10 Feb 10 Google Buzz — First Reactions

Google announced Buzz today, as we anticipated this morning. CNET has a workmanlike description of the social-networking service, which is integrated into gmail. CNET identifies a central obstacle Buzz will have to overcome to gain traction: "The problem, however, will be the increasing backlash Google is seeing from the general public over how much data the company already controls on their online habits." Buzz is being rolled out over the next few days so some people will see a Buzz folder in their gmail, but most won't yet (this Twitter post explains how Safari users can get an early glimpse). A blog posting up at O'Reilly Answers points out some of the distinguishing characteristics of Google Buzz — one interesting one being its ability to post an update either pubilcly or privately, at the user's option. This design choice places it between the public-by-default Twitter and the private-by-default Facebook. Lauren Weinstein sounds a note of caution about the inherent privacy risks of Google's method of filling out initial friend profiles by automatic friending.

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Tagi: social networking service, lauren weinstein, th morning, design choice, google, mdash, o reilly, rks, cnet, twitter, opti, backlash, obstacle, glimpse, safari, few days, peoe, profiles, blog

20 Jul 10 Anatomy of an Achievement

Whether they annoy you or fulfill your nerdy collection habit, achievements have spread across the gaming landscape and are here to stay. The Xbox Engineering blog recently posted a glimpse into the creation of the Xbox 360 achievement system, discussing how achievements work at a software level, and even showing a brief snippet of code. They also mention some of the decisions they struggled with while creating them: "We are proud of the consistency you find across all games. You have one friends list, every game supports voice chat, etc. But we also like to give game designers room to come up with new and interesting ways to entertain. That trade-off was at the heart of the original decision we made to not give any indication that a new achievement had been awarded. Some people argued that gamers wouldn't want toast popping up in the heat of battle and that game designers would want to use their own visual style to present achievements. Others argued for consistency and for reducing the work required of game developers. In the end we added the notification popup and its happy beep, which turned out to be the right decision, but for a long time it was anything but obvious."

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Tagi: gaming landscape, game designers, game developers, software level, heat of battle, xbox 360, decis, deci, voice chat, snippet, beep, glimpse, anatomy, habit, peoe, creati, xbox, lt, heart, blog

02 Aug 10 A Geographical Glimpse at Verizon's LTE Rollout

The website Intomobile has gotten its hands on some additional rollout details for Verizon's impending LTE network. They're still a little incomplete, but they're nevertheless more than just the simple timeline information that's been tossed around as of late.
Tagi: veriz, intomobile, glimpse, timeline, verizon