This sidebar in my opinion is a pretty accurate representation of what Blizzard has become since the merge with Activision (devil picture of Kotick originates from Ars Technica)

Ok Blizzard, what the fuck…

Are those advertisements I see on the WorldofWarcraft.com website?  Why?  Why do you need ads on your website?  You make millions of dollars DAILY from recurring World of Warcraft subscriptions.  Why in the fuck do you feel the need to advertise third party shit to us when we already pay you money?  The only people that actually visit your website are those that play your game.  Is it because we’re not paying you enough money that you need to come up with new ways to generate MORE revenue from us in other ways?  The fucking ads aren’t even relevant to YOUR game!

I just don’t get it.  You offered the option for us to change our character names for $10; you offered us the option to transfer between realms so we can play with our friends for $25; hell you even added in the option to let us change our character names, as well as their SEX for $25.  That’s fine!  I can understand the reasoning behind these types of decisions because they’re optional convenience fees, and they’re also services that are revalent to your game.

When I saw the ads appear on your forums, I was hoping that this was a temporary thing.  The ads we saw then were at least somewhat relevant to what your game offered.

You guys decided to merge with Activision to where you guys now are now call yourselves Activision-Blizzard.  Activision alone made millions with popular games like Guitar Hero, and Call of Duty 4, and despite the success of these games, even their websites don’t have ads on them.

You know what this means, it means you guys are fucking SELLOUTS.  None of your other websites like Battle.net, Diablo II, have ads advertising cell phones, credit cards or pizza.  Sure other websites have banner links to WorldofWarcraft.com, but I wouldn’t count those as ads because it all ties together with your company offers.

It’s not very hard to connect the dots here.  Ever since this merger, you guys have started doing things that the old Blizzard would never do.  Should I point the finger at the new CEO, Bobby Kotick?  Ars Technica pointed out alot of things that reflect upon this guy and upon reading up on these articles, I’d say that his way of doing business by milking out everything he can is certainly showing.

Ars Technica’s excerpt on Bobby Kotick:

The only reason we care about him is that he makes a ton of money, and yes, that’s great for business. I get that. But usually, when you put the devil in charge, you have the good graces to at least keep a smooth-talking demon or two around to deal with the press. With Kotick, he’s very brazen about his need to squeeze every last dollar he can out of every franchise under the Activision Blizzard label. He wants to exploit his games. He wants to make sure he has a sequel every year, and don’t forget the Wii and DS ports. Why have one StarCraft game if you can have three? Just because people are used to Battle.net being free doesn’t mean you can’t find some way to make more money from the service.

What’s next? What other unnecessary method are you guys going to come up with to bring in more cash?  In-game advertising?   You might as well start now because you guys already seem to be heading in that direction.  You guys are the #1 successful gaming company in this nation, you made a 92% increase in net revenue compared to the prior year.  I don’t like what I’m seeing here, the latest WoW patch 3.0.8 was a complete disaster, you guys seemed to have shifted your focus from quality, to “how much money can we make.?”

Thank god for Adblock on Firefox.

Oh did you notice how cluttered this particular blog post looked?  I had to make a point by doing exactly what Blizzard did to their website…  Looks like shit doesn’t it?

Sources:

• The “obvious” ads from WorldofWarcraft.com
• Ars Technica
• WoWInsider.com

Palm Pre

CES happened happened not too long ago and one particular product certainly had its time in the spotlight.

Palm announced their new product which they showed off at CES, a smartphone they call the Palm Pre.  This was Palm’s last ditch attempt to regain their ground since PDA’s are being replaced with smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, HTC Mogul, etc..).

The Palm Pre is scheduled to be released the late second quarter of this year.  Sprint will be the exclusive carrier for this phone upon launch.

Here are the announced specifications for this phone:

• Operating System: Palm webOS
• Network: 3G EVDO Rev A (GSM Network will also be included in a separate model to be released sometime afterward)
  
• CPU: Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 Processor (almost comparable to the Intel Atom CPU  you’d find in todays Netbooks)
• Display: 3.1 inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×240 resolution HVGA
• Physical QWERTY keyboard
• Email Capability: Microsoft Outlook w/ Microsoft Direct Push technology, POP3/IMAP, Yahoo! Gmail, AOL, etc…
• Messaging: Integrated Instant Messaging, including, AOL/ICQ, Yahoo, Live, GTalk, SMS and MMS protocol
• Built in GPS (GPS software will be reliant upon 3rd party software like Telenav or Google Maps)
• 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field
• Sensors: Ambient Light, accelemoter, and proximity
• 3.5mm headphone stereo jack
• Supported audio formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV
• Supported video formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
• Supported image formats: animated GIFs, JPEG, PNG, BMP
• Wireless Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, 802.11X authentication Bluetooth 2/1-EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
• Memory: 8GB storage (approx 7.4GB available) USB Mass Storage support
• Phone as Modem (tethering)
• Charging Dock
• Dimensions:
  • Width: 59.5 mm (2.34 inches)
  • Height: 100.5 mm (3.95 inches)
  • Thickness: 16.95 mm (0.66 inches)
  • Weight: 135 grams (4.76 ounces)

I would also like to note that this phone WILL support Adobe FLASH according to the Business Wire PR.  This feature alone is a huge selling point for me as alot of content that I frequently access uses Flash.  The negative is support for Flash won’t be available upon release until the end of this year (or so what PreCentral.net says).

While my Blackberry is a great messaging tool, (despite the fact that Sprint has still borked the MMS capabilities) I would like the ability to do more with my phone if I can have that option.  You might say go with the iPhone, but I refuse because for starters, I hate AT&T with a passion, and second because the iPhone lacks a true QWERTY keyboard.  No mobile/smartphone in the U.S. currently has support for Flash, although this is also due to the limitation of hardware that most smartphones use.  The Palm Pre CPU (made by Texas Instruments) is supposedly capable of being able to handle 720p HD video, if that’s the case then it shouldn’t have any trouble processing/rendering Flash.

I like my Blackberry for the most part, however I’m a bit put off when  90% of the features my phone has can’t be utilized due to the incompetence of RIM whenever they have server issues.  Last Friday was a perfect example.  I needed to go pick up a friend of mine, and I was relying on my phone to provide me directions to get to her place, at that exact moment, my phone lost data coverage and I was unable to pull up the location as to where she was.  I was really depending on my phone at that time, but was unable to do so, further complicating what should have been a simple task.

The details as to how the Palm Pre will be storing/recieving information through this “synergy” method that Palm keeps talking about still hasn’t been announced.  After watching the CES preview of the Palm Pre, something tells me it’s going to work the same way where all the data information runs through a centralized server, and streams whatever data you request to the phone.  If that’s the case, I can only hope that their server infrastructure is better setup then RIM’s.

I’m sure everybody has that one friend on Facebook or MySpace that has a tendency to post several news/bulletins a day about some shit which 99% of us could give a crap about.  I certainly know of one person that does exactly this.  I just happened to stumble across this picture that I think fits their personality perfectly… In fact it might actually be their car.

The car of that annoying person on your Facebook/MySpace (click image to view actual size)

Facebook decided to save face and back out on overstepping thier boundaries.

It didn’t take them very long to change their minds did it?  I totally made the call on this.   So basically Facebook reversed their decision claiming they have the right the license any information about you regardless if you choose to close your account.

It’s pretty sad when a company like Facebook attempts to sell out those whom don’t want to be a part of their community anymore.  All things considered, anybody who chooses to have an active Facebook account is agreeing to that Facebook can sell your information, but if you decide you don’t agree with that policy anymore, then it should be your right not to want Facebook to sell out your information afterwards.

Ok now that that’s settled, we can continue on with our normal lives.

Facebook is still shady

I mentioned a couple days ago about Facebook changing their Terms of Service stating that they can keep your information forever regardless if you cancel your account or not and sublicence your information to third parties if they wish to do so.

14 days later, after Facebook made those changes to their Terms of Service, people finally catch on about these changes and now alot of people are unhappy.  Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg further clarified the changes.

On Facebook, people post their information and control who they share it with.  When you choose to share your photos, messages, or status with your friends, you’re granting Facebook a license so that the site can pass that information along to authorized friends.  Without that license, we wouldn’t be help people share that information.

He continues on saying that the terms were changed this way because if a user chooses to close their profile, their friends still have that information about that user.

Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message… We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with out other services like e-mail work.  This is one of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.”

I’m personally calling bullshit on this.  I think it is the right of the individual to have the option to erase ALL information/history associated with their profile including any information about them that may be on their friends account.  This type of feature shouldn’t be hard for them to implement at all, as any information your friends may get from you is pulled from your profile.   Rather then come up with his lame excuse, Zuckerburg should give the Facebook community that option if/when they shut down their account.

I’m going to be keeping my eye on this story as this event unfolds.  In all honesty, I’d be surprised if Facebook doesn’t proactively change their minds, or add in