Tech Olive

If you have an old mouse laying around, why not destroy it for a chance to win a brand new gaming mouse from Razer? They are asking that you submit a YouTube video of your mouse getting trashed and you could just win the brand spankin’ new Razer Mamba gaming mouse (MSRP $130)

They haven’t said exactly how many winners there will be, nor did they specify any further criteria, but they have said that entries must be in by January 30 and winners will be chosen on February 17.

Happy crushing/destroying/trashing!

As promised, EA Dice is accepting applications into their Battlefield Heroes (PC) beta. Although no details have been given as to how many applicants they will be accepting or even when they will be choosing from the applicants, but it’s still worth a try to get to play a great looking game before most people. If you’re interested in trying your luck, sign up for the beta here.

As an online gamer, I rely heavily on communication, most notable the chat program Xfire. This is a fantastic program which has been mentioned before here on Tech Olive. It can do everything from broadcasting and recording live video, to having voice and text chat with your friends. However, at times the sounds can get annoying as any user of this program will tell you. So, rather then dealing with the few annoying sounds, we at Tech Olive decided to make a custom sound pack that replaces the in-game “RIP!” sound with the default out of game “beep!”. It also lowers the default volume of that “beep!” so that it is not ear-bleeding loud. If you’d like,  you can even make your own little sound pack, but this is the one we will be using for this article.

1) Download our custom sound pack from HERE.

2) After you’ve downloaded the “quiet.zip” file to your computer, do not extract it, but rather place the .zip into the following folder:
(If installed to the default directory)
For Windows XP:
C:\Program Files\Xfire\Sounds
For Vista:
C:\Programdata\Xfire\Sounds

3) After you place the .zip in the Sounds folder, you’re done with that. Now, go ahead and close that folder.

4) Exit Xfire and re-open it.

5) At the top of your Xfire window, click Tools> Options, the options window will pop-up. On the top bar of that window, click the “Sounds” tab. Once there, find the drop-down menu and click it to reveal more choices. Choose “Quieter send and receive“.

6) Click “OK” and you now have your custom, quieter sounds.

6 days from now, Bethesda is releasing the first bit of  downloadable content (DLC) for Fallout 3. January 27th is the planned release date. Operation: Anchorage is planned to cost 800 MS points, or $10. For that price, you get another 4-5 hours of gameplay and a fresh story. According to what I have read, it follows survivors’ fight to liberate Anchorage from the control of the Red Army, fighting through a virtual reality simulation.

The Chinese red army is everywhere, and the player will first have to secure the surrounding mountain side and then fight their way into the Chinese base. The player will have to use a lot of their standard combat skills, along with several new tools that will only be available in the downloadable content. These include interactive Strike Teams under the player’s command and unique armor, weapons, and other exotic gadgets,” – Bethesda DLC producer Jeff Gardiner.

As much as anyone out there, I oh so very much *love* typing on ergonomic keyboards [/sarcasm]. So to save my fingers from the pain and endurance of a 1,000 word article, today’s is a bit quicker. But please do enjoy learning how to use LEDs in just about anything with a power source……

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For those of you who are excited for the upcoming release of Burnout Paradise on PC (Feb. 5th), you have a chance to get the game 3 days early. If you pre-order the game through EA’s online store, you’ll get the game three days before anyone else, except the other fans that took advantage of the offer, of course.

As many of the loyal Xbox gamers have probably heard, Amazon has dropped the price of a 12-month gold subscription to Xbox Live from $50 to a bone-crushing $30. If this still doesn’t float your boat, they are including 1 whole month for FREE.

But is $30 still way overpriced compared to the free online services of PC gamers? Should you really have to pay for multiplayer? Microsoft still hasn’t really said exactly why they are charging money for the Xbox Live service. Many think that the features of Xbox Live are worth the shells, but the only difference from its PC counterparts that I see, is the neat bow and semi-useful matchmaking.

Since I have little else to write about, I thought I would brag about my mad skills. I’m one of those gamers that loves game-related merchandise. I didn’t realize this until recently, and I have only just begun my collection. Mostly what I am interested in is figures, or statues of video game characters. As you may know, Portal is my favorite game, so naturally I wanted a little something from that game. Unfortunately the only thing that I could find was a plush “Weighted Companion Cube”, from Valve’s store. Since that was too expensive, I decided to make one for myself and one for Craig and for each of my two brothers. However, this was still not enough, Portal deserved more devotion. So last week I set my sights for the Portal turret (Pictured above).

I decided I would make a clay statue of the turret. I figured it shouldn’t be that hard; a fairly simple design, even if my only modeling/sculpting experience comes from a childhood of Play-doh, Legos and building model cars. So after reading a bit, I found that it was best to start with a wire-frame, and build your clay onto that. So, I bought the cheapest clay I could find, grabbed some wire and went to work. For being my first sculpting project, I think it’s going quite well. Obviously it’s not a very complex object, but it’s still a challenge.

After a few hours of work, that is as far as I’ve gotten. When it’s finished, I’ll of course post it in all it’s glory. I may even write a build log so that you can make one of your own. Stay tuned.

It seems like the new year has brought much bad news for tech companies. I’ve constantly been reading press releases and news stories about job cuts and layoffs happening left and right in the technology world. People that thought technology was recession-proof have now been proven very wrong. According to Layoff Tracker (8/27/08 – 1/17/09), 347 companies have made layoffs and over 140,000 employees have received the bad news. Below I’ve made a list of some of the more notable tech companies that have been hit, and how many employees that have been cut.

• AMD – 1,100
• Google – 100
• Motorola – 4,000
• Seagate – 800
• Dell – 1,900
• Lenovo – 2,500
• Logitech – 500
• Electronic Arts – 400
• Western Digital – 2,500

These are just a fraction of all the companies. To see an up-to-date list, visit TechCrunch.

Mirror’s Edge was a game I had been anticipating for a good while. I expected it to follow in the path that Portal blazed for the first-person perspective genre. When it finally released on consoles, I couldn’t help reading the reviews it got. I refused to play it on my Xbox 360, but I would at least read about what others thought. Much to my surprise, most of the reviews I read mentioned that it was just a mediocre game, nothing special. Some even classified it as a disappointment. The problem is that whenever a game is greatly anticipated, it’s chances of failure skyrocket for obvious reasons, mainly because people expect too much. On the days leading up to the PC release, I couldn’t help but wonder was I expecting too much of this game? Would I too be let down? These are questions that I will be answering in this review.

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