Bastard traitor zombie, #7dfps and some zoo information

The 7 day FPS challenge has begun. To those unfamiliar with the subject, check out 7dfps.org.

Challenge begun a few days ago.

And so did neighbour renovations. It’s bit strange to sit in toilet, wearing those anti-noise things you put on your head, while the floor is shaking. This took 2 days.

So, this means first 2 days of my 7 day project went traveling. We traveled with kids around the city and I was so exhausted couldn’t get anything done for the project. Well, a bit of thinking happened, but not really much anything.

(Off-topic: I learned that group of 3-5 year old kids in one small place… it’s… it’s like monkeys in a zoo. Except there’s no fences anywhere. It was crazy action. One kid hide under some stuff, one other kid threw stuff around and 3rd one tried to jump on top of the first one. I’m surprised everybody got there alive.)

Anyway, back to the FPS challenge topic.

3rd day: I was about to code, when I got super nasty headache. I believe I have some sort of air pressure meter there. When thunder storms approach, my head hurts. So, 3rd day went there, nothing done. Couldn’t even think.

Now we are in day 4. I knocked together a page for my game (due time constraints I spent about 2 seconds thinking the name), put together some existing old code, threw in raknet and got server & client running there.

So, looks like I have bit of catching up to do… but we are good to go.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 at 12:37 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Facebook allows users to download expanded archive of their information

Facebook has increased the amount of data it provides to users when they download a copy of their information from the site, according to a post on Facebook Public Policy Europe page.

The “Download Your Information” feature now includes catalogues of friend requests a users make, IP addresses they’ve logged in from and any previous names they’ve used, among other Facebook actions. This is in addition to the copy of photos, posts, messages, chat conversations, friend lists and other information that Facebook first made available for download in 2010.

The changes, which begin rolling out to users today, are part of an agreement with the Data Protection Commissioner  – an Irish agency responsible for the enforcement and monitoring of compliance with data protection legislation. Since Facebook’s international headquarters are located in Dublin, the company is responsible to the Irish commissioner. The commissioner conducted a three-month audit of Facebook following a formal complaint suggesting the social network was creating “shadow profiles” of non-users. The commissioner found the company compliant with Irish and European Union law, but had Facebook agree to gives users even more control over their data and privacy within six months.

When users download their information from Facebook, they get a zip file containing html files of their profile, wall, events, messages, notes and friend lists; jpegs of their photos; mp4s of their videos; and an index file for navigating the content. The data can be used as a keepsake or to replace lost media files, but not to easily switch to a different social network.

The following is a table from the commissioner’s report showing what was previously available in the “Download Your Information” tool and what Facebook promised to add. The company did not list all of the changes it made today, but it says more categories of information will be available in the future. Users can download their information here.

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Facebook Users Can Now Opt Into Letting Friends Export Their Email Addresses via Download Your Information

Previously, Facebook’s Download Your Information tool let users export an archive of their status updates, photos, as well as a list of friends’ names, but not their contact information. Now, Facebook allows users to opt into having their email address included in exports by their friends, TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid reports.

The feature will allow Facebook to deflect criticism that it doesn’t permit data portability by saying that users have the option but choose not to let friends export their email addresses for use in other web services, including Google+.

Facebook launched Download Your Information so users could back up the social content they own, in case they lost their local copy of data such as their photos. It was designed for personal use, with David Recordon, Facebook’s senior open programs manager saying at its launch event “We built this product as something that’s useful for people, not for other developers.” It wasn’t meant to be used to seed a profile and social graph on another web service.

Google and Facebook blocked or put up roadblocks on importing and exporting data between their services in November 2010. Google had accused Facebook of not supporting data portability because users couldn’t export email addresses of friends, but could import addresses from services like Gmail. Facebook responded saying the email addresses of friends are not a user’s own data, and therefore they don’t have the right to export them. Meanwhile, it allowed these same email addresses to be exported through Yahoo! Mail and some smaller third-party email services.

Now Facebook users can authorize their email to be exported when friends use Download Your Information. The option is buried within the folded “Email” settings in Account Settings. Few users regularly visit their account settings, and even fewer would expanded an area that presumably only allows you to change your email address. The placement of the feature here will allow Facebook to say it exists without the risk that most users will actually enable address exporting.

Google’s new social network Google+ bases friend discovery on email addresses, so if users could export the email addresses of all their Facebook friends, they could easily find them on Google+. Facebook clearly doesn’t want this to happen, but doesn’t want to appear to be hoarding user data — a key fear of users that might make them more likely to switch social networks.

Users have little to lose by enabling the option, unless they have friends who would share their email address with unscrupulous developers or spammers. It will make them easier to find around the web, and help friends stay in contact by email if they ever choose to leave Facebook.

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FrontierVille Oregon Trail sign updated with new information

by Brandy Shaul, Posted Mar 28th 2011 7:27PM

Since the launch of FrontierVille last year, we users have been stuck with four directional markers leading to future "expansions" or at least new features that apparently in the works. Since you can't remove these signs from your land, many users have taken to checking them regularly to make sure that nothing has changed. It turns out, that thoroughness has led us to a bit of a breakthrough, at least where the Oregon Trail sign is concerned.

The text on the sign is quite interesting, leading us to believe that the feature might be the first of the four released, and that it might be the next big thing Zynga decides to work on in the game. Here's what the text says:

"Adventurers are headin' west! Maybe one of 'em will pass by your homestead, pardner. The Oregon Trail ain't for the faint of heart - you'll need pioneer spirit 'n' teamwork to make it!"

Additionally, the large yellow "Coming Soon" marker that has been seen on other signs since the beginning has now been removed. While this might mean that the feature has instead been moved further back in the line of features that Zynga is working on, that seems rather counter-intuitive. After all, why would Zynga update the sign at all, if they had no intention of working on the feature?

Help us speculate as to what all of this means in the comments. Could the Oregon Trail be FrontierVille's first expansion? We'd love to know what you think!
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Tags: coming soon, frontierville, frontierville expansion, frontierville oregon trail, oregon trail, zynga

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