So I have this 2-week World of Warcraft trial from Comic-Con and I don’t know whether or not I should try it out. What do you think? Will I get addicted, or will I suck at it so badly that I stop playing long before the trial is up? The latter happened after trying Dungeons and Dragons Online, City of Villains, Darkstar One, and Prey. Although Prey was a limited-function demo, and D&D was the actual beta. Come to think of it, I haven’t gotten deeply involved in a game ever since I beta tested the Matrix Online and they lost my character. I didn’t feel like working at rebuilding the character anymore after that.

Let me know if you think I should test it. And the first person with a good reason either way gets first crack at a $25 gift card to SideshowCollectibles.com.

Jason Calacanis wrote up a post about AOL and I responded in the comments. He asked if AOL should provide free Internet services like Google and Yahoo. I say that it may already be too little and too late for AOL to make an impact with more free services. They kept up their walled garden for so long, that people became fed-up and left for more open pastures. I know I did years ago. AOL was the second ISP I ever used, right after Prodigy, and after a few years I started using NetZero more heavily and then switched to high-speed Internet. AOL just didn’t offer good speeds in my area and the quality of the bloated desktop client was poor.

Though free services could help keep AOL’s current customers using the service in some capacity while they jump ship, I would say its a necessary move from AOL that may not help. They took over the Netscape brand and pretty much abandoned the browser, which is now an important Microsoft competitor. They didn’t even put their weight behind the browser for their Internet service users. And their relationship with Google is sketchy at best. No one knows how they will leverage their business agreement with Google (where they received $1 billion for advertising and other goodies), especially given their botched merger and Netscape buy.

I think AOL should offer free services, but that they should have been doing it for years. Do you think there is any juice left at AOL? Is their recent interest in blogging enough to save them? And what do you think went wrong with the Time Warner merger and Netscape buyout?

I put up a web album with pictures from my visit to San Diego and Comic-Con 2006. You can check them out here. Hopefully this will tide you over until I can get a few posts up on Monday detailing Heroes, Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, Snakes on a Plane, and a generic post or two with everything else I encountered. I have some more pictures that I may put up later on from the trip, but they are of a more personal nature.

Pictures from San Diego and Comic-Con

Plans for Saturday have been up in the air for a while, and just when it seemed I would be going it turns out that Comic-Con has closed both onsite and online registration for today. But if I had gone here’s what I would have seen:

1. Kevin Smith discussing Clerks 2. Although I’ve already seen him before and I plan to see Clerks 2 in a few days anyway. I’m a fan of the original Clerks and other Kevin Smith films, namely Chasing Amy and Dogma, and I will let you know what I think of it when I see it.
2. Marvel talking about upcoming movies based on their franchises, including Iron Man which I am eagerly anticipating. I would have found out from Jon Favreau that the villain in Iron Man will be Madarin, the man with the powerful rings. So be prepared for May 2, 2008. (Sources: 1, 2, 3) Each source says the same thing and I have no idea which one it came from first, or if it was another source entirely. I try my best folks.
3. The latest news on The 4400, including Jordan Collier return. And if I could have also gotten a press pass I would have been able to ask them questions for an hour before their public panel. I’ll print up some business cards and rectify that in the future.
4. Spider-Man 3 news and promos with special guests Tobey Maquire, and Kirsten Dunst. Venom was confirmed as the third villain in Spider-Man 3. Bruce Campbell was also confirmed as having a cameo with a new character (though that character’s name was not released). And check out the two press roundtables online: Tobey, Kirsten and Sam, Topher, Thomas and Bryce.(Source: FirstShowing.net)
5. Ghost Rider goodness with Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendes. This is something I am upset about missing and a movie I am waiting for. Wizard Universe has some good coverage of the Ghost Rider panel at Comic-Con so check it out here. SuperHeroHype also has this great post that details the two scenes shown to Comic-Con attendees. The movie opens February 16, 2007.
6. And lastly, but certainly not least, that the voice of Optimus Prime in the forthcoming live-action Transformers movie will indeed be that of the original Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen. (Source)

I will be posting Sunday and Monday like I mentioned before, and I will put up a gallery with my pictures from Comic-Con. The things I do for my adoring public. I couldn’t make it to Comic-Con today but I hunted down the details so you don’t have to, but you can if you want. Peace out.

As my inaugural Comic-Con experience draws to a close I wanted to recap a bit of what I saw today. The exclusive 72-minute Heroes pilot was amazing. I saw a short clip/trailer for Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny and it was awesome. Attendees were blessed with an exclusive 10-minute clip from Snakes on a Plane that will not be seen anywhere else until the movie comes out. And Samuel L. Jackson is still one bad ass mother f-er.

A few full-er length posts will be coming within the next few days, along with plenty of pictures. Each point I made above will be expanded upon, along with a few other random details from The Con. Oh, and Ali Larter is as hot as ever.

A lousy £ 5.000.000 (British Pounds, that’s right), which is 9.1495 million U.S. dollar (peanuts for a guy like Jason) and this car is yours. It runs on sea-water and generates enough power to have half your street supplied. Kewl.

YouTube link

It appears that I will be attending Comic-Con in a few days. I plan to take plenty of pictures and notes to write up some posts. The key areas I plan to cover are The 4400, KyleXY, Fallen, Spiderman 3, and finding any celebrities I can. If I am able to make it there on Friday I would also be covering the new show Heroes and possibly Snakes on a Plane with special guest Samuel L. Jackson. It should be very exciting and I hope to have some good stuff to report here.

Feel free to send me any questions to ask or information to find out.

Update (7/20): It looks like Friday is a definite and Saturday is a possibility. I will be attending as many events and booths as I can.

The Seattle Times has an article that says Microsoft really is working on a line of Xbox-branded digital-media products. The project code-named Argo is being developed by the Xbox group. Apparently it has Wi-Fi capability and will compete with the iPod and portable gaming devices.

This could be a big gamble to fight off the companies impeding on Microsoft’s territory with their pervasive technology that causes customers to use their software. Case in point: I use iTunes because I needed it to connect with my iPod. Now there are free software options that don’t require the use of iTunes to transfer music, like one I mentioned here, but I didn’t care so much to look for one at the time.

News of a Microsoft-branded iPod competitor has abounded for a while now. Microsoft consistently denies the rumors. So this article could be wrong, and it could be a product for other manufacturers to develop such as that portable tablet PC Microsoft released a few months ago that went by the name of Origami. Or it could be something else. Only time will tell, and of course I will tell you as soon as I find anything more concrete. But for now the article is an interesting read, and if correct could offer some new insight into Microsoft’s operations.

Source: Seattle Times

For the past few years some companies have offered the ability to skip parts of movies due to swearing, sex and violence. A US judge recently ruled that practice illegal. “Judge Richard P. Matsch decreed on Thursday in Denver, Colo., that sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an ‘illegitimate business.’” He also praised their motives to stop the “infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies.” Apparently the practice began in 1999 when one company removed a scene from Titanic. The companies vowed to continue the fight.

Source: CBC Arts (via Slashdot)

If you watched NBC’s coverage of the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular then you noticed their ridiculous camera work. Instead of focusing one camera on the entire action they awkwardly switched from camera to camera, often missing the fireworks completely. And they focused entirely too much on the people watching. Do I want to see hundreds of people staring in rapture at the fireworks? No, I want to see the explosions.

They even missed some spectacular fireworks by focusing at the audience, and I just wished I could make them turn the camera so I could see the fireworks. That’s what the viewers care about. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of power. One particularly amazing part started with what looked like Iraqi tracer fire criss-crossing through the sky. It was amazing, but I missed the beginning due to the camera being on the audience.

Congratulations to NBC on messing up a national event with their ridiculous efforts to remake the show. This isn’t a movie. I don’t need to be held in suspense, confused at the camera trickery. Do your simple job of broadcasting the fireworks and not pissing me off.