This is really just a teaser for the the strategy guide that Prima Games produces for just about every game that comes out. I don’t buy them as I think the game should come with a full set of instructions and I don’t want to support this fleecing of the public. In fact after I “aquire” the guide via alternate means I typically share it with my friends. That’s right, sticking it to the man the best way I know how. Greedy smucks.

Anyway, this teaser is free to the public so feel free to download it and give it a look guilt free. Afterwards, maybe you can explain the whole guilt thing. Sounds fascinating.

Well, I got a chance to play around with Spore this evening. Of course, I’m just talking about the creature creator. The actual game hasn’t been released yet. It’s was fun creating the various creatures and I have to say I am looking forward to playing the game once it’s released.

I think you could spend quite some time just seeing what you could come up with using the creature creator. Seems to be very intuitive and I was able to hit the ground running without having to read anything. It will be interesting to see what they come up with as far as game play goes but since I have liked all the previous Sim and Civilization games, I am sure this one will be worth the price of admission. Of course only time will tell if the game is any good or not but expectations are high.

(Click the related videos button on the player above to see the other dragons some “Sporians” have created.)

If you want to try out the Spore Creature Creator for yourself, you can download it by clicking the image below. It’s available for both Mac and PC users.

On one of my missions to help someone out with a setting in some program they were using I stumbled across this handy little app. If only I had this back in my tech support days it would have saved me countless hours of phone support with a client. Jing allows you to create screen shots or videos to use when trying to explain how to use a piece of software or some element of their computer’s operating system. When using the screen shot feature it gives you several options to annotate the image to get your point across. A very useful feature for tech writing. In the past I have used Photoshop to create my images for tech papers but as everyone does not have access to Photoshop this application will do quite nicely. In the image below you can see some examples of the annotations provided by Jing.

When a simple pic won’t suffice you can create a video showing step by step instructions complete with audio. This is easily the best feature of Jing as nothings gets a person through a jam like video with audio prompts showing them exactly what they need to do in order to accomplish their task. A friend new to Mac computing and Adium (a multi-client IM application for Mac OS) asked me how to set a custom away message over email, I launched Jing and created this video in a matter of minutes…

Creating a custom away message in Adium

Much faster than typing out the steps in an email and left little chance of them not understanding how to do what they wanted with their application.

Jing sits off to the side of your screen and when you need it all you have to do is hover your mouse over it and you’re moments away from creating a screen shot or video you can share via chat, a web forum or email. Jing places a link to the media you created on your clip board, so all you have to do it paste it into your conversation. It’s a cross platform application so there are versions available for both Mac and PC users and at the current time Jing is free. That’s right, free.

So, if you want to check it out head on over to their web site and give it a try. The only thing you have to spend is your time.

So I finally got around to trying the demo for the game based on the hilarious web comic featuring Tycho and Gabe. I have enjoyed their comic for years for the simple reason that I felt that we, the comic artists and I, shared the same opinion of games and the game industry as well as other gear head topics. Part of the reasons I found their digs on Call of Duty 4 or Battle Field 2 so funny was I remember thinking the same thing before they spelled it out their comic strip. Maybe you had to be there. Regardless, I have always felt their brand on humor was spot on with my own and have shared many a chuckle with others on the web over the years. So when I heard they were planning a game of their own I thought it would be cool as well as ballsy for a couple of guys that lam bast game developers with a lot of their strips.

You may have seen one of their banner ads on a web site in the last week. You would remember this one as it pretty much quotes one seriously misguide forum troll who blasts Penny Arcade. The fact that they decided to quote him in one of the games ads is priceless. Talk about getting the last laugh. That move alone made me want to plop down my twenty bucks! Here’s a link so you can read about it yourself.

Banner Ad explanation

So, after playing a little of the game demo I decided to go ahead and buy it. The humor was there, the same artistic flair of the comic and it looks gorgeous on my Mac. At $20 it’s not a bad deal and as I heard one other net gamer say, “$20 bucks for six hours or entertainment is cheap now days when you consider most people pay $10 dollars for less then 2 hours at a movie theater.” Good point, I say.

If you are interested in trying it out, I encourage you to download the demo from their web site.

I picked up a new toy this week. It’s basically an open external hard drive enclosure for your SATA hard drives. Now I have tons of ATA drives lying around, so this is very handy for me but when I saw it I also saw the potential for it’s use as a tech head. With this device you could mount the hard drive from your computer, as long a it’s an SATA drive, and retrieve your files should something go wrong with your system. Now, if your computer is less than 3 years old then chances are you have a SATA drive as your computer’s hard drive. The device connects to your computer via a USB cable, you drop your SATA drive into it and power it on and it mounts the drive on your desktop or in Windows Explorer if you are on a PC. It also has applications as a security device. You can transfer your sensitive files to it and then stick the drive in a safe once you have ejected the drive from the the device. You could also very easily send the hard drive, I’m thinking of the smaller size here that you find in your notebook computers, via UPS or standard mail if you had a project that was larger than 8GB. Think video projects.

It will mount all SATA drives, 2.5 and 3.5 drives and will transfer files at the rate of a standard USB 2.0 connection. (480/mb) I haven’t tried mounting a laptop SATA drive yet, I don’t have a 2.5 drive here at the house at the moment, but I am sure it will work just as well as the three larger drives I have tried. I’m very happy with it and at just over $30 dollars, you can beat the value.

One of the images below you can see that the drive it sitting next to my Mac but I also hooked it up to my Windows box and it worked as advertised there as well.

Penny Arcade

Anyway, after reviewing games for eons they decided to throw their hat into the game development arena and have come up with a game called On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One, which is due to be released in tomorrow. If it’s half as entertaining as their comic strip it will be well worth the $20. Check out the video below for a preview.

IronKey: Meet The IronKey Secure Flash Drive

If you want some serious protection for your USB key, this thing is worth a look. The price is a little steep but I guess you are paying for all the tech that went into it.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Obviously, if you would like to keep people from using the USB ports on your computer to prevent them from doing this to your machine or copying data from your hard drive, well, that works too!

USB Port Blocker – Pack of 4, Colour Code: Blue | USB Light, Fan & Security Locks | USB & FireWire | LINDY UK

The simple and effective tool for blocking access to a computer’s USB port!

USB Port Blocker – Pack of 4, Colour Code: Blue
With this neat little device, system administrators can physically prevent users from connecting Pen Drives, MP3 Players and other USB Mass Storage Devices to their computers to copy data, introduce viruses etc.

The USB Port Blocker is made up of a combined ‘key’ and ‘lock’ assembly which plugs into the USB port. To use, simply plug the ‘keylock’ into the port and release the latch – the lock remains in place! Plug the key back into the lock to remove. Easy!

* Physically blocks access to a USB port
* Quick and easy to use
* Consists of 4 locks and 1 key

* 5 different colour code versions available: Pink, Green, Blue, Orange, White
* Each key only works with a lock of the same colour
* Also available in packs of 10 (without key)

To access the stream, click the link at the top of this web site titled “BES Scanner“.

Also, I have instructions on that page on how to get the RTSP protocol to work with Firefox if you are on a PC. Mac users shouldn’t have any problems at all launching the stream. If you have any questions you can comment here or on the BES Scanner page.

Cheers!