Who needs fancy graphics and snazzy physics known in modern gaming? I prefer the creative, classic DOS games of yore to today’s hyper-real slaughter fests. Up until this weekend I had know idea how to play old DOS games on my Mac,and then I found Boxer.

Boxer is a DOS game emulator for OS X and is based on the open source project DOSBox. It packs a few little tricks to help you load and launch your games with ease. The problem is these tricks aren’t very obvious so I’ll give you a little walkthrough.

After downloading and installing Boxer, the first time you run it it will ask you to choose a designated game folder. Which ever folder you choose will auto-mount as your C: drive every time you start Boxer. From here you can navigate to the folder with your game in it and launch the .exe file. Wait, you don’t remember how to navigate around that black screen with a white blinking cursor? Yea neither did I.

Luckily Boxer makes it a snap to run your games straight from the Finder. Just go to the game folder and add ‘.boxer’ to the end of it’s name. Now you can double click the folder and it will automagically launch in Boxer. Some games require you to have a CD-ROM loaded but Boxer can handle that too! Just make a copy of the game folder inside the game folder and add a ‘.cdrom’ to the end of it’s name. Boxer will automatically detect it and mount it as a virtual CD for you. Can’t get much easier than that!

Other niceties include Mac friendly keyboard shortcuts like cmd+F for fullscreen view and cmd + up/cmd + down to increase/decrease the CPU speed. Other ones are listed on the Boxer site.

Now you can relive the gaming classics. If you need some ideas to get started take a look at the adventure game Sam and Max: Hit the Road or the first person that took the world by storm, Doom. Try your hand at the original Warcraft or one of my favorite turn-based strategy games Heroes of Might and Magic 2. Remember those old education games from the Learning Company like Treasure Mountain? There are a ton more games up for grabs at Abandonia, which is dedicated to abandoned DOS games and Squakenet.

Even thought these games might be old, they are still just as addictive. Be sure to give yourself some time to get sucked in.

Today was the first day of the 2nd annual Techcrunch 50 conference. The goal of the conference, dreamed up by entrepreneurs Micahel Arrington and Jason Calacanis, was to promote 50 great start-ups to the “industry’s most influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press.” They also hoped to eliminate the fee for start-ups to present like other conferences.

Today they announced the 50 finalists where a few companies caught my eye right off the bat.

Fitbit wants to make living a healthy lifestyle easier. The company is developing an “ultra-compact” wearable sensor that transmits various data (like calories burned, quality of sleep, number of steps, and distance) to it’s website for analysis. The wearer can track data and mark their progress as they strive to reach personal goals.

This product resonates with me. I’ve been trying to keep track of my health, like what I eat and how much I weigh, but it becomes tedious. A small, compact device that can do a lot of the tedious recording for me is certainly welcome.

Yammer is like Twitter for companies. Instead of answering “What are you doing?” Yammer wants you to answer “What are you working on?” The service is more secure than public micro-blogging services because you can only join a network if you have an approved e-mail domain. The hope is Yammer will be a central repository which can archived and searched will make everyone more productive.

I would find something like this useful to keep tabs on what projects my co-workers were working on without being a nosy micro-manager. The problem is older people don’t really get Twitter so it would be a tough sell to get everyone on bored. Younger works already update what they’re doing on Twitter and other micro-blogging services albeit a little more obscure.

Out of all the websites of the Techcrunch 50 finalists that I visited, Popego looked the best. The service sounds vague according to the Techcrunch description: “Surfaces the most meaningful information from within your social graph based on your interests and other factors.”

Blah Girls probably had the biggest buzz of the bunch because it is being pitched by Ashton Kutcher. The premise is “a gossip site that features a group of animated teenage girls who provide opinions on what’s going on in the world of entertainment.” I’m curious to see an episode or two to see if it is worthy of joining my video podcast playlist.

Finally, the biggest WTF award goes to Shryk. How is their name pronounced? Shrike? Shreik? I have no idea. The goal of the company is something I can get behind however. They hope to promote financial literacy and good saving habits among teens/tweens with web based software built specifically for that age group.

There are many more companies I didn’t have a chance to get to either for lack of time or because the company just sounded flat out stupid. Like PlaYce, which aims to go head-to-head with the often misunderstood Google Lively. Browser based virtual worlds seem like such a losing proposition.

It will be interesting to see who the Techcrunch50 judges pick as the most interesting startup of the conference.

Crunchbase links for the start-ups mentioned:

• Fitbit
• Yammer
• Popego
• Blah Girls
• Shryk
• PlaYce

I just got an e-mail today from Dave Troy, the SocialDevCamp East organizer, announcing the fall edition of SocialDevCamp East! Like last year, this unconference is taking place at the University of Baltimore’s Thumel Business Center Building. If it is anything like the first SocialDevCamp East then expect to meet lots of interesting people and sit in on a bunch of great talks.

So if I’ve piqued your interest and you’re free all day on Saturday November 1st, then I’ll see you there! If anyone from the DC area wants to go and needs a ride up to Baltimore then let me know. I’ve got a mini-van and live right next to the Glenmont metro station (red line).

Time and Place

Date:

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Time:

8:30am – 10:00pm

Location:

University of Baltimore

Street:

1420 Charles St.

City/Town:

Baltimore, MD

View Map

Other Resources

• Official SocialDevCamp East Wiki
• Facebook Event Page
• Follow ‘socialdevcamp’ on Twitter
• Linkedin Group

Google’s snazzy new browser, Chrome, is slick both in looks and performance. But look at that logo. It kind of looks like…

the Death Star?

(via Paul Jacobson)

Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey?

(via Jaireh aka exuberantfool)

the Windows Media Player 10 icon?

(via me)

Samus Aran’s Morph Ball from Metroid?

(via Metro Mapper)

the eyes of the Martians in War of the Worlds?

(via John Wohn aka JDub)

the game Simon?

(via Going Like Sixty)

a Poké ball from Pokemon?

(via various people)

So as you can see Google was inspired by a multitude of geeky things when it came up with the logo for it’s latest project. Let’s hope it wasn’t really inspired by Pokemon. Eck!

Is this Pixar’s next movie? Nope, this is the 2006 demo reel of a fellow Art Institute classmate of mine. Billy Woodward and I graduated at the same time in September of 2006. During our graduation screening, Billy’s demo reel blew everyone away. And even if you ignored his 3d animation or his storytelling abilities, the fact that he got the “Voice Over King”, Don LaFontaine, to do a custom voice over for his demo reel shows just how far he would go to make his vision as compelling as possible. Watching this short trailer made you feel like you were actually in a theater waiting for the feature presentation to start. It was easily the best showing of the night leaving everyone wanting more.

I was going to write up this post at some point in the future but when I heard Don died yesterday from complications of a collapsed lung at age 68, I immediately thought of Billy’s demo reel. The fact that he would take the time out of his busy voice-over schedule to help a graduating art student spruce up his demo reel shows just what a great guy Don was. He will be truly missed and movie trailers just won’t be the same without that booming, authoritative voice we’ve grown familiar with.

Nikon announced the Nikon D90 digital SLR yesterday. The camera is your run-of-the-mill DSLR with 12.3 megapixels, built-in sensor cleaning, and a bigger screen blah, blah, blah! But the feature that that sets this still camera from the pack is the fact that it does 720p HD video at 24 frames per second.

A digital SLR that records high-definition video? Holy smokes! Point and shoots have been able to record video for quite some time. What seperates the D90 from point and shoots is the larger sensor size and the glass in front of that sensor. HD video is known for lacking depth resulting in a bland, flat image. Several companies like Red Rock Microsystems even make adapters for prosumer cameras that enable the attachment of 35mm lenses to get around the issue.

The sample video clips from the D90 speak for themselves:

It seems natural that video capabilities will become standard affair in DSLRs within the next 2 years. How will Canon respond to Nikon’s volley? Nikon has put Canon in an uncomfortable position. Keep in mind, Nikon doesn’t make video cameras. Canon does.

Pandora is hands down the best Internet radio service on the net. The Music Genome Project was developed by Pandora to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level” using over 400 attributes to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them. Using this categorization, Pandora is able to develop playlists that you will actually like based on the characteristics of the songs you previously listened to. But this great service is under threat of shutting down.

The Washington Post sums up the company’s looming troubles best in their article Giant of Internet Radio Nears Its ‘Last Stand’.

“Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies. Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures. As for Pandora, its royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million, Westergren said, a level that could doom it and other Web radio outfits.”

I use Pandora 8 hours a day while at work. Without it, my day would certainly be a lot less interesting as I code to the sound of the A/C hum and the random murmurs of conversation outside my door. So if you love Pandora as much as I do, show your support by putting this widget on your pages and blog about it!

I <3 Pandora!

While walking to work along M street I came across a group of local protestors protesting unfair wages. They were banging make shift drums, yelling, and holding big signs. Typical protesting affairs. Then I saw the huge inflatable rat atop a Prius. Huge rats must not be earning fair wages also.

On the plane ride out to Montana I came to the conclusion that the window seat isn’t as exciting as when I was a kid. I remember the excitement of being able to see the view from the plane as we took off and soared into the sky. Getting an aerial view of your surroundings was an infrequent treat long before the Internet was commonplace. But with the advent of Google Maps and Windows Live Maps, seeing things from above is as common as an overloaded inbox.

By entering a short query I can jump from the Grand Canyon to Mount Rushmore, back to the Rocky Mountains, and across to the Finger Lakes of New York. All of this for less than a pack of overpriced airline peanuts. And just as easy as it is to jump around the United States I can fly to other countries throughout the world: Mt. Kilimanjaro, Stonehenge, Easter Island, and Egyptian Pyramids.

So on our trip I let Kristina have the window seat while I read More Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky and caught up on podcasts. After our 4 flights I realized I didn’t miss the porthole view, seeing the tops of clouds, or the visual reassurance that the wing was still firmly attached to the fuselage of the plane. And let’s face it, when you are flying over the midwest there isn’t much to see anyways.

Kristina is in New York for the weekend visiting a friend. My roommates went out to Silver Spring to see a movie. This leaves me home all alone with Puck the cat. I’m waiting for my computer to finish processing some images when Puck started being all cute right next to my foot.