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Today I got invite to private Hulu.com Beta. Looks like they are expanding their beta user base, and I was lucky to get in on this next round. Though, pretty soon they will go public, I’m sure.

So, first impressions are positive! The navigation is pretty intuitive, though I did not see an easy way to navigate to other seasons of things. These are very minor, the important positives are:

• High Quality — Duhh!!! This is a single most important issue today for streaming video on the web, and so far I am very positively impressed with hulu!
• Streaming — On Demand TV is here, for real, finally!
• Huge Library — Since it’s an official effort by several major studios, they actually have Quality Content! OMG! Simpsons! House MD! Journeyman! Monk! Pretender! The list goes on and on. It looks like they are mixing old classics with new favorites, great formula, if you ask me!

Stop the presses! I can embed entire episodes or show snippets in my blog!!! This is so big that I worked hard to modify the layout of my blog and make it wider to accommodate their excellent wide-screen video size.

And now, without any further delay, check out this funny Simpsons episode! Which, hilariously enough, investigates Tivo and the demise of traditional TV model.

Remember! You saw it here first!

PS: After additional confirmation, I see that video embedded on my blog appears to be slightly lower quality than the one you would get to see on hulu.com, plus the Full Screen feature only available on Hulu.com

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But First - Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and special Thanks for reading!

While browsing Amazon’s Black Friday Deals, I stumbled across a Pre-Order page for the revolutionary game called Spore. Will Wright, one of the best known game designers, who created titles like SimCity and The Sims, is the creative Genius behind this one.

This game attempts to simulate an entire Universe within your Computer and then uses the Internet to extend it even further. You play the coveted role of God, the creator of all things, or at least one planet and one species, for starters. You get to help your species evolve through the ages, from a small cell organism to big Star conquering Civilization. Obviously, such grandiose game was years in development and until  today no-one knew the release date. But, Voila, it’s coming! Enjoy the video below and you can read more about it on Wikipedia and Gaming sites!

And looks like the Universe is giving me a Birthday gift! Why else would the release date be March 3rd, 2008? It must be a hint, and it also means that this will be yet another one of these few precious Gem games that we purchase on the release day, the last one being Sims 2, ironically.

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"We are boring people to death" - I believe is the exact quote from non other than Electronic Arts CEO. He was referring to the endless sequels to established games, which bring little more than shinier graphics and few more features.

He has a point! Gaming companies need to get the ball rolling on more innovate gameplay! Still, as technology matures, there is always time to revisit the tried and true formula of Wolfenstein’s 3D first person shooter genre. Just few recent games come to mind that raise the bar across the board and really take this style to the next level. They bring us amazing improvements in graphic visuals, realistic sound, and most importantly very real physics. Two such games come to mind for this holiday season, and the most technologically advanced one is Crysis.

Just watch this short 30 second trailer. Make sure to watch it full screen to see high quality of real in-game visuals. Of course you will need DirectX 10 Windows Vista PC, with decent nVidia GeForce 8000 series graphics card. But, I hear it should run on lesser PCs also, just not with such shiny graphics.

Another holiday favorite this season is Halo 3 for XBox 360. This game has come of age, and is probably the most feature complete first-person shooter today.

Personally, I mostly avoid first person shooters.

After playing Wolfstein, many years ago, then later some Doom 2 — it’s really becomes more of the same. I am also not a fan of doing first person shooters using joystick. Really, this is exactly what the mouse was created for, to aim with and shoot, while running sideways or jumping, using the keyboard, of course.

Remember, both games are rated M for Mature! And I really think they aren’t kid or even teen material.

For your family, check out Playground, an up and coming fun title from EA. Looks like they are finally trying to avoid boring people to death, though, this one is just a fresh Wii style take on the classic Party games genre

In my opinion Gaming with your Family is the new spending time with kids. This is what they are into today, and joining in their activities, and showing them "how it’s done" is something that Parents must strive for, to maintain that all important link with your kids and have their ongoing trust of being Authority on All things Life.

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Yes, there is a Zune near you! And if you had your own Wi-Fi enabled Zune, you would see that other Zune and be able to share media wirelessly.

As you may have guessed, I picked up a Zune a week or so ago. This first week been pretty good experience overall, and so far the only thing I can complain about is the lack of Podcast support.

But WAIT!!! Microsoft says newly Redesigned (rewritten from ground up, as I hear) software for Zune device and for the PC that syncs with it, is coming mid November! Actually, I knew this and thus picked up the older model on sale, which should also be fully compatible with the new software.

So, I have been promising a Podcasts primer, and it is notably missing from my list of upcoming subjects, but not because it’s forgotten! Not at all! I simply decided to wait until this major update to Zune software, which I understand anyone can download and use, even without Zune.

For now, I am using PodNova web site + their client software to manage and auto-download my Podcasts. Now, I setup the Zune PC software to monitor PodNova download directory, and it syncs any new MP3 Podcasts to my Zune without any troubles. Deleting them from the device, after listening, that’s the real trick. But, everything is bound to change with this upcoming revamp, which is also rumored to be able to download recorded TV directly to Zune from your home Media Center PC, without the silly $1.99 or whatever iTunes charges!

Meanwhile, I recommend you take advantage of this closeout on v1 of Zunes, which is still going on at Buy.com  — Just tell yourself that Brown is the new Black!

PS: Though I ordered a brown one, Woot ran out and were nice enough to replace with Black ones for free! Excellent customer service, I am not complaining!

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I think I tackled this in the past, but here is a brief reminder, yet again. I am against bloging senseless! I really don’t enjoy blogs that post 10+ times each day, that’s just ridiculous! Yes, there may be a lot to blog about, and there is a lot going on in the world all the time. But, putting this many posts ends up only hurting your readers, in my humble opinion. It becomes impossible to read every post, and since there is no way to know which posts may be important to you without reading them all, people just stop trying!

So, philosophy of this blog is to weed out the essence from the noise, and bring you just things of interest. Plus, don’t forget the hourly updating Latest Shared Links section on the right. That’s where I bring you latest deals, news of interest, and other fun things. That section is updated frequently, but don’t worry if you don’t keep up.

Now, onto the promised Weekend Fun. This weekend I bring you the amazing advances in Computer Graphics Technology, using 3D shaders rendering, bump-mapping, and other such hard to pronounce methods that lead to the amazing creation on the right. If you are not a fan of that sort of stuff, please don’t click on any of the links below, you’ve been warned!

Now, if you are still reading, I presume you enjoy this skillful art and technology coming together, like me. So, here are some video clips from the excellent Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 game. It’s just a compilation of mini-games, but Who Cares! when the graphics is this good!!! And you probably would want to visit the game developer site, just make sure to click on the English magazine laying towards the bottom of the screen, that’s how insiders get in.

Still reading this? Ok then! Check out this Promotional Trailer and then Game Opening Movie. Done? Did I mention that this game plays via HDMI on your 42″ or larger HDTV screen!!! So, go on and buy the game, with XBox 360 if you still don’t have it!

PS: I was trying to stay family friendly blog by avoiding words like Sexy, Blonde and Girl, but the traffic spike from the search engines seeking just these words is something I can really use right now

PPS: For some reason there is one new Amazon favorite item (on the right column) which isn’t showing image, but be sure to click through and find out what it is!

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