Tech Olive

To celebrate Earth Day, Seagate has announced that they have started shipping a new, power efficient line of hard drives dubbed the Barracuda LP.

The new series will include 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB models. This is Seagate’s first hard drive that fulfills the 2TB capacity. The potential downside to these drives are the 5900RPM speed, which is most likely where the low power comes into play.

No info yet regarding prices and availability.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.

Believe it or not, that is a name of an upcoming base jumping stunt-based game. When you know what it’s about, the name fits, but I still think they should have thought the name through before coming to such a careless decision. Despite the name, this game is reportedly in a closed alpha testing stage and the developers are planning to have a public testing release availible to everyone “within the month”. The game is planned for official release in Q3 2009.

Volvo (yes, the car maker) has contracted SimBin, a well established racing game developer, to make a racing game based around Volvo’s new S60 concept car. Although most ‘adverti-games’ usually fall flat on their face for any number of reasons, this game looks to actually have a chance at succeeding. Volvo: The Game is set to include many Volvo racing cars, not just the S60 and also a collection of tracks on which to race these cars. Also, an interesting aspect, “Volvo: The Game includes leader boards that will be published on Volvo’s website with competitions and prizes to be won when the game is released.”

Planned for release on May 26th, Volvo: The Game will be a free download.

It turns out that Microsoft is not taking a break after the development of Windows 7. It turns out that they’re already hiring for the development of Windows 8.  The job description states, “We will soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices.”

Why the rush Microsoft? Take it easy. Kick back, relax and throw down some cold ones.

Valve is a studio that knows how to release DLC, as in none of that “console DLC now, PC DLC in a few months” crap. The console’s DLC for Left4Dead has released, with the PC version “targeted for release later in the day.” At least it’s not in a few months.

So, there you have it. Chances are, by the time you’ve read this, you can open up Steam and download the newest update for Left4Dead. Why are you still here reading? Go watch your download progress so you can play immediately!

This is where I usually end up talking about how I didn’t expect such quality from an indie game like this and that I am blown away by my expectations that Zeno Clash surpassed, but honestly? I had no idea what to expect of this game. Sure, I knew it would look great and the characters and world would be unique and interesting, but despite the gameplay videos I had seen, I still had no idea what to expect. I think this is the perfect way to go into a review, or even just a new game.

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You might remember awhile back when Guru3D got a hold of the 40nm protype GPU from AMD. It seems that the long awaited 40nm GPU could still very well be on its way next month at a price tag of $99. The 40nm Radeon HD 4770 houses GDDR5 memory, DirectX 10.1 support, a 750 MHz clock speed, a memory clock of 800 MHz using a 128-bit memory bus and a 512MB frame buffer.

Check out the leaked slides HERE.

So you consider yourself to be an amateur photographer and a die-hard sports fan. You’re thinking to yourself, “Why don’t I merge my two loves?”. As a professional sports photographer, my reply to this would be, “DO IT!”. Sports is an absolute blast to shoot, but there’s a few things to keep in mind (especially if you’re shooting with media credentials around your neck).

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After months of delay of a game that was supposed to launch side-by-side with its console version, PC gamers have finallty been given a date to look forward to. May 1st is the official date, as announced by Capcom. Lets hope the game makes this date and isn’t delayed another few months for no reason.

Before you ask, the answer is yes: Rasterbating is the term I intended to use. In short, it’s taking an image, turning it into dots and printing it across multiple pages as a banner. There is even a dedicated tool for it! The problem is the dots are too low of quality for me. So I generally take an image, blow up the resolution and then divide it into multiple files to print individually. Not technically rasterbating, but I use the term loosely. This is a two part guide to help you make your own wall sized art.

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