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Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Phone-ify Your Computer for Considerably Improved At-Home Calls and Texts
June 5th, 2012Top StoryPhone-ify Your Computer for Considerably Improved At-Home Calls and TextsBy Whitson Gordon
Your phone can do a lot of things that even your computer can't do, but in many ways your computer is actually better at being a phone than your little touch-friendly, pocketable device. You can send text messages with a full keyboard, make hands-free calls without swapping devices, and you never have to worry about reception. With a simple setup, you can seamlessly use either your phone or computer to place or answer calls and send or receive texts, so as long as you're home, you never have to pick your phone up to answer a call or text. The crux of this whole system is Google Voice, which acts as the perfect bridge between your phone and your computer. On its own, Google Voice is great, but combined with a few other services, extensions, and apps, it can be phenomenal, letting you use your computer for all the same telephony that you already use your phone for. If you haven't already signed up for Google Voice, sign up now, then come back and go through the steps below. You'll be glad you did. If you're outside of the US or don't want to switch to Google Voice, you have a few alternatives (which we'll mention as we go through the process), but they won't be quite as seamless.
Step Zero: Sign Up for and Set Up Google VoiceIf you haven't already signed up for GVoice, you need to do that first. You can make your transition really easy by porting your number, so none of your friends have to learn a new number. You can also download the Google Voice app for Android or iOS, though jailbroken iOS users can also use this nifty tweak to get Google Voice support in the default Messages app. Of course, if you have a non-smartphone, Google Voice works great with that too. Step One: Set Up Calling from Your PC
The last thing you may want to consider is a browser extension, like Google's Voice extension for Chrome or the unnoficial Google Voice extension for Firefox. You'll not only be able to see recent calls and texts right from your toolbar, but it'll also detect phone numbers on web pages and make them clickable. So, if you're on Yelp finding a restaurant to order some take out, you can just click on their phone number to call them on your computer right then and there. It doesn't get much more convenient than that. Step Two: Set Up Text Messaging From Your PC
Alternatives to Google VoiceLike we said before, Google Voice is by far the best way to make this system work. But, for those of you that don't want to use Google Voice (or can't), you still have a few options. There aren't any perfect Google Voice clones out there, but if we had to pick one replacement, it'd be PhoneBooth. Like Google Voice, you get a new number that you can forward to as many phones as you want, get transcribed voicemail, and connect to a VOIP phone like Skype to make calls from your computer. You won't be able to port your number or make international calls, unfortunately, and you only have a set number of minutes for the free service, but most people should be just fine with it. As far as text messages go, if you aren't a Google Voice user, you should check out DeskSMS for Android and jailbroken iPhone. DeskSMS allows you to send text messages right from your favorite IM client, saving you from using that tiny keyboard when you're sitting at your desk. That's all it takes. Once you're done, you should be rid of all the annoyances that come with a cellphone and have much more convenient texting and calling. Got any other tips for making the process smoother? Let us know about them in the comments. Title image remixed from DryIcons.  |
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Hands-On With The Wii U, Nintendo’s Risky New Revolution
June 5th, 2012Top StoryHands-On With The Wii U, Nintendo's Risky New RevolutionBy Stephen Totilo
This is a familiar spot for Nintendo to be in: quirky new console, skeptical reporter, and a dollop of uncertainty about whether the house of Mario is going to compete successfully against its competition. Let's finally talk about some Nintendo-made Wii U games: one you should be excited about and one that's a head-scratcher: A virtual Nintendo theme park that looks terrific…Nintendo Land is a mini-game collection sort of in the vein of Wii Sports or Wii Play. It's specifically designed to teach you how to use the new Wii U GamePad, which is the screen-based controller that sets the Wii U apart from just about every other video game console ever. Some spotlight the GamePad's ability to serve as a touch-sensitive controller for games that run on your TV; some focus on the GamePad's tilt features; others on the Wii U's ability to give players standing in the same living room radically different playing experiences while joined together in a Wii U game. You play as Miis, hopping from one mini-game to the next. The unifying theme in Nintendo Land is that you're in a Nintendo-style theme park. Each mini-game is a new attraction in this sort of what-if-Disneyland-was-made-by-Nintendo virtual world. There's some sort of haunted mansion attraction tied to Luigi and another based perhaps on a Mario game. Nintendo reps didn't show me those. We tried games based on Zelda, Donkey Kong and a Japanese-only Famicom game called The Mysterious Murasame Castle.
It seems that Nintendo Land should be packed in with each Wii U, since it is clearly designed to both show off the distinct experiences the Wii U enables and tap into Nintendo nostalgia. As a bonus it's a thrilling tease as to what Nintendo-franchise games can look like in HD. The Nintendo reps who showed me the game wouldn't say whether this will in fact be part of a Wii U bundle. An Underwhelming Mario…The Wii U will launch with New Super Mario Bros. U which is the official name of a game born from the side-scrolling Mario demo that Nintendo showed for the Wii U last year. Nintendo reps boast that this will be the first Mario game to launch with a Nintendo console since the Nintendo 64's Super Mario 64. This game is no Super Mario 64. Rather, it feels as predictable and obvious as Nintendo could be and lacks, in the pair of E3 demo levels I saw, freshness. The game looks and plays like New Super Mario Bros. Wii which itself was barely distinct from the Nintendo DS' New Super Mario Bros.. The Wii game added four-player co-op, which this game also has, but you're more or less doing side-scrolling Mario platforming, looking for the one or two new power-ups they've added, enjoying the distinct level design but not really finding much that's new beyond the tweaks to the core 2D Mario formula. This feels not like a Super Mario World or Super Mario Galaxy evolution of a great series but more like a Call of Duty-conservative tweaking of a popular thing. This is, in other words, sadly, the safest Nintendo launch game I think I've ever seen. The Wii U twist in NSMBU is that, while four players can play as Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad or Yellow Toad with Wii Remotes, another player can view and affect the action by playing on the Wii U GamePad. This player can provide a support role. They can see the same section of the game's side-scrolling level that the Mario/Luigi/Toad players can see on the TV, but the GamePad player can tap on the level and generate platforms to help the TV players from falling to their death or to access hidden areas. Double-tapping on a new block turns it into a coin block that the TV players can bounce on to collect coins. Coins, as always, will generate new lives. The new power-ups I saw included an inflatable baby Yoshi who Mario can cling to like a child in a cartoon clinging to a bunch of floating balloons. There is also a flying-squirrel suit, which lets Mario extend his jumps into glides. A shake of the Wii Remote gives squirrel-suit Mario a single extra boost in the air… a double-jump, more or less. Side-scrolling Mario games are always fun, but there's just not that much that is novel here. Perhaps Nintendo designers believe that Wii U gamers will need something as comfortably formulaic as New Super Mario Bros. U to clearly demonstrate how a Wii U game can differ from the many single-screen TV console games we've played for years, but this really feels like a re-tread with an added gimmick. Worse, Ubisoft's Rayman Legends which does the same side-scroller asymmetrical, co-op multiplayer straight-up looks better and looks more fun. Nintendo reps also showed me a video of a Wii U version of Batman: Arkham City. Developed by WB Montreal, the game modifies Rocksteady Studio's 2011 Arkham City game by putting a lot of added Batman map and scanner gadgetry onto the Wii U gamepad. It also adds a special armored-suit mode that Batman can fight in. This looked really gimmicky and unappealing to someone like me who has happily finished Arkham City on an Xbox 360. I guess it's proof that 360/PS3 games can run on the Wii U, but it's also proof that I can't care too much about last year's games getting some new touch-screen controls for the Wii U. Batman: Arkham City: Armored Edition is not the kind of third-party Wii U game we need, I don't think. I was not shown a new Wii U version of Wii Fit, but that game is in the works. I was shown an app called Wii U Panorama View, which lets you point the GamePad in any direction to let you view a recorded live-action video from all sides, as if you have a viewfinder into the place where the video was shot (this is essentially the live-action version of being able to look around inside the aforementioned Zelda world in Nintendo Land There is no Wii Sports among the Wii U games I played. There is no game that I think people will fall in love with the moment the Wii U is released later this year. There are even some troubling signs of controllers that need to be repeatedly manually re-synced when a game requires some sort of pointing of the controller at the TV. There's also worrying signs of gimmicky updates to existing games and the worst warning sign of all, that Nintendo's Mario team might not bring their best material to the Wii U launch. On the other hand, it is wonderful to see Nintendo's best characters in HD graphics. Nintendo Land literally looks amazing. And some of the specific Wii U experience are fantastic: being able to play a Wii U game on my GamePad screen or my TV; being able to use the GamePad as a viewfinder to virtual worlds that ostensibly fill my living room; being able to have fun assymetric multiplayer experiences with people using different controllers and screens in the same room. None of these ideas has the immediately-brilliant appeal of swinging a game controller to bowl a virtual bowling ball. None of these makes me think the Wii U is a guaranteed global phenomenon. Many of these ideas, though, are fresh and appealing and prove that the Wii U is going to be different enough from any game console we've ever played before that it'll be well worth anyone's time to at least give it a shot.  |
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