Wonk’d Out Fahionistas

Inspiring fascination in children can in itself be a very inspiring motivation.  I like these sites because they are fun, but are void of the perilous social aspects like chat.  These are Flash sites, and Wonka requires the newest version.  So be prepared and go get it!

 The Wonka site has games, a newsletter, and chances to win prizes and redeem codes. 

 The Bratzsite is different because in order for the girl to register, a parent must also set up an account.  Although their site has a long way to go before attaining the vitalization of Barbie Girls, it is still very nice.

Speaking of Barbie Girls, it is set to shed its beta status in July – that’s just around the corner!  I am hoping that by October, when I will most likely be purchasing one of the ‘dolls’, all the kinks will be worked out.  One can always hope.

Barbie Virtual World

The battle is forcing some serious innovations from Mattel.  With the launch of Barbie Girls Beta, comes fantastic clothes, funky furniture, and everything comes in pink.  Much less slick than Disney XD, but way more interactive, get your character dressed and ready because she has an apartment to decorate, clothes to buy, pets to adopt, and B bucks to earn and spend.  The mall has a lot more ways to spend your B bucks, but I’ll let you check it out for yourself.  There’s a chat and friend feature, too, which I believe is going to be moderated quite heavily.  I will have to look more into that.  The registration process is simple enough, and your home screen comes complete with a button to send your parents a reminder to get you the flash-drive-in-the-shape-of-a-doll that goes with it.  Thanks, Mattel.  But the one good thing I see coming from this is it might get girls who would otherwise shun a computer as ‘too much science’ into technology.

The Beta Fetish Fix For the Day: Protopage

If you have a beta (and I don’t mean fish) fetish like I do, you may have come across this http://protopage.com/v2 .  Absolutely fabulous.

Plus, I picked up a few new (to me) podcasts and vidcasts that I am currently getting an earful of so that I can write about them.  I have taken a decidedly twisted turn into sploiting lately and have also become obsessed with 600613.  Would it be okay if I started reviewing other streams not on iTunes….?  And since when have I ever asked permission for anything?  Ha.

Vista, a quick first look.

So we got another machine in the house the other day, with the Nvidia 7900 something or other that's supposed to be very good, dual core processor thingy, huge widescreen monitor, and you get the picture.  We put Vista b2 on it just because we could.  It is fantastic looking.  The display backgrounds are incredibly three-dimensional looking.  Very glassy. The start menu has the icon enlarged and at the top of the menu, partially hanging out of the menu and it changes on rollover.  (All those little icons next to the text are rather annoying to me, I am glad they are gone.) The windows are different in that they have semitransparent parts, and the buttons in the upper right glow when you rollover them.  The windows are mostly a pale grey, although I am sure that can be changed.  They are split horizontally into two frames, the upper is the semi-transparent one and the bottom has file lists, etc.  It occurred to me that with all this fogged-glass look they could have called it Bathroom Windows.  The pie charts (that remind me so much of Quatro) are replaced by horizontal bar graphs.  Yes, it does look reminiscent of a Mac OS, which is probably why it will do well.  Then we couldn't find any sound drivers and had to put the old XP back on, because we watch movies and play games on that machine, and how much fun would that be without sound?