Today, Mac users have a second popular Steam title to add to their gaming belts – Day of Defeat Source has been added to the Mac game directory of Steam, joining the ranks of the ever popular Counter Strike Source which debuted on Mac just a few weeks back.

As a result, Day of Defeat Source has also received a price drop, now available for the very modest price of £5.99. Let us not forget though that the title in question was originally released in 2004. Although Steam seem to be doing everything they can to bring multiple gaming titles to Mac users, it might still be a while before more recent, more complex games appear on Mac.

That being said, Steam appear to have finally answered the call of long forgotted Mac users. Mac is no longer the ‘forgotten platform’ of gaming.

This 34-Year old WoW addict has racked up 55 months of solid gameplay; totalling just over 16 in-game characters spanning over almost 5 years of his life. Running the numbers quickly, this equates to almost 1000 days of gameplay or 24,000 hours worth of pure MMO addiction! This is madness!

Unfortunately it took this “internet personality” long enough to realise the true depth of his gaming addiction, that he has been left with “”no [real life] friends…at all” and has thus taken the mature step to delete his account, moving on to pastures new. Of course what better way to achieve this in 2010 than to make the spectacle public via YouTube!

For those interested, you can check out the footage here; for those not, trust me, it happened.

RockStar have struck once again, providing gamers worldwide with an incredibly entertaining and addictive twist on the globally recognised Grand Theft Auto franchise. Red Dead Redemption follows the tales of a conflict hardened cowboy, out for revenge in the rapidly changing wild west. Since the game launched last month, developers have already surprised gamers with the release of a free co-op DLC, and they haven’t stopped there!

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For those of you who haven’t quite had your fill of John Marston, a further four Downloadable Content packs have been announced, allegedly to be made available sometime this year. The four packs in question are as follows;

• The Legends and Killers pack.
• Liars and Cheaters pack.
• The Free Roam pack.
• The Undead Nightmare pack.

Each new release promises to bring with it new game modes, missions, playable characters and of course a slew of new achievements to rush out and grab, ensuring that gamers remain in the Wild West just a while longer. Whilst the four DLC mentioned above will not be free this time round, RockStar have promised that they will be “competitively priced” which one can only presume will relate to about 600-800 MS points or about £6 respectively.

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for those who are unaware, is a process by which a webmaster can attract a number of unique hits to their website, regardless of the content that website may host. At a very basic level, this works by improving said website’s ranking within leading search engines, the more search engines the better, as this (again, in theory) should lead to a dramatic increase in web traffic. There are a number of methods by which you can go about achieving Search Engine Optimisation, however the majority just don’t work, plain and simple. For those methods that do work, they require a ridiculous amount of effort on your behalf, and no-one wants to spend more time optimising their website, than they do producing content for it.

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To further explain my point, I want you to perform a little exercise for me. Look back over some of your favourite websites. The majority of them will be popular because they have a constant stream of new posts, with new content provided daily from a team of professional writers sitting at their desks around the world. Keep looking though, and I bet you find a website that isn’t update as frequently, but is still bustling with activity; via comments, forum posts and link-backs. What is it that this person’s blog has got, that your blog hasn’t?

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As far as my research goes, the answer doesn’t lie in Search Engine Optimisation. Don’t put words in my mouth though, I’m not saying that SEO is useless, quite to the contrary. Instead, I’m implying that something more is required to create the desired effect. Before you can begin to implement the few tips I’ve outlined for you below, you will need to ensure that your website resides in the archives of Google. Ranking isn’t so important, and I’m going to guess that you aren’t too near the top anyway if you’re reading this article.

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Alright, enough delay. Here they are – 6 Important tips to increase traffic to your website;

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1) Don’t over estimate the importance of Social Networking. You need to get your brand name out there! Setup a new account relating to your website on Twitter, and shamelessly plug it with your personal twitter account, frequently! Don’t forget to use one of the various WordPress plugins that will automatically post your latest articles to Twitter, this can save you time and also gain you visitors, as it creates the false illusion that your website is more professional than it is. Establish your website on Facebook, too. Create a group – I know it’s annoying to watch your friends mindlessly joining  similar groups, you know the ones that pick fun out of the mundane tasks people perform each day, wouldn’t it be better if one of the groups they were joining related to your website? You can’t overestimate the potential of viral-social networking either, as you’ve got no idea how many other potential visitors to your website could stem from friends-of-friends viewing that group you created on Facebook. If the statistics are to be believed, approximately 100 million people use Facebook on a daily basis – you would have to be nuts not to tap into that resource. Free advertisement is king!

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2) Don’t bother joining web-rings, they’re an outdated concept from the 1990′s and they just don’t work. As a webmaster in 2010 you should be one step ahead – search out websites that relate to your own, but are not large enough yet to support themselves. Get in contact with their webmaster and offer to setup a partnership. This principle will work wonders for both of you, as you can leech readers from other websites without feeling guilty, as the other party will be benefiting in exactly the same way! Developing partnerships can also lead to much more; email is free, quick and worthwhile – so utilise it! Heck, drop ME an email, i’ll happily partner with your website! Don’t forget that you too should be putting a contact email on your website, in numerous places. You should be advertising the fact that you’re open to partners, and that you’re open to discussion about the placement of ads on your website from the various advertisement agencies out there. Smaller advertising companies such those at TopSpot-Promotions love to use lesser known websites, as they’re cheaper while still allowing the company to meet their quota. The little details can really get the ball rolling, and even begin to bring in some money for you. What have you got to lose?

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3) Keywords aren’t the be-all-and-end-all. Don’t listen to people who say that they are! Saturating your posts with keywords won’t increase traffic to your website, it’ll just provide a bunch of random links to your website very far down the rankings, when people perform an obscure search. 95% of people use one of the results from the first page of a search, what good is it that a link to your website is on page 83? Instead you should use a couple of selective keywords relating to your article. Using “Starcraft 2 Spec Sheet” for example would be much more applicable that just “Starcraft” in relation to drawing traffic to your website. Be smart.

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4) Sitemaps are an interesting concept, as I haven’t been able to discover whether I have had any increased traffic as a result. It seems more than unlikely, as once again the principle of a Sitemap is an outdated concept, as Search Engines in 2010 are more than capable of indexing a website without one, the only difference being that the likes of Google might miss a couple of obscure results without one. Pictures are also less likely to be indexed. There is a valid argument that pictures should be indexed, as they may lead to further traffic, as users explore the website they’re hosted upon, however in practice the difference is next to none. An alternative is to set yourself up with Google Web Analytics. Submitting a sitemap here would definitely be a step in the right direction, and this would work two fold, as Analytics allows you to monitor data with regards to your websites traffic. There are alternative methods to achieve this, but this is the most efficient and time saving, which is what this article is all about!

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5) Ensure that your blog works! Sling your blog through http://www.ismyblogworking.com/ and ensure that it’s functioning properly, fix the errors and promote the fact on your website, for visitors and also potential clients (such as advertisers and partners) to see. Many WordPress themes today miss out the closing </html> code, which can cause up to a 5 second increase in loading time for your website – time which could cause a unique visitor to give up and go back to updating their Facebook instead. Again, don’t forget the importance of Facebook, it’s so important that I’ve now mentioned it twice! Teenagers in particular spend the majority of their time browsing the web on this single website. Use this to your advantage.

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6) One of the most important principles though, and one that I’m sure you’ve heard time and time again – You need unique, detailed and relevant content on your website. Regardless to popular belief, there’s nothing wrong with creating a blog in an already saturated market (such as this one, technology and games) you just need to be unique within the saturated market (see what I did there?). There’s far to many websites out there reporting the latest industry news. Your website needs to take a unique slant on your chosen topic; if you’re running a WordPress blog on the latest gaming news, don’t just report recent developments, go one step further – Write reviews and criticisms of recent releases, evaluate companies and fantasise about where a game series should head next. The possibilities are endless, you just need to apply yourself. On the topic of content, don’t forget to proof read your articles, alongside spellchecking thoroughly – sloppy writing isn’t likely to keep visitors returning to your site.

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I’m sure you noticed while reading through these 6 points, that they all interlink with one another. The principles I’ve outlined above are based off my own research and experience dealing with SEO and improving traffic to TechCritic. If you disagree with my opinions, or have any comments you wish to raise, please do so below. I will respond to all comments I receive. Thank you for taking the time to read this post, If you made it all the way to the end, I commend you.

Alright, so that statement I’ve just made isn’t completely true… Well it’s not true at all. Allow me to clarify. By buying and using Apple’s latest tech offering, the iPad, you will not encounter any damaging or painful side-affects, mentally or physically, that I know of. However, for one Denver man pictured above, the loss of one of his digits can be associated to such a purchase.

A business man from Denver purchased an iPad recently, turning himself into a walking target for thieves. While leaving an Apple store in the Denver area with his latest purchase, the poor guy in question was approached by men who then forcefully removed the bag from his possession. This wouldn’t ordinarily of been a problem (well, besides the fact that he’s just been mugged) however this guy had unfortunately wrapped the string handles of the Apple bag around his fingers, probably in an attempt to keep it safe.

It appears that this extra measure backfired, and resulted in this guy losing more than just the latest piece of technology, he also lost part of his little finger as the bag was ripped from his hands. Let’s hope that these guys are caught.

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Gaming addiction is a big issue worldwide, but Korea has often graced the news regarding their ‘alternative’ methods of dealing with the problem. That being said, with young Korean gamers dying of dehydration due to their excessive addiction, it’s entirely plausable that Korea should take further steps to reduce the problem.

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As a result, an online gaming ban is to be implemented in Southern Korea, blocking access to the most popular of internet games after midnight. It’s rather questionable whether this will work though. With adolescant Korean gamers being denied access to their favourite games in the middle of the night, channelling all that energy elsewhere, it won’t take long for a work-around to be released. Alternatively, their ‘gaming fix’ could easily be replaced by numerous hours of surfing the net for porn, replacing one addiction for another. Hurrah!

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With the threat of the ban looming overhead, much of the media attention has turned to the serverity of gaming addiction. The deaths of teenagers, and perhaps more poinantly, the death of a newborn baby through starvation due to parental gaming addiction, are being held up as shining examples of a reason for change.

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That being said, with Starcraft II just around the corner, what are the chances – realistically – of enforcing this ban? It seems unlikely, to say the least, but then again it is Korea we’re talking about!

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IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, PLEASE READ THIS – Basically, I’ve adapted the web address from – http://techcritic.co.uk/wordpress – which is ugly and very unprofessional, to a much better and generally nicer looking – http://www.techcritic.co.uk/ – with a consistent www preface.

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This seemingly minor alteration has had a snowball effect though. Once the web address changed, a couple of other things needed to change, too. For those 10 or so of you who are subscribed to TechCritic via RSS (for which I am very grateful by the way!), you ‘may’ need to update your feed link – see here. Secondly, any web links you previously had to TechCritic (I know a couple of you had bit.ly and tinyurl links set up) will need to be adapted. If you do click one of these bit.ly links, you will soon be presented with a “This page cannot be found…” error, as the link will try to send you to http://techcritic.co.uk/wordpress/whatever-the-post-was. Annoying, I know.

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For those of you like to investigate, you will find that the http://techritic.co.uk/wordpress web address still exists. The reason for this is that quite a few of the website’s images are tied up in this location, and so for the time being I’m going to leave them where they are, or take the website down again while I fiddle with the Database, which doesn’t sound particularly fun so I’m not going to do it.

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While I was at it, I also made a couple of changes to the back end of the website, which should hopefully (fingers crossed) increase performance, not that the website was particularly slow before, but faster load speeds are always a positive!

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Although I went to great lengths to minimize the number of changes that would affect you guys, some things were unavoidable. With a bit of luck though, everything else should work just fine! Any comments about the site, or notifying me of any bugs you’ve found, would be greatly appreciated.

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Thanks for your support!

TechCritic

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The iPhad, available from Sevensheaven, provides the user with an authentic iPad experience, essentially keeping the iPhone exactly as it is, but making it just a little bit… bigger. Yup, that’s it! It’s far cheaper and much more efficient, you also don’t have to lug that hefty bit of expensive computer tech about, you can keep the iPhone (as always) in your pocket.

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Genius!

Facebook does a number of things very well, and in it’s defence, possesses a lot of innovative features. However to date there is still no function to download an entire album of photos with a single button press. I would imagine that such a feature would be met with the warmest of welcomes, as many users not only use Facebook as a storage/backup medium for there sizable photo albums, but are also keen to take copies of photos uploaded by others for themselves. We all like to document our lives with photos, and although Facebook does a good job of centralising this, it’s never a bad idea to have a backup on your own computer, too.

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All is not lost however, as you could probably tell by the fact that I’m actually writing this article, as there are 2 very popular methods available by which to automate this process. Currently, the only viable way to perform this feat is via Firefox extensions. I’m sure there are adequate alternatives for Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Internet Explorer users, however this article will only focus on Mozilla Firefox. Sorry.

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The first method I’m going to show you is via a Firefox Extension available directly from the Mozilla Addons Library, affectionately dubbed FacePad. This Downloader tool adds an extension to the right-click menu, enabling the user to download an entire Photo Album with one click of the mouse. There have been a number of reported problems with this extension, however I can safely say that I didn’t encounter any during my brief usage of this addon. The only downsides with FacePAD as it stands now, is that you cannot change the folder where your downloaded images are sent, and you also cannot specify names for the images before they’re downloaded. Instead you are confronted with some ridiculous cryptic alphanumeric combination of characters, instead of a nicely descriptive file name, which is incredibly annoying. You can grab FacePAD here!

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The second method of downloading Photo Albums is via an actual program you can install, available for either Windows or Mac, known as FotoBounce. This works in a similar way to FacePAD,  integrating itself within your web browser, which works well within Firefox but not so well elsewhere. The method by which to download photos from a friends album with FotoBounce is also slightly different, and rather more complex. To do this, you need to use the FotoBounce program itself, tie it into your Facebook account and then search for your friends using the program UI. You can then select to download their photos via some right click trickery, however this is nowhere near as efficient as the ability to download directly from Facebook through your web browser, in lieu of FacePAD. This inconvenience though is offset by the number of other features that are available in FotoBounce. While these impressive features don’t have a place in this article, I’ve attached a YouTube video below that highlights these features, which you can view at your own leisure. You can read more and download FotoBounce here!

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On reflection, I would recommend the use of FacePAD, due to the simplicity and direct integration this Firefox extension offers, but I implore you to experiment with whatever method suits you best.

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I’ve just watched the latest FEAR 3 video, oh sorry I meant ‘F3AR’, and although the trailer is a pretty avid watch, it gives away absolutely nothing about the latest Fear outing, which is expected in late 2010. The above video would instead make a fantastic pre-screen trailer for another 28 days later film…

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In all honesty though, on reflection of the video above, I’m inclined to agree with others that feel the Fear series has now stepped too far. If nothing else, I’ve got some pretty burning questions; what has happened to Beckett and more importantly, what the hell has happened to the naming of the new title?! Driv3R anyone?

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It seems unlikely that Fear 3 will be a flop though, due to the series avid following of hardcore gamers. As for whether the 3rd Fear outing will be worth it, well I guess we’ll have to wait and see.