Flickr Co-Founder Proudly Announces ...Glitch

Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield's new startup Tiny Speck has announced its first product, to be released in the fall of this year: a massively multiplayer online game called Glitch. Judging by the video trailer provided at the Glitch site, the game is a modern—and somewhat psychedelic-looking—take on the 2-D genre, like a trippier version of Super Mario Brothers. According to an in-depth description at CNET, which got an exclusive look inside the game's development, Glitch will have a number of social elements, such as collaborative puzzle-solving.

The Flash-based game, which Tiny Speck has been working on since the company's launch last March, is a bit of a "back to the future" move for Butterfield. As some Flickr fans know, he and now ex-wife Caterina Fake got their start building a massively multiplayer online game called Game Neverending in the late 1990s, but changed course after it became obvious that users were more interested in the game's photo-sharing portion. That feature ultimately became Flickr, which the pair sold to Yahoo in 2005 for $35 million. In what could be a veiled reference to Butterfield's earlier startup, the description of Glitch at the game site calls it a "neverending feast of imagination."

Dr. Seuss meets Borges for some "fun"

The company's choice of Flash as the basis for a game also makes sense, given that Flickr was one of the web services that helped popularize Flash as an interface. Using it as a platform means Glitch will be relatively easy to distribute and even embed in other sites or services—except the iPhone or iPad (AAPL) because neither supports Flash. It further suggests that Tiny Speck is going after the kind of casual-gaming market that has proven so popular for such games as Facebook's Farmville and web sites as AddictingGames.com.

Butterfield formed Tiny Speck last year with several senior Flickr staffers, including Cal Henderson and Eric Costello. They were later joined by Digg designer Daniel Burka—like Butterfield, a Canadian emigré.Tiny Speck is backed by Accel Partners and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen.In an interview last year with the Globe & Mail, Butterfield said the game was inspired by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and "magic realism" author Jorge Luis Borges, and that the goal was to create a "fun and really interesting world with its own rules—absurdist and strange but fully realized, if imaginary."

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Phantom Op Trailer

Earlier today we first announced Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and tonight we bring you the teaser trailer.

Entitled "Phantom Op," this teaser trailer gives us a bit of an idea what to expect from Ubisoft's latest addition to the Ghost Recon franchise.

As a member of the elite Ghost Recon, you are among the few who possess the power, the adaptability and the cognitive fortitude of the future soldier. Specialized in every area of combat, equipped for survival and trained in absolute discretion, you are entrusted with the missions no other soldier can handle. Armed to the teeth with an arsenal of real-world high-tech weaponry only in prototype today, you are an F-16 on legs, trained to lock-on to your objective even in the world's most complex, high-risk warzones.


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Google Nexus One fee cut follows broad FCC inquiry

(02-09) 11:48 PST -- Google has quietly acknowledged that $350 is a bit too much to charge consumers who ditch its Nexus One smartphone.

The company's terms of sale for the device now state customers who cancel their Nexus One accounts within 120 days of purchase will have to pay a $150 equipment recovery fee. Previously, Google had been charging a $350 equipment recovery fee for customers who backed out of their Nexus One deals after 120 days.

Father of Linux calls Nexus One "a winner"

Google's decision to charge an early termination fee for the Nexus One has been controversial because both Google and T-Mobile currently charge users separate early termination fees if they drop their Nexus One in less than four months. With a Google fee of $350 and a T-Mobile early termination fee of $200, consumers originally would have had to pay up to $550 for breaking their contracts early.

The practice of charging early termination fees has come under fire in recent months after Verizon doubled its standard early termination fee from $175 to $350 last November. The FCC last month sent letters to AT&T, Google, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon "to gather facts and data on the consumer experience with early termination fees." In particular the FCC cited concerns that early termination fees "have an important impact on consumers' ability to switch carriers" and said the commission must make sure that "consumers fully understand what they are signing up for? when they accept a service plan with an early termination fee."

Space shuttle Endeavour pulls in at space station

APE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Shuttle Endeavour arrived at the International Space Station early Wednesday, delivering a new room and observation deck that will come close to completing construction 200 miles above Earth.

The midnight rendezvous occurred as the two spacecraft sailed over the Atlantic, just west of Portugal.

"We've got the place ready for you," space station commander Jeffrey Williams assured the shuttle astronauts. "Looking forward to welcoming you on board."

Back at Mission Control, meanwhile, NASA said that standard checks hadn't revealed any launch damage so far. All the pictures and information collected during the first two days of the flight indicate Endeavour suffered no serious damage during Monday's liftoff. But the analysis is continuing, and a few hundred photos taken from the space station during Endeavour's final approach will yield additional data, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.

Endeavour's crew of six will spend more than a week at the space station, installing the compartments and helping with space station maintenance.

This represents the last major construction work at the orbiting outpost. Once the room, named Tranquility, and the observation deck are in place, the station will be 98 percent complete.

Five men are living at the space station. That makes for a crowd of 11 with Endeavour's presence.

Before docking, commander George Zamka guided Endeavour through a 360-degree back flip so two of the space station crew could photograph the shuttle's belly with zoom lenses. The photos were transmitted immediately to Mission Control so experts can scour the images for any scrapes or holes.

A few pieces of foam insulation came off the external fuel tank during the launch, but none appeared to strike Endeavour.

The only oddity in the pictures from orbit was a protruding seal on the top of the left wing. The seal is part of a door for an access panel; about 4 inches of the 2- to 3-foot seal is sticking out.

Cain said the flapping seal poses no concern, but engineers will look into the matter to find out how it happened. Mission Control asked the station crew to take pictures of the seal, as the shuttle performed its somersault.

As for the rest of the wings and nose — the most vulnerable parts of the shuttle during re-entry — the laser inspection conducted earlier in the day by the astronauts was coming up empty. "Nothing that threw any unusual flags for us," Cain told reporters late Tuesday afternoon.

The rigorous checks were put in place following the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Three spacewalks are planned to hook up the 23-foot Tranquility — named after the Apollo 11 moon landing site — and the seven-windowed dome. The first will get under way Thursday night.

The two Italian-built compartments cost more than $400 million.

Google Buzz Demo Videos You Need to See Before Using It

As a frontal assault on the social Web castles of Facebook and Twitter, Google Buzz lets users post status updates, pictures, links, videos and other content in Gmail and share them with users, or the entire Web.

I wrote about it after viewing the launch event Webcast. I also logged into Gmail to find Buzz turned on.

It's a snap to use; if you have a Google Profile, you may start buzzing to the Web or privately among users immediately.

Before you click on that link that invites you to Google Buzz in your inbox, you should check out the demo videos for both the desktop and mobile versions of the Web service, which will be rolling out broadly to Gmail users over the course of the week.

First, this video after the jump shows how Google Buzz pulls images from links, plays YouTube videos in line and lets users scroll through Picasa and Flickr Web albums:

Comments Gmail users make in Buzz on your Buzz are automatically pushed to your Gmail inbox, facilitating the information sharing aspects.

Moreover, Buzz will recommend Buzz from users that Gmail users are not directly following. Users can turn this off; it will be interesting to see how many people will take Google up on the recommendations.

Next, the Google Buzz for mobile app looks like a great way for Google to compete with Foursquare, Gowalla and mobile versions of Facebook and Twitter.

After navigating to buzz.google.com in their mobile browser for Apple iPhone or Google Android smartphones, users can use their location to identify places around them and attach these places as location tags to posts, or see what others have posted about the location or business.

Moreover, the new Buzz layer in Google Maps for Mobile lets users see buzz near them or anywhere on the map and lets them post public buzz directly from the layer, attaching a photo from their phone. Users can also access Places Pages to read recent comments or to post buzz about that place. See this demo:

Finally, a voice shortcut available in the quick search widget on Android and in Google Mobile App on iPhone, lets users post buzz by speaking 'post buzz,' into their phone, and then saying their status update aloud.

Are these interesting features? You bet. They put a fresh, social twist on an otherwise siloed Gmail application.

Gmail has 176 million users, according to comScore. Facebook boasts more than 400 million and I'm not sure users will stop using Facebook or even Twitter to do some of the same stuff on Gmail. Why won't people leave Facebook for Google Buzz on Gmail?

Here's one analogy I like to use: People have gotten very comfortable with sharing on Facebook, much the same way people have gotten comfortable using Google search instead of Yahoo or Microsoft Bing.

Why mess with a good thing? Still, it will be fun to watch this theater played out in 2010 and beyond.