If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week.  The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry.  GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.

On the final day at GDC, the show continues with lots of activity in the Career Fair.  With the continuing bad economy and poor job outlook, there were many people visiting all the exhibiting companies with resumes and demo reels in hand.  While there were many companies looking for new talent, then number of openings appears to be small.

Many of the final lectures and sessions were very full as the conference attendees eagerly rush to take in a final chance to learn from the many experienced speakers before the close of the show.  As the show ended, hundreds gathered in the main lobby of the convention center reluctant to see this year’s GDC end.

Some things that caught our attention on Friday were:

If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week.  The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry.  GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.

The second day for the main part of the show opened today with the Career Fair and Expo Hall as well as more session for Art, Programming, Design, Production, etc.

Some things that caught our attention on Thursday were:

If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week.  The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry.  GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.

The main part of the show opened today with the Career Fair and Expo Hall as well as more session for Art, Programming, Design, Production, etc.
Also featured today was a Keynote Address from Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, who spoke about how Nintendo & Independent Developers can both be successful in the same market and how Nintendo’s Star Designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, approaches design and development.

Some things that caught our attention on Wednesday were:

If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week.  The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry.  GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.

We will be roaming the show to bring you tidbits of news that will affect the technology and games you will be playing soon.  Many of the news stories we will bring you will become product reviews in the futures as new products announced at GDC reach your local retail store.

The first two days of GDC are specialized summits including Outsourcing and Mobile.  These summits allow the attendees to get focused instruction on specific areas of the game industry.

Some things that caught our attention today were:

Congratulations to our 44th President of the United States of America; Barack H. Obama!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

This past weekend, ‘The Last HOPE’ conference was held in the heart of New York City, at the legendary Hotel Pennsylvania. ‘HOPE’ of course stands for ‘Hackers on Planet Earth’, this latest iteration being the seventh, and also supposedly the ‘last’. The conference first launched in 1994 and proceeded to become a bi-annual affair in 2000. All but one conference was held at Hotel Penn, so over the years, the hotel itself has become an integral part of what makes HOPE the conference it is.

Quote:

The seventh HOPE conference was held this past weekend in NYC and I was there to take in the numerous talks. Such subjects covered were lock picking, Wikipedia’s evils, YouTube, FOIA, hardware hacking and a lot more. Special talks were also given by Steven Rambam, Steven Levy, Adam Savage and Jello Biafra.

http://techgage.com/article/hackers_on_planet_earth_2008_the_last_hope/

When: July 12th, Saturday, 7:00 - 10:00 PM
Where: Showbox SoDo, 1700 1st Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134
What else?:DJ El Toro, Light Appetizers, Drink Tickets, Door Prizes and more…
RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only

http://summermashseattle-mashbutton.eventbrite.com/

http://mashable.com/

I will be updating the website with news and more reviews soon.

Thanks!

Bill

This place has it all: more than 5,000 square feet; home entertainment; music, video and games; more than three dozen screens; and the latest, coolest, hottest wireless phones. This place also lets customers look at, touch and experience everything in the store.

The more than 5,000-square-foot store will feature several new retail concepts, including six integrated “customer experience” stations that encourage customer interaction with cutting-edge wireline, wireless and converged services. In addition, knowledgeable store personnel will be on hand throughout the store and within each of the stations to guide consumers through product trials and purchasing decisions.

In addition, a centrally located Personal Style Studio will showcase high-end accessories and will allow customers to purchase external wireless features, such as ringtones, crystal handset designs and phone “tattoos”, or pictures that customers can download to a laptop in-store, print on a sticker and apply to wireless phones.

Other unique features include more than three-dozen screens located throughout the store. On these screens, visitors can learn about and experience a variety of AT&T products and services, including broadband, wireless, voice and video. Digital messages that inform customers about the variety of lifestyle, product and feature benefits will be displayed throughout the store on 32-inch LCD screens. A series of “Guided Selling Kiosks” also provide valuable information to assist employees and customers during the sales process.

http://www.att.com/newsroom

We just got back from the PepCom Digital Media Experience event…Pirates was the theme this year…ARRR!!.  Seriously they had pirates and pirate booty with all the trimmings. PepCom puts on one great party.

The new OQO is very sleek and sexy. It features a 1.5GHz VIA C7M processor with 1GB DDR2 ram and packs a 60GB hard drive. Naturally it’s packing Microsoft Vista and a bevy of wireless options like 3G EV-DO, WiFi A/B/G and Bluetooth. Oh, and it has an HDMI digital port…mmmm yummy.

The unit was fast and responsive and the slide mechanism has been redesigned giving it is positive secure feeling. The screen is gorgeous and very easy to read. We will have a full review of a unit in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

Here are some pics:

PSHUG.org March Meeting, 3/28/2006

This month, your chance to vote for our new board, or run for office yourself! 
Also, a great guest speaker, Anil Dhawan, the Program Manager for Connectivity on Windows Mobile.  He leads a team that defines the user interface for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular technologies on Windows Mobile devices.  Anil represents Windows Mobile in the Bluetooth SIG and also maintains a blog on the topic: http://blogs.msdn.com/anil_dhawan .
Agenda

• ActiveSync with Bluetooth: How to setup and sync a mobile device using Bluetooth, with troubleshooting.
• Guest Speaker: Anil Dhawan Anil has been featured in several Channel9 webcasts involving Bluetooth and will be sharing his thoughts on the technology as well as demonstrating some cool stuff!
• Networking, Open Discussion and Pizza
• Elections! Members will vote and our new President and board will discuss plans and goals with the members

Meeting Sponsor: MVOX Electronics Inc. mVox has given us an MVOX MV900 bluetooth handsfree speaker phone for our monthly drawing. http://www.mvox.com/mv900.html
Date/Time:
Tuesday, 3/28/2006
7:00 PM
Location:
Microsoft RedWest Building E – Emerald Room
Redmond, WA
Turn off 148th Ave NE at NE 56st St. (look for the traffic light and the “Microsoft” sign)
It’s just a little farther down 148th from the PSHUG Nov. and June location, the same location as the Feb. PSHUG meeting.
Map:
http://members.microsoft.com/careers/mslife/locations/images/north_campus.jpg

Hi all, I will be out of town this week snowboarding at Mt Bachelor. 

Mt. Bachelor offers nearly 3700 acres of varied terrain and sits in the high desert of the Central Cascades therefore being known for dry snow and the best skiing and riding in Oregon and the Northwest. It also features 4 very different terrain parks and an Olympic size superpipe.

News will be a little slow for a few days. We do have some new reviews almost ready for release next week.

—Bill

PSHUG February Meeting, 2/28/2006

Agenda

Making your own home screen theme
Demo of an MP3 player with USB Host capability
Review of our predictions for ‘05
Giveaways, including Panasonic Oxyride batteries

Don’t forget: Elections are coming in March!
Date/Time: Tuesday, 2/28/2006 7:00 PM

Location:
Microsoft RedWest Building E – Emerald Room
Redmond, WA

More Info: http://www.PSHUG.org

Excerpt:

“The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a tough show this year, with two large convention centers to cover, plus all of the manufacturers’ suites in hotels. As always, it was a tiring but exciting show. As I noted in my most recent blog (“Post Partum CES”), the two major themes of the show were 1080p displays in all screen technologies and the looming next-generation optical disk format war. Will this format war play out like Red versus Blue states, or will it be a different scenario? (In case you didn’t know, HD DVD’s packaging is red, and Blu-ray’s is blue. How quaint.)

We take a look at the new HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players as well as the newest 1080P TV’s.”

Link:

http://news.designtechnica.com/featured_article38.html

Here is our home town hero Jeff McKean with Bill Gates going over the Windows Mobile 5.0 platform during CES. Jeff works in the Mobility group at Microsoft and is a big part of the Puget Sound Handheld Users Group here in Seattle/Redmond. Microsoft is committed to the grass roots of user groups and the mobile community.

Once a month, on the 4th Tuesday the PSHUG.org group meets at Microsoft to discuss mobile platforms and gadgets. Mostly they are Pocket PC related but we do go into other devices and gadgets.

PDAToday dontates a lot of our demo and review gear to the group for their monthly drawing. If you are in the Seattle area I encourage you to stop by and give us a visit!