Good & Cheap Game Review: World of Goo (PC)

World of Goo is a single player puzzle game that is simple enough for kids to learn and enjoy and full of enough snarky humor and social commentary to keep the more geeky adults in line as well.  It quickly took the place of the previously reviewed Crayon Physics as my 6-year-old son’s favorite game.

World of Goo is in many ways an amazing game.  It was created by 2D Boy Studios by a team of 2 guys with neither office space nor venture capital.  The game won several awards and lots of merits from the press and public for its design and gameplay.

The game revolves around living gooballs of various types, each with their own ability.  You then use these gooballs to build structures or solve puzzles, with the main goal to be to get a set number of balls to a pipe which sucks them up.  The games range from very easy to downright frustrating, but the good thing is that none of them involve incredible leaps of logical reasoning as in the Myst series.  The game itself is relatively short but in all very satisfying.  Even when you’ve solved the whole thing, you can go back and try to achieve “OCD” status on any level.

The game is notable not only for its gameplay but for the edgy humor that pokes fun at everything from geek culture to consumerism.  Some of it you’ll get and some you won’t, but it’s always good.

You can’t beat the price either – at $15 this is one of the best cheap games out there.  It’s available as a demo if you’d like to try it for PC, Linux or Mac.  It is also available as WiiWare for the same price.

Is Ebay the Best Place to Sell Your Stuff?

No doubt about it – Ebay has become synonymous with not only finding great deals, but also for selling your stuff in a relatively easy manner.  It’s not the only place though, and it may not be the best for sellers depending on what you’re selling.

I’ve sold items on Craigslist, Ebay and Amazon.  Each has its benefits and drawbacks, and once you use them you’ll find that one is better for selling a particular item at a good price than another.

Craigslist, for example, is great if you’re selling stuff that you don’t want to ship.  For example, I sold a number of baby items that would be very impractical to ship (a high chair, an exersaucer, etc.).  These also weren’t that valuable, so the cost of shipping would have been more than the price of the item.  But there were plenty of people locally who wanted them and were willing to pick them up.  Craigslist listings are good for a month and can easily be renewed after they expire, so if an item doesn’t sell it’s not a big deal.  Think of Craigslist as your yard sale space.  Oh – and it’s free to list and sell items.  Can’t beat that!  You may have to deal with a few extra hassles around scheduling pick-up or delivery of a Craigslist sale, but it can be well worth it to sell an otherwise unsellable item.

Amazon.com is one of the largest sales sites on the Internet, and you can take advantage of this by selling your items on their site.  You can’t sell just anything though – whatever you’re selling should already be listed in Amazon’s catalog in order to get good hits.  But if you’re selling things like books, cd’s, old video games, or other common Amazon-listed items you are good to go.  When you list an item in Amazon, you pay nothing until it sells.  At that point Amazon takes a commission.  But Amazon beats Ebay in that it gives you a shipping allowance credited to your account to help cover shipping, starting at $3.99 for regularly-shipped items.  If you’re selling something and shipping it media mail, the shipping allowance more than makes up for the postage in most cases.  Be savvy though: when you list items make sure there aren’t a ton of other people selling that same thing for less than what you want.  You can do that easily enough when you make your listing.  Also be aware that the sale isn’t done until you indicate on your seller page that the item has shipped.  Another benefit of Amazon is that listings are active for months.  Amazon’s customer service is also remarkably good.  When I had a problem with a buyer, Amazon intervened within 48 hours of my request and rectified the problem immediately.

If you have a unique or rare item, Ebay is still one of the best places to go to to sell.  While often considered just as an auction site, Ebay offers many different ways to sell your goods.  List your item as an auction, as a no-reserve auction, or as a regular sale through the “buy it now” feature.  If you are willing to try and sell your item by auction, it’s also your only bet among the three considered here.  You have a lot more freedom in terms of how your sale works, looks and is marketed on Ebay as well.  You can jazz up your sales page as much as you like, add as many photos as you want, and easily link to other items you’re selling.  These extras will cost you though, and it can easily add up.  When you include the cut that Ebay takes for commission, you may not have much left after the sale.  Therefore, items that you may not be able to make more than $3 or $4 are probably best left to the yard sale, or try one of the other options above.  Ebay also lets you set the shipping price of your item on your own, which can work toward your benefit at times to help cover a low sales price.  One negative of Ebay is that listings typically don’t last more than 7-10 days, although some do last longer.  So you’ll really need to advertise your item well to get the best price.

Which site to sell on will depend on a number of factors.  The rarity or uniqueness of the item you want to sell, the cost of shipping your item, and your overall sales strategy (hands-off or hands-on) are all important things to consider.  If you use these sites and their audiences in your favor, you can make your online sales soar.

Netflix confirmed for the Wii!

Slashdot, among others, has confirmed that Netflix will begin offering streaming over the Wii very soon. The streaming service requires a disk to be in the console to operate, probably due to the Wii’s piddly memory capacity. I wouldn’t doubt that a downloadable channel will become available anyway though. Still, the stream won’t be in HD.

Whoa, did you hear that? That’s a big “so what?” from those of us that are still too broke to migrate up to an HDTV and to cheap to upgrade to Comcast’s digital monstrosity.  This is a no-brainer!

Still, I’m already looking at banging out that Netflix subscription.

10 Trends to Watch for 2010

Not to be left behind off the “10 ____ of 2010″ bandwagon, here’s part one of my predictions of things to watch for in 2010.

1.  The Disappearing Desktop:  With the advent and popularity of netbooks, as well as the continuing popularity of notebooks, the desktop computer will start to become more and more of a niche item as opposed to a do-it -all machine.   Desktops will become more like home servers to store content for use by other pc’s and even game consoles.

2.  Social Networking Peaks Out:  Facebook and Twitter have revolutionized how people keep in touch with one another, and companies have capitalized on this as well.  More and more, Facebook and the like have become more like advertising tools.  While that’s fine in some cases, I think the commercialization of social networking will also doom it.

3.  The Realization of the Wired Home:  While people have tried to connect home life and technology before, the results were either cost prohibitive or lackluster.  Now as wireless and wired networking are ubiquitous in many homes, home integration around energy efficiency, security, lighting, and entertainment will really start to take off.

4.  The Phone is the new PC: Smartphones, including Google’s new Nexus One, are becoming indispensable among the technorati, even taking the place notebooks once had as portable computers.  Even with high prices, people are willing to pay a premium for what these phones do.  Expect prices to drop and for bandwidth to increase across the board.

5.  The 3D Television:  Manufacturers are rapidly pushing 3D enabled televisions as the next leap forward after the advent of large plasma and LCD screens.  I’m skeptical as to how well it will take off though.  While sports broadcasters have caught on, will the public embrace it enough to watch “The Office – 3D!”?

6.  Microsoft Loses Ground:  While most of the world thinks of Microsoft as unstoppable in the computing world, it’s armor is getting tarnised more every month.  While Windows 7 is a huge success, Office 2010 doesn’t seem to be as innovative or as upgrade-worthy as 7.  More importantly, Microsoft is losing ground to Firefox in the browser market and to Google in nearly everything Internet related.  Will Google out-Microsoft Microsoft?

7:  Bigger, Better, Faster, More:  No big surprise, but computers and consumer electronics will continue to reach speeds that are almost obscene.  Terabyte hard drives are already commonplace, as are quad-core CPU’s.  Wireless network bandwidth is getting faster, and a lot of this new technology is also more energy efficient that predecessors. 

8:  Cloud Computing Gains Acceptance:  With the increasing availability of devices for ultra-mobile computing (smartphones, netbooks) people will become more and more at ease with the idea of having their data stored somewhere other than with them.   This will all be well and good until…

9:  Hackers Target The Internet Itself:  As more and more data is stored on remote servers and less on home PC’s, the Internet itself will become a primary target of attack.  Why?  Well probably not to access the cloud data, although they could try.  It’s easier to hack a home PC with a lousy firewall than a server farm.  But hackers could launch a denial of service attack, not just shutting down access to a site (which harms the company being targeted) but cutting off access between users and their data stored in the cloud.  When this happens, the results could be anything from annoying to catastrophic.

10:  Environmental Tech Goes Boom:  I think that 2010 will see an exponential increase in not only the drive to create new green products but – more importantly – in the success of these products.  It’s one thing to make ultra-efficient cars, but who cares if nobody can afford them?  In 2010 smaller companies with smaller overheads, fewer management egos to placate, and geniuses at the helm (old-school Steve Jobs) will make real headway in developing new ways to save energy, make it more cheaply and efficiently, and put it out in a way that appeals to both budget-conscious conservatives and earth-conscious liberals. 

So here’s to 2010, which I prefer to call “twenty-ten” just for the record.  I’m a strict believer in syllable conservation.