Archive for: October, 2006

hellgate hands-on and bill roper’s 1st singapore trip

Oct 12 2006 Published by Joey Alarilla under Gaming

 

That’s me on the right with Bill Roper (center) and GAME! editor in chief Howard Paw.

Here’s an excerpt from my hackenslash story:

I’m slaughtering demons with my Templar, which along with the Cabalist is one of the two character classes that have so far been unveiled for Flagship Studios’ Hellgate: London. It’s quite a rush to hack your way through hordes of colorful demons, including some really huge ones that prove that the cliché “jaw-dropping graphics” is at least accurate when used to describe this game. Then, I became even more interested when I saw one of the item drops from a demon I’ve just slain. A sumpitan. A blow pipe made of bamboo, which is one of the native weapons used in the Philippines, particularly in the Mindanao region, as well as in Borneo and other parts of Asia.

Read the full story.

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of newspapers, vinyl records and phones you actually dial

Oct 11 2006 Published by Joey Alarilla under Tech

Here’s an excerpt from my INQ7 Infotech @Play column piece:

THE OTHER day, my daughter Sam, who’s turning five in December, was singing one of the songs from the Disney original movie “High School Musical,” which I’m sure many parents are very familiar with thanks to its overwhelming popularity among kids.

Sam was jokingly repeating a line over and over again, and my wife Ellen laughed and asked her, “Are you pretending to be a broken record?”

And Sam’s brows furrowed and she asked, all puzzled, “A record? What’s that?” She then explained that she was pretending to be a DVD or CD that was skipping.

This is one of those moments when it hits you that, yup, the world has changed dramatically over the past few years.

Read the full story.

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are days of newspapers numbered?

Oct 10 2006 Published by Joey Alarilla under Tech

Here’s an interesting analysis from Amando Doronila on the front page of the Oct. 9 edition of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Here’s an excerpt:

AS YOU READ this piece this morning, it has to be asked if you are reading it in a newspaper or on the Internet on a computer in front of you.

If dire predictions come true, the newspapers “in their current form will cease to exist within a decade or two.” Some say that newspapers have a “use by” label tucked to their ears, like perishable consumer commodities.

Doomsday prophecies, such as this, have filled newspapers in the wake of a cover story in The Economist magazine (Aug. 26-Sept. 1) with the head, “Who Killed the Newspaper?”

Read the rest of Doronila’s analysis. 

I already said my piece a couple of months ago on what I think about the fate of print newspapers, so check out “Wake up and smell the coffee, Dead Tree People.”

Oh, and for the record, yup, I read the article online.

UPDATE: I wrote this and then saw that fellow INQ7.net journalist and blogger Erwin Oliva also weighed in on this issue yesterday.

Here’s an excerpt from Erwin’s post:

This debate has emerged in our discussions back in my MA class in journalism at the Konrad Adenauer Center for Journalism. We’ve had heated debates on the importance of public or civic journalism in attracting back readers to newspapers or other mediums like the Internet. The same goes with citizen journalism, which is now the title given to bloggers who have become sources of information.

To say newspaper readerships are declining simply because of the Internet is too simplistic of an explanation. There are many factors at play here.

Check out Erwin’s take on this issue.

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