FretsOnFire has been around for a while and allows you to play GuitarHero on your own machine, but JamLegend is an online version. Using the 1-5 buttons for the frets and enter to strum you can play like Guitar Hero.
There is some pretty good music on there from bands you will have never heard of – I didn’t see any music that I recognised, but I guess this will eventually come, but in the meantime this is a fun way of finding out new music. One of my favourite tracks so far is Go On by Blue Judy and the neat thing is they also provide links to other sites where you can get the music to download. In this case there is itunes, cdbaby, lastfm and others. The other good thing is they have good taste in tshirts – see the right most tshirt 😉
There are showdowns and Duels where you can compete against other people in realtime. It also has social features where you can add friends and you need an invite to play – I currently have three invites for (regular) blog readers if anyone wants it leave a comment.
One down side that is really annoying is that my flash player stutters – normally when I get to around 50 notes which means it breaks my streak and I have to start again. Seeing as though continual play is the best way of advancing through the ranks this is REALLY annoying. I’m not sure if it’s a problem with flash – I suspect it is as it also affects youtube and other flash video viewers 🙁
So Microsoft update a patch today to do with Adobe flash player and I quote “Caveats: This bulletin is for customers using Macromedia Flash Player version 6 from Adobe. Customers that have followed the guidance in Adobe Security Bulletin APSB06-11, issued September 12, 2006, are not at risk from these vulnerabilities. Vulnerable versions of Macromedia Flash Player from Adobe are redistributed with Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3, and Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.”
Now XP sp3 has only been out a couple of weeks, if that, Adobe released their bulletin in September 2006 so how on earth is WindowsXP sp3 vulnerable – surely flash should have been updated in the xpsp3 release! This seems to make a mockery of the security focus that Microsoft are meant to be working hard on and coming on the heels of the recent snafu’s with Windows updates and genuine advantage, it’s no wonder people are not very happy with patching.
I’ve had several computers fail to install the MS06-020 patch for Flash – which seems to be caused by having more than one version of flash loaded on the pc in the past. The main solution at KB913433 is to go to the Macromedia site and download the new player directly