Archive for category Technology
Obama Cancels Return To The Moon
Posted by John Nemec in Technology on February 3rd, 2010

The Ares I-X launches during its test flight in Oct. 2009. The program to develop the rocket may be canceled by the Obama administration. NASA
President Obama is planning to cancel NASA’s return trip to the moon due to tough economic times but is planning on boosting NASA budget 5.9 billion dollars, according to Discovery News.
“We are canceling the program, not delaying it,” Obama’s budget chief Peter Orszag told reporters.
President George W. Bush began the Constellation program in 2004 with the hope of having humans one day return to the moon. Since that time NASA estimates to have spent over nine billion dollars on not only this project but also on the component Ares 1 program (3.5 billion) and the Orion program (3.7 billion on).
Obama’s cancellation decision means that NASA will be constrained to low-Earth orbits for years to come. This combined with the planned retirement of the space shuttle fleet in September will transform the aspirations of the U.S. Space Program.
Obama is hoping that commercial rockets and other vehicles will ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station (IIS). But at the same time, Obama plans to hike NASA’s budget by 5.9 billion dollars over five years to boost commercial development, with the goal of a first commercial flight to the ISS launching by 2015, according to Obama advisers.
Until the new infrastructure is in place, and after the space shuttle program retires, NASA will rely on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to carry U.S. astronauts to the space station.
The last hurtle for Obama to get this passed will be Congress, which, in my opinion, I hope is a hard one, since lawmakers from Florida and other states with close ties to the space program are likely to oppose moves that could threaten local jobs.
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The Beginners Guide To World War For The iPhone
Posted by John Nemec in Technology on January 6th, 2010
S
o you’ve decided to start playing World War on your iPhone. It looks really cool, hey what’s better than a war game, and it has a great opening graphic, but where do you start? What do you do? I’ll tell you. Now, I can’t promise that you’ll be the best player in the history of World War for the iPhone, I certainly am not, but hopefully after reading this you’ll have a better idea of how to play and succeed.
Oh, by the way, click on the images to make them larger.
First, lets flesh out the main page and see what everything does.
Lets do the easy ones first; at the very top you have your Money, Experience and current Level.
Your Money does exactly what you think it does, buys stuff (more on this later).
Experience tracks how close or far you are from advancing to the next Level. As you advance Levels you gain the option to play different Missions, buy different Units, and build different Buildings among other things.
The next row down is your Health, Energy and Ammo.
Your Health is more or less your Hit Points. When you battle someone or someone attacks you, you can lose Health. If you lose too much Health you die, but don’t fret, you don’t have to start over and it doesn’t kick you out of the game; it just add a Death to you’re My Profile page.
Energy is used to do Missions, more on this in the Missions section.
Ammo is used to Battle other players. Every time you battle someone you use an Ammo. It’s not gone forever, a counter will start and when it reaches zero you gain 1 Ammo back so you can battle again.
Every once-in-a-while, the nice people running World War offer you Honor Points or a new Unit for signing up for a different game. My advice is, do it. Most of the time it’s free, and if you don’t like the game or think World War is enough for you, once you get your Honor Points you can delete it.
The next area is a nice little graphic that tells you your Name, how many people are in your Alliance and your Alliance Code. And if you’re like me, you may find yourself tapping the screen in that area to see if it does anything. Try tapping around to see where it takes you.
The Missions button takes you too the Missions screen. Here is where you can battle to gain Experience, Money and sometimes Loot. Each mission has requirements to complete them, Energy (yup, this is where you use Energy), Alliance size and Units. There is also a ranking system, so each time you play a mission you gain more rank experience to eventually Master the Mission. If you master an entire section (Europe, Balkans, Africa, ect.) you will gain a special Loot.
Battle is exactly what you think it is, a place to go fight the bad guys, but don’t go attacking with out the right Units and Alliance members. Here it tells you what country the bad guy is in, gives you a link to their page (so you can see their stuff), how many people are in the other guys Alliance, and a quick Attack button. Also on the top is the Sanctions list.
The Units button is where you buy your military so you can Battle the bad guys. Here you can pick what type of Units you want to buy (Infantry, Ground, Water, and Air) and see the stats of each unit. The trick with buying Units is, buy enough to defend yourself as well as attack. And when I say enough, I mean there is some math involved.
The Unit Math
Take your current level and multiply that by five, that’s how many Alliance members you should have. Now take that number and multiply it by 6, and that’s how many units you should have. So, since I’m at level 53, I should have no less than 265 Alliance members (53 x 5). Each Alliance member can use 6 units, so I should have 1590 (265 x 6) attack units and 1590 defense units (if I could afford it). It’s relatively easy early on, but as you gain levels it gets harder, so keep that in mind as you start gaining levels.
Some Units can cost you money each round, so pay close attention to how much the unit will cost you compared to how much you are actually making.
The Buildings, where I spend most of my time, is where you can buy things to help defend yourself, earn you more money, and raise your Energy. I highly advise you to spend your time in here, whenever you can, and buy as much money and defense as you can. It will help you.
The Vault is where you can store your money when you are not playing or if you’re saving up for something special. But keep in mind, there is a 10% fee for every deposit you make.
Restore is where you can pay to refill your Health. I never use this, your Health refills itself on its own. But you may find yourself fighting someone and running out of energy so you cant attack, it may be a good idea to fill yourself back up so you can keep on battling.
The President section is where you can spend your Honor Points. My advice is to save your Honor Points for either Secret Reinforcement or the Money.
My Profile is where you can find out all about yourself and spend Skill Points. Everything in there is pretty self explanatory, but I’ll take a minute and explain the Skill Points.
Under the Skills tab are your Skills, every time you advance a level you gain some Skill Points to be used here. My advice early in the game is to either build up your defense or put one in Attack, one in Defense and one in Max Energy. I normally don’t put anything in the Max Health or Max Ammo, but I also don’t attack all that often.
The Alliance screen is where you can add people to your alliance, see who is in your alliance and check out the Leaderboard. Why don’t you test it out now by inviting JSJTRW to your Alliance.
I’m sure there are plenty of things I’ve missed, try just tapping them and see what happens. I intentionally didn’t go into the Settings or Help screens, you can play with those by yourself. I also had no interest in going into the News Feed, it’s pretty self explanatory.
So you may saying to yourself, “Self, That was a lot of info. What am I suposted to do with all that?” Well, here’s the low down:
- Money makes the world go round – save it for Units and Buildings
- Get as many Alliance Members as you can
- Follow the Units to Alliance Member / Level Rule – 5 Alliance Members per Level, 6 Units per Alliance Member
- Keep track of how much your Units cost, Money is the most important
- Don’t waist your Honor Points on anything but Money or Secret Reinforcement
- and finally add JSJTRW
Well, I hope this helped, and if you have any questions post a comment and I promise I’ll respond. OH! and feel free to add you Alliance Codes here or on my previous post Sick Addiction To World War for the iPhone.
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Foursquare Review
Posted by John Nemec in Technology on December 8th, 2009
For about a week now I’ve been reviewing Foursquare using my iPhone. Foursquare is a location-based social network, similar to twitter (in-fact it connects to twitter if you want), that, among other things, allows you to ‘check in’ to different places you go and review them. At a bare minimum, it a fun little game to show your friends where you are at any given moment, but has the potential to become a great marketing tool for businesses around the world.
I’ll start with the basics of this app and expand from there.
Once you have an account, which is free, and let Foursquare know what city you’re in, every time you go anywhere you can ‘Check-in’ to notify your friend where you are. You gain points when you check-in somewhere in the hopes of not only having the most points but also becoming the Mayor of places and unlocking Badges.
If you find yourself visiting a place often you have the chance to become the Mayor, this means you are the person that visits that place the most. There is great marketing potential with this that I’ll explain later.
Every time you check-in to a place or find a new place that no other Foursquare user has visited before you earn points. The more points you acquire and the more places you go, the better the chance for you to earn Badges. There are badges for discovering new places, traveling to faraway places and even going to the same place multiple times.
Since your already visiting the world and checking-in, Foursquare gives you the ability to add your own review called a ‘To-Do’. For example, if you visit a great burger joint, once you check-in to that place you can recommend something to other visitors by adding it. There are also Nearby Tips that can give you recommendations to places near-by your location.
To every check-in you can ‘Shout’ something. I recently found myself to be Mayor of the Fenton Wal-Mart, just what I’ve always wanted. So to save my pride a little, and to cover up the fact that I’m at Wal-Mart I wrote a witty comment in the shout box.
Everything I do and everywhere I go on Foursquare I have automatically post to Twitter. This is nice for multiple reasons. First, I don’t have to post something twice, in case I wanted to tell the world where I was on Twitter. Second, it could draw more people into joining the Foursquare community. As with any Social Networking site, more users = more fun.
Marketing
This could be an excellent tool for local businesses to use in the marketing world. If you have someone that comes to your establishment often (and becomes Mayor), why not reward them by giving them something free or a discount. This may stir up a friendly competition to visit your establishment more often. Businesses can learn more about Foursquare for Businesses here.
A good St. Louis example of this is the Missouri Botanical Garden. They posted, “Make sure to check in, using Foursquare, during the months of November and December! Top 5 Foursquare users will get free tickets to the 2010 Orchid Show!”
So far I haven’t had too much trouble with the iPhone app, it occasionally crashes (once or twice a week) when I try and check-in to places, and I couldn’t add a location once. But other than that, I’ve had no major issues.
So if you’re are using Foursquare and want to be my friend, be my friend on Twitter and add me that way or just add John Nemec.
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