Sorry. My Thursday will be full – with Infinity Blade!

The Best Game On The App Store Gets Multiplayer And Survival Modes [Infinity Blade]
[Via Cult of Mac]

Char Entertainment and Epic Games’ Infinity Blade — a game we called “an elegiac app store masterpiece” and one of the best games on the App Store — is getting another beefy, free update on Thursday, and aside from more content, it brings one huge new feature to the game: multiplater deathmatch. Swoon.

Starting Thursday, Infinity Blade will get its next big content pack in Infinity Blade: Arena.

The big news is the “Enter The Arena” mode, which allows two players to go head-to-head via Game Center. One player takes the role of the protagonist knight, while the other player controls one of the games awesome titans, in a challenge for dueling supremacy.

But that’s not all. Another addition is the new survivor mode, in which players have to face off against a legion of Titans to see how far they can go without dying.

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I will not be getting anything done on Thursday as I deal with the new content. And multiplayer can be awesome.

importantly, this is following the app economy model – update early and often, keeping your fans connected with the company.  Angry Birds is one example and Infinity Blade is another.

I’ve now got 3 different versions of Angry Birds – HD, Holidays and Rio – all on their own update cycle. I’m hoping for something similar for Infinity Blade.

Perhaps soon they will open up different areas of the castle. Or allow different skills than creating a huge tank.

And, of course, they will have to give us the next step in the adventure sometime. The ending as it is now just makes me want to know what happens next.

I wonder what the street value of all that illegal bologna was?

by Dottie Mae

Big Border Bologna Bust: U.S. seizes nearly 400 pounds of illegal Mexican meat
[Via Boing Boing]

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers intercepted 385 pounds of Mexican bologna after finding the contraband luncheon meat behind the seat of a pickup truck stopped at the port of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, last Friday. I wonder how they sniffed that one out. Guess the smuggler didn’t do a very good job of hiding the salami, so to speak.

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My baloney has a first name. It’s I-L-L-E-G-A-L. My baloney has a second name. It’s I-M-P-O-R-T-A-T-I-O-N.

The worry is that since pork is used in the bologna that there could be nasty parasites and stuff in the meat. Could well be true which is why I always choose name brands with my processed foods.

Then if I develop food poisoning and die, my heirs have someone to sue.

Of course, the real purpose, as some of the commenters mentioned, might be that bringing in a smelly meat just before the weed truck can mess up the dog’s sense of smell. Perhaps enough to get the truck through.

I wonder if that is true.

More from our media overlords

by Groupe Aménagement Numérique des Territoires

North Carolina broadband bill would eliminate level playing field
[Via Ars Technica]

Op-ed: In this guest editorial, Josh Levy of Free Press argues that a bill that would ban the construction of new municipal broadband networks would stifle competition and make it tough for existing municipal networks to survive.

Michelle Kempinksi lives in Cedar Grove, North Carolina, a township of about 2,000 on the fringes of Orange County. The county is home to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and thousands of plugged-in residents enjoying the benefits of high-speed broadband. In Cedar Grove however, life is a different story.

Kempinski is a landscape architect. Like others in her field, she uses complex AutoCAD (a 3D design program popular with engineers) and GIS (geographic information system) applications to produce and move around big files used to map and build in physical spaces.

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Now, who benefits from a law that prevents anyone but the cable companies to provide broadband connections to people the cable companies refuse to provide broadband connections to?

When non-profit entities arise to provide this service to people, the cable companies get their paid help in the legislature to pass laws to prevent this service.

You know, broadband access should be run like a utility, not a purely for-profit business. The lack of diversity in access, and the lack of any incentives to provide any access to some people much less reasonable access, is causing he US to fall further behind most other countries here.

South Korea has AVERAGE connections speeds of 17 Mbps. In the US, the average is  4.6 Mbps but few of us actually achieve that at home. I’m lucky if I can get a couple of hundred Kbps downstream. Upstream is much slower.

The average broadband speed worldwide dropped in half over the last 2 years. Did anyone in the US see a 50% drop in their Internet bill? IN the US broadband costs dropped from 25% of a citizen’s income to 22%. In Europe the cost is 2% of someone’s income.

Thanks to the control of so many legislators by the media companies, I think it will be a very long time before we are competitive with the rest of the world. Funny how important regulation is to these companies when they can us it to kill any real competition.