Google has come out with yet another attempt to conquer the mighty Facebook, this time with Google+.

Clearly splitting up groups of friends is a good idea, something Facebook has yet to get quite right.

The signup is a bit too complicated – I don’t see people’s moms signing up here anytime soon. Maybe that is a good thing, but it will be tough to conquer Zuck’s 700+ million user behemoth without those demographics.

Since the user count is still low, you run into the current annoyance with facebook – too many posts from certain obnoxious “verbose” users, and not enough updates from the folks you’d rather hear from. circles could potentially solve this, by corralling these folks into their own “chatty / spammy” sphere.

Also interesting is the ability to follow anyone (ala Twitter), instead of a mutual bi-directional friendship (ala Facebook). This means I can subscribe to the posts of folks who may be putting out interesting content, but aren’t actually a RL friend (which is the current use of twitter).

The photo integration is definitely superior to Facebook, but we’ll see if the rest of the API (integration with external apps / services, comment posting, etc) follows suit. That’s what makes Facebook currently so powerful.

The newest streaming music service has finally landed in the U.S.

The client itself is pretty nice. Very similar to iTunes, but sleeker. I’ve had a few crashes, and even had to do a fresh reinstall when some user file got corrupted.

But it is fast to load, and lets you play locally stored music from the iTunes library, as well as the online library. The streaming itself has been fantastic – never had to wait for songs to buffer, and stuff starts almost instantly.

Playlists take some getting used to. Say you browse for an artist and pull up an album. If you click the first song, it will only play that song, then stop. If you want to play the entire record, you have to copy it into a playlist, and play that. Also confusing was the Queue, which is sort of similar to the iTunes DJ. Once your current playlist completes, it will start playing stuff from the queue.

The ads are a bit strange. Most of them are for the Spotify service itself (which is not terrible in itself, compared to Pandora, which is peppered with horrible car insurance ads, etc), or tips and tricks to using the service. It’s odd when they start playing a random top 40 track without any prompt (as an ad for that playlist), so you go from hearing some soothing ambient electronica or obscure indy rock to Chris Brown.

I’ve yet to “discover” any new music on the service. Mostly I’ve been going through and listening to the full discographies of bands I already like. What the service could really use is an auto-playlist feature, similar to iTunes genius, which creates playlists of similar songs/artists for you. I suppose the short clips of random songs are about discovery, but I don’t think Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Marley and Johnny Cash need much promotion.

Still, this is currently the best way to listen to music out there, with both the local library of MP3s and online streaming combined in one slick interface. I may fork over the 5$ / month if I end up blowing through the limit. Invites may still be rare – I ended up getting one through this Coke promotion: http://www.spotify.com/us/coca-cola/

Last summer my zone-out record of choice was Delorean – Subiza, and this year I think it will be Washed out – Within and Without. The indie-bloggers have already coined a new genre (post-chillwave) to describe the record, but it draws heavily from the now classic synths of New Wave and the software wizardry of contemporaries Panda Bear and Ulrich Schnauss. The brilliant thing about the record is that each song feels like a different interpretation of the same motif, like light fractured through a prism.

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
All the instantly classic folk melodies and incomparable vocals of Robin Pecknold are back, but it’s the songwriting that really sets the record apart. The title track leads the charge, with the existential ponderings of young man questioning his place in the world.

Cut Copy – Zonoscope
Cut Copy sounds like a band that was transported directly out of the 1980s of some alternate universe. They match the New Wave sound perfectly, but they put together songs with the grandeur of a band that would be selling out arenas, or at the very least opening for New Order. Never mind that they’re an Australian import that gets some praise on indy music blogs. Maybe they can do videos for Nike:

It’s pretty depressing to think that Wallace was hacking away at this thing the last 10 years of his life, without success. Granted, there are some pretty impressive sections here (POV tales of oddball characters, ending up as tax processors in Peoria, IL), and hints of a cohesive whole (semi-sinister plots of shadowy bureaucratic overlords revamping the inner workings of the IRS…) But Wallace was never good at novelistic plotting – it always came off as cheesy and surreal (the wheelchair terrorist in Infinite Jest, etc). The best part of his writing is when he’s deep within the psyche of a character, usually on the verge of some sort of depressive breakdown. In this book, he’s seeking some sort of spiritual solace amidst all the paper-shuffling boredom. It’s tough to say if he ever found it, but there are glimpses of salvation hidden away, like a needle of meaning in the monumental haystack that is the US Tax Code.

James Michener – Chesapeake

This book was a monster, and I barely finished it before my maximum number of renewals was exhausted at the library. Michener was a beast with a pen. The book is less of a novel then a compendium of loosely connected short stories that are set along the Chesapeake Bay, spanning hundreds of years. Each story is wonderful on its own, but the real standouts are the tale of an American Privateer who battles English warships but eventually becomes a slaver for financial reasons; the tale of a slave kidnapped from the Congo, brought aboard the holds of that very ship, who organizes a revolt; and then a hundred years later, the descendants of those grand characters, hatching schemes to hunt geese and crabs on the quiet banks of the bay. I have family from the area, and every summer I’d spend some time on those waters, out on boats or lounging on docks. That juxtaposition is still there today – pulling in a muddy crab pot, watching the pelicans skim over the glistening water, as an aircraft carrier leaves its berth at Little Creek, bound for some grand conflict of our own age.

Years ago, when I first started reading George RR Martin’s series, I found immediate comparisons with HBO’s The Sopranos. The sex, violence and backstabbing in Westeros was right on par with Tony, Paulie, Christopher and the rest of the Jersey crew. Luckily, plenty of folks with dollars thought the same thing, and here we are, years later, with the first season wrapped and another on the way. I will say – it could not have been better. The casting is pitch-perfect; the aesthetics of the lands and cultures are right on. Even the dialog has been tightened, so Tyrion’s quips are still just as sharp, Arya’s just as feisty, Daenery’s just as regal, but we can fit a 1000 pages in 10 hours. I would trade half the sexposition scenes for larger battles, but hey, it’s not television, it’s HBO. Bonus: Dance with Dragons is *actually* getting released this year!

Tree of Life

I’m not sure if it’s an actual quote, but I’ve always thought “All film is fiction”. What that means is that film will always be a substitute for reality, as much as it attempts to mirror it. There will always be a hint of the unreal, whether it’s the makeup on the actor’s face, the artificial lighting, awkward dialog, or even the pace of editing during post-production. Malick’s own films understand the gap can’t be truly bridged, and instead of going in the conventional directions, either towards theatrical performance (via dialog, scenery chewing acting) or gritty reality (hand-held camera, natural lighting), he goes for hyper-reality: visions that would only exist in dreams.

Tree of Life has both the grandest scope and the most intimate focus of all his films, contrasting a montage of childhood snippets from 1950s Texas with the very creation of the universe. The central question: does life follow the way of nature (a stern father, the elemental forces of the universe); or the way of grace (an angelic mother; an afterlife of reunions on an endless beach). The cinematography and editing are incredible, of course, but it’s the way Malick can pull central questions of morality from images of trees and rivers that really give the film weight. For the young boy, those suburban lawns and woodlands are Eden – we see him tempted with the Apple of choice, freedom and selfishness. We see his pride and guilt and sadness. We see him exiled from that garden, and years later, his sullen self, lost in an urban wasteland of towering steel and glass. Is there a way back?

The world is gorgeous and vast, and the atmosphere is downright horrific, but the character animations give the entire thing a healthy dose of Uncanny Valley. The scripting is a bit off as well, so it feels like some areas / quests are broken. And the UI is downright horrendous. But aside from those small quibbles, Fallout 3 is probably the most immersive game I’ve played this year. Not due to the storytelling, which was somewhat half-baked and yawn-inducing (nevermind Liam Neeson’s admirable voice acting), but simply due to the post-apocalyptic scenarios presented to the player. Approaching a slavers camp with the mission to rescue a few kidnapped children, you go in with the intention to cut a deal, complete the mission, and get out alive. But the cockiness and pure evil of the slavers induces pure rage: you pull out a handful of frag ‘nades the minigun and don’t stop firing until the ground is littered with red slaver giblets. That’s the most impressive (and fun) thing about Fallout: the sheer power you feel when you equip power armor, some heavy weaponry, and bring justice to a land lacking any.

Dragon Age: Origins

DA:O was Bioware’s return to its origins of classic fantasy RPGS, and it was a welcome return. A new engine, new rules (finally setting aside the legacy of D&D), new world, a new emphasis on gritty realism. Bioware’s skill for polish shines through – every map, character and dialog tree is lovingly crafted by the guys. The raw gameplay draws heavily from the elephant in the room (World of Warcraft), with configurable talent trees and hot buttons the player continually “fires” during combat, with cooldowns. Even some of the bigger boss fights approached the epic endurance of WoW’s raids. But the fact that you control 4 characters and can pause at any time harkens back to the glory days of Baldur’s Gate. Aside from expanding endless dialog trees to reveal lore about the land, or perhaps kick off a romance among companions, the most memorable thing about the game are the fights. When it comes down to the wire, pausing at a sliver of life, chugging a potion, getting a critical attack on that pesky mage, landing a heal on the tank, and just barely eking out victory. In most RPGS, victory comes down to a math equation (are my skills / gear good enough?). But in DA: O, victory draws in part from skill, so when you save the world, it feels like you did something.

Super Meat Boy

Probably the hardest game I’ve played in a long time, in a purely hand-eye-coordination sense. But it’s got a cool style and aesthetic, and the levels aren’t impossible, just challenging. So you end up playing the same level 30-40-50 times in a row, until you perform the jumps with perfection, and you watch all your failures plummet to red death. Like the many lives failing on the path to attain nirvana, you reincarnate again and again until you (the player) reach a state of zen.

Torchlight
Torchlight is the antithesis of Bioware RPGS. There’s hardly any story, no puzzle solving, no dialog trees, no party dynamics. It’s pure hack-n-slash. Diablo on crack. And its fun as hell.

iPhone Games

I’m loathe to pay even a dollar for a piece of software that would be free and take up a minute or two of mindless time on a regular computer (hello – flash games). So I’ve usually just downloaded the “lite” version of iPhone games, or wait till they drop to 0$. And most of it is crap. There are maybe a dozen unique games, with ten thousand different skins. Of course, I have the staple – Angry Birds. (I’ve found the game frustrating in the seemingly arbitrariness of its physics. I like games where success is assured given a few well executed timed button presses. The “analog” nature of iPhone physics-based games goes against my entire video game upbringing, from Nintendo through PC, where all input is digitized and finite. In Angry Birds, we are at the whims of a cruel physics simulation, and those damned green pigs! hence frustration ) Other games I’ve liked (and played far too many hours):

Gun Bros – probably the best of the twin stick shooters, aside from the micro-transaction annoyances.

Death Knight – old school beat-em-up with great art and smooth controls.

Logic Box – contains a pack of classic puzzle games (unblocker, labyrinth, etc). I’ve spent hours on this one.

Trace – Platformer-puzzler, where you draw the platforms.

TikiTotems – disassemble towers (ala Angry Birds) by removing pieces.

The Labyrinth – Like the old school marble-on-wood board games, using the iPhone gyroscope.

The author had recently suffered a concussion, and was consigned to bed rest. She designed some sort of meta-game to make her stay in bed, getting points and leveling up for every tasks (napping, reading magazine, calling a friend on the phone) she completed.

The ironic thing is that lots of gamers have come out to decry this effort as being neither new, nor a good thing. In fact, most corporations have integrated “gamification” into their marketing for the last few years. “Games” that force the “player” to jump through hoops (finding clues on websites or codes under bottle caps) merely to reveal more marketing. Beyond that, gamification adds another layer, a digital / artificial layer on top of reality. Jaron Lanier’s book You Are Not a Gadget goes into the moral reasoning against this. The crux of the argument is that software attempts to digitize the fractal, analog nature of reality in order to control it and manipulate it.

This is one of the fun things about video games. Playing a game takes two stages. The first stage is training your muscle memory to react to the situations on the screen – the timing and button combos, etc. You are basically deciphering the system of the game world. The next step is exploiting this learning to defeat harder and more complex challenges. Because the entire reality of the game (movement in the world, interaction with characters, etc) can be broken down into discrete button pushes, it’s possible to maximize power and utility in that world. This is why video games are fun – lots of power for a few minutes of brain expenditure.

The real world is much more complex. Of course you can’t distill real life conversations, with all their awkward pauses, meta-level politicking, stammers, faux-pas, burst of passion and serendipity into a binary tree of conversation paths (Bioware RPGS). Of course you can’t distill the physics and friction of real life skateboarding (or ninjitsu) into a few flicks of a joystick.

But gamification says you can. It says you can break down reality into these discrete chunks, and the “user” of the system will not only complete the real-world tasks, but feed off the endorphin bursts that come from the “Ding-buzz” of video game accomplishment.

The art of video games is partially because they reside in the realm of escapism. If I play a flight simulation to zoom through the mountains or even drop some digital bombs on pixilated bad guys, it can be fun, even approaching a form of interactive art. If a trained operative is doing the same thing from Langley Virginia, and those bombs and bad guys are no longer digital, what is the difference? For the CIA bomber, inside his own brain, maybe not much. But from a moral standpoint, it’s night and day. See: Ender’s Game.

As our own professions become increasingly digital, and most of our workday consists of manipulating symbolic information on a screen, the lure of gamification will be to turn every tasks into something fun. The danger is that this will mask what those symbols mean in the real world, and the worker bees won’t be directly engaged in moral compromise, because they’ll be having too much fun leveling up their crops in Farmville, or their headshot count in Call of Duty.

From Feb 2011 Blue Ridge Parkway

From Feb 2011 Blue Ridge Parkway

The view is spectacular (360 degree panorama):