5 Games To Look Out For In 2013

Posted by Rebol  /   May 03, 2013  /   Posted in Technology  /   Comments Off

GTA: V
Released: September 2013

Back for another dose of guns, drugs, death and ladies of the night. We’re certain GTA: V will offer all the gory glory that we expect. Offering the chance to explore the whole of Los Santos and the areas surrounding, GTA: V offers a map much larger than any previous. Not to mention it promises multiple 1st player characters, so you can get right into the heart of the games core personas. We hope that not too much of the original game concepts have been lost in the attempt to keep the GTA series fresh, but we think that would be a struggle to achieve in itself.

The Last Of Us
Released: June 2013

Big expectations are held for this post-apocalyptic game from Sony. Giving you an action packed and graphically immense storyline, this is the game of the year for zombie fans. A twist on any other typical P-A scenarios in other games, this one sees characters affected by a modern day plague. Braving your way through the story will see you travel across ruined US cities with a teenage girl, and see you equip yourself to kill – by whatever means possible.

Metro: Last Night
Released: TBA

The sequel to the massive Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light sees the story take you through a nuclear war ravaged wasteland. In the Metro tunnels underneath ruined Moscow, you will come across threats to the dwindling life of mankind left on the planet. Playing the character who ultimately can save everyone from themselves, above and below the poisonous skies of the outside world – this game is sure to take you on a brilliantly epic journey.

Army Of Two: The Devils Cartel
Released: March 2013


The previous two games in the Army Of Two series focuses around two main characters, however this game is the first to take a step away from the old, and move into the new. With new T.W.O agents Alpha and Bravo, this game is heated and action packed from the get go. Fighting your way through the drug riddled and corrupted streets of Mexico, delving right into the veins of the darkness. Stripped back to a classic shoot and go storyline, we’re very excited to see the release date of this game arrive.

Crysis 3:
Released: February 2013

Playing the role of Prophet, in NY 2047 – this story picks off 24 years after Crysis 2. Going on what the game refers to as ‘Revenge Missions’ this game sees you inside the corrupt ‘New York City Liberty Dome’ created by a corrupt higher power, Crysis 3 will offer all the twists and turns you expect. With considerably more characters at the forefront of this game, the storyline is very cleverly entwined throughout, and offers for very flawless gameplay.

Shelly Flaherty is a gamer, tech geek and a mom of two. She recommends sending any gaming consoles using anti static packaging, like that over at Davpack.

Why Openstack for businesses?

Posted by Rebol  /   May 01, 2013  /   Posted in Technology  /   Comments Off

Despite the love/hate relationship the IT crowd has with OpenStack, it’s undeniable that the enterprise world sees something valuable in the open cloud. Forbes talked about PayPal’s recent shift from traditional VMware-powered servers to open source server management on the OpenStack platform. Not only that but eCommerce giant, eBay is rumored to be considering moving thousands of their own servers to the OpenStack platform.

If these major eCommerce and payment processing companies are thinking of moving to the open cloud, it won’t be long before smaller enterprise organizations follow suit. But why this major shift? And why now? In this post we’ll aim to answer these questions.

What is OpenStack?

Before you attempt to understand the “whys” behind this major shift to OpenStack, it’s important to understand the platform itself. For the uninitiated, OpenStack was founded a few years back in a partnership between NASA – yes, that NASA – and Rackspace, a growing, open source cloud storage computing company based out of Texas.

OpenStack is a completely open source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider that is completely managed and deployed by the OpenStack community of open source developers and coders.

Major shift in data management priorities

According to the OpenStack Wikipedia page, over 150 major companies currently use OpenStack to manage their servers. This signals that a large number of large companies are looking for a more flexible solution for managing their complex data, and that traditional or virtualized servers are no longer offering that flexibility.

Why the shift?

Options. The enterprise is in need of a great deal of flexibility and scalability within their infrastructure. Or as PayPal put it in a recent Forbes article, the enterprise is “committed to collaborate with the open source community to drive further innovation.” For many, this shift also means a simplification of the datacenter. Companies like PayPal and eBay spend millions upon millions of dollars in IT resources managing their datacenter presence. For similar organizations this is viewed as a major competitive advantage.

Why the move from VMware is significant

There are a few sticking points in regards to the shift away from VMware for these large enterprise-class organizations. For starters, VMware is a member of the OpenStack community, but it is also a major competitor of Rackspace. This shift in data management priorities may force VMware’s hand – as well as many other virtualization and server management organizations – to become a little more open source to meet the needs of the market. To date, the PayPal and (rumored) eBay shifts to OpenStack are costing the virtualization giant billions of dollars in market cap.

How these changes will affect business owners

Of course, these major decisions by massive enterprise companies are making the headlines. But how do these shifts to the open cloud affect regular business owners? Mainly, it gives business owners options because OpenStack is highly accessible, and can be leveraged as a cost-effective option for cloud data management. Additionally, it allows business owners to step out of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware bubbles and create their own robust, public clouds by collaborating with the OpenStack community. Additionally, if this trend continues we’ll on our way to creating some open cloud standards for the entire industry.

About the author: Dawn Altnam lives and works in the Midwest, and she enjoys following the business tech world. After furthering her education, she has spent some time researching her interests and blogging of her discoveries often. Follow her on Twitter! @DawnAltnam.

The 5 Top Facebook Home Alternatives for Android

Posted by Rebol  /   April 17, 2013  /   Posted in Technology  /   Comments Off

The release of the new Facebook Home mobile app has been hailed by many as a massive improvement of the social networking experience on Android. However, just as many users aren’t sold on its benefits. If you’re not impressed with Facebook Home and would prefer another solution, here are 5 excellent tools to access Facebook from your Android.

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The visual rise of social media

Posted by Rebol  /   April 17, 2013  /   Posted in Marketing  /   Comments Off

In today’s social media marketing landscape, content is surely king, but there’s a new hierarchy edging into place where visual content undoubtedly ranks above written content. As the old adage states, a picture is worth a thousand words, or, in social media, a thousand new followers!

Social media research has made it clear: savvy marketers do best when they combine well designed images with engaging written text.

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What is Google Adwords?

Posted by Rebol  /   April 15, 2013  /   Posted in Marketing  /   No Comments

Online advertisements has grown leaps and bounce and there has are many companies which are providing online advertisement solutions in the form of ads. One of the mostly used advertisement solution for online marketing is Google Adwords.  Google adwords is an advertisement solution which shows your ads to the target customers with the use of Google network and its partner website.

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Hacked Blog and Hacked off with Web Hosting

Posted by Rebol  /   April 09, 2013  /   Posted in Technology  /   No Comments

I have not updated this blog in so long, it was one of those ideas that seemed good at the time, but then… time became the problem!

Anyway, when I finally got back around to wanting to update it, I found it had been hacked, and then after managing to sort that out I had a load of problems with my hosting (which admittedly was free from a friend).

Anyway, I fixed the site and changed host… hopefully this will work out a bit better, though I am tempted to just go to using a free blogging site and save the hassle.

Expect some more updates and great stuff in the pipeline for the future ;)