In the best tradition of the beholder’s eye, here are my picks for the top 5 games for the Xbox:

1. Red Dead Redemption. Saddle up, pilgrim, it’s time to bring some justice back to the Old West. This free roaming third person shooter puts you in Clint Eastwood’s shoes as John Marston, outlaw turned hero in the American Old West that should have been, and perhaps only ever existed for Hollywood.

2. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2. A shooter with heavy RPG elements is still a shooter, but Lucas Arts did it right with all the trappings and rich back story of the Star Wars universe. Lightsabers, the Force, droids, and an unmatched hive of scum and villainy put you in the action in a world where Greedo never would have got the chance to shoot first.

3. Lego Harry Potter: Okay, so waving a wand and blasting little Lego people into their component bricks isn’t exactly a shooter. But this latest entry in the Lego series of licensed games brings its own twist to the addictive puzzle and platform formula that made Legos Batman, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars so captivating. And its funny; famous scenes from the movies done up in silent movie Legos? Priceless.

4. Halo: Reach. Halo is unquestionably the game that established the bar for every other Xbox shooter to target, and the new entry in the series is no exception. It makes the most of that Xbox Live connection to put you and your buddies into the hot zone with a whole new set of rules, toys, and customizations that are guaranteed to keep your guns blazing.

5. Bioshock. This is one to watch, with the combination of intriguing gameplay and immersive storyline. The sheer variety of tasks puts you in a world where I just want to keep exploring the possibilities of one more upgrade, and the challenge of hacking another odd computer. Just because I can.

No coincidence that shooters form the core of my top Xbox games. The fast pace and frenetic action fuel my adrenaline like unfiltered caffeine!

When my college sorority decided to buy Netflix for the house, it was the best decision ever made. Watching movies on this website is much more dependable than watching movies at websites like Hulu plus. When watching movies on mobile devices, it is important that a movie contain no interruptions and flow as smoothly as possible.

Nothing is more frustrating than watching a movie filled with advertisements. On Hulu plus, it seems every movie is filled with advertisements. Even more frustrating, sometimes the quality of films on Hulu plus is choppy. On Netflix, movies are always high-quality and contain no choppiness. I like that I can depend on certain sites for movies that will give me the true “theatre” experience in the comfort of my own home.

For people that are looking for a dependable way to watch movies on mobile devices, Netflix is truly the answer. For college students especially, this will be a choice one never regrets! It is simply the best decision my sorority ever made and we enjoy watching movies on this site so much.

AdMob and iAds are two competing platforms in today’s mobile advertising and smartphone ads universe. AdMob, which was recently acquired by Google, is a mobile advertising company. It is one of the world’s largest mobile advertising platforms, and claims to have served 220 billion impressions. iAds, on the other hand, is the smartphone ads platform of Apple (since they were outbid for AdMob, their platform is based on their acquisition of Quattro Wireless).

The two platforms are in direct competition. While Apple has more experience in the mobile phone world, Google has more experience in the realm of advertising; this experience reflects innovation and creativity not only in the content and presentation of ads, but in the expansion and retention of a client base. However, while this experience in advertising could be advantageous for Google, the far wider mobile phone customer base that Apple has already established could be the deciding factor in this competition.

In a move that all but confirmed their dominance of E3 2010, Nintendo unveiled their latest portable device: the Nintendo 3DS. An evolution of the DS, the latest offering from Nintendo features surprisingly robust internal hardware for a handheld device. In fact, several reports claim it has more juice behind it than the Nintendo Wii. But who cares about numbers? What gamers are getting excited about is the ability to play Super Mario games in brilliant, glasses-free 3D.

Unfortunately, pictures can’t really do the Nintendo 3DS justice. Journalists at E3 were impressed by the clarity and depth of the 3D image. And just in case you were worried, the Nintendo 3DS will be fully backwards compatible with previous Nintendo DS titles.

Initial impressions are highly positive. Corporate is already expecting a year-long sell out, similar to what was seen with the Nintendo Wii, for the 3DS. Although pricing has not yet been announced, initial sources estimate it to be available worldwide by March 31st.

Working in conjunction with the pre-existing Sony Eyetoy, the PlayStation Move will bring precision motion controls to the PS3. Gamers will immediately be reminded of Nintendo’s “Wiimote” when they use Move’s wand controller. Featuring a motion-sensing, bulb-headed control for one hand and an analog stick and control buttons for the other, Sony’s Move is conspicuously similar to Nintendo’s design.

Unlike Nintendo, however, Move will have the benefit of an extremely powerful home console backing it. The Wii, though extremely popular, was notoriously weak from a hardware standpoint. Sony is claiming this is their next step in their plan to be the end-all, be-all entertainment device. The Move is expected to sell for $99 or less. A bundle including the required Playstation 3 system will also be available, retailing at $399.

Gamers will be awash in motion controls this holiday season. Microsoft’s Kinect will also be competing against Sony’s latest peripheral.

The move will launch with ten or more titles from companies such as Konami, Sony, and Capcom. The console will support up to four players at once, making it an ideal system for party gaming. Players can expect to see it on the market in America on September 19th.

It remains to be seen what interest level gamers will have in the Move, but expect a major rollout feature a multi-media advertising blitz shortly.

With the highly esteemed motion controller that Nintendo introduced in its Wii gaming console we knew it wouldn’t be long at all before its main competitors decided to create their own versions. Microsoft has officially announced that the Xbox 360 will get hands-free motion control in an attempt to compete directly with the Wii.

Kinetic is the official name of the new control system, although before the announcement was made, Microsoft referred to it as Project Natal. The new hands-free controller is projected to be released by year’s end. Microsoft’s plan is for the Xbox 360 to compete head on with Sony’s Playstation Move controller and Nintendo’s WiiMotion Plus.

The system will offer facial and voice recognition. One example provided was the capacity to control the motion of a light saber on screen by utilizing hand movements. The control system will also facilitate such actions as synchronization of dance moves versus an on screen command prompt as shown in MTV Game’s Dance Central.

As sound and graphics have attained near life like experiences a greater number of video game makers are now looking for new ways to immerse the gamer. By getting them more physically involved in games, the game makers are hoping to give gamers another reason to continue playing.

The second largest cellular provider in the United States, AT&T, issued an apology to users of the Apple iPad whose email addresses were leaked last week during a security breach. Hackers were able to discover the email addresses of nearly 114,000 iPad 3G users through a program on AT&T’s website. Among the email addresses uncovered by hackers were those belonging to members of the U.S. military as well as executives at media, technology and finance companies.

New York Times Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s email addresses were among those discovered by hackers. The group that uncovered the email addresses compiled them into a list to be sold in order to benefit their own publicity. Gawker Media’s Valleywag website was among a handful of places that received the hacked list of emails.

Goatse Security, which helps Web firms with security issues, discovered the gap in security on AT&T’s website. The company found the problem in a matter of an hour and publicized their results in the interest of iPad users’ safety. Dorothy Attwood, AT&T’s chief privacy officer, sent an e-mail on Sunday to the affected iPad accounts expressing the company’s regret and “apologizing for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused.” The company insured those affected that no other information was obtained by the hackers.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an inquiry into the matter and has asked groups, such as Gawker Media, who received the hacked email lists to save any documents they received so they could be used in the investigation.

If you’re an avid Apple’s iPhone, iPod, or iPad user you’ll probably be very pleased to hear that Apple has denied Google from blasting your devices with their mobile advertising. This is a breaking news story from June 9, 2010.

As you can imagine, Google is quite upset about this, especially since in late May Google acquired the mobile ad company named AdMob, from Apple Devices for a reported $750 Million. This decision also seems to have AdMob’s founder Omar Hamoui a bit miffed as well. This is also quite easy to understand, since as reported by AdMob, almost 32% of the ads served by that company in April went out to iPhone and iPod devices. That can translate into some serious future advertising revenue losses. Were your devices being bombarded with ads during the month of April?

It seems that there have been many requests made to Apple to clarify on Google’s claim, but none have been forthcoming from the company as yet.
In other breaking news, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs spoke on Monday June 8th that iAd, which is scheduled to launch in July 2010, could own a large share of the mobile advertising market by mid 2010. This is no big surprise as iAd is Apple’s own new mobile advertising platform. Personally this seems to be a well thought out plan by Steve to help boost Apple’s domination and market share even further.

All I can say is “Kudos’ to you once again”, Steve.

What are your thoughts on this new information?

Apple has announced a new version of the iPhone at WWDC. The new phone will be called the iPhone 4. It will offer Facetime, a new feature that enables any other iPhone user to have a face to face conference with each other. A five megapixel camera with LED flash on the rear of the phone will ensure users are able to take stunning pictures. Multitasking will also be coming to the new iPhone. Users will be able to have their email open while checking on their Facebook account.

Other major announcements by Apple include Farmville coming to the iPhone. Users will be able to interact with all of their Facebook friends as well as harvest their farms from their iPhone or iPod touch. Another major announcement was Netflix streaming on the iPod touch/iPhone. The streaming ability will allow anyone with a Netflix account to view any title from Netflix’s watch instantly catalog.

At the All Things Digital interview on Tuesday June 1st, Steve Jobs stepped out on the stage and talked for the first time since the last All Things Digital interview in 2007. However, in this year’s conference, Bill Gates was not present as he was in 2007.

Steve Jobs was asked about the recent spate of suicides that took place at Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple’s iPhone and iPad and Jobs replied that the company is dismayed about the problem and that it is a troubling idea, not to mention that Foxconn is not a sweatshop, despite the press coverage saying that it is. In addition to this situation, he was also asked what he thought about Apple finally passing Microsoft and he stated it was a “surreal” situation.

They then turned to the Adobe Flash situation and why the harsh words written in the Thoughts about Flash” letter. He replied that Apple only wants to make the best products and Flash is not the best so Apple does not want it on any of his products, even if the people demand it. Many other items were talked about at the D8 conference between the interviewers and Jobs but the biggest statement he iterated upon the entire evening was that Apple wants to make better products, period.