Internet

IMDB turns 18

You may have heard me say this before, but it's worth repeating: I love the Internet.

From my first forays onto Yahoo in the mid-1990s, to my slow, methodical construction of a perfect rating on eBay to the dozens of times I use Google every day, there is simply no question about it: I am head over heels gaga for the medium.

But no matter how many times I laugh at a YouTube video, read something interesting on NYTimes.com or consult Wikipedia, I think my true favorite online hangout is the Internet Movie Database, or IMDB.

What can … Read more

Microsoft unveils new Xbox Live 'experience'

Whether you're one of the legions of hard-core Xbox players or someone who's only played with the game console casually, get ready for an all-new Xbox Live.

Since the first announcement of the new approach to the massively popular service at E3 in July, some longtime fans have fretted that Microsoft is morphing it into a place for purely casual players at the expense of those for whom Xbox Live is nearly as much a home as where they actually live.

Well, based on a demo I got recently of the (not quite finished) new version of Xbox Live, I'd have to say, fret no more.

Dubbed the new "Xbox Live Experience," this re-launched service--which is rumored to be launching in November, but which Microsoft will only say is due "before Christmas"--really does seem to have something for everyone: an easy-to-use graphical interface complete with deeply customizable avatars that casual players will enjoy, and all kinds of new functionality that will actually reward the dedication of the hard-core Xbox player.

Microsoft readily admits that there may be a bit of a transition period for those core players--a time during which a lot of griping might be heard--but the company fully expects a gradual realization on the part of those players that the new service takes the existing Xbox Live and adds all kinds of new community and interactive functions to it.

And, again, I would have to agree.

To date, the Xbox Live interface has been based on what are called blades, essentially pages of information stacked on top of each other in such as way as to maximize the number of choices Xbox Live players have and the directions in which they can go. They can see lists of games to play, choose to watch a movie, go into a section to buy add-ons for games, and so on. The new interface largely does away with the blades era and moves into a more advanced motif of full windows that spread out on the screen and stretch off into the distance, allowing users to shuttle through them, left to right or right to left.

But that's getting a little too far ahead. … Read more

Google launches AdSense for Games

If Google's entry into a field of advertising doesn't legitimize it, nothing can. And that's why the in-game advertising industry just got a huge shot in the arm.

On Tuesday night, Google announced the beta launch of its new AdSense for Games program, the search giant's first foray into the video games market, and the long-awaited answer to the question of what the company planned to do with AdScape Media, which it bought for $23 million in February 2007.

According to Christian Oestlien, the senior product manager for AdSense for Games, the program's beta launch will focus on the placement of a variety of forms of ads in Flash-based casual games and some larger titles.

In the beginning at least, Oestlien said, Google will work with partners like PlayFish, Mochi Media, Demand Media and Konami.

The latter, Oestlien said, would use AdSense for Games to place ads in well-known titles like Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution.

And among the initial advertisers participating in the program are eSurance, Sprint, and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Of course, the in-game advertising field already has several well-established players, including Microsoft's Massive, DoubleFusion, and IGA.

"By (Google) finally launching in the space," said DoubleFusion CEO Jonathan Epstein, "it confirms for all parties...that this space is of interest to one of the largest media companies in the world. Google does not enter into markets that don't have billion dollar-plus potential for them."

To Epstein, having Google plant its flag in the in-game ads space shows everyone that games cannot be taken lightly as an ad platform, no matter what other choices advertisers have for their dollars.

"The battleground here is not between ourselves and Massive and Google," Epstein said. "It's getting games their rightful share of the ad dollars, as opposed to TV, print, and (traditional) online ads."

For its part, Google is well aware that it will have several significant competitors, but still thinks it can set itself apart.

According to Oestlien, Google intends to do so by leveraging its network of thousands of advertiser partners, as well as its proven experience helping those partners with the placement of effective print, image- and Flash-based creative ads.

Google's long-term play Given that Google announced its AdScape buy more than a year ago, Google's move is by no means a surprise. Some see that it's only natural that the company seeks to repeat the success it has had with AdSense in as many new environments as possible.

And some think that while Google may have its work cut out for it in the games space in the short-term, the AdSense for Games move is really part of a long-term play involving several different media. … Read more

Taking on Twitter with open-source software

Earlier this summer, just as Twitter started to really pick up steam, the microblogging service began to have major stability problems.

The more users who signed up, the more the site seemed to be down, and it became nearly as commonplace to see the so-called "fail whale"--signifying that a desired operation wouldn't go through--as it was to have the service work properly.

For countless users, this was extremely frustrating, as Twitter had become the live conversation medium of choice for many early-adopters. And into this vacuum jumped a series of other microblogging services, each trying to … Read more

Skype's Chinese version left the surveillance door wide open

Security researchers recently found that IM conversations on the Chinese Skype program were not only filtered, but also recorded on a massive, nonsecure, server. The possibility of surveillance flies in the face of Skype's supposed strong encryption, and has provoked outcry among privacy advocates.

Users of the TOM-Skype platform, marketed in cooperation with a Chinese company, were "regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and if present, the resulting data [were] uploaded and stored on servers in China," according to the report by Nart Villeneuve. Voice communications may have been catalogged, but researchers reported they did not find recorded … Read more

Man in China fined $277 for porn on drive, then forgiven

[UPDATE: I wrote the below before seeing an update on Danwei noting that the fine was canceled. This only underlines the power of online controversy, especially considering that the cancelation notice says the man was still guilty: they are merely using discretion in this case.]

Police officers who said they were investigating the distribution of "harmful information" from a new business' IP address found a 30-minute adult video on a hard drive and fined the owner 1,900 RMB ($277 USD), according to a reported translated by ESWN.

The crux of the legal claim appears to be the … Read more

MMOs to help futurists solve world problems?

As has become increasingly obvious over the last few years, games are being used more and more as tools for helping people and organizations work their way through all kinds of problems and scenarios.

That's been the reasoning behind the steady growth of initiatives like the serious games movement, whose practitioners promote the idea of deploying games in education, government, military, and other sober institutions that need new ways to resolve troubling issues.

And now it appears that an august group of futurists is hoping that they can employ large numbers of people to play collaborative games in search of solutions to some of the world's most vexing problems.

That was the word Tuesday from the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based think tank that focuses on identifying the directions that mankind will take down the line. … Read more

'I Can Has Cheezburger' book missing online vibrancy

If you're a big fan of LOLCats like me, then you probably are very familiar with Icanhascheezburger.com, a community site where the most active practitioners of the phenomenon involving funny pictures of cats mixed with odd, badly spelled phrases ply their trade daily.

To the uninitiated, LOLCats can be hard to decipher, especially given that many of them are subtle meta references to the phenomenon itself. So regular Icanhascheezburger.com visitors are well-versed in phrases involving things like "Ceiling Cat...," "I'm in ur...," "...ur doing it wrong" and so on.

Over the last year-and-a-half, the site has become massively popular, with tens of millions of monthly visitors and even a series of spin-off sites, all in spite of the fact that it was hardly the originator of the phenomenon.

Now, the creators of the site have cobbled together several dozen LOLCats from the site into I Can Has Cheezburger? the book. A slick little volume subtitled, "A LOLCat colleckshun," it features the famous fluffy gray cat so familiar to fans of the site on the cover.

I was really looking forward to the book, as I figured it would cull the best of the site's thousands upon thousands of user-created entries. And since I can always feel confident that a visit to the site will have me ROFLMAOing--rolling on the floor laughing my (butt) off--I expected that the book would induce much the same reactions, except even more concentrated.

Sadly, that wasn't the case. … Read more

Facebook has the Monday morning blues

Update (1:18 p.m.): This story has been modified to include comment from Facebook.

For some of the legions of Facebook users eager to get on the site to see what their friends have been up to, play Scrabble or look at photos, Monday morning has not been the best of times.

That's because some users of the popular social-networking site--though not all--have found themselves locked out due to some sort of Facebook-initiated downtime.

"Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance," a message received by some users when they tried to log in said. &… Read more