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.

Episode 020 – Mobile Madness

November 15, 2009November 16, 2009 Doug Groves Bell, droid, HD2, HSPA, HTC, HTC HD2, iPhone, milestone, Motorola, Motorola Milestone, Rogers, Telus16 Comments

After taking a hiatus, which allowed us to catch up with our Fan Expo footage, we’re back on a regular schedule. Given the big news in the mobile phone space over the past couple of weeks, we talk about the new Bell / Telus HSPA+ network, and some of the new phones they’ve introduced (or soon will be) such as the Motorola Droid/Milestone, the HTC HD2, the end of Rogers iPhone exclusivity and much more. If you’ve been contemplating switching, or getting a new smartphone, then this is the episode…

Inside scoop on Modern Warfare 3 via The Onion

November 11, 2009 Doug Groves 1 Comment

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks Modern Warfare 2 has only been out for a day, but The Onion managed to get some details on the inevitable sequel. The missions in this beta are looking to be even more true to life, and vary from the very easy “Pose for photo-ops for Thanksgiving media reports” to the more challenging “Settle the debate on who’ you’d rather have sex with: Jessica Biel or Shakira“. Infinity Ward isn’t known for adding such subtle role-playing elements, and it’s nice to…

Trio of Acer convertible tablets announced

November 10, 2009January 28, 2010 Doug Groves 1420P, 1820PT, 1820PTZ, Acer, convertible, Laptop, multitouch, netbook, tablet, Windows 72 Comments

Netbooks have been with us for a couple of years now, and although the market has been one of the largest growing consumer tech sectors, there’s been little innovation beyond increasing screen size and the blurring of lines between netbook and laptop. Sitting squarely between the netbook and laptop markets are ultra thin devices that range from reasonably priced products like the Acer Timeline to the ultra expensive and stylish Dell Adamo and Sony Vaio X. I had a chance to play with the Acer 1410, and found it to…

Smart Phone OS market growth: RIM the winner

November 10, 2009 Doug Groves Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile0 comment

Canalys, which is an independent technology analyst group, has released its latest numbers on the global smart phone market, and there’s some interesting stuff in there. Overall smart phone growth was 4%, with the largest regional growth was 26% in APAC (East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australasia and Oceania), and North America saw a 5% increase, while EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) actually dropped 6%. The overall 4% growth is much smaller than the 13% growth last year, and some of this could be attributed to the global economic…

Boxee Media Center Beta arrives Dec 7

November 6, 2009November 6, 2009 Doug Groves beta, Boxee, event, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows0 comment

Boxee, the social media connected media center, is having a beta reveal party on December 7, 2009. The software has been in alpha for the past year or so, and brings a wealth of online content to the living room interface, whether you’re running Windows, Linux, Mac or Apple TV. From the annoucement: At the event we will demo the new Beta, launch new applications from partners and start a 4-weeks early-access for users to test the Beta before we release it to the public at CES on Jan 7th….

Mass Effect 2 gameplay footage

November 6, 2009 Doug Groves Mass Effect 2, Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 3600 comment

If ever there’s a time to just sit back and chill, it’s a Friday afternoon when watching the clock slowly move to 5. To help it pass faster, Joystiq posted 9 minutes of game play footage from the upcoming Mass Effect 2 using the current build. Even though the video isn’t in HD, the level of texturing, and details in animation and environment are an obvious improvement over original. There’s some NSFW (or as I like to call it NSFFoxNews) language in the beginning, but beyond that, everything is shaping…

Bell / Telus HSPA Network launches

November 4, 2009 Doug Groves Bell, HSPA, iPhone, Samsung Omnia II, Telus, Windows Mobile10 Comments

It’s been a long time coming, but as we covered before, the new high speed wireless network from Bell and Telus officially launches today. The HSPA+ network supports speeds up to 42Mbit down and 22Mbit up, although the fastest phones being launched support 7.2Mbit. It’s a new standard, which means it’s not backwards compatible with their CDMA network (which will stay online for some time to come). It’s a two day announcement, with Bell going public today, and Telus tomorrow. Though it means a lot a new phone options, don’t…

Alice sequel teased, twisted

November 2, 2009November 4, 2009 Doug Groves Alice, American McGee, PS3, Return Of Alice, sequel, Xbox 3603 Comments

American McGee’s Alice, the nicely twisted third person game that put an extra dose of creepiness into the Alice In Wonderland world back in 2000, finally had a sequel announced by EA back in February of 2009. Now the first teaser trailer, courtesy of developers Spicy Horse has been put online at the teaser Return Of Alice site (the main URL is showing black at the moment). Given the capabilities of hardware these days, I’m hoping that the game itself will have the same creepy stop motion style as the…

Left 4 Dead 2 Demo impressions

October 29, 2009October 29, 2009 Doug Groves L4D2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, PC games, Xbox 3604 Comments

After some minor delays, the PC version of the Left 4 Dead 2 demo was finally available yesterday evening to those who’ve pre-orderd the game. The Xbox 360 demo was also available, it’ll be another week or more before it’s available for those who haven’t pre-ordered. I fired up a local server so Dr Squid and myself, along with a friend, could give the two map co-op experience a whirl or two. Some of the points mentioned in here were originally made by Dr. Squid during gameplay. Right off the…

Assassin’s Creed: Lineage Part 1 short film online

October 27, 2009 Doug Groves Assassin's Creed II, Hybride, PC games, PS3, Ubisoft, Xbox 3601 Comment

Remember when Ubisoft bought Hybride, the Montreal based studio that did effects work for Sin City, 300 and other films? Besides continuing work on film effects, one of the fruits of that purchase is now available to watch online, in the form of Assassin’s Creed: Lineage. There’s also a good interview with Ubisoft’s UK marketing director talking about the convergence of games and film… “So the beauty of something like Lineage is that it allows us to take a lot of the assets developed for the in-game engine and create…

Play Left 4 Dead 2 demo tomorrow if you preorder

October 26, 2009 Doug Groves demo, L4D, L4D2, Left 4 Dead0 comment

There’s no secret that some of us here are huge fans of the zombie-blasting multi-player game Left 4 Dead, proving an exception to the Max Brooks rule. You can see why this is of some import to those of us who just don’t want to wait until November 17th to get our melee-style zombie smashing on. There’s been a couple of noteworthy items, the first being… Those who have pre-purchased Left 4 Dead 2 via Steam may now pre-load the game demo, which is due to launch for early access…

CRTC decision already having effect?

October 26, 2009 Doug Groves Bell, CRTC, net neutrality, throttling7 Comments

Last week, the CRTC released it’s initial net neutrality decision, which was quickly followed by a wide range of opinions, from pie-in-the-sky to “The sky is falling“. More reasonable responses suggested that the ruling wasn’t bad, and the head of a 3rd party ISP or two even said it was pretty good overall, with some problems. That being said, one of the major issues was bandwidth throttling, and there were guidelines put in place that would restrict how and when ISPs could do so. Less than a week after the…