Author Archives: Jon Cole

Engadget exodus ends with encouragement (updated)

by Jon Cole in News312 days ago

As an Engadget faithful and podcast junkie, news that Paul Miller, Joshua Topolsky, and Nilay Patel were leaving the site left me a bit distressed. In one fell sweep, the Engadget Podcast was no more. In a move to try to preserve some connection with the personalities at my favorite tech website, I began to listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast hosted by frequent flagship guest Chris Ziegler. Much to my surprise and continued dismay, Chris announced on his latest show that he was also leaving the site in favor of greener pastures. Luckily, these...

Required Listening: Bethesda Podcast Oblivion Special

by Jon Cole in Games314 days ago

Up until this point, The Bethesda Podcast has been fairly reigned in, with the longest episode featuring the conversational John Carmack. The latest episode changes this trend, bringing out all the stops for an Oblivion 5th Anniversary podcast. Similar to the format of some Irrational Podcasts, the first half of the show is dedicated to the most memorable moments of development as spoken from the mouths of the developers themselves. This gives a ton of insight into the thinking behind some of the most entertaining quests, including the origins of...

Idle Thumbs GDC 2011

by Jon Cole in Games330 days ago

It’s been made pretty clear over the last year that the CastMedium staff members are big fans of (The) Idle Thumbs (Podcast), despite the fact that their feed has remained dormant for almost six months. Fortunately, that fact has recently been dashed by a couple of “Conf Grenades” that the guys released during this year’s Game Developers Conference. Since these podcasts have managed to fly under some of our radars despite nearly rabid fandom, we thought it might be useful to bring them to the attention of both Idle Thumbs...

Jon’s Podcast Recommendation #2: The Totally Rad Show

by Jon Cole in Games, Movies, Podcasts, TV352 days ago

When I first heard that The Totally Rad Show was going to be changing format from a weekly video show to a bite-sized daily segments, it seemed clear that this was primarily a move to serve sponsors and garner more “clicks”. After finally giving it a chance a couple weeks later, I was proven dead wrong and earned a new appreciation for one of Revision3′s longest running podcasts. Basically, our hosts Jeff Cannata, Daniel Trachtenburg, and Alex Albrecht take us on a daily ride into a single movie, video game, television show, comic...

GWJ Conference Call Episode 226

by Jon Cole in Games365 days ago

This week’s Shawn/Sean show kicks things off with Shawn’s continuing experiences with Dead Space 2. He admires the pacing and narrative style of the game, giving you these areas to explore that flesh out the world in different ways but are also mostly optional. He also gives us a brief update on Magicka, which he’s continued to play despite the bugs due to a longer campaign than he expected and deep gameplay mechanics. Sean shares a couple stories about playing LittleBigPlanet 2 with his son, though his propensity to quit out for...

Behind the Screened Door 02-07-2011

by Jon Cole in Movies, TV366 days ago

This week’s Screened-cast starts things off with discussion about this year’s Super Bowl. The pre-show butchering of the National Anthem, Frank Caliendo, crazy sports commentator shenanigans, and a jingoistic America F-yeah! montage join the terrible Black Eyed Peas halftime show add up to a bizarre peripheral Super Bowl experience, but the game itself and a handful of solid commercials seemed to make the whole thing worthwhile to the guys. Rorie reviewed The Roommate this week, which seems to be a boiled down, college-age version of...

Engadget Podcast 231 – 02.05.2011

by Jon Cole in Tech367 days ago

Chris Ziegler joins the show this week to start off the conversation with his experience with the new Android Market, which allows you to buy apps via the web on your PC and push the purchases onto your phone over the air. While that’s certainly a welcome change, the guys talk about problems with app discovery that could have been better addressed with this service. Google also showed off the Motorola Xoom in a little more detail than at CES, highlighting apps that were designed specifically for Honeycomb in particular. The Motorola Atrix...

Game Scoop!: Two Worlds 2, Bionic Commando 2 Reviewed

by Jon Cole in Games368 days ago

Arthur Gies and greenhorn editor Colin Moriarty join the show this week, kicking off things with Arthur’s impressions of Two Worlds 2. The game’s most notable quality is the magic customization system, but the game as a whole doesn’t impress and will likely not appeal to anyone outside the normal fantasy RPG fanbase. Daemon reviewed Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, which was perfectly fine but didn’t really improve on the formula of the first game at all. Nintendo unveiled some sales numbers from 2010 and it’s no big surprise...

Tekzilla 188 – Intel SandyBridge Recall!

by Jon Cole in Tech368 days ago

The latest episode of Tekzilla starts off with a veritable smorgasbord of topics, ranging from MacWorld gadgets, iPod warranties, and the situation in Egypt. The biggest piece of news by far is the recall of Intel’s new Sandy Bridge chipset, which is caused primarily by rogue SATA 3.0 ports. PC Perspective’s Ryan Shrout joins the show to fill us in on the details, which revolves around the fact that the problem is on the motherboards and that mobo manufacturers will be responsible for contact with consumers. Veronica got a chance to...

Behind the Screened Door 02-01-2011

by Jon Cole in Movies372 days ago

This week’s Behind the Screened Door is back to normal after last week’s Oscar bonanza, starting things off with Alex’s impressions of The Mechanic. In typical Jason Statham movie fashion, the film doesn’t really have a substantive plot but manages to entertain with the good fight scenes and a fun assassination training montage with Ben Foster. They proceed to talk more about Statham’s career, which they heartily agree could just as easily fit into the same mold as Schwarzenegger’s. Rorie dives into The Rite,...

Tekzilla 187 – Best Tech Job Bets!

by Jon Cole in Tech373 days ago

After burning through some news, Patrick and Robert dive into the first big topic of the show – Portable Apps. Robert follows up from his flash drive recommendations from last week with the offerings from a company called PortableApps, which packages a number of useful apps into a compact footprint to take along in your pocket. In particular, he recommends installing KeePass, FileZilla, Pidgin, Google Chrome, and Sumatra PDF to keep all your information with you on whatever computer you’d like in a convenient way. The guys answer a couple...

GWJ Conference Call Episode 225

by Jon Cole in Games373 days ago

This week’s Gamers with Jobs starts off with some talk about Magicka, a PC game that seems to have come out of nowhere to capture a fair amount of attention. Magicka’s best attribute is its gameplay, which allows a user to combine different types of spells into diverse, impressive combinations that add a layer of unique layer of complexity. The only detractor of the experience is some bugginess that disrupts multiplayer connectivity and other parts of the game, which will likely be patched in the near future. Dead Space is definitely...

Game Scoop!: The Next-Generation Podcast

by Jon Cole in Games375 days ago

NGP talk opens up this week’s Game Scoop! and there’s clearly a lot of confusion about the bland codename. Dubbing it PSP2 for the sake of simplicity, the guys discuss the potential launch price and how it’ll likely come in second place to the 3DS due to Nintendo’s business sense and the PSP’s poor history. On the bright side, the hardware (dual analog sticks, new flash-based storage for games, 3G radio, back dual touchpads) seems quite impressive though dependent on strong execution to best take advantage of them. High...

GWJ Conference Call Episode 224

by Jon Cole in Games379 days ago

The new game season is quickly boiling up and Rob is back on the show to join the conversation. LittleBigPlanet 2 kicks things off, acting as a platform for creating games with a much enhanced toolbox and offering a far more diverse campaign. Sean makes the argument that the game shines best in user-created levels made with those tools, but Rob and Rabbit strongly defend Media Molecule’s offerings. DC Universe Online was another big game to launch last week, with an excellent character creator and action-centric combat that differentiates...

Behind the Screened Door 01-25-2011

by Jon Cole in Movies379 days ago

Gary Whitta wanders in from the Tested side of the office to be a guest on this week’s Behind the Screened Door, primarily showing up to discuss the Oscar nominations. First off, the guys talk about how the ten nominations for best picture are far more appropriate in this year of movies, due to the huge pool of fantastic films with many that people have actually heard of. The King’s Speech and The Social Network are clearly the front-runners of the pack, though Alex and Gary agree that Inception may be the reasonable, populist pick. Colin...

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Episode 092 - PTW ahoy!
Games, tech, and the usual, for the last time. Hello Podcast Thing Weekly.

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Author Archives: Jon Cole

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Games, tech, and the usual, for the last time. Hello Podcast Thing Weekly.

New episodes every Thursday!

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