Managed to pick up a few extra shifts at work this week, although the money isn’t going far. Didn’t do much over the weekend, got a 30 day trial account for Xbox Live. Console online gaming sure is different to PC, I’m yet to see a single game actually tell you a ping time or allow basic server filtering.

EA Games’ approach is certainly half assed, you’re just automatically dumped in to a game hosted on an EA server, and each client takes turns at being ‘Leader’ (allowed to select game options like tracks). PGR 3 seems to have much better online support, actually allowing you to create your own game (host).

Communication leaves much to be desired if you cannot afford a headset and microphone. You can’t use just any old headset and mic, it has to be an Xbox one with a proprietary connector. You can send instant messages to other gamers, if you don’t mind using the analog stick to move around a qwerty keyboard. I’m not sure whether to blame Microsoft (and their more than likely crappy SDK) or the game developers for the poor online play – perhaps I’m just expecting too much from a console.

Either way, certainly not worth $10.95 a month in my opinion, not on top of game costs and your own broadband internet connection. As a side note, burned games work online just fine, and I have seen no evidence that Microsoft is able to detect modified optical drive firmware (via Dashboard updates or otherwise).

We’re all familiar with the Genie effect, and Scale – but apparently the Apple developers were also working on a third minimize effect called Suck-in – I guess somebody forgot to remove it entirely from the final builds. You can enable this effect using TinkerTool, as well as many other cool tricks. You’ll also note the transparent dock in that screenshot, achieved by running ClearDock.