Web Game Review: absOrb HD

Today, I'm reviewing absOrb HD from EffectGames.com.

In absOrb, you use your cursor and hover over the falling orbs of the same color as your ring(or cursor).  You use the keyboard keys to change the color of your ring to get corrisponding circles. The keyboard keys that you press to change the ring color are the 1-4 numerial keys.  If you find a falling Google Chrome orb, just hover over that and for a few seconds you can hover over circles of any color.

I really like how the game is laid out.  It is very addicting and fun to play at the same time.  I've spent lots of time playing it and find it very fun to play.  Another reason I like it is the wonderful graphics.  The graphics are good quality and very vivid.  It gives the game a great look and feel all around.  It's also completely HTML5 which I like that as well because it makes it very fast and modern.

You can play it here and be sure to check out EffectGames for other web games as well!  It is also available in the Chrome Web Store here.

My Rating: 9.5/10

SuperPC

Cool Use of HTML5

This post was originally published at http://www.tylersmiller.com.  Enjoy!

This has been passed around the Internet the past week, but I wanted to touch on it here.  If you visit the website The Wilderness Downtown using a browser other than Chrome, you are prompted that your experience might be limited on the website.  That being said, you might want to download Chrome JUST for this website.  Let's talk about it in a nutshell.

You go the the site, type in your address and hit Search. Yep, very straightforward.  What you might not realize is that it is then pulling Google Map data for the location you specified.  After a few seconds your video is ready.  It plays a music video, using HTML5 and pops up windows that continue the story line.  Your address is then converted to Google Map data and is shown in some of these windows.  It showcases your address from a satellite standpoint and from a streetview standpoint.  In some cases, you might have to pick a well known place, like the TWiT Cottage in California, to get this to work.  I live in small town Iowa, and of course my house was not on Streetview.  So, I chose to enter in the TWiT Cottage.  (8 Keller Street, Petaluma, CA) The video was amazing.  Me talking about it does not give the site justice, you have to check it out!

So, go get Chrome.  Open Chrome, and type in http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com and type in your address or an address that you are certain is on Streetview.

Let me know what your thoughts are on this project and HTML5 as well.

Website

HTML5 - YouTube's New Future?

By now I'm sure you know about all the whining and the bitterness of people talking about the iPad and how it doesn't support Adobe Flash, and also the people who are happy about it and seem to endlessly complain about how Flash should not be anywhere, and it should just go away. I personally haven't had a crash issue in flash, however I do agree that Flash needs to work on how much memory and CPU it takes up on OS X. So, today I decided to try HTML5 on YouTube's website, since I recently started having issues with loading YouTube videos. Others such as jkls have also had this issue, just to a more severe degree.

A typical YouTube video on HTML5.

Although, there are some restrictions to HTML5 in YouTube. Currently, all ads on YouTube are flash-based, therefore all videos that have ads on them will still have flash support. Also, Fullscreen support is disabled on all HTML5 videos. YouTube says they are working on bringing both of these features to HTML5, and considering past new features that YouTube rolled out, it shouldn't be too long.

First thoughts on HTML5 are decent. There are features missing as of now, though. YouTube will eventually fix these issues, but these could be some issues that could make you want to wait for HTML5.

The only way to pause a video in YouTube is by manually pressing the pause button. In Flash, you could press the space key or click on the video once to pause it. In HTML5, however, you cannot. I don't really have an issue with this, I am willing to give up some features in YouTube to have better playback and a more stable program.

As of now, HTML5 is not perfect, but I do think that this version is a step up from Flash. If YouTube continues its work with HTML5 and adds all the features Flash supports, HTML5 has a bright feature.