iPhone Bugs, Still?
I have to say I hear a ton of complaints about the iPhone signal and this and that all the time. Maybe I am one of the lucky ones, but I have had no such problems. In fact my iPhone 3G works great in my house here most phones don’t get very good signal at all. Chime in and let me now how your experience has been thus far.
Star Wars The Clone Wars: My Thoughts
If you are a Star Wars fan, it doesn’t get better than seeing the action on the big screen. So naturally when I heard about The Clone Wars TV series doing a movie debut, I was totally stoked. I mean this could very well be the last time we see a new Star Wars film on the big screen. Going into the film I was extremely excited and eager to see how they adapted the story. I purchased my tickets a week early, and arrived at the theater about 2 hours a head of the movies play time on opening night. To my surprise I was the only one! Now I live in Raleigh North Carolina, which isn’t exactly New York City, but needless to say, I expected a line, maybe members of the 501st, a clone trooper, some chick with buns in her hair, somethin! That excitement of seeing a Star Wars film on opening night just wasn’t there. Eventually the seats in the theatre began to fill up, but only to about 30% full when the movie finally striated. To me this was just weird, I mean its FREAKING STAR WARS ON THE BIG SCREEN! Apparently not everyone was as excited to see it as I was. So I had this odd sense of gloom, and melon collie as the film started, for no real reason, I just couldn’t shake it. That was until the film finally kicked off, the traditional opening of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far away…….” Then BAM I was hit with the new opening score which was a nice mix of the original, but with a slightly new twist. I immediately felt excited again. The movie was and exciting and action packed, and being animated, the characters were able to flip, twirl, and engage in some very neat battle scenes and it all look natural. The characters themselves had almost like a “wooden puppet” quality about them. What I mean by that is they looked less like CGI, and more like real life action figures in motion. The lightsaber battles were awesome and the camera angle in the battles with the clone troopers was a very nice touch. It made you feel like you were right there in the action. The characters were portrayed well. Obi-Wan was witty and smart, Anakin was strong and reckless, Ashoka was young, feisty, and had a 14 year old’s attitude. The nick names she gave everyone kinda reminded me of Han Solo, calling threepio goldie locks and the princess all sorts of teasing nick names. The plot was decent, nothing that blew my mind, but at the same time this essentially was a pilot episode marketed as a movie. I think that is a very important thing to realise when watching The Clone Wars. It is not a traditional “Feature length film” it is 3 TV episodes strung together and shown on the big screen. So no, it is not as epic as any of the 6 previous films. It is still Star Wars on a big screen, and if you are a fan, that is all you really need to put a smile on your face. If anything the movie did a great job of getting me excited about the TV series. I really want to see how the story develops and how the incorporate new perspectives into the franchise. The way I look at it is, was The Clone Wars good enough to be it’s own stand alone movie? No. Was it meant to be? Absolutely not. It was a peak of things to come in the TV series, just on a big screen. And lets be real here, if they didn’t do it on the big screen, and made it a straight to DVD or TV movie, wouldn’t all of us Star Wars fans would have wanted to see it in the theatre anyway. I know I would.
Phonesaber pulled!? WTF!!!
Well it looks like he mighty legal hands have swooped down and yanked phonesaber from the app store. Looks like it is due to legal issues with THQ owning the rights to StarWars related apps on the iPhone. Which sucks for those of you that did not get a hold of this gem. According to the article below, THQ supposedly wants to work with the developer of phonesaber to create a “official version”, which I am sure will not be free. Click the link to tread the rest of the details. Oh and bow your head in silence for a truly bad ass app.
Phonesaber Pulled From App Store
iPhone App Review: Pandora Radio
WOW is all I can say about this app. Ok not really, I can say much more, but WOWd is what I am. First off, this is my first time using Pandora Radio, I wasn’t even aware that there is also a desktop app as well. The premise behind Pandora is very simple, you choose a song or an artist to start things off and Pandora will then find other music similar to your choice and begin streaming these songs to your very own “channel”. You can have many different channels, like one for rock, one for hip hop, and one for blue grass On the Player itself you will see buttons for thumbs up, a thumbs down, volume control, pause/play, bookmark, skip, and music info. The thumbs up/down is where the magic happens. When you “thumbs down” a song it will remove it from your channel, when you “thumbs up” a song, Pandora will find other artists and songs like it and add them to your channel. Say you hear a song you like and want to make a note of the artist, you can use the bookmark button. You then can go to the desktop version and see your bookmarks. You can get direct links to amazon or iTunes to download the song, artists information and bios, and other like music. Another neat thing is the music info button, when you tap the button it will pop up a text box that explains why Pandora chose that song to add to your channel. In the player you will also get the album art for your music, which is a very nice touch. At first you will get the same artists a few times until Pandora widens your music taste. After a few hours you will have tons of different artists and songs on your channel. Just after an hour I heard 3-4 different bands I had never heard of, but I really liked. Pandora does an excellent job matching my music tastes. So if you are always on the hunt for new music and finding new artists, Pandora will not disappoint. Pandora for the iPhone/desktop is a great app and one app I would have gladly plunked down some jack for, luckily though, it is free! I use it all the time in the car plugged in to my AUX jack, it is MUCH better than listening to the same 8 songs the FM radio plays, and even more selective than my XM radio. Oh there are also no commercials at all. The only one down side to Pandora, is that you must have cell phone signal in order to use it, since it streams the music to your iPhone. Not really a big deal for me, but for some it may be different depending on your coverage. It does download the song, so if you loose coverage and than go back into coverage your song will continue to play uninterrupted. Stop what you doing and go give Pandora radio a try right now!
Here is the iTunes link: Pandora Radio
Soul Calibur 4: Vader VS Yoda
Well here is some promising footage of Darth Vader fighting Yoda on the same system. If that is the for real deal, looks like we may see both characters as downloadable content. Woohoo! Enjoy the clip:
