WipEout? SSD? MotorStorm? Maybe...

Sony tech wizard Simon Benson has confirmed the first batch of 3D games for PlayStation 3 will be available this summer.

Speaking to Eurogamer at the Game Developers Conference, Benson said, "Basically, we're launching our TV range around June, I think, so it should be somewhere around then."

During his GDC session, Benson showed demos of WipEout HD, Super Stardust and MotorStorm: Pacific Rift. When asked if these games will be playable in 3D this summer, he replied, "I don't know if we've formally announced what we're doing for launch. But there is certainly going to be a good range of content - there probably won't be any unusual surprises, let's say."a

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The GigaOM crew is out in full force at this year’s South by Southwest, reporting on all that is nearest and dearest to our readers’ hearts.

Need help figuring out what to do and who or what to see? This 10-point cheat sheet will help you navigate everything from the sessions to the parties to the weather. Austin is filled with tech startups, so get away from the maddening crowds and check out some of them on their home turf. And since the one must-have accessory for SXSW attendees is a smartphone, here’s a way to use it to pay for your bar tab.

Speaking of mobile, the stress on AT&T’s network last year rendered many a SXSW 2009 attendee’s phone useless, so this year, Ma Bell wasn’t taking any chances. Word on the Texas city’s streets is that it’s paying off.

But the mobile focus this year is centered around two things: device-wise, it’s all about the iPad; category-wise, it’s location-based services. Foursquare, which launched at last year’s SXSW, is definitely not the only game in town.

And for those of you that couldn’t make it to Austin, here’s how you can keep up with all the activities — yes, even the parties! — online.

The title of this post is the subtitle of an article in Game Developer (March 2010) by Matthew S. Burns about the production methods used by various leading game developers. (I have no idea why I’ve started receiving copies of this magazine for software engineers in the video game industry, which I’m enjoying despite — because — it’s over my head.) According to the article, Valve — the source of some of the greatest games ever, including Half-life, Portal, and Left4Dead — “works in a cooperative, adaptable way that is difficult to explain to people who are used to the top-down, hierarchical management at most other large game developers.” Valve trusts its employees to make good decisions, but it is not a free-for-all. Decisions are made in consultation with others (“relevant parties”) because, as Erik Johnson says, “…we know you’re going to be wrong more often than if you made decisions together.” In addition, what Matthew calls “a kind of decision market” develops because people who design a system also build it, so you “‘vote’ by spending time on the features most important” to you. Vote with your code.

Valve also means in making incremental decisions. Week by week. But what does that do to long-term planning? Robin Walker says that one of the ways she (he?) judges how far they are from shipping by “how may pages of notes I’m taking from each session.” That means Valve “can’t plan more than three months out,” but planning out further than that increases the chances of being wrong.

Interesting approach. Interesting article. Great games.

It's SXSW weekend so you may be pretty burnt out on conferences - or just sick and tired of hearing about them - but if you're in New York City this week, don't miss what's sure to be a profound and fascinating A Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus

On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.
The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

• Social Networking World Forum
• Enterprise social media
• Social TV World Forum
• Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

• Full workshop program within exhibition area
• Evening networking reception
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Free pass for exhibition only

Search Engine Strategies New York Conference & Expo

Go beyond search at Search Engine Strategies New York. Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more.Book your pass today. Enter RWW15 to save 15% off the registration. Sessions include:

• Digital Asset Optimization
• Deep Dive Into Analytics
• Augmented Reality: It's a Brave New World
• Bringing SEO In-House: The Pros and Cons
• Advanced B2B Search Marketing
• Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

S.F. Beta 4.0

After a long winter's hiatus, S.F. Beta is back, for its forth year straight! Join hundreds of founders, investors, developers, and technologists for a lively evening of demos, drinks, conversation, and new connections. Early bird tickets are available, and they're going fast. Register now for discounted admission. As always, we feature startup demos all night. This time around, the theme is Search & Discovery. If you're building the next Google (or the next Google acquisition), we want you here! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info.

Freemium Summit

The first Freemium Summit is a one day event focused on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation impacting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners.

Confirmed Speakers: Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress); Matt Brezina, Xobni; Aaron Levie, Box.net; Phil Libin, Evernote; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Drew Houston, Dropbox; Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt; Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp; Lance Walley, Chargify; Isaac Hall, Recurly; and Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures.

Social Fresh Portland

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

ConnectNow

TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh).

The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010.

For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

ConnectNow

ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au.

PubCon South

PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here.

Under the Radar: Cloud

Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com.

FutureMidwest

FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow.

Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here.

Social Fresh St. Louis

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

DrupalCon

DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts.

Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management.

Future of Money and Technology Summit

The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more.

Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration.

ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010

The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference.

An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences.

We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks.

• 
  
• Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform?
• 
  
• Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel?
• 
  
• Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices.
• 
  
• Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices.
• 
  
• Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data.
• 
  
• Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR.
• 
  
• Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian.
• 
  

Click here to register now, or to become a sponsor, or to help shape the conference.

FinovateSpring

FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day.

Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available.

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off.

25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado

Glue

Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world.

ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12".

Corporate Social Media Summit

The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring:

• Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully
• 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),
• Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business
• A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media

Cloud Computing World Forum

The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and(...)

Gallery: GDC 2010 Microtalks

Continue reading GDC 2010 Microtalks: Big ideas, tiny speeches

GDC 2010 Microtalks: Big ideas, tiny speeches originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: GDC 2010 Microtalks

Continue reading GDC 2010 Microtalks: Big ideas, tiny speeches

GDC 2010 Microtalks: Big ideas, tiny speeches originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Public Anger continues to spread following the incident which saw governor of Hubei province Li Hongzhong [de] snatch a recording device out of the hands reporter Liu Jie in between sessions at the ongoing Lianghui.

Taking their cue from a speech from Prime Minister Wen Jiabao leading up to the Lunar New Year about people's need for greater dignity and another last week calling for greater public supervision of the government, journalists, academics and others from the country have launched a petition demanding Li Hongzhong's resignation.

This follows growing, since rejected, demand since the incident for an apology from Li, perhaps most notably in a March 8 editorial (now harmonious) from Caijing magazine, ‘Would Governor Li please apologize?”. Sophie Beach at China Digital Times has a thorough roundup of the various facets to the story so far.

“This ‘Two Sessions’ recorder is stealing-, grabbing- and governor-proof, perfect for you female reporters...”

The petition was launched Saturday morning with a number of prominent names and over 200 signatories in total by the latest tally; the number keeps growing on a Google Buzz thread, where an English translation of the petition has appeared, reading in part:

In their many weighty opinions on this matter, those from both the news and academic worlds speak now with the same voice, having found, in the shared shame this incident has brought upon them, the resolve to unite in condemning the terrific impact the Li Hongzhong incident has had. Regardless of your medium, be that newspaper, magazine, television, radio or microblog, or be you journalist from north or south, please do not hesitate in your resolve to continue reporting this story as it develops, as this is a battle for all of our rights.

We look to news workers to raise your arms and voice your concerns, at the same time that we welcome citizens to second the points made within this petition. Our tolerance has run its length and extends no further. People need to be reminded that journalists still exist in this world, as well as to be reminded what being a journalist means; more importantly, people need to know that their civil rights still belong to them and them alone. Having witnessed senior official Li's rage, the time has now come for him to see and hear the fury of the news media profession and how far that fury has now spread.

Beijing-based writer, blogger, publisher and Twitter fiend Mo Zhixu offers a bit more perspective on the backlash against Li:

12:38 AM Mar 12th 我觉得å§ï¼Œçœé•¿æŠ¢ç¬”事件在推特上也ä¸è¦å¤ªè¿½ç©¶äº†ï¼Œè¯´åˆ°åº•è¿™äº‹æƒ…跟新闻自由也没多大关系，ä¸è¿‡æ˜¯åœ°æ–¹å¤§å‘˜è—视了一哈中å¤@媒体æƒå¨ï¼Œå¦‚果两会自由采è@¿ï¼ŒæŠ¢ç¬”事件æ‰ä¸Žè‡ªç”±è¨€è@ºæœ‰å…³å§

12:39 AM Mar 12th 没日人民报的è¯ä»¶ï¼Œè¿žè¢«æŠ¢çš„资格都没有，所以，这事件æå‡åˆ°æ–°é—»è‡ªç”±çš„高度，我看也ä¸é è°±

1:04 AM Mar 12th 我并没有说ä¸åº”该关注抢笔事件，我åªæ˜¯å¼ºè°ƒï¼Œè¿™äº‹æƒ…跟新闻自由关系ä¸å¤§ã€‚通过掩盖当下媒体的æƒåŠ›å±žæ€§ï¼Œå°†è¿™ä¸ªäº‹ä»¶åŒ…装æˆæ–°é—»è‡ªç”±äº‹ä»¶ï¼Œåœ¨æˆ‘看æ¥æ˜¯ä¸æˆç«‹çš„

Startup’s leaders will speak at sessions on app porting and mobile “app-vertising;” company’s breakthrough ShopSavvy app a finalist at Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator event. (PRWeb Mar 13, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/Big_in_Japan_ShopSavvy/SXSW_Interactive/prweb3725504.htm

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 retains and builds upon the tongue-in-cheek destructive action of the original.  In spite of the themes, it is difficult to not play through a session of this action game without an accompanying cheesy grin.

Jeff Downs

I do not generally blog about events that are not related to ACT 3 or I would be able to do nothing but promote event. In this case I am announcing an event because I plan to attend and believe it is something that is so consistent with the vision I have for “equipping leaders for unity in Christ’s mission” that I want everyone, at least in the Chicago area, to be aware of this valuable training opportunity. I refer to: Creating and Weathering the Storm: Hope for Church Leadership.

This is an equipping event sponsored by the Synod of Mid-America and the Classis of Chicago of the Reformed Church in America.  Leadership teams will learn what it means to create a storm – why that is good – and to weather it.  Through it all there is hope for leadership!  This title seemed appropriate to the planning team as the members talked about the content being planned for leadership groups from congregations within the regional synod.

Jim Herrington and Trisha Taylor will be leading church leadership groups around the topics of:

   Creating continuing change, keeping your cool

            Calm and cool when it all goes crazy

The sessions will be designed for congregation leadership groups to be better leaders within their congregations.  Leaders will be able to take away information and resources to continue the process after the sessions.  This can lead to new vision and vitality within churches – and hope for the church leadership!

Jim and Trisha are known to several within our regional synod as they are working extensively and intentionally with five churches in a momentum mobilization revitalization process within those congregations.  They will share a healthy taste of this work with all those that participate in the Friday evening and Saturday morning event. 

One pastor who is involved in this revitalization process said “We need to start living as Jesus calls his followers to live. [This] process is helping us do that in new ways that call us to deeper levels of authenticity and integrity – and that lead to healing and new life through Jesus Christ.”  The event will be most valuable if several leaders from each church can attend – and great if most of the church’s leadership is there.  Creating and Weathering the Storm is designed for pastors, elders, deacons, staff, and all other key leaders in our congregations. 

Here are some of the specifics:

• Invitation is for all church leadership of congregations within the Synod of Mid-America
• Dates:  Friday evening, April 30, 2010 and Saturday morning, May 1, 2010
• Location:  Christ Community Church, 13400 Bell Road, Lemont, IL 60439
• Cost: $10 per person if registered by April 1 - $15 per person after April 1
• Online registration available
• More information at http://storm.msyn.org

Mark Cuban and Avner Ronen met in person for the first time just before their Pay TV vs. Internet debate here at South by Southwest Interactive—about 20 minutes before their session was interrupted by a fire alarm. But they argue like a married couple that’s been together for 20 years, complete with sharp barbs. That’s because the debate isn’t new: they started that drill online a year ago and neither has budged as best I can tell—if anything, their attitudes are more entrenched. HD Net founder Cuban believes in subscription TV and sees Ronen, the CEO of Boxee, as representing free-only; Ronen believes TV over the internet is the present—and the future but a la carte. He’s not anti-pay per se—Boxee is working on a pay offering—but anti-establishment TV. Cuban doesn’t see an internet TV business model that works yet.

“If you’re counting on the internet replacing cable, you’re crazy,” says Cuban; Ronen posits it as generational—if you’‘re 50 with HD, you’re comfortable the way things are; if you’re 23 and getting your first apartment, you see things differently. Cuban doesn’t see the same possibility of making money from TV online; he’d rather get small amounts—when he can—from multichannel distributors.

We're seeing a lot more discussion on the topic of single-sign on for SaaS environments. The issue is becoming more important as security emerges as a top concern for companies considering making the move to cloud-based environments.

OneLogin is a new company that offers single sign-on, cloud-based service that allows for small and mid-sized companies to enjoy the same level of security as large enterprise companies.

Sponsor

Most small companies do not deploy security methods that employ SAML, (Security Assertion Markup Language) an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. It's expensive to deploy. Open-source tools do exist but require someone to understand how it works and deployed in a work environment.

OneLogin configures a browser to give the experience of a single sign in. It bypasses the traditional user name/password system, which often has gaping security holes.

To us, this is a big reason why the new breed of SaaS services are not taken seriously by security conscious enterprise customers. The security can not be trusted.

With OneLogin, a person would be directed to a login page that would automatically fill-in the information for the person. The person is provided their own OpenID account. OneLogin knows the person's session so no second authentication is required.

OneLogin's infrastructure sits in the cloud, which means that a customer does not have to maintain dedicated servers and people to keep the system working.

There is no install. Rackspace hosts the web server and the database.

Two-factor authentication is available. People may use a Yubi key, which used a USB port to plug in and activate a random number authorization. People may also soon be able to use Verisign's VIP service that gives a mobile device the capability to generate a new password every 30 sec. You then input the number within 30 seconds to receive permission.

The OneLogin service works on most SaaS services, including Google Apps. There is a free service. For SAML capabilities, the cost is $8 per user per month.

Mark Cuban and Avner Ronen met in person for the first time just before their Pay TV vs. Internet debate here at South by Southwest Interactive—about 20 minutes before their session was interrupted by a fire alarm. But they argue like a married couple that’s been together for 20 years, complete with sharp barbs. That’s because the debate isn’t new: they started that drill online a year ago and neither has budged as best I can tell—if anything, their attitudes are more entrenched. HD Net founder Cuban believes in subscription TV and sees Ronen, the CEO of Boxee, as representing free-only; Ronen believes TV over the internet is the present—and the future but a la carte. He’s not anti-pay per se—Boxee is working on a pay offering—but anti-establishment TV. Cuban doesn’t see an internet TV business model that works yet.

“If you’re counting on the internet replacing cable, you’re crazy,” says Cuban; Ronen posits it as generational—if you’‘re 50 with HD, you’re comfortable the way things are; if you’re 23 and getting your first apartment, you see things differently. Cuban doesn’t see the same possibility of making money from TV online; he’d rather get small amounts—when he can—from multichannel distributors.

Reckons it's a great time to be in games.

Speaking at the Game Developers Conference, Sid Meier has declared that 2011 is "the year of Civilization".

He made the statement during the Q&A session which followed his keynote speech. When asked what he's looking forward to playing this year Meier said, "In the immediate future I think this is the year of Civlization.

"But looking further out, there's so much energy and dynamism in this industry... Every day there's something new, and that's a big part of being excited about being in games," he added.

Read more...

The GDC's popular Microtalks session allows 10 game industry people to discuss a topic of their choice for 5 minutes. We present here the highlights of three of those talks, from Foundation 9's Jane Pinckard, writer and consultant Margaret Robertson, and Jesse Schell, instructor of entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon. Jane Pinckard Pinckard decided to tackle the subject of romantic love in games. "When we design software we've got really good about asking the question ...

A founding father of British games journalism for his time at Zzap 64 and now creative director at Denki, Gary Penn argued during GDC’s early-morning Microtalks session that while there are more ways to play than ever, “no matter who plays with whom and how, we always need to think like [both] makers and players; to do unto others as we would have them do to unto us.”

read more

Scalable Social Games, Robert Zubek of Zynga (liveblog)

Social games interesting from an engineering point of view sinc ethey live at the intersection of games and web. We spend time thinking about making games fun, making players want to come back. We know those engineering challenges, but the web introduces its own set, especially around users arriving somewhat unpredictably, effects where huge populations come in suddenly. SNSes are a great example of this, with spreading network effects and unpredictable traffi fluctuations.

At Zynga we have 65m daily players, 225m monthly. And usage can vary drastically — Roller Coaster Kingdom gained 1m DAUs in one weekend going from 700k to 1.7m. Another example, Fishville grow from 0 to 6m DAUs in one week. Huge scalability challenges. And finally, Farmville grew 25m DAUs in five months. The cliff is not as steep but the order of magnitude difference adds its own challenge.

Talk outline: Introducing game developers to best practices for web development. Maybe you come from consoles or mobile or whatever, the web world introduces its own set of challenges and also a whole set of solutions that are already developed that we steal, or, uh, learn from. If you are alreayd an experiened web developer, you may know this stuff already.

2 server approaches and two client approaches. So you get three major types.

1. Web server stack + HTML, Mafia Wars, Vampires, et
2. Web server stack + Flash, Farmville, Fishwville, Cafe world
3. Web + MMO stack + Flash, yoVille, Zynga Poker, Roller Coaster Kingdom

Web stack based on LAMP, logic in PHP, HTTP Comms. Very well understood protocol, limitations well known.

Mixed stack has game logic in MMO server such as Java, web stack for everything else. When web stack limitations are preventing the game development. Use web for the SNS pieces.

Fishville:

DB servers
–> web stack
Cache and queue servers

yoVille:

DB    >    MMO
Cache    >    Web & CDN

Why web stack? HTTP is very scalable, very short lived requests, scales very well, and easy to load balance. Each request is atomic. Stateless, easy to add more servers. But limitations esp for games: server-initiated actions (NPCs running around, if you come to lose, the monster reacts…) are hard to do over HTTP, since it is request/response. There are some tricks, like the long poll, but fundamentally this makes it harder to scale. Load balancers will get unhappy with you, you can saturate a connection.

The other thing is storing state between requests. This is more particular to game dev than web. Say you areplaying Farmville and collecting apples. You do a bunch of actions which result in many different requests to the servers, but we want to make sure that only the first click gives you an apple, so you cannot click a dozen times on one tree. Whih means stored state and validation. If you had clients talking to many web servers, you cannot use the DB< the poor thing will fall over. If we can guaratee that the client only talks to one web server, you can store it there, and save to db later. But this is tricky to do. Ensuring that people are no allowed to break session affinity even in the presence of maliious clients and browsers… hard.

So instead, you can wrap th DB servers in a caching layer that is faster that does not hit the DB all the time, such as Network Attached Caching. This works much better.

MMO servers… minimally MMO. Persistent socket connection per lient, live game support such as chat and server side push. Keeps game state in memory. We know when a player logs in and load from DB then… session affinity by default. Very different from web! We can’t do the easy load balancing like on web.

Why do them? They are harder to scale out because of load balaning. But you get stuff like the server side push, live events, lots of game state.

Diagram:

DB servers, maybe less caching wrapping it — talks to both web server and MMO server, then those both talk to client.

On the client side, things are simpler.

Flash allows high prodution quality games, game logic on client, can keep open socket. You can talk any protocol you want.

HTML+AJAX  the game is “just” a web page, minimal system reqs, and limited graphics.

SNS integration. “Easy” but not relate dto scaling. Call the host network to get friends, etc. You do run into lateny and scaling problems, as you grow larger you need to build your infrastructure so it can support gradeful performane degradation in the face of network issues. Networks provide REST APIs and sometimes client libraries.

Architectures:

Data is shared across all three of these: database, cache, etc.

Part II: Scaling solutions

aka not blowing up as you grow.

Two approaches: scaling up or scaling out.

up means that as you hit processor or IO limits, you get a better box.
out means that you add more boxes

The difference is largely architectural. When scaling up, you do not need to change code or design. But to scale out you need an architecture that works that way. Zynga chooses scaling out, huge win for us. At some point you cannot get a box big enough fast enough. Must easier to add small boxes, but you need the app to have architectural support for it.

Rollercoaster Kingdom gained a lot of players quickly. We started with one database, 500k DAUs in a week. Bottlenecked. Short term scaled up but switched to scaling out next.

Databases, very exciting. The first to fall over. Several ways to scale them. Terms unique to mySQL here but concepts the same for other systems:

Everyone starts out with one database, which is great. But you need to keep track of two things -  the limit on queries per second, do benchmarking using standard tools like SuperSmack. You want to know your q/s ceiling, and beyon that how will it perform. There are optimizations you can use to move it. And two, you need to know the player’s query profile in terms of inserts, selets, updates, and average profile per second. It might trail your DAU number, which is nice because then you can project q/s and know when you will reach capacity.

If your app grows then you will need to scale out.

Approach one, replicating data to read only slaves. Works well for blogs and web properties but hnot games, because games have a higher modification profile so your master is still a bottleneck. But useful for redundancy.

Approach two, multiple master. Better because of split writes, but now you have consistency resolution problems, which can be dealt with but increases CPU load.

Approach three and best and push the logic for resolution up to the app layer, a standard sharding approach. The app knows which data goes to which DB.

Partition data two ways”:

vertical by table, whih is easy but does not scale with DAUs. MOve players to a different box from items.

horizontal by row. Harder to do but gives best results. Different rows on different DBs, need good mapping from row to DB. Stripe rows across different boxes. Primary key modulo # of DBs. Do it on an immutable property of the row.  A logical RAID 0. Nice side eeffect to increase capacity… to sale out a shard, you add read only slaves, sync them, then shut down, cut replication, and hook it back up. Instant double capacity.

More clever schemes exist. Interaction layers which check where to go… but the nice thing about this is how straightforward it is.  No automatic replications, no magic, robust and easy to maintain.

YoVille: partiioning both ways, lots of joins had to be broken. Data patterns had to be redesigned, with sharding you need the shard id per query. Data replication had trouble catching up with high violume usage. In sharded world  cannot do joins across shards easily, there are solutions but they are expensive. Instead, do multiple selects or denormalize your data. Say a catalog of items and inventory, and you watch to match them. If catalog is small enough, just keep it in memory.

Skip transactions and foreign key constraints. Easier to push this to the app layer. The more you keep in RAM the less you will need to do this.

Caching.

If we don’t have to talk to the DB, let’s skip it. Spend memory to buy speed. Most popular right now is memache, network attached ram cache. Not just for caching queries but storing shared game state as well, such as the apple picking example. Stores simple key value pairs. Put structured game data there, and mutexes for actions across servers. Caveat: it is an LRU (least recently used) cache, not a DB. There is no persistence! If you put too much data in it, it will start dropping old values, so you need to make sure you have written the data to DB>

bc it is so foundational, you can shard it just like the DB. Different keys on different servers, or shard it veritcally or horizontally.

Game servers.

Web server part is very well known. Load-balance. Preferred approach is to load balance with a proxy first. This is nice from a security standpoint… but it i a single point of failure, capacity limits since the proxy will have a max # of connections.

If you hit those limits you load balance the load balancers… and using DNS load balancing in front of it. It doesn’t matter if dns propagation takes a while.

The other thing that is useful is redirecting media traffic away from media servers… swfs are big, audio is big, do not serve from the same place as game comms. You will spend all yor capaity on media files. Push it through a CDN, and if you are on the cloud already you can store them there instead. CDN makes it fast, sine the assets are close to the users. Another possibility is to use lightweight web servers that only server media files. But essentially, you want big server bank to only talk game data, not serve files. Seevral orders of magnitude performance by doing this.

MMO servers, the unusual part of the setup! Scaling is easiest when servers do not need to talk to each other. DBs can shard, memcache an shard, web can load balance farms, and MMOs? well, our approach is to shard like other servers.

Remove ny knowledge they have about each other and push complexity up or down. Moving it up means load balancing it somehow. Minimize interserver comms, all participants in a live event should be on the same server. Scaling out means no direct sharing — sharing thru third parties is OK, a separate service for that event traffic.

Do not let players choose their connections. Poor man’s load balancing, is a server gets hot remove it from the LB pool, if enough servers get hot, add more instances and send new connections there. Not quite true load balancing which limits scalability.

In deployment, downtime = lost revenues. In web just copy over PHP files. Socket servers are harder. How to deploy with zero downtime? Ideally you set up shadow new servers and slowly transition players over. This can be difficult — versioning issues.

For this reason, this is all harder than web servers.

Capacity planning.

We believe in scaling out, but demand can change fast.how to provision enough servers?  Different logistics. Do you provision physical servers or go to the cloud? If you have your own machines, you have more choice and controll and higher fixed costs. With cloud lower costs, faster provisioning, canot control CPU, virtualized IO, etc. On cloud easier to scale out than up.

For a legion of servers you need a custom dashboard for health, Munin for server monitoring graphs, and Nagios for alerts. First level for drilldown is graphs for every server family separately so you can isolate it to a given layer in the system. Once you know memache usage spiked, then you can drill down to particular machines…

Nagios… SMS alerts for server load, CPU load exeeds 4, test account fails to connect after 3 retries.

Put alerts on business stats too! DAUs dropping belo daily average for example. Sometimes they react faster than server stats.

If you are deployed in cloud, network problems are more common. Dropping off net or restarting is common. Be defensive, Reduce single points of failure, program defensively. This includes on the game side.

Q&A:

q: why mySQL? Other DBs are better for scaling.
a: there are other DBs that have been around longer, have greater community, but we don’t use the features those large DBs do. Looking back at the sharding slides — we don’t do a lot of even things like transactions. Easier to move that complexity to the app layer. Once you are on that path, it is a good solution.

q: did you benchmark, that sort of thing, for the different DBs?
a: yes, of course.

q: and for data integrity, if you threw foreign key constraints, that sounds scary! Is it kind of a nightmare?
a: No, not too bad at all, actually. Esp if you do not hit the DB all the time, you ind you don’t get into those dangerous situations as often.

q: is the task when you add more tables… is it as complex?
a: not too bad, has worke well.

q: assuming browsers pick it up, are you guys looking into webGL?
a: many technologies interesting, 3d in browser, silverlight. I would be interested in using them personally… once they achieve high market penetration.

q: why flash?
a: everyone has it. Very pragmatic approach.

q: Do you back up dbs?
a: of course

q: and how?
a: onc eyou go with cloud and amazon, you have to use that approach…  we have a number of redundant backups solutions.

q: I guess many joins are across friends… they have to tlak to multiple shards. Do you try to put friends on same shard?
a: no, everyone has different friends.

q: on SNS integration, did you run into issues with PHO not supporting asynh, with delays from answers from the SNS, running out of threads?
a: you will encounter delay with SNS comms, just part of the overall insfrastruture, could be anytihng, not just PHP. You have to program around it, have to find good solutions for dealing with it when it happens bc it will.

q: So you don’t switch from PHP, delay the process?
a: we did encounter a number of places where we had to dig deep into PHP in order to make it work well on that scale.

q: did you patch PHP?
a: we, uh… yes.

q: what are you feeling on tools like the no SQL sort of thing
a: we look into those atively, one the tech matures, it will be a very good candidate fot this sort of thing. But not currently implemented.

q: on sharding, you said use modulo to distrbute load. Once you have found a bottleneck, howdo you prepare the data to be moved from one shard to another.
a: You don’t move people between shards. You just copy a shard to two machine, and both have redundant, and then remove the redundant data.

q: on partitioning, partitioning to two tables. Say item trading that goes across two DBs, transactions may break? Changing ownership on two different dbs?
a: you need to do a guarantee across multiple DBs, putting the data in a memcache layer, locking it, then doing the write, or putting it in the app layre, implementing”transactions lite”

q: being on the cloud did you have to not use a service approach and have each PHP layer write direct to the DB instead of use a service layer? Say an MMO, achievments or presence services. Do you keep the servie layer as a web servie, or write direct to the DB? Your service call time can add time… even on the cloud.
a: Yes, you want this to be nicely modular… we end up not putting it on different machines. Same box as the game logic so there is no network traffic, so there is no separate layer between. So modular, but not in terms of network topology.

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• Mais de quel projet s'agit-il ?

• Oui mais, qu'est-ce exactement ?

• Les miniatures des fenêtres dans le dock ont maintenant leur emblème sur l'icône pour les reconnaître plus facilement.
• Les icônes pointant sur un sous-dock peuvent afficher le contenu de ce dernier.
• Quand une application demande votre attention, seule son icône apparaît si le dock est caché. Vous pouvez donc être averti sans être gêné par le dock.
• ShowDesktop (Afficher le bureau) vous permet désormais de changer de résolution d'écran en un clic.
• L'applet Dnd2Share, qui facilite le partage en ligne de texte, d'images, de vidéos et autres fichiers, peut directement envoyer le contenu du presse-papier (comme un screenshot).
• Quelques options ont également été modifiées ou ajoutées aux autres applets (RSSReader, Mail, etc.), ainsi qu'aux options générales (saisir directement la classe d'une fenêtre, ré-agencement de certaines options, etc.).

• Lancez la commande suivante dans un terminal :dbus-send --session --dest=org.cairodock.CairoDock /org/cairodock/CairoDock org.cairodock.CairoDock.ShowDock boolean:false Le dock est maintenant caché.
• À l'inverse, exécutez celle-ci :dbus-send --session --dest=org.cairodock.CairoDock /org/cairodock/CairoDock org.cairodock.CairoDock.ShowDock boolean:true Le dock est de retour !

• Les tarballs sont disponibles à ces adresses : https://launchpad.net/cairo-dock-core & https://launchpad.net/cairo-dock-plug-ins
• Les explications détaillées concernant la compilation : http://www.glx-dock.org/ww_page.php?p=Par%20compilation
• Les explications spécifiques pour plusieurs distributions (mais la version ainsi disponible n'est peut-être pas encore à jour) : http://www.glx-dock.org/ww_page.php?p=Par%20distribution
• Concernant les utilisateurs de Debian, Ubuntu et dérivés, nous disposons d'un dépôt à l'adresse http://repository.glx-dock.org/. Pour plus d'informations à propos de nos dépôts, nous vous invitons à cliquer ici

• Un changement au niveau des icônes du panneau de configuration. En effet, il était temps de se donner une ligne de conduite graphique. Les beta testeurs (en compilant les sources depuis le dépôt BZR ou via un 'ppa Weekly') peuvent déjà commenter une première version proposée.
• Nous en sommes conscient, le thème par défaut doit subir un 'relooking'. Le débat est ouvert et lancé sur le forum mais le choix est difficile ! L'ancien fut choisi, un peu à l'instar des thèmes de base de Gnome, pour son extrême sobriété et sa simplicité. Mais en plus, en ne mettant pas en avant les possibilités du dock et en tentant d'obtenir un thème qui ne fisse pas référence à un DE ou une distribution, le résultat ne fut sans doute pas excellent.
• Peut-être avez-vous des idées d'effets sympa ou de nouvelles vues ? Partagez-les ! (pas trop farfelues tout de même )
• Dernièrement, des bruits circulaient faisant miroiter une possible arrivée d'un nouveau 'systray' (ou zone de notification : l'endroit où se trouve, par exemple, l'icône de votre gestionnaire de connexion réseau) commun aux actuels environnements de bureau. Mais cette arrivée se fait attendre alors qu'elle pourrait permettre beaucoup plus de libertés (par exemple, en se libérant définitivement des différents tableaux de bord).
• Concernant l'OpenGL, les fonctions utilisant des pBuffers ont tout dernièrement été remplacés par du FBO. Cela devrait être une amélioration pour tous, mais en particulier pour la prise en charge par les drivers libres. Si vous utilisez un chipset graphique Intel ou ATI, n'hésitez pas à tester, ces changement sont déjà d'actualité sur nos branches trunk (BZR) ou via le dépôt Weekly.
• Si de nouvelles applets externes se créent, une sorte de dépôt contrôlable depuis le dock pourrait être envisagé, comme c'est déjà le cas pour les thèmes.
• Bien-entendu, de nouveaux plug-ins et applets seront toujours les bienvenus ! Mais il nous faut pour cela des idées, du temps et pourquoi pas de l'aide
• D'ailleurs, quelles sont vos idées ? Pour vous, que manque-t-il à Cairo-Dock ? Qu'est-ce qui ne convient pas dans cette dernière version ? Nous ne promettons rien mais si vos idées ou vos bout de code peut accroître la qualité de Cairo-Dock, nous vous écouterons.

• Du côté du développement : Fabounet (Fabrice Rey), Tofe (Christophe Chapuis), Mav (Yann Sladek), Nochka85 (Yann Dulieu) et matttbe (Matthieu Baerts).
• Mais n'oublions pas les membres actifs de notre forum et channel IRC comme ppmt, lylambda, taiebot, Rom1, JokerNathan, ours_en_pluche, alaclef, MastroPino, miousername, coz, soreau, Semmemon, etc.
• Et aussi toutes les personnes ayant contribué aux traductions : https://translations.launchpad.net/cairo-dock
• Mais n'oublions pas nos packageurs dans de nombreuses distribution et spécialement didrocks (Didier Roche) pour avoir résolu nos problème pour la mise à jour des paquets de Cairo-Dock dans la prochaine version d'Ubuntu

(désolé si nous avons omis certaines personnes mais on ne vous oublie pas )

Billet original de Cairo-Dock.Votez pour cet article sur le Planet Libre.

Damaka has announced the release of its Live Video Streaming solution for laptops and certain BlackBerry and Android devices. So, while EMT’s with BlackBerry and Android phones will be able to keep attending physicians in the ER in the loop as to an incoming patient’s condition with real-time video updates, woe betide the unlucky EMT who has a crap data plan or an iPhone.

Damaka’s Live Video Streaming solution, as they’re calling it, provides instant communication of video and voice via an encrypted channel that includes session archival & annotation features. Live video streaming is also able to be transmitted to multiple receiving devices over WiFi /3G / 4G network depending on the device.  I just can’t wait to have a live video conference streaming from my mobile device while I’m driving, staring at my dash-mounted Garmin and trying navigate rush hour traffic—the future is NOW!

Tags: 3g, 4g, android, blackberry, cellphones, damaka, live video streaming, smartphones, ucc, video streaming, wi-fi, wifi,