Three Wise Men

Coming up: PlayStation 3 Firmware update (v3.10)

Eric Lampel – Director of PlayStation Network Operations confirmed a rumor about an upcoming PS3 firmware update.

He stated that the update will include the following features and improvements:

• Social networking integration by linking your PlayStation Network account to Facebook. PS3 will; upon users confirmation, publish trophy and PSN store activity. Although we applaud that users will have a choice weather to publish their personal information on their Facebook wall, we are not convinced that this will work through XMB menu system.
• The Photo category on the XMB has been revamped to make it easier to see more of your photos stored on your PS3
• The PSN Friends List has been modified based on feedback we received after update 3.00. Additionally, you can now choose a color for your PSN ID on the XMB¹.

Additional features list will follow upon 3.10 release. When? Soon.

Edit: Sources at 1UP.com state that PlayStation 3 firmware update 3.10 will be available later today on the November 18 2009.

1. Thank you Sony [↩]

Geocaching or how to hunt a treasure using GPS

In the past maps were used to seek a treasure¹. Wooden chest full of gold coins and necklaces or rubies and crowns with gold chalices and guns filled with gun powder and don’t forget grog. Yes grog, with a feistful lass by your pirate alter ego and one eyed Poly with a cracker in her beak.

But alas, modern age brings complicated technology to seek different kind of treasure. You the new age pirate have to use your wits and your stamina for this outdoor activity, called Geocaching. It requires Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or some other navigational method to hide and seek a case or a container with a treasure² anywhere in the world.

A waterproof container obligatory contains a logbook and a pen. If large enough it may also contain items for trading (toys, books, geocoins, travel-bugs…). As a geocacher bury a waterproof container with or without trade items somewhere on the globe and with the help of your GPS record the cache’s coordinates. Post the coordinates on a listing site, located for example here.

Other geocachers seeking the treasure, will obtain the coordinates from a listing site. They seek out the cache using their GPS handheld receivers. The seeking geocachers record their achievement in the logbook within the container and online. Trade objects are free to take (except the logbook and pen) from the cache, but something of similar or higher value should be left in exchange. In that way there is always a treasure for the next person to find.

Image via Wikipedia

The first documented geocache took place on May 2000 in Oregon. Since than geocaches are currently hidden in over 100 countries around the world on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

Most of the participants of GPS ”hide and seek” activity are adults, but even children find this modern treasure hunt very amusing. Some geocaching communities organize competitions with reward for your effort. But the main purpose of these competitions is getting people in contact with each other, kind of like Facebook but healthier. Why don’t you try it your self? There’s a treasure waiting for you too!

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• Geocaching – The Official Global GPS Cache  Hunt Site (geocaching.com)
• Geocaching with NaviCache (navicache.com)

1. who wouldn’t want one [↩]
2. cache [↩]

Experimenting With Social Networks: Facebook Results

A few days ago I decided to start a little experiment with social networks. I was planning to add 100 friends to my Facebook account. In the end it turned out that I was half successful. I managed to send a friend request to 50 people then Facebook started telling me that I am doing something very bad and they will suspend my account if I continue to do so. So I stopped, 50 is still better than nothing, right?

I was choosing people pseudo randomly from various facebook groups and fan pages. After I added only one quarter of planned people, 25, the responses started to pour in. I don’t have any idea if accounts I added were active or not and when they were last time used. I was merely guessing.

Results are somewhat surprising.

READ MORE

Experimenting with Social Networks

Image via Wikipedia

Every now and then some random person starts following me on Twitter and every now and then some random person adds me to their friends list on Facebook.

“Watson, a clue!”

I’ll start with an experiment. I will be adding one hundred people on my friends list on Facebook and I’ll follow ome hundred different people on Twitter. What’s the situation right now? Being a moderate user of both services this is what I have:

Facebook: 165 Friends, Twitter: 45 Following, 84 Followers

People I pick will be pseudo-random. I will check if they are active and they don’t appear as a spam bot on Twitter. On Facebook I’ll start with friends of my friends and people from various groups and invitations to all sorts of events. I will try to keep people as different as possible adding males and females of all ages and interest groups. I’ll be posting follow-ups on twitter #twmkd so you can keep track of the progress.

It starts now!

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