MaiMai first time play

Surprisingly, the game was available in the arcades at Tampines Mall’s Timezone finally. It was probably thankful to the Asian release of the game sometime this month and I had the opportunity to play it for the first time.

But before that, I had a shy feeling about this but this is no Kinect game nor the dance game. It is something like Samba De Amigo but on the washing machine. Also, there were like two people playing this like the beginners or so but it seemed that the guy had some experience with certain songs in rhythm gaming. After playing Project Diva Arcade for like one more time with two songs only, I eventually moved on to play Maimai. The serious downside though, there’s no headphone jack and the volume is freaking soft that I ended up struggling to keep up even though I know certain songs. I started off with four of those Vocaloid songs in Advanced difficulty and on the second run, I had the A rank as the result for two songs in that run because in the first run, I had the B rank which didn’t count as clearing the songs. I guess that things are kind of brutal like this but having to play co-op will not be easy due to different skill level, knowledge level and experience level of rhythm gaming between the two players. Even worse is that the game is even more expensive for each quarter than say, Project Diva Arcade as it costs like $2.80 each quarter. Multiply by two for four songs which may be equal to two runs and you get $5.60. That is $1.60 more expensive than playing Project Diva Arcade with four songs with each run being $2 but it can be a waste of a dollar if you choose one song mode.

I don’t know if there can be Nico Nico Douga videos of foreign players playing MaiMai due to the fact that some account card is required if you want to play additional account exclusive songs as playing as a guest will be less worth it.

Songs played in MaiMai today are:

• Luka Luka Night Fever
• W****’s *** Dancehall
• Happy Synthesizer
• Zigg-Zagg

Google’s 14th Birthday

Now it’s time to Tell Your World again with Google’s 14th Birthday today. On Google’s Search Engine, you’re able to see the animated birthday cake representing Google. The downside though, the link leads to the only word in the search box, ‘Google’. Is there a reason not to enter things like ‘Google’s 14th Birthday’ for example instead?

Well, let’s make sure that Google keeps up their work with fun and other business activities as long as the projects are completed on time with proper quality and resources. Sure they have equal musical power of various young modern artists including the unusual and virtual ones who are featured in Google Chrome Japan commercials.

Jubeat Saucer

In addition to the update for IIDX Tricoro, there is also the initial release for Jubeat Saucer that took place yesterday. For Jubeat Coupious Append, it features certain BEMANI crossover songs that Jubeat Saucer also has but according to some Bemani Wiki, Jubeat Saucer is said to be the first one to feature Bemani crossover songs. In addition, the soundtrack of this game will be out in November 21st. However, we don’t even know what are the new songs that are exclusive to Jubeat Saucer not because the game was just released yesterday. Speaking of songs list, it is the first game to have the certain songs removed by having 15-20 existing songs replaced with the new ones. The songs can be licensed ones, Bemani crossovers or entirely new songs so keep a look out for this occurrence every month which may be why it can be time consuming for the ones behind the wikis to keep on researching and updating them actively.
Lastly for IIDX Tricoro, the update already took place yesterday but we don’t know about what’s new in the update. I assume that the update may contain additional stuffs, additional songs, etc, but we may have doubts that the remaining machines running IIDX Lincle would be upgraded to IIDX Tricoro so that people can have the high definition experience.

New Itunes in October

This is the new Itunes from Apple whose player skin is redesigned with newer library views for smarter collection. From each Album in the Albums view, you can expand and preview the tracks you want to listen to. You can choose to buy the song or perhaps the entire album which is powered by ITunes Store. There’s also the New MiniPlayer which may be something like Windows Media Player in Mini Mode or something.

Then there are bonus features such as instant recommendations and you can choose What’s Up Next. It’s sort of like the homepage of YouTube with video recommendations as if ITunes will suggest music you may have never found on your own. Will that be a good suggestion? Already know what you want to listen to? Then you can use the new Up Next feature in ITunes that lets you select a song and easily queue it to play next or last depending on the song order you may want to arrange.

The interface will be changed for computers and IOS devices so the program will work the same wherever you shop for new music, movies, TV Shows and even more. The Preview History which is again powered by ICloud, allows you to keep the preview history up to date across all your devices that are powered by that cloud service. Preview History is the quick rundown of all the music, movies and TV shows you’ve sampled. Furthermore, the music, TV shows and movies you’ve bought from ITunes store will be synchronized with ICloud so that you can play on any device with ICloud whether you go such as your IOS device for example after buying the music on your computer from ITunes Store.

Beatmania IIDX 20 Tricoro

Finally, the latest in the IIDX series was released yesterday but the upgrade will happen in September 25th which is 5 days away from now. This is the first IIDX game with HD graphics which may have shifted from the 640X480 resolution to 1280X720. Previously, for first to ninth styles, the resolution is actually 4:3 but the visuals are purposely squashed to make the whole thing fittable into widescreen monitor. The widescreen monitor eventually stretches the game’s resolution to 16:9 screen mode and that looks impressive even until today with 19th Lincle. The gameplay interface is redone for high definition and the results screens pictures return ever since the previous IIDX games. However, the total notes information is longer on song results screens and the song results screen is somewhat different in this one compared to previous IIDX games. Normally, you get to see the song results screen with the number of notes done from poorly to perfectly as well as the total number of notes depending on the song. To add more freedom, you can move the score graph and the video panes to whichever location you want as well as see how you rank on a specific song against other players in the same game. It may be similar to other rhythm games when comparing your scores against other players’ in specific songs in specific difficulties.

Apple IOS 6 Arrived

Finally, IOS 6 arrived yesterday and I forgot to blog about it as well as the new Itunes in which I will try to do that later. Here are the apps we’re going to talk here but more of these can be found in this link: http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/

• Facebook – As the social networking site is way too popular, it is now part of the IOS 6 so that there’s no reason for you to obtain that from the App Store but will the app become more improved? In IOS6, you can share photos, locations from Maps app, high score from Game Center app and other stuffs to Facebook easily. Also, the Facebook events and contacts are integrated into your Apple account similar to the integration done to your other existing email accounts. New to IOS6 includes the Facebook Like button on ITunes and App Store.
• Shared Photo streams – People using ICloud on IOS 6 device or Mac running Mountain Lion can get photos delivered immediately in the Photo app or Iphoto through Photo Streams. You can also view Shared Photo Streams on Apple TV since the latest generation of Apple TV is based on IOS that you can view the photos with the power of ICloud although we’re not sure if there will be IOS 6 for Apple TV. There’s also the web viewing of Photo Streams similar to viewing photos on Skydrive or other cloud storage services.
• Mail – There will be photo and video attachments on the messages but for videos, it is not an easy feat no matter what. There’s also the VIP list which is exclusive to IOS 6 to indicate which messages are important to you. It’s going to be freaking useful but THAT KIND OF PRIORITY should be released earlier in the first place like having the new special folder that contains important messages only. When they’re marked as important , there should be a new special folder like what IOS 6’s VIP folder has.
• Safari – New to IOS 6 includes the cloud bookmarks similar to other web browsers like Google Chrome in which you can synchronize the bookmarks. Also, you can even view webpages offline as well as in full-screen landscape.
• Find My Friends – There are lots of apps that share your location to social networking sites but this one is IOS 6 exclusive as I don’t think this can be in IOS 5 and below. Using the map, your friends can be located on where they are in this app which you may want to take some opportunity to go to the places your friends have gone to one day or perhaps ensure that your friends remain as safe as possible.
• App Store and ITunes Store – You can see what’s new in music, movies, TV shows, apps and other stuffs at the top of each store’s home page. Keep track of the ones you’ve previewed with the History button and when you’re ready to obtain, tap Buy to add something to your collection whether they are free or paid but be careful, you do not want to run into those things that are kind of stupid, not working or even plagued with other flaws. Like cloud bookmarks, the history for these stores is iCloud powered.

Office for Windows RT

What do you get when you use Office Desktop edition on the tablets? You get a the fully functional but with un-friendly touch interface. Even worse is that the Desktop app is still un-friendly to the tablet devices no matter how clean and simple the interface is. So, to get around the problem for using Office on tablets, you’re going to need the external keyboard and the mouse as long as they are USB compatible devices. That’s what you can get when using Desktop app because it’s difficult to tap on things like that. Once you’re finished, simply drag from top to bottom of the screen to close the Desktop app so that you can continue to use other Metro apps. Other than Office 15 and Internet Explorer 10, other desktop apps are not allowed so Windows RT may seem to be suitable for Metro apps which may be useful for tablets. In fact, having the Microsoft Surface device that runs Windows 8 Pro is kind of unacceptable to exist because the Desktop app is quite difficult to use with touch.

Last year, there was a question on whether the developers could develop the ARM version of Office and they did. So this led to Steve Ballmer to do the demo on Word and PowerPoint on ARM devices during the Consumer Electronics Show.

Office for Windows RT will be optimized to be Touch-Enabled, Portable with the ability to run on battery for long periods of time, having memory capabilities to start at 2GB and so on. Wow, 2GB of memory capabilities? Does it mean that 2GB of RAM and above is required on tablets? Perhaps you can to buy Asus Vivo Tab and its RT counterpart tablets for maximum performance.

For the new Office to take less energy of the CPU, Windows 8 adds the new coalescable timers which allow programs to be more battery-life friendly by specifying a range of time to wake up rather than an absolute interval to save battery life, compared to Windows 7 and below which was still ticking that you were guaranteed to wake up every ~16ms. Also, for Office 2k10, there were some situations where applications would wake up the CPU more than 1000 per minutes when the system goes idle but with the new Office, the developers have reduced that by 95% when the user isn’t interacting with the program. To save the battery life even more, the blinking cursor where you type in the text stops blinking after a few seconds if the user stops interacting with the application. However, this can get you lost on where you are in if you drift too far away from editing your documents so this one is kind of flawed in saving battery life.

For Windows Update in Windows 8, I bet that this is suitable for normal computers, not tablets because this is not how you update your tablets running Windows like that. Having to patch Windows RT with a bunch of updates is a huge no-no to us which may cause delays like that and multi-language support in Windows RT is kind of flawed as you may end up using the desktop Control Panel to do the installation which can also cause delays like spending time in doing the installation. THAT IS ANOTHER FLAW IN USING WINDOWS RT IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES, EVEN WITH SSD, IT TAKES TIME TO INSTALL! But, can they find a way to save time from doing that stupid installation?

For Office 15 as well as Windows RT combined, things may be extra costly with Mobile Network enabled so it’s best to use cloud technology by Wi-Fi only and thankfully, Office for Windows RT is able to warn you about this.

And lastly, how the hell can you import stuffs onto your documents as well as open and save documents in Office for Windows RT? Will that open up that freaking Open/Save As dialog box in desktop form for example?

Final flaw will include confusing Metro interface in Office 15 for tablets. When the buttons are not hovered, they remain button-less and become the links made of icons and texts compared to the interface of the past. Perhaps Office 15 for Windows RT is overall okay to use so be glad that they didn’t screw this up.