When War Games Hit Too Close to Home

Over the weekend, Fox News kicked off a controversy by asking whether the upcoming Medal of Honor goes too far in letting players fight as the Taliban.

The debate on Fox News and the angry comments from Karen Meredith, a Gold Star Mom, don’t surprise me in the slightest or interest me all that much. Anyone who’s kept an eye on the first-person shooter since it was announced last December could’ve seen the outrage coming from a mile away.

What interests me is that even some game critics, who as a group usually rally to defend the morality of violent video games, realize that Electronic Arts might’ve crossed a line with Medal of Honor.

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Five Million Websites Carried Koobface Worm Variant

In what’s being called a record for the single biggest viral infection, a hack may have potentially delivered a variant of the Koobface worm to visitors of sites that had the “Small Business Success Index” survey widget installed. This included every parked domain hosted by registrar Network Solutions. The company has since removed the offending widget, it said.

Web searches for the code indicate that for the most part, the survey only appeared there — but the size of this infection is stunning: potentially as many as five million websites. Researchers at Armorize say the infected widget would be installable on Blogger, Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. I guess the best advice here is that if you’ve recently ended up on a parked domain, scan your computer now for viruses.

E-Readers are Dead. Long Love E-Reading!

Over at Ars Technica, Jon Stokes is noting that the explosion of new e-readers that seemed to be coming this year has turned out to be more of a whimper than a bang. Plastic Logic’s Que ProReader is dead, Hearst’s Skiff reader shows no signs of life, Samsung’s E-Ink reader is apparently skipping the US market, and none of the umpteen readers from lesser-known companies has become a breakout hit.

Still in the game: Amazon’s Kindle (the e-reader that’s synonymous with e-readers), Barnes & Noble’s Nook (which B&N is about to double down on), and Sony’s Reader (the first modern e-reader). Oh, and there’s Kobo, the Canadian e-reader backed by Borders. I don’t see any of these going away anytime soon–actually, as Slate’s Farhad Manjoo points out, the likely scenario is that they’ll get even cheaper and sell even better.

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FaceMod’s Dislike Button Unwilling Participant in Scam

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a status come across my news feed that says “Facebook has an dislike button, install now!” Chances are now from what we’re being told by Sophos that these folks fell for a scam that really doesn’t truly add a dislike button anyway.

What’s installed is a Firefox add-on by FaceMod, but nobody will see your dislikes unless they got the add-on installed as well. Sophos says that the company is not involved with the scam, but is rather being used as bait.

Whoever’s behind it has rigged the Facebook app (which doesn’t install the add-on anyway) to silently update your Facebook status which in turn spreads it to your friends. In order to even gain access to the add-on, the user needs to fill out an online survey.

The survey seems to be how the scammers are making money through this scheme. Sophos recommends that users download FaceMod’s dislike button directly if they really want it, and ignore those status messages.

Engadget Likes Sprint’s Epic 4G

Engadget’s Chris Ziegler has reviewed Sprint’s Epic 4G, the second 4G phone, and the first with a physical keyboard. It’s based on Samsung’s Galaxy S platform, also available in various forms–but not with a keyboard–from other carriers. He pretty much raves about the thing. Engadget got close four hours of life using the Epic as a 4G hotspot, which sounds impressive; it hasn’t done traditional battery testing yet, though. (Iffy battery life is the biggest gotcha with Sprint’s EVO 4G, so it’s an important point.)

Asus Offers Proof That the iPad Hurts Netbooks

Whether Apple’s iPad is killing netbooks remains a touchy subject, but Asus has added fuel to the fire by lowering its netbook shipments for next quarter.

According to DigiTimes, Asus president and chief executive Jerry Shen acknowledged that the iPad was cutting into netbook sales, which fell short of expectations last quarter. At a conference for investors, Shen reminded the audience that Asus is working on its own tablet and e-reader, but said the company will continue offer the Eee PC netbook line.

There is at least some other proof that the iPad is hurting netbooks. A Morgan Stanley/Alphawise study conducted in May showed that 44 percent of U.S. consumers who planned to buy an iPad were doing so in lieu of a netbook or notebook PC. And why not? Between smartphones and PCs, there might be room for a third device, but four is a stretch, especially when tablets and netbooks overlap in their ability to check e-mail and surf the web. That doesn’t mean the iPad is killing netbooks, it just means consumers will make a choice, which explains why hardware makers besides Apple are trying to push out their own tablets.

Still, I’m taking Shen’s claims about his company’s netbook performance with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that Asus lost netbook market share between 2008 and 2009, and could lose its second place standing behind Acer with strong netbook sales expected of Samsung. Even before the iPad launched, Asus was already seeing flat-to-meager increases in netbook sales. Meanwhile, iSuppli expects overall netbook sales to grow by 30 percent this year.

In other words, Apple’s tablet makes a good scapegoat.

Thirty-One Years of Apple Tablets

Computerworld compares the iPad against an earlier Apple tablet–one I remember fooling around with at a computer store when I was in high school.

Instant Jam Goes Where Other Music Games Won’t

Although I sometimes say nice things about music games such as Guitar Hero, I don’t host enough parties to justify spending money on them, but I might consider buying a fake plastic guitar for Instant Jam, a music game that launches in closed beta on Facebook today.

At a glance, Instant Jam looks like Guitar Hero for the PC. Colored notes scroll down the screen, prompting you to press keyboard buttons in step with the guitar track. You can also use guitar controllers from other games, as long as they have USB output.

Here’s the big twist: Instant Jam uses music you already own, reading songs off your hard drive and matching them with a database of note charts. If a note chart exists for your favorite tune, you can play it in Instant Jam for free, and if a chart exists for a song you don’t own, the game provides links to iTunes and Amazon. Furthermore, there’s no music licensing involved, so even artists that have refused to appear in Guitar Hero and Rock Band, such as Led Zeppelin, are represented among the initial 2,000 songs.

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Twitter, the Level Playing Field

I had fun this week visiting with Richard Brewer-Hay, the blogger who presides over eBay Ink, eBay’s official corporate blog. We talked about his adventures interacting with the gigantic, highly opinionated community of communities that’s made up of people interested in eBay, PayPal, StubHub, and other eBay-owned sites and services. (I’ve never met an eBay user who doesn’t have strong opinions on it, although the same person may be fiercely positive or fiercely negative depending on when I ask.)

Richard is also in charge of the eBay Ink Twitter feed, and one thing he said about Twitter resonated with me. Some of his followers prefer to make contact with him at Twitter over the eBay Blog itself, because eBay has complete control over the blog and very little control over its presence on Twitter. They’re suspicious that eBay might be tamping down dissent in the blog’s comments, and pleased that Richard couldn’t suppress @replies and other tweets about eBay even if he wanted to do so.

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Resolved: Programming is Hard Work

Over at his New York Times column, David Pogue has reviewed Google App Inventor, the toolkit–currently in private beta testing–that aims to let normal non-gearheads write applications for Android phones with no programming knowledge. His experience wasn’t sensational. In fact, he found Inventor so cryptic, cumbersome, and glitchy that he was unable to write a program–even after he brought in an expert consultant in the form of his 13-year-old son.

I enjoyed reading the column: It’s an entertaining, necessary antidote to some of the initial hype surrounding App Inventor. But it also left me feeling a tad melancholy. The concept behind Inventor remains exciting, and I hope that Google sticks with it and eradicates at least some of the gremlins that David encountered.

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Google Spits Out Video Game Release Dates, Sometimes

Here’s an intriguing idea: Google automatically compiles a massive list of release dates for video games, movies, books and music, and sticks the information on top of relevant search results.

I have no idea whether that’s going on, but Google is at least quietly fooling around with the concept for video games, as journalist Kyle Orland discovered. For instance, searching for “Mafia 2 release date” brings up a date and a list of sources, in this case Wikipedia and VGReleases. I’ve gotten this to work for a few other games, but only when they’re a couple weeks away from launch.

Looking up release dates for video games is an otherwise tedious process. Wikipedia tends to be my go-to source, but the information isn’t always reliable — launches are fickle and subject to change — and getting to the page requires a few steps. Publisher’s video game websites are usually abominations, locked behind age verification gates (do those really work?) and drowned in clumsy Flash. Good luck finding any useful information from the official source.

Because I’m a nerd, I don’t look up release information for movies and music nearly as often as I do for video games, but Google search results for other media would be just as valuable. Google could even take it a step further and build a media database for manual browsing, always linking to its sources so you can verify the information.

Google’s video game release date listings aren’t perfect — in all cases, I’m seeing launch dates for Europe, rather than North America — but I hope they’re a work in progress, and a sign of bigger things to come.

Samsung is Really Serious About 3D TV

With the vast bulk of the still very emerging 3D TV market in its veritable hands, Samsung plans to place 3D TVs in more people’s living rooms by bringing out more entertainment content and less costly equipment. At an event this week in New York City, the consumer electronics maker did just that.

Many who got the mysteriously worded invitation expected to see the rollout of Samsung’s rumored tablet. Samsung instead presented the world’s first portable Blu-ray player with 3D output, a gadget that looks a lot like a netbook except for the DVD slot on the right-hand side.

Samsung also rolled out three new plasma 3D TVs–including a 50-inch entry in the Plasma C490 Series, the first 3DTV from Samsung in the $1,100 bracket–along with an LED 3D TV, a far pricier 65-inch model in the LED C8000 Series which goes for around $6,000.

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Windows Phone 7 Gaming: What We Know So Far

At a presentation for developers in March, Microsoft showed a single Xbox Live game running on three different platforms. First came the PC, then Windows Phone 7, and finally the Xbox 360, each one picking up where the last left off. Developing games for all three would be a breeze, Microsoft promised, and it seemed that by connecting the three screens, the company’s gaming strategy would go where the competition hadn’t.

Five months later, Windows Phone 7 gaming is still somewhat of a mystery. Microsoft has missed a couple opportunities to show that Windows Phone 7 is a serious gaming platform. The phone was mostly absent from E3, a major video game industry trade show, and when several publications tested Windows Phone 7 prototypes in July, the Xbox Live section was an empty shell, with no actual games to speak of.

Microsoft still has until the holiday season to impress gamers with Windows Phone 7, but there are a lot of blanks to be filled in. For now, I’ve learned enough to paint a blurry picture of what Windows Phone 7 gaming will be like.

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Google Gives Android Better Voice Input, Chrome Connectivity

A couple of thousand folks–many of who were clearly hardcore Android enthusiasts–hung out with me this morning as I liveblogged Google’s mobile event. Before the event got underway, some of them shared their hopes about what it would cover: Android Market improvements, new handsets, integrated FaceTime-style videochat, and more.

Google didn’t announce any of that stuff. But it did roll out two new app/services, one of which it first previewed back at its Google I|O conference in May.

The brand new item is an addition to Android’s voice-recognition features called Voice Actions. The OS already lets you talk to perform Google searches and dictate text into any app that accepts keyboard app–and now you can speak commands to send texts, pull up maps, make phone calls, send yourself notes in the form of e-mails addressed to yourself, and more.

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Notion Ink Swears the Adam Tablet is Real, and Priced

In a nice addendum to Harry’s definitive iPad alternative guide, Notion Ink is divulging price and launch details about its Adam Android tablet, as if to suggest it’s not vaporware.

There’s still a fair amount of throat-clearing in a blog post by Rohan Shravan, Notion Ink’s founder and chief executive, but the bottom line is that the Adam will supposedly cost between $399 and $498, depending on whether you want 3G coverage and the PixelQi screen that can switch to an outdoor-friendly reflective mode. Slashgear’s inside source gets more specific: $399 for Wi-Fi and an LCD screen, $449 for 3G and LCD, or Wi-Fi and PixelQi, and $498 for 3G and PixelQi. Shravan says he’s aiming for FCC certification in November.

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Tweetmeme Hands Over Retweet Button to Twitter

It’s been a little over a year since a company called Tweetmeme decided to mash-up the idea of social news with Twitter, resulting in a one-stop clearinghouse for retweets and obviously generating a new traffic stream for content providers. That concept received Twitter’s official blessing Thursday as the social networking site took over the retweet button concept from the site.

The button now counts some 750 million impressions per day. Here at Technologizer, we added the button early this year, and its been interesting to watch which of our posts get picked up in the social web. It’s not surprising that Twitter would want to bring what has become a successful concept in-house.

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