Biggs' Zone

A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

App Spotlight: TurboScan (& NotesPlus)

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On March 30, 2012

In App Spotlight

Perhaps this will be a new category on my blog because I have been playing around with various apps, some are free, some you have to pay for (I’m also starting to write a few of my own). Honestly I rarely pay for an app unless I am certain that I will get the appropriate use out of it for even the $0.99 that I pay for it. However, when an app comes around that really gets the geek tingling, I feel like I should share it with others. After all, I think the best way news of an app is spread is through word of mouth. I hope, one day, someone will do this with an app I write.

A co-worker encouraged me to download an app called TurboScan. It is an iPhone app for now, though I can see there being an iPad version for the new iPad. Basically this app “scans” a document using the phone’s camera (so you will probably have the best results with the iPhone 4 or 4S). If you use the Sure Scan 3x feature, you have better results with the scan. Sure Scan 3x takes three pictures of the document and essentially creates the best possible scan of the document using a merge of the three photos.

I think this app is great. The quality of the scan is almost undeniable and you can sync it with iTunes File Sharing, Dropbox, Evernote, or email it as a PDF. This app becomes an excellent business tool when coupled with NotesPlus (v3), which I use all the time at work. I can scan in a requirements document, e-mail it to my iPad and load the PDF into NotesPlus where I can add additional annotations just like I would to the printed document.

TurboScan should be available to download from the iTunes App Store and costs $1.99. As I mentioned above, it is only available for the iPhone (as of the date of this post).

Check it out!

The MMO Times: The Panda’s Are Coming!!

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On March 29, 2012

In Gaming, MMORPG

Issue 29

Hello Again, Gamers! Despite the title, there won’t be a lot of Mists of Pandaria information in this issue, mainly because there is so much out there that I didn’t want to flood this post with articles just about the next WoW expansion. If you really want to check out all the upcoming features for MoP I would head over to MMO-Champion, they have quite a comprehensive collection of information.

Instead I tried to keep things more about other games because, despite Blizzard’s best efforts, there are other games out there to play then just WoW and after nearly eight years, the other games are just more interesting. I did include a couple of WoW-related posts but I think people might enjoy some new information about upcoming (new) MMOs like Pathfinder Online and World of Darkness.

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Soapbox: Discussing Politics Is Getting Insufferable

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On March 28, 2012

In General Cogitation, Soapbox

When I was in high school I rarely cared about politics. I was neither republican or democrat. It wasn’t until college that I started to pay more attention and began forming my own opinions and which party those opinions better aligned with. In fact, there were even times when I enjoyed discussing politics with friends and family. I also thought it was great to see younger people becoming more politically involved.

Lately, however, I find myself trying to avoid talking politics to anyone. Passion is often a good thing, but I think passion can be blinding and I think that is what is happening in politics. I think, in some ways, we are in the midst of a civil war; a civil war fought with words and opinions instead of guns and bullets. There have been a few times lately when I have read something a friend posted on Facebook or Google+ that just almost got me extremely riled up. Almost to the point where I wanted to mute their posts or remove them from my Friends list, in fact there have been a couple times when I have already done that.

I’m reaching the point where I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to fight with my friends (or family) just because they hold a different opinion (this isn’t something that happens to all my friends of opposing opinions, its about those that often express their opinion colorfully). I think my new stance is that I won’t allow any of the idiots in Washington (regardless of party) to form a rift between me and my friends.

I will be “Unliking” any politically oriented group on Facebook and hiding any post that I feel is too extreme.

I’m not picking a side.

I’m not fighting this civil war.

/end soapbox

WoW: Why I’m Not Going to Beta MoP

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On March 21, 2012

In Gaming, MMORPG, World of Warcraft

I suppose it wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that I won’t opt-in for the Mists of Pandaria beta, I probably will. In fact I may even log in to check it out, but I probably won’t do any long term testing of the expansion. In fact I probably won’t participate in any beta for a game (or expansion) that I intend to play when it goes live. I have decided this after playing the beta for SWTOR.

I discovered, after participating in the SWTOR for nearly 8 months, that once the game goes live, it starts to feel stale pretty quick. Granted there are some subtle changes and sometimes that is good and sometimes, not so good. For example, in SWTOR there was a preference in the Social options that I used all the time while I was in the beta, but when the game went live, they took it out. I never found out why but I was pretty disappointed to find it missing.

Eventually SWTOR became exciting again after I leveled past all the quests that I had already done repeatedly (because of data resets) in the beta. Be that as it may, I would still like to avoid that kind of repetition especially in an expansion where the level cap is only increased by five (which means there will already be some repetition, relatively quickly, when I start leveling the alts). I hope that I don’t discourage anyone else from participating in a beta. The beta test is an extremely important part of software development and the more people that participate the better the user experience will be (in theory) when the product goes live. It is also kind of fun to say that you had participated in the beta of a popular game.

Cheers!

The MMO Times: Mechs and Dragons and Lightsabers, OH MY!!!

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On March 16, 2012

In Gaming, MMO Times, MMORPG

Issue 28

Greetings Fellow Gamers! I am trying to remain on top of all the latest MMO news that I believe most of you will find interesting. The GDC was going on this week so there have been quite a few of announcements. This issue has some new information about MechWarrior Online, the latest SWTOR patch trailer as well as more news on upcoming patches and updates for other popular games. There are also details about the Diablo III release date, Guild Wars 2 pre-order information and more.

I may have another issue next week as Blizzard has indicated that a wealth of expansion information will be unveiled by the media sometime next week. I would expect that the next issue of MMO Times will be dominated by World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria news.

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WoW: Wrath Still the Favorite

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On March 13, 2012

In Gaming, World of Warcraft

I haven’t written too many blog posts about World of Warcraft. Most of my ramblings have been about gaming in general or SWTOR (when I was in the beta), so its kind of fun to blog about the game that really started it all (for me).

I have now played vanilla (though I did not reach max level before the expansion), Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King and now Cataclysm. I have watched the game change tremendously and I have tried to follow the lore throughout each expansion. I have been following along as more information about Mists of Pandaria is unveiled. I think, among all of the expansions (past and future), Wrath of the Lich King is still my favorite.

I played Warcraft III several times before and during college so I think that is why I enjoyed the lore so much in Wrath of the Lich King. The addition of the Death Knight as a playable class added an ironic twist to the story and the quest to defeat Arthas. I loved doing the quests specifically to follow the story and the lore and the homages it payed to Warcraft III. Every time you left Eastern Kingdoms (or Kalimdor) it felt like an expedition to Northrend, just as Arthas did (before he went totally nutz). Dalaran was, and still is, my favorite capital city. I still have my hearth set there for several of my toons. Sometimes its depressing to be there and see it so empty. I think that Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel are still the best raid instances in the game.

As WoW is declining in popularity, I think the timing of its decline is somewhat fitting. Despite the fact that Cataclysm brought many features players were clamoring for (ex: flight on the original continents), from a lore perspective I kind of feel like Wrath of the Lich King was the final chapter. It ended one of the biggest story lines in Warcraft lore. I would go so far as to say that any expansion that follows Wrath of the Lich King is just an appendix because its hard to imagine that any expansion could be better … unless there is an expansion dedicated to the Emerald Dream/Nightmare.

Or, maybe one day we will have to return to Northred … after all there always must be a Lich King 🙂

Cheers!

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