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Influential slot machine designer dies in accident

May 7, 2012

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Courtesy of Rocket Gaming Systems

Robert Phillip Manz, whose legacy includes designing some of the most successful slot machine games in history, died Saturday, April 21, 2012, in Las Vegas after reportedly suffering a medical emergency while driving.

The designer of some of the most successful slot machine games in history — Blazing 7s and the Black and White slot series — has died in a traffic accident in Las Vegas.

Robert Phillip Manz, who had a 23-year career with the predecessor companies of Bally Technologies and served as president of Las Vegas-based Rocket Gaming Systems, leading it from a small start-up operation to one of the leaders in the production of a class of casino games used extensively in tribal casinos, reportedly suffered a medical emergency while driving Saturday and lost control of his vehicle. He was 65.

“People in the industry would come into our office and just want to shake his hand,” said Ron Harris, CEO of Rocket Gaming Systems, who credited Manz for turning his company into a billion-dollar operation in four years. “He hated the spotlight and didn’t like accolades. When I would introduce him as the person responsible for making our company what it is, he would interrupt me and correct me and say it was the result of the efforts of the team.”

Manz was instrumental in the development of Rocket’s Gold Series of slot machine games used in several tribal casinos nationwide. The devices are in a class known as video lottery terminals, which are designed to meet legal requirements specifically related to tribal gaming and are connected to a central computer that determines the outcome of each wager — unlike Las Vegas-style slot machines, which generally are operated with random number generators in individual machines.

But Manz was best known for his development of Blazing 7s and its subsequent variations, a design that has continued to be a casino floor favorite since its introduction in 1987.

“He had a knack for knowing what players like to play as well as what casinos wanted,” said Terry Daly, vice president of game design at Rocket.

Manz used a simple concept — the knowledge that players like to see several winning “7” combinations. He also teased players with near-wins when spins would produce 7-7-blank on the screen.

Manz designed the 7s on the reels with flames to designate it as a “hot slot.”

But the most popular concept was the generous payout and bunching several of the machines together on a casino floor. While the hit frequency was roughly one jackpot in every 4,096 plays, casinos would place 10 Blazing 7s machines together. At an average 10 plays a minute, players could expect to see a jackpot every half hour with the top winning combination paying 1,000 coins — $1,000 on dollar machines and $250 on quarters.

Longtime friend and game-designer colleague Charlie Lombardo said Manz was successful because he pioneered the concept of allowing a game’s entertainment value to be the driving force in a design.

“He had a gambler’s mentality,” Lombardo said. “He believed if you take care of the player and give him value, he would eventually give you his money. He firmly believed that you had to let the player win once in a while and that it was OK to let them go home with money in their pockets.”

Lombardo, who met Manz when they were part of the team rebuilding the MGM Grand casino — now Bally’s — after a tragic fire in 1980 that killed 87 people, said he never thought Blazing 7s would catch on with the public.

Courtesy of Rocket Gaming Systems

Robert Phillip Manz had a 23-year career with the predecessor companies of Bally Technologies and served as president of Las Vegas-based Rocket Gaming Systems. He brought a “gambler’s mentality” to his work as a slot game designer, a colleague said. Manz died in a car accident April 21, 2012, in Las Vegas.

“When Bobby introduced the game and it was in its raw stages, he called it Blazing 7s and he had a bunch of story boards to explain it,” Lombardo said. “I was the only one who said the game would never make it. I told him, ‘You’re wasting your time.’ After it became such a big success, we always got a laugh out of that.”

Manz was an avid hunter, fisherman and golfer. His industry travels took him to all 50 states and nearly every continent.

He began his slot-designing career with Bally Manufacturing in Chicago in 1970 and moved to Las Vegas in 1983.

Manz retired from Bally and met Harris at an industry trade show, where he matter-of-factly told the Rocket CEO he needed his help. Harris concurred and hired him as his company’s president. In 2006, Manz stepped down from the executive position but continued to design games for the company, spending his latter years mentoring young game-development talent.

“He was always listening and innovating and letting people take a chance,” Harris said. “He would always say, ‘Let’s try it,’ and provide the opportunity.”

Manz is survived by a brother living in Las Vegas and a sister in Chicago.

A visitation is scheduled from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, with a funeral service to follow at the chapel at the Davis Funeral Home and Memorial Park, 6200 S. Eastern Ave. Interment will be at 10:40 a.m. Monday at Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.

Influential slot machine designer dies in accident

Online Casinos News · Filed Under Slot Machine News 

Automotive passion shared at swap meet

May 6, 2012

The 65-year-old Roberts said he always has some hot rods at his rural Atwater home. His garage includes a 1949 Oldsmobile 88 Fastback, a 1957 Chevrolet Nomad station wagon, 1958 Ford Country Squire station wagon and a 1934 Ford Tudor street rod.

Roberts figures he was born with the old-car bug. As an 8-year-old, he built a homemade go-kart, using his dad’s lawnmower engine for power. When Roberts’ father saw it was missing, he didn’t get upset, but told his young son to make sure the engine was back when it was time to cut the grass.

Roberts said his love of old cars “kind of evolved from there.”

Atwater resident Jim Becker, who will help staff the gate at Sunday’s swap meet with his wife, Bunnie, has known Roberts for 20 years.

“Rich is the ultimate car guy,” Becker said. “He lives and breathes cars. He tries to do a good job for people at the swap meet; he tries to run a good show.”

Becker said today’s economy is a little more challenging, but auto enthusiasts are digging deeper into their stashes of old car parts to take to swap meets. He admits he also seeks out the rare, off-the-wall items that sometimes surface at such events.

Roberts said old slot machines, vending machines and antique furniture have been spotted at his events.

This year’s swap meet will feature a “show and shine” car show open to pre-1975 vintage vehicles.

Roberts, a master sergeant stationed at Castle Air Force Base, retired from the military in 1988, pursuing his hobby of restoring and reselling old cars. His collection once numbered 22 vehicles.

Among the cars Roberts used to have were a 1956 Chrysler Newport station wagon, a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, 1957 Lincoln Mark II, and just about every body style of 1932-34 Fords.

He jokingly admits he can’t afford to be another Jay Leno, the famed television comedian and talk show host who has warehouses full of vintage cars, trucks and motorcycles. He said old cars are too hard to maintain.

Still, he keeps his eye open to new acquisitions, acquiring a jet-black 1949 Olds Fastback about two months ago.

Roberts has noticed that a number of European and Australian car collectors visit his swap meet, buying vehicles in Turlock and shipping them back home. Last year, a man from Belgium bought seven vintage vehicles.

IF YOU GO

• WHAT: Spring Turlock Collector Car Swap Meet

• WHERE: Stanislaus County Fairground, 900 N. Broadway, Turlock

• WHEN: Sunday, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.

• ADMISSION: $7; free for kids under 12. Free parking.

• INFORMATION: Call (209) 358-3334 or go to springfallturlock.com

Automotive passion shared at swap meet

Online Casinos News · Filed Under Slot Machine News 

1 Stock to Buy in May: Las Vegas Sands

May 5, 2012

In this series, we’re presenting six ideas for stocks to buy in May — stocks our writers believe can serve as the foundation for a long-term-focused portfolio.

Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows! Who doesn’t like spinning the roulette wheel once in a while, or putting a few bucks on a poker game or a hand of blackjack? The world is full of gamblers, and gambling as a business is big and getting bigger.

Since the awarding of gaming licenses to Indian tribes in the 1980s, new markets have popped open here and abroad. Meanwhile, the recovering domestic economy has begun lifting the results of casino operators in traditional markets such as Las Vegas from their recession plunge. Even the sharpest players know that the odds are always stacked heavily in favor of the house, and one of the best houses is Las Vegas Sands (NYS: LVS) .

The businessAnyone who’s been to Vegas has at least stared at the company’s property, if not gambled away part of their savings there. The company operates two of the Vegas Strip’s iconic complexes, the faux-Italian Venetian and the neighboring Palazzo.

Both are monuments to the power of gambling — the Venetian boasts around 120,000 square feet of gaming space and more than 4,000 suites for those gamers to stay in. The Palazzo boasts 50 floors of hotel with more than 3,000 suites and nearly as much gaming real estate as its brother. It’s also connected to the Sands Expo Center, one of the country’s largest convention facilities, which of course helps funnel large numbers of guests to the games conveniently located a short walk away.

The company’s other domestic asset is the Sands Bethlehem, an integrated (gaming, hotel, retail, dining) facility in the eponymous Pennsylvania city, once home to a big steel factory. Gaming space is even more immense here, at 152,000 square feet, although many players have to commute to reach it since the hotel “only” has 300 rooms.

Those buildings are impressive, but America’s not where Sands Las Vegas is making the serious money. The Chinese “special administrative region” of Macao is the largest gaming market in the world, producing several times the collective revenue of Vegas and dwarfing every other American casino enclave.

Las Vegas Sands’ great advantage as a company is that it’s got a few solid hooks in that market. Through its majority-owned subsidiary Sands China Ltd., the firm operates the Venetian Macau, which is virtually a gambling city in terms of size. It has more than 500,000 square feet of gaming room and around 2,900 hotel suites, to say nothing of the 300 stores in its 1 million square feet of retail space.

If gamblers get tired of spending money in the Venetian, they can pop over to one of the company’s three other properties in the region — the Four Seasons, the Sands, and the just-opened Sands Cotai Central, which has an almost astounding 13.7 million square feet of total space and 5,800 suites.

Elsewhere in Asia, Las Vegas Sands also operates Marina Bay Sands in the small but rich city-state of Singapore. The country isn’t very big, but the Marina Bay is still a sizable place, more or less matching the dimensions of its Vegas Strip properties. For good measure, Marina Bay (which is responsible for around 28% of company revenue) even has an art and science museum to complement its usual hotel, retail, dining, and entertainment amenities.

Why it’s a buy nowChina’s economy might be slowing down of late, but it seems that someone forgot to tell the nation’s gamblers. That $33.5 billion in gambling revenue Macau vacuumed in last year was a more than 40% increase over 2010′s figure.

Of course, not all of Macau’s visitors are dropping their last pataca on baccarat or the slot machines. Since Las Vegas Sands’ assets in the enclave are integrated facilities, the firm makes money when these visitors buy dinner, go to a show, or contribute a few drops to one of the many other revenue streams flowing through its properties. And the customers just keep coming; in March, visitor arrivals in package tours leaped by nearly 42% year over year.

So it’s a great time to open a big new facility and add to the revenue and bottom line figures that have already been rising nicely. All told, the company took in a record $9.4 billion in revenue in 2011, for an increase of 37%. Net income over that period, meanwhile, zoomed by 160% to $1.56 billion.

The company isn’t content with only settling in those markets. Determined CEO Sheldon Adelson is planning to open EuroVegas, a huge project to be located in Spain that would aim to ingest Europe’s scattered gaming customer base. The complex would occupy an area roughly half the size of the Vegas Strip and feature 12 resorts, inside of which would be six casinos, nine theaters, and as many as three golf courses.

At the moment, Adelson is estimating that the project would cost something in the neighborhood of $35 billion. That’s expensive, sure, but it would buy a destination that’s unique on the continent. As such, it would be a good bet to attract a significant chunk of Europe’s gaming population.

Plus, the timing is coming at the bottom of a market — Spain currently suffers from a worsening economy and deepening unemployment, and thus could really use the boost that a project of this scope would bring. This could conceivably provide leverage for Adelson and company to bring some of the costs down.

Mix it upFew gambling stocks have as good an asset base/financials mix as Las Vegas Sands. MGM Resorts (NYS: MGM) , which is still recovering after nearly going bankrupt not long ago, has nearly all of its casino properties in the U.S. with only a limited presence in Macau. Operationally, it’s posted net losses in three of its last four quarters in spite of an improving macroeconomic climate.

Wynn Resorts (NAS: WYNN) has one casino/hotel combination each in Las Vegas and Macau. The Chinese iteration of the casino is much smaller than the nearby Venetian. The company is expecting the country’s government to soon approve its application for a bigger casino on the Cotai Strip, but if this happens, the facility probably won’t open until the middle of the decade, at best.

Meanwhile, Caesars Entertainment (NAS: CZR) operates a sprawling collection of generally smaller facilities operating under several brand names (Harrah’s, Bally’s, Horseshoe, etc.). They’re usually located in less-high-profile locales like Atlantic City or Reno, and the company has only a few complexes outside of the United States. None is in a hot Asian market like Macau. A recent IPO hasn’t pushed the company into the black; it’s loss-making and expected to continue being so over the next two fiscal years.

Risks Casinos, particularly those in Las Vegas or Macau, are huge places requiring a lot of management, upkeep, and staff to keep running. Operating costs, therefore, are high. Additionally, Las Vegas Sands is a tireless builder and constructing those big facilities requires so much money that even the cash pumped in by the firm’s casinos isn’t enough. At the end of 2011, long-term debt stood at just over $9.5 billion, which is more than double the $3.9 billion the company had in cash.

Although Macau visitor numbers are continuing to grow robustly, they can’t do so forever, particularly if GDP advancement is slowing down and the populace has to make do with less fun money. As for Vegas, America’s economic recovery is still tentative, and there’s always the chance growth will decelerate or stagnate. And when the country’s economy sneezes, its top gambling city tends to catch a cold. That puts a lot of pressure on Singapore operations to keep things humming.

In sum Las Vegas Sands knows its business, and knows it well. It also seems to have a knack for establishing a strong foothold in lucrative markets and staying there while the money rolls in. The big, just-opened facility in Macau will add to the company’s already strong revenue and net growth, while EuroVegas will be a unique project sure to attract big crowds. This stock’s a winner, much like a lucky blackjack gambler or poker shark in one of the firm’s many casinos.

Fool contributor Eric Volkman owns no stocks mentioned in the story above. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

At the time this article was published

1 Stock to Buy in May: Las Vegas Sands

Online Casinos News · Filed Under Slot Machine News 

Nikon D800 Review

May 4, 2012

In this review

The D800 sits smack in the middle of Nikon’s professional line-up of cameras, where it combines a compact chassis with the company’s highest resolution to date.

It’s heavy and chunky but very balanced, with well-spaced controls and the kind of features that make a pro camera both easy and fun to use. Better yet, it’s keenly priced for a top spec snapper. It will surely tempt the full-time photo brigade, but it may also encourage the über-ambitious hobbyist to take a step up.

The Nikon D800 is available to buy for £2,600 for the body only.

Let’s start with the biggest stat of them all — the resolution. The D800 is a monster, with 36.3 megapixels to call on, arranged on an FX-format sensor. That’s 24x36mm, which is the same size as a frame of 35mm film, and it’s the sensor used in the £8,500 Leica M9.

Such a high resolution obviously means it can record more information, allowing for tighter crops in post-production.

Of perhaps greater interest though is the flexibility delivered by the full-frame sensor.

It offers two major benefits. Most obviously it allows manufacturers to deliver higher resolutions without compromising performance. This is because they needn’t ruthlessly shrink the photoreceptors — the actual cells on the sensor that detect the incoming light. This makes them sensitive to a wide range of illumination for more subtle, detailed images, with a particularly better response in areas of highlight and shadow.

The results are obvious right from the off, with the D800 consistently producing balanced shots when faced with stark contrasts.

In the snap below, the underside of a railway viaduct is cast in shadow, yet the sky around it is very bright. When exposed at ISO 400, the whole frame remains balanced, with the four points I’ve picked out for comparison accurately and evenly exposed. It would be easy to draw out further detail within the brickwork in post-production by manipulating the RAW file.

Furthermore, from a usability point of view, full-frame sensors make a lot more sense when you’re choosing and buying lenses, as you no longer need to do a quick spot of multiplication to know how each lens will behave.

Smaller sensors, such as Nikon’s DX sensor, have a crop factor which requires that you multiply the lens’ focal length by a number — usually around 1.5x — to see how it will work in practice with a regular lens. As a result, long zooms often over-perform, with a 210mm lens acting as though it were a 315mm attachment since only the central portion of its view can be accommodated by the sensor.

On the one hand, this is a good thing as it means you can often buy a cheaper telephoto lens to reap the benefits of a longer equivalent lens. However, it also means that very wide angle lenses don’t live up to their full potential with, say, a 28mm lens on a smaller-chipped camera acting like a 42mm lens on an FX camera. Any savings you make on the zoom lens might therefore be lost when shopping around for a wide-angle lens, which will inevitably cost more to achieve the same effect.

With a full-frame sensor, you can take your lenses as face value.

In every respect then, this is a serious camera, with serious specs to boot. The 36.3 megapixels equates to a staggering 7,360×4,912 pixels. To display one single frame at full resolution without any cropping, you’d need to lace together a dozen regular 27-inch monitors — four across and three deep, each running at a native 2,560×1,440-pixel resolution.

Sensitivity runs from ISO 100 to ISO 6,400, but you can push it in either direction to ISO 50 and ISO 25,600, and exposure compensation gives you adjustments of +/-5EV in 1/3EV steps. It’s an HDR photographer’s dream, with three bracketing options covering exposure, flash and white balance, taking between two and nine shots for each.

I performed my tests with the D800 set to aperture priority, adjusting sensitivity as the situation required and saving all results as RAW NEF files, which averaged around 40MB apiece. The dynamic range of the results was impressive, with plenty of detail in both shadow and highlight areas

At higher sensitivities, the results were very clean, and in most cases there was no evidence of dappling caused by the introduction of digital noise. The image below was shot at ISO 500 in overcast conditions, with the subject of the shot shaded still further by the overhanging first floor of a building.

Examining it at 100 per cent magnification, the grain of the wooden structure and carving remains sharp and clear right across the frame.

The D800 sports 51 auto-focus points so you can isolate your subject precisely, and a maximum shutter speed of 1/8,000 second. The longest exposure time is 30 seconds.

With so many focus points you’ll have no trouble framing your subject precisely, and it quickly becomes second nature to move the focal selector each time you shoot. Switching back to a consumer dSLR with nine or fewer focus points feels limiting, as you spend more time setting the focus and exposure on one point, then reframing to take your shot. If you’re using a wide aperture with a short depth of field, you risk throwing your subject out of focus, but that’s not a problem here.

It has not one, but two media card slots, and you can use either for primary or back-up storage, or split them so that JPEGs are written to one and RAW files to the other. One takes SD cards and the other CompactFlash, so if you have a lot of CF cards left over from previous cameras, this is a neat way to recycle them.

There are buttons everywhere, but rather than overwhelming you, they’re very carefully placed and fall exactly to your fingers. There are wheels front and back for changing aperture and shutter speed, direct access to ISO, white balance and quality, shortcuts to selecting the focal point… even buttons inside of the grip, including the customisable fn button.

The D800 is a big bag of buttons, but they’re all thoughtfully positioned for intuitive use.

It takes no time to get used to where they all lie, and when you do, handling comes as naturally as driving a car or playing an instrument.

There’s loads of useful feedback, both in the eyepiece and overlaying the live view, if you choose to use it. The horizon view is particularly neatly implemented, with discreet bars in the eyepiece margins showing you which way to tilt it left, right, up and down to keep your subject level.

Overlays in the eyepiece and screen are well done, such as guidance on which way to tilt to level a horizon.

I tested the D800 with a 14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, so the focus results achieved reflect that particular set-up. Pairing it with another lens will achieve different results, so in this instance the standard macro test I would normally do is irrelevant.

However, the D800′s impressive resolution is sufficient to render a high level of detail, and when exposed through a wide aperture — in this case below f/2.8 — subjects are rendered extremely finely.

It didn’t take long to get into the habit of shooting at higher sensitivities, even in situations where smaller cameras would start to encounter problems.

The court house, below, was exposed at ISO 400, and there’s a wealth of detail in the stonework where you’d usually expect to start losing detail through over-exposure at that level.

This is true at either end of the scale, with the areas of deep shadow clearly visible in this untouched RAW shot (it’s been converted to JPEG), where the darker parts below the table remain clear, despite the exposure measurement being taken from the white door reflected in the mirror.

Colours were bright and vivid throughout the tests, and in many instances you may want to slightly desaturate the results when you get them into post-production. Reds and blues were particularly bright, with skies highly reminiscent of those produced by the Leica M9.

Nikon claims that the D800 shoots ‘broadcast quality video’, and the specs certainly support that assertion.

Native movie resolution is 1,920×1,080 pixels at 30p (frames per second, progressive), 25p or 24p, and 1,280×720 at 60p, 50p, 30p and 25p. Movies are stored in MOV format and have a maximum single-shot running time of 29 minutes 59 seconds.

The quality of the results is excellent, with sharp detail and a clean soundtrack. You can see how much importance Nikon has put on this aspect of filming, as there’s a sound meter on the live display while recording. You can change the recording level using the four-way controller and, by tapping the focal point selector, switch to setting the video exposure instead.

The D800′s results speak for themselves. They’re colourful, vibrant and packed with detail. The 36.3-megapixel resolution is enormous and it’s far more than a marketing stat. In this body, paired with such versatile controls, it’s well up to the job of delivering first-class results with plenty of opportunity for cropping down to the details you need, should your lens not deliver sufficient zoom.

It’s a joy to use, and clearly built with humans — not simply functions — in mind. The layout of its controls can’t be faulted, and once set up, you’ll barely need to touch the menus in a whole day’s shooting.

All this at £2,600 is a fair bargain. It’s not pocket money, but compare it to the price of a medium format digital camera — many of which boast similar resolutions while remaining out of the reach of all but the most dedicated photographer — and it’s clear what great value it is.

Nikon D800 Review

Online Casinos News · Filed Under Slot Machine News 

Panel Approves Slots License For Western Md. Site

May 3, 2012

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland commission approved a slot machine license Thursday for a casino at the Rocky Gap Lodge and Golf Resort in western Maryland.

Meanwhile, the owners of what will be the state’s largest casino in Anne Arundel County set a June 6 opening date.

The unanimous vote for the western Maryland site by the state’s Video Lottery Facility Location Commission moved the state a step closer to fulfilling its initial casino gambling plan that was envisioned more than four years ago — only to be held up by the recession’s impact on developing five casinos.

The license was awarded to Evitts Resort LLC. Lakes Maryland Development LLC, the parent company of Evitts, has agreed to buy out its business partner, Addy Entertainment LLC. Lakes Maryland Development is owned by Lakes Entertainment, which is based in Minnetonka, Minn.

The plan calls for 850 slot machines, with anticipated growth to 1,000 machines in the second year of operation. The site, which is the fourth to be licensed in Maryland, had the additional hurdle of being located at a remote lodge that has struggled for years.

“I think it’s struggled for a number of reasons, but I think that the addition of slots at that facility will add a lot ofdestination travel to the facility,” said Don Fry, the commission’s chairman. Having a private-sector owner make a largeinvestment there will likely help it prosper, he said.

The deal also has been complicated because the site is on state-owned land. The state’s Board of Public Works must stillapprove purchase agreements and a ground lease for the casino to be built. It is expected to be built in a 50,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the lodge within 18 to 24 months after the board signs off on the agreement.

Evitts has agreed to spend $54 million to buy the resort and make improvements to build the casino. The company already has put down a $2.1 million license fee for the first 350 slot machines.

The license fee on the other 500 machines was waived to sweeten the deal after the site failed to draw interested parties.

The state also changed the way the proceeds would be allocated to make the site more attractive. The operator will receive 50 percent of the proceeds for the first 10 years and 33 percent in subsequent years. In the first 10 years, the state’s education trust fund is slated to receive about 42 percent of the money, with 2.75 percent allocated for local impact grants.

Analysts have estimated the site will make a total of about $40 million in the first year of operation with 850 slot machines.

The facility is expected to employ about 400 people during the construction period and about 520 workers when the facility is up and running.

So far, two casinos have opened in Maryland, one in Perryville off of Interstate 95 and another in Berlin near Ocean City on the Eastern Shore.

The owners of the state’s third and largest casino, Maryland Live! Casino at the Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, announced on Thursday that it will open in Anne Arundel County on June 6. It will open initially with about 3,200 slot machines.

Caesars Entertainment is working on receiving a license to operate a casino in Baltimore. Fry said a license could be issued for the Baltimore site by the end of June. Fry said the commission hopes to receive background investigation reports on the proposal next month.

Currently, Maryland only allows slot machines at its casinos. However, state officials are talking about allowing table games like blackjack and roulette. They also are discussing allowing a sixth casino in Prince George’s County near the nation’s capital. Gov. Martin O’Malley this week said he is considering a special session in August to take up gambling expansion.

Adding table games and a sixth casino would require approval by Maryland voters in a statewide referendum.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Panel Approves Slots License For Western Md. Site

Online Casinos News · Filed Under Slot Machine News 

HP Innovates The Staid Workstation PC Into A Shiny, Happy, All-In-One Machine

May 2, 2012

The Z1 stands apart from nearly every one of its workstation brethren by taking up less room on your desk, huffing out much less noise and fuss, offering the usual ability to slot in this year’s hot new processor or graphics cards, and looking cool. It’s an all-in-one workstation solution, and all-in-ones–like laptops–aren’t a computer form factor known for their internal upgradability.

The Z1 is different, and HP says it’s the first of its kind. It’s designed to be as interchangable as a tower-format PC, just in a smaller size with many of its internal parts accessible when you flip its easy-access lid up. They’re shrouded in custom-fit HP plastic to ensure all the right high-power parts don’t vent heat onto other parts when the tight-fitting shell is shut, and there are small fans all over the place as a compromise–pushing hot air out but in a way HP assures us is quiet. That means if you want to upgrade them, then you’ll likely have to go with custom HP parts (we’re checking with HP on this), but that’s pretty much the norm when you’re talking about the workstation business, and it feeds HP’s long-tail business model.

Workstations are a sort of personal computer, as distinct from, say a mainframe, but not like the one you may be reading this on. They’re typically the high-end offering of many computer makers, and they’re usually promoted as offering professionlal-grade power with industrial-level reliability (a trend stemming back from when they were invented, when computers were less reliable than now). They’re found in designer’s offices, helping render Hollywood special effects and shaping the curves of next-generation cars–both in terms of design and calculations about aerodynamics. The industry is typified by staid design, slow iteration, high cost, and boxy, performance-led computers that can be about the size of an undergrad’s dorm room refrigerator.

Here’s HP’s glossy video promoting the novel machine.

Notable at the end of the clip is the way components slip easily in and out of their sockets–requiring no tools, no fiddling, and none of the traditional paraphernalia IT support staff traditionally carry to unbolt components, undo pentalobe screws holding the chassis together and so on.

HP product manager Mike Diehl explained to Fast Company that the Z1 was considered by HP to be so disruptive that it was put on a super fast-track process that took about 18 months. “It was secret inside of many of the places within HP. We kept the program team separated … our lab was really a lab within a lab. It was a locked room within a lab that only certain people could get into. Our sales team, our people outside … were not informed of what was going on.”

Workstations are big business, and each machine is expensive (the Z1 starts at $1,899 and goes up from there), and the design and accessibility of the Z1 will definitely appeal to many corporate buyers looking for a next-gen solution. All this innovation, Diehl says, is transformative for his industry: “I believe we’re going to see things down in the consumer space when people see what we’ve been able to do, they’ll be incorporated into mainstream systems.”

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

HP Innovates The Staid Workstation PC Into A Shiny, Happy, All-In-One Machine

Online Casinos News · Filed Under Slot Machine News 

Happy Wanderer: San Mateo County was slow-paced when slow-paced wasn’t cool

May 1, 2012

I’m talking about the feathered kind, the kind popping up in coops around the Bay. Day in and day out, Half Moon Bay Feed and Fuel sells more baby chicks than their competitors — some 200 peepers a week. And these are not your father’s hens. Some lay white eggs, and some lay light brown. But some chicks lay pink, green and blue. Think Easter eggs without the dye.

It all perfectly describes Half Moon Bay, a town with a funky flavor and a slow farm movement that was big before slow food was cool.

“It’s like entering a bygone era,” say locals who are proud of Half Moon Bay and the rest of the rural towns on the San Mateo Coast. They seem somehow frozen in time — and you can thank the Santa Cruz Mountains for running like a spine through the county, trapping fog and creating a barrier in bad weather.

The San Mateo Coast has a way of getting inside you — the miles of undisturbed beaches, the old Redwood forests and the patchwork of farms that push into the foothills. Here, you can stay in a 19th century lighthouse (Point Montara Light Station) or sleep in a luxury tent cabin (Costanoa). You can stroll through hamlets like Pescadero, with more than a dozen historic buildings including the town watering hole, Duarte’s Tavern.

And you can smoke in a double-decker English bus. Just south of Half Moon Bay is a heralded pub called Cameron’s. The owner, Cameron Palmer, has a knack for knickknacks and his place has more collectibles than a Nantucket antique shop. It’s also got quite a storied past.

“The Inn was built about 100 years ago and has quite a history,” says Palmer. “At least three times since the turn of the century it has been a house of ill repute.” It was also a hot spot in the days of prohibition, and Al Capone’s sister was said to have slot machines here.

On the grounds are two bright red double-decker buses, which Palmer set aside for smoking when it was banned indoors. It’s one of the many PR moves that has given him coverage on the BBC and in the Wall Street Journal.

Add Palmer’s collection of 2000-plus beer cans and his talent for marketing everything from his RV Park and campground to his bangers and brews, and you have an oddity and landmark that folks rarely miss on their drive down the Cabrillo Highway.

On the list of Bay Area getaways, the rugged San Mateo Coast is “the land that time forgot,” as author David Laws describes it in his book “Coastside: Exploring the Ocean Side of the San Francisco Peninsula.” It’s a place where you can still buy a chicken in town and light up on a double decker bus with an ale in your hand. It’s a place where individuality is still recognized — and celebrated.

For an instructional video on chicks, see ginnyprior.com.

What are your favorite local adventures? Drop me a line, and I’ll share them with readers. You can reach me at or online at ginnyprior.com.

Happy Wanderer: San Mateo County was slow-paced when slow-paced wasn’t cool

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Allrecipes.com’s upgraded app lets consumers scan for supper help

April 30, 2012

Sometimes even the most creative chef needs a little inspiration when it comes to what to whip up with the ingredients in her pantry. Allrecipes.com, a social site that offers recipes, enables cooks to share ideas and doles out kitchen tips, has updated its apps for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and for smartphones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system with a feature that can help.  

The feature, available in Allrecipes.com’s free Dinner Spinner app as well as its $2.99 Dinner Spinner Pro, enables cooks to scan bar codes on grocery items with a smartphone to find recipes that call for those items, add items to shopping lists or save items in a scan history, creating a “virtual pantry” to keep track of food and ingredients at home.

Consumers can scan a grocery item’s bar code to search for recipes with related ingredients, create and manage shopping lists by scanning ingredients they are low on to add them to a list, and to avoid purchasing something they don’t need by scanning the ingredients they have in their pantries.

Consumers can also save money by scanning sale items and then searching for recipes in Allrecipes’ database that contain those ingredients.  For example, if Chihuahua cheese is on sale, the app user can search through a database of recipes with that ingredient. For brave chefs, the app also features a slot-machine-style search feature that will choose a recipe for a consumer based on ingredients she enters.

“With more than 11 million global downloads of Allrecipes’ Dinner Spinner, developing innovative new features that meet our community’s needs and complement our apps is a top priority for Allrecipes,” says Lisa Sharples, president of Allrecipes.com. 

More consumers are realizing the value of putting their smartphones to work while in a store. 58% of smartphone owners use a phone while in bricks-and-mortar stores to shop, according to the comScore MobiLens report. Additionally, one in five use their smartphones to scan bar codes, comScore says.

Bar code scanning in particular seems to be on the rise. Scanbuy, a QR code purveyor and Quick Response marketing campaign manager, registered 31 million scans of 1-D and 2-D bar codes worldwide in 2011 through its ScanLife app. That’s up 297% from 7.8 million in 2010. There were 11 million scans in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 175% from 4 million in Q4 2010. There were more bar code scans through ScanLife in Q4 2011 than in all of 2009 and 2010 combined, Scanbuy says.

The Universal Product Code, or UPC, is a one-dimensional bar code found on virtually all consumer goods, including grocery items. Scanning a conventional bar code can lead consumers to product information hosted on the mobile web by a scanning company, a comparison shopping engine, a retailer or other companies.

A QR code is a form of two-dimensional bar code not yet common on consumer goods, but gaining popularity as a marketing tool. It typically appears as a black-and-white square with a pattern of tiny black-and-white squares within; sometimes a company may include its logo within the square. A consumer downloads a QR code scanner app, such as ScanLife, onto his smartphone. He opens the app, points the smartphone camera at the QR code, and the app reads the code and then connects him to mobile web-based content.

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Allrecipes.com’s upgraded app lets consumers scan for supper help

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From rock stage to slots, audio producer aims to improve the sounds of the casino

April 29, 2012

Saturday, April 21, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Willie Wilcox played drums behind some of the hottest musicians of the 1970s, including Todd Rundgren and Meatloaf. He has even drummed alongside Ringo Starr.

But after switching gears to mix chart-topping dance hits and soundtracks for MTV and Nickelodeon television shows, Wilcox landed in Las Vegas three years ago to begin yet another new gig — engineering musical licks for slot machines.

“I try to take the same methods of writing hit songs and apply them here,” Wilcox said inside a recording studio at Bally Technologies, where he serves as senior audio director. “Of course, if I had the secret of writing a hit song, I wouldn’t be here. But most people will agree that they all have the same characteristics of a melody, a rhythm and a lyric that sticks in your mind.”

And sometimes, Wilcox introduces music to slot machines that already has topped the charts.

One of Wilcox’s greatest hits on the slot circuit is a Michael Jackson game that debuted last fall. It’s the first surround sound slot, where the music of the King of Pop literally engulfs the player, coming from both the machine and speakers inside an electronic chair that pulsates with every bonus. Jackson’s famous yelps and hoots pulsate throughout the game, which launches video segments from “Beat It” or “Smooth Criminal” when players win.

To create the surround sound experience, Wilcox had to get every track of the original recordings from Sony and the Jackson estate and remix them. Astute listeners will hear Jackson’s voice coming from in front of them, while the crisp sounds of the instruments pump from the sides and behind them.

“The challenge was to take this iconic music and have people experience it like they never have before,” Wilcox said. “You’ve heard ‘Beat It’ before, but you’ve never heard it like this.”

Wilcox also worked to preserve Jackson’s music for his fans, who he was aware might look skeptically on the favorite music of their childhood being used for a casino game.

“His music is sacred to all of his fans,” Wilcox said. “The question was, how do I take Michael’s music and put it where it was never intended to be — in a video game — without it sounding chopped up or disrespectful? That was the No. 1 goal.”

Wilcox knows about the artists’ side of pop music. On Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” album, he contributed to one of the top-selling pop albums of all time. He spent much of the 1970s and ’80s playing for Rundgren’s Utopia, which was also the backing band for Hall and Oates’ 1974 LP “War Babies.”

While playing with Rundgren until the early 1990s, Wilcox devised some of the most creative drum sets in rock ‘n’ roll, including one built to resemble a motorcycle chassis. He was a staff writer for Geffen and Warner Brothers records and produced Stacey Q’s 1986 dance hit “We Connect.”

But bringing Michael Jackson to the casino floor presented special concerns.

Yes, slot machines signal wins with bells, a sound that didn’t necessarily lend itself to Jackson’s music. But as a percussionist, Wilcox also knew that ringing also was a rhythm, made as effective with the chink of cymbals as clanging.

“I wanted people to feel the bells, not hear them,” Wilcox said. “I wanted them to recognize that something had happened in the game while not distracting from Michael’s music.”

It’s all a part of the new soundtrack of casinos.

Wilcox used the guitar riffs of fellow Las Vegas musician Paul Crook to design rock sounds for Bally’s Money Vault game. He brought a contemporary vibe to the game Code Red by using Auto-Tune, a pitch-correcting program, and tricks from his electronic dance background to create a sample of music for a game feature known as Touch and Slide — a video wheel that players simulate spinning by touching the screen.

The snippet became one of his biggest hits around the Bally offices.

“Some of the people are using it as their ring tone,” he said.

From rock stage to slots, audio producer aims to improve the sounds of the casino

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Syfy Development Slate Includes 'Fan Boy' Project From 'Jersey Shore's' SallyAnn Salsano (Exclusive)

April 27, 2012

The NBCUniversal-owned cable network has put eight unscripted projects into its development pipeline, including Fan Girl/Fan Boy Project from the producer of MTV's hit reality franchise, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.

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The potential docuseries would celebrate the unique and often misunderstood fanboy and fangirl culture (science fiction/fantasy/super hero offerings encompassing comics, video games, TV and movies and those who obsess over them) and hail from Salsano's 495 Productions.

Joining the Fan Boy project vying for a slot on the network's primetime slate — which includes Ghost Hunters, Face Off and its upcoming Jaleel White-hosted effort Total Blackout — are efforts featuring mind reader Chris Cox, a project involving cosplay as well as a pair of video series.

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The eight projects come a mere three months after the network bolsterd its unscripted department with the addition of five executives.

A look at Syfy's unscripted development slate follows. The network is slated to present its slate to advertisers Tuesday in New York.

• Chris Cox Project– Chris Cox is the mind reader who can’t read minds. Coxhas the mind-manipulating abilities of Derren Brown, the mischief of Ferris Bueller and the comic eccentricity of Mr. Bean all wrapped in a style uniquely his own. In everyday situations and locations — at a coffee shop, the post office, or just walking down the street — Chris amazes and confounds real people. Production company: Mission Control Media. Executive producers: Dwight Smith, Michael Agbabian, Erich Recker.

• Divas of Dress Up — Follows the six hottest cos-play stars as they push the boundaries of creativity and costuming in this docu-series that takes viewers inside the amazingly creative world of cos-play competition. Each week, the top women competitors transform themselves into fictional characters with visually arresting costumes, pushing the boundary between fantasy and reality. Production company: Skip Films. Executive producers: Skip Chaisson, Brian Gallagher.

• Fan Girl/Fan Boy Project — From the producer of Jersey Shore comes a docuseries that celebrates the incredibly unique, often misunderstood and infinitely fascinating fan girl and fan boy cultures. Production company: 495 Productions. Executive producer: SallyAnn Salsano.

• Limitless– Recounts firsthand, true-life tales of ordinary men and women who discovered hidden powers — they never knew existed — when faced with extreme life and death circumstances. Every story will explore the often unexplainable potential of the human body and psyche, leaving viewers to wonder what hidden abilities humans might possess. Production company: Karga 7. Executiveproducers: Kelly McPherson, Miriam Leffert, Sarah Wetherbee, Emre Sahin.

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• Superhuman — Uncovers the secrets of unbelievable stunts, record-breaking abilities and exceptional feats of human power and skill by putting real people through physical on-location challenges and a series of tests in a high-tech lab to answer the question: “How did they do that?” Production company: BASE Productions. Executive producers: John Brenkus, Mickey Stern.

• Toy Traveler– Shane Turgeon, the Indiana Jones of toy collectors, travels to remote corners of the world to find the rarest and most valuable toys and collectibles. Whether it’s in an old toy warehouse in a remote Guatemalan town or a small swap meet in the Ukraine, Shane will go to all lengths to find the most unique and collectible toys. Production company: Jarrett Creative Group. Executive producers: Seth Jarrett, Julie Insogna Jarrett.

• Master Control– A weekly competition that pits user-generated videos against one another in a battle for viewer popularity. Each week, self-submitted videos must entertain the host, celebrity panel and the entire viewing audience, who are all simultaneously rating the video and anointing a winner. Production company: The Gurin Co. Executive producers: Phil Gurin, Kevin Pereira.

• Stranger Than Fiction — A viral video clip show where comedians compete for laughs while commenting on and arguing over the strangest clips from the web. Good jokes earn points, while lame jokes lose them. At the end of the show, one comedian is crowned the irreverent victor. Production company: BASE Productions. Executive producers: John Brenkus, Mickey Stern.

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Syfy Development Slate Includes 'Fan Boy' Project From 'Jersey Shore's' SallyAnn Salsano (Exclusive)

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