So, you have entered the broad wide ranging Universe of Eve Online. It’s quite a daunting place initially and to be quite fair, continues to be so as you play more and more.

So, here are the tips that I feel should make your initial experience easier. (FROM YOUR 1st STATION)

1 - NEOCON - It’s the strip on the left this is a very important part of the game. Through this you access your character sheet. Your character sheet is where you improve your character by training new skills.

2 - Character Sheet - Very important to open this immediately and then go to the Skills page. The 1st page open in your character sheet is the SKILLS sheet. This is a bit confusing at first as many of the skills only have a green tick beside them. This means that you can train in them but you have to buy them from the market. You should open the training queue and immediately. In here you will be able to see the skills that you can currently train in. Put all the level 1 skills in the queue, Level 1 only take 10mins or so to train generally. If you cannot find a skill in the Training queue then you need to buy it from the Market as mentioned earlier. Make sure to queue up shorter skills that finish just under 24 hours, then set a longer skill at the end, just in case you cannot login, so that even when you are not playing you are still advancing.

3 - Station Info (Agents) - You should look to the right hand side of the screen and see aStation Info Tab. This is where you will fix your ship, buy insurance, find agents to get jobs make money and acquire new objects. Do THE TRAINING MISSIONS, they provide you with new ships, skills and will kick start your career in Eve. To begin a mission, Find the Agent tab, Once you have located this, you will see Agents available to you. Missions that you can do are based your Standing in a system. The more missions you complete in a system the better standing you have and the more missions you can complete.

4 - Your Cargohold and Your Items(Neocon), the difference - Very important to be aware of both even from the beginning. When you buy something from the market, as long as you make sure to buy it from the location you are at, which is always "Station". You then have to move it from My Items which is essentially equivalent to your locker on the station, each station has a different locker for you, so to get items from one to the other you must put them in your cargohold.  To do this, Right click on your ship and choose "Open Cargohold", then click on My Items from Neocon. This opens New Window, Drag items from one to the other. When you accept a mission you will more than likely need to move the cargo from your my items to your cargohold so you can, transport to new location.

5 - Skills in your My Items list / Cargohold - Very important to Right-Click on these and choose Inject Skill . If you do not, then you will not be able to train in the skill. This took me some time to figure out

6 - Your Journal - When you accept a mission, it puts a note in your journal, which gives you both the mission and the locations. If a location is within the same location as you are currently at you need to leave the station and get a certain distance from the station, right click on the yellow link, Usually something like xxxx 0.4, at this point choose Warp to location, the Autopilot will fly you to the location. You may find an acceleration gate, activate this to get the mission underway usually.

7 - The Market - You will come to love and hate the market very quickly. When you need something to complete a mission, weapons, skills, this is the place to go.  2 most important points. PRICE / JUMPS ,  everything else becomes more useful later I assume. When you need to buy something, rank it by price and then look to see what’s closest and what’s the best price. Station is the station that you are currently at. If you are in a hurry/impatient always buy here but prices can be prohibitive depending on your location. Remember everything you buy goes into your My Items on the Neocon.

8 - Buying  Weapons - Buying weapons is a big step as it’s all very complicated. I reccomend completing the training missions and you should have what you need to get going.

9 - Using Weapons - Very important to right click on your weapon and see Show info, you can do this both when flying or on the Fittings & Services screen, in the Station. On this Info tab look at attributes, and optimal range. This tells you the range to fire your weapon from. You also have to check the ammo you are using as this can increase and decrease the distance by plus and minus 50% in some cases.

10 - MOST IMPORTANT TIP FOR BEGINNER - Close your all open information windows, when you are not using them. This was the thing I found most confusing and overwhelming. It makes the game a lot easier to digest if you are only tring to figure out one window at a time. If it doesn’t make sense close it until you need it. When you need it , you will know how to use it.

Microsoft has landed a deal with Netflix to bring movies directly to the Xbox 360. Netflix is by far the largest online movie rental service out there. Thru their “Watch Instantly” feature, subscribers can stream “near-DVD quality” movies and recorded television shows on their PCs or laptops at no additional cost. Major film studios that distribute their releases thru this feature include: Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Lions Gate Entertainment and New Line Cinema. Just recently, Netflix subscribers have been able to watch the streaming content with the help of a Roku TV set-top box. This device, which is sold separately, enables streaming content to be played directly on TV sets. With this new Xbox 360 feature, there’s no need for the Roku device. Microsoft announced the new feature during their pre-E3 press conference. The service will be made available by late fall this year. In the past, Xbox 360 owners have been able to download content from Microsoft’s own video store, but users are complaining that the selection is very limited. Now, that’s just a thing of the past. Currently, Netflix have over 10,000 legitimate movies and recorded TV episodes in their database, with over 100,000 more that they are yet to get the rights to distribute – all of which will be made available to the Xbox 360 users. According to Microsoft’s VP for interactive entertainment John Schappert, those Xbox 360 owners who are currently subscribed to Netflix won’t have to pay extra for the service. Netflix has approximately 8.2 million subscribers, while Xbox Live (Microsoft’s online service) currently has 12 million active users. The Xbox Live users will be able to play their Netflix downloads with their Xbox 360 consoles and watch the video on their TV. Plus, they will be able to share the downloaded videos with their friends who are also on Xbox Live and "watch them together despite sitting on different couches," according to John Schappert. "You can now share Netflix movies with a Live Party at no extra cost," he added. “Live Party” seems to be a newly coined term from Microsoft. Together with the Netflix feature, many more features are coming to the Xbox 360 this coming fall. New features include 3D avatars, instant messaging, video chat, and photo sharing – all on a new Xbox Live dashboard. A Live Party hence is like a “Sims” party of Xbox Live avatars. Sony has announced that its PlayStation Store for the PS3 will also have the same service available soon; but there are no indications that it’s also going to be in partnership with Netflix. Nintendo has no plans of adding a video store for its hot-selling gaming console, Wii.

Insiders believe that Microsoft will soon be cutting down the price of the Xbox 360 Pro to $299. The gaming consoles’ former price is $349. Based on my complex mathematics, that’s exactly a $50 price cut! The cut coincides with the forthcoming E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), an annual event widely considered as the video game industry’s biggest trade show. The E3, which will run this year from July 13 – 15 in Los Angeles, is used by all game developers to show off upcoming releases. Although Microsoft reps have been keeping mum about the price decrease, almost everyone from video game bloggers to tech sites is sure it’s going to happen. After posting pictures of flyers and posters announcing the forthcoming price cut, gaming blog Kotaku has posted a cellphone capture of a GameStop internal memo announcing that the official date of the price cut is in fact July 13^th, the first day of the E3. Actually, Target has already posted a $299.99 price tag for the gaming console on their online store. The last time there was a price cut for the Xbox 360 was way back in August last year, when Microsoft cut back from $399 to $349, coinciding with the upcoming release the following month of their benchmark game "Halo 3." Even with the overall economic crisis, the Sony PS3 gained a significant sales boost with the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 exactly one month ago. So aside from the forthcoming E3, a price cut was also necessary to counter the increasing PS3 sales. After this cut, the 20 gig Xbox 360 Pro will be $100 cheaper than the 40 gig Sony PS3. Their other competitor, the Nintendo Wii, is the cheapest of the bunch at $249. Sony and Nintendo have no plans of cutting down prices yet. "Our plan is not to reduce the price," Sony’s CFO Nobuyuki Oneda said in an interview. "Our strategy is not to sell more quantity for PS3 but to concentrate on profitability." That’s a pretty strong comment, being that we are only four months into the business fiscal year which ends March next year. "I doubt we’ll see Nintendo do anything on price. They don’t really need to,” said analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co. "But at a difference of $50, it does start to get interesting." Nintendo has been selling out Wii’s with its cheap $249 price tag. The new difference of $50 between the two consoles will definitely challenge one of the Nintendo console’s main selling points. Of the three gaming giants, Microsoft will be the first to have a press conference during E3. We are all hoping that the rumors are true, and we are hoping against hope that the other two console makers follow suit. Remember that in 2004, when Microsoft dropped the cost of the original Xbox to $149, Sony followed suit and did the same for to the PlayStation 2. And just last summer Sony had a price cut of their own, selling the 60 gig PS3 at $499 - by which Microsoft reacted with a $349 20 gig Xbox 360. After four months, Sony introduced the $399 40 gig PS3 -with a $50 difference and a 20 gig added hdd, the PS3 is now catching up with the Xbox 360 for control of the gaming console market. Though it should be noted that the Xbox 360 has a year’s head start over its next gen competitors.