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Showing posts from May, 2013

Google+ Hangouts - Google's Unified Messaging

Google has released there new product which will be rolling out over the next few days to all Android 2.3+ devices. This addition has had a lot of hype and has a lot of good changes and qualities about it. Basically, this new move brings all of Google's different chat methods into one unified system. So, now you can get the new extentions for Chrome, Gmail, Google+ or phone apps, and they all works seamlessly together for chat, voice or video communications. The best feature about the new system is the notifications. Once read on one device, it is taken away as a notification on your other devices, so you don't have to disregard messages you've already read somewhere else. This is something that has bothered me for years and am glad to see a solution, that in my short testing, works very well. The Chrome extension is very interesting. It runs and give a pop-up window on messages, which stays persistent across tabs. This is a great improvement over Gmail built in chat,

Left 4 Dead 2 - Now Available in Steam on Linux

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Left 4 Dead 2 has now been made available in Linux in Steam. This is the game that was first reported to be coming to Linux with the Steam client. It has finally arrived and will not disappoint. Just yesterday Portal was released and now Left 4 Dead 2. I don't know if Valve is seeing any profit with all this effort, but I am sure glad they are making the effort and give them my full support. The latest reports show that Linux usage has peaked and has begun to decline. I am hoping that this is just due to the bulk of games being available being indie games that were mostly already available in Linux through other means. Hopefully the launch of major games like Portal and Left 4 Dead 2 will help bring those numbers back up and continue to rise to new heights. I myself have many good games available in Linux from Oil Rush to Waregame: European Escalation. If Valve continues to bring there other Source games to Linux, that would be the end of Windows for me as I would have enough g

Cyanogenmod 10.1 - Galaxy Nexus

I've had my Samsung Galaxy Nexus for over 6 months now and I've realized a few things in that time. First is that the software on the phone, is much more important than the phone hardware. I would rather have Jelly Bean on 1 year old hardware, than Ice Cream Sandwich on the latest phone hardware. This is why the Galaxy Nexus was a good choice for me because with it, I can be on the latest version, though I do have the Sprint version, which does lag a little, but ultimately isn't the reason I moved too Cyanogenmod. I ran Cyanogenmod on my previous phone, the Sprint EVO 4G. That made a huge difference and was much more pleasant than the stock HTC Sense interface which could be slow, though it did have some nice features to it. This time, having the Galaxy Nexus, even though it was the Sprint version, and being stock Android, my desire and need to move to a custom ROM was very small. Ultimately, the reason I moved was for just a few features that I wanted. The first thi