Posts Tagged ‘buy’
Peggle Nights Released With DLC in the Future
For those of you who haven’t already heard of Peggle, it’s a highly addicting game that has similarities to Plinko in that you fire a ball from the top and see what it does on the way down. The goal is to hit all of the orange pegs before you run out of balls. Peggle Nights expounds on the game by adding in a new character, 60 new levels, new style shots like “Double Long Shot,” and 60 new challenges to keep you playing all night. The cost of the game is $19.95, and hopefully the original Peggle will receive a price drop soon.
The most exciting feature about the new game is undoubtedly the downloadable level packs that Popcap is planning on creating, and hopefully they will even release a level editor for players to create their own levels, but that has not been confirmed.
iTunes 7.7 Has Come With New iPhone Firmware
Apple recently released iTunes 7.7.0, bringing along its share of new features and bug fixes. The major update actually comes for owners of iPhones and iPod Touches, because Apple updated the firmware of both to v2.0. Version 2’s highlighted feature is the App Store, which has 500+ applications for your pleasure. Other features are support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, which keeps your contacts, calendars, etc up-to-date, GPS tracking, contact searching, Powerpoint and iView viewing support, direct screenshot capturing, MobileMe support, among other things. Sadly, current owners (i.e. not 3G owners) have to buy the firmware update for $20. It is worth noting that everything on your device will be erased after applying the update, so make a backup before you update.
If you have any problems applying the after applying the firmware update, check out this article at MyDigitalLife that talks about how to fix firmware errors.
M-Rated Games Are Harder For Teens to Buy
Each year, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) hires many 13-16 year olds to go shopping. They aren’t just shopping for anything though; these teens are out to buy products that have Parental Advisory Labels, or PAL’s. Specifically, they’re attempting to buy R-Rated movie tickets and DVD’s, PAL’d CD’s, and M-Rated video games.
As you can see by looking at the graph to the left, the sales of M-Rated games to minors has drastically decreased in the past couple years, from 69% being able to purchase the games to 20%. This means that video game retailers are paying closer attention to minors without parents trying to buy M-Rated content.
The FTC doesn’t just stop at grand totals, they track which stores allow the minors to buy the games. If you’d look at the table below, you can see, in order of percentage of sales, the stores that sell M-Rated video games to minors.
As you can see, Gamestop denies almost any sales, while Hollywood Video really doesn’t give a care who they make a buck off of.
Just remember kids, if you want to buy an M-Rated game, bring your mom, dad, or guardian with you to the store so you don’t look like an idiot.
3 Online Music Services – For Free
I’ve been debating lately with other people I know what music service is the best on the web. I naturally decided to do a comparison of the 3 services – Pandora, Free Napster, and Grooveshark – on the blog to give the facts about each.
After going to the website, you are immediately asked what artist or song you want to create a “station” from, you hear something from the band or the song, then you listen to a song that has similar music “genes” or “DNA” to the previous song. In layman’s terms, you can hear song after song of music that has similar qualities, such as “hard rock roots” or “repetitive melodic phrasing.” Anyone that I have talked to agrees that Pandora is the best service for finding new bands, but Pandora has its downfalls too. For one, you can only skip about 5 songs an hour, which I find can be annoying. Another thing is that you can’t repeat or rewind a song, you hear it once and you’re done. Overall, if you’re looking for another band or two to add to your collection, go with Pandora.
Grooveshark is a very unique service in the way that you can buy music. Users upload their music (it doesn’t matter where it came from, as long as it doesn’t have DRM on it) and Grooveshark adds it to the online collection. From there, whenever another person buys a song for $0.99 cents, the uploader gets $0.30 cents towards buying music, Grooveshark keeps about $0.04 cents, and the rest goes to the recording studio. The creators of Grooveshark hope that their service will encourage people to listen to music online and buy it if they like it, knowing that their money isn’t being sent to the wrong people (looking at iTunes here). I like Grooveshark’s initiative, but I’m skeptic about it being a commonly used service to purchase music at.
Lastly, we have Free Napster, and if you don’t know about Napster’s history, it’s some great reading. Free Napster lets you search through their extensive library of music and listen to it for free online like the previous services. What Free Napster nails is the listening part; you can listen to single songs, albums, or anything from one band at a time. The only thing that keeps this service from totally rocking is that some songs are only 0:30 second previews. I’ll admit this is rare, but it is very annoying when you come across a whole band’s library of previews. If you’re looking for your music fix from one or two bands, Free Napster is the way to go.
All in all, I would crown the winner to be Pandora. I mean, I’ve been using it the whole time I was writing this post because I love finding new bands that sound like the ones I already love. Whatever service you go with, just be aware of the limitations and advantages before you start saying it will take over the Internet world with its pwnage.