Wednesday, April 28, 2010

AsiaOne - Reported Attack Site

AsiaOne is one of the news website that I frequent to get my news fix.

Strangely today AsiaOne is reported as a 'Reported Attack Site' by Google. In fact a number of search results that point to AsiaOne also highlighted it as a dangerous site.



I clicked further and found these details. So apparently there are malicious scripting exploits and Google found the malicious software as recent as 27th April. That means the site has been down for nearly a day? Wow, I wonder why it takes so long for the site owner to remove the malicious scripts.



Yes this is a screen grab of the search results. I'm sure the site suffers major loss of traffic over this incident. Hopefully AsiaOne site owners can get it up soon.


Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Machinarium - Snapshots

It is nice to get away from all the Facebook games and play other games for a change. One of the other games worth playing is Machinarium, a point & click browser game developed by Amnita Design. They are also the developers of the Samorost 1 & 2 games.

I like Machinarium. There is a storyline to the whole game and the simple interface helps a lot. The entire design gives the same feel as the Samorost series, i.e. a somewhat out-of-the-world atmosphere with the in-game soundtracks. This time round there is an inventory function in the game, which allows the player to store items and also combine the items for new functions.

Here's some of the snap shots of the game. Yes I played it last year in December. The in game hints, as well as the after the-mini-game tips are pretty useful.



Some of the scenes from the game:







One touching factor about the Machinarium is the occasional memories bubbles from the main character, that flashback some of the more 'romantic' events that happened in the past between the character and his girlfriend / fiancee. This adds a very human touch that is further emphasized because the characters involved are actually robots.



For those who are interested to play Machinarium, you can download it from their website. Free demo has limited scenes (of course), and the price of $20 for a full package will entitle the player to 30 locations / scenes. Quite worth it!



Go give it a try!