Tech Jawa > Reviews

Just came across this handy extension for Firefox and Google Chrome. It takes the advertisements next to your gmail messages and replaces them with any info (social network accounts, location, and job) it can find about the email address your message is from.

It does a good job in the tests I put it through… It’s just a quick install, then you give Rapportive access to your gmail account and it’s off and running indexing content on your contacts. Surely you wouldn’t need this for your most frequent contacts, but when you get other emails from people you’re no so “in touch” with, it helps you become more in touch with them, by listing social networks and other information about them.

At the very LEAST, it’s much more pleasing to the eyes than the gaudy ads that Google serves up, but at the best, it could be an extremely useful communication tool. I can see this being an essential addon for people who do business with others over email. It will allow you to get a quick “at-a-glance” perspective of people, and allow you to quickly and easily check out their social networking accounts.

Pros:

• Quick Install and Authentication.
• Extremely useful information for business partners.

Cons:

• Only supports Chrome/Firefox
• Slow in finding information on a new contact

Other Thoughts:
It’s in it’s early stages, and already a GREAT addon, keep an eye on this, and install it you like the idea at all, you wont regret it.

Overall: Rating:

You can download and install Rapprotive here.

Overall Rating:
This rating is automatically derived from taking the average of all ratings below.

Gameplay Rating:
The gameplay in GTA IV has been overhauled over the past GTA’s, there’s some new elements to the game, such as the “cover system” and multiplayer, without going into too much detail, I’ll just say the cover system works AMAZINGLY, and the multiplayer is fun for a good laugh, there’s some issues with it right now, but those should be addressed in a patch or something fairly soon. The new Euphoria physics engine is stunning as well, doing the same thing in game twice will surely produce different results, each human model in the game reacts differently to a stab, bullet, or being hit by a car, which looks stupendous, especailly in the game’s “bullet-time” mode.

Story Rating:
The story in this game is quite intriguing, you start off without too much of a backstory as to why you’ve came to Liberty City, but that’s what makes the story what it is… it develops deeper and deeper as you go, and by the end of the game, it gets downright… emotional. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that the only downfall of the story is the fact that characters come in and out of the game quicker than you can murder hookers for your money back.

Graphics Rating:
Simply stunning, if you’re playing this game on anything besides a 1080p TV, you’re really missing out. The immense level of detail on the cars alone is to be marveled at for such a vast game. City lights, buildings, roads, debris, and everything have an astonishing level of clarity for a game that focuses on people and cars. I’ll say it again and again, if you’re a gamer that plays more than casually, you NEED to invest in an HDTV, games like this don’t reveal their full graphical potential until it’s on the big HD screen. I can tell you first hand that I played through this game on an HDTV, and tried to play it (at a friends house) on a SDTV, and I just couldn’t do it… once you go HD, you’ll never go back.

Sound Rating:
I like a lot of different music personally, and GTA usually tailors to that aspect of me very very well, in previous GTA’s, I could get into a car and just leave the radio alone. In GTA IV, I constantly find myself getting into a vehicle, and immediatly switching to Liberty Rock Radio, or the Electro Choc, and those are the only two I fully enjoyed, th new “chatterbox” style station gets old… fast. In a game that takes 30+ hours to complete, hearing the same jokes from that station just get really old. On the other hand, “Weasel News” in the game’s radio stations reports on recent activity in the city, and it’s always cool to hear about the crimes you just commited on the radio!

Replay Factor Rating:
I won’t spoil the game for anybody, but I’ll just say that there are a LOT of decisions to be made in the game, which will reflect the story later, especially the end-game… The story missions are just fun to replay as well, I’ve found myself finishing a mission on the first try and saying “man, that was awesome, I wish I could do that again…” so a replay of the game wouldn’t be hard to imagine, especially with all th decions you could make differently the second time around.

Rating:

“Are you free tonight?” Is the famous line by Michelle Williams, who I have not seen in a film since The United States of Leland (2003). However I feel Williams is very fresh in this movie, and nearly outshines the stars, Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGreggor, who start the movie off in a quite awkward scene, which totally threw me off in the beginning, and had me expecting something far worse than the final product.

The film continues to evolve quite rapidly, into McGreggor being “inadvertently” inducted into “The List” which is a quite appalling thought, of men and women who simply exchange number, and then call eachother asking if they are “free tonight?” and proceed to meet at a hotel for sex, without ever knowing eachothers name, or what the other does for a living, and these are the RULES of the club.

However, setting aside the strange rules of the club, the movie delivers. It keeps you guessing and guessing on the many plot twist that happen, even if some are predictable. The film sets you up for some thrills along the way, some of which fall short of their intended goal, but overall, as a whole, the film was worth the money.

Its a great first film by director Marcel Langenegger