Marvel Studios announced who the director of The First Avenger: Captain America will be, Joe Johnston. When I read the name the first thing that came to mind was Jurassic Park III, the second thing that came to mind was fuck that. Then I started thinking and at the back of my head I knew he’d done something else, something better. So I went to IMDB and looked up Joe Johnston and all was right with the world.

Two movies leapt out at me when I read over his resume. The first was The Rocketeer, which I love. The Rocketeer was a terribly underrated movie. The acting was solid and the story was fun. Most importantly though the action sequences were well shot and easy to follow. The emotional scenes were well framed and the director didn’t get in the way of the story with his filming. In fact the performance from Timothy Dalton made me wonder if the one who did the Bond movies was a doppleganger. That movie was enough to balance out Jurassic Park III and make me believe it was the studio that screwed the pooch there. The next movie was a much bigger deal to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Belief is powerful. Belief can heal and it can destroy. I believe in a lot of things but until now I didn’t know what it was to believe in a person. I’ve never been about the individual when it comes to belief. Belief in one person is dangerous, I’m someone who believes in ideas. I’m still someone who believes in ideas. I believe in the ideas of Barrack Obama and believe in his ability to bring change to this country.

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I’m ready for the change.

I’m flipping back and forth through election coverage and I’m noticing something. It seems that all the news channels have gone technology happy. We have holograms on CNN, virtual rooms on NBC. It’s like they’re trying to be hip with cheap technology tricks. What I want is good coverage not smoke and mirrors to make boring coverage seem interesting. Sadly most of the coverage is bland at best even with the glitz.

I’m watching my first election coverage of the evening right now. So far I like what I’m seeing but we all know it’s far from over. Still Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York have all been called for Obama, that’s important. I’m not going to live blog this election like I did the last one. Just a status update or two at most. Any little things I have to say I’ll post on twitter. I’m very hopeful right now.

Live Mesh proves that Microsoft gets it. It’s taken a long time for Microsoft to realize the importance of the cloud and cloud computing, but with Live Mesh we’ve seen a killer app that really gets it.

The concept of Live Mesh is pretty simple and not really new. Basically it’s a way to store your documents online. The real difference in Mesh is not just about online storage, it’s about syncing files. When you create a Live Mesh folder on the Live Mesh Desktop you can access it from anywhere. By that I mean any web browser, or any Windows, OSX or Windows Mobile device with the software installed. When you’re using the actual application it seamlessly keeps your local version of that folder in sync with the online version. Sounds simple and really it is.

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That is all.

We’re quicky approaching our 100th episode (if you combine vol. 1 and vol. 2) and our 4 year anniversary. Look for something special the week of November 17th. Anyway, here’s what Jeff and I covered.

• NaNoWriMo
• Microsoft News
  • Live Mesh
  • Office Online
  • Azure
  • Windows 7
  • Win Mob 6.5
• The next step in Netbooks

 

 Maximum Geek Vol. 2 Ep. 29 [67:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s official, there’s a new Star Wars MMO coming and it’s called Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s being developed by Bioware, the company behind Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). KOTOR is one of the most popular Star Wars games of all time. Star Wars: The Old Republic will be set in a time period 3,500 years before the Star Wars films. It’s a time where Jedi and Sith are abundant and the Republic is at the peak of its power. In short it’s the perfect setting for a Star Wars MMO made by a company that really gets the Star Wars license.

We don’t have many details at this point, in fact the details are so few I almost didn’t post this. However there are a couple of things I wanted to talk about which are promising. First of all it sounds like this is going to be a role playing game first. There’s talk about an emphasis on the personal story, in fact it sounds like it will have a strong solo aspect, since they talked about companion characters which are customizable. It sounds to me like this may be a very non-traditional MMO. Other than that all we really know is the only in game footage they showed was a pre-alpha build. That means we’re probably looking at a couple of years before release.

I’m worried that letting this cat out of the bag so long before release could be a problem. A long wait like that often sets players up for disappointment. Also any details they do release are subject to change and over reaching is common in MMOs. Still it’s too early to worry about any of that really. Hopefully we’ll see some screenshots soon, it sounds like the game will have a striking visual style, concept art come to life was one of the terms used.

Anyway, I followed Star Wars Galaxies for 3 years, I’ll definitely be keeping up with SW:TOR.

Hey it’s us, we’re still alive and there’s a new Max Geek, we even kept it under an hour. Here’s what we covered.

• Comicbook movie news
• McCain vs. youtube
• Google, evil or no?
• New Macbooks
• Netbooks
  • Jeff loves him some 2133
  • $300 EeePc
  • Netbooks for kids
• Touch HD rumors

 

 Standard Podcast [56:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (95)