I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.
In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.
To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.
Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.
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According to BusinessWeek, Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are preparing to launch The Venice Project, a new start-up that "combines the best things about television with the social power of the internet." Venice--which is just a codename--has been in very limited testing since the summer, but the beta program will expand significantly in November, and Friis says it will be available to everyone by the end of the year. They're currently courting small and large media and TV companies to put their full-length content on the network, which will be accessed through a stand-alone app and work on P2P technology just like KaZaA and Skype. It will have built-in intellectual property controls and will stream media rather than download it, which BusinessWeek naively assumes "makes it much more difficult for users to make, distribute, or sell illegal copies of the content that they watch." At the uber-austere Venice Project web site you can sign up for their mailing list which, presumably, will notify you when that expanded beta program starts.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jordan Running said 8:48AM on 10-06-2006
Mr Wave Theory: KaZaA's indiscretions aside, it seems to me that Venice doesn't collect any information that Amazon.com or the iTunes Music Store doesn't.
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Peter said 12:35PM on 10-08-2006
Jordan, I agree. Mr. Wave you have posted the exact same comment on other news I have seen related to The Venice Project. (http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/10/the_venice_proj.html)
What's your beef with the VP
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Mr Wave Theory said 5:30AM on 12-01-2006
You can sign up for the beta by visiting the home page of the Venice Project. But before doing so, I would read the privacy policy. Kazaa was notorious for installing spyware on users' computers and it looks like The Venice Project will be making great efforts to do data collection on users. This is just the boilerplate from the web site on what the software will collect:
When you register to become a user of a TVP website, service or software, TVP collects certain information such as your first and last name, e-mail address, location, and birth date, as well as information about your use of TVP features and contributions of content.
http://mrwavetheory.blogspot.com/2006/10/skype-founders-launch-venice-project.html
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