The Pageant of Peripherals

First of all, the Batman Begins preview last night after Smallville was completely and utterly sweet and if you missed it you must bug everyone you know and see if someone taped/DVRed it. The first part was from his childhood, then a clip from his training with Ra's Al-Ghul, then a scene with Batmobile, then a run-in with Rachel (Katie Holmes) at the subway, and then an assortment of scenes, many of which we've already seen. Nothing at E3 today could've topped that, though we finally have some more details on Starcraft: Ghost as well as a trailer (just to go to 'Videos' from that page). There was also a sweet trailer from the PS2 port of Resident Evil 4. I also watched a 30 minute gameplay video for Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and I must say that it's simple incredible. If you have a Gamecube you need to preorder this game this very moment because there's no way in Hell you're going to be disappointed. The topic of today's post is regarding this article I encountered about how independent accessory makers have to bet on what the next trend will be so they can get peripherals out fast enough, sometimes within a few months. It's interesting that the console makers themselves help out so little because you'd think they'd like more products available for their console, but go figure. It's interesting how stuff almost as expensive as the system, like a 1 GB memory card for the PSP, sells so well and the only theory I can posit is that people who buy a PSP are wealthy enough to afford all the bells and whistles.

There's more news yet for geeks like me to feast on. Not to be outdone, TDK is competing with Toshiba's triple-layer 45 GB HD-DVD format with a 4-layer 100 GB Blu-ray disc. I'm rooting for BD because I want to be able to watch movies on my PS3! As a followup to yesterday's article on software piracy I have an article today foretelling an actual rise in software piracy in emerging markets, particularly in places where the piracy isn't even considered to be wrong. The Business Software Alliance has a long and hard road ahead of it. Steve Ballmer dealt an insult to Google in a recent speech at Stanford claiming that the company would be a "one-hit wonder". That only fuels my desire to work at Google so I can prove him wrong. Google isn't infallible and I'm sure it will come across scandals and such, but microsoft is set in a philosophy from the old days of computing and I believe they're underestimating newer companies with fresher ideas. Microsoft got slapped back in the face though when Cuba decided to switch to Linux, indirectly following the example of Brazil. Back to Google though, due to "user request" they've unleashed a customizable Google homepage. I think they're just trying to take the next natural step in competing with the likes of Yahoo!, but I never use those kinds of homepages anyway myself.

Revenge of the Sith is out today and I didn't watch it yet but I thought it was funny that CNN made a mistake in an article about the pirated version of it. The movie was actually online a few hours before midnight. Anyway, there are a ton of new trailers today and like half of them were packaged with the movie. The most exciting one is a trailer for War of the Worlds and it actually managed to top the previous trailer with some footage of the aliens in there as well. This movie is going to be unbeleiveably sweet. There was a Fantastic Four trailer with the movie as well that actually impresses me more than previous footage for the movie and it reinforces just how incredibly hot Jessica Alba is. Speaking of hotties though, there was also a trailer for Stealth, which features Jessica Biel. The movie is probably going to just aim to be a summer blockbuster like Independence Day without much substance, but I'm sure it'll be fun to watch. There's one last new trailer today and that's for The Island, a Michael Bay joint. Things are looking good for this movie so far to redeem Bay. Topher Grace, of That 70s Show fame, is joining the cast of Spider-man 3 to add yet another mysterious character to the film. Lastly, here's the new poster for Steve Carell's (aka Produce Pete) new movie:



Just a couple of last things. It appears that inflation worries have abated thanks to April reports showing that the core Consumer Price Index (CPI) stayed the same while the index as a whole grew only a marginal amount more than in March due to energy prices. Retail sales and employment also looked good, so let's hope that this becomes an ongoing trend. All you Strongbad fans out there will want to check out a couple of new e-mails he's put up because they're funny as always.

Now to answer a Question of the Day:

You’re a country at this year’s World Expo [currently being held in Aichiken, Japan]!

What country would you choose to be, and what would your main attraction, theme or event be?
I'd probably be India and my main attraction would be food. I think some people underestimate how good properly made Indian food is. You can't even get Indian food that good in America, only in India.