Tech News: E3, Microsoft, XBox 360, Call Of Duty, Gears Of War, Kinect, etc. - John Draper

Microsoft kicked off their press conference at this year's E3 with a demo of Call Of Duty: Black Ops.

Mark Lamia, Studio Head of Treyarch, took the stage to show the game play demo of the new Call Of Duty game.  He begins the demo crawling through tunnels burrowed in the ground, climbing over the dead bodies of fellow soldiers hacked to pieces.  Following his partner through the tunnels, he turns the corner to see his leader stabbed in the throat by an enemy.  Then he emerges in an underground bunker where he is surrounded by the opposition.  The screen fades to white.  New scene:  His character finds an enemy camp in the jungle.  There is a firefight.  He then climbs into a helicopter.  An NPC (non-playable character) takes the controls and gets the chopper off the ground, then lets the player take over.  He flies through a lush green river valley, shooting down enemies and blowing up enemy bases.

The game looked fantastic.  Fast paced, great graphics, and very captivating.  Call Of Duty: Black Ops will be released November 9th of this year.  Here's the official trailer:



Don Mattrick, Senior Vice President of Interactive Entertainment at Microsoft announced a new agreement between Microsoft and Activision which will make all Call Of Duty add-ons and map hacks available on XBox 360 first now through 2012.

Kojima Productions then came out to announce Metal Gear Solid Rising, which focuses more on precision swordsmanship.  It's a new direction for the Metal Gear franchise, which previously was more gun-oriented.  Trailer:



Then came the demo of Gears Of War 3.  Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director at Epic Games, came out with some colleagues to show off the 4-player story-based co-op mode (I like to call it "hyphen mode" for short :P).  There were laser beams shooting down from the sky and giant snake/tree things popping out of the ground and giving birth to monsters.  It was amazing!  Bleszinski also said this Gears iteration would introduce a new game play mode which he called "beast." This is Beast Mode:



This was followed by a trailer for the mediocre-looking Fable 3.

Then a trailer for an XBox exclusive title from Crytek called Codename Kingdoms, which looked kind of like a video game version of "Spartacus: Blood and Sand."

After that Creative Director of Bungie, Marcus Lehto, emerged to introduce Halo: Reach.  This game looks great.  Spectacular graphics.  The screen was filled with crisp, clear, detailed images.  Not to mention *geek moment* SPACE BATTLES!

This is a clip from G4TV where Bungie shows off a game play demo of the new Halo:



ESPN announced an agreement with Microsoft to make over 3500 live and on-demand sports events available to XBox Live Gold members free of charge.  Some of the sports available will include college football, college basketball, NBA, MLB, and soccer.

Then came probably the biggest announcement Microsoft had up their sleeve, and the main focus of the rest of the conference:  XBox Kinect.

Previously code named "Project Natal," Kinect is a sleek receiver that hooks up to your XBox 360, circumventing the need for controllers.  XBox Live Corporate Vice President Marc Whitten said of Kinect, "This is what happens when technology gets out of your way."

Kinect responds to gestures and voice commands.  When watching videos or listening to music, a user has to simply say things like "XBox, play music" or "XBox, stop" to control playback functions.

Another feature will be VideoKinect, which is XBox Live's version of video phone.  You'll be able to have a live video chat with others on XBox Live or Windows Live Messenger.  You can watch videos together, and the camera automatically tracks your movement so you can walk around the room and remain on screen.  A built in microphone eliminates the need for a headphone.

The games that will ship with Kinect are:

Kinectimals-
Basically Tamagachi in HD.  In the demo a young girl played with a tiger cub named Skittles.  The cub interacted with her petting and commands to do tricks.  When she hid behind a podium, the cub looked around for her.  Cute but pointless.  Kids will love it.

Kinect Sports-
More interactive than WII Sports.  You actually use your whole body to play.  No mats, no controllers.

Kinect Joy Ride-
Cart racing and stunts.  Looks fun.

Kinect Adventures-
This one looks fun too.  Your character stands on a platform or float on what looks like a roller coaster and you jump, duck and dodge to avoid obstacles and move the platform.  The game takes photos and videos of you in action which you can post to the web.

Other games that will be available at launch time are YourShape: Fitness Evolved which is a full-body workout game and Harmonix Dance Central - a high energy full-body choreography game.

Kinect launches in North America on November 4th of this year.

Next was a preview of Star Wars for Kinect, which looks great, and is due out next year.

Then Bill Gies and Dan Greenawalt of Turn 10 Studios introduced Forza Motorsports for Kinect, which is also due in 2011.

Finally, the new XBox 360 Slim was unveiled.  It's smaller, sleeker design holds a highly amped-up CPU inside.  View the full specs here.

IGN shows you the new XBox 360:



To wrap things up, and this is one major reason I wished I could be there, Microsoft gave a new XBox 360 Slim to everyone in the audience.


That's all for Microsoft's press conference.  Stay tuned, because tomorrow I'll summarize the press conferences from Nintendo and Sony.

Chris Klein of American Pie arrested on DUI

Chris Klein

Pop Culture cult movie American Pie Star Chris Klein was arrested for DUI today, Wednesday morning. According to TMZ.com, Klein was found with almost three times the legal limit of alcohol in his system. Klein has his second DUI arrest in six years.

Chris Klein was traveling on the 101 Freeway at 3:13 AM PDT. TMZ reports California Highway Patrol Officers "observed (Klein) weaving from the #3 lane into the #2 and #4 lane westbound US 101 at Woodman Ave."

In other words, Klein was really toasted.

No "big hit role" since American Pie

Chris Klein's visibility as an actor surfaced with the surprising popularity of American Pie after it's release in 1991. Klein played a high school lacrosse player who falls for Mena Suvari's character in the high school coming-of-age flick.

Since American Pie, Klein's landed steady work, but no "big hit" film roles. That could change if and when Sam is released, but it's in the pre-production stage as of this writing. Sam is about "An alpha New York City male is magically transformed into a beautiful girl, falls in love with his best buddy, and learns what it means to be a woman."

Here's Chris Klein talking about his character "Oz" and playing in American Pie:



Klein's bail was set at $25,000.

NJ (New Jersey) State Trooper Shot; committed suicide

Scott Graham, a New Jersey State Trooper was found shot dead on the side of an exit ramp from the Garden State Parkway at 7:30 AM Wednesday according to multiple sources. Graham reportedly died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound and was pronounced dead on the scene.

The 35-year old NJ Trooper Graham was found in a marked New Jersey State Trooper police car. Graham was a 10-year veteran on the New Jersey State Police force.

New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow was escorted to the scene, but did not issue a statement to the press as of this writing.

NJ State Trooper Scott Graham's death comes less than two weeks after a another New Jersey State Trooper was struck and killed by a passing car as he was helping in a search for two people believed to have abandoned a vehicle.

Seattle cop punches black woman; another Seattle police race issue

In 2010 Seattle Police now have not one but two separate incidents of racism. The first one occurred on May 7th, as Seattle Police officer Shandy Cobane was captured on video kicking and innocent Latino man in the face on April 17th and saying "I'm going to beat the Mexican piss out of you, homey. You feel me?" Here's the video:



Cobane gave a tearful apology after his actions were publicly shown. Seattle's Latino community called the action "outrageously racist."

Now, another Seattle Police officer is caught on video, this time Officer Ian P. Walsh is hitting a black woman, 19-year-old Marilyn Levias, in the face with a clinched fist in the process of trying to arrest her. Moreover, the officer was yanking and pulling her clothes nearly off. He didn't need to do all of that; he was investigating a - get this - jaywalking stop.

A jaywalking stop. Seattle Police cop Ian P. Walsh punched a black woman over a jaywalking stop. Here's that video and I warn you, it's more graphic than the other one:

To anyone who sees this and immediately rushes to defend the Seattle cop, remember that just because someone in authority does something does not make their actions correct. This was wrong, and all for a jaywalking ticket according to The New York Daily News.

Racism still exists. This corner would bet $1,000 that Seattle cop would not have punched a white, blonde college woman, let alone stop her regarding a jaywalking claim. Moreover, the Seattle Police are backing Officer Walsh's actions over a jaywalking ticket. Does Seattle need money so badly it's willing to let its police officers beat up and arrest black women over jaywalking ticket claims?

Stupid. Just stupid. And damn racist, too.

Obama's BP Oil Speech better than The Huffington Post's blog take

President Obama shows the way 

President Barack Obama gave a good speech on the BP Oil Spill Disaster. He explained in detail what happened and what needed to be done to solve the problem. Obama also explained what he wanted to see from BP, that's British Petroleum.

No, it wasn't a great speech, but how can any political speech about a disaster, a man-made disaster as was the BP Oil Spill, be a great speech. It's impossible.  After all, America wasn't attacked by aliens as in Independence Day.

Of course, all that escaped The Huffington Post, where blogger Jason Linkins produced a long, ramblings, non-sensical blog post designed purely to hammer President Obama and nothing else. How else to explain a blog post that reads as if Linkins didn't listen to Obama's speech and instead smoked a bong?

Linkins wrote "And yet, basically what we got, in spades, was sentiment."

Spades? Thank God Jason didn't drop the "s", otherwise he would have had a real problem. But it shows just how sloppy Linkins was in his presentation created for many to see.

I heard Obama present a plan which in part explained what had been done:

Tonight I'd like to lay out for you what our battle plan is going forward: what we're doing to clean up the oil, what we're doing to help our neighbors in the Gulf, and what we're doing to make sure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.

First, the cleanup. From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history - an effort led by Admiral Thad Allen, who has almost forty years of experience responding to disasters. We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and cleanup the oil. Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding in the Gulf. And I have authorized the deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members along the coast. These servicemen and women are ready to help stop the oil from coming ashore, clean beaches, train response workers, or even help with processing claims - and I urge the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible.

And what is going to be done.

Obama mentioned the formation of "The Gulf Coast Restoration Plan," something Linkins didn't even pay attention to it would seem. Obama was honest in stating essentially that the BP Oil Spill caught America off guard and it's rushing to catch up as the disaster gets even worse. I got that and did not expect a full battle plan ready to go, because there's so much we're learning as it happens, and a lot has happened in a very short period of time.

Hindsight is 20-20, but the proof that Linkins is just plain dead wrong is in the simple fact that he does not present an alternative speech himself. It's as if Linkins saw the negative Twitter tweets and elected to play to that crowd of mobsters. It's always easy to play to the crowd. The hardest action is to take a stand and go against it.

The Huffington Post forgets that the main act of a presidential speech is to give direction to the country.  Obama did just that.

Tech News: E3, Nintendo 3DS, Playstation Plus, More... John Draper

I didn't make it to this year's E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) but I will be standing by from this point to relay the news from those who did.

Some of the more popular current E3 news includes Nintendo's announcement of the 3DS, Sony announcing its new Playstation Plus subscription service and it's new Playstation Move controller, the new Zelda Skyward Sword game, and the new Twisted Metal game.

Watch here for in-depth specs and info on these and more tomorrow, but for now I leave you with a video showcasing some great stuff that's in the works, via IGN.

Nikky Raney Vlog Update

Watch it; it's great stuff. Expect more vlog posts from videos I made with my friend Andrea. This is a 4 am vlog post, please appreciate it. :) Expect longer and more informative blog entries later tonight. I am motivated.

Nikky Raney
The Future of Journalism
Twitter

President Obama's Presidential Address to The Nation live stream

President Barack Obama is addressing the nation as this blog post is written. You can see it live, online, right here, below, and courtesy of The White House:

JOIN THE LIVE CHAT

VISIT WHITEHOUSE.GOV

You can also review Twitter tweets below:

Angry, Violent, SF Luxor Cab Driver update - no Luxor apology

An update in the case of the Angry, Violent, SF Luxor Cab Driver who tried to physically remove this blogger from Luxor Cab #1046 License number CA 8L46060, a white Ford Crown Victoria.

The assault report was filed and San Francisco Transportation Authority staffers reported that it was sent to the San Francisco Taxi Cab Commission. As of this writing, there has not been a follow-up phone call, but the report was filed on Friday and today is Tuesday.

But given this blog series was first posted last Wednesday and it's six days later, and information to me explains that Luxor has seen the blog post, there has not been an apology from anyone representing Luxor Cab in San Francisco.

Meanwhile there has been a sudden development of comments from the same person using different YouTube accounts. Cool, but if this person represents Luxor Cab San Francisco, they're advocating against free speech rights (in this case, the right to say the cab driver's problem was he wanted a white passenger and not a black passenger), and that I should have been assaulted for expressing my point of view, which is what the Luxor cab driver tried to do.

This is a matter that I will press until change happens; it will not just go away and if that upsets someone reading this, too bad. There should be a California state law that says cab drivers can't remove passengers from cars without just cause and the presence, permission and assistance of a uniformed police officer. Any violation of the law will be a felony resulting in the loss of license, drivers license suspension, jail time, and a fine to both the driver and the cab company of $10,000.

Some cab drivers are on total power trips, taking passengers on rides deliberately longer than necessary to gouge them, not wanting the passenger to have their say in how to get to a destination, or worse, like my experience here on video:



Enough is enough. No more of this.

Stay tuned.

Touchdown Jesus statue in Ohio burns after lighting strike (video)

Touchdown Jesus 

Also: touchdown jesus on fire, touchdown jesus ohio, butter jesus, big butter jesus, touchdown jesus fire, notre dame touchdown jesus

An event that occupies multiple positions on Google Trends is the news that a version of what's called the "Touchdown Jesus" statue burned on I-75 near Monroe, Ohio. 

Why the burning of the six-story, 65-foot creation news is more because Internet news searchers may have believed this statue was the one that graces the football field at The University of Notre Dame. Here's a YouTube video of the event:



The statue is also called "King of Kings" and reportedly "Big Butter Jesus" after a song, and "Touchdown Jesus" because it looked like Jesus was giving the American Football sign for a score in the end zone.

But it's not the statue at Notre Dame, so ND Football fans need not worry.

Channel 5's Mike Sugarman discovers the camera at BART

San Francisco TV Station KPIX Channel 5's Mike Sugarman discovers the Sony camera at BART.

On Friday of last week, on the way to Cafe Americano to meet a friend, Mike Sugarman - the long-time San Francisco KPIX Channel 5 (CBS) News Man, who interviewed this blogger when the focus was bringing the Super Bowl to Oakland in 1999 - was struggling with a new Sony Betacam camera that he was given to use for a story about the planned BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) 15 cent fare decrease (which he and I disagree about.)

I stopped to help Mike and suggested he restart the Sony camera; he did and it worked. So, in turn he interviewed me as part of his segment.

That was Mike's first time with the camera on his own.

For 31 years Mike Sugarman worked a story assignment with a camera person. But in the age of smaller media budgets, reporters like Mike Sugarman are learning to be, well, something like video bloggers, using the camera to make the news themselves without a camera person. That saves as much as $500 to $1,000 for a segment.

This is an example of what I was blogging about regarding Social Networking being Social Broadcasting. Now, you have the power to make media just like Channel Five's Mike Sugarman. The only difference is in your ability to use the equipment.

Mike Sugarman says it's something more he's got to do that's part of the job, but to me it's a lot of fun. He's more flexible and can react faster to stories that develop. In fact, he really could have done the same job with just a Flip Video Camera. One day a Non AT&T iPhone will allow one to make studio quality videos.

Wait. We've got that already, just with AT&T.

Rats.

Catch Mike Sugarman on SF Channel Five, KPIX.

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band Concert Film At Balboa SF

This San Francisco event annoucement comes from Gary Meyer, the owner and operator of The San Francisco Balboa Theater and the Co-Director of The Telluride Film Festival, who you may remember from this video interview earlier this year:



Sent a press release announcing the exclusive debut of a new concert film featuring Bruce Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band this Thursday June 17th at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco with two shows at 7:15 PM and 9:15 PM. This YouTube video gives you a preview. It's from the very show the concert film is based on:



Here's the extensive press release:

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND
CONCERT FILM PREMIERES AT BALBOA JUNE 17 TO BENEFIT MELANOMA RESEARCH

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band in "LONDON CALLING: LIVE IN HYDE PARK” will have it exclusive San Francisco area Premiere on Thursday, July 17. This one night only benefit will have two showings at 7:15pm and 9:15pm. The showings will benefit the Danny Fund/Melanoma Research Alliance, a charity focused on finding and funding melanoma research to accelerate progress toward a cure.

"LONDON CALLING: Live In Hyde Park" conveys the experience of being on stage and the vast crowd of a festival environment. Captured in London at the Hard Rock Calling Festival on June 28, 2009, a special 90-minute film of this highly anticipated outdoor concert begins in daylight and progress through a gorgeous sunset into night.

Bruce Springsteen spontaneously directs the E Street Band through 13 live tracks, all recorded in glorious HD. A special Dolby Stereo System utilizing the unique speakers from Berkeley’s Meyer Sound www.meyersound.com/ will be featured.

The concert earned rave reviews. The London Times called it "epic" and "a revved-up power drive through Springsteen's America." The Independent concurred: "Springsteen's intensity was staggering from first powerful vocal to final thrashed-out chord."

GRAMMY® and Emmy Award®-winning producer and editor Thom Zimny and director Chris Hilson - both members of Springsteen's video team dating back over a decade - oversaw the filming.
Set list:
London Calling
Badlands
Night
She’s The One
Outlaw Pete
Working On a Dream
Born To Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Jungleland
American Land
Glory Days
See “Glory Days” at:
http://www.vevo.com/watch/bruce-springsteen-the-e-street-band/glory-days-live-in-hyde-park/USSM21000730

All tickets are $10.00 and may be purchased in advance at the Balboa Box Office or at
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/116231

The Danny Fund was set up after the 2008 passing of Danny Federici, longtime Springsteen friend and E Street Band member. See www.dannyfund.org for additional information. With the warm weather just now coming on, it’s especially timely to raise awareness about the dangers of the sun.

Three lucky attendees will win the deluxe two DVD extended version of LONDON CALLING, a 172-minute film with 27 tracks being released tracks being released by Columbia Records on June 22 (http://www.brucespringsteen.net/news/index.html ).

The BalboaTheatre is located at 3630 Balboa Street (between 37th and 38th Avenues) in San Francisco.
For more information go to www.BalboaMovies.com or call (415) 221-8184

If you have a major event to promote, regardless of location, please send your press release to zennie@zennie62.com.