Every calendar year sports titles roll out their latest entries, mostly consisting of updated rosters, one new gameplay feature (that gets nixed the following year) and slight tweaks in the graphic department (high-resolution goatees).

2K Sports, the company that handles MLB exclusively, is well aware of this, and has reevaluated their franchise, rebuilding it from the ground up.

I recently played a test demo of the upcoming Major League Baseball 2K8, scheduled for release next Tuesday - and the changes this year are more than cosmetic.

For starters, the gameplay that was marred with inconsistencies last year (shoddy errors and bugs galore) has been completely revamped. Most controls, whether pitching, fielding or batting, utilize the right analog stick this time around (I played the XBox 360 version; the PS3 uses the same control scheme).

For pitching, buttons have gone by the wayside, with different combinations of analog stick movement determining what pitch you throw and how accurate; batting controls require a back-and-forth upswing to make contact. Throwing to each base is also done with the analog control. Read More »

There has been some speculation about what exactly Persai is.

Well, I’m going to set the record straight…sort of. Persai is not ready to launch yet - in fact it’s in private beta testing mode right now - but I’ll break down what it will be once launched.

Persai is a content aggregator that is specific to your interests. You specify a topic that you’re interested in with a few words, and Persai will find new content relevant to that interest and recommend it to you. As you use Persai, it learns, and can better recommend content. Read More »

Since the advent of Facebook, social networking has become an essential part of the college experience. If you’re looking for a local shindig to attend, ogling that girl in your class you’ve never officially “met” or want to browse through pictures of your very own drunken antics, all you had to do was log in without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, times have changed.

In late 2006, Facebook decided against being a social network simply for college students, and opened up the network to the public. Suddenly parents, teachers, bosses and random kids off the grid could learn all about your personal life with the click of a mouse. Social networking on Facebook suddenly turned sour, riddled with problems stemming from letting non-students in. But all that’s about to change with Hugh Hefner’s social network, Playboy U. Read More »

Video games can be, well, addicting. God knows how many late nights I spent trying get out of that one dungeon, or unlock that one sword, or kept saying to myself, “Just one more level…” Still, I draw my limits on things like World of Warcraft.

In case you aren’t up on the MMORPG (that’s Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game) front, World of Warcraft is the most popular MMO out there, with well over six million – yes, million – players.

I know people who are hopelessly addicted, people who have no social life, people who dropped out of school so that they could spend more hours playing Warcraft. So when I read about a married couple of six years that divorced because of this game, I could only say one thing: WOW. Read More »

It looks High Definition DVD’s are about to go the way of the Betamax and the Laser Disc when Toshiba announced that they would no longer develop, make, or market HD DVD players.

What prompted this decision was that major movie studios such as Warner Brothers, Disney, Sony, and Twentieth Century Fox decided to exclusively release their movies with the Blu-ray format. In addition to movie studios, retailers such as Wal-Mart, and Netflix also decided to only carry Blu-ray DVDs and hardware. Toshiba plans to phase out HD DVDs by reducing the amount of shipments to retailers and ceasing production by the end of March.

Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios, both of who signed to produce HD DVDs, probably will cease production of the format around the same time. Read More »

Finally, technology with a point: After decades of waiting (and numerous hints towards its possibility via movies like Barbarella and Woody Allen’s Sleeper) science has taken a bold step forward in sexuality, coming close to controlling the human orgasm.

Dr. Stuart Meloy, a pain specialist in North Carolina, has concocted (be on the lookout for vague sexual innuendos from here on out) the Orgasmatron, a device that can stimulate pleasure through electrodes hitting the right spots. This. Is. Big. News. Read More »

Congratulations! You have an STD! (Nope. That’s not funny at all.)

What better way to celebrate the most unfortunate of problems than by sending an STD E-Card to your past girlfriends and/or flings commemorating the event?

inSPOT, the website responsible for the STD E-Cards, seem to be pitching them as an alternative method for introverted, emo kids who would rather not go through the trouble of actually talking to their past hookups face to face. Oopsy Daisy indeed.

If this “trend” catches on, it just proves how severely f***ed up our generation is.

As for me, I have hope for our generation: with the right spin, expect these STD E-Cards to be sent to every Tom, Dick and Jane with an email address. We are sick, cynical bastards who take nothing seriously, just like our parents always tell us. Congrats to us!

Until there’s a better way to relay the bad news to your ex-flames (outside of telling them in person or over the phone or by email or any other way more respectable than a f**king E-Card), I guess they will have to do, right? These digital disease warnings are a healthy reminder on why girls shouldn’t hook up with you in the first place, you selfish, shamless, careless piece of sh*t.

I have been waiting with baited breath for something, anything to indicate that the future is indeed now - and finally, that fateful day has come.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Rinspeed sQuba:

Watch video and see photos of the sQuba in action after the jump! Read More »

Since the Guitar Hero franchise releases a new “update” every 6 months, and Rock Band costs more than a month’s rent, I am left with two choices: either buy Rock Band and live off Ramen for the remainder of the year, or purchase the pocket version of Guitar Hero.

Basic Fun, the company responsible for this mini marvel, worked with the creative teams at Activision and Red Octane to produce a pocket-perfect port of the mega-successful series. This portable version of the game includes songs from Guitar Hero I and II, like “Killer Queen” and “Cherry Pie.” You play by following the color-coded notes on the built-in screen and tapping each of the mock guitar’s color-coded buttons, in the correct order, on rhythm, just like the original - only, like, way smaller.

If its 3 x 7.5 inch size wasn’t small enough, the guitar neck folds down, making it small enough to fit in most pockets, hence the name.

And if you’re wondering, yes - the whammy bar is intact.

Panamanian call center rep insults an American customer trying to buy a PC computer.

This is AMAZING:

This is for all those crotchety musicians that hate on Guitar Hero players ’cause, like, they should all learn real instruments and stuff. Truth be told, Guitar Rising looks well executed, though I’m wondering what songs will be licensed due to Guitar Hero’s stranglehold on the music game genre.