So I got into the beta for the star trek online (STO) mmorpg game and well not very impressed with what they got going. I understand that it is a beta and as such there are bound to be bugs, glitches or other anomalies with the system. Except that by todays standards when a game is only about a week from release then maybe the vast majority of the bugs should be fixed before the game goes live and well they likely won't be. Bugs aside the game wasn't very fun either and had a real feeling of just being slapped together.

Out of curiosity maybe or general interest but I find that all this big push to "Cloud" computing and clustering lately has still been missing something. All the different cloud computing systems out there seem to all be very much application based. Like running clustered apache setups that allow resources to be dynamically reassigned between users of the system. Now this isn't bad per say, but it is missing the point by a bit. Not saying that the idea is bad or offering services in a cloud is off, just incomplete.

Star Wars Galaxies(SWG), what can honestly be said that hasn't been already? All the reviews before all the hate and discontent and everything else would make one think that there really isn't much left to be said about the game. The last 6 years I have been playing the game off and on, but pretty much kept anything I had to say really about it to myself.

In terms of Addictive games that are available on the iPhone/iPod Touch I have to say this one fell into that category for the most part for me. Overall the game is extremely simple and in its simplicity is the addictive qualities. Basically setup a lemonade stand and try to be a successful Business person from running it. A relative few controls to achieve this like location of the stand, price of the lemonade per cup, advertising, hiring staff, upgrades/equipment for the stand, etc...

Apparently at some point not too long ago Blizzard released a bunch of rules for Mods. Those rules can be found here. Now this is a good thing a really good thing for that matter as there has been a fair amount of Mods going in all kinds of directions including a couple that you had to purchase the premium version. Really it is up to blizzard to make the final determination on what kind of practices are allowed and which are not in regards to writing Mods.

In fact mac has this nifty speech recognition built-in to the OS that simply can be turned on from the preference and includes a fair decent command set. What makes it more powerful is that the command set can easily be extended by applescript and attached to individual programs. It also works fairly well with video games, like World of Warcraft and I am sure with other games. There are a few things with the speech recognition that need to be taken into consideration when using it for gaming.

Onlive
Ok, I am going to jump on this one too as it is interesting and it is creating a fair amount of media buzz surrounding it. First of all I think it is a neat idea with some fascinating prospects around it. There is a lot of flexibility with the system and some possibilities game wise that may not have/could not have fully been explored before.