A while back, During CE Week, we mentioned that we saw some of the new offerings from Audio-Technica and how much we wanted to take a closer look at the ATH-W55 aka the Solid Bass headphones. We recalled that these headphones were packing a fairly serious punch during the show, but now that lights have come down and the crowds have dispersed, it’s time to really see how well these headphones sound.
Continue reading Review: Audio-Technica ATH-WS55 Headphones
So not too long ago we, took a look at the highly talked about Yamakasi Catleap Q270. It was a beautiful monitor that performed well, but calling it barebones in its features and connections was an understatement. Well, we recently decided to double down on all of that desktop real estate and add another monitor to the mix. It was certainly an adventure and we learned a few things along the way that we thought you might like to know.
Continue reading Yamakasi Catleap Q270 Update: Doubling-Down
The mobile space is an interesting area. The price of decent to excellent hardware is going to cost somewhere in the $500 mark for base level models and at the same time, the processing power is leagues below mid to high level laptops and desktops.
Or at least that’s what we thought until the Samsung Galaxy S III showed up on our door.
Let us put a thought out on the table from now, just so that everyone is on the same page. This is easily in the top 5 for fastest phones ever released to the public. There’s so much computational power in this phone that current software won’t pose any problems unless coded poorly and that the future for smartphones is so bright, we’re all going to have to wear shades.
About 4 years ago, NCSoft announced that they were working on a MMORPG game called Blade & Soul. This wasn’t some run-of-the mill MMO, this was to be a MMO that would have the masses “going gorrilla” with it’s fast-paced action, deep combat, and character designs by the amazingly talented Hyung Tae Kim. Seriously, if you’re not familiar with his work, hit up Google and educate yourself. You’ll be glad that you did.
That was 4 long years ago. Along with that announcement, a trailer (of epic proportions) was released and nary a word was mentioned after that. That all changed a few days ago when NCsoft launched the English language version of the Blade & Soul site. Information is scarce right now, but the game does look like it’s using some form of the Unreal engine, most likely Unreal 3.
What we do know is that if the game-play from some of the trailers actually translate to the final game, then this is going to be an MMO for the history books. NCsoft is really playing up the action and more specifically, the combos of each class. There are 6 classes: Destroyer, Blademaster, Summoner, Kung-Fu Master, Force Master, and Assassain, and all are extremely deadly. We noticed that the combos shown off in the game-play trailer aren’t quite as fantastic as some of the pre-choreographed fight, but they were still very impressive (and acrobatic).
Like we said, details are practically nonexistant right now, so pricing and timing are very much up in the air. Based on what we know of NCsoft’s other major MMO’s, Aion and Guild Wars, Blade & Soul can either be a Free-to-Play game or pay for the physical game and there won’t be a subscription fee. While we are always fans of free, we have the distinct feeling that this will be a free subscription game only. We’re not complainingg though.
For more info on the 4 races, character classes, and the like head over to http://us.bladeandsoul.com/en/ and poke around. We’ll leave you with the official trailer released a few days ago.
Have you been reading about everyone is cutting the cord these days? It seems like every tech site out there has some story about how you can take back your life and money by giving your evil cable provider the boot and saying “Sayonara!” to your cable bill. Granted, there are a massive amount of options these days for streaming video content to the television that we’re not going to get into at the moment. We get the odd feeling that most of the stories that we’ve read seem to either forget or fail to consider one thing: the solutions they provide aren’t girlfriend/wife friendly.