Labaser: August 2011

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Minecraft Adventure Update 1.8!

Here is an awesome video preview showing off EVERYTHING from the new adventure update, or update 1.8!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Building Modern Warfare 3

Gamespot has an awesome feature showing off Modern Warfare 3's new (yet still normal..) looking gameplay and graphics and how they made it all.

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/video/6331965/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-feature-building-modern-warfare-3?tag=updates%3Beditor%3Ball%3Btitle%3B3

Futuristic Shopping – Groceries via QR codes scanned by Smartphone.

A lot of geeks who grew up watching classic cartoons dreamed of living in a futuristic world like the one we saw depicted in the old-school vision of what future life would be like. Commuting in a flying car, robotic servants and automatic housing that does nearly everything for you at the touch of a button. The future envisioned 50 years ago hasn't arrived yet, but every once in a while, tech news shows us an advance that suggests it is getting just a little bit closer. The portable electronic devices used for communication and entertainment get a little better each year, and visionaries innovate with these platforms to make lives easier a bit at a time. No matter what someone wants to do with their business, it is always easiest to attract customers by appealing to their sense of convenience. Someone who might not pay extra for quality, novelty or might not switch from a brand they are used to is more likely to buy a product based not primarily on price, but convenience. This concept is at the heart of a kind of store in South Korea that looks like it belongs in a cartoon's vision of the future.

When I first heard about a virtual grocery, this is pretty much what first came to mind.

Tesco (who recently changed their name to HomePlus there,) the 2^nd largest grocery store chain in Korea was confronted with a problem. Their largest competitor had many more stores than they did, and opening new locations is a great way to gamble potential profits by greatly increasing overhead. They decided to try an unconventional solution to the problem of not being able to grow and remain competitive without opening many new locations. South Korea has a high population density and many professionals have long working hours and short leisure time, so running necessary errands is inconvenient and stressful. Another thing that is interesting about South Korea is the level of smartphone adoption is extremely high throughout the population as compared to the US and many countries in Europe. Web-based grocery stores have had some limited success, but shopping for your food on a smartphone screen while waiting for the train to or from work isn't really a solution many people will accept.

Tesco decided to take another sort of gamble, with virtual supermarkets in subway stations, life sized pictures of food and drink on shelves that look enough like an actual supermarket for people to be able to shop. The photographs have QR codes that can be scanned with a smartphone's camera to add the product into a virtual shopping cart for home delivery, a service that has been developed with the ability to provide home delivery within hours rather than days. Looking at the virtual stores it is interesting to note that the products aren't lined up, in general with only one on the “shelf” except in cases where there are multiple varieties or flavors, just like actual displays in physical stores. The experimental stores have proven successful even beyond the short period where novelty could be expected to be the primary factor in people trying things out.

I'd like to see QR codes used in the US for more than stupid gimmicks in entertainment.

There are a lot of downsides to doing weekly shopping for the home in a shop like this, and reasons why a similar idea would have trouble taking root here in the US for the moment. For a lot of people, the tactile sense of being able to pick up and look at a container or individual item is very important in selecting something like food. Also, the produce and meat in a virtual supermarket is a photograph of a perfectly fresh item, and anyone who has compared the food inside a container to the picture on the outside knows how different the reality can be from pictures taken for marketing purposes. Whatever is delivered to the home is what is selected at a warehouse before shipping, with the control over quality of the individual piece of fruit, vegetable or cut of meat out of the individual control of the customer. Even with the fastest possible delivery time, there's also something to be said for not wanting to wait for a delivery service to arrive, though in this case, if you REALLY want it now, maybe you're willing to travel to a shop.

Presuming that service quality makes some of those questions a non-issue, and that convenience trumps the rest, there are still logistical differences between South Korea and many other countries. The primary obstacle standing in the way of something like this taking root somewhere outside of South Korea is the rate of smartphone adoption is much lower elsewhere. Virtually 100% of the South Korean population has a mobile phone, and almost a third of those are smartphones. In the US, rate of adoption is on the rise, but isn't where it would need to be for a service like this to be a smart business to open, at least for now. Home delivery in Seoul has already been nearly perfected, something made easier by the extreme population density allowing for a successful delivery service to drop off many packages in a single run. The “convenience factor” starts to tarnish a little in countries that don't have a home delivery service industry developed to the point where it can be run profitably without a lot of extra charges added for the convenience.

Mmmm... pizza.

Personally, if a service like this were available here in the US, and I had a phone capable of taking advantage of it, I'd likely give it a shot. Thinking about trips to the grocery, dealing with crowded parking lots, people rushing through the store itself without being considerate of others, screaming children... I'd sacrifice being able to actually handle an individual item for not having to deal with that, especially if the virtual store was somewhere I had to be daily anyway. When it comes to worrying about the quality of the food, I'd guess that a business like this has to maintain a high level of quality specifically to dispel this sort of concern. In instances of human error or something else resulting in an order filled incorrectly or with food of unacceptable quality, either the business would resolve such (hopefully rare) incidents quickly, or they couldn't expect to stay in business for very long. For now, though, I have to wait. No virtual grocery here yet... and no flying cars.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

User Submitted Screenshots (6)

“Superheroes” on HBO and the Real Life Superhero Movement.

I've written a lot about comics, thought a lot about what it would be like to be a superhero like Batman, no superhuman powers, just a costume and a desire to help out. The comics and films Kick-Ass and Watchmen are all about the idea of regular people who do just that, but they are also fiction. This month on HBO, a documentary aired about individuals who take to the streets of their communities in homemade costumes and try to help their communities in any way they can. The people who engage in this calling, hobby, whatever you want to call it refer to themselves as Real Life Superheroes. The film comes at the phenomenon from many different angles, alternately showing these heroes as inspiring, pathetic, courageous and partially unhinged at different points.

And yes, there are Real Life Supervillains, but they exist almost entirely on YouTube as parodies,
not committing real crimes. They simply mock and lampoon people in the RLSH scene.

The balanced take on the topic starting with the awkwardness of the movement, people in ridiculous suits who seem socially inept, most people who interact with them laughing at them or being patronizing in the way you might treat someone who is mentally handicapped. The police don't seem to know how to handle them, usually telling them to go home, that they don't want to see anyone hurt, a sentiment echoed by Marvel Comics' Stan Lee. Even the “super teams” that seem to have themselves fairly together and who could be taken somewhat seriously at first appear to be comprised of people who have something about them that is somehow a little... off. The people seem to be well meaning, but at first the question of “What would this be like?” can be answered with one word: “Lame.”

The documentary interviews many people and groups, but focuses on a few for most of the film. The New York Initiative, four roommates who train in weapons and martial arts and set up “bait patrols” in Brooklyn attempting to catch muggers trying to molest one of their own. Mr. Xtreme is portrayed as an awkward loner who moves into a van, watches Power Rangers and goes with his mother to a martial arts tournament where, as a white belt hoping to earn a higher rank, he gets his ass kicked. Zetaman, his wife Apocalypse Meow and the Jewish masked hero called Life focus on handing out clothes and food to the homeless in their communities. Dark Guardian's background as a martial arts instructor gives him confidence in his confrontations with DC drug dealers with the help of his sidekick, The Cameraman. Thanatos, the Dark Guardian, dispenses sage wisdom about what it all means, and the former Pro Wrestler (and generically-named) Super Hero shows off his cool gear, including a red sports car with “SUPRHERO” on the license plate. These last two are members of a super-team that also has the most colorful figure in the film.

Even if he is a nut, I'm glad someone like Master Legend is out there,
that he really exists outside the realm of fiction.

Team Justice is an officially recognized Non-Profit Organization based on the activities of an allied group of individuals mostly based in Florida (though Thanatos is active in British Columbia, Canada.) Whether organizing Christmas toy drives, going on patrol for criminals, dispensing food, helping anyone in need by means mundane or adventurous, there is no question that they do a lot of good. They also have as one of their founding members the most interesting individual in the RLSH community, and almost certainly the one who has been active the longest. He may also be certifiably insane. Master Legend believes he was born with a purple veil over his eyes, that he's died multiple times and that God listens to him. He is eccentric, drinking on the job (though he claims never to excess) and has a Swiss WWII army helmet, a modified potato cannon and a home welded “iron fist” that can punch through doors. He claims he started his career at age nine in New Orleans, learning to fight under the cruel influence of his Klansman parents, and beating up a local bully wearing a mask made from an old shirt.

By the end of the film, actual incidents of doing good, if not high-action comic book fare are caught on tape, and even Mr. Xtreme is honored by the Mayor of his city, and begins to recruit others for a super team of his own. Many of the RLSH individuals wear armored bodysuits and carry mace and tasers for personal protection, and seem pragmatic about the possibility that someone may shoot or stab them. Their visibility as symbols often is enough to stop trouble, and drug dealers sometimes give up in frustration when these masked and caped crusaders are about, because no one wants to buy drugs with a bunch of costumed vigilantes standing right there. A refusal to give up, to turn away when they see something wrong makes these people who they are, several of them inspired by the murder and rape of Kitty Genovese who died because people didn't want to get involved. This same story factored into the origin of Watchmen's Rorshach, a fictional hero who would be right at home with Master Legend and Thanatos.

Notably absent from the documentary is any mention of one of the most famous and controversial figures in the RLSH community, Seattle's Phoenix Jones. Jones is the leader of the Rain City Superheroes and has been vocal in his criticism of anyone who calls themselves a superhero but limits their activity to costumed charity work. He's derided them in the media, calling them "Real Life Sandwich Handlers." This has not made him many friends, nor has the incredible amount of publicity he's garnered through his publicist, leading many to criticize him as someone who is involved primarily for personal fame and attention. Journalists and police have had difficulty in establishing how many of Jones' claims are unverifiable but true, or if some of the things he has said to reporters are fabrications or exaggerations. Frequently, other heroes will not work with a journalist who is doing a story on Jones, so this may have factored into the filmmakers' decision to leave him out.

In more recent news, a British superhero calling himself The Statesman gave aid to police during the recent riots in England, escorting scared travelers through areas with roving gangs of thugs. He also directly assisted police in performing arrests, and performed a citizen's arrest of a looter himself during the chaos. The movement, and the film showing it from as many perspectives as possible while retaining entertainment value are both very interesting. I applaud the intent and courage, if not every specific action performed by these people, and recognize the power of them as symbols. I just hope that as more people take up cape and cowl that we don't hear about one of them turning up dead from a gun or a knife. The real life superhero would, as a general rule, say that is a risk that comes with the job.

Angelina Jolie Hairstyles

An individual facial form are not easily categorized in the real world. Most of one person a combination facial forms. Most faces are combinations of two or more of these basic forms. The form of Angelina Jolie's face is a good example. Because the form of the face is the most basic sign that most flatteringly hairstyle will determine, we should analysis own facial form, before one a smart hairstyle... plz do comments if u like.

Angelina Jolie Hairstyles

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Rihanna Hairstyles

Very stylish singer Rihanna always looks great. The secret? Her hair is very well maintained and has a unique hairstyle.lets have look. Lets have a look at some pictures of Rihanna that proves that Gorgeous Rihanna is not so bad in her real life.