Industry news

Apple's Game Center isn't worrying game networks

Gamers who use Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad are likely to be looking forward to Apple's "Game Center" network, which was announced among the other updates as part of iPhone OS 4.0. But what about the companies that are running existing social networks for the platform?

It's not the end of the world, apparently.

Ngmoco, maker of popular game titles such as Rolando, We Rule, and Touch Pets, also created the Plus+ social network. It's built in to all of its own titles, as well as a select group of games from other developers. Ngmoco's chief publishing officer, Simon Jeffrey, told CNET that the company "has anticipated this move from Apple for some time," and that it should bring a "cleaner developer and consumer experience."

But what does that mean for the Plus+ implementation that has been built into more than 75 titles? "Plus+ took a strategic shift in direction a few months ago toward being a service, and less about being a set of social-gaming features," Jeffery said in a statement. "Plus+ is all about empowering monetization and discoverability mechanisms for the development community, and we have clearly demonstrated with games like We Rule that these mechanisms work."

Discoverability was, in fact, one of the biggest benefits of using services like Plus+, but it's also something Apple plans to offer within its Game Center. Plus+'s implementation was to show you what your friends were playing, as well as show off games that had just been launched. According to the very few details mentioned by Scott Forstall, Apple's senior vice president of iPhone software, during Thursday's press event, both of these things will be a part of the Game Center framework.

So does that mean that Plus+ is going to be more focused on advertising and the metrics of what users are doing within apps? If so, that's another area where Apple has delved into with its iAds platform.… Read more

iPhone OS 4: Multitasking arrives (live blog)

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and a few CNET editors. For those of you who just want the updates, we've included them in regular text here. To get the key points from today's announcement, you can check out our summary of what got announced, in our story here.

We're coming to you live Thursday from Apple's campus with news about the iPhone OS 4 as it happens.

Maybe the biggest news is this: Apple is bringing multitasking to the iPhone. CEO Steve Jobs and his crew showed 12 apps running at the same time. But not all models of the iPhone will get multitasking or other upgrades. Third-generation models of the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch will be out this summer.

In addition, Apple is touting services including background audio, background location, and voice over IP. And there's more: a new folders feature, flicking between pages of apps on the phone, and the new iAd mobile advertising platform.

The newly released iPad, meanwhile, will get OS 4 in the fall.

Transcript of live blog starts here:… Read more

Purported hack brings Linux back to the PS3

Sony PlayStation 3 owners who held off on updating their systems in order to keep from losing the option to install alternate operating systems have a new glimmer of hope. Hacker George Hotz (a.k.a Geohot) has released a video of a new hack that promises to keep the alternate OS install feature, even with the 3.21 firmware update that was released last week.

Hotz says the hack is nothing more than a custom system software update that can be installed without having to do any hardware modifications, but users need to be on version 3.15 of … Read more

Digg 'killing' the DiggBar, unbanning domains

More big news out of the Digg camp this week. Late Monday, Digg founder (and now interim CEO) Kevin Rose announced via blog post that the company would be "killing" the DiggBar, the iFrame-based content viewer that caused a lion's share of controversy when it was launched this time last year.

Rose criticized the DiggBar's user experience as "inconsistent" and "wonky," and called the feature "bad for the Internet." According to Rose, the company will instead choose to focus on its browser extensions, which offer many of the same features … Read more

Six April Fools' Day launches that were real

Every year the tech world trips over itself to create a myriad fake products for user chuckles and some easy press. There's also a very small percentage of companies that decide to launch real products. We've rounded up six of those sites and services below, as well as some honorable April Fools' Day-related news events.

1. Google Gmail

One of the most notable April Fools' Day launches was Google's Gmail in 2004. Back then, a gigabyte of storage for a Web e-mail service was a big deal. This was especially true given that competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo were charging for extra in-box space.

Gmail wasn't open to everyone though. Its small, 1,000-user private beta test, which expanded through the company doling out user invites from time to time, became a hot tech ticket, and one that spawned an entire ecosystem of invite-trading economies.

Gmail has since continued to expand how much service it gives users, which is now up to 7.4GB.

2. Yahoo Sideline

Yahoo launched its Twitter tracking tool Sideline exactly one year ago, and it's still up and running. The Adobe Air-based app lets users keep an eye on Twitter in real time. Users can enter in search queries, and see them stream in across multiple tabs. The software is meant to be running all the time, though it cannot do some basic things like allow you to post to Twitter, or quickly follow a user that shows up in the results.

See our hands-on with it from last year.

3. Scribd's "Paper to iPaper"

A scanning-by-mail service from a digital documents service? It seemed too outlandish that a company would eat the cost of scanning a giant stack of your documents in order to get them in its database. But that's just what Web document-sharing tool Scribd launched on April Fools' Day in 2008. We thought it was a joke and so did our readers.

The service, which was quietly killed off last year, worked pretty well in our testing (see the result). The only big downsides were that you never got your physical documents back, and you had to pay for it to be shipped to Scribd's scanning headquarters.… Read more

Tokbox gets super-sized group video meetings

Video chat service Tokbox is about to get bigger--like hundreds of people in one chat bigger.

The new service, which launches Wednesday morning, lets users host a meeting for 200 people or less, and in an orderly fashion no less. All while using the service's existing technology to facilitate several talking heads up on the screen at once.

It's not free though. It will cost $18.99 per session, or $12.99 for people who are already subscribers of Tokbox's premium service. What that gets you is a control panel with space for up to 12 people … Read more

YouTube's big redesign goes live to everyone

SAN BRUNO, Calif.--YouTube is rolling out a new coat of paint on Wednesday.

Its video page redesign, which went up as a beta test to users in late January, will be going out live to everyone by the end of the day. The cleaner look is part of a bigger plan to simplify the site based on user feedback and testing, as well as to keep people from ever leaving.

In a "blogger breakfast" press event at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., YouTube UI designer Julian Frumar explained that the site was simply not working … Read more

Amazon's new patent could make returns harder

A new patent awarded to Web retailer Amazon.com could change what customers see in their shipping confirmation e-mails, as well as making falsely problematic returns more difficult.

U.S. patent number 7,689,465, which was unearthed early Tuesday by blog TechFlash, outlines a process wherein the company films outgoing packages being boxed up. Stills from these videos, or the entire video clip of the packing, can then be sent to the buyer for what Amazon says is verification of both the order and the shipping address.

But the idea behind the patent is not just for customers, it'… Read more

Webs taps Facebook Connect for log-ins, sharing

A small change to site builder Webs could have a big impact on Facebook's news feed. At least that's what the company is hoping.

Webs (formerly FreeWebs) on Tuesday is rolling out a new way for users to add Facebook Connect log-ins and content sharing to their sites. The site-building and Web-hosting service says it has more than 55 million users, and churns around 300 million page views a month. And by integrating Facebook Connect, the company expects to make those numbers bigger.

Webs has long had a way for users to sign up their own users, however … Read more

File transfers come to iGoogle, Orkut; Gmail's next

Google has finally added one of the biggest omissions to the Web-based version of its Google Talk service: size limit-free, P2P file transfers.

The feature, which has been a part of the service's desktop software since mid-2006, went live on the Google Talk widgets inside of iGoogle and Orkut on Monday.

The endgame here--which Google says is coming, is to bring file-sharing into Gmail's integrated Google Talk. Imagine, if you will, a situation where you want to share a big file, and Gmail's attachment limit is just not cutting it. Your options are simple: you could hop … Read more