Author: Doug Groves

dougplanet.com is his personal blog, which is withering on the vine. If you poke around it, you’ll find out that he’s an animator and broadcast designer by trade, usually pushing pixels in either After Effects or Lightwave 3D. If he absolutely had to pick a favourite all time writer, it would be Harlan Ellison more days than any other. If you don’t know who Ellison is, then Doug weeps for you. Doug also likes long walks on the beach, mainly to collect improperly discarded medical waste for an undisclosed project of epic proportions.

Wardriving the planet: Google Street View style

April 26, 2010 Doug Groves google, privacy, Street View, wardriving2 Comments

Most people love the Street View function in Google Maps, and rightly so. It’s a neat gimmick at the very least, and if you find yourself in an unknown area, it can actually be useful. It’s helped fight crime, by helping police rescue an allegedly kidnapped girl, but the Street View cars have been at the centre of controversy before, including snapping pics while driving along private roads, killing Bambi and more. This this now includes the Street View cars operating as the world’s largest fleet of wardriving vehicles. Wardriving…

L4D2: The Passing – impressions

April 26, 2010April 28, 2010 Doug Groves DLC, Left 4 Dead 2, Microsoft, PC gaming, The Passing, Valve, Xbox 360, Xbox Live0 comment

After last week’s release of Left 4 Dead 2’s “The Passing”, a couple of us here at rgb have had a chance to run through it and give our impressions. If you haven’t heard of it yet, “The Passing” is a new campaign for L4D2 that not only adds a missing episode between “Dead Center” and “Dark Carnival”. It’s free for PC players and 560 points on Xbox Live. “The Passing” is a little shorter than most campaigns, with 3 chapters instead of the normal 5, and an average playthrough…

Kick Ass movie review

April 25, 2010April 25, 2010 Doug Groves Kick Ass, Mark Millar, movie, review0 comment

Alex and Dave discuss whether Kick Ass does or not. To correct Alex’s name mix-up, Hit Girl is played by Chloë Grace Moretz, Red Mist by Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

GravyTrain world premiere tonight

April 23, 2010April 26, 2010 Doug Groves April Mullen, GravyTrain, premiere, red carpet, Tim Doiran, Way Of The Tosser2 Comments

One of the most fun moments at Fan Expo last year was when we chatted with filmmakers April Mullen and Tim Doiron, and their great indie mockumentary “Rock Paper Scissors: The Way Of The Tosser”. The duo are back with the new comedy GravyTrain, and the trailer suggests that even with a bigger budget the film is infused with the same sense of humour as Way Of The Tosser. As an interesting side note, GravyTrain is the 3rd Canadian feature to be shot on the Red One digital cinema camera….

Dell’s push back into mobile leaked

April 22, 2010 Doug Groves Android, Axim x51, Dell, Dell Lightning, Dell Smoke, Dell Streak, Dell Thunder, google, Microsoft, Windows Phone 7, WP71 Comment

Dell was a pretty major player back in the days before PDAs and mobile phones were mashed together to become smart phones. A device with a 3.7″ VGA screen and a 624Mhz processor sounds like pretty decent specs. Well, Dell released the Axim x50v back in 2004. The next year, they release the x51v, which was the last of their Windows Mobile devices. Although they didn’t have phone capabilities, they were certainly very powerful devices back in the day, and even now holder their own against some mid range smart…

Kin: Microsoft aims at mobile sociability

April 21, 2010 Doug Groves Danger, facebook, Kin, Kin 1, Kin 2, Microsoft, Nvidia, QWERTY, Sidekick, slider, social, tegra, twitter, Windows Phone, WP7, Zune, Zune Pass5 Comments

After Microsoft unveiled its Project Pink as Kin there was a lot of speculation as to what it really meant, given the major noise Microsoft has been making about its other phone strategy, Windows Phone 7. The Kin phones and service are clearly targeted at a teen demographic, in the same way that Gossip Girl targets the teen demographic by portraying a lifestyle 99.9% of their audience will never achieve… you know… aspirational. The snide remarks aside, after taking a look at what Kin has to offer, and the pedigree…

SPOILER L4D2 “The Passing” achievements released

April 20, 2010 Doug Groves DLC, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, PC gaming, Valve, Xbox 3600 comment

“The Passing”, the new downloadable campaign for Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2 is due out this Thursday, and being the generous group they are, they’ve posted a list of the new achievements that go along with the new content. If you haven’t heard anything at all about “The Passing”, and you don’t want to know anything about it until you start playing, I’d stop reading here. Some of the achievements may contain plot spoilers. If you just HAVE to know, you can read the whole list

Video games can’t be art? Why Ebert is wrong and should gamers care?

April 19, 2010April 19, 2010 Doug Groves AC II, art, Assassin's Creed II, critique, editorial, Kellee Santiago, Mass Effect II, photography, Roger Ebert, TED X, TEDx, Venice5 Comments

Back in 2005, famed film critic Roger Ebert posited that ‘video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful”, but “the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art’, or, as many online at the time boiled it down, ‘Roger Ebert hates video games’. Numerous video game fans replied to that column, and to this day I’ve seen references to his ‘hatred’ crop up from time to time. This is usually when he pans a movie that a gamer liked, with…

Canadian Video Game Awards finalists announced

April 16, 2010 Doug Groves Assassin's Creed II, Canadian Video Game Awards, CVGA, Dragon Age, finalists, Prototype2 Comments

Last month, we told you about the nominations for the Canadian Video Game Awards, and now the finalists have been posted for voting. The five overall finalists are Assassins Creed II, Dawn Of War, Dragon Age: Origins, FIFA Soccer 10 and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. Assassins Creed II has been nominated in the most categories, at 7, with Dragon Age following behind with 5. Although not nominated for Game Of The Year, Prototype appears as a finalist in 5 categories. Though I don’t find this surprising, because I…

Xperia X10 Launch Event interviews, available now at Rogers

April 15, 2010April 16, 2010 Doug Groves Anderson Teixeira, Android, interview, launch, Raj Doshi, Rogers, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Windows Phone 7, Xperia, Xperia X101 Comment

Today Rogers launched the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android-packing phone, for $149.99 on a 3 year contract, $549 outright. It runs Android 1.6, with Sony Ericsson’s custom Timescape and Mediascape UI. It has 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 4″ (480 x 854) screen and an 8.1 MP camera. Included in the box is a 16gb MicroSD card, charger and wired stereo headset, but sadly no carrying case. We should be getting an X10 to play with soon, and will post our in-depth hands-on review next week. You can buy phone today at…

HTC HD2 review

April 13, 2010July 19, 2010 Doug Groves HD2, HTC, HTC HD2, review, superphone, Swype, T-Mobile, Wind Mobile10 Comments

When the HTC HD2 was released overseas last fall, it quickly gained a lot of fans. They couldn’t help but appreciate the bright, massive screen and the design of the phone itself. This included reviewers generally down on Windows Mobile 6.5. Now that the phone has officially hit North American shores via T-Mobile US, we take a look at it running on Wind Mobile here in Canada. Out Of The Box First impressions are important, and the HD2 absolutely nails it in this department. The design of the phone itself…

Short film “The Gift” becoming a feature?

April 10, 2010April 10, 2010 Doug Groves 21:9, Carl Erik Rinsch, Cinema TV, Philips, Ridley Scott, Small, The Gift4 Comments

Remember the crazy days of January 2009, when Philips announced its Cinema TV with the odd ball 21:9 aspect ratio? If you don’t recall it, you may remember the way cool short they commissioned to promote it, Carousel. Well, Philips has continued to use short films to promote the Cinema TV. This time, in an experiment with Ridley Scott Associates, Philips presents 5 short films, each using the same short bit of dialogue with very different results, from Dreamworks-esque animation to gritty dystopian action thriller. The project, though certainly very…