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An inside look at the Venice Project

the venice projectEveryone is dying to find out what the founder of Skype's latest project called the Venice Project is all about, and trying their hardest to get a peek into what it's all about. Well it's finally out, in beta form of course--a very limited beta, it seems. Om Malik caught an inside look into the much-anticipated disruptive P2P television application which fits in nicely with Janus and Niklas' free music and free phone offerings. Venice is a desktop application working exclusively on Windows XP SP2, and takes approximately one minute to download on a high speed connection. While Om reports that the photo quality of the site is incredible, and issues that once seemed to be present are now non existent, switching channels or menu options in the application saw a rather large delay. With the giant success of both KaZaA and Skype, I wonder how many media companies will jump on the bandwagon with this offering? Between KaZaA and Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom sure know how to turn an industry on their backs. Take a look at some screen shots at GigaOM.

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Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI 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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