When I ruminated that the future of the set-top box was the web browser, I asked when television manufacturers would add a browser to their sets. Sharp's latest LCD HDTVs include a browser, so I guess the answer is "now". Too bad they're priced for business use at over $5,000 — and that many streaming video sites still use Windows Media-based DRM, which these televisions surely don't support. But it's a step in the right direction!
Press Release [Slashgear.com via Engadget]
Steve Mason's implementation of Atari's classic game runs on an 8x4' display and allows one to basketfuls of warheads at a time.
I wrote a Missile Command clone for the multi-touch wall at Obscura Digital. Just like the original, except you can fire by touching the wall with your fingers. Save the Golden Gate Bridge from ICBMs. Fun for the whole family!
It's incredible to watch, making the already-frenetic original look like a cakewalk. Missile Command meets bullet hell:
randomWarGamesQuotation();
Missile Command[Steve Mason via Gizmodo]
There was a time when the power of steam was used to drive mighty locomotives up mountains, to plunge mine shafts deep into the chthonic bowels of the earth, to cross the oceans and tame the dark, wild heart of the West. Now? Our bodies pasty and atrophied, we use steam power as a novel and less efficient way to do thinks we're too lazy to do ourselves.
Bridgestone's steam powered electronic newspaper shows just how low steam power has sunk. Using the mighty power of the elements, this electronic newspaper display can turn pages at an astonishing one page every fifteen seconds. You'd have a better page rate pressing your fingers against your temples, holding your breath and concentrating really hard until your eyeballs popped.
Video: World’s first full-size e-paper newspaper [Digital World Tokyo]
Touchscreen computers installed in the hallways of fifteen apartments in Gothenburg, Sweden, inform the residents the carbon footprint of every action they've taken in their homes, helping them monitor the true cost of leaving the lights on or taking a long shower. They're part of a pilot program from Swedish start-up Manodo; they also give handy updates for things like tram stops, weather, and who's standing outside the door.
But do the screens report the impact of their own construction and operation?
Manodo's Screen Is The Big Brother Of Energy Saving [Treehugger]
The D-Link DSM-750's journey to stores is something of an epic.
There's not much to recommend the SunView PMP Projector (PMPP), a pedestrian and chunky media player that runs Windows CE, except...a built-in "pico-projector" that will shoot a 53-inch VGA image onto any available flat surface. Now it's not a very bright image at that size — just 9 lux, just shy of one footcandle (to use a modern measurement) — which means you'll only be using this in a darkened environment. But it's the notion that counts. While these tiny LED-based projectors won't be replacing LCD screens in our gadgets any time soon, it's reasonable to think that in the next few years they could become as ubiquitous as the tiny, crappy cameras we now expect to see in almost every device we own.
The PMP Projector is available now through your preferred outlet for obscure Chinese equipments.
World’s First Commercial Portable Product with Integrated Pico-Projector Unveiled in Hong Kong [Display Daily via Gearlog]
We already knew the Dell Crystal Monitor was going to sell only to those more concerned with how their computer looked than how it performed — $1,200 for a 22-inch monitor with a sheet of glass over it is madness, no matter how attractive it might be — but what we didn't know was how bad it would look turned on. Maximum PC got their greasy hands on the Dell Crystal and found its slab of glass to greatly diminish the picture quality of what is otherwise an okay monitor.
The monitor’s artful exterior looks great on our desktop. If only the picture followed suit. Even after cranking the Crystal’s brightness to the extremes, the 1680x1050-native picture was unable to produce acceptable differences on its dark grayscales during our DisplayMate testing. This translated to a noticeable loss of quality and increased darkness levels in every real-world test we could conjure up: details escaped our pictures and movies; subtle lighting effects smudged together on our games.They gave it a five out of ten, which I'm happy to translate into human speech: avoid.This is the fuel behind the Crystal’s fiery glare issue. The display’s tempered glass lends the entire unit a mirror-like quality, more so than any glossy-panel monitor we’ve reviewed. We didn’t notice ourselves when we were working with a brighter scene, but seeing our blatant reflection during darker images, like Sweeney Todd, was more than a mere distraction. It destroyed the picture.
Dell Crystal [MaximumPC.com]
Previously • Dell Crystal LCD Monitor [BBG]
The future of video rentals is pretty clearly in on-demand streaming of video over the Internet, but until then, DVD companies need to strengthen the legs of their business model somehow. Now, a German company named Einmal has announced that they have come up with a self-destructing DVD technology. Coated in a special chemical, the DVDs will begin to break down and corrosively melt after 48 hours, rendering them unplayable.
The idea is to allow people to "rent" DVDs (or, really, buy the DVDs while renting the intellectual property stored on the disc) anywhere: gas stations, grocery stores, 7-11s and the like. The whole concept eschews the troublesome "returning the disc" aspect of DVD rentals.
Of course, this isn't new: Flexplay has offered disposable DVDs in America for the last five years. I actually saw some of these at a Mass Pike Gas 'N' Gulp in January, and I remember being flabbergasted by the utter wastefulness of such a scheme... along with the way in which each and every item I purchased was placed in its own individual plastic bag, then double bagged for good measure.
That's what really bothers me about it. The wastefulness. I'm actually not particularly green conscious, subscribing to the Monty Burns School of Environmentalism. But the utterly stupid wastefulness of tossing out millions of DVDs a year — as if an optical disc were as befouled by a single viewing as a prophylactic is by a single syphilitic hump-and-squirt — just stupefies me.
What's even more bizarre is the EU is far more green-friendly than the United States. I live in a country (Germany) where all of my garbage must be sorted into eight color-coded bins every trash day; where I am expected to pay 20 cents per plastic bag when I go shopping; where an empty beer bottle will get you a 25 cent deposit back. How can Europeans, of all people, be embracing such a wasteful, decidedly un-eco-friendly scheme, even as Americans have rejected it?
And I think that's the rub: while Europe has high bandwidth penetration and people actually would like to stream video on-demand, it's a second class citizen (but with a 40% higher currency value). We're largely excluded from buying video off of iTunes. Most of the American corporate video streaming sites exclude us. There is no real European equivalent to Netflix or Blockbuster online. There's money to be made, but no one's paying attention.
Until the film and television industry starts reaching out to Europe in the same way it's reached out to Americans, melting DVDs are about as good as it's going to get.
This DVD will self-destruct in 48 hours [The Register]
RED, the company whose 4K-capable 'RED One' camera — that's 4,096 by 2,160 pixels — became one of the most lusted after cameras of recent memory last year, has announced the 'Scarlet,' a hand-held Flash-memory based camcorder capable of a remarkable 3K resolution at 120 frames per second. They've stated they intend for it to sell for under $3,000. That means the relatively small Scarlet — pictured above both naked and with lots of accessories bolted on — will be capable of shoot video worthy of projection in digital cinemas, which mostly top out at around 4K these days (although typically only at 24FPS).
RED also announced the "Epic," a new camera that will be capable of 5K resolution. Both cameras will be available in 2009.
Resolution isn't the end-all, be-all of digital cinema, though. Variety recently ran a fascinating interview with James Cameron in which the director detailed the technology behind his upcoming 3D movie 'Avatar,' and why resolution isn't as important for providing lifelike cinema experiences as frame rate can be.
But 4K doesn't solve the curse of 24 frames per second. In fact it tends to stand in the way of the solutions to that more fundamental problem. The NBA execs made a bold decision to do the All Star Game 3-D simulcast at 60 frames per second, because they didn't like the judder. The effect of the high-frame-rate 3-D was visually astonishing, a huge crowdpleaser.I would vastly prefer to see 2K/48 frames per second as a new display standard, than 4K/24 frames per second. This would mean shooting movies at 48 fps, which the digital cameras can easily accommodate. Film cameras can run that fast, but stock costs would go up. However, that could be offset by shooting 3-perf, or even 2-perf, because you'd get the resolution back through the higher display rate. The 48 fps negative or digital master can be skip-printed to generate a 24 fps 35mm DI negative for making release prints, so 48 is the magic number because it remains compatible with the film-based platform which will still be with us for some time, especially internationally. 30 and 60 fps are out for that reason. Anyway the benefit of 30 is not great enough to be worth the effort, especially when 48 is so easy to achieve. SMPTE tests done about 15 years ago showed that above 48 frames the returns diminish dramatically, and 60 fps is overkill. So 48 is the magic number.
I was still having a hard time visualizing all these resolutions, so I decided just to make myself a reference chart all the way from the highest resolution standards down to some of the lowest of yore. I left out most the common 4:3 resolutions because they were just cluttering stuff up. I also suspect that the "5K/4K/3K" used in my chart are not the exact same ones that RED is claiming to support, as there are different formats of digital cinema. I pulled most of my numbers from Wikipedia's list of common resolutions.
If you'd like to look at the graphic in a 1:1 pixel version, there is a full-sized 316KB PNG available for download. Just remember: it's 7,000+ pixels wide, so your browser might choke on it if it's a creaky old ship.
[via Uncrate]
Overpriced interconnect bastards Monster Cable — and I know, it's what the market will bear, etc., but we all know they're screwing the ignorant and now apparently going after smaller companies, hence... — sent a cease-and-desist letter to smaller cable manufacturer, Blue Jeans Cable. Too bad Blue Jeans Cable's president, Kurt Denke, used to work as an attorney. His response to Monster Cable, posted with permission at Audioholics, is chock full of bring it on, fuckers. Kurt Denke has one hundred arms, each hand with middle finger unfurled.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs' practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.
Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable [Audioholics]
Howie writes:
To go along with Wal Mart and Amazon's rebates, Best Buy is offering a $50 gift card to anyone who bought an HD-DVD player from them before February 23, 2008.I love that Best Buy is calling their program the "HD DVD Action Center." I wonder if that reflect a feeling of genuine crisis they've had at the store level. I bet those floor walkers have had to deal with some really irate customers.They're also offering a trade-in, but for an excellent quality player with manuals, remote, and two movies, they only offer $33 (?!)
HD DVD Action Center [Best Buy]
Blockbuster is building a set-top, burped the web. I looked around my apartment at my three media consumption stations — or would have had I not been flying on an airplane — and considered where Blockbuster's box might go.
My laptop, a Mac, is full of a few video podcasts which I watch primarily on my phone. (Lala, call me!) I'll download the occasional torrent, although that is done primarily on my...
Desktop machine, a Windows Vista PC hooked up to a television-sized LCD monitor. I'll bring down television torrents from time to time, but as I have money to spend again (last year was a bear), I've been renting DVDs from Netflix. I watch those occasionally on my PS3, attached to the same display, instead of the PC. That's to pretend that I have a use for the PS3 besides a Blu-ray player.
In the living room is a projector connected to a DVR, or as it is increasingly known, "The American Idol Experience Box." If I wanted, I believe Time Warner has some on-demand options, but since I'm really only paying my cable bill as a way to assuage, in part, any ethical burden I feel for torrents I download, I've never used tried to use on-demand.
What I use many times a week is Netflix's web-based streaming service, available free at most subscription levels. And, to my surprise, Hulu. I pop open a browser, fire up an episode of 30 Rock or Arrested Development and watch an episode or two while I run on the elliptical. Or that's what I did at first. Now I find myself looking through the Netflix streaming listing for movies. Not just movies I've seen a million times, like Ghostbusters, but movies I keep putting at the back of my DVD queue because I'm just not quite sure I actually want to watch them. (Half of my queue is filled with movies I'm fairly sure I just have on there to impress myself. Oh, you're so well-rounded and worldly! But no one will mind if you just move Enchanted up to the top.*)
I never want to touch a piece of proprietary hardware to access content again. There's no need! We'll be able to stream HD content soon enough; in the interim, even these browser-based solutions could pre-fetch and cache it. The only reason companies like Blockbuster and Vudu want dedicated hardware is because it locks you into their service. They're recreating the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war for streaming digital media. How silly is that?
In Appledom, iTunes is the future, not AppleTV. AppleTV and other PC-based media centers only exist because no television manufacturer has figured out how to make a passable, low-priced solution to add a capable web browser to their TVs.
It would be simple and inexpensive to add a computer small enough to run a web browser to most televisions. (Even accounting for the relatively high performance cost of streaming video.) It might not even need a traditional hard drive, since data would only need to be cached, not stored. And while a custom interface to the web sites would be nice, it's not essential. (And could be done by the streaming media sites themselves by catching the browser type ID and passing back a custom CSS, like many sites now do for iPhone Safari.) A cursor and an on-screen keyboard would be enough to log-in to web pages, if slowly.
Or add a web browser to the game consoles. It doesn't matter. Just get a browser on these displays, connect them to the plain ol' web, and let them start showing content.
Of course there is one snag: DRM. And it's not even the standard DRM problem — you know, how it's a complete waste of culture's time — but that the DRM powering Netflix is Windows-based. But there's a fix for even that (besides adding the same DRM to Linux or other OSes and browsers): just use a different DRM. Hulu works just fine on my Mac. I don't know how or if they're trying to lock down the stream through Flash, but it seems to be working cross-platform without issue.
Unlike an ISP-level tax to preemptively pay for all media consumption as some have proposed, the browser-based system still empowers me as a consumer to make decisions within the framework of the market. If I like what I'm getting, I pay. If I don't, I stop paying. And there's no dead box under my television, waiting to be ground into splinters and smelted for heavy metals. There's just bored me looking wistfully at a login form, secure that all that entertainment is ready to be beamed to me again to any browser on any screen in the world.
* Loved it.
From an email I, a lucky Xbox 360 HD DVD drive owner, received:
As someone who purchased an HD DVD player from us before February 23, 2008,* you might like to hear about a special offer available from Amazon.com.I'll take it. I'd already made my peace with my stupid purchase, so this is just free money.New technologies don't always work out as planned. We at Amazon.com value our customer relationships more than anything and would like to support customers who purchased these players by offering a credit good for $50 off any products sold by Amazon.com.** Just use promotional code [redacted] when checking out. The code is valid through April 9, 2009, so you have plenty of time to use your credit. Purchases from third-party merchants on our site are not eligible
Previously • Wal-Mart Refunding HD DVD Player Purchased Made After Nov. 1 [BBG]
Amazon is still having a hard time meeting the at-the-moment-nebulous demand for the Kindle. A pal of mine ordered his on March 24th, but as of today it still hasn't shipped. Digitimes reported in January that PVI, the company that makes the Kindle's ePaper display, is having trouble meeting demand. I suspect that is still the snag.
Keep in mind this doesn't necessarily mean the Kindle is doing huge numbers overall. I requested sales about the device from Amazon several weeks ago and was met with silence (from a contact that had otherwise been happy to talk), so at this point it's possible that the overall unit sales could be low. (Or high! But usually when they're high you get some sort of response.) And they'll remain low if Amazon can't start getting Kindles into the hands of the unknown number of customers who want one.
Update: That same pal just got this email: "We now have estimated delivery dates for the Kindle order you placed on 3/24/08, #[redacted]. We are now estimating that your Kindle will arrive between 4/20/2008 and 4/27/2008."
Dok's Emporium sells these fully functional 1/12th-scale model televisions for use in doll houses. They take a standard composite input to display reruns of Jem and the Holograms (or whatever you like provided it is truly outrageous) on the 2-inch screen.
You can buy one yourself for £99, provided you live in England.
Product Page [DollhouseTVs.co.uk via Newslite.tv]
If you bought an HD DVD player at Wal-Mart on or after November 1st and have your receipt, you can return it with or without original package for a full refund. [WSJ via Crunchgear]
My editor Glenn Derene at Popular Mechanics points out that Microsoft really dropped the ball on launching its once-innovative Surface table in the US, missing a chance to really shine as an innovator:
Unfortunately, it seems that Surface is turning out to be a classic example of how a lot of hoopla followed by a long delay can drain much of the excitement out of a technological innovation. When Surface was introduced, it looked revolutionary, but in the intervening 11 months Apple iPhones have made multitouch screen interaction mainstream, Jeff Han's huge multitouch displays are being used for election color commentary on CNN, and other, less-sophisticated touchscreen interfaces such as Savant's Rosie coffee table and even ToyQuest's Touch Table EES could potentially beat Surface to the market.None of these products actually overlap with the Surface's in-store experience business model, but by the time Surface gets out in front of the public on April 17, it could look like a technological also-ran in a category that Microsoft was instrumental in pioneering.
Microsoft Surface Is Finally Here. What the Heck Took So Long? [PopularMechanics.com]
Germany's "Lumin" is talking a bit of trash about Microsoft's Surface multi-touch tables—or at least their PR partners are, suggesting the Lumin Multitouch display works well in lighting, unlike "Microsoft's Surface prototype ... which only works in dark surroundings." (I am making a presumption that it was Lumin's PR firm since the email that sent the about quote is from HaffaPartner.de, a PR company.)
While the Lumin Multitouch may be a fine piece of kiosk hardware, I've seen the Surface in action in a well-lit area and it wasn't washed out. And because of the way the Surface works—with an array of cameras peering up from below the projected screen—it can do all those fancy "recognize your gadgets" tricks that a standard display with a multi-touch overlay cannot.
Anyway, not a big deal, but I just wanted to call out that little attempt at PR sniping, despite the fact that at the end of the day which multi-thousand-dollar kiosk display is which won't affect any of us in the least.
Product Page [Lumin.de]
I've been trying to get a clear answer to that one for the last couple of years, but every time I ask Panasonic or Infocus about the high cost of replacement bulbs I get some mumbo-jumbo about the high tolerances or exotic materials that go inside—or more commonly no response at all.
It's been bugging me lately because my beloved Panasonic AE-900U is getting dim. (And has a wicked fan rattle, too, but that's probably both fixable and the fault of Porter's disgusting shedding, not a failure endemic to the model.) I priced out new bulbs and they're all about $300-400, depending on the source. What is a real pisser is that I could buy a used AE-900U on eBay for around the same price, making it clear that the only thing of real value inside a projector is a fresh, new bulb.
It's got to be a racket, right? I understand that those lamps need to throw out a ton of lumens, but even if they're filled with strange metals and inert gasses, hundreds of dollars for a bulb seems nutso to me. Then again, I'd feel a lot better about paying for a new bulb if I were wrong, so if you've got some science to drop on me I'd love to hear it.
Threat Level's Ryan Singel puts together a great overview of "BD+," the as-yet-undefeated DRM system that is included as an optional secondary restriction layer on Blu-ray high-definition discs.
The BD+ system, invented by the San Francisco-based company Cryptography Research, embeds a virtual machine in Blu-ray discs that play only on authorized Blu-ray players.I don't think I have to tell you my opinion about ultimately fruitless customer frustration schemes, but it is always interesting to see the current state of the art of DRM design.When the player spins up the disc, the virtual machine software and the DVD player view each other with mutual suspicion, but initiate a complicated mating ritual involving checks of cryptographic keys.
Once the disc decides the player is legitimate and hasn't been compromised, it allows the movie it contains to be decrypted for playback.
But if the disc detects that the player has been modified to record the movie, or it is using stolen keys from a different player, the disc won't play. Unlike AACS, however, BD+ has no ability to disable a player permanently, nor does its software linger after a disc is ejected.
How Crypto Won the DVD War [Threat Level]
Let's give a nod where it's due: one of Sony's developers of the "PlayTV" digital receiver for the Playstation 3 has announced that television recordings will be stored in industry standard, DRM-free MPEG-2, reports Eurogamer.
"We've talked to our legal department about it," said Bunting. "All we're doing is moving it out of PlayTV and to the cross-media bar as if it was any other recording. So hopefully users won't do stuff they shouldn't do with it.What a wholly sensible outlook! I'm sure it'll be quashed by the time the product gets to market.
"If I'm prohibited from getting the recording off and storing it somewhere else because some other dude is making money out of selling it, then I'd rather they brought the law in to catch those people," he added.
I finally got a Playstation 3 last week, picking up a used 60GB so I can pretend I'll someday get around to playing Dragon Quest VIII someday. So far I've been pretty impressed by the machine, if superficially. It certainly feels like a magisterial, adult experience, from the warming orchestra boot-up intro to the copious options available in the menu to the slot-loading Blu-ray drive—much more so than the Wii or Xbox 360. (Which, for the record, I think are also great in their own ways. Let's not start a console battlefront here!)
Do anything with PlayTV recordings [Eurogamer.net]
Japanese electronics retailer Edion has instituted a take-back program for its customers who purchased HD DVD players, offering to replace the units with Blu-ray players. That is true class.
Throughout March, customers can return any of seven Toshiba HD DVD decks and swap them for a BD unit from Sony, Panasonic or Sharp. If the latter is more expensive, customers need to make up the balance, but if it’s cheaper they’ll actually get a refund of the difference.
Honest / insane retailer swaps old HD DVD for new Blu-ray gear [DigitalWorldTokyo.com]
I made a little squawk and clapped my paws as I read down the spec sheet for the "Popcorn Hour NMT A-100," a badass little media streaming front end that appears to do just about everything you'd want out of a set-top box and is inexpensive to boot. Not only can it stream from just about anything on your network—PCs, NAS, attached USB mass storage, even internet streams—but you can also toss in a hard drive (not included) to download movies directly to the Popcorn Hour via BitTorrent. (Yes!)
The A-100, the current model, has enough horsepower to decode MPEG2, H.264, or VC-1 at 1080p. (Some media streamers do not, even if the network can push out a fat enough video stream.)
Network-wise it does pretty much everything you'd expect: UPnP, Bonjour, Windows Media, SMB. You can browse photos on Flickr or watch video on YouTube. I don't see a major codec it doesn't support, including Matroska containers and Xvid. (No Ogg video or audio, but that could probably be patched in.)
HDMI out. Component out. S/PDIF coax digital audio out. (Although strangely only 10/100 Ethernet, not gigabit. And no Wi-Fi.) All with a custom on-screen interface that looks capable if not stunning.
I have absolutely no need for one of these with my current setup, yet I'm still considering getting one. Unfortunately, there's some sort of weird first-come, first-serve setup to allow people to buy the units online, so picking one up looks to be a bit of a chore.
Kolbu reviewed one of these a couple months ago and gave it generally high marks for the price. It exposes a lot of the same rough edges as many cheaply made Asian do-everything boxes. (And seeing how little hardware is actually inside the box is both impressive for its economy but saddening for how little actual hardware you're getting.) It's not going to be an Apple TV killer for most—too many little quirks, like dropped video signals while switching between modes—but for those willing to deal with the occasional snag it looks like you'll get a lot more capability in return.
If only Popcorn Hour would get enough of these units produced that you could just order them straight off the website!
Product Page [PopcornHour.com] (Thanks, Joakim!)
Cartoon genius Tex Avery produced this short in 1953, showing off TVs for smokers, water drinkers, and those afflicted by airplanes overhead. The integration of real footage with the cartoon is fantastic. (I love that the fishing set was actually replicated by SEGA in the '90s in an arcade game, complete with working reel.) [via io9]
iLounge takes a look at Apple TV HD downloads, Blu-ray, DVD, and HD cable on-demand movies. In short, the Blu-ray looks best (duh), but Apple TV's HD beats out HD cable by a slim but noticeable margin. I still have no desire for an Apple TV until it can play streamed Divx over my network. Then again my big LCD is hooked up to a PC, so it's not like I do much streaming into the projector these days anyway. (My projector and Time Warner DVR have become mostly "The American Idol Experience" since I got the Westinghouse LCD.)
(And no, you can't tell any difference in my resized image above.)
Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison [iLounge.com]
Previously • My Wildly Inaccurate Look at Movie Distribution in 2007 [BBG]
Just got this email. I figure it was sent to me because Brad knows that the Boing Boing Gadgets audience would be the ultimate locus of DVR-owning MMO players.
Hello,Also, if you see either of Brad's characters in game you can message him and get a free TiVo. Or at least that's what I think should happen.I'm hoping this is the WoW Nowplaying guild list here at TiVo. If not, please accept my apologies for tagging the wrong list.
If it is the list, I'd like to get in touch with someone to get my 2 characters, Beacker (mage) and Korok (warrior) into the guild.
I'd also like to see if it's possible to coordinate with people who are trying to level alts to group up. I'm finding that the mage needs some backup to get his ruby shards from Silver Stream mine (Beacker's level 21), and get that damned compass out of the Alexston's farm house. Nothing like getting jumped by a bunch of Defias when you poke your nose around the corner inside the house.
Brad (beacker)
