After the last post on automated related links in posts I mentioned liking the relevancy provided by the Zemanta service and promised to check into the service in greater detail. Bonus: Andraz the Zemanta CTO stopped by in the comment section and answered a few questions which piqued my curiosity further. I like seeing company executives and reps out responding to blog posts, being transparent about their service. Andraz promised more features were on the way as backed up by the active Zemanta GetSatisfaction page. I’m guessing he’ll dig the info in this post for his team which is loaded with wish list items to make Zemanta a killer application.

Important note: the spam category placement is not intended to imply that I think Zemanta in any way spams anybody, rather I’ve noticed their service is being used by some spam blogs and splogs. There are lots of legitimate tools that are being abused/used by spammers, this is not meant to be nor should it be construed as condemnation of the Zemanta service.

I downloaded the Zemanta Windows Live Writer plugin and have been experimenting with using on a few posts at our group blog, VTOReality.com (e.g Anarchy Online 30 day free offer expires December 31, 2008). There are Zemanta plugins available for self-hosted WordPress, wordpress.com, Blogger and more, but I won’t be covering those here.

What Zemanta does

Think of Zemanta as an almost real time blogging research assistant. On GetSatisfaction they self-describe as:

Contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again.

Imagine having somebody — or something — that sits beside you while you write posts and presents you with ongoing number of choices for adding external content to your blog posts like: pictures from Flickr, Wikipedia entries, homepage links, links to related stories around the web, company info, map locations and more. 

Above you’ll see a picture of what it’s like working in Windows Live Writer with the Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer active in the middle. Along the right is a full-size screenshot of only the Zemanta pane. 

Wish list #1: Allow width resizing of Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer.

The Zemanta pane is either open or closed by clicking on the two right arrows (<< and >> respectively). When writing I tend to want as much space as possible, but found that I liked the idea of having this pane open a little bit. This brings me to my next wishlist item.

Wish list #2: let users customize what sources and types show in the Zemanta pane

For example, maybe I only want to see pictures from Flickr. And maybe only pictures licensed for commercial use. There is a Zemanta filter option but it’s not clear how to use that to only retrieve commercial licensed ok pictures. If that is possible, then please somebody tell me how? Most of the plugins I’ve seen for showing related pictures don’t include this very important option. This blog has advertisements, turns a profit, and thus is considered commercial use by many TOS so a tool that shows me non-commercial licensed images is useless here.

Also maybe I don’t ever want to see links by Wikipedia or links to posts made by resources I already use or feel are too common. Then there are certain times I want to see only related content from sources in my OPML list. 

Wish list #3: increase number of sources from 160 to 500+ and include feature to allow to only draw from these sources

Lightbulb flashes went off in my head when I learned you could add your own list of sources, but was quickly disappointed to learn only a maximum of 160 sources are currently allowed. This comes up short for the number of individual sources used at VTOR and the number of current sources which I pull for this blog is over 600 RSS feeds alone, not counting my network of Twitter and Friendfeed contacts. We haven’t even gotten into StumbleUpon, digg or the many other places one can find stuff that encourages them to write a blog post.

I’m not expecting Zemanta to cater to users like Scoble who pulls from tens of thousands sources, but there lies a middle road between that extreme and 160. That’s where I’m at anyway and hazard a guess that plenty of other blog writers fit this demographic. Please let me know otherwise in the comments if you have less than 160 sources including Twitter, Friendfeed. I doubt many do that are blogging regularly these days.

As I’m writing this it occurred to me one could create a plugin mashup using the Y! context checker and provide those results from their own sources checked say once every few minutes or so. This would give the ability to draw from a specific source list much greater than 160. A toggle could be used for pictures or external articles giving very similar functionality to Zemanta. I wonder if some enterprising developer has already done the lifting here?

Wish list #4: Fix Windows Live Writer (WLW) plugin stability issues and allow easy disabling/removing of WLW plugin

If this wishlist were in order of importance, this would be #1. During the writing of this post with the Zemanta plugin activated, WLW crashed multiple times. Before activating the Zemanta plugin, I rarely encountered WLW crashes like this so I’m led to believe Zemanta was the culprit. Indeed, I exited the Zemanta plugin and finished the rest of this post and it never crashed again. Here are the errors received:

Obviously the worst kind of blog helper imaginable would be one that came and shut you down in the middle of writing something.

Fortunately during each crash I could save before the application needed to be restarted and my work-in-progress was safe. This is where Zemanta as my blog assistant got fired. I tried to disable the plugin in WLW. When restarting after the plugin being disabled it still starts up in the middle pane. Huh? This needs to be fixed ASAP. When something is marked as disabled it should not fire upon application restart. I exited again and uninstalled from add/remove programs in Windows. I saw a complaint on GetSatisfaction that another user had to use RevoUninstaller (freeware) to purge the Zemanta installation files completely. This type of once we’re installed we don’t leave on uninstall behavior is totally unacceptable and borderline adware tactic. Fix this now.

Wish list #5: scrap the Terms of Service requirement to use the Zemanta reblog image service link and allow something more (better) customized

I don’t see myself using Zemanta on this blog for the other wishlist items mentioned but the Zemanta TOS requiring me to use their button in every post that I use anything showing in their interface is a big reason to say thanks but no thanks. I wonder how many are using Zemanta to find related content and get angles are skipping fulfilling the TOS requirement which clearly says this is not optional.

Here’s the Terms of Service quote, Zemanta users:

• Service Description. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content on your site or within your application, you agree to display the Zemanta Icon logo.
• Service Icon/Logo Display. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content, you agree not to make any changes to the shape and size of the Zemanta logo, or other Zemanta created content
• Service User Interface Display. When a reader clicks on the Zemanta icon logo you agree to hyperlink that logo directly to our home page at http://www.zemanta.com, or other appropriate page within our site.

NOTE: even though Zemanta screenshots are shown in this post and the review is about the service absolutely no links or content was used from the interface, so you won’t see that image link here as required by the TOS. In fact during the writing of this post I uninstalled the plugin as mentioned above.

Zemanta, just get rid of the TOS requirement altogether. Credit link in a blog post like this should be more than sufficient as a site-wide mention of the service. This post will be spidered by Google and will remain as long as this site — or your service — is live. There is no reason for me to promote Zemanta in every single post where Zemanta was somewhat helpful. That would be the equivalent of mentioning a human blog assistant’s name in every post even when it’s not relevant. It starts to feel kind of spammy to me, which leads to another concern I had about Zemanta. And one that I voiced to their CTO in the comments about my familiarity with their service to date.

I’ve noticed a considerable number of sites using posts from this blog as related links on very spammy/sploggy blogs and trackbacking in from those posts. This just sullies the Zemanta brand. It also could lead to search engines punishing these unrelated, forced Zemanta links someday. The lines between paying somebody to put up a link without rel=nofollow and bartering for the link (which is what Zemanta is doing) are fuzzy, IMO.  I’m not saying that Zemanta is spamming anybody or is a haven for spammers nor that they can control whether or not spammers are using their services, but it’s an issue worth mentioning.

Andraz pointed out in the comments that these brand name companies are using Zemanta: Real Networks official blog, HP Marketing Blogs, Chris Brogan, some start-up CEOs, Geekdad blog at Wired.com, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want to deprive Zemanta any credit for being a blog helper — links here and there where relevant are fine, just not in every single post. Adding to that I strongly dislike where these links point to: the Zemanta reblogging web interface.

This thing is an eyesore from a design and usability standpoint.

Not sure if it’s the hard to read text (writers need their eyes!) or the fact that we’re being sandwiched into a dual pane and then being asked to give Zemanta our blog login credentials. It’s all around fail to me from a blog owner perspective. Why should I send other bloggers off to use that? Most bloggers already have their own blog interface they are happy using. At the very least give me the ability to customize what that link does and/or provide the interface directly on this blog at least. It would be awesome if Zemanta would allow Zemanta registered users to redirect that link to their blog interface of choice: e.g launch windows live writer with that text highlighted or Firefox plugin and so on.

Zemanta still the most useful that I’ve seen in this class of tools

Despite Zemanta’s shortcomings mentioned in this Hmm Review, it is the best I’ve seen/used to date at what it does. Much better and contextually related than Sphere. If Zemanta fills the wishlist items mentioned here, I’d strongly recommend this tool to blogging friends and probably use more myself. As it stands now, the Windows Live Writer plugin needs too much work to be added to my workflow. Might be worth reviewing the other plugin options to see if they are better. As always, I invite you to agree or disagree below. Grade: C+

Axl Rose, Dizzy and a bunch of other good musicians that make up the 2008 version of Guns N Roses have released Chinese Democracy on MySpace first, followed by a Best Buy only release this Sunday.

After listening, I know one place I will be this Sunday besides watching the Seahawks get beat again.

Yes, you can now listen to every Chinese Democracy track in or out of order for free streaming and after the first listen through I figuratively wiped my brow.

Wow.

There are some powerful, mind bending guitar riffs in here. If like me you miss the days when songs were layered with catchy guitar solos, you are in for a serious treat when you listen to what’s behind the Chinese Democracy curtain. Major kill switch, guitar bending, screaming action on some of these tracks.

Sure, the guitar wizard Slash isn’t there — and no disrespect is intended by the title of this post or the following admission — but you don’t end up missing him that much. This is either a testament to it taking nearly 20 15 years to get this GNR album published or the reality that there are 2008 guitar wizards in the making. I saw this 8-year old kid on YouTube yesterday that might grow up to be a future guitar god, who knows.

But what does Slash think about it? He has already weighed in — and likes it:

To tell you the truth: I already listened to it. At first I thought that I would never listen to it until it’s released, but someone handed it to me and I was in my car and I was like, "Okay, let’s give it a try." So I listened to it: It’s a really good record. It’s very different from what the original GUNS N’ ROSES sounded like, but it’s a great statement by Axl. Now you understand where he was heading all this time. It’s a record that the original GUNS N’ ROSES could never possibly make. And at the same time it just shows you how brilliant Axl is. So it was a relief for me to actually hear it.

Like former GNR guitarist I too felt prepared for disappointment and was pleasantly surprised by how good this album sounds. This had Spore-like hype written all over it but unlike Spore, Chinese Democracy delivers.

Track listing and notes

1. "Chinese Democracy" - for a title track and intro to the album, I suppose it works, but it had a bit too much going on for my taste. Not that I don’t like complex music, but this one feels like you need an Iron Maiden type lineup of multiple guitarists to pull it off faithfully live. I like music that doesn’t feel too much like it was over-processed and this track just oozes over-production. This doesn’t take away from it being a decent song melodically, but stripped down a bit I bet this would have rocked more. The guitar solo foreshadows perfectly (3:26) that this will be a guitar album that kicks ass.
2. "Shackler’s Revenge" - this has been available and playable on Rock Band 2 for awhile now. One of the weakest vocal tracks IMO. A little too new wave sounding for me, although love the guitar work. Fun to play this on Rock Band.
3. "Better" - Ironically, this is where the album starts to pick up some serious steam for me. I’d heard a bootleg of this a few years back and enjoyed it then. Professionally mixed it sounds even better. Catchy verse and chorus. Layered with some thundering power chords. This could have been a B-side cut — and a good one — on Use Your Illusion II. If you were worried if Axl could still sing, this track answers with an exclamation mark. Great track.
4. "Street of Dreams" - the first mellow track on the album, heavy in the keyboard area. Axl’s verse vocals seem off the first few listens, like he’s singing in a can or something but it grew on me after a few listens. This isn’t "November Rain" or "Patience" but it’s pretty good.
5. "If The World" - has a groovy 70s-era riff going.  Almost like this could be something you heard playing in the background of a Shaft movie.
6. "There Was A Time" - an almost religious song like opening and closing, quickly replaced by a guitar moaning in the background and catchy beat. One of the best guitar solos on the album. 5:21 listen for the liberal kill switch. I think it’s songs like this that will have budding guitarists everywhere adding kill switches to their axes.
7. "Catcher In The Rye" - second mellow song. Just OK. Kind of a Bon Jovi-ish la-la-la chorus part that didn’t work very well for me. Too much layering and overdubbing here again.
8. "Scraped" - a vocal assault opening that leads into a "Rocket Queen" type riff. Digging it, especially the wah-wah guitar solo.
9. "Sorry" - Sebastian Bach of Skid Row sings backup vocals on this haunting third mellow track.  This is one where the tons of layering guitars and overdubs actually works quite well. Might be the best lyrics of any song on the album or at least the easiest to understand. Liner notes needed.
10. "Riad N’ The Bedouins" - easily wins the strangest song title award. A beginning with a theme that moves into an upbeat, rocking moaning intro. I don’t have any idea what this song is about but it jams.
11. "I.R.S" - (somewhat) mellow track #4. Better than "Catcher in the Rye" but not as good as "Sorry" and "Street of Dreams"
12. "Madagascar" - mellow track #5. There is some similarity to the last track with this one, although the beat is different. Gotta dig the clips of King’s famous "I have a dream" interspersed with the "Failure to co-mun-nicate" clip in "Civil War" — nice way to pay homage.
13. "This is Love" - this is the sixth and final mellow track complete with piano, keyboard and vocals only opening. When the guitar comes in around a minute in the song, it’s surprisingly subdued but effective. Axl layered vocals are nice. This kind of reminds me a bit of Black Sabbath "Changes" in the overall feel, though the melody is nothing like it. At 2:15 the guitar power chords start to color the song leading to a heavy, somber solo. Cheap guitar solo nowhere to be found on this album. Thanks GNR!
14. "Prostitute" - the drumbeat to this one reminds me a bit of "Locomotion" on Illusion 2. This might be my sleeper favorite of the album with the gripping melody. Some nice Axl screams before the guitar wailing. I thought at first, hey this solo was short, but stay with it as more riffing assaults your ears (in a good way) at 4:23. Oh yeah this is good. Are we going to be left with a piano outro? The drums fade into the distance and keyboards dominate. You can imagine smoke rising through the stage. And then like that it’s just … over.

Can’t stop listening to these tracks on MySpace.

Kudos aside, back down to earth it’s clear that Chinese Democracy isn’t Appetite For Destruction. There is no smoking gun of a song like "Sweet Child O’ Mine" on here, but there are several very good, catchy heavy tracks like "Better" that will get plenty of rotation. The guitar work alone deserves high marks.

Axl would likely be the first to say that creating another Appetitle wasn’t what he was trying to do. I believed he’d botch up Chinese Democracy, but there are brushes of brilliance on this album. Axl might be difficult to get along with, but there’s no denying he’s got major talent and knows the recipe for good music.

Appetite is a classic and even if the original GNR got back together I doubt they could bring back the fire and magic of that album. I’d put Chinese Democracy somewhere between Use Your Illusion I (which I didn’t much care for) and Use Your Illusion II (which is a classic). The 6 of 14 mellow songs make it feel very Use Your Illusion 2 like as far as overall theme. It’s world’s better than the crap on Spaghetti Incident. Although they are two completely different types of albums, I put it about on par with Lies.

Where does this work for a grade? The wait was much too long, but it feels worth it in a few of these songs. The overall vibe of the album is thumbs up. Easily one of my favorite albums of the year among the best of the new music by 80s bands. A few of the tracks are weak, but even the weakest are better than expected. And hey, don’t forget your free Dr. Pepper! Now I’m stoked for a live GNR concert. Grade: A-

Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you’ve probably heard something about UFOs, aliens and Roswell at least once in your lifetime. The year was 1947, some 21 years before I entered this earth and would not hear about Roswell for a good 10 more years or so.

The facts 

In years since I knew something happened, there was some kind of crash, on a farm Northwest of Roswell. A rancher by the name of "Mac" Brazel stumbled upon the wreckage and was worried about having it on his property because his sheep would not cross past it.

He gathered samples and took them into town to the sheriff. His story in the beginning was that he didn’t know what the material was and took it into town, wondering if it might be the wreckage of a flying saucer.

The sheriff phoned the local 509th bomber group and was routed to military intelligence officer Jesse Marcel Sr. who went out to the sheriff’s office to review the strange material. Marcel wanted to see where it came from and Brazel led him out to the spot where the wreckage was on his property.

Marcel took more samples of the material in his car. He stopped home and after swearing them to secrecy, showed his wife and his son what was discovered. He told his son — according to his son, Jesse Marcel Jr. — that it wasn’t anything he’d ever seen before. They touched the material which was like aluminum foil, only lighter and without one side being paper-like. They handled it carefully, not wanting to damage it.

Marcel took the material back to the base and after showing his superior, General Ramsey, the general checked  around with other military bases to see if it might be part of an experiment, a sensational press release was made that was retracted later. What was described as debris from a flying saucer was quickly amended to a misunderstanding: it was just a weather balloon.

This is where the story twists, depending on who or what you want — or are willing — to believe.

Common sense and Hollywood

It’s important to note that neither Marcel or son has ever claimed to have seen any aliens. They both only claimed to have seen material they hadn’t ever seen before. I was unclear on this until I read Marcel Jr.’s book, The Roswell Legacy, pictured above. This is the only book I’ve ever read on the subject, but I believe almost everything happened as Marcel’s son described.

The book isn’t laid out in story format. Instead it’s told in first person with little narrative and mostly descriptions of what Marcel’s son had witnessed firsthand and/or been told by his father of what really happened in 1947. It isn’t filled with a bunch of grandiose hypothesis about what might have happened, as I’ve seen to be the case with the Roswell incident over the years. It’s a mere 174 pages, including appendix.

The book also goes into a little bit of who his father was, his military credentials and what happened to him after Roswell. There was a TV movie in 1994 called Roswell starring Martin Sheen which takes some poetic license with the story, but remains somewhat faithful to what Marcel Jr. says really happened to him.

There are other stories portrayed in that TV movie which get much more difficult to believe — like there was a second crash site Marcel didn’t see that had the aliens, one of which was still alive. Don’t get derailed there though yet, let’s stay with Marcel who only said he saw material not of this world, later rebuffed by the government to be common material he should have been able to identify.

Marcel Jr. a surgeon has also been a career military man like his father and the only reasons he claims (and I believe) he wrote this story were:

1. to keep a promise to his father over getting the truth out about what really happened in 1947
2. to defend his father’s honor that was besmirched over mis-indentifying the Roswell crash debris as something other worldly instead of a weather balloon.

Marcel Jr. has served in Iraq as recently as 2005. He a credible source to me.

Marcel being part of the elite 509th bomber group, the unit behind the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have been able to easily identify the wreckage if it came from some known material. That only makes sense. Especially if it was a weather balloon, which was the government’s official story shortly after the first report put out by the 509th.

A weather balloon.  They’ve stuck by that story for the most part. Amending it later after reopening the investigation to a mogul balloon.

In the book, Marcel Jr. provides a scan of his father’s diploma from radar school dated September 8, 1945. He also lists his various military awards and despite his alleged gaffe identifying the debris, he was later promoted to lieutenant colonel in the reserves.

This doesn’t sound like the type of guy who would go out to a local ranch, bring back some material, show his boss the general the material, and then be part of putting out a press release that said it could be from a "flying saucer."

I did some internet fact checking to see if a copy of the original press release could be found online. Wikipedia, in fact, has a scan of the story in the Roswell Daily Record dated Tuesday July 8, 1943

 
Source: Wikipedia

So was there really a UFO crash in 1947 or not?

At least for this post I’m going to steer away from the hard to believe claims about seeing actual aliens at the second site, that one of them might have been kept alive for five years. Or that the government actually had an exchange program called Project Serpo from 1965-1978 where military personnel visited the planet Zeta Reticuli (and later allegedly died from "excess radiation"). You can visit YouTube, type in "Roswell" as the query and be treated to a bunch of clearly fake alien autopsy videos or use your favorite search engine for any of these terms to learn more if so inclined.

(But hey, if you want a good laugh then check out Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs — lol! Don’t you dig it when people try to be serious and it’s funny instead?)

Mea culpa: I wrote back in August 2006 that I believe aliens have visited earth and that the U.S government has proof of it. I’m not sure if this first happening was Roswell in 1947 and the book being reviewed here doesn’t try to answer that (and if it does, then it fails to be very compelling in that regard). What it does try to answer was if there was a crash of something not from earth. If you can’t go as far as me and believe in E.T then at least see if you can go as far as believing something crashed here not of this earth.

I am ready to believe the wreckage Marcel and his son touched wasn’t from earth. There are simply too many holes in the government’s response to believe otherwise. Weather balloon? Come on.

Where it came from, I don’t know, but if we knew it came from somewhere on earth what would be the harm in the government declassifying this information 60+ years later? Since the declassification hasn’t happened, one of the following possibilities must be true (pick your poison):

1. the government knows where it came from and doesn’t want to tell us
2. the government does not know where it came from and doesn’t want to admit this to us
3. the government knows where it came from on earth, and doesn’t want to tell us
4. the government does not know where it came from on earth and doesn’t want to admit this to us (yeah, similar to #2)

I was glad to be able to solve the lingering riddle in my mind about what happened in 1947 just outside Roswell. For that reason I give this book the highest Hmm Reviews grade possible. The book doesn’t get all "tinfoil-hat" to use the author’s own description of the fringe UFO crowd — and don’t worry readers, I’m not joining that crowd either. In fact, until the last chapter it doesn’t get too far afield of what the author and his father witnessed. That type of non-fiction works great for me.

In the last chapter the author explains why he thinks we’re not alone in the universe. I agree with much of his thinking there too. We can’t be alone and it’s arrogant to think we are. The universe is much too big and there are too many parts we know absolutely nothing about.

He thinks the aliens that have contacted us have been benign and that they might have some Star Trek like prime directive. That would make some sense as to why we don’t see aliens everywhere but they might have been in contact with the government.

The Russians have acknowledged crashed debris as being not of this earth while the U.S government has done so to date. I think before my death, assuming living out a ripe old age, I’ll see this happen.

I think it’s well past time for the government to declassify the material in 1947 that’s sitting on a base somewhere, waiting for further critical study and research. Why not?

Conspiracy theorist or realist

Now if I’m to be labeled conspiracy theorist for believing the government has botched up the Roswell cover-up, so be it. I put this one with the JFK assassination as far as believing the government lied to us. I’d also add in the more recent Bush administration lying about the whole weapons of mass destructions.

I think it’s harder to believe that the government has never lied to us, don’t you?

Conspiracy theorist or realist? I’ll take the latter. If you are looking for a story about what really happened in 1947 in Roswell, run, don’t walk, to the bookstore and get The Roswell Legacy. It feels about as close to the truth as we can get until the government declassifies what they are secreting away from us for our own [snicker] protection. Grade: A+

Last night there was the annual Best Buy customer private party and I saw voodoo for the first time. Er, VUDU [vudu.com] rather which is pronounced like voodoo. Here’s what this VUDU $299 DVD/HD/1080p on demand in a box badboy looks like:

Little bigger than the now defunct Xbox HD-DVD drive and a little smaller than the Xbox 360. What does it do? Delivers movies up to 1080p/24 to your TV over broadband internet.

VUDU comes neatly packed with everything you need to hook up to a 1080p TV and broadband network:

- network cable
- HDMI cable (also includes standard AV cables for those without HDMI)
- VUDU box (pictured above) which has 250GB storage
- AC power supply
- radio frequency antenna for remote (shown in the right rear of the picture)
- remote + required 2 AA batteries
- $200 in free movie credits (cannot be used on adult movies), more on this later

Don’t be dumb like us and forget to screw in the radio antenna first before trying to use the remote. The "Start Here" manual tells you to do this, BTW. Good idea to thumb through before digging in.

With RF frequency you don’t need to point at the box in order for the signal to make it to the box. You can put the box behind the TV if you want and it will work just fine. Downside to this is getting it to work with Slingbox, but in the VUDU forums I found some people who were successfully using VUDO with a Slingbox and IR dongle.

The VUDU has a USB 2.0 port which is planned to be used for external storage since it only has 250GB of storage. In the meantime you can use the VUDU servers for archival storage if you decide to build a library of movies in addition to renting movies. Not sure it’s wise spending too much money on buying movies from a service you probably haven’t ever heard of before. I hadn’t heard of VUDU until last night and I’m looking for new gadgets like this to try out.

Gotta dig the VUDU remote which looks like an alien’s head and has a simple, but effective design:

Pressing and holding the VUDU button for five seconds starts the step by step process. Vudu will test your broadband network and decide how long it takes for Standard Definition (SD) and HD movies to play. If you have 2.0 Mbps - 4.0 Mbps you can watch SD movies instantly without any waiting but you’ll need to wait for the HD movies.

You need to activate the VUDU at vudu.com/activation which involves entering in a VUDU activation code provided in the setup, putting your information in on the website along with credit card and agreeing to fund your vudubucks account with at least $20. The website is also where you turn on the adult movie feature if you want to be able to watch any adult movies. By default, VUDU is set not to show any movies in the After Dark category.

There are a handy set of parental controls to restrict what movies can be rented and watched without a pincode. By default everything is wide open (except adult as mentioned above) without any code required.

Once you provide your details and give VUDU at least $20 via credit card, the VUDU box will go through the final update stage and then you can start browsing, renting and/or buying movies to watch.

$200 in free movies — the catch

If you buy the VUDU during the promotional period you are also given the $200 in movie credits. Reading the fine print I learned that:

- the $200 in movie credits must be used within 4 months of activation or you lose the credits
- the $200 credits do not apply to any adult movies through the AVN after dark area
- if you return the VUDU they will bang your credit card for whatever movies you’ve rented, the credits only apply if you don’t return VUDU

Tall tales by VUDU sales rep

The VUDU rep wasn’t completely straightforward with us on the whole "having to wait" thing. I asked him point blank if there would be any waiting time of HD and he said there wasn’t. Wrong. There can be a wait, and can be a substantial one if you get the HDX (1080p) movies which are around 10GB in size. If you have 4.0 Mbps or greater connection you can get the HD movies instantly according to the documentation.

On every page of the VUDU website you can test your connection. When VUDU tested my speed through the box it put it at 2.0 Mbps speed, but from browser I’m seeing this:

From the Info & Settings menu you can force VUDU to use the higher setting.

The VUDU rep also told me the average price for movie rentals was $2.99. I found from browsing most of the newer movies seem to be $3.99 for HD and more for HDX. I didn’t see any HD movies for under $3.99. The movie rentals work similarly to renting movies through Xbox Live. You pay for a 24 hour window of time.

Watch movies the day they are released on DVD

The big selling point for VUDU is the ability to rent movies in HD quality the day they are released. Netflix which is going to be available through Xbox Live later this month streams movies as part of their monthly subscription.

The VUDU rep told me that they get movies the day they are released on DVD which is different from the other similar movie on demand services I’ve seen but unfortunately not every studio in Hollywood let’s their movies be immediately available for rental. He said the window was two weeks before the new DVDs become available to rent through VUDU which isn’t bad if you can wait. I don’t recall which studios he said made their movies available for rental on the day they were for sale, but it’s stupid that any studio does that. Hollywood being dumb again.

Iron Man, for example is available to buy ($19.99) but will not be available for rent until November 12.  It’s cool that VUDU shows you exactly when you will be able to rent movies, as well as provides coming soon dates of upcoming DVD releases.

Vudu menu is slick and simplistic

The VUDU UI is easy enough for a child to pick up and begin searching through movies. I was impressed with the design which consists of five top level options: Most Watched movies, New on VUDU, Explore Catalog, My VUDU and Info & Settings.

As the screenshot above shows, as you move to the right with the VUDU remote scrollwheel, the movie box art grows bigger and shows at the bottom the rating as well as range of prices for rental and to buy. If you don’t see any $5.99 or less price it means there is no rental available, it’s purchase only. Simple, but effective.

Most Watched - shows the top 100 movies other VUDU users have rented or purchased from the previous week
New on VUDU - here you can see what’s recently been added as well as when the movies will be available for rent
Explore Catalog - sort from thousands of titles (our list of ‘all’ showed over 7,000 titles) by genre and subgenre (like comedy-romance). You can also search by keyword on title and even actors in movies. VUDU also has TV shows available to buy at $1.99 per episode (upscaled in HD) which might give you the best picture over SD DVD set available to buy in stores
My VUDU - shows active rentals, movies you own, TV shows purchased as well as a wish list for titles you’d like to rent or buy someday and an archive/delete menu for moving content onto the VUDU servers
Info & Settings - adjust parental and other VUDU settings

There is an in-depth VUDU user guide (PDF) online detailing each feature available.

Is VUDU worth $299?

If you love to watch movies like we do and in the highest quality you can see them, we own over 600 DVDS (including some HD-DVD and Blu-ray) and we regularly rent movies through Xbox Live (paying $3+ for the privilege), the VUDU is worth checking out.  With the Best Buy $200 in free movie credits promotion, that brings the price of the VUDU + some movies/TV to watch down to a more reasonable $99. Something tells me they aren’t moving huge numbers of these because:

1. they are bit too pricey for something that requires spending more to watch movies and
2. they aren’t very well known and thus could be a here today gone tomorrow gadget. I remember Slingbox being something nobody had heard about once upon a time, but don’t think VUDU is as widely useful as the Slingbox.

Another downside is VUDU is yet another box around your TV and will fight for an HDMI slot among your gaming systems, cable/dish box, etc. If we keep the VUDU then we need an HDMI selector. I’m having to plug and unplug into the back of the TV too much already. Two HDMI slots and 4 HDMI devices doesn’t work.

I’m not sure we’re going to keep VUDU yet (30 day money back guarantee), but like the idea of being able to rent newer DVD movies without (hopefully) too much hassle. It takes way too long for new DVDs to reach the movie channels like Cinemax, HBO and Showtime. Xbox Live has them sooner, but there is still a noticeable delay. If Hollywood wasn’t lame, they’d make the movies available in VUDU on the day they are for sale for rent, just like they are in movie rental stores.

If the window of time that VUDU gets the newer movies is shorter than it takes to get to Xbox Live, it fills a niche for us versus getting the all you can watch subscription at say Hollywood Video. I also like not having to pay for a monthly subscription fee, but will probably be getting Netflix with Xbox later this month and comparing vs. VUDU. The quality of movies through Netflix vs. VUDU could be what separates the two.

If you watch a lot of new DVDs and don’t care as much about the picture quality then VUDU will be more expensive than one of those all you can watch plans from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video even when factoring in gas if you need to drive to/from to get the movies. Gas prices aren’t almost $5/gallon any more so this makes sense.

VUDU would be more attractive with an internet browser

Why can’t I check my email on this thing or watch vid clips from sites like YouTube? Or (gasp, competitor alert!) visit Hulu.com and watch TV shows for free. I think they didn’t put this option in for fear (?) that it would cut into people paying for the content versus going to legal, legitimate channels to get it and works against the overall value of VUDU.

Watching a movie or TV show in a pixelated browser window is not worth as much as seeing it in 1080p. Until the web offers that kind of deal for free (legally), VUDU shouldn’t be afraid of making a browser available. The Xbox 360 doesn’t have a browser either. So, it’s off to the PS3 or Wii if you want a browser.

The other possible issue here is bandwidth cap from your internet service provider. If you watch a lot of HDX movies at 10GB a piece and have a 250GB per month cap, you could run into additional charges from your ISP. Add all this up and VUDU could be ideal for heavy duty moviephiles who like the best quality they can get without having to leave their house to get it.

Grade: B-

If you’re thinking with the current state of the economy that the timing couldn’t be worse for opening a brand new casino along the interstate in Washington state outside Seattle, you wouldn’t know it by the size of the opening weekend crowd at Snoqualmie Casino (warning: sound onload).

Let’s skip over the fact that the website just linked has one of the most annoying navigation schemes ever. You move your cursor down and the page jerks down and up and it jumps in reverse. Why?! You hover over something and it expands and plays a mini-movie. Congrats to some Flash designer who likely got paid a bunch of dough to frustrate site visitors.

Stay with me, this trend continues offline as well.

Via Seattle PI:

A modest roadside casino — instead of a lavish, multimillion-dollar facility — would not have worked, [tribal administrator Matt Mattson] said.

"Given the socioeconomic status, the sophistication of the people who live there, we think that doing more and starting out with a high-level property instead of a roadside casino gives us a better opportunity to succeed.

Kara and I hopped in the car and drove 43 miles to check it out last night. As the PI article indicates, you can’t see any neon sign or hulking structure from the interstate.

The first thing that struck me as we pulled around the stylish looking casino and drove downhill to self parking in the back and underneath the casino was the lack of sidewalks. $375 million and no sidewalks from the rear parking to the front? Nope, your choice is to wait among the crowd for the elevators or make a perilous uphill walk on a narrow road not intended for pedestrians.

Seeing sandbagging around the drains is an odd sight. The landscaping behind the casino looks a bit like an ice cream cone in 130 degree weather.

Of the many terrestrial casinos visited over the years I’ve never seen such a poor design from parking lot to casino. Sure, it’s great if there aren’t tons of people waiting for an elevator (which on opening weekend there were). It’s just … strange.

It caused confusion with others too, and there was nobody around to explain how or why the only way into the casino from the self-parking was through a bank of three elevators servicing 5+ levels of garage parking plus a huge rear self parking lot. When saw people coming down the parking garage stairs complaining that there was no way to get into the casino from the stairs. The stairs just go up and down to the parking lot.

We were joined by others who said screw it to waiting for the elevators and took our chances walking up the road — and being honked at by a few cars.

So if you’re planning on going this weekend then don’t do what we did, use the valet parking around the front at the top of the hill. Valet is the only way to fly.

The casino has a pleasant look to it around the front but when you walk in you get the immediate feeling you’re in a sardine can. There isn’t nearly enough space in the aisles to walk and slot machines and gaming tables are way too closely spaced. We were thirsty for some kind of soft drink and were surprised there wasn’t any serve yourself drink stations.

There are several bars, including a big luxurious one in the center of the casino. There were long waiting lines at the restaurants. There wasn’t an overly casino smoky air to it which was a positive. Another positive: you can use cash in the machines and they have ticket redemption machines so you aren’t forced to go to the cashier or wait in line to buy tickets to use in the machines.

But what about the gambling

We retreated to the least busiest area of the casino toward the end near the ballroom. Kara stuck $20 in some Egyptian slot and I stuck $10 into something with 7s and a bonus game. My machine quickly swallowed the $10 of which I stuck another $20 … and then another $20. Meanwhile Kara got into a bonus game and cashed out with $70.

As I was about to see my $50 disappear, I hit five symbols which paid $40. Then I upped the bet to the maximum $2.50 per digital spin. About five or six spins later I got 15 free bonus games. At the end of the bonus round my $50 had been turned into $150. I added Kara’s ticket to mine and cashed out.

Went to the nearest cashier station and the cashier informed me that she didn’t have enough twenties and could only pay us in big bills. The big cage in the center of the casino could help us. No thanks, we went to the machine thinking that might give us twenties. Nope, it spit out big bills too. Good thing these machines double as bill breakers so we just slid a $100 bill back in and got five crisp twenties.

Getting out easier than getting in

We’d had enough.

We exited via the elevators. Surprisingly, only one single guy was leaving at the same time as us. The elevator waiting area was eerily quiet. The elevator indicator lights turned red and door opened. After a full elevator of new arrivals passed by we entered, pressed ‘5′ for the level of the parking garage and in seconds were whisked back to the parking garage. We exited, got in our car and snaked our way out of the parking garage.

Of all the casinos we’ve seen, I’m sure it’s well over 100, we’ve never seen a casino that was designed to be easier to leave than to enter but hey, maybe this strategy will work for them. Add to the fact that they didn’t seem to have any of the machines we like to play: Keno or Bingo. I didn’t even see any video poker machines. They have 1,700 slot machines, mostly the ones with five symbols and dozens of winning combinations, so if that’s your thing you might dig it. They also have a bunch of table games. I enjoy craps but the tables were hopelessly crammed.

Hey, it’s opening weekend, not taking away any points in this review for them being busy. More power to them for being busy. I don’t know if it was in anticipation of Jessica Simpson playing, that it was less than 24 hours after they opened, it was a Friday night, that it was new and other gamblers were curious or some combination thereof.

I do know the experience wasn’t for us.

We enjoy visiting new casinos but doubt we’ll be back to this one any time soon. It’s not often we can say that about a casino where we spend 30 minutes there and leave first visit winners. If you’re going to enter and exit a casino, leaving a winner is always a good thing. I’d sooner recommend Emerald Queen which is off I-5 or if you’re taking the ferry over the sound, try Clearwater Casino. Clearwater in particular is a good example of a smaller casino geared for big crowds. Both those casinos offer bigger aisles and can better handle large crowds.

Grade: C-

Update November 1, 2008 8:19am PST: Activision/Red Octane that make Guitar Hero World, have offered a drum tuning kit download (Windows XP only) which is supposed to fix the issues discussed in the review that follows. You will need a USB to midi cable which they will send you if you fill out a form here.

Saturday night at the stroke of midnight we joined a small line of people at the Tacoma, WA Best Buy as the first to buy the newest installment of Guitar Hero (Guitar Hero World Tour). After buying the $29.99 warranty for the bundle the total rang in at $233.90 USD. 

We got it home and immediately dug in. The drum setup was quick and painless and give you a sense of quality that the Rock Band drums do not have. They seem more realistic — until you start actually playing.

The laggy band mode drum syncing ruined the first time gameplay experience for me. The drums are better synced in solo mode and even when playing with one other player, but add two or three more band members and it’s a mess.

When hearing the beat and when to hit the notes is all wrong. I tried recalibrating in the options several times but never found the sweet spot in band mode. I hope an update through Xbox Live comes along that fixes this as a quick survey of the Amazon reviews show many complaints from other reviewers about the same issue.

In a music game like this, quality calibration is vital. I give drum calibration a 0 out of 5 stars. I was failing on medium difficulty whereas I’m able to play hard and even expert drums on Rock Band 2. The plan was to play all night, but our band grew tired of me failing on what should have been easy intro songs and we quit playing around 2:30am.

We didn’t break out the Guitar Hero microphone or guitar, preferring to play with Rock Band gear there. Reports on the guitar, bass and singing in Guitar Hero were all thumbs up from other band members.

Activating star power on drums and microphone

Your drummer and singer may wonder how star power is activated. It’s in the skimpy six page manual, but we’ll throw you a bone. To activate star power on the drums, hit both yellow and orange cymbals at the same time. On the microphone just tap the top of the microphone, no yelling in the yellow spots required like Rock Band. Kind of prefer Rock Band’s approach here.

GH Tunes sans vocals

Being able to create and share your own tunes with other players was a promising feature I was stoked about. We peeked at it briefly Saturday night and people had already created and shared some tunes mere hours after launch. Sunday after a fresh night’s sleep I checked it out in more detail.

Bummer alert: only instrumental tunes are allowed — drums, bass, guitar and even keyboards, cool — but no vocals. This is going to lead to a lot of axe shredding and drum pounding but will be a non-starter for vocalists.

Hopefully vocals will be added as part of an update someday (?). Or do we need to wait another year for Guitar Hero 5 to come out?

Summary and grade

For guitar, bass and singing, Guitar Hero World Tour is solid. Major thumbs down on drum syncing.  I think until this is fixed we’re going to see a bunch of drumless bands. Or bands where the drummer marches, literally, to a different beat.

As for the GH Studio? No vocals hamper but not ruin the experience. I’m sure others will disagree with wanting to hear people screaming out of tune, karaoke style, but the absence of vocals is noticeable.

Surely there must have been a way to add vocal tracking to GH Studio? Since the software can detect when the music is in tune, was it that difficult to add the ability to match GH Studio created vocals? Or was this a copyright concern, afraid that bands would be creating an endless stream of unlicensed covers? I’m guessing technology was a small part of the concern here and copyright issues are playing at least some part.

Whatever the case, Guitar Hero World Tour’s strength remains its roots: guitar. Bass and vocals for the game part are a decent add, but while the drums are fun to pound on they aren’t much fun to play — outside of single player mode — because of the lag/syncing issue. I also don’t like that the bass pedal isn’t attached to anything like rock band to keep it in place, although must admit not having any trouble with it moving all around.

Guitar Hero World Tour as a package ends up a mixed bag and feels way too first generation in everything but its namesake. Perhaps our band is spoiled by competitor Rock Band which really has the band experience down and sports a solid lineup of hundreds of songs available, while Guitar Hero World Tour pretty much is limited to what comes with the game. Almost all the prior downloadable Guitar Hero songs and previous songs in games are not forward compatible.

Guitar Hero World Tour sports an impressive list of tunes, don’t get me wrong — and there is the ability to download for $$ a small few tracks (like Metallica’s complete Death Magnetic album) as well as what other players create in GH Tunes for free, but it doesn’t come close to matching Rock Band’s currently available music library. And with the AC/DC Live at Donnington track pack coming November 2nd, Rock Band will raise the stakes further.

Put all this together and I wouldn’t recommend to readers or friends looking to form their first music game band experience to buy Guitar Hero World Tour over Rock Band 2 this holiday season. Being my favorite baseball hat of the moment is my Guitar Hero cap pictured above, I’m conflicted, but the differences between the two in band mode are glaring.

Hardcore music game fans like our band will buy it regardless. I wouldn’t label GH World Tour a totally disappointing band experience, but it’s not up to par with all four band members (sans the drums, it works good). If all you care about is a cool guitar, bass or vocal experience in Guitar Hero World Tour then stop reading and buy this game now. You might want to skip the bundle and just buy the game otherwise.

Grade: C+

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a comedy in or out of a movie theater that’s made me laugh out loud. This past weekend I tried unsuccessfully to convince my wife to see the latest Star Whores, pun intended, "Clone Wars" (which might be a blessing considering the many unfavorable reviews). Second choice was "Tropic Thunder" with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black and Tom Cruise.

source: box office mojo

Whatever you want to say about Robert Downey Jr’s offscreen problems — and he’s had many — his acting skills are superb. You can see why he keeps getting solid starring roles. In Tropic Thunder he goes into an area that seems almost universally taboo in this day and age, blackface, and yet he pulls it off. His portrayal of an actor who can’t get out of the grips of his role had tears in my eyes during some spots. Ben Stiller’s lead character has similar same hang-ups, a victim of one too many sequels and trying to get past a role he played that was panned, but loved by his a niche following.  Jack Black’s character was famous for fart movies and has an unhealthy penchant for drugs off screen. I’m not a big Jack Black fan but this was him at his funniest.

Tom Cruise sporting a beard and some heavy make-up plays a movie exec with an anger management problem. Cruise should do more comedies and get away from the whole action and drama movie scene for awhile.

The backdrop of the movie is the making of a Vietnam era war flick penned by a character played by Nick Nolte of 48 Hours fame. The trio of Black, Downey Jr and Stiller are dropped into a jungle where cameras will catch their every move. Away from all the pampering actor trucks and special favors given to stars. It takes a humorous amount of time before these actor soldiers realize they aren’t shooting a movie, they are embroiled in a real conflict with drug harvesters that require real soldier actions.

There aren’t enough movies that make fun of themselves and do so creatively. Example: before the Tropic Thunder movie started there were previews of the movies the characters in Tropic Thunder are playing. Talk about spoofing where you sleep. I’m going to take a few points off for parts that could have moved a little quicker. Pretty much all the parts right before the ending sequence were too slow narratively and could have been edited out to make the movie tighter.

As far as controversy and the parts that could make you cringe: I didn’t find the humor surrounding the mentally retarded character ("Simple Jack") that Ben Stiller’s character played funny. I’ve never found humor involving the mentally challenged or disabled people humorous. Maybe it’s because I know people are disabled and there’s nothing funny about being disabled.

It seemed like if "Simple Jack" had really existed, this movie would have drawn protests far greater than Tropic Thunder has done and rightfully so. And if filmgoers are to believe Stiller’s character would take on such a blatantly offensive project, why would he do it when his action movie sequels were less dangerous content? Plausibility problem for me, nevermind whether or not one thinks humor about the disabled is funny.

As the LATimes opinion piece aptly points out:

The "retard" jokes are a harder case, and I don’t quite buy the rationalization that Ben Stiller’s performance as "Simple Jack" derives all its laughs from its lampooning of Hollywood’s naive lionization of the mentally challenged. Yet it’s funny in a sophomoric, guilt-inducing way. I confess that I laughed both at "Simple Jack" and the Downey character’s advice to Stiller’s character never to "go full retard" if he wanted an Oscar.

The action movies Stiller’s character were most popular for ("Scorcher") seemed much more plausible and easier territory to score with laughs. I think Stiller and company could have used the action movie character scenes with more humor and am somewhat puzzled why that wasn’t used instead. It seemed more like a cheap shock jock type device rather than a vital part of the film. As for the protesting groups, I think you have somewhat of a point, but you probably did more to promote the movie than hurt ticket sales. It didn’t work for me. A friend had to tell me you were protesting, but I probably would have been more intrigued to see if the film was offensive if I’d known you were protesting. That’s always the danger with drawing too much attention to something you hope others won’t pay to see. Controversy sells tickets.

Tropic Thunder is a comedy worth seeing. The LATimes review reminded me that it borrows somewhat from Galaxy Quest in that the actors extend their roles beyond the screen, but I think it’s a different enough twist that it’s still creative.  Grade: A-

Turbo is considered to be one of the worst Judas Priest albums, so let’s hope the turbo theme works better for DISH TV. Got this email today:

Did I read that right? We’re getting full on 1080p action through DISH? No, not exactly, they will only be offering 1080p video on demand movies (pay per view). Will this cost extra? It doesn’t say if the 1080p pay per view movies will cost more than the standard definition like Xbox and the PS3 are currently doing through their networks.

All DISH Network HD customers have been Turbo-charged! In the early morning hours of 8/1 DISH Network reinvented high definition! Current HD customers had the next generation of HD downloaded right to their receivers!

It sucks that this is for pay per view and not for all of their HD channels. Sort of a non announcement. Turbo … what?

Add to that today seeing the release of Starship Troopers 1-3 trilogy Blu-ray (2008) for $56.95 at Amazon or $59.99 at Best Buy (where we bought it). Oh yeah it’s a beautiful day to be at 1080p!

The trilogy offers the first Starship Troopers movie (a classic!), Starship Troopers 2 which was kind of lame and the newest straight to DVD Starship Troopers 3 Marauders. This is BD-live enabled which means extras and goodies through a separate menu including the ability to "join the fight" against the bugs by uploading a headshot of yourself. Just click on the "BD-Live" option in the main menu screen and wait for BD-live to load.

Expect to be staring at this for an awkward amount of time, even if you have a fast connection:

 

Waiting. Man, why does the loading take so long for BD-live? And it’s every me too. I have a PS3, use the hard drive already, cache some content, buy some faster servers, whatever it takes. Once you get into the BD-live menu, you still need to register for an account before you can "join the fight." That only takes a little bit of time, but then you are sent to your email to find a link to upload a head shot.

 

It’s a clumsy, laborious process. Will save you some hassle, make sure your headshot is 640×480, anything larger or that much smaller and your face will not fit in the matte. Once you’ve done that you can watch scenes with your face super-imposed on a Starship Trooper solider. Would have preferred a networked game blasting bugs with a fellow Starship Troopers fan.

As for the Starship Troopers 3 movie? It’s better than the second movie, but not as good as the first. Good to see Casper Van Dien back but I miss Denise Richards. Her absence isn’t explained in the movie at all. The Marauders part doesn’t come until the last act of the film and feels kind of Robocop to me. Grade: C

Night Ranger Hole In The Sun is the newest album from one of the favorite 80s bands. Dawn Patrol (1982) and Midnight Madness (1983) were two awesome albums from a band that might have pigeonholed themselves as being too mellow, but these guys can seriously rock. 7 Wishes (1985) was the last studio album I liked a lot. Since the late 80s they’ve released five studio albums: Man in Motion (1988), Feeding off The Mojo (1995), Neverland (1997), Seven (1998) and their newest album Hole In The Sun. Where does Hole fit in their body of work? I’d say in the middle. It’s not among their best, but it’s no embarassment.

Warning: before buying this album through musicane - read the section at the bottom of this post

I’ve had Hole In The Sun in the playlist cycling and trying to get into it. The problem with Night Ranger is their first two albums were so good that everything that follows is being compared to a high benchmark. It’s a good thing they have some great musicians in Jack Blades who got together with Damn Yankees and more recently with Tommy Shaw in the project Shaw-Blades (recommended). Blades keeps the bass line down as well as Night Ranger vocals.

Brad Gillis is the whammy bar master axe grinder who was good enough to enjoy a short stint with Ozzy on the Speak of the Devil album covering Sabbath songs. If you don’t think that Gillis can play, just pick that album up someday. Add Jeff Watson as a co-guitarist (their description, not mine) and you have a solid one-two punch on the six strings. Hey, and Kelly Keagy is no slouch pounding the skins either.

As for the guy with the shades on the back of the Midnight Madness CD (Alan Fitzgerald?)? Seven seems to have been his last studio album with the band. Fitzgerald is also absent from "the band" page on nightranger.com. Disappointed to see him missing too as keyboards are an important part of the classic Night Ranger sound. Don’t worry, they have Great White’s Michael Lardie on the keys on the album.

Unfortunately you won’t find Watson or Lardie on the 2008 Night Ranger tour to support Hole In The Sky.

That’s right, Watson and Lardie have both left Night Ranger again already. Watson has been replaced by Joel Hoekstra and Lardie by Christian Cullen. Who are these guys? I’d have to Google them to learn more because apparently they aren’t important or well known enough to make "the band" page on nightranger.com yet. Why do they diss new band members like this? Somebody get their webmaster motoring.

Track List and review notes

1. "You’re Gonna Hear It From Me" - thundering drum intro with nice use of power chords and floor tom. Makes a statement that this isn’t album isn’t going to be as mellow as Night Ranger fans might expect. I like this one.

2. "Tell Your Vision" - Another good rocker track. Didn’t immediately like this one, but it grew on me quickly. Solo rips. The main riff reminds me a lot of another song by another band, but I can’t think of the name. This album is off to a strong start.

3. "Drama Queen" - I’m not sure who’s singing the main vocals on this one, but the vocals seem off. This one has a Def Leppard type of feel to it and would be better with Joe Elliot singing, especially with the whole "come on, come on, come on…" part. The dueling guitar solos are pure Night Ranger and great stuff.

4. "Whatever Happened" - breaking out the cry baby wah for the intro and outro, nice. Rest of song kind of reminds me of "All Star" by Smash Mouth. Would have liked to have more of that wah peddle doing something like Gary Richrath did on Wheels or Turning album by REO Speedwagon. A little too fluffy.

5. "There Is Life" - the first mellow track which starts with a piano. Think "Sister Christian" or "Sentimental Street" but without the strong lyrical hooks. The chorus is sticky, but it doesn’t have classic written on it. Not bad, not great, but solid and satisfying.

6. "Rockstar" - I don’t care for the tinty verse sound or the chorus. Seems too whiny. This is my least favorite track thus far.

7. "Hole In The Sun" - The guitar solo is great. Easily my favorite part of many lesser known songs like this by them. The rest of the song is just OK. This feels like we’re on B-side material.

8. "Fool In Me" - Acoustic guitar. The second mellow track on the album with a nice melody and lyrics but the bongo drums ruined it a bit for me.

9. "White Knuckle" - strong guitar intro and some effective keyboard work. This feels like one of those grow on you over multiple plays tracks.

10. "Revelation 4AM" - Another mellow track, some good bass work here.

11. "Wrap It Up" - this one’s not for me.

12. "Being" - mellow track number four and the weakest of the bunch. Would have rather seen them end the album on a rocker note.

13. Don’t Tell Me You Love Me (Acoustic) - see below

14. Sister Christian (Acoustic) - it’s nice hearing acoustic / unplugged versions but the inclusion of these tracks on the album seem more like a sales thing than adding anything that thrilling to the original versions. Don’t get me wrong, the acoustic guitar playing is skilled and entertaining, but I’d rather hear the originals.

Thinking that some fans might only buy the album if it comes with bonus acoustic tracks of past versions. Personally, I think if they want to do bonus songs, they should provide live versions of the new studio tracks so fans can get an idea of how the songs would sound live rather than trying to return to the hits well from the past. It makes sense that people are going to want to hear how the tunes would sound live on the upcoming tour. Bands that don’t do complete versions of their studio tracks live are missing a sales/marketing opportunity.

Rocky Musicane purchase experience
Purchasing the new Night Ranger Hole In The Sun album through Musicane 320kbps proved to be more challenging than it should have been. Musicane is in beta, so they should be given a little slack, but nightranger.com is promoting using them — and so am I in the top of this post, so I want readers to be on high alert.

First off I kept receiving "invalid token" errors when trying to pay via PayPal. Then I used my PayPal credit card and the transaction went through the first time, but also displayed error messages. When I logged into PayPal, I learned that they had charged me three times for the same album.

Grr. I fired off an email to customercare [->] musicane.com to see if they would please cancel the two extraneous charges and waited for a response. Right away I was given an automated ticket number to track the sale information, but didn’t hear back from a customer support person right away on a Monday. Not a great sign. I’ll update this section as to what happens, but I added a "warning:" message below the link above for readers. You might want to get this CD at Amazon or your local music store instead of buying online like I did.

The quality of the MP3 files is high, although it didn’t come with album art. I was able to get that from the Night Ranger official website.

Summary and grade
My first listen-through on the album yielded different feeling than subsequent ones have. It’s no Dawn Patrol or Midnight Madness, but you likely expected that. It’s not even 7 Wishes, but I’d put this ahead of Seven and tied with Man In Motion. There are a few scattered tracks that I really like here. I’ve never seen Night Ranger live and feel like this album and accompanying tour would be a good opportunity.  Do regret the fact that I can’t play any of these tunes on Rock Band or Guitar Hero (why not?), but that has nothing to do with my review grade that follows. Grade: B

It’s no secret that I’ve been a huge fan of the various fake music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. This weekend we took some time to purchase and review the two most current offerings in the Guitar Hero franchise: Guitar Hero On Tour Nintendo DS ($49.99) and Guitar Hero Aerosmith ($99 at Wal-Mart) for the Xbox 360.

Guitar Hero On Tour Nintendo DS
Guitar Hero On Tour has an interesting, but uncomfortable glove-like control pad that literally wraps around the DS. When I saw a demo of it online a couple months back (sorry, can’t remember what the publication was to link), I didn’t think it would be as uncomfortable to hold and play. It is. I felt uncomfortable with it after playing a couple songs. Carpal Guitar Hero Tunnel syndrome anyone?

It was a nice touch to include an adapter for the game that fit those of us with the older style Nintendo DS. Just have to unscrew a couple flat-head screws and pop out the control circuit, then put in the replacement one. Takes a couple minutes.

The game itself has an already lampooned mechanism for activating star power: either yell something into the microphone or blow in it. If you blow in it or yell at it you look equally foolish. Why didn’t they include some picture of an amp or something to knock over on the right screen? Who wants to give their Nintendo DS a blowjob?

The pick is the one part that feels good in the hand but no so much with the back and forth motion on the virtual guitar displayed on the touch screen. To whammy you just move the pick in a similar motion over the whammy bar. It’s not nearly as satisfying as using the whammy bar on the full size game.

I give high marks for effort and am glad to see something on the DS for portable rocking out, but I’m not sure we’ll be taking this game many places because it is awkward and not as much fun to play as the full-size version.

Also, my son pointed out that if you have longer fingers like him, it’s a little more tricky. And there are only four buttons instead of five (no orange button), which is another knock for hardcore Guitar Hero players. Guitar Hero fans will buy this, heck, you probably have, but I wouldn’t recommend for non diehards. Grade: C-

Guitar Hero Aerosmith
The first thing to disappoint is that the game wasn’t available separately at Wal-Mart. Maybe other stores are selling the game elsewhere, but Wal-Mart was forcing their shoppers to buy the Aerosmith guitar bundle which cost $99.87 or some weird penny price like that. I thought about hitting Best Buy or Circuit City to see if it was the same deal there but it was a hot day yesterday and I didn’t want to spend it shopping.

According to Amazon, the game sold separately won’t be available until tomorrow, Tuesday July 1, 2008. So for two days of impatience, we’re paying. We should have waited. Oh well. I don’t blame them for releasing the game this way, so the review score doesn’t reflect this annoyance.

Since we bought the package to get to the game, I’m not going to review the guitar itself. It’s essentially the same Guitar Hero III guitar controller, as best as I can tell. We left it in the package. Might be handy to have an extra axe in case the others go down and when you figure they are selling the guitars standalone for $59, it’s actually a deal buying the package.

Guitar Hero Aerosmith takes the player through the career of Aerosmith and boasts some 25 tracks from the band’s extensive music library. It’s nice hearing and being able to play along with great songs like “Kings and Queens” and more well-known songs like “Sweet Emotion” but if you aren’t an Aerosmith fan be warned: you will likely be disappointed.

I don’t know why anybody would buy a game with Aerosmith music if they didn’t like Aerosmith, but if that fits you, then I’d pass. If you are a Guitar Hero collector, as I said above, you probably already were waiting in line Sunday morning at 12:01am. That wasn’t us. We went Sunday afternoon.

Mad props for another Guitar Hero game, but we didn’t see that much new here to warrant a completely new game. Why not just release Aerosmith song paks? I know, I know, there’s an Aerosmith storyline that goes with the game, it’s not just the songs, but at the end of the day — and the career mode — you’re left with replay value being the songs themselves. I’d rather have paid $30-40 for the songs than $100 for the game and extra controller, but that’s just me.

I’m not at expert skill level at these games and tend to play and be challenged by the ‘hard’ difficulty for most of these type games. I don’t have enough time to practice and get as good at these games as I’d like. I’d rather use this time playing real music instruments. At the same time, I do enjoy them and think they offer a huge benefit to the struggling music business.

My middle son and younger son are both experts at these games and were able to beat both Guitar Hero on Tour for the Nintendo DS and Guitar Hero Aerosmith at expert difficulty in a few hours. Aerosmith has 31 base songs (with 9+ more unlockable) and Guitar Hero On Tour has 25 (not sure how many more unlockables). None of the songs, according to our sons were extraordinarily difficult. Nothing that matches “Through The Fire and Flames.” This was a letdown for them. They were hoping for something to shred and more challenging.

As the one who purchased the games, I was disappointed there wasn’t more challenge as well. Why not throw in some speed death metal tracks just to keep the replay factor high for players like them?

Here’s an idea — and missed opportunity — release each new version with new types of game controllers. Don’t have just another guitar, have it be one that has special effects that the other doesn’t have. That’s not my idea, BTW, Activision competitor Rock Band is planning to do just that by promising new type instruments (keyboard, maybe?). Oh yeah, sign me up.

My son who beat it on expert (pictured above), said Guitar Hero Aerosmith is “ok.” The time to beat this on the expert setting, was much too easy (for him). Therefore, at least in our household, I don’t see this one having very much replay value, so I’m marking down for that. Just being a new Guitar Hero game isn’t enough when one can buy new songs online every week. Nobody in our family are huge Aerosmith fans, but the music selection is good. Not sure I’d want to emulate Joe Perry though. Grade: C+