I knew being an MSN beta tester would pay off

Well it's been a couple of months now since all the Messenger Beta testers were notified they would be receiving a "gift" for their testing efforts, and today that gift finally arrived.
There was speculation, rumor and excitement about what the said gift would actually be, if history was to repeat itself we would all be receiving web cams, if MS was to keep up the technology hype we would have all received funky IP Phones, but alas neither of those options was to be. I'm now the proud owner of yet another branded laptop bag, Complete will Messenger Men and all.
I'm as yet undecided which of my 3 laptops will reside in this little fella but I'm sure they'll be playing rock, paper, scissors for it all afternoon :o)

King Quest is back!!!!!

Great news, Kings Quest 3 has been pimped out and re-released, and whats better it's free.
you can check it out here
http://www.infamous-adventures.com/index.php?page=kq3

My Xbox now has it's own blog

Ok we all know I love my Xbox and even he's new little brother Xbox360 so I figured it's about time it had it's own blog
http://www.360voice.com/blog.asp?tag=Nilcraban

basically this service monitors when I'm on Xbox live and makes blog posts about my gaming habits.
I've only just signed up so understandably there isn't a lot of content yet but keep an eye out I'm sure it will fill up

Which Superhero are you?

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 80% Green Lantern 80% Spider-Man 75% The Flash 70% Robin 67% Wonder Woman 62% Batman 55% Hulk 55% Supergirl 52% Catwoman 40% Iron Man 30%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Sony struggling to stay relevant

So we all know that Xbox 360 is my console of choice but I have to recommend everyone who is thinking of buying a Playstation 3 checkout this clip
http://www.gameklip.com/v/719/
it basically goes through the lowlights of Playstation 3 all taken from the recent E3 it also helps to highlight how Sony seems to be struggling to understand the market that they seemed to dominate so well.
enjoy

Halo Fever beginning

I was just informed by one of my colleauges that the teaser trailer for Halo3 has been released.
Be sure to check it out ASAP

Australian broadband moving backwards

I recently received a letter from my ISP stating that the plan I was currently on is no longer offered and that I would need to update my plan details. At the time I was on a 1.5 ADSL connection with a 20gb limit before my connection was shaped (slowed down) all this for $50 a month.
The options I now had before me were as follows

1. Slow my connection speed to 512 and maintain my 20gb limit for $50 a month
2. Maintain my connection speed and reduce my limit to 10gb for $60 a month

Obviously I wasn't too happy with this as either option presented meant I was getting less but paying more. Of course I called the customer service line at my ISP and had some very stern words regarding their plan changes. To cut a long story short I opted to look for a new ISP, after much searching and comparing I eventually found Chariot a nice little ISP that offered a 1.5 mb connection and a 40gb limit for around $70, now I understand this is $20 more than what I was paying but as my limit has increased I'm ok with that. Also to Chariot's credit the churn was done within a couple of hours the fastest churn I have ever had done big thumbs up to them.

However this did get me thinking why is it that in a day when the rest of the world is experiencing free wireless and cheap broadband that Australia is going through a price inflation. I know that some ISP's are beginning to roll out ADSL2 and rightly so if you are using this service then you would expect to pay a premium for it. However for people who are still using the standard ADSL network the ISP should have already made back the money for any hardware roll out and should be offering much cheaper plans or at least unlimited downloads. It also seems that the bigger ISPs are the more expensive, with smaller ISP's doing all they can to stay competitive.

With those rhetorical questions out of the way my advice is this,

• When looking for broadband look for the best deal you can.
• Faster connection and greater download limit is better.
• Don't be afraid to check out the smaller ISP's they are usually the ones with better customer service (e.g. not some guy sitting in a call centre in India trying to tell you how to set up your router)
• Don't be afraid to change your ISP if your not happy, the more we let our ISP's walk over us by specifying what "We need" the more they are going to to.

Anyway I've had my rant now so it's time to finish up have a great week everyone.