Hey Facebook Friends, Read this!

The title is a little gratuitous, but I just added a Facebook application (my RSS) that publishes this blog's RSS feed to my Facebook profile.

The ability to create applications is both amazing and scary at the same time. It's amazing because at it's finest, it allows this expandable usability. Applications like birthday reminders, graffiti walls, and my RSS really let Facebook shine as a website that must be used daily. This coupled with Facebook's built in functionality like stories and poking, make it a clear MySpace wrecking creation.

The scary bits are the applications that are nothing more then attempts to emulate the failed charm that MySpace has. There's about fifty different ways to play "tag" with someone, everything from zombies to food fights. These applications are nothing more then cheap attempts by the authors to create an application that generates the most users. This isn't to say that the users are just as bad. How many methods are needed to assure your internet popularity?

The icing on the cake is the "Top Friends" application, which emulates MySpace's top friends. The catch? Users won't show on your top friends unless they also install the app and confirm your top friend invite.


Hopefully once the shiny new user application function loses it's hot new fad status and users start removing the nonsense, we'll see authors actually trying to create new, creative, and useful items for Facebook users to incorporate into their profiles.

But for now, tag, you're in my zombie vampire foodfight. At me as a top friend, spread the social virus, and keep reading this blog through Facebook.

Steam update and new publisher signs up

If you like Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Titan Quest or Supreme Commander you should be as ecstatic as I am that THQ has signed up to be a part of Steam. Developer Relic Entertainment has already done a fine job redefining the RTS genre and also doing away with one of the most annoying aspects of PC gaming: having to put the game's disk in your computer in order to play.

It seems only natural then to go on Steam, where all the games do not require a CD to play, since they are registered to a Steam account which downloads your games straight onto your computer. On top of that, those games can be installed quickly onto any computer with steam as long as you log in.

In other older news, Steam is getting ready to compete against Microsoft Live Arcade by releasing an update that features community functionality which will allow user accounts to create profiles, join groups, and review other gamers that they've played with. This builds out the existing features of being able to add friends and messaging them while in a game.

With 13 million registered users already on Steam, I can only hope that this will encourage even more big name publishers to sign up. The idea of a unified central location for gaming and connecting to users on a multitude of games is exciting.

Now to convince EA to drop EA Link, which supports a surprising unimpressive amount of titles, and join the Steam nation.

What's going on PlayStation 3?

I've been following the PlayStation 3 for some time. If you've read my previous blogs, I've already chastised Sony for trying to monopolize on formats with Blu-Ray, and really, the success of Blu-Ray goes hand and hand with the success of the PlayStation 3.

Sony has recently lowered the price of the PS3 by one hundred dollars, I'm assuming to rekindle some interest. I believe this YouTube video summarizes how a majority of the people feel about Sony at this point:



And plus, game makers are still not reluctant to give up on the dominant PlayStation 2. There are new games coming out, plus it's been stated that game developers feel like the PS2 is still viable for another year or two.

What are you going to do, Sony?