In the last months there were some previews for computer-games that were just jaw-dropping because these games introduce us into a new way of experiencing a game with mind-blowing concepts — Ladies and Gentleman, the next milestones in computer-game history are:

Spore (Maxis, EA)

Spore is a computer and video game designed by Will Wright that simulates the complete history and future of life.
Its concept, scope, and development philosophy (broad use of procedural generation) have drawn wide attention.

This is simply amazing — a game that will cover macrocosm as well as microcosm.
Watch a gameplay video of Spore presented by the game’s developer Will Wright.

Portal (Valve)

Portal is an upcoming single-player puzzle game by Valve Corporation, shipping with Half-Life 2: Episode Two, which is due to be released during the fourth quarter of 2006.

Analog to the Gravity Gun known from Half-Life 2, Valve now introduces the Portal Gun which can create portals allowing instant travel and a visual connection between any two different locations in 3D space.
Absolutely recommendable is this video demonstration of Valve’s Portal which is nicely produced as an illustrative instructing ad.

If these games are about to be released I am definitely one of the first people putting a pre-order.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m throwing standards over board now.
(Hence the question mark).

We all probably know when Bjoern Hoehrmann (Developer at the W3C) recently announced that he will leave the World Wide Web Consortium, the outlook for the future of webstandards (that make sense) was grey. But thank god he will keep working with the CSS team, hopefully finalising CSS3 one day.

Read the full entry "Standards down the drain?"

WordPress TuneUp 2.0.3 fixes several bugs in WordPress 2.0.3. Such as the annoying confirmation messages when editing comments and links in the admin menu.

(Those messages ask “Are you sure you want to do this?” and provide two submit buttons on a white, blank page). Furthermore edited comments aren’t messed up with escaping backslashes (”\”) anymore.

Currently available as a plugin at Tempus Fugit, the changes are hopefully in the SVN already. Thanks anyway for this bugfixin’ plugin. Those bugs really were annoying.

Update: WordPress 2.0.4 ist out which also fixes these errors. But wait! There is still such an ugly dialog left when editing categories.

The freshlabs project PG232 recently experienced more publicity than ever. After being developed in Copenhagen and exhibited at three events in Germany, there are now first public videos at YouTube and Google Video. Plus it got an honorable mention on the Techeblog.

The software Automatic Photo Pop-up takes any high-resolution photo of an outdoor scene and calculates it into a 3-dimensional VRML.

Our system automatically constructs simple “pop-up” 3D models, like those one would find in a children’s book, out of a single outdoor image. The system labels each region of an outdoor image as ground, vertical, or sky.

The tool is free for non-commercial use and is available for Linux and Windows. Additionally it requires the Matlab 7 SP3 Libraries.

Indicating loading activity has become a serious topic since Ajax-driven functionality on websites has emerged throughout the Internet.

This is a script I used in my blog now for some months. As I stumbled upon the article by Ian Selby, Ajax Activity Indicators: Make them global and unobtrusive, I thought I should write an article about my method as well.

Read the full entry "Ajax LoadingMessage in JSON"