See, the basic principles of games like (Desktop) Tower Defense are what make them so addicting. As such, tower defense’s rules are simple to understand: build a maze of different weapons which the enemy - in case of Fieldrunners a varying number of ground and air units - has to walk through or fly over.

In Fieldrunners there are four different weapons at your disposal, which can be upgraded numerous times:

• Gatling Tower - short range, cheap
• Goo Tower - slows enemy down
• Missile Tower - long range, good against air units
• Tesla Tower - powerful, expensive

In its current status, Fieldrunners is really simple and only gives you three different diffulty levels you can choose from. There’s only a single map yet, but the developer is promising new maps, new towers and, of course, new enemy types, called Fieldrunners. Update: Yesterday I got an update for Fieldrunners which adds a second map and what I believe to be new Fieldrunners.

The game makes good use of the touchscreen which you can use to move over the map and zoom into using the usual finger gestures. Even when there are many units on the screen, there’s no noticeable lag. The game runs perfectly smooth.

One nice detail other games didn’t do right is always saving last game’s state, even when you just hit the home button. When you restart the game it just starts where you left off. As with every other game that is graphics intensive it’ll eat through your battery rather quickly.

Something I’m missing from the good ol’ flash DTD (Desktop Tower Defense) is the ability to call in more enemies at once. After a while I was getting annoyed by waiting for new Fieldrunners to arrive on the virtual battlefield. Also I’d like to get in more enemies in one round to gain more points at a time. This way it also wouldn’t take ages to finish a single match.

Overall Fieldrunners is a really addicting game, maybe not quite as addicting as DTD once, but I’m sure the developers are actively working on that.

Here are the quick facts:
Price: 3,99 € (4.99 USD)
App Store: Fieldrunners
Developer: Subatomic Studios

Screenshot gallery:

Video of the game in action:

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MobileFiles can access your local files on the iPhone and multiple MobileMe iDisks, including your friends public folders. When you drill down to an actual file in the folder structure you can view many of the documents. Supported are:

- Images: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, .tiff, .gif and .svg
- Microsoft Word: .doc and .docx
- Microsoft Excel: .xls and .xlsx
- Microsoft PowerPoint: .ppt and .pptx
- Adobe Acrobat: .pdf
- Web Pages: .htm and .html
- Web Archive: .mht
- Text: .txt
- Audio: .mp3

The only thing I’m missing on this list is .mov, which happens to work nonetheless. You can view the above files, but - not yet - edit them. Viewing is possible in regular or landscape view, although there seems to be a display error in the latter. The top of a file was missing a few pixels, while there was a black bar at the bottom of the screen. The developers at Quickoffice, the creators of MobileFiles, are working on an app that will let you edit Microsoft Office documents on the iPhone.

You can mark multiple files that should be downloaded to your device for faster access or to simply get them from a friends public MobileMe folder. It’s only possible to mark multiple files for download, getting a whole folder isn’t possible. You have to go into the folder a mark each file for download.

Another thing that MobileFiles doesn’t support is sharing the files on the device on your local network, like AirSharing does for example. The combination of these two apps makes it possible to get your online files to the iPhone and from there to your notebook in case you’re without any internet connectivity besides your iPhone (Note: tethering would be great at this point).

Overall MobileFiles is a useful app which comes a great price: it’s free. You can see some screenshots of the app in the following gallery. Enjoy!

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The first step in the new dashboard is to create your own avatar. While some of the essential choices are pretty good, there’s currently a lack of clothing to put on. I guess this will change until November 19th, when the NXE is officially available and I’m sure third party developers will be able to offer their stuff. I hope there’ll be a way to import your own creations in some way. (And no, I didn’t settle for the pimp to the left.)

One of my most anticipated things is the ability to install games onto your harddrive. This results in faster loading times and a much quieter experience because that noisy DVD drive doesn’t need to spin up. Since this behaviour alone would open all doors to piracy you’ll still need to have the actual disc in the drive. The installation of PGR4 (6.1 GB) took about 5 to 10 minutes. I guess I need to get the very expensive 120 GByte drive now. :(

One thing I noticed while trying to play videos through Connect360 on my Mac, which still works without a problem after the update, was the fact that I needed to redownload the optional AAC/iPod/Quicktime update. I had installed this before but decided to give it a try by downloading it again. Now, HD content from CNet or Revision3 plays flawless. So if you’re having problems with this, just download this component again. Don’t know if this was the same with the old dashboard, but if I remember correctly it didn’t work for me the last time I tried this. But maybe the encoding of the videos has also changed since then.

Gear Live has a nice 20 minute walkthrough of the New Xbox Experience:

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There we go again. After the news came out that Seinfeld won’t be in the next commercials, here are the first new, Jerry free ads (the other ads, including two new ones, can be found after the jump):

Oh, by the way, if you try mailing Sean Siler, one of the people with an email address in the ads, you’ll get this auto-reply:

Hello! I’m a PC – and I can’t answer your email right now. I’d like to say that I’m out climbing Mt. Rainier or biking across Europe with the Swedish Beach Volleyball Team, but in fact I’m probably just chained to a desk somewhere in the depths of Redmond pounding out product specifications.

Now that I have been in a commercial, Microsoft has given me access to super-secret “BillyG” level of executive resources. That’s right – I have my own email auto-responder!

This, as you have probably surmised, is my pre-prepared auto-response (All natural, no filler. No animals were harmed in the making of this response. Except for a ferret.) I really would like to have answered you myself, but if I did, (a) I’d probably get no work done, and (b) then I’d get fired, and (c) then I’d have no chance of doing any more of those really awesome commercials.

So let me try to prognosticate a few of your questions and answer a few of them.

Why did they put you on TV?
I think it’s my devastating good-looks and animal magnetism. No, really – there’s a ferret stuck to my leg right now.

But really – you aren’t even an actor!
No I’m not. But I play one on TV. I really am a Microsoft Program Manager. I work on IPv6, and other things that you haven’t heard of.

How did you get selected?
I auditioned along with a couple of hundred others. I guess I looked very Engineery. And the ferret probably helped.

Are you interested in more acting?
Oh no, I think that Engineering is MUCH more fun.

What’s with Windows Vista?
You’ve been watching those commercials again, haven’t you? Windows Vista rocks. Listen to real users, not actors.

-The Real PC, Sean Siler

These are the other two ads without Jerry Seinfeld:

The first two ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates

Here is the second clip with Seinfeld and Gates about pretty much nothing. It’s getting there, but they are really taking their time to build up to their story, if they actually do have a story. Also I don’t get why they are seemingly making the story all about Bill Gates, who retired from his job at Microsoft a few months back. Here I was, thinking they were producing ads about Microsoft and their products.

It’s like they are looking back at the times when Gates was in charge and Seinfeld had an actual show on TV, rather than looking forward to the things to come. But maybe that’ll all change with the upcoming ads. That $300 million for the campaign better be worth it.

For those who don’t know/remember the first ad, here you go:

I’ll update this post as soon as more Microsoft ads appear.

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I know that many of you are excited to get your hands on the New Xbox Experience, which will go live all Xbox LIVE regions wide on November 19th. Well, we’re just as excited to as you are so I am happy to announce that I’ve been working on a little project that I think may interested you.

All you have to do is to sign up at the usual Microsoft Connect site. You’ll be asked a few question about your console and your internet connection. They are currently for a “few thousand participants” from “regions where Xbox Live is available”.

I already signed up and wish you all the best to get accepted. You’ll hear from Microsoft in “about a week” if they accept your entry. Good luck everyone!

(via MajorNelson.com)

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Since there were a few people on Flickr who liked this photo, I guess it’s worth being put on my blog too. Enjoy!

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For example there are already apps that allow you to run a Bittorrent client on the Drobo or use it as a media server for iTunes. With Yoics you can access Drobo and its contents from everywhere in the world. I’m sure there are many more ways to make use of the device. DroboShare, the device which actually runs most of the apps, is based on Linux - so there are numerous possibilities. Can’t wait to talk with the guys in the US again. I’m not sure if they are going to tell me anything beyond this today, but one can hope.

Update:
So I’m just off the phone with Thomas Loverro, Data Robotics’ Director of Product Marketing, to get some more details on the DroboApps. The SDK is available to everyone who wants to create their own app. At this time they have a little over 100 developers. Data Robotics also has some partnerships with other companies to push development. One of the first resulted in the already mentioned Yoics. But they are also working with two other companies - Tom didn’t say which - but they are well-known manufacturers in the audio and photography industry.

To use an application you have to enable DroboApps in the Drobo Dashboard. This will create a folder on your Drobo where you simply copy the downloaded applications. Currently there are no commercial apps available, but it’s up to the developers if they want to charge for them or not. Data Robotics doesn’t do a formal certification, like Apple does with the App Store for example. So you don’t necessarily have to download an app from their site. They just like to get notified about a new one, so they can check it and put it up on their website.

Apps can be everything that works on a Linux system. For example Apache was just ported (not yet uploaded to drobo.com), so it’s only a matter of time until you see php, mysql and the other usual suspects. Tom said that DroboShare “basically gets you a 200 USD PC that runs Linux”. So, be creative and show everyone what’s possible!

For those of you who prefer to see Cali presenting the news, here you go:

GeekBrief.TV #450 from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

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While I was at Photokina last week I was particularly interested in Canon’s new 5D Mark II and Nikon’s D700. Both models are currenlty in line for an upcoming upgrade in my backpack. I don’t have that many Canon lenses, so I could make the jump to Nikon with only a minor loss.

I played around with the new 5D at Photokina for a while and having worked with the original 5D I have to say, it just feels the same. Obviously Canon has done many improvements but at the same time kept many things that were already known from the old 5D. I’m looking forward to getting the D700 in for testing in a few weeks. But back to the 5D and its 21.1 Megapixel sensor that makes it Canon’s second camera with this sensor size. The first one was and still is the EOS 1Ds Mark III.

The biggest news for the Mark II is the addition of video recording, which Nikon only presented in the D90 a few weeks before the 5D Mk II. The difference: The D90 only shoots 720p while the 5D Mark II can do 1080p. A common problem with both cameras unfortunately is the so called rolling shutter problem. Here’s a sample of this problem with Nikon’s D90 (the actual problem shows up in the end of the video, starting at 2:00):

Obviously, if you don’t pan fast the problem isn’t a big deal, but still, you have to keep it in mind when using the movie mode.

Vincent LaForet put together a short video, which was completely shot with the new 5D. They only had 2 days for the whole thing; including writing, shooting and editing it, so the actual production wasn’t really great. It’s just a movie with beautiful images (can you say “Bokeh”?) that were thrown together in a short clip. A behind the scenes video is available here. All the information about the gear used in the video can be found in the video and on LaForet’s blog. (Disclaimer: He is getting paid by Canon for doing stuff like this.)

Another new fine addition is the high(er) resolution 3″ display with 920.000 pixels. Finally, Canon made the step there. I always find it hard to judge the quality of images based on the LCD of my 40D. They look so-so on the small screen, but come out great on my Mac after loading them into Lightroom. The two things that disturb me most on the new 5D, compared to the D700, are the mediocre 3.9 fps and the autofocus system, which still features the same old AF we know from the original 5D. Of course, the 5D features a 21 MP sensor (D700/D3 only have 12 MP) and I guess Canon just didn’t want to up the fps, since it would seriously hurt sales of the much more expensive 1Ds Mark III. The same goes for a professional AF system. Still, I’ve heard from many photographers that they would rather go with the 5D Mark II (2,700 USD) now, rather than spending almost three times for the 1Ds Mk III (7,500 USD!). Although the video mode in the 5D Mk II might be a problem for some pro photographers, because they are only allowed to shoot photos and not video.

I talked to Nikon’s Marketing Manager about the video mode and the integration of video into the D3 or D700. He said they’re watching the market, exactly due to this limitation. They chose the D90 because this camera isn’t aimed at pro-photographers. Obviously it’s his job to say this. In the long all SLRs will get the video mode. It’s only a question of time now. The same happenend with live view. First there were only a few cameras that actually came with this feature. Now every new camera has it, from consumer camera to professional SLR.

I’m looking forward to getting the D700 for a few days. I played with it for a while at Photokina, but of course that is never the same as actually using it, especially since I worked with Canon only.

If you want to find more about the 5D Mark II, Raoul Pop has a nice summary including links and his own opinion about the camera.

One company I totally missed at Photokina was Sony. I haven’t had that much time to just walk through the halls, but managed to at least take note of the booth of every major camera manufacturer. Sony? Not really. I’d have to look at the exhibitor’s list to see if they were actually at Photokina. First they show up with this 24 Megapixel monster, but - at least in my case - fail to impress on the show floor.

A new product I’m not so sure about is the micro four-thirds, which is currently pushed by Panasonic and Olympus. Micro four-thirds allows for smaller bodies because there’s no big mirror box required. The viewfinder is completely electronic. You’re not looking at the optical representation of the image but rather at a small display inside the camera which is fed directly by the sensor. No mirrors involved. It’s sort of a mixture between a point and shoot and DSLR. You still get exchangeable lenses but in a smaller body. The main problem I see with Panasonic’s G1 is its price: Retail price for the kit in Germany starts at 700 Euros (roughly 1.000 USD), while the EOS 450D with the 18-55 IS drops at your door for just 520 Euros. The G1 isn’t that much smaller than a regular DSLR, but it’s just the beginning of the things to come. Olympus actually brought a smaller prototype to Photokina (and our show).

Overall Photokina was a great show for everyone who loves cameras, imaging and everything in between. Getting to touch and play around with all these nice cameras, lights, tripods, watching people who teach you things from Photoshop to the correct setup of lights, etc. is an awesome experience. I hope koelnmesse, the organization behind Photokina, will up the ante and make it a yearly show. There are far too many new developments at the moment for a fair that only takes place every other year.

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Today I had the chance to have a first look at Photokina’s inner workings. I’m an editor at the show working with one of the few HD stations in Germany, and no it isn’t Premiere. That being said I decided to walk around the show floors to have a sneak peak at some of the booths.

Of course there weren’t any products to see yet, so I can’t really tell you if there’ll be a D3x or not. The Nikon booth at this point didn’t show any signs of it at least. The Canon booth, right in sight from Nikon in the other hall, is pretty huge and looked almost finished. All the carpets were still secured by their plastic wrap and there was the usual sound of saws and hammers all around.

Panasonic, right next door to Canon also looked very important and primarily busy. They totally closed their booth with a fence, so there was no way of getting up close. Don’t know what fancy things they were hiding there.

Then there is of course “tiny town”, all the tiny companies who have a small booth somewhere around the various halls. Completion of their booth wasn’t nearly as close as it was for the main exhibitors. My best guess is, looking at the free spots available at different halls, that they’ll arrive on the weekend and put up their four walls just in time for the official opening on tuesday.

I’m looking forward to have some of the interesting heads of the big guns at our shows.

Be sure to watch my Flickr stream for photos of the show. Since Photokina is in my hometown, I’ll probably have the time to update it every day with updated impressions for all the people who don’t have the chance to visit Cologne this time. This show definitely looks very interesting already.

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