Microsoft Corporation

Five Reasons to Hate GRUMA, Makers of Mission and Guerrero Tortillas, Maseca, and Other Tortilla Evil

If you're a fan of Mexican food in this country, you're most likely a consumer one way or another of GRUMA, the world's largest tortilla maker. Their American brands, Mission and Guerrero, are the top-selling brand in the United States and a favorite of Mexican households, respectively. Their masa, ... More >>

Report: Best-Selling Video Games of Black Friday 2011

​Like watching football or having a nap after stuffing yourself with turkey, Black Friday shopping has become a Thanksgiving tradition for millions of Americans. If you're a smart shopper and a gamer, there's no doubt that you've saved many of your video game purchases for the weekend following Th ... More >>

Justin Bieber Is Officially the Most Searched Musician Of 2011

​Bing.com, Microsoft's search engine, recently compiled its 2011 search trends for musicians and came up with some interesting results.Their list of the top ten most searched musicians is entirely made up of femme powerhouses (Who run da world?), save for the top slot, which was nabbed b ... More >>

Gateway Inc. of Irvine Deemed No. 1 Epic Tech Failure of All-Time

​Gateway Inc., which was founded in 1985 in Sioux City, Iowa (thus the cow logo), was flying high by 1991, with some believing it was poised to become the biggest and most popular personal computer maker in the world. But after a dodgy retail store strategy, the dot-com bust and moves to North Sou ... More >>

5 Ways Facebook Has Changed Console Gaming

​Facebook games are on a completely different wavelength than modern gaming on consoles. They're simple, often mindless, and accessible to just about everybody. People who aren't typically gamers have now been introduced to games with a community larger than XBOX Live, or PSN. It did a better job ... More >>

Modernist Cuisine's Nathan Myhrvold On Nightline With Mac and Cheese Recipe

​ I'm nothing if not endlessly fascinated by Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine cookbook. Not enough to actually buy the 40 pound, $625 tome; but I do perk up and watch in rapt attention when it pops up in the news.Last Friday, the ex-Microsoft CTO who holds more advanced degrees than some people ... More >>

The Best Free Sh*t from E3 2011

Peter Mai/OC Weekly​Last week's annual Electronics Entertainment Expo held in Los Angeles has come and gone, and other than the announcement of the Wii U, nothing truly exciting or new happened. Luckily, attendees of the show were given the next best thing--free junk. Every year, game companies ha ... More >>

E3 2011: Hands-off Impressions of New Kinect Hardware

Peter Mai/OC Weekly​Unlike Nintendo and Sony, Microsoft's biggest focus this year is all about software--specifically, software to support the Kinect sensor that was released half a year ago. Although the peripheral sold a world-record amount of units since launch, the amount of games and applicat ... More >>

E3 2011: 8 Reasons Why You Should be Excited As Hell

​The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is right around the corner, and the entire video game industry is focusing its gaze on what surprises the world's biggest gaming convention has in store. This year's E3, however, is going to be one of those really big, exciting ones that come come around eve ... More >>

Five Games That Are Not on the Wii Virtual Console-- But Should Be

​With all of the anticipation of a new console from Nintendo to be unveiled at this year's E3, we can safely say that the Wii is on its way to retirement. Within the past five years since its release in 2006, Nintendo's Wii system supported many great features that have pleased casual and not-so-c ... More >>

OC Republican Offers Early Support to Long Beach Democrat's Internet No-Tracking Bill

​State Sen. Alan Lowenthal  (D-Long Beach) has introduced a bill that would create a mechanism to allow users of computers or any other device that accesses the Internet in California to inform website operators they don't want their online habits monitored.And in these times of partisan bick ... More >>

How the Video Game Community Is Responding to Japan's Quake Disasters

Masahiro Sakurai's TwitterA photo by Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai shows empty Tokyo streets after the earthquake​With the death toll rising above 10,000 people, 88,000 people reported missing and the threat of numerous nuclear meltdowns, Japan is facing its worst national catastrophe since World ... More >>

Popular Science Tastes Modernist Cuisine

​Popular Science recently published a revealing article on Dr. Nathan Myhrvold's lab. Myhrvold, as you know, is the ex-Microsoft CTO and genius whose current project is an epic cookbook called Modernist Cuisine, the much-anticipated work some regard as the next Escoffier.

Highlights From the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show--Day 1

​The technology world will have its eyes on Las Vegas this week, when one of the largest trade shows in the world, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), starts on Thursday. Since 1967, numerous companies have used this convention to unveil some of the world's most recognized products ... More >>

Is the XBOX 360's Kinect Peeping on You?

​Microsoft's Kinect for the the XBOX 360 can very well be this Holiday season's hot item. It shouldn't be much of a surprise either, for it has the family-friendly appeal to draw in non-gamers, and promising technology that can interest even the most seasoned gamers. Besides, if Oprah said that th ... More >>

Massive Attack and Thievery Corporation at Gibson Amphitheatre Last Night

​Danielle Bacher/ OC Weekly​Massive Attack and Thievery CorporationNovember 7, 2010Gibson AmphitheatreBristol, UK trip-hop stalwarts Massive Attack joined D.C.-based dub/electronic collective Thievery Corporation for an evening of downbeat musical exploration. The gig capped off the LA ... More >>

Donald Bren Ranked Richest in SoCal (Again)

The latest Forbes list of richest Americans is out, and Newport Beach's reclusive billionaire Donald Bren once again finds himself ranked the richest man in Southern California.Forbes pegs the Irvine Co. chairman's wealth at $12 billion, enough to make him the 21st richest man in these United St ... More >>

Did You Hear About The $625 Cookbook?

​$625 is the retail price of this book, a 2,200-page tome on how to cook as if you were a mad scientist, written by the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold, who you may have guessed is as geeky as any man alive. He holds more than 18 U.S. patents. This cooking thing? ... More >>

Five Most Embarrassing E3 Moments

With the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo approaching in a few weeks, gamers and electronics fans across the globe have a lot to look forward to. During this event, industry giants such as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will have the opportunity to show off all of the great products that they have t ... More >>

UC Irvine Celebrates 40 Years Computing

UCI.edu​Computing at UC Irvine is bearing down on middle age!Friday's "Celebrating 40 Years of Computing @ UCIrvine: Innovating for a Better World: yesterday's vision... today's research... tomorrow's technology" features events and panel discussions about the digital revolution's reach to the Irv ... More >>

Just in Time for the Holidays: Secondhand Porn Under, On and Above Ground

Monica Hesse has an interesting story in today's Washington Post on ​a new breach of etiquette sweeping this great land of ours: the secondhand porn that travelers are subjected to as they, well, sweep across this great land of ours.

Expect a Big Crowd at Thursday's OC Microsoft Store Opening

​The Microsoft mall gods have blessed the Shops at Mission Viejo with the honor of being home to the second ever Microsoft retail story in the world. Why Mission Viejo? We're betting they want to staff the store with Nadadores, but who really knows.The store opens Thursday. The Mission Viejo Dispa ... More >>

Natural High

Deepak Chopra

[Game On] Humanely Put Down: The Long, Troubled Journey of 'Too Human' Is Finally at an End

[Game On] From Wii Speak to 'Final Fantasy,' E3 Lets Gamers Glimpse at Their Next Obsessions

[Game On] 'Ninja Gaiden II' for Xbox Goes Heavy on the Gore and Glitches

Hope You Didn't Buy Too Many Songs From MSN Music Store

For the many people who purchased music from the now-defunct MSN Music store, this summer would be a good time to clean out your files. You didn’t really want to keep all those songs you bought, did you? After the launch of the company’s Zune Marketplace in late 2006, Microsoft decided to ditch ... More >>

Blackout in Santa Ana!

About two-thirds of the way through my writing of an upcoming review last night, the power suddenly went off. Then it came back on. Then off. On again, briefly. Then darkness. I hadn't saved my work. Suburban blackouts can be odd and frustrating. You see lights on on the other side of the street, ... More >>

[Game On] Text Adventure: Words Get in the Way of an Otherwise Stellar Lost Odyssey

Game On

WEB EXCLUSIVE! Hype Machine: Does Halo 3 live up to its billing?

Game On

Elf Life: Shadowrun is fresh and excitingand on its way to being obsolete

Game On

Car Lust: Take a ride with Forza 2, the greatest car sim ever

It Was Free Cuz I Stole It

WEB EXCLUSIVE!: The Year In Unfair Shares

True Lies

The rise of the bunkumentary

a Clockwork Orange

Diary Of A Mad County

Affirmative Action for Whites

The Court affirms racial preferences in universities, so long as they work for white people

Sodomized Again!

The Revolution Will Not Be Digitized

Geek David, corporate Goliath in Revolution OS

Big Brother Award

Night of the Living Hoax

World Currency Cartel returns from the dead

This weeks featured game: New Orleans vs. Chicago

Internet Appleiance

What the iMac really isand what it means for Apple

Your Name Here!

In which our Heroine sells her Soul for a crust of Bread

Y2K Ready, Set, Doh!

Microsofts home remedy for the millennial bug: Download more products

Boredom Is Exciting

Nerdman stars in his own Truman Show

Sequelitis Hits Gaming!

Are megamergers healthy for the industry?

Non-Windows Users of the World, Unite!

Microsoft Windows Refund Day is just around the corner

The Year in Cyberspace

Welcome to Virtual U

Why is cyberspace sucking the college experience into a black hole? 'It all comes down to money'