Category: Web Video

Lord of the Rings: Conquest trailer looks tedious

Wow, people still make and play Lord of the Rings games? I mean seriously, it’s been a while since the King returned it’s not like we’re magically going to be seeing prequels of it some 20 years in the future (OK, maybe the Hobbit). But what the hell, when EA has a franchise, they’re gonna make sure it’s milked clean.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest is being developed by Pandemic Studios, the same guys behind Star Wars: Battlefront (they were acquired by EA not very long ago, you will remember). As you can probably guess, Conquest is the Lord of the Rings version of Battlefront (which in turn was a Star Wars version of the Battlefield series). Hmm.

In the epic struggle between good and evil, you get to pick your side. The game will get you up close and personal with Lord of the Rings’ mass scale battles. In the good campaign, you will be able to play as one of the many heroes of Middle-Earth: Gandalf battling Saruman, the battle of Isengard through the eyes of an Ent and such. The dark campaign, however, will take you to an alternate route, where Sauron managed to kill Frodo and secure the One Ring. Now he must battle across Helm’s Deep, the Shire, Weathertop and so on, ultimately in Rivendell.

Personally, the trailer doesn’t look too exciting. It reminds me of the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King game, which I had absolutely no interest in. The graphics don’t seem to be in with the times, and the art style wears me out a but. They remind me of the Age of Conan game that came out recently. Not interested.

But if you are, then this game is coming out later this year for the PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and the Nintendo DS.

Splashcast HotSpot

No this isn’t a new T-Mobile technology, it’s Splashcast silly! Splashcast is a company with its eyes set on building an interactive widget based multimedia service. It has been a while since they’ve released a new feature, but today is literally marks a new slate for Splashcast.

Not only did they introduce a new feature, they’ve completely redesigned their intuitive console. The console is where users create Channels, Shows, and upload their items. The new console layout makes Splashcast even easier to use. It is by far one of the most simple control schemes for any media service out there!

Splashcast’s new feature, HotSpots allows users to add a box within their media that can pop up an image or SWF file. On top of that the file can be linked to a third-party URL.

Video producers will be able to provide a new way for users to interact with their video. Additionally, advertisers will definitely get a kick out of the possibility for mega-product placement. In this world were no one has a definite answer to making BIG BUCKS in the online video realm, it’ll be very interesting to see how this affects Splashcast.

Currently Splashcast does not have an advertiser network of any kind for its video producers. So will it have to be up to video producers to find the advertisers and try to get them to place ads in their videos? How would that model exactly benefit Splashcast?

I’m still messing around with this HotSpot technology. Currently pictures from Facebook are not being recognized. Hopefully Splashcast will be able to fix this bug soon!

StuffWeLike uses Splashcast for its social network widgets: Facebook and MySpace. Click here for our previous coverage of Splashcast. You can see HotSpot in action below:

Tony Stark in Incredible Hulk scene

Our dear friend Tony has been getting around a lot these days. I guess anyone can afford that when you’re a multi-billionaire. Tony Stark aka Iron Man is in The Incredible Hulk. Yes if this is a spoiler to you, then you obviously haven’t seen the film. Well I haven’t seen the film, but I heard about it with the net-vines.

Of course StuffWeLike went scowering across the webs for any related video to bring to you loyal readers and of course we succeeded.

Unlike our previous Samuel L. Jackson video in Iron Man, hopefully this Tony Stark video won’t have to be taken offline. It seems as if this video is an official trailer. If it ain’t it’ll probably have to be taken down. So watch it while you can.

If this isn’t an incentive to go watch The Incredible Hulk, I don’t know what is.

MYST DS Giveaway Contest

Yes you read correctly we’re giving away MYST for the Nintendo DS! Many thanks to Empire Interactive for supplying us with 4 retail copies of the game. You have until June 25, 2008 to enter! Watch the video below for all the rules.

If you don’t feel like going onto the YouTube video to write a comment, you can post one in this post.

Youtube Uploads 1024 megabytes!!!

Youtube has increased the maximum upload capacity for videos from 100 megabytes to 1024 megabytes! This increase will allow for some major high resolution videos to be viewed on the mega-video site. Additionally video producers can upload multiple videos at once using an extra downloadable software pack.

Videos still have the 10 minute cap.

In other related news Youtube launched a new feature called Youtube Annotations.

[Update]

I’ve uploaded a 800 megabyte file onto YouTube:

Looks like crap. Click on the video and read its description for more information. I guess higher resolution videos won’t come from higher storage upload.

Youtube Annotations

Youtube has added a new feature called Annotations! This is awesome for video producers because it allows you to write notes on your video! Include popup text with links and you can have some major kick ass videos! Imagine you say a URL – now you can write it out in the video and provide a link to it for viewers to click on during the video!

This is fantastic thanks Youtube!

Here’s an example.

[Correction]

Currently links can only be to: YouTube Video, Channel, or Search result.
Also currently the text is only available on videos embedded on Youtube.

My How-To Annotate video:

Continue reading “Youtube Annotations”