Have your own mutated abomination ready for Spore

I still don't really know what to expect from the much hyped upcoming game Spore. I do know I am excited about it! Why? you may ask. Will Wright thats why. Will Wright is mostly known as "Game God" because he is one of the founders of Maxis and creators of Sim City and The Sims. While not all of Will's games have been as successful (I'm looking at you SimCopter) even games like SimAnt can catch the imagination for hours.

What is spore? Spore's official website describes the game; "With Spore you can nurture your creature through five stages of evolution: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. Or if you prefer, spend as much time as you like making creatures, vehicles, buildings and spaceships with Spore’s unique Creator tools.CREATE Your Universe from Microscopic to Macrocosmic - From tide pool amoebas to thriving civilizations to intergalactic starships, everything is in your hands."

So if you are anything like me I know you want to download the creature creator and start playing Intelligent Designer like I did.

Watch a clip of the game play HERE

Check out the games offical site, where you can download the Creature Creator HERE

Free Flash Fun!

Today's Free Flash Fun is an addictive little game called "Dirk Valentine And The Fortress Of Steam." Dirk is a platformer style of game where you control a small soldier armed with only a chain gun (think Bionic Commando's arm) which you must use to both destroy wandering enemies and create your self bridges over obstacles. To play Dirk you need to use both the keyboard and mouse so lap tops with touch pads and smart phones might have a tough time enjoying Dirk Valentine, but I think most flash gamers will be pleased with this clever little platformer from Nitrome.com

The Wire: Blogs

Just in case you haven't noticed we here at Palaba's Posts are big fans of HBO's The Wire, but believe it or not we're not the only ones! It seems the series finale of The Wire has inspired many a post, especially at The New York Entertainment's blog Vulture. So for you other blog readers who can't get enough of The Wire here's some of reading material:

Vulture:
‘The Wire’: One Last Long, Boozy Irish Wake for David Simon’s Accidental Masterpiece
Ten Questions Left Unanswered by the ‘Wire’ Finale
Actor Ptolemy Slocum on the Emotional Last Night of Shooting ‘The Wire’
‘The Wire’ Finale's Montage: A Shot-by-Shot Commentary
Debating the Legacy of ‘The Wire’
Sternbergh on ‘The Wire’ Finale: The Anti-‘Sopranos’
BREAKING: Eliot Spitzer Completes Tommy Carcetti's Character Arc
David Simon Still Has Some Things to Say
Looking for Vulture's Coverage of ‘The Wire’?

Newsweek New York Times TV Squad Salon Chicago Tribune TV Guide AOL Variety NPR USA Today Entertainment Weekly and Barack Obama

LEGO Digital Designer: Design anything you can Imagine with LEGOs

If you loved building your own LEGO designs as much as I did, I have found a must download free app, the LEGO Digital Designer! The LEGO Digital Designer allows you to select from three LEGO themes and 763 different blocks. The graphics rich interface allows you to rotate and connect bricks, move any hinges or levers and move the "camera" 360 degrees. Of course there is a link to the LEGO store so you can purchase your creation, which even comes with custom step-by-step directions so you can re-build you digital creation with the real blocks.If you're having a creative mental block the Digital Designer comes with 17 models ready for you to customize. All the options combined with the heavy graphics can be quite the memory hog, so I suggest closing every thing else before you give it a try, but I DO suggest you give it a try.

Check it out HERE

Mr. Picasso Head

If you have ten minutes to kill check out Mr. Picasso Head. The name pretty much everything you need to know, but just in case you can't quite picture it I'll give you a brief run down. You start with blank canvas in lieu of a potato, and instead of shiny plastic appendages to bludgeon the potato with Mr. Picasso Head allows you to arrange Picasso-ish graphics which can be enlarged, rotated, shaded, etc. Create your own or browse the user created gallery HERE

Warner Brothers to join Hulu

Embedded TV fans rejoice! Bruce Rosenblum, Warner Brothers TV's president said in a talk with Stanford law students that a deal with Hulu is "imminent." As you may or may not know I am a big fan and an avid watcher of Hulu.com, so I am excited about the addition of WB TV shows and possibly some movies. This article also speaks to Warner Brothers future use of celluar content. We may soon see Smallville and Reaper on Qualcomm based MediaFLO, which provides us full TV shows on cell phones via Verizon Wireless' V-Cast Mobile TV (and AT&T's service, whenever they get around to launching it.) If you haven't gotten an invite to Hulu's private beta yet, no worries TechCrunch thinks they will be out of beta and available to everyone in March! But if you can't wait that long than here's an episode of the Simpsons to hold you over.



And here's the Arrested Development pilot because, well, I love this show!

Consumer Advocacy Blogs You Should Know About

In today's world of recalls, shady CEOs, outsourced customer service and general disrespect for your dollar attitude, I think it's nice to have a few people looking out for you. Here's a couple of my favorite customer advocacy blogs, which I recommend checking on a quasi-regular basis.

Gawker Media's Consumerist

the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups has a good site and blog

WashingtonPost.com's The Checkout by Annys Shin

And Joe Consumer, which I have no idea of who runs it

Read Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield's weekely Freak Angel online for free

The new free weekly online comic Freak Angel from the extraordinarily talent of Warren Elis and Paul Duffield looks great and has gotten my attention is just 6 pages. It seems to be a post apocalyptic super hero steam punk comic, which in my opinion there just are not enough of on the planet. I don't know how I'll manage with just 6 pages at a time, I just may have to stay away for several months and check back for a longer read. I'm sure if this is even a marginal success, I'm sure there will be a paper collection of some sort. I must say I really admire the effort of new distribution method, if it dies well I'm sure we'll see a more web comics like this.

Check out this weeks edition HERE
Still not sure? Than read the first page below first.

Update: We have just added a Freak Angels widget below, so now you can always get there from here.

Jerry O'Connell loves the WGA more than Tom Cruise loves Scientology!

Digg your self into a hole!

The ever popular, ultra cool, super web savvy Digg has come under some fire for not being nearly as democratic as it claims. Now in all fairness I may be bitter because we here at Palaba's Posts have never been "Dugg" (I'd do it myself but that just seems dirty) But according to prisonplanet.com the web's unofficial "hey look at this" app is blocking or rather burying Diggs about Ron Paul. I'm no political pundit, heck I'm not even a political blogger, but this seems more like big brother than "internet democracy" to me.

Check out the original story HERE