^day8

As i have mentioned before my topic for the exam will be video games with a hint of social networking and how the two converge and other the past week or so i have been delaying making an update as too gather information on the subject and in particular Playstation's take on this, 'Playstation Home'. Now i know that i have already made a post on 'Home' agessss ago (how the hell do i stop this hyperlink?!

There we go... any way, yeah i had intended for this update to be based on 'Home' as it is like social networking in a virtual literal sense as explained in that previous article, touted as 'gaming 3.0', but thanks to the punctual guys at 'Sony' there are still very little details about 'Home' to update on and just to add salt into hte proverbial wound, it was due for release in April 2009, you know, this month, the one thats almost finished. So 'Sony' have announced that they are delaying 'Home' again! If this is 'Sony' trying to do a 'Blair Witch' and delaying to create more hype, it is not succeeding. 'Sony' have been having 'closed Beta' testing on 'Home' for some time now (a beta is basically like a glorified demo on a game currently in development and/or nearing its release) we still don't seem to be any closer to having it on our XMB's.

Gamers are growing impatient as news on Home is dwindling into non-existence, and any news is likely to be further delays, so is 'Home' going to be too little too late? Will i never be able to play virtual bowling with avatars of people ive never meet before? As the magic 8-ball would say, 'Not likely'.
To be honest i don't particularly care too much for 'Home', i only use it as a counter to 360 vs PS3 arguements as long as my console still has games im happy, throw in an in game XMB and ill be even happier. But until then i guess ill just have to stick with reality... sigh.

As games consoles are adopting social networking, social networking are also adopting gaming. Social networking sites such as 'FaceBook' and 'MySpace' boast new 'application' features that allow their users to add applications to their pages that can range from games such as poker to snooker and paly with their friends on them over web 2.0. For example 'MySpace' has just announced the public launch of its "applications gallery" at Web 2.0. Central to those applications will be games. It's hardly 'Call of Duty' but its a start. I guess.

Read more here.

Speaking of 'facebook', i know that theres no such thing as bad publicity, but i was reading 'The News of the World' today and came across a section headlines 'Disgracebook', "haha, i see what they did there" i thought to my self, only to be disgusted to the articles premise. A section on a social networking website known as 'onemodelplace' or some other largely unoriginal name, where models, agents and photographers have profiles on this global website. Now your all probably think, "what the crap is wrong with that?" Well theres photos of girls as young as 11 who have uploaded pretty tasteless photos of themselves on it and posted details on how they long to work as glamour models. And ANYONE could just set up a fake login name etc and look through these profiles. Warning lights any one? Cos that is just WRONG!

It only further highlights the dangers and downsides of social networking.

If only there were some kind of police for this kind of thing...

In time.

- Alex x