Adobe, best-known for incredibly overpriced software, has unleashed a public beta of Photoshop Express, which offers users the same functionality as Flickr, albeit with lots of nice effects.
"Photoshop is trusted technology that has changed the visual landscape of our world. Now, Photoshop Express allows anyone who snaps a digital photo to easily achieve the high-impact results for which Adobe is known," said Doug Mack, vice president of Consumer and Hosted Solutions at Adobe in a statement.
Ahh, nothing like PR hyperbole. The "visual landscape of our world" actually looks quite the same as I sit here, gazing out my window. No matter, Photoshop Express could prove successful as both a service and marketing tool for Adobe products.
Adobe Photoshop Express features the most widely used photo effects, such as removing blemishes and red-eye, converting to black and white, cropping and resizing, and much more. It can also embed or link photos to social networking sites and personal blogs without having to leave the application.
Game Almighty posted their impressions of the newly launched closed beta of Battlefield: Bad Company and I think it's safe to say they aren't impressed. After trying throughout the day to find a server, I was finally able to enter a few games and I must say, I agree. After Call of Duty 4, Bad Company feels like a dated, half-assed mess.
After playing Battlefield: Bad Company for a little over an hour, it shows promise, but it definitely needs a lot of work. The visuals aren’t amazing, but I don’t think that a beta’s graphics are worth scrutinizing. With only 3 months to go before it hits shelves, one has to believe that the beta is primarily to work out technical issues, but I hope that they’ll deal with some of the game’s balance problems as well. Otherwise, gamers won’t be left with many compelling reasons to put down Call of Duty 4, or prevent them from snagging Battlefield: Modern Combat out of the bargain bin. Let’s pray that EA puts their remaining development time to good use as Battlefield: Bad Company shows a lot of interesting ideas, but seems to fall flat on the execution.
It always seems to take a year or more for developers to realize the bar has been raised.
That didn't take long. I just tried to hop into a beta game of Battlefield: Bad Company and was unable to make a connection. Then a nice little scrolling message danced across the top of the screen that said:
Servers are now live, but we are experiencing performance issues - We are looking into it, thank you for your patience.
I'm sick of paying $60 for a game that doesn't work. I cringe every time I put a new disc in my Xbox 360 or PS3 and dive into multiplayer, knowing the odds are good that I'll be faced with a half-assed experience.
The latest hunk o' junk gracing consoles is the PS3 version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Finding games is hit and miss and when you do manage to enter a round, you're faced with fun-killing lag.
Add to this other recent releases, like MLB 2K8 and MLB 08 The Show, both shipping with unplayable multiplayer, and gamers are increasingly faced with putting off purchases for a few months until these matters are addressed.
