Tech In The News: Pac-Man Eats Time, Microsoft's Team Lineup Change, PS3 Only?

This week in the news we have several notable stories.  The did you know that Pac-Man is the eater of time.  A couple big guys leave Microsoft, Insomniac Games brings games to Xbox 360 as well as PS3, and Facebook to Modify it's Privacy Settings Again?!

First up is Pac-Man.  Pac-Man has been around for a long time.  But thanks to his resurgence in Google's logo last week, he has proven that he is going to be around for quite a while.  For those not in the know, Google created a Pac-Man logo for Pac-Man's anniversary last week.  During that time period, countless millions played the interactive doodle.  Google had such a great response they have brought the doodle back permanently.  You too can give Pac-Man a spin by visiting: http://www.google.com/pacman/ and clicking the 'Insert A Coin' button to play.  And according to an article posted on PCMag.com the short duration in which the doodle was on Google's homepage killed a little less than 5 million hours of time.  Think about that, that's roughly 200,000 days worth of time.  Gone, never to be seen again.  This tells me Pac-Man still has it!  Rock on!

Secondly in the news, Microsoft has had some change in it's internal batting order as of late.  First was the 'sabbatical' of J Allard and now Robbie Bach.  J Allard had a huge hand in the workings of the Xbox division at Microsoft.  Meanwhile, Robbie Bach was president of Entertainment & Devices Division (which handles Zune and Windows Phone projects to name a few).  J Allard was onboard at Microsoft for about 19 years; while Bach was onboard for 22 years.  It will be interesting to see what direction Microsoft takes and the further development of these respective product areas take.  Best of luck to J Allard and Robbie Bach.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/technology/26soft.html

Thirdly, Insomniac Games has inked a deal with Microsoft which will allow them to bring a new unnamed game project to the Xbox 360; as well as, the PS3.  Insomniac Games are the guys who bought the world the 'Resistance' games for the PS3; and who were formerly a PS3 exclusive developer.  This will be interesting to keep an eye on as well.  http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/05/insomniac-signs-multi-platform-deal-with-ea-partners.ars

Last up in the news this week: Facebook changes Privacy Settings Again?!  Go ahead and cringe.  I know I did.  Anyone who has ever used Facebook knows about their privacy settings fiasco.  Their privacy settings have been pretty confusing for most people for a while now.  For example, I post a picture.  I can edit the privacy settings for that picture to determine who can see it.  This is great at it's most basic form.  However, the settings go on to allow you to control how friends of friends see it, and how people viewing friends pages see your content, etc.  Whatever happened to: 'Keep This Picture Private' (Only Friends See it) or 'Make the Public' (for anybody to see it).  This is pure crap from a development stand point.  It's obvious that Facebook has trumped MySpace, there are other Social Sites out there.  But none that are so widely used as Facebook.  The population of Facebook isn't college kids anymore.  Now people of all ages use it.  From children to grandparents.  For this reason, Facebook is going to have to keep it simple in regards to permissions and privacy settings.  The current system is something that a webmaster using a Content Management System might see (individual privacy/security settings for individual components).  Security is very important, especially with the sheer amount of everyday user's who access Facebook.  So yes, it needs to be safe to protect everybody.  But at the same time, Facebook is taking our information and selling it to other sites.  Which in my opinion is wrong.  I understand they are in business to make money.  But they already do that by ad placement on their site pages; which are viewed billions of times a day.

Facebook better straighten up, because I can certainly live without Farmville.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177321/Facebook_to_simplify_privacy_settings_Wednesday