Google social gaming service reportedly in the works
Steam is gathering on the rumors that Google is planing to launch a Facebook competitor that will focus on social gaming. The company is supposedly in talks with a number of online game makers in order to build a stable for launch, according to unnamed individuals speaking to the Wall Street Journal. However, even if Google succeeds in launching a social network that will keep users' interest, it seems unlikely that it will make much of a dent in Facebook in the near term.According to the WSJ's sources, Google is currently talking to Playdom, Electronic Arts' Playfish, and Zynga (maker of the popular Facebook game Farmville). This supports a previous rumor from earlier this month alleging Google "secretly" invested $100 million in Zynga as part of a strategic partnership for Google's upcoming gaming service. The timeline for such a service still has yet to be determined, however, so it may still be some time before we see the fruits of Google's labor.
Google, of course, has not uttered a peep about its plans except to state that the world doesn't need another Facebook knockoff. Indeed, it's unlikely that Google (or any other company for that matter) would be able to steal away many users from Facebook, which, despite constant controversy over its privacy policies, remains a huge force in the online world.
Instead, Google is likely trying to build something that would tie into users' Google accounts in the same way Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Buzz, and other services already do. There are also likely be native ties into Android, which would allow a growing number of smartphone users direct access to the gaming network.
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GNOME 3 not ready yet, release pushed back to 2011
The developers behind the GNOME project have gathered in the Netherlands this week for the annual GUADEC conference. During a meeting that took place at the event, the GNOME release team made the difficult decision to delay the launch of GNOME 3, the next major version of the popular open source desktop environment.
The new version has been deemed unready for mass consumption and will need another round of refinements before it can achieve the level of maturity and robustness that is expected by the software's users. Although the news will likely disappoint some enthusiasts, it is consistent with the GNOME development community's conservative approach to release management and strong emphasis on predictability.
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New LightWave 10 looks light on new features
Ars is on the ground at SIGGRAPH for the first time. Over the next couple of days, keep your eyes peeled for news from the world's largest conference on computer graphics and 3D.
NewTek software is at the conference showing off the newly announced LightWave 10. It's a bit light on the new, with the new viewport preview rendering, which offers realistic views of scenes and objects with interactive light, nodal shading, and scene set-up, really the only standout from the list.
There's also CG hardware real-time viewpoint shading and linear workflow support. Version 10 also adds support for the Autodesk Geometry Cache, COLLADA, FBX, and ZBrush interchange, along with handful of new real-time and game tools.
Although the inclusion of the renowned and speedy Bullet Physics is encouraging, the rest of the feature list reads like a padded résumé that isn’t going to help LightWave get out of the funk it's widely perceived to be in. While there are still many people who like the application, it has lost most of its relevance in film and television. NewTek has lost a lot of face after after key engineers defected and created Luxology, and its well-respected modeler, modo. At this point, NewTek needs to just release something to stay relevant. If the linear workflow hits the market by the end of the year, at least it will beat Autodesk’s Maya.
LightWave 10 will begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2010 in both 32- and 64-bit versions for Windows and Mac OS. Suggested retail price is $1,495 and upgrades will be US$695.
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Houdini 11 escapes from Side Effects Software
On Tuesday, Toronto's Side Effects software announced the 11th release of its high-end animation package Houdini. If you clicked to read about Harry Houdini's 11th escape, we're sorry—Houdini is not the household name that Max and LightWave are, but it has become a staple of high-end 3D in film and increasingly in game production.
Houdini's specialty is procedural effects, and the crumbling buildings of Killzone 2 and Spiderman 3's Birth of Sandman sequence are a couple examples of the power of this program, out of the box. This isn't a program that relies on plug-ins to make it useful—but it's always demanded input via scripting and other building block schemes, which gives it a steep learning curve. Version 11 adds more turn-key elements like a simpler one-size-fits-all material model and built-in Voronoi mesh destruction.
The full feature list for version 11 includes
- User Interface
- New, bezier-style connectors in the network editors
- New tool palette in the network editor offers a gallery of nodes which can be dragged into the network.
- Seamless integration of particles into dynamics networks and dynamics into geometry networks. This makes it easier to focus simulations on particular networks instead of simulating everything at the same time.
- Enhancements to bundles to strengthen light-linking workflow
- Z-up support
- Vertex Normals
- Support for vertex normals in OpenGL
- Network Rendering
- Network-distributed IPR
- HQueue for Windows and Mac
- Gold release of Houdini Cloud rendering tools
- Volumes
- Support for multi-resolution volumes with merging, feathering and surfacing tools
- VEX Volume Procedural
- Volume Quality setting in viewport
- Camera frustum volumes with tapering values.
- Higher quality viewport visualization of volumes
- Texturing
- Support for Disney's "Ptex" format
- Point clouds
- New point cloud surfacer with adaptive controls (generates a better surface than the existing particle fluid surfacer; more applicable to games)
- New point cloud functions
- Fluids
- New Fluid Shelf tools—target smoke, source from surface, resize voxel grid
- SPH particle fluid solver up to twice as fast
- Ability to rotate voxel grid to create non axis-aligned fluid container
- Fur
- More shelf tools for hair grooming
- Control over guide hair distribution for faster interactivity while grooming
- Combing direction can now be controlled by skin shaders
- No need for rest attribute
- Distributed wire solver output node
- Cloth
- Support for cloth pinching and layering
- Direct support for non-stretchy cloth (stretch/shear/bend constraints)
- Ability to simulate 0D cloth particles and to attach 1D cloth strings to 2D cloth surfaces.
- Distributed cloth solver output node
- Crowd Control
- New CHOPS (foreach, iksolver, objectchain, transformchain, vector)—for crowds and more
- New Python module that lets developers easily embed C++ code into python code
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Firefox 4 beta 2 adds CSS3 transitions and tab-pinning
Mozilla has announced the availability of the second Firefox 4 beta. This prerelease introduces several new features and brings further refinement to the open source Web browser's new user interface.
We took a close look at Firefox's visual refresh when we tested the first beta earlier this month. The tabs have been moved to the top, above the main toolbar and URL text box. The menubar is gone, replaced with a single menu button that is embedded in the top corner of the window. These changes move Firefox into conformance with the prevailing user interface paradigms that are already used by Opera and Chrome.
One of the major user interface additions in beta 2 is support for "application" tabs. When you convert a regular tab into an app tab by selecting the relevant option from the right-click context menu, the tab will shrink down to just the icon and move to the far left-hand side of the tab bar. When the implementation is complete, the app tabs will eventually persist across sessions. The idea seems similar to the tab-pinning feature that is available in Chrome.
Mozilla is planning to institute a more radical overhaul of tab management and overflow handling, as the organization demonstrated in its recent Tab Candy prototype. You can look forward to reading our full hands-on report about Tab Candy in the near future.
Mozilla is also working to improve the browser's rendering, scrolling and startup performance, and handling of emerging Web standards. CSS3 transitions and transformations are supported in the new beta. Users who want to test the new beta can download it from the Mozilla website. For more details, you can refer to the official Mozilla blog.
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AirSketch for iPad review: a realtime browser whiteboard
AirSketch is a new application from Qrayon LLC which, at first glance, seems to be just another basic whiteboard app. Upon closer examination, however, it turns out that the application has one important feature up its sleeve that sets it head and shoulders above the rest: drawing progress can be viewed in real time using any Web browser with rudimentary HTML5 support, as long as it's on the same local network.
The drawing tools in AirSketch are fairly rudimentary; there are five different writing implements to choose from, each with a fixed radius and opacity. These tools include a pencil, a pen, a marker, a paint brush, and a highlighter; the last two are somewhat transparent and respond to color overlay appropriately. There are eight color slots available that you can customize by double-tapping one of the default colors and then using a color picker to select the new color.
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Astronomy and particle physics race to replace Standard Model
If energy issues seem to be attracting the attention of a lot of physicists, the Large Hadron Collider seems to be drawing the attention of many of the rest of them, including people in fields like cosmology, which deals with items on the opposite end of the size scale. In turn, the people working on the LHC and other particle detectors are carefully paying attention to the latest astronomy results, hoping they'll put limits on the properties and identities of the zoo of theoretical particles that need to be considered.
There are two reasons for this newfound unity in physics. If cosmology has become a part of elementary particle physics, as Nobel Laureate George Smoot put it at the Lindau Meeting, it's because we've found that "it's a continuum from quantum mechanics to clumps of matter to galaxies." The properties of the tiniest particles should dictate what the Universe looks like, but all the cosmological data is telling us there must be something in addition to what we know about, dark matter particles that we haven't yet identified.
The second issue is that we know the Standard Model, which describes the properties of these particles, is wrong, but we're not sure what to replace it with yet, and it's entirely possible that astronomy and cosmology will provide key insights into this process.
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Privacy lawsuit targets 'Net giants over "zombie" cookies
A wide swath of the 'Net's top websites, including MTV, ESPN, MySpace, Hulu, ABC, NBC and Scribd, were sued in federal court Friday on the grounds they violated federal computer intrusion law by secretly using storage in Adobe's Flash player to recreate cookies deleted by users.At issue is technology from Quantcast, also targeted in the lawsuit. Quantcast created Flash cookies that track users across the Web, and used them to recreate traditional browser cookies that users deleted from their computers. These “zombie” cookies came to light last year, after researchers at UC Berkeley documented deleted browser cookies returning to life. Quantcast quickly fixed the issue, calling it an unintended consequence of trying to measure Web traffic accurately.
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Intel: the future of electronics is a hybrid silicon "laser device"
Intel announced today that it has reached a milestone in its efforts to replace copper wiring with light by creating a stable, 50Gbps link between two devices using fiber optics. Dubbed "silicon photonics," the chipmaker's innovations are the basis for a fiber optic interconnect that can be theoretically scaled to 1Tbps for device-to-device and wide-area networking connections. Those same innovations could one day be used to replace copper interconnects in electronic systems.One of the key innovations that drives this technology is research conducted in concert with UC Santa Barbara to developer hybrid silicon lasers. Using a unique process to bond indium phosphide to silicon along with carefully etched gratings in formed silicon waveguides, designers are able to create variable-wavelength solid state laser emitters by merely manipulating the etching pattern.
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Building a game out of cardboard and clay: The Dream Machine
No one will accuse The Dream Machine of looking generic. Created in part as a response to the seemingly endless stream of similar-looking games on the market, the developers at Cockroach Inc. built The Dream Machine to be something different: a stop-motion, episodic, point-and-click adventure.Ars spoke with Anders Gustafsson, one half of Cockroach, to learn just how to make a game out of cardboard and clay.
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A Home Theater Tale: convergence, divergence, and Solaris
Oh, the travails of anyone trying to wrap their mind around the current state of home theater options, whether for the purpose of actually putting together a home theater or of writing a Top 10 Home Theater Components list. The Ars audience's understanding of which gadgets are essential to their home theater setup expands well beyond the typical list of components to include laptops, smartphones, and NAS boxes running Solaris. But these days, even the typical components don't always do exactly what you might think they do—TVs and Blu-ray players are taking on media extender features, keyboards are looking more like remotes, and in general everything does more than one thing.When we asked the Ars audience to list what's in their home theater setup, we didn't know we'd get over 675 submissions. But even more surprising than the number and nature of the submissions was the fact that taken together, they tell a remarkable—almost epic—story of expectations, frustrations, hubris, and missed opportunities. But before we dive into the results and the bigger story they tell, first, a bit of history.
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iPhone not king pig: Verizon 3G phone users gobble most data
iPhone users may be notorious data hogs that have done nothing but pillage and plunder AT&T's network, but it's Verizon's smartphone users who consume the most data per month. That's according Validas (a company that optimizes wireless phone bills), which analyzed 20,000 wireless bills between January and May 2010 to find that Verizon smartphone users consume more data than iPhone users at a ratio of 1.25 to 1. According to Validas, the average data consumption for non-Blackberry Verizon smartphones was 421MB per month, compared to the 338MB per month consumed by AT&T iPhone users. 11 percent of Verizon subscribers use between 500MB and 1GB per month, while only 5.6 percent of iPhone users do the same. In fact, although many iPhone users complained when AT&T recently put a 2GB data cap on its subscribers, only 1.6 percent of iPhone users used that much bandwidth according to Validas' data, compared to 4 percent of Verizon smartphone users.
(The company said it excluded Blackberrys from its analysis thanks to RIM's "data compression techniques," saying that the devices "do not follow similar data consumption patterns to those of iPhones and other Smartphones.")
iPhones aside, Validas says that the number of smartphone users who pay for data packages increased over the last year from 42 percent to 53 percent of total wireless subscribers in the US. The mean number of megabytes (or is that the BIGGER EM-BEES?) downloaded per user went up as well, from 96.8MB to 145.8MB. Verizon's customers were responsible for the largest increase in mean data usage among the four major US carriers, with T-Mobile coming in second and AT&T coming in third. Sprint saw a decrease in mean data usage largely because it gained new data customers that consumed 50MB or less.
This kind of analysis doesn't take into account some of the efforts cell carriers are making to reduce their data traffic, such as AT&T's WiFi "hot zones" that are specifically targeted toward heavy 3G-using markets. In fact, Validas might even encourage users to look into such solutions, as it would help users cut down on data overages and the resulting fees.
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Payola! (or, How to undermine your own argument to Congress)
Music labels want Congress to force radio stations to pay up for the music they play, but radio stations argue that they actually provide necessary publicity for artists. Despite their public stances, music labels seem to agree—they just can't stop paying radio stations to promote certain songs. The practice, called "payola," is perfectly legal so long as it's disclosed. But admitting that editorial judgment went out the window and that song choice is being made based on who brings the largest briefcase of cash to the station's business office is not a recipe for listener loyalty, so the companies that engage in it try to keep payola secret.
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Gap between advertised, actual broadband speeds growing
Here's the good news for British Internet users: the average "actual fixed-line residential broadband speed" for most ISPs has jumped by an amazing 25 percent over the past year. That's according to the United Kingdom's telecom regulator Ofcom, which commissioned a tracking study on broadband rates conducted by the research company SamKnows.The speeds have leaped from 4.1Mbps to 5.2Mbps over the last twelve months, with many ISPs offering faster packages.
But there's also some troubling news. SamKnows found that the chasm between actual and advertised UK ISP performance is wide and getting wider, especially for copper-wire-based DSL services. Here are the newest stats:
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Class action lawsuit filed over "overheating" iPads
Three iPad users claim that because the iPad will shut itself off after remaining in direct sunlight for long enough, it fails to meet the promises Apple made about using the iPad as an e-book reader. The group has filed a federal class-action lawsuit in the Northern California district to "redress and end this pattern of unlawful conduct."When the iPad's operating temperature reaches a critical level, it will force itself to shut down and display a message warning the user to let the device cool down before trying use it again. This warning is the same that iPhones and iPod touches give before shutting down when they overheat, often after being left in direct sunlight.
The lawsuit alleges that the iPad "does not live up to reasonable consumer's expectations created by Apple insofar as the iPad overheats so quickly under common weather conditions." Apple lists the iPad's operating temperature as 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C), so it's not hard to see that using it out in the hot sun can quickly heat up the device over the maximum temperature.
The plaintiffs seem to take particular issue with Apple claiming that "reading on the iPad is just like reading a book." This claim is patently false, according to the lawsuit, because a real book can be used in "the sunlight or other normal environmental conditions" without shutting off.
Most consumer electronic devices can be damaged from overheating if used in direct sunlight for long periods of time; not all of them have the automatic shutoff capability that the iPad does. (Sadly, my boom box from 1986 didn't have an automatic shutoff, and my Quiet Riot tape melted all over the inside when I left it playing by the pool on a hot summer day.) However, during my hours-long marathon Plants vs Zombies sessions—both indoors and in the shade of an apartment deck on a sunny, 82° day—my iPad never became even warm to the touch.
The iPad may not work "just like a book" at the beach or out in the hot sun. Does that fact truly make Apple guilty of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive advertising, unfair business practices, breach of express or implied warranty, intentional misrepresentation, or unjust enrichment? The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status and asking for an injunction against Apple's "false" promises as well as "real" and punitive damages.
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Counterpoint: Intel and Apple clash by no means inevitable
The notion that Intel and Apple are on a collision course is interesting, but fundamentally flawed. Or at least, missing the point: even if they are, which is by no means certain, the chance of this "clash" having repercussions is slim.The theory put forward by our own Jon Stokes is essentially that Intel is muscling in on Apple's domain—smartphones—and that Intel's PC processors are increasingly unsuitable for Apple's demands due to Intel's use of CPU-integrated graphics processors. Together, these factors will drive Intel and Apple apart, forcing the system builder to go to AMD to source its processors.
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Microsoft Hohm goes wireless with Blue Line
Microsoft and Blue Line Innovations have announced a partnership designed to give consumers real-time information about their home energy use. Blue Line's popular energy tracking device combined with Microsoft Hohm can now give you information (in graph and chart form) about household energy use, its cost, and where you can save the most.
Here's how it works: the Blue Line PowerCost Monitor, which runs $249, attaches to a household power utility meter (no wiring is required, thus you don't need an electrician). The included WiFi Gateway device (separately goes for $159) wirelessly transmits energy use data to your Microsoft Hohm account.
The collaboration with Blue Line marks the first available device partnership for Microsoft Hohm, though if it does well, we can expect more. Ford's upcoming electric vehicles are already implementing the Microsoft Hohm home energy management application.
Ars has a PowerCost Monitor on its way, so look for our thoughts on the device once we've had a chance to put it through its paces.
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Students trust high Google search rankings too much
As seasoned Internet veterans know, just because a site shows up high on Google's search rankings doesn't mean it's the most credible source on a topic. That little bit of wisdom has apparently not made it all the way down to the current generation of college students, however, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Communication. According to the research out of Northwestern University, students barely care about who or what is showing up when they click on that top link—a behavior that undoubtedly affects their quality of research when doing schoolwork.
The researchers observed 102 college freshmen performing searches on a computer for specific information—usually with Google, but also making use of Yahoo, SparkNotes, MapQuest, Microsoft (we assume this means Bing), Wikipedia, AOL, and Facebook. Most students clicked on the first search result no matter what it was, and more than a quarter of respondents said explicitly that they chose it because it was the first result. "In some cases, the respondent regarded the search engine as the relevant entity for which to evaluate trustworthiness, rather than the Web site that contained the information," wrote researchers Eszter Hargittai, Lindsay Fullerton, Ericka Menchen-Trevino, and Kristin Yates Thomas.
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Comcast fastest fish in shallow US broadband pond
Who's the fastest ISP in the US? According to well-known Internet metrics firm Ookla (which runs the Speedtest.net and Pingtest.net websites), it's Comcast, with an average speed of 16.23Mbps.In the US, Comcast was followed by Charter and then by Cablevision; indeed, all of the top players are cable companies. Verizon comes in ninth, despite its FiOS deployments, in part due to its DSL lines.
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Of editing, humor, and content sharing: your feedback
Continuing my discussion of the recent reader survey results, I want to now turn to part one of a two-part consideration of the critiques you guys tossed our way. Some of the issues raised were new; some were as old as the hills. Today I want to address issues relating to copyediting, our use of humor, and content sharing. I'll start with that last item first. Read the comments on this post
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