Omniblog

(You can thank ScribeFire that I mentioned last week for more blog posts from me. I am not sure if this is a blessing or a curse, for those of you that read. But it makes blogging a little easier when I think about something.)

No, I’m not talking about a warlock, I’m talking about Ozzy.

I got the live feed for BlizzCon 2009 for a few things, one of which was the Ozzy concert to close out the convention. I could not get an actual ticket to the event, so I figured I’d do the second best thing I could. (By the way, there’s a Blizzard employee band called “Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftans” that plays almost every BlizzCon. I heard them for the first time, and they were, interesting. They write songs about all things World of Warcraft, which is creative, but at times I think they are really stretching. I will say this: The lead guitar player is pretty awesome.)

I put up the High Def feed on my main computer in full screen mode, cranked the speakers, and rocked out while organizing my pictures on my laptop. For 60+, he’s still got it, folks.

Now, parts of it were a little “yea he’s old” but still, all in all it was not bad at all. Opened with “Bark at the Moon”, at one point he had a 7 year old (yes 7) guitar phenom come up and play with “Crazy Train” I believe.

Oh and of course, a lot of f bombs, but it’s Ozzy!

BlizzCon is upon us again. Where tons and tons of Blizzard fans (Mainly WoW players I think), Blizzard employees, and anyone else descends upon some hapless convention center (this year it’s in Anaheim, not sure if that’s where it always is) to talk about upcoming stuff for WoW, stuff that’s been done recently (See Patch 3.2), and anything else related to Blizzard.

Every year, they give away some cool pet, mount, or what not for World of Warcraft. This year it’s a military murloc. He looks pretty sweet.

The recent rumor is about a new expansion for WoW where Blizzard is really going to screw some stuff up in the old world. Yes, the rumor is the old “Classic” WoW world is gonna get screwed, hard. It’s not called World of Warcraft: Cataclysm for nothing.

There’s a twist this year, you can subscribe to the BlizzCon stream either through the internet, or through DirecTV and still get the in-game pet. Whoa, really? And! The icing on the cake: Ozzy Osbourne.

No, I’m not kidding. Ozzy has been featured, like a few other celebrities, in some WoW commercials, and he is going to close out BlizzCon Saturday night with a concert, which you can also see if you subscribe to a feed.

I’m seriously considering getting the feed just for the expansion announcement tomorrow, and for the Ozzy concert. Sure, it’s not like being there, but I’ll take the next best thing (oh and the pet too).

One year, I will go. I keep wanting to, but things get in the way, like not being able to get a ticket, which is quite the pain in the ass.

One year….

Maybe next year they’ll have Mr T – awesome.

This is a quick n dirty review of Tweetcraft, the Twitter client for World of Warcraft.

Just hearing about it today, of course I had to try it, and I’d like to sum it up by saying: Nice try guys, very nice try.

It works, but due to limitations within WoW, it doesn’t work as one would expect.

1. You have to run an installer to make it work since it requires some MS C++ runtime libraries.

These are used to run a client outside of World of Warcraft. The addon then connects to this client to get tweets from your Twitter account. The client looks pretty with a jumping bird on the window.

Since when did a WoW addon require running setup.exe. Some do for ease of use, this one does because it has to for dependencies.

2. The updates are not even close to what you get with a normal Twitter client on your PC or Mac. If this is what you are expecting, then skip to #3. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

To refresh your list, and even post your own tweets, you must click a refresh button which then does a /console reloadui. Yes, the addon must reload your UI to post tweets from you and update tweets from your list. This is more than likely due to a number of factors. One being a limitation in the WoW UI (which is fine, it wasn’t meant to handle stuff like this honestly).

Now granted this is more than likely not to be used for pseudo-real time, or close to what Tweetdeck and Destroytwitter do, but still, reload the console? To some people, that’s like stabbing their eyes due to computer speed.

3. It will post all kinds of WoW related stuff unless you turn off the option.

Like Achievements, login/logout, zoning in and out of instances, etc. That’s a bit too much, even for me.

4. It will post screenshots to twitpic from within the game is pretty neat, I might hvae to try that later.

I can see that being used if you down Yogg-Saron in Ulduar for the first time and want to show it off. I have no problems with that. I’d be damn proud too.

All in all, it’s very impressive they got it to work, but there are limitations within WoW that would make it painful for some to use. I will keep it installed, and only use it when I feel like it.

I did it. I reactivated my iPhone because not only am I a gadget geek, but because I’m a technology whore.

I also got a taste of the new apps store stuff thanks to my sister. The Facebook app, MySpace app, a twitter app, and many other things are just plain better than they are on a Blackberry.

Now, before you slap me for the above statement, let me clarify with this:

Blackberry (non-Storm) vs iPhone – is this even an apples to apples comparison? No. Why? iPhone has touch screen, 99.9% of Blackberries don’t. So, yes the apps are going to be better, but they are actually better by a lot.

And, the side bonus, I save $15 a month on my bill. Woot.

The other part that got me to switch back over: About a year ago my World of Warcraft account was hacked. (Thankfully, a friend called me while it was happening, so I interrupted the hacker.) Ever since then, Blizzard has come out with an Authenticator which is a random number generator thingy similar to ones that companies use for VPN access. When you setup your account for it, there’s an extra step to logging in because you must enter the number from the Authenticator. They make a free one for the iPhone. (the other is $6.50) So, download from Apps Store, activate account, and voila, secure.

The other part of this story, I tried to go in and get a 3G iPhone, but because I wasn’t far enough along into my Blackberry Bold contract (Gads, I am a whore, aren’t i?), I would’ve had to pay full price for the 8GB 3G iPhone which is: $600. Jumpin Jesus on a Pogo Stick. So, back to the old one I went.

My name is Michael, and I’m a gadget and technology whore, and I approve this message.