Online im Perfect...

This is the new Playstation 3 home i was telling you about. I was recently informed that i was knocked off the top spot by Raeesa, that bum! So i thought id better get my brain in gear and update. Provided you have just seen this movie? doesnt that look amazing? Just through owning a playstation3 i can have my own life, online! I think this epitomizes exactly what we were discussing in class about creating yourself in your own image. My specific area of study is the convergence between computergames and social networking. Playstation home is convergence at its best.
Let me know what you think.

Helping to change the future by leaving your PC on? / Gaming socially?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7329990.stm

Hey folks, recently i added a post about a piece of software on my Playstation three. I was browsing the web for more on New Media Technology and i saw this article on the same software. This piece is for Personal Computers rather than Playstations, however it works upon the same lines. Dontaton of computing power for other causes, just by leaving your PC, or playstation's power on. Is this a waste of electricity? No, probably not as thinking about it. The scientific project now using our computing power, would have probably had to use the same amount of electricty to power its own computers had they been left on. The Link for the BBC's Article is above.

I was also recently researching my own topic, of the convergence between Social networking and the gaming industry. I happened to stumble upon this article about PlaystationHome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Home <<< This is a link to the Wikipedia article about PlaystationHome. I will soon be updating again and following the progress of the developers of PlaystationHome to see when it is released so i can download it!. Then i can write about it all.
I have also made a purchase of (Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare) for the Playstation three. I thought id take a little time out to say what a fantastic game with a fantastic online multiplayer. If any of you out there have this game look out for "Thecarbonator" by the way... add me as a friend and we can have a game or two. The game uses the PlaystationNetwork to match make games of up to 12 players in combat situations of arenas all over the world. You can use any bluetooth headset to chat to the players you are playing with and coordinate your teams combat against other teams in the game. The System is quick and even players on a low bandwidth do not get Pinged from the game as it runs on one flat server with only one playspeed. Which happens to be quick. If you ever get the chance to play this game then definately do. Its like a gaming social networking with people becoming members of Clans, with the clans having their own Tags etc.
Thanks for listening...

Update soon.....

T'internet... Of The Future??

Whats good people.
I know my specific area to write about was Social Networking and Online Gaming, however, i decided after seeing an article on a popular news site that i would broaden my horizons. I have copied and pasted this article about "The Grid" for you.

"The Internet as we know it, could become obsolete within a decade".

Forget dial-up; forget broadband: The future, it seems, is The Grid. It's the brainchild of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research based in Geneva. It's there that Sir Tim Berners-Lee first invented the internet, so it's appropriate that the next stage in its evolution should emerge there. But what is the Grid? In fact, it is a spin-off from another major research project. For several years, the particle physicists at CERN have been building a device called the Large Hadron Collider. Knowing they would need massive processing capability to cope with the data from the new device, the scientists set about integrating thousands of computers all around the world. Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the project, says: "We need so much processing power, if all the computers were here at CERN there would be a problem getting enough electricity to run them. "We had to have a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research partners in other countries." That network of linked computers - connected by superfast fibre-optic cable and combining together to act as one giant super-computer - is the Grid and, one day, it won't just be for scientists. We'll all be connected to it. It's not actually a new principle. SETI@home is a programme for PCs which is helping to analyse the data of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It's been downloaded by half a million public-spirited people who allow the spare processing power of their personal computers to be used remotely by the astronomers to number-crunch their scientific data. But while SETI@home runs on private PCs and over existing telephone cables, CERN's Grid uses fibre-optic links to dedicated resources in major computer centres and can therefore handle much more complex calculations.

This is interesting as, recently i was on my Playstation3 and i decided i would sign up to an external programme called "mobilehome". when turned on, the extra computing power of my playstation3 is donated to universities around the U.K. to help their research into various aspects of science and technology. SO this principle hasnt just been established in Puerto Rico, but in the Homes of games console owners!

The long-term possibilities for home entertainment are immense. It's estimated that connection speeds could be 1,000 times faster than current broadband capabilities. Imagine being able to download feature films in the blink of an eye, or the entire Beatles back catalogue in less than a second. Grainy webcam images would be replaced by crystal clear pictures and sound, and video gaming would be transformed. According to Professor David Britton, a leading figure in the Grid project: "With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine." And there are also medical applications. It's already been used to help research anti-malarial drugs. Researchers used the Grid to analyse 140 million different compounds - a process which would have taken 420 years to complete on a conventional internet-linked computer. The Grid might soon be used to help unlock the secrets of the human genome.

Hows that for processing power?. Truth of this matter is that all of this power, within computing and other technological advancements starts with people like me, who are simply adding programmes, that dont hinder the performance of your Personal Computers or Games consoles but help to advance technology. So if its true what they say, about computing power this large being able to unlock the human genome and further medial research. I could be contributing to curing a major disease just by adding this application to my playstation3.
Thanks, Let me know how you feel about these posts, its nice to have feedback.
xxx

The Playstation 3 Network? Soon To Be A Gaming Myspace?

Alright Guy's Once again id like to take this time out to apologise for not having a post up sooner. the last post was over a month ago and is overdue, due in no small part to the fact that i had to also contribute to another blog, coinciding with my media studies project in school. Recently i was in lesson and we were discussing key terms in Media studies. One of the terms that interests me most is "convergence". If you wish to find out more about this "word" and its meaning, I recently started looking at "The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies" to try and gain an insight into what "convergence" actually means, in terms of the media and its respective branches.(http://convergence.beds.ac.uk/) << This is a series of magazines, published by a university on "convergence" that i intend to glance over very soon. Im trying to find something similar online, but so far havent been sucessful.
Moving on, what does it mean? Well to put it shortly and in my own definition, the "mergance" of two different aspects of the media, in this case, into one single aspect. Social Networking (Myspace, Facebook) and Online Gaming (Dedicated Servers for MMOG's). As I said in my last post, i now own a Playstation 3. Im still trying to explore all of the features, due to a lack of time to play with it, that the playstation 3 has to offer, but the one that im most interested in, and most relevant to the "Convergence" topic, is the Playstation Network. SO...What is the Playstation 3 network? Wikipedia says...

PlayStation Network, often abbreviated to PSN in the gaming community, is Sony's free online service provided for use with their PlayStation 3 (PS3)[2] and PlayStation Portable (PSP) video game consoles.

I was quite amazed to hear that since the Playstation 3's Release a year and a bit ago, there are 2.9 Million people registered in North America alone. Not to mention Japanese Figures at 4.34Million people. So.. Obviously this is popular, it doesnt quite rival myspace yet, at 10.96Million people but then again it has been out for not even a quarter of the time "myspace" has existed for. I thought that id try and see what the "playstation Network" was really about and signed up, hoping that i would find some "convergence" between Social Networking and The Gaming Industry. Surely enough, i did. I was even amazed to find my own personal "AVATAR" winking at me every time i logged in. And then i recieved messages from friends i know, that wanted to play a cup final at Wembley or work together, using a "bluetooth" headset, to take down a russian warlord in a popular shoot-em-up game, came pouring in. So now, i dont have to invite my friends over to play with them, and i get a free internet browser on my T.V... Im Impressed. Games are fairer, due to matchmaking setups and i no longer need to spend my days on MSN Messenger, as the "PSN" provides me with my own instant messaging service. I could go on and on about the features. Sure there are downsides, not having a keyboard means typing a message takes for ever. But when there is so much offered by the console and the Network you cant realy fault Sony here.
Im going to be investigating this more, by covering more consoles and see how "Microsoft" have countered Sony's biggest project since the Original Playstation more than 15 years ago. Consoles have come a long way since then.
Ciao..
Let me know your thoughts, provided you have time to read the amount ive written.

(I think that deserves a promotion up the Blog Rankings Sir..HintHint)