There are many games developed every year, one better than the other. Divided by categories, graphics, gameplay they all share in the end the same idea: scoring big revenues. But not all of them can achieve this goal. Most of them get some attention from the audience and only few games become popular and in the end true cultures.

It is the case of GTA franchise or Grand Theft Auto. The game is at its forth installment and has been released for the first time simultaneous on both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Based on the RAGE engine and with some help from the Euphoria - a realistic movement and behavior engine, the game has all the feature you need. Also keep in mind that this is the most expensive game in the history, with 1000 developers and 100$ millions spent.

After the first week it seems like this game is one of the best selling games of the year and maybe with some luck can become one o the best selling ever. It sold over 6 million copies worldwide with a total value of over $500 million in its first week. Also the reviews were positive from all game reviewers out there.

Kudos for this awesome game and … Start Game!

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Several days ago I wrote about the new interface form the Gigablast search engine. It seems like Gigablast isn’t the only one retouching the design. Today when I was searching on most of the search engines, my eyes were disturbed by Microsoft’s search engine - Live.com.

Live.com had a good interface in the past. Actually it was my second favorite after Ask.com, although the search results were better. Back to the interface, I was quite surprised with the simplicity and clear design lines. Also the options from the past interface vanished and now the user has only the search. Nice move. This is actually kinda old school, giving the user the ability to … SEARCH.

Kudos for the move, a bold move and hopefully successful as well. Live is ALIVE.

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Do you remember good old Trillian, the multi instant messenger with nice interface and simple yet powerful features? Well, I do remember and I honestly liked the application - Trillian 3.1.
But I also remember that at the end of 2006 Cerulean Studios - the company behind the product, made some announcements regarding the upcoming version of Trillian - Trillian Astra.

So, I did a little research in order to see how old is Trillian Astra. It seems that the first mention of the product was in May 2006 along with this login screenshot.

At the end of November 2006, Cerulean Studios launched a preview site for their product. In January 2007 a web version was released. Also, to keep up with the trend in July 2007 they announced a new custom design for the iPhone. Am I going too fast ? No, actually after one year of development they had not much.
Well at this time, at 2 years from the first word they are still in alpha testing. Good work guys!

Oh in the end here is the definition for vaporware:
Vaporware is a software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle.

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There has been a time where you needed an icon in your work. I don’t know … maybe just as a placeholder or maybe the final graphic element. Well most people believe that besides Google Image Search and some major search engines, there are no other resources for this kind of artwork.

Well the concept of icons search was niche a while ago, but now there are several products on the market to satisfy every need. This fact combined with the repeated release of new icons packs under different licenses were good reasons for developing search engines exclusively for icons.
In this case the search engine covered here is Iconfinder.net. First of all, compared to other search engines of any type, the user interface from Iconfinder is unique and with a very nice design.

With simple yet effective features like background color (black or white), tag system, license info or icon size selection this is a great tool in the development and design process. A big advantage is also the availability of Crystal Project icons pack which is from my point of view the best and most comprehensive icon pack online. Another important factor is the scalability and good response time of the search engine.
Also there is a widget available for Mac users for improved accessibility.

In the end I think that this is a good product and also a very useful one. Kudos for the developer and keep up the good work.

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Well I wanted to add a video section before but now this piece of work is forcing me to do this.
Do you remember Snatch? No? How about this lines:

Avi: Should I call you Bullet? Tooth?
Bullet Tooth Tony: You can call me Susan if it makes you happy.
……………………………………………………………….
Policeman: So, what you doin here?
Turkish: I’m taking the dog for a walk. What’s the problem?
Policeman: What’s in the car?
Turkish: Seats and a steering wheel.


Well, we all remember Guy Ritchie for some reason and also we remember those awesome movies. It seems like Nike hired him to do the next football spot (soccers for US). Things got out of control and this is the final result:

Awesome. Brilliant from my point a view. Different style, noncommercial but with very familiar faces and with cool fluid story. This is big. My only question is who is the player in the spot? Does anyone know?

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I don’t want to upset people around, but I’m not a Star Wars fan. Well actually I didn’t saw more than 10 minutes so therefor I cannot express my opinion. In exchange I loved Alien series, space movies and I liked the concepts for spaceships developed by various artists.

A couple of hours ago I’ve stumbled into a site with great resources in spaceships drawings. I’m sure that this is the only site but I will give my graphic rating. First of all the site has different styles of designs from sketches to 3D rendered images. Also various artists are showcased here.
You wounder what site I’m talking about. Well this one is a blog called Concept Ships and I was simply amazed by the diversity of designs and originality in most concepts. It is true that the concepts based on Star Wars are as you guessed here, in high number and with nice graphic lines. But there are also visionary concepts and well polished designs. Check the site and judge for yourself.

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Lately one of the hottest topic in social networking has been the powerful entrance of the games communities. This is a very good concept with many examples out there and with great adoption from the crowd. But is it profitable?
Well I don’t know that aspect, but I know for sure that it’s addictive. I have some friends who share the same gaming passion and we like the idea of playing small intensive games and at the same time with the humor element embedded. One site that I like particularly is InstantAction.com with no more than 5 or 6 games and many members. The site doesn’t have games made in Flash - it is build upon the engine developed by GarageGames. It has very powerful 3d capabilities and it is quite scalable.

Not only that it has these powerful gaming features, but also it has community features, realtime chat and many more. Kudos for the effort and skills - I really appreciate the work. Now let me go back and play some ThinkTanks.

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Hello, my name is Andy Gongea and I’m a movie addict. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen a good film.

Uuuuuuha! Yes, Iron Man is a good movie. I’ve been expecting an action movie - comic book type for a while. And now it is here. Decent script, good actors and great CG for a very enjoyable trip at the cinema. That is in my opinion regarding a movie like Iron Man - a good and enjoyable experience at the cinema. With nice storyline and humor placed randomly in the script and also with a help of a good visual effects team behind, Jon Favreau made a very good impression with this movie.
He had help from actors like Robert Downey, Jr., Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges and also a solid base regarding the popularity of this comic book. With this advantages I’m sure that it will be quite a hit in the boxoffice chart. Kudos!

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I was wondering what is the pulse of the freelancing industry, mainly the status of the freelancing sites. My concern was that due to the explosion of the personal blogs and web pages, the freelancing sites will experience lower traffic. As you will see in the image below I was wrong. For this image I’ve used 5 of the most popular freelancing sites: Guru.com, Elance.com, GetAFreelancer.com, RentACoder.com and ScriptLance.com

So, with the help of Compete I did a comparison between this 5 freelancing web sites and here are the results:

As you can see in the timeline, all sites are going well. In just one year the number of people has doubled in the worst case: Guru and multiplied by 4.6 in the case of GetAFreelancer.
So it looks like the clients are getting used with the freelance approach instead of using well established companies for different tasks. Kudos for these sites.

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I was looking the other day for a simple application to make some diagrams and elements connection ( for again my upcoming website ). And while I was surfing the web and finding all kind of applications, one got my attention. It was in a top 100 learning applications and I was curious about its features.

So I typed in http://www.bubbl.us and the play began.
The application has a simple interface with couple of embedded buttons. You can perform several actions like adding child, changing color, position and others. Also it has a good response time, being developed in flex and has a good interface. It doesn’t have complex features but for its target it is a great tool. Maybe in time, new needs will require new capabilities. Anyway … I like it!

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