Technociety

According to AP, the OnLive game streaming service will premier its services for personal computers on June 17.  The pricing is a $14.95 monthly subscription fee, plus an undisclosed price for each game.  There are several digital game services online at the moment.  Probably the closest thing to OnLive right now is GameTap, in which users can download games that have been licensed by GameTap.  The games are encrypted by GameTap and can only be used with that service, but the price structure is a variable monthly fee (generally $10-$15 a month), and there is no further pricing for games.  Also available are Good Old Games, that offer older (5 to 20 years) games from various platforms that are wrapped in a DosBOX emulator so they can be played on modern equipment, and various download services such as Steam and Direct2Drive.  What makes OnLive different is the claim that rather than a download, the games will stream, and modern games can be played satisfactorily on older equipment.  It will be interesting to see if OnLive can live up to that claim.

The second Tuesday of each month is Patch Tuesday, when Microsoft releases its major patches.  This month features two patches: KB975561 addresses a security vulnerability in Windows Movie Maker, and KB980150 closes a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel.

LiveScience reports that a new Standford University study indicates that the iPhone is addictive to many people.

Some of this survey must be taken with a grain of salt.  The study involved 200 college students, 70% of which had owned their iPhone less than a year.  What the article chose to call "addicting" seemed more appropriate as "incredibly useful:" the majority of users rely on their phone to tell the time, as an alarm clock, and as an always-on media device, in addition to a communications device.  I rather wonder that if they had done the same survey looking at cars if they would have reported that automobiles are addicting, because people spend so much time driving.

I'm also struck by the fact that the article itself points out that the study looked specifically at iPhones, for no particular reason.  It's quite possible they would have had the same results looking at any decent smartphone.  I've known people who love their smartphone, regardless of what brand it is.

After hearing all the ads for Squarespace, and seeing as how my current web hosting package renews this month, I have decided to check out Squarespace for myself.  My current package is bare bones, and while I have created and maintained websites from scratch in the past (my first web editor was Notepad), I simply do not have the time anymore.  Squarespace looks like an affordable and easy-to-maintain alternative.