The Slick Network

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 Every year the release of EA’s Madden Football is eagerly anticipated by millions of adults and children across the globe.  This year’s version offers the same great gameplay and some extras that were not available in last year’s release for the next generation X Box 360 console.  You now have the ability to control lead blockers, create a player and control his career, and also participate in a mini camp.  I am not a hardcore gamer, so I just like to play the franchise mode and play out an entire season.

The graphics and animations are awesome.  The realistic movements of the players improve with each version of Madden that is released.  I caught very few animation “glitches” that took away from the realistic gameplay.  I did notice that my X Box 360 did “sputter” a little from time to time.  I do not know if this has to do with the processor being overworked or not.

 I was disappointed that I could not immediately go online and download current rosters.  I know that the regular NFL football season hasn’t started yet, but the coolest thing is playing with a team with the actual rosters.  I believe that you have to be an X Box Live Gold subscriber to be able to download updated rosters when they are finalized.*  I think that if you are paying $60 for a game, the roster updates shouldn’t  be seen as additional extra content.  That should be part of the deal…If I buy a Madden 07 game, I should be allowed all roster updates for the ‘07 season.  I don’t think that is asking for too much.  EA should take a look at its policies and give us free updates that we can update our offline teams with.   I know that I can update the rosters manually, but then the faces , stats , and performances will not be as accurate as I would like them to be.

Does anyone have any hacks to get around this?  If so please post them in the comments section of this post.

Update:  I have an Update for all you X Box Live Silver members…you are out of luck.  Only the premium Gold Members have access to the Free Madden 07 roster updates.  A work around was posted, but it requires you sign up with a new gamertag an start a new X Box 360 Live Gold Membership with a free 30 day trial and then cancel it before the 30 days are over.  This seems like a pain in the @ss to do.   If you have a computer, you can download the Rosters that have been posted online by other users, but you will need to purchase a data transfer kit that runs about $14.99.  That may be the best bet.  If you have a computer with online access, you can always buy a one month X box live membership for $7.99 and update your rosters that way.  Either way, it looks like you will be spending money in order to get roster updates for a product that retails for $59.99.  It just doesn’t seem fair to me.

Link to site that has the update Roster:  Football-Freaks.com  - You will need to register with the site to have access to the downlaod area.

Here is the Data transfer kit that you will need.

I will post instructions if I can find them online.

Here are the Xbox 360 September 06 updated rosters posted to a Rapidshare account.**

* This was incorrect.  Live Silver Members can download roster updates too.  

** Not the most current rosters available. I believe that a more current roster set is available via the Xbox live system.  3/28/07

 

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I was excited to learn that a new version of iTunes was being released.  I quickly looked up the list of new features of the 7th version of this program. It has a great back up to CD or DVD feature that I will most likely try. The add album art feature sounded great.  Most of my songs are imported Mp3 from different sources that lack the album art.  I guess that it isn’t the most important feature, but it really made me want to try it out.  It is just annoying to see a song come up on my now playing screen without any cover art. Instead of having to use a third party software program to find my cover art, Itunes did it for me.  It only found 800 covers, but that is 800 that I didn’t have before I installed the new version.  Itunes 7also offers a new feature called “Cover Flow” that allows for navigation of songs using the album artwork.   It really seemed that Apple was trying to add value to Itunes and not just trying to get people to upgrade in order to buy movies and games.  I have no interest in watching movies on my iPod, I purchased a 60BG iPod(eight months ago) mainly for the music storage space.  I still think that we are at least six to ten months away from getting the iPod that will “again” change the face of the portable media player.  I won’t purchase another iPod until it has a widescreen display and bluetooth wireless capabilities.  The new 6th Gen iPod will have to have at least 120GB hard drive in order for me to find worth the estimated retail price of $499. I suspect that the 6th Generation iPod will be compatible with most late model 2007 cars.  I want to turn my iPod on and have my car recognize the Bluetooth signal and just start playing…it is 2006…this shouldn’t be too difficult.  The current 5.5 generation iPods added little more than more storage space and a search function that isn’t available on the 5.0 generation version.  Apple is great at re-inventing its products, so they could at least update our firmware with new advances and software improvements.  I am already a loyal iPod user, but I would feel that more value was added if I could get firmware upgrades that improved the way my iPod performed as a media player.  I guess that I shouldn’t complain too much…Apple did add a new quick search by letter function that is very helpful.  I purchased my iPod eight months ago and it is already old technology. 

 This is where the problems start…

Itunes also has a feature that lets you perform firmware upgrades from within the program.  This sounded excellent because it is always a pain to connect your iPod and get notified that you need to go to the Apple site to download the new firmware version.  I assume that this automatic feature will download new version of the firmware in the background.   I was prompted to update my firmware, so I installed it hoping to find some cool new features.  That single upgrade has wasted 10 hours of my life.  My iPod keeps rebooting after some songs and sometimes it doesn’t even get to the main menu screen.  My iPod is “hanging” on the Apple logo and rebooting back to the logo again.  It almost seems like my iPod is stuck in the reboot cycle because I can hear it spin very fast and then just stop.  I read a few articles and many people have reported that it could be a problem associated with the encoding of audio files.   I re-installed the firmware upgrade and had to reload all of my 3500 songs.  I have my songs loaded on an external drive, so it took over an hour to load all the songs.  After the restore of the iPod, I am still having problems with it rebooting for no reason at all.   Install the iPod 1.2 Firmware Update at your own risk.   I have been searching for hours online and I still have not found anything that gets my iPod working properly. 

 Update:  I was finally able to restore my iPod’s firmware to the earlier 1.1 version. I had to restore my computer to a date before I installed iTunes 7 in order for it to work. At this point, it really isn’t worth my time to re-install iTunes 7 until word on the “boards” comes out that it is safe.

My iPod is now problem free and I will wait for a more stable firmware release before I try to update again.  Below are a few articles that helped me to narrow down the problem.

• Apple Support Article
• Another Apple Support Article
• Chernick.org
• Article 4
• Older Versions of iPod Firmware(iPod Wizard.net)
• iTunes 6
• iLounge.com
• Horror Story
• BradKovach.Com

Here are the steps that I had to take to get my iPod working again.  You don’t need to panic like I did.  Your iPod is not really dead. You will be able to get it to work again.

1. Restore my windows based system to a date before I installed iTunes 7.  The restore feature in iTunes 7 doesn’t appear to restore your iPod back to the previous version.  It tries to load the 1.2 Firmware version again.
2. Load a previous version of the iPod updater.  I used iPod Updater 2006-03-23, but you can also use the disk that came with your iPod. The previous versions are disabled if you update to iTunes 7.  This will erase all of your music, photos, and data from your iPod, so be sure that the orginal files are safe.    
3. You may have to reload iTunes or Quicktime.  My Quicktime Pro said that it was missing a files. Use  caution because you don’t want to accidentally delete your library and mp3/AAC files.
4. Sync up your iPod and enjoy it. 
5. Wait for a stable release of the iPod firware to be announced.

I tried the Firmware update twice without any success, so use caution when installing this update.

My iPod experience posted to YouTube.com .

** Update 10/01/06 **

A few people have emailed me to let me know that the easiest solution to my problem is to just plug the iPod into the AC adapter and then reboot.  I have not tried it yet, but it may work.

 

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I was searching for a convenient way to convert my (non-DRM)WMA audio files to mp3 format, but I found that it was difficult to find a solution that met my needs.  I looked up audio converters on Google and I was provided a large list of tools that sounded great.  I downloaded a few and I was surprised to learn that all tools required manually inputting information into id3 tags.  I research the problem a little more and several sources pointed out that WMA to mp3 tagging is not as easy as it sounds.  I figured that I would have to buy a plugin that worked with the Windows Media Player.  The prices ranged from $9.99 and up.  I would have purchased them , but I didn’t see any description that the products could do what I needed them to do.  Most of the tools provided ID3 tags when ripping from a CD to Mp3, but none offered ID3 tags when converting from WMA to MP3. 

 I have an iPod now, but I used to use a Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra.  I figured that I would try to reload or download the software that came with the product because I was sure that it offered a free conversion tool.  I went to the Creative USA site and they did offer a tool.  The tool works like a charm and converts title, track, and album name to ID3 tags.  I am including the link below and hopefully it will save someone some time.  The actual article below describes the conversion from Mp3 to WMA, but it is easy enough to figure out how to do it the other way. You don’t actually have to own a Creative Mp3 player for this program to work.  This is a great tool if you all of a sudden have a large collection of DRM free WMA files to convert.

Here is a screenshot of the program:  

*Note: Creative no longer has a direct link to the Audio Converter.  You will have to download the full software bundle.  You can delete the programs thst you don’t need.

Here is a direct link to the article and dowload.  <-- not working

Try this link. You will need to select your Country and mp3 player.  Any of the Zen Players should work.  Download the Creative Media Source Organizer.

 If you have iTunes, you can also just drag any unprotected WMA file into the library window and have the option to convert WMA files to Mp3.