E3 2010: A summary so far

A lot happened this year at E3, so here's a nice little summary for you. First, let's talk about Playstation. There's now a tiered online system; with $50 a year for Playstation Plus but normal PSN is free -- you just don't get the added benefits that Plus gives: notably premium content, early access to betas and Qore.

Sony also announced Playstation Move, its Wii challenging motion based gaming based system (but now also Xbox challenging, read on for that...). It isn't cheap: on top of the normal PS3 cost you need to cough up $99 which gets you the Sports Champion Bundle with Playstation Eye and Move. A controller is a hefty $50 and the (Nunchuk competing) option controller is another $30. However, a bundle which gives you everything listed above will be available for $399. It'll be in the UK on September 15th and in the States 4 days later. Extra peripherals are the Charger ($30) and Gun attachment ($20).

But Sony wasn't the only big company to have some press at E3 this year, Nintendo has been snapping on its heels with its 3D DS; 3DS for short. It features 2 screens like the normal DS range, but the top one is 3D. You don't need glasses, and it has a slider switch to change the effects of the 3D or turn it off altogether. It features an analog stick, similar to the PSP, but no word on price as yet.

Finally, Microsoft's news from E3 this year. They had two big announcements. One of these was the new Xbox 360, and the other was Kinect. I won't go into detail about Kinect because Steve already has but let me tell you a bit about the new Xbox 360.

It is a thing of beauty in some respects. The black outer with chrome looks mean and aggressive. The "brick" power supply means that it's easier to transport as well as fitting better into the room. It's got touch buttons like the PS3 as well so it should be a comfortable device to use. It's the same price in the States at $299 so let's hope that stays the same for the UK.

Also, for those on a tight budget but love a game, the Arcade will be phased out and be replaced by a $199 Xbox 360. Xbox also will have Zune Music and there will also be ESPN3 on it. Netflix will have search but that's US only for obvious reasons.

To conclude, E3 2010 has been a great event filled with lots of fascinating news. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the new hardware announced, as well as the new games and titles which were also announced.

Xbox Kinect

Microsoft Xbox Project Natal just got a name: ‘Kinect’. This full-body-sensing, full-body-recognizing, voice-understanding camera enables interactivity with games without the requirement of controllers. It’s been known of for a while but only under the guise of ‘Project Natal’, a moniker which has now been wiped away due to USA Today leaking an advert. Microsoft’s E3 speech will now be relatively underwhelming.

FrontierVille

Zynga has taken the popularity of FarmVille and applied it to the wild west in FrontierVille.

One of the biggest changes in FrontierVille involves your neighbors (basically, the friends you’ve connected with in the game, who are always shown in a panel at the bottom of your screen). In FarmVille when you visit a friend’s virtual farm, your potential actions are quite limited — you can’t do much to engage with your friend’s plot of land. In FrontierVille that dynamic has changed. You can now swing by a friend’s plot of land and tend to some of their chores, like harvesting their crops. Doing so gives you a reward, and also helps them save time. There’s one caveat to this though: your friend will have to approve your actions before they take effect (some players prefer to trudge through these tasks on their own).

FrontierVille is also putting a much bigger emphasis on its storyline. Soon after you start the game, you’ll encounter a letter from your betrothed who is stuck “out east” — it’s your job to build up your home and garden so that they can come out and join you. Once that happens you can start having children, who you design to look exactly as you want them to. Family members can be used to help decorate your land (which sounds a little weird, I know), and can also help speed up the rate at which you collect resources like wood. In addition to these story elements, there are also new missions that are designed to help mix up gameplay. For example, the game may instruct you to harvest flowers (something that you may not normally do) for the purpose of making a bouquet to woo your spouse.

Another social gameplay element is the notion of “hiring” your friends, which entails paying some in-game money to have a buddy harvest your plants or do other tasks. In reality your friends aren’t actually sitting at their computers doing this “work” themselves (which would be pretty boring). Instead, you’re merely controlling their in-game avatar. The social element of this stems from the game’s stat system: over time you can accumulate multiple kinds of experience points, based on how much you’ve engaged with your friends and what you’ve accomplished in the game. The more points you have, the more ‘work’ you do for your friends when they hire you, which in turn makes it more likely that your friends will be looking to hire your avatar.

Finally, there’s a new set of features that Reynolds refers to as the “living world effect”. In short, these are events that are beyond your control, which help the virtual world feel more alive. Log off for a few days, and you’ll find that you may have some weeds growing in the yard. Trees will grow larger over time, and eventually they’ll start to drop seeds where seedlings will start growing. And an array of creatures like snakes and bears will sometimes encroach on your territory. They won’t ever actually harm your property, but they drain energy when you’re close to them.

ZYNGA GOES WEST WITH FRONTIERVILLE from Zynga on Vimeo.

Facebook Security - A Warning

Facebook is a bit stupid and ignorant when it comes to the security of their own social networking brainchild. The story of insecurity is generally based around Facebook fanpages or groups. It all started when someone decided that it would be a good idea to abuse the Pages system, which was initially developed for usage by celebrities, to share a joke he'd thought of with friends but thru which he unintentionally gained over 100,000 fans. Ever since then people began making fanpages by the dozen, with practically all users with at least two pages of their own, totalling to a shocking 80million fanpages likely to be in existence at this exact moment in time.
So what does this have to do with security?
Well, thanks to Facebook Pages being abused as mere jokes, someone created the very first Facebook meme. By making fun of a song which initially had the lyrics 'My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they're look, ooh aah', a meme was created throughout Facebok. Over 100 pages were created following this meme and soon other memes started appearing.
At the moment it's the somewhat annoying 'lol jk' pages.
Sadly, all this kerfuffle surrounding pages soon lead to a security flaw.
A load of groups started popping up which forced you to go to an external website just to be able to see a picture or a video. This soon led to people being gullible enough to stray onto viral websites. Before long people were wondering why a fanpage had infected their computer with malware. But Facebook doesn't seem to care because now they've gone totally overboard by allowing web developers to embed 'Like' buttons onto any old website. This isn't doing any harm at the moment but it makes you wonder why they're actually doing it because most things which people 'Like' are now on websites other than Twitter. They're trying to make out that they're doing it for the sole purpose of sharing the social networking experience across the entire Internet.

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But I personally think they're only doing it so that they can take the strain away from their own servers. If this is true then that really sucks, because eventually, 'Liking' something on an external website will automatically infect your PC without even opening the website. Before long, merely clicking a 'Like' button from an unknown source could literally destroy your computer's operating system.
You were warned.

Post WWDC news

First up in this large amount of post WWDC news is that iWork will be coming to the iPhone. In a (now removed) picture from the Apple website, it shows an email having the option to open in keynote. Also, iTunes 9.2 has been released allowing iBooks syncing, and updated app organising including folders.

In other iPhone related news since WWDC, Google Goggles will be coming to the iPhone which allows you to search for items just by taking a picture of it. Finally, (for the UK), O2, Orange and Vodafone have announced they will be selling the iPhone 4 but there has been no word on costs, but I wouldn't expect it to be free on £20 a month. Anyway, that's just the start of the WWDC news, so stick about here for more. Remember, the iPhone 4 is coming out in the UK and US on the 24th of June and we'll try our best to use one on the day (my co-blogger, Steve, is also contemplating buying one).