Research in Motion (RIM) has released another video for the upcoming BlackBerry 6 operating system. The video clearly displays a touch interface, something which we saw for the first time in April 2010 when the company showed initial glimpses of the new platform at its annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium conference in Florida. I spoke to the company’s CTO David Yach about the interface and he confirmed that touch was a big part of it, but wouldn’t be cornered on what was planned from a hardware perspective. Rumours abound of an announcement of a new device to supersede the Storm platform forthcoming from RIM in the next couple of months. BlackBerry 6 will also be compatible with most of the brand’s current models.

Shuttleworth is a South African philanthropist and internet entrepreneur who started the company Thawte in 1995 and went on to sell it to Verisign at the turn of the century in a US$575 million deal. He then became the second ever self-funded civilian astronaut traveling to the international space station as a member of the Soyuz TM-34/TM-33 missions. Upon his return to earth Mark formed the Shuttleworth Foundation and Canonical.

Simon Dingle recently authored a chapter on Mark Shuttleworth for the book South Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs. The publication will be available in September 2010.

Use the audio player above to stream the interview or click here to download the mp3 file.

Platform: Wii
Price: R450
Verdict: Next-level Mario.

One of the best days of my life, as a kid, was being 10 years old and using saved up pocket money to buy a Famicom (Japanese NES) 8-bit console. I had enough cash to get two games with it and chose Goonies and Super Mario Brothers. I had played Atari and other early consoles but the NES was a milestone and Super Mario set the stage for a new era in console gaming. Anyone old enough to remember MacGyver, The A Team and Airwolf will likely also have some nostalgia attached to Mario. But you don’t have to be a child of the eighties to appreciate Super Mario Galaxy 2 which once again raises the bar for platform games.

This is the second in a 3D series of Mario games set in space, along with an amazing variety of power-ups and physics tricks. And it’s ridiculously fun.

The controls are a bit niggly at first, especially the irritating (to me) Wiimote-twist that you have to do to get Mario to spin up against things. This move is the same as in New Super Mario Bros. for Wii and I still can’t get the hang of it. I’m not a big fan of motion gaming in general but at least you can play Galaxy 2 without needing to be standing in front of the TV. You do need to point the controller at the set, however, to manipulate a star-cursor used to collect stars in the game that can also be fired as a weapon.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 requires the Nunchuck attachment for the Wii-remote and uses most of the buttons for specific jumps and moves. A second player can also join in with just a Wii-remote and control a little star that follows Mario around and helps him out. This is a neat feature, but not much fun for the second player.

So we’ve established that this game is fun, but it does also contain some of the frustration common to Super Mario titles. For example, dying will send you back to the beginning of a level and it can be highly annoying to play through again, especially if you were close to a save point before dying. There are also camera angles that sometimes make your movements difficult to judge, sending Mario flying off a planet, for example.

Those annoyances pale when compared to the storyline, however, that is as inane as they come. You can’t skip through the ridiculous dialogue about… like… candy-floss and mushrooms and stars, either. Luckily these sequences aren’t too long, but you have to wonder why Nintendo even bothers with a storyline for Mario games.

That said, the variety in Super Mario Galaxy 2 makes up for any shortcomings and will keep you busy with this game for ages. There are heaps of spherical, 3D worlds to run around on, 2D levels that set a new standard in platform gaming, gravity-reversed levels where you’re stuck to the ceiling and power-ups including a suit that lets Mario create clouds  in mid air to use as platforms and a bee suit for flying around in.

Yoshi, Mario’s dinosaur-friend is also back in this title and you can ride around on him, using his tongue to zap enemies.

If you have a Nintendo Wii this is a must-have title that will keep you busy for ages. You have to push through the first few levels before things really get going, so bear that in mind. It’s a good time. And it’s Mario.

“… the detractors who criticise the noise of the vuvuzela, can virtually eliminate it while enhancing commentary with LG’s unique Clear Voice technology found on LG’s LCD, Plasma and 3D Full LED TVs. Those keen to embrace the passion and emotion that the vuvuzela has come to represent, can still immerse themselves in the action and sounds of the game as if they were pitch-side.  Clear Voice and LG’s innovative technology gives you the power to choose what suits your viewing situation best.

Clear Voice technology is unique to LG and emphasises voice commentary while suppressing the often loud ambient sounds found at major sporting events. For an even more immersive experience, LG’s 3D Full LED TV is the first of its type placing the viewer at the centre of the action: horns, vuvuzelas and all.”

I’d like to get my hands on a compatible television and try it out. Apparently Samsung sets can also drain out the cacophony using the built-in equaliser.

Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
Price: R400 – R600
Verdict: The best official FIFA title to date.

I’m  not big on sports games, but a good football title is a must for any gamer’s collection and 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa by EA is the one to own right now. The world cup is in South Africa for the first time and this game introduces some firsts too.

One of the new features is the Virtual Pro that allows you to customise a virtual player and then insert him into any team you want. This opens up a sort of career mode for you and there is a set of achievements linked to your Virtual Pro.

The game is also rich with features. For example, you can map out your own set-pieces for games and then have these played out by your team. There is also a Manager Mode for team and player management.

The amount of game modes and options is overwhelming, but it’s easy to ignore these and get on with things.

As for graphics and animation this is the best looking FIFA game ever and player movement has reached a new degree of realism.

But as good as this game is it’s hard to find much to say about it without boringly listing features. It’s a soccer game, after all, even if it is one of the best I’ve seen. And it’s fun, especially in multiplayer mode.

If you’re looking for a game to satisfy the soccer fever that currently grips the globe then you won’t be disappointed with this title, which is also reasonably priced.

Making the announcement at the massive E3 gaming conference and expo currently underway in Los Angeles, Mirosoft said that the service is set to launch in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece,  Hungary, Poland, Russia and South Africa.

Said Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox Live for Microsoft,“This expansion is another step toward our vision for Live – to deliver the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, wherever you are in the world.”

The service will be available in the USA summer, which means it should come online in South Africa within the next three months, and definitely by the end of September.

Microsoft said that Xbox Live in South Africa will focus first on delivering core gaming and community features including matchmaking, friends list, achievements, Gamerscore, a tailored Games Marketplace and other features, with content like movies and music being excluded at launch, but on the cards for addition later on.

Yvette van Rooyen, product and marketing manager for Xbox 360 in South Africa added that, “Xbox fans in South Africa will now be able play the best games in the industry with 23 million other Xbox Live users across the world who have made this their online gaming destination of choice. “

Given the long wait for Xbox Live it is likely that most South African Xbox users will have already created international accounts by lying about their location and will be loathe to switch to a South African account because they will lose all their stored information in the service. This will keep numbers down, I predict, while making it look like regions such as the USA and UK have unrealistically high numbers, as is the case with, for example, the Apple iPad which claims 2 million sales in the USA in under 60 days while I’m willing to bet that half those sales ended up elsewhere in the world (heck, I bought two).

I have been an Xbox Live Gold subscriber for some time and have compared the service to Sony Playstation Network (PSN). In my opinion there is no competition really, Microsoft’s service is streets ahead of Sony’s – but the latter gets all the credit for betting on South Africa first.

Microsoft had a slew of announcements at E3 2010, including unveiling its Project Natal accessory which will go to market as Microsoft Kinect and a new version of the Xbox 360 called the ‘Slim’ that will retail in the USA for $299.

The FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa has been featured solidly on Twitter since kickoff on Friday 11 June with trending topics related to the tournament featuring daily. Twitter has a dedicated site for the event and has added icons that appear on the Twitter website in tweets with specific hashtags relating to the event.

These hashtags include #worldcup that generates a little soccer-ball icon and flags for each of the 32 countries at the cup, such as #rsa for South Africa and #bra for Brazil.

Below is a table with all of the country codes for the event that Twitter will pick up and convert into icons.

Microsoft has unveiled a new Xbox 360 accessory called ‘Kinect’ that was previously known as Project Natal. Unveiled at the annual E3 gaming conference currently underway in Los Angeles, the Kinect enables controller-free gaming for the Microsoft console. Demos of the accessory included fighting, driving, dancing and other games all controlled by player’s actions without controllers. Checkout the video above for a taste of Kinect in action.

The device can also be used to control media playback on the Xbox 360 by just waving your fingers around in the air, which looks pretty sweet.

I personally like lying on the couch in a semi-vegitative state while gaming, but the Kinect is certainly the most impressive piece of console technology to hit the scene of late.

Kinect will be available worldwide from November 2010.

Red Dead Redemption is easily the best game I’ve played this year. It features cowboys, guns, horses and hot chicks – the ingredients of a good time.  The title was developed by Rockstar Games, makers of the Grand Theft Auto series and features the same sandbox-style, go-anywhere-do-anything gameplay of its stable partner.

The game is the nearest thing to perfect I’ve experienced on a console. Your character is former outlaw John Marston. You can ride horses and carriages, hunt animals, pick herbs, have gun battles, lasso and tame wild stallions, hogtie bandits and shoot people in the face.

The storyline is captivating and engrossing, but you can put it on hold at any time to roam the wild west, help or rob characters in-game and cause general mayhem.

The game environment features rich, beautiful graphics and no end of mini-quests, enemies and other encounters to keep you busy with. As with Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption is one of those titles you can kill hours with, just running around and causing kak. It also features a similar ‘wanted’ system whereby you can get on the wrong side of the law, forcing you to evade arrest, and a system for saving your game at specific safe areas where your character can ‘sleep’. In RDR, however, you can also set up camp while in the wilderness and use this to save your game or teleport to parts of the map you have already visited, saving time otherwise spent traveling.

The game did seem a bit buggy in parts and some of the quests feature clumsy combinations of actions that can be frustrating. These are few and far between, however.

The gameplay is rich with everything from being able to whistle for your horse to having choices between killing wanted bandits or tying them up, participating with the law or getting on the wrong side of it and dozens of mini-games including poker, horseshoe-toss and others. You can also hunt and skin animals to earn currency.

If you’re looking for a console game there is no other new title more worthy of your money. Red Dead Redemption offers a perfect balance of fun and challenge and won’t leave you short-changed as it features hours and hours of endless gameplay that is highly re-playable. Rockstar has delivered another winner and its hard to imagine any of its competitors coming up with anything better this year.

In the Web 2.0 echo-chamber  bad ideas spread fast. This time nodal sparks came from web celebs like entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and online broadcasting demigod Leo Laporte – both of which I have the utmost respect for, and both of which are proponents of the anti-Facebook movement.

I also respectively believe they’re taking things too far.

Calacanis is known for jumping to conclusions and he’s been wrong before. A great example of this was his Twitter attack on the New York Times’ David Pogue for daring to publish books on products from companies he writes about in the ‘Times. He attacked Pogue’s integrity and my opinion that he was wrong in doing so isn’t just an assertion – but listen to Pogue defend himself in TWiT episode 213 and decide for yourself.

Calacanis is clearly a principled guy who feels strongly about things. I’m the same and have made bad calls on that basis before too, so it would be hypocrisy for me to criticise him too harshly. But I believe he’s wrong about Facebook.

That Zuckerberg is an awkward kid with a track record of doucheness is undoubtable. He has been presented as such from all quarters and even the movie about the birth and rise of Facebook apparently casts him as ruthless and untrustworthy, amongst other things.

But so what? I’ve met some hard hitters in the tech space, including CEOs of large companies, and I can assure you that being ruthless is a common trait amongst almost all of them. Being untrustworthy, on the other hand, is a common trait with young men in general and Zuckerberg was very young indeed when he allegedly knifed business partners in the back. Raise your hand if you went through your teens without doing anything stupid… I didn’t think so.

If you’re going to quit Facebook because its leader is an arrogant know-it-all with weird preoccupations and because the company isn’t in full adoption of the open approach to privacy and technology in general then I would tender that you should be selling all your Apple products, deleting Windows off your PC and getting rid of all your gaming consoles. No more Kindle books, and you should probably sift through Google’s user agreements too. And good luck finding a mobile phone and network to use it on.

The fact is that Facebook is a great and useful service irrespective of its CEO being a douchebag (which may or may not be true). The privacy thing also isn’t as big a deal as some will tell you.

I’ve always been very wary of online privacy and have implemented advanced controls on my Facebook account since it was possible to do so. I have groups of users and I control who can see what. For example, I don’t let anyone except really close friends and family see most of the pictures and videos of my kids. Those settings have persisted and Facebook hasn’t changed them. My account is still as secure as it was this time last year.

The problem Facebook has is that it does privacy too well. It allows for advanced control of your personal content and I’m yet to see another service come close in terms of the granularity it allows. As with any feature in technology, if you don’t apply these controls then it’s you that has the problem, not Facebook. The user is still in control of what the public gets and what stays private in terms of specified user groups and networks.

Because it does this better than most, people expect Facebook to shine at privacy. They don’t care that Twitter is completely open because it’s always been that way, unless you have a locked account.

I am not suggesting that Facebook is faultless, however. The company certainly has played hard and fast with the information of people who do not lock down their information and accept the default settings. It also clearly plans to leverage its situation to make money. But I’m not sure those are malicious actions. God forbid anyone makes a profit, right?

My suggestion is that everyone takes a deep breath and calms down. Facebook is no more or less evil than any other company trying to drive a profit. We could pick out individuals from any organisation and form opinions of the company as a whole based on that one person – but this is shortsighted and infantile as far as I’m concerned. Zuckerberg is the baby and Facebook is the bathwater. Let’s not throw them both out – even if Mark has been peeing in the bath.

There are way more people involved in the creation and running of the company than just the CEO.

I’m all for open software and networks. I believe the guys over at the Diaspora project are on the right track with their plans for a “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network” and I can’t wait to see the fruits of their effort and funding. But for now Facebook is still a useful tool to me. I have no privacy concerns because I’ve taken the time to set things up properly. I don’t approve of everything the company does, but I could say the same for all the other providers whose products I use on a daily basis including Twitter, Sony, Apple, etcetera.

And, it bears repeating: if you accept the default settings then you can’t complain too loudly when they change. Lock it down like I did.

I had an enlightening discussion with science fiction author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow in Croatia in 2008 where we discussed his abandonment of the Mac, amongst other things. Cory, who has a tattoo of a Mac on his right bicep, found himself at odds with Apple as a company in recent years and switched to Linux. I asked Cory how he was enjoying Ubuntu Linux, which he runs on a Lenovo laptop.

“I’m extremely impressed with Ubuntu,” he said. “But less impressed with Lenovo as a company.”

The problem? Lenovo’s user agreement for their laptops. The reality is that if you look at most technology companies closely enough you’ll find something to disapprove of. Sometimes you just need to consolidate that in terms of the advantages offered by the technology itself. Cory still uses Lenovo products. And I still use Facebook.

And no, I won’t be deleting my account today. Spare me the hype. I’d go so far as to say that most of the people who have been swept up in the anti-Facebook togetherness are ignorant as to exactly what it is they’re protesting.

But, if you do want to get rid of your Facebook account, check out Seppukoo – a service that aids you in your virtual suicide. And ra-ra for taking a stand.