Kindle Fire Review

Following last week’s slightly screenbreaking review of music, it feels right to continue the trend and review a “screen.” I recently purchased Amazon’s Kindle Fire. In trying to decide if I should purchase the tablet, I found a ton of cruelly unfair or obviously biased reviews. As a Screenfix writer, I’m not one to let that stand. I’ll try to answer a few of the questions that I asked when I was looking to buy.

Screenfix does not recommend holding your Kindle Fire like this EVER

Deciphering Eve 6's Return

Though it’s admittedly a stretch of our clever moniker, we here at ScreenFix do keep our eyes—or more appropriately our ears—on the world of music as well as film, television, and interactive entertainment.  This week, we’d like to bring your attention to the resurgence of an alternative rock band that is releasing their new album, “Speak in Code,” next Tuesday, April 24^th: Eve 6.

Radio Musings

I never used to listen to the radio. Not for any grand moral convictions about the state of radio or the music industry at large, I have just always managed to live in places with horrible reception. It’s a bit hard to get pumped up to clean some dishes to static.

Well now I am the proud owner of a 90 min commute home (on a good day) and car with a radio, we need to have a talk. I like you radio, I really do, you entertain me and have been the cause of quite a few impromptu dance parties in the car. Without you radio, I would have listened to the same iPod songs over and over again and would most likely have been murdered by my coworker and car co-captain, Scotty. Despite how this sounds, this is not going to be a giant rant about everything that is wrong with radio, more general observations of five things the radio has exposed me to.

Future Screens

When we think about life in the future and what it might be like, one of the first things we always bring up is how we will communicate, consume media, and generally interact with digital information. Whether it is a 3D holo-shark jumping out to scare Marty McFly or Neo jacking into the Matrix, the ultimate evolution of our display technology is frequently the starting point for a future world’s technological motif. In this past week we heard from Google about their secret Google[x] Glass Project and LG started to hype their paper-thin e-ink display. This got me thinking about how we might consume media in the future. Here is my list of six pieces of screen-tech that ScreenFix would like to see made real.

The Art of Thrilling Conclusions: Bioware's Mass Effect 3

In 2007, the first Mass Effect game was released.  It was published by the relatively unknown Microsoft Game Studios, and was exclusive to the Xbox 360 console.  Fast forward to 2012: amidst a massive amount of hype across social networks and YouTube, Mass Effect 3 was released (on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3) and concluded the trilogy that can very fairly be called “epic.”  As promised, Bioware has included an official female Shepard protoganist, and ultimately decided on a redhead (see my post from last summer, Mass Effect: Hair Salon).  As the only member of the ScreenFix staff who shared Bioware’s trailers on his Facebook with comments like “AHHHHHH!”, the responsibility falls to me to review the conclusion of the trilogy.  If you’re only here to find out if you should play Mass Effect 3, or if it’s worth the money, let me save you reading the rest of this admittedly lengthy review.  The answer is yes.  Go buy it and play it.  You will not regret the purchase.  For everyone else, here’s a breakdown of the game’s qualities.

The Summer Movie Season Is Upon Us

Well, we have officially sprung forward and as the days get longer and warmer, we here at ScreenFix are turning our attention to what really is important this time of year – the summer movie season.  Without further preamble, here are the films I am most looking forward to this summer.

2012 Summer Movie Fantasy League

If Ryan is writing his summer movie preview that means it is also time for the NSFW Podcast's Summer Movie Draft. In case you don't remember the draft from last year here are the basics. NSFW is a podcast on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech netcast network (TWiT.TV). Every summer (and sometimes the winter) NSFW runs a fantasy football style game with movies. The podcast's host bid on movies for their team. Followers of the show can play along. You get 100 points to spend on movies at the rates set by the host's bidding.

Here is how I picked the ScreenFix movie team. I looked over the list of films and took note of the points it cost to buy each film. This ranged from 9 points to buy G.I. Joe 3 to 60 points for The Dark Knight Rises. I then loaded up the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX.com) since people on the site basically do this year round. I compared the estimated earnings for all the films to their point value and picked out the movies with the highest points per dollar earned ratio. Admittedly I did tend to skew toward movies I personally was excited but I ended up with a team that HSX.com estimates will make over a thousand million dollars. I don't know if that will be enough to win, but I'll check back in here through the season and let you know how its going. If you're interested in following along I'll include some links below.

The NSFW Episode 2012 Draft Episode

The Draft Spreadsheet - Bookmark this to follow the progress of the draft

NSFW Draft Image created by Kid Lion