New Media Feed

The brand new Smeer DVD ( Smeer Live ) is now available on Smeer.com. The DVD features 90 minutes of live concert footage shot in Grand Falls NB, October 2005. Lots of extras are also included on the DVD, dowload clips from the website today.

Pros: No latency, crystal clear sound, incredible value
Cons: Pre’s are typically solid state. Nice, but a tube drive is nicer (personal preference)

Full review

I previously tried using USB audio interfaces and while they worked, the latency associated with multiple audio tracks was frustrating. Direct monitoring gets around the latency problem but it’s still not ideal.

I plugged in the firewire 410, and had the joy of playing along in real time with multiple effects and absolutely no audible latency. Amazing.

I can’t comment on the midi side of this product (haven’t used it yet).

The mic pre’s are clean and dead quiet. Nice, but if you’re looking for a more dynamic sound you should spend $50 and get an ART tube MP pre.

Overall, for audio, it’s incredible

This week Smeer have released thier new video “To Your Sons” to the public. The video was shot in Boston last summer and because of record company complications the band was not able to release the video last year. The song really touches on a sensative subject and the response to the song has been amazing. Go to Smeer.com and download the new clip.

It’s quite rare when a sequel can actually excel beyond its predecessor, but when an expansion pack manages to accomplish such a feat it’s truly remarkable. In reality Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike is more of a sequel than an expansion, but since we all know that the true sequel is going to rock the Xbox 360 later this year the expansion label will have to stick.

Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike is a fantastic example of how to make an expansion pack. Ghost Recon 2 was a hard act to follow but Red Storm managed to improve upon the original design and polish this game to near-perfection. A lot of it was technical enhancements but even more was just listening to the desires of the gaming community and implementing those changes and new features.

The new larger levels with non-linear gameplay put a lot of the decisions in the control of you, the squad leader, and the tweaked AI and intuitive command system makes the single player game almost as much fun as multiplayer.

Summit Strike is a must-own game for any Clancy veteran, especially if you have already played and enjoyed Ghost Recon 2. There is just nothing quite like it on a console and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us when Ghost Recon 3 hits the Xbox 360 later this year.

New Media Feed Podcast
Episode 1
Show notes

• Show introduction


• Info on what the New Media Feed Podcast will cover


• Information and background on show host – Bryan Cote


• Review of M-audio’s – Firewire 410


• Review of Ghost Recon 2 – Summit Strike


• News about Apple’s new mp3 player "Nano"


• News about Dells’s New mp3 player the "Ditty"


• Security update on Firefox

Download the podcast

My Odeo Channel

I have been playing the BF series for about a year now and I am not going to say anything new that the other reviewers haven’t said about this game. If you like combat and single/multiplayer battles then you should like this game.

As far as I know there is no other game out there right now that has the commander mode to the effect of accually commanding AI in a single player game to attack at specified locations on the map or scan the map for the ememy’s location and call in artillery to hinder the ememy’s advance. No other game right now has the squad based warfare in both sing/multi gameplay modes like Battlefield 2 has.

This is an intovation in the new era of not only war gaming but multiplayer gaming period! 

Now I am not a big multiplayer fan simply because I find in multiplayer games there is hacking and cheating no matter if punk buster is enabled or not because there is always someone smart enough to speed hack into someones server just to many computer literate people out there not to break the rules so I tend to go solo a lot in single player. We’ll here’s the deal and I don’t care what anyone say’s.

(PRWEB) September 23, 2005—“Consumers are buying hybrid cars,” reports NBC news correspondent, Anne Thompson. “Some because of high gas prices, others because hybrids are kinder to the environment. Either way, Americans are getting into hybrids.”

With gas prices setting all-time records and rapidly approaching $3/gallon in many US cities, motorists are outraged and looking for some relief. Though reluctant to embrace hybrid cars because of their higher price and relative short time on the market, these new breed of autos may be the best solution to the surging gas prices dilemma.

However, are they all they are proposed to be? Are they getting better mileage than conventional cars? How do they work and do they need to be recharged? These and many other questions are still on the minds of those who are hesitant to take the plunge and venture into territory unknown.

Andy Grant and Taylor Reid, authors of the eBook, All About Hybrid Cars: Maximum Performance/Minimum Impact, saw the compelling need for education on hybrid cars, so they wrote the book and launched the companion Website: http://www.AllAboutHybridCars.com.

“We ran a study and saw there was a tremendous demand for information on hybrid cars, but very little out there to educate consumers,” said Reid, an Internet marketing consultant. So she partnered with Grant, a professional writer and award-winning author. “I had to do a lot of research, because there was no one place that had all the facts,” Grant said. “We wanted to provide clear, current information that anyone who was curious about hybrid cars could understand.”