a Microsoft Windows environment. Project Ophelia is rumored to be a meager $100 and plugs into an HDMI or MHL port on a TV or monitor. HDMI doesn’t transmit power, so it requires a separate USB connection when using that input.
Over the last few years, there has been a significant shift in how we consume digital content from music and movies to books and television (TV). The intersection of new technologies, devices and high speed networks has served to accelerate that change, particularly for TV. If we were to hop into the way back machine, it’s hard to believe that TV consisted of only a handful of channels, programming ceased at some point each night and the picture was in black & white, not color let alone 3D. Yet for all the changes we have seen, the recent past and the coming future are poised to radically shift TV to the point that other than live sporting events and maybe news, we may not be able to recognize broadcast TV any longer. …read more
Whether you’re a millionaire or a middle-class father of two, we all make the same mistakes when it comes to money — we think the more we earn, the happier we’ll be. If you really want to buy yourself a more fulfilling life, it’s not how much money you earn that matters, but figuring out the right way to spend it.
That’s the idea explored in a fascinating new book, “Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending,” written by a pair of renown behavioral scientists, Dr. Elizabeth Dunn and Dr. Michael Norton.
“When it comes to increasing the amount of money they have, most people recognize that relying on their own intuition is insufficient, spawning an entire industry of financial advisors,” they write. “But when it comes to spending that money, people are often content to rely on their hunches about what will make them happy.”
That all ends with this book. We’ve combed through and highlighted five ways to change the way you think about money that will make you happier in the long-run.
You’re Buying Too Many Things and Not Enough Experiences.
In a world where anything and everything can be yours with a credit card and access to the Internet, it’s easy to get swept up by material things. But if you recognized the fact that you could get more satisfaction out of a $50 dinner with friends than that big screen TV or new iPhone, it might change the way you shop.
“Research shows experiences provide more happiness than material goods in part because experiences are more likely to make us feel connected to others,” Dunn and Norton write. “Understanding why experiences provide more happiness than material goods can also help us to choose the most satisfying kinds of experiences.”
To help, here are four questions they suggest asking before you spend money on an experience that may not be as happiness-inducing as others:
1. Does this bring me together with other people?
2. Will this make a memorable story that I will tell for years to come?
3. Is this experience in line with who I am or who I’d like to become?
4. Is this a unique opportunity and something I can’t compare to things I’ve done before?
You’re More Focused on Getting More Money Than Buying More Time
Sometimes, we get too caught up in either working hard to save a buck or working hard to earn a buck to realize what really matters — our time.
“Research suggests that people with more money do not spend their time in more enjoyable ways on a day-to-day basis,” the authors write.”Wealthier individuals tend to spend more of their time on activities associated with relatively high levels of tension and stress, such as shopping, working, and commuting.”
MALIBU, Calif., July 29 (UPI) — U.S. actress and TV personality Leah Remini says she left the Church of Scientology because she didn’t want to be told what to think or to whom she could speak. …read more
DVDs are so analog. Sure, they’re digitally encoded versions of your favorite movies and TV shows, but they’re trapped on physical platters. If you want to watch something, you have to find the disc, slide it into a DVD player—or a computer with a DVD drive—and flip your TV to the proper input.
As DVD players leave the market and DVD drives disappear from PCs, it’s time to free your films from their shiny silver prisons so they’ll still be watchable in the player-free future. As a bonus, ripping your movies off the disc extends your viewing options to your phone, tablet, Roku box, game console, and more.
Once you convert your movie library to digital files, you can store those files on a server and stream them anytime, from anywhere. Media companies are slowly waking up to how convenient this is and are building services like Flixster, Ultraviolet, and Vudu, which offer DVD-to-digital conversions: Pop a disc into your PC, and the service adds it to your online account—at which point you can stream it to an app or to a set-top box.
Each such conversion will cost you a few bucks, however, and you won’t be able to convert some movies (owing to studio-imposed restrictions). But you can take a more hands-on approach and accomplish the same thing yourself, spending little or no money in the process.
If you’re a federal worker facing the prospect of unpaid furlough days this year, you’re probably already worrying about how you’ll live with a 20 percent cut in your income. But federal workers aren’t the only ones who may have to radically alter their budgets to accommodate a drop in their take-home pay. Civilian employees of government agencies and contractors are also seeing shrinking paychecks these days. And plenty of hourly employees in the private sector have seen their hours trimmed back in recent years as businesses reduced hours, renegotiated contracts, or implemented furloughs of their own.
And of course, a pay cut can be a matter of your own choice: If you’re in a two-income family and one spouse transitions to part-time work to take care of the kids, the decline you experience could easily be even steeper than our furloughed public workers face.
Naturally, those who have robust savings accounts and assets can handle such a pay cut more easily than those with fewer resources. But research from Bankrate.com shows that 27 percent of Americans have no emergency savings at all, and 76 percent don’t have enough savings to cover their expenses for six months.
Even if you’re in the well-prepared minority, you’ll still need to make budget adjustments to accommodate your newly reduced income.
Crunching the Numbers
“When a reduction in income takes place, it’s important to list out everywhere you regularly spend money each month and then determine if that spending item is a need or want,” says Larry Rosenthal, a certified financial planner and president of Rosenthal Wealth Management Group in Manassas, Va. “Most people will be able to temporarily suspend some of the ‘want’ spending each month until their income bounces back.”
Bruce McClary, director of media relations for ClearPoint Credit Counseling Solutions in Seattle and a credit counselor for 15 years, says that the average annual household income in the U.S. was $51,404 in March 2013. A reduction of 20 percent would reduce that to $41,124, which means they would need to reduce their spending by $10,281 per year, or about $857 per month. (That’s all before taxes, of course.)
“The average savings rate is 3.2 percent, although that’s far less than the recommended minimum of 10 percent,” says McClary. “A household earning $51,404 would be saving $137 per month at the average savings rate. They should continue to save at least that much even after a pay cut.”
Rosenthal says federal employees, even if they decide to temporarily reduce their contributions to their retirement savings, must make sure they contribute at least 5 percent to their Thrift Savings Plan, because that’s the amount the government matches.
Cost-Cutting Measures
“Start with discretionary variables and some essentials such as your cable TV, cellphone, Internet, magazine subscriptions, groceries, gasoline,” says McClary. “It’s possible, …read more
Google’s new Chromecast promises that it’s the “easiest way to enjoy online video and music on your TV.” Given that it’s only $35, hundreds of thousands of people were excited enough by that promise to order one immediately, leading to sellouts at Best Buy, Amazon and Google’s own online store. But while the device is inexpensive and setup is reasonably straightforward, Chromecast is a work in progress and it’s difficult to recommend, even over more expensive devices from Roku and Apple. …read more
Lousy news from the world of television: Simpsons ‘ co-creator Sam Simon has only months to live because of terminal colon cancer. The diagnosis came just five months ago for the 58-year-old, whose royalties from the show and the rest of his TV career have made him a millionaire many… …read more
I’m mounting a 51 pound TV on tongue and groove panel with 3 inch lag bolts. One of the studs I need to use is behind a groove. Is it a problem if I use that stud and have a gap of about 5/16th between the bracket and the groove? Thanks
San Diego Comic-Con came and went with a whole bunch of madness in between. If you followed IGN’s coverage last weekend, you might have noticed that there were quite a few notable pieces of news that came out of the event.
You can still see all of it over at our Comic-Con index, but we thought it’d be fun to break down the best of the best across movies, TV, and comics.
The surprise of the con, Warner Bros.’ reveal that the sequel to Man of Steel will actually be a Batman/Superman movie shook Hall H like Krypton in its final hours. We know almost nothing about the film aside from the fact that director Zack Snyder and scripter David Goyer will be back, and that it is scheduled for 2015. Oh, and that it’s going to probably be called Batman Vs. Superman. Yes, the Dark Knight returns…
