so i got myself a nintendo wii, thanks to the wii finder widget that searches online inventories and notifies you as soon as it’s available (and if so, you have about 5 minutes to get it before it’s sold out).
in case you haven’t been keeping track: in the ‘next-gen’ gaming race, the PS3 was the most anticipated system (due to the PS2 dominating the past few years), the Xbox 360 a close competitor, and the Wii a distant long shot. the Wii doesn’t have anywhere near the graphics capability as the former 2, but what stands out is the wireless controller where you actually gesture to make movements (i.e. to swing a tennis racquet, you swing it just as you would in real life).
so now that they’ve all been out for a few months, the Wii is kicking butt, the 360 is doing ok, and the PS3 is nearly a flop (it just fell out of the top 100 Computer & Video Game products at Amazon.com). the Wii has been out for about 4 months now, and it’s completely sold out almost everywhere. i’ve never had such a hard time getting my hands on a gadget so long after launch. i think it’s great, though, because the company that focused on innovation and fun is the one that’s winning.
anyways, after having it for a week, i can say that it is definitely a blast and stands up to it’s reputation of getting ‘non-gamers’ to play games, because it’s just FUN. at Amo’s surprise party it was a huge hit with everyone, from the young girls to my friends to the older parents.
on Friday night I threw a surprise birthday party for my baby…and it all went off *perfectly*…i came home from work and took her out to a yummy sushi dinner @ Sushi Groove South. little did she know, as soon as we left, all of her local family and friends snuck into our building and starting setting things up on the roof deck: a huge spread of food, amazing desserts, and drinks; christmas lights, candles, the whole nine yards.
we came home from dinner, planning on having a very chill evening together. i had to somehow get her up to the roof, so i used surefire bait: i said we should go up to the roof to cuddle and reflect on our relationship. of course, she’s like ‘OK!’. so we take the elevator up, the door opens, and about 20 people are facing us screaming “SURPRISE!!”. my baby was *completely* caught off guard, and actually speechless…after a few seconds she bowed “i’m not worthy, i’m not worthy….”. the roof thing didn’t last long, given the san francisco chill…so we moved it into our apartment and celebrated there.
here’s her description of the evening.
my one regret of the evening is that we hardly took any pics. towards the end i got with it and snapped a few, but they hardly capture the breadth of the food spread and everyone that was there:
twittervision is a mashup of twitter and google maps that shows a little popup on a world map whenever someone makes a tweet (a tweet is a ’status update’ on twitter…kinda like a mini-blog update).
This is the most complete list of beverage caffeine content online.
The Caffeine Database
Apple TV started shipping today. it’ll be interesting to see how it does, if it really does become the ipod of the living room. even if it gets off to a slow start, it wouldn’t be fair to judge it until a few years down the road. after all, ipod took 3 years to sell the first 10 million units - and then took off and sold 80 million in the last 2 years.
it’s interesting how big of an event it is when Apple enters a new market these days…all the established players who have been fighting for years to get a few million customers (Xbox 360, TiVo, Netflix) are instantly marginalized the second apple tv ships!
Apple TV Projected To Surpass TiVo And Netflix - Technology News by InformationWeek
