It’s official: Rogers will be offering the iPhone in Canada. No word on whether they’re going to lower their ridiculous mobile data rates to reasonable levels.
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Here’s a photo of the line outside my local EB Games (the Runnymede/St. Clair location in Toronto) for Grand Theft Auto IV, taken last night at midnight:
The 30-car parking lot behind the store was full of cars that I could’ve sworn were lifted right from the previous game in the series, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: small sports cars painted in bright colours with lowered suspensions, chrome wheels and obnoxiously loud exhausts and stereos driven by guys in hoodies. The male-female ratio was high, but there actually were some teenage girls in line, which is a good sign: why should guys have all the realistically rendered fun in a virtual New York?
The door to the store is a few paces past the “no left turn” sign in the distance. I waited in line for about an hour and managed to get one of the last non-pre-ordered copies for the XBox 360.
A trailer for Grand Theft Auto featuring my character’s cousin Roman.
After getting back home, I played the game for about an hour, soaking up the the visually gorgeous opening sequence, running errands for my character’s cousin, Roman, shopping for clothes to impress a lady and beating up Albanian loan sharks. I’m going to have to jack a car and explore the city, as it’s so gorgeously rendered that it feels quite real. While the “San Francisco” segment of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gave me the feeling of deja vu (I lived there for a year), Grand Theft Auto IV made me feel as if I was in Brooklyn right now.
Here’s a video of the opening of the game, featuring the title sequence and the first few minutes of mise en scene:
The first 10 minutes of Grand Theft Auto IV.
I’ll post more details as I play the game.
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Darth Emo
Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood will tell you that there’s nothing like a computer you build yourself, and as the Star Wars comic below shows, it applies to droids you built yourself too:
Grand Theft Auto IV Goes Out at Midnight! Games stores all over Toronto are opening for an hour at midnight to sell the hotly-anticipated and universally praised next installment of the Grand Theft Auto series of games. If you’re in the Toronto area, all Future Shops and EB Games will be open at midnight, as will the Yonge/Dundas Best Buy. For more on the game, check out the IGN Review and the GameSpy review.
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The Real Threat to Google
According to a BusinessWeek article, the real threat to Google isn’t Microsoft or Yahoo!, but cell phones:. “As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what’s called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.”
Making Long-Distance (Business) Partnerships Work: “Technology makes it possible to run a business from practically anywhere on the planet. But what if your business partner lives in a different city or a different time zone? How do long-distance partners make it work? The answer appears to be with lots of planning and smart use of technology. And even in the best long-distance arrangements, an old-fashioned in-person meeting now and then seems to reignite the spark.”
Eric Sink on Windows XP and Listening to Customers: “My overall posture toward Microsoft is still friendly. I still use Windows every day…I’ve used Vista, and while I didn’t find it to be a compelling “must-have” upgrade, I rather liked it. But none of this means that I’m going to give my blanket agreement to every decision Microsoft makes. In this case, I object to Microsoft’s plan, not because Vista is so awful, but rather, because ignoring customers is so wrong.”