While prevailing sentiment seemed to be that Google Wave is all but finished as a standalone product, Google has made a pair of big announcements about the service. Google’s Alex North has published a blog post which seems to indicate that something different is going on.
Wave is not so much dead, as preparing to enter the second chapter of its saga. To that end, Google will be open sourcing additional code (more than 200,000 lines were already open). That doesn’t mean the entire project is going OSS as you may have read elsewhere. Think of the Chromium/Chrome model — while the vast majority is open, there are certain things which Google can’t (codecs, for example) and others they simply don’t make part of the open source code.
They’re also working on delivering Wave-in-a-box, which would include a server and web client that developers and administrators could self-deploy and manage. Heck, maybe you’ll even be able to slide a Google Collaboration box into your rackmount underneath that fancy search appliance.
Moral: don’t count Wave out just yet. It’s back for round two, and its code will no doubt be cropping up in other Google apps soon enough.
There are a total of 630 products being shown at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, nearly 40 percent more than the 456 products shown last year. However, while there’s a lot more on show, it’s surprising to see which genres are dwindling down. For example, there are half as many RPGs this year as last (dropping from 52 to 26). Japanese publishers are showing significantly fewer sports and puzzle games this year, as well.
On the upside, there’s an increase in shooters (from 10 to 19) and a shocking number of peripherals: 157. Certainly, the release of PlayStation Move, Kinect and the upcoming 3DS must have something to do with that figure!
Most exciting of all is the mysterious “Other” category, which has dramatically increased from 103 to 226. Does this mean we’ll see more innovative, genre-bending titles out of this year’s TGS? Or, will it mean we’re going to see a lot more Square Enix perfumes? See the full rundown of genres for this year versus last after the break.
According to Apple’s UK website, iOS 4.1 will hit on Wednesday, September 8th. The US website still displays the non-commital “Coming Soon” message, so we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled. We’re going to go ahead and guess that all those shiny new iPods will come to retail that day too… but don’t hold us to that one. Like we said, it’s only a guess.
If you’re constantly forgetting to log out of Facebook when you use other people’s computers or phones, Facebook’s new remote logout feature is right up your alley. Under Account Settings (specifically, the Account Security section), you can now see a list of places where you’re currently logged in, along with some info to help you determine whether each session is legitimate or unauthorized. And, of course, you also have the option to log any of those sessions out.
Based on the approximate location (determined via IP address), the time the session started, and the browser and OS, you should be able to tell whether you just forgot to log out at work, or whether someone else has accessed your account. You can also sign up to be alerted via email or text when someone tries to log in from a device that you haven’t registered with Facebook.
The service isn’t available for everyone yet, but it’s rolling out now, and it should reach you soon if you don’t already have it.
While demoing Retro City Rampage, one of the PAX 10, its creator Brian Provinciano revealed to Joystiq that the game would likely launch in December of this year. Up until now, all we had was a tentative Q4 2010 window — Provinciano nailed the last month of the year as being an optimal time to subject the world to his experiment at seeing how many inside jokes he could fit into a single game.
WiiWare is currently the only platform, though Provinciano noted that he was currently “in talks” with Microsoft on bringing the game to XBLA. PSN was also on the table, he offered. A PC version would be out of the cards for “at least a year.”
Provinciano began the game as Project Grand Theftendo, where he sought to create an 8-bit version of Grand Theft Auto 3 that ran on the NES.
Last week we gave the Apple loyalists in attendance a chance to rip and rag the iPhone 4, and this time around we’re doing the same for Motorola’s best frienemies. The Droid X is without question the largest Droid in the family today, and calling it a showstopper on Verizon would probably be understating things. Now that it’s been on the market a few months, we’re curious to know how you early adopters like (or dislike) it. Did the massive screen end up being too large for comfort? Anything you’d tweak software-wise? How’s the VZW service been? Might your world change if Android 2.2 ever hits in official fashion? Go on and let us know how you’d alter this behemoth down in comments below — but give it some real thought first, cool? Cool.
I’ve previously covered Eraser for deleting files securely. Eraser stayed installed on my system for a while, and I must say that, eventually, I found it annoying. It autostarted on boot and despite my attempts to keep it from doing so, it persisted.
Just the other day, I finally uninstalled Eraser — and today, I found FileKiller. It’s a tiny (27KB), open source, portable GUI utility for doing the same thing.
FileKiller is a single window. It doesn’t support drag-and-drop and won’t add any context menu entries, but it gets the job done. You add files using the Select Files button, and then you click the red-captioned KILL Files on Grid button (way to go on the drama there). The application then BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERS all of those files by overwriting them with random data, blank characters, or specific ASCII characters for however many times you wish (default is five iterations).
I wish I could drag files onto the list or the program’s icon (to add them to the list), but besides this minor irritation, FileKiller seems like a low friction way to securely remove unwanted files.
We got a first look at Obsidian’s upcoming third Dungeon Siege title back at E3 — and even caught a glimpse of its CGI teaser shortly thereafter — but, up until now, we hadn’t been able to show it to you in motion. Y’know, actual gameplay. That’s just what you’ll find after the break.
As for the video’s content, we’re compelled to relay that it looks awfully JRPG-influenced to us, in addition to being extremely lush and heavy on the flowing bits of fabric on characters’ costumes. Other than that, well, have you seen Torchlight or Diablo? If the answer’s “yes,” you’ve got a good idea of what to expect.
Another day, another CSS3 playground. Are you excited yet? Wait for it – this one has wood paneling for a background! (That’s classy!) Even though it’s not exactly the first tool of its kind (or the second, … or the tenth), CSS 3.0 Makeris pretty handy and comprehensive, so I decided it was worth covering. Let me quickly sum it up:
I like:
That it provides clear compatibility information for Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome (no IE, of course). You can see exactly which browser versions support your bleeding-edge CSS.
That it’s visual and real-time.
That it provides code that works across as many browsers as possible, including browser-specific syntax (think -moz-border-radius for Firefox).
The wood paneling! It makes me feel like I’m in a sauna.
I don’t like:
That it won’t let you set all parameters at once. After altering the style of a
you can change the border radius — but upon clicking the gradient tab, your change is undone. It’s pretty irritating and almost relegates this to “toy” status.
The RIAA may have given up on lawsuits targeting P2P users, but other companies have stepped into their shoes. There are many ways to detect P2P users and collect evidence of their behaviors for use in lawsuits. The simplest way needs nothing more than a BitTorrent client.
We’ve covered some of the more exotic ways people can be tracked or monitored in the past (including some that don’t work) but the lawsuits, abandoned by the record industry as bad for business, have been adopted by a group of lawyers who don’t let a little hypocrisy stand in their way.
There’s a lot of misinformation about which companies and agencies can do what, and how they do it. People claim industry groups or random companies can search and send out letters at random, whereas the reality is the investigator must be authorized or they could be deemed guilty of copyright infringement themselves.
There’s also a lot of confusion about exactly how evidence is collected, with people sometimes believing that it can only be collected from corporate networks, or that private trackers are safe because investigators can’t share and so would be banned for their ratio. Much of this is untrue and these beliefs can make it easier to collect evidence.
The easiest way of all is to simply collect information from trackers. It’s an easy and quick way to do it, although as was revealed 2 years ago, it’s often quite inaccurate.
The next simplest way, which provides lots of data, is just to join a swarm and monitor. Some people believe that clients doing this will stand out, as modified clients will behave differently. The reality is that clients don’t have to be monitored at all.
Researcher Andrew Norton produced this video explaining how a vanilla µTorrent client can be used to identify and log peers without any modification or abnormal behavior.
The raw data shown in the video – all that’s needed for a lawsuit or allegation under most 3-strikes laws – is nothing more than basic communication data. However, it’s critical to note that this data, while it is evidence of activity, is NOT evidence of infringement in many cases.
We can’t testify that this is the method used by any company – they’re notoriously tight-lipped about their methods – but it’s quite possible that it’s being used and sold on as a very high priced service to customers. Selling simple and not always accurate or effective methods for thousands of dollars a week was revealed to be a key method of MediaDefender. Anyone reading this and intending to hire such companies would be advised to ask for a demonstration of their detection system first-hand.
It should, however, come as yet another wakeup call to those using blocklist-based software. Without any way to identify a client using this method, there’s no way to add its IP to the list. In fact, the public availability of block-list contents means it’s extremely easy to avoid being on them.
On the other hand VPNs, proxies and seedboxes will provide some protection, but the only real solution is to press for the peer-review of anti-P2P companies and their methods, but that doesn’t look like it will come any time soon.
