Read this article about cloud computing in respect to the gaming industry this morning. David Perry, famed game developer, explains about how gaming industry is heading on a very "clear" path, moving from cassette/floppies to optical media to physical hard drives and ultimately into the cloud. He is now founder of Gaikai.com, a website that lets you play premium 3D games just using your web browser.

Very interesting service, I must say. Does this mean that we don’t need to ever upgrade our computer to play the latest game? Does this mean that we can play resource consuming Crysis2 using old computer, as long as it can run flash or java?

I think there are some challenges that have to be addressed in order for the concept to work, such as:

• Performance: Can we really play latest game without having performance issue? is there any limitation as to how high can we push the settings? I assume that there will be limitation, or otherwise everyone would want to crank to the highest settings. This is not a bad thing if your server farms can handle it.
• Connection: How reliable the connection to the server will be? Will we be disconnected from time to time? What’s the minimum connection speed requirement?
• Latency: If we play online, means that we need to add connection latency between our computer to the server. If he says that there will be zero latency, that’s Bull. Try playing online game, while your sister is watching youtube or your roommate is downloading torrent, i bet you will see your latency spiking up. This issue will definitely exists, but the question is how good/bad it will be?
• Server: How reliable and scalable is their server farm? How many users can they handle? What happens if one of the server fails, what is the contingency plan? This is important, especially for gaming, as it needs a big amount of computing resources and you don’t want to lose any of your gaming data.
• Integration: Any special requirements for games to be able to be played on the platform? If the answer is yes, then they’re in a big trouble.
• Licensing: Can they have only one game license per server to be used by many users?

I doubt that they can completely overcome the above challenges (at least not in near future), but I do hope that they can be successful on their platform. If they can overcome the above challenges up to the point where its acceptable by the masses, what would happen to the gaming card industry?

RWendi

Everyone will eventually come to “not enough” storage issue. I had hit that problem few years ago and solved it by getting a 500 Gb Western Digital My Passport Essential.

This little hard drive last me about a year before I have to start deleting some data to preserve some space. However, 500 Gb is still 500 Gb and I’m running out of “non-essential” data to delete. Thus, it is time for me to get a new storage.

Being very satisfied with the My Passport Essential, I decided to get a storage by Western Digital again. This time I’m going for 2 TB MyBook World Edition II series.

Why I chose this? MyBook World Edition II is a NAS, meaning that I don’t need to worry about plugging and un-plugging USB cables, as long as I’m connected to the network, the extra storage is there. It’s a dual hard-drive configuration, which offers more flexibility and Raid Mode. Lastly, as you can see from the picture, this thing looks classy! It’s perfect for SOHO use.

RWendi

Great article by tomshardware comparing all the leading web browsers in the market. From the test done by them, it proves that how I felt was right that IE 9 is a big improvement in speed.

• Web Browsers Grand Prix 3.
• Web Browsers Grand Prix 4 (includes Firefox 4).

RWendi

After using IE 9 for couple of days now, I have to say that I’m pretty impress with it. I know it’s only a couple of days, but seriously Microsoft finally did a good job on improving Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer 9 comes with a new UI, clean and simple. As you can see below, by default it only has an address bar, IE tabs, and 5 buttons (back, forward, home, favourite, and settings). This of course very similar to Google chrome UI, just some re arranging of the controls, but still a welcome changes.

Similar to Google Chrome, the address bar in IE 9 is also serve as a search bar. It uses Bing as its default search engine, but this can be changed to other search engines.

The best thing that is greatly improved by IE 9 is speed. Internet Explorer 9 is a speed king. It’s comparable of that Google Chrome. The old days of slowness of Internet explorer is gone now thanks to IE 9. I have no actual data to prove this, but I’m pretty sure you can find them on the net. Just by using it, I can tell speed improvement is there. A LOT!!

With IE 9, Internet Explorer now a better HTML5 Web Browser than IE 8. Why better? because it partially supports HTML 5. For some reasons Microsoft only implemented parts that they think are most important. Of all the web browsers that supports HTML 5, Internet Explorer 9 scores the lowest in HTML5 Test. Considering how people are fuzzing about HTML5, I think IE 9 should fully support HTML 5.

The only problem with Internet Explorer 9 is that it’s only available for Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP 2. This means for XP users, they have to settle for other browsers (IE 8, Chrome, Firefox, etc). This’ a big blow for Internet Explorer 9, or Internet explorer itself. Windows XP still owns more than 50 percent of OS market share, if XP users want to use Internet Explorer, they have to use IE 8. Lets face it, Internet Explorer 8 could not compete with Chrome or Mozilla. They really need to consider to support Windows XP too.

RWendi

A few years ago Microsoft released a program called Microsoft Bizspark that help tech startup companies getting started with their business. This program allows its member to own and use Microsoft software commercially during the duration of the program (which is 3 years). As long as your business’ qualified (privately held, less than 3 years, and earning below USD 1M), you will get the following for just $300:

• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise,Workgroup, and Web Edition
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, web edition
• BizTalk Server 2009 R2 Branch, Standard, and Enterprise Editions
• SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites Enterprise
• More

Last night when I was considering to join the program, I found out that Microsoft had released a similar program called Microsoft Website Spark. This program is targeted for web professionals and it offers different set of softwares, as follows:

• Visual Studio Professional with MSDN subscription
• Expression Studio (1 user) and Expression Web (up to 2 users)
• Windows Web Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2008 Web Edition

Unlike Microsoft Bizspark program, Website Spark cost nothing. All you need to do is sign up, fill in some details, and voila, you can start downloading visual studio right away. It is the easiest and free way to own Microsoft Visual Studio, Windows Server, and SQL Server. I joined this program in a heartbeat, and has started using Visual Studio 2010 for my next project. I think this is a very good approach by Microsoft to broaden exposure of its development software. Highly recommended!!

RWendi