Diablo Down. #error37

Over a decade and a half after the original Diablo came out, Diablo III was released yesterday. Too bad hardly anybody could play the demon-fighting role-playing game. A global flood of users trying access the servers that host the game left most people with an “error 37” message, telling them their connection failed. According to the Guardian: “The hashtag #error37 immediately began trending on Twitter, attracting a mix of furious complaints and ironic comments. "Man, Diablo 3 is super hard. I've been playing for 30 minutes and haven't even defeated the login screen," tweeted one gamer.” I can still remember back to the good old days (Monday of this week and before), when people were talking about what a great job Activision was doing by pre-releasing the game - making it available to download but not play. Let your computer download the 7.3 GB that make up the game before its release date, so when 12:01 a.m. comes around and the locks come off the game, everybody can get to playing. Apperently this was a very popular option. 

Phones go big (again)

Remember the original cell phones--brick sized devices--that you carried around in their own case.  We’ve moved on from the ultra-big... or at least it seemed like we had.  For a while, small was all the rage.  Razr anyone?  But now, big is back.  The WSJ and Reuters are reporting the next-gen IPhone will be 4 inches from corner to corner (current Iphones are 3.5 inches).  And it will not make it the largest phone on the market.  Samsung’s Galaxy S III will be nearly 5 inches.  HTC also makes 4+ inch phones.  That should make this guy happy.  

Facebook wants to monetize you

What’s Facebook going to do with all our data?  Our pics, our friends, our likes and thumbs ups?  We’ll find out soon.  From the NYTimes  “As Facebook turns to Wall Street in the biggest public offering ever by an Internet company, it faces a new, unenviable test: how to keep growing and enriching its hungry new shareholders.”  And to feed those hungry, hungry shareholders, Facebook needs to come up with ways to use its massive data-bank to make money.  So what are we talking here--an online world with more, customized ads?  Or something else? “How Facebook exploits its users’ information — and how those users react — is the next reckoning. David Eastman, worldwide digital director for the advertising agency JWT, said Facebook would need to give marketers more data about what kinds of users click on what kinds of advertising, and about their travels on the Internet before and after they click on an ad. Most brands want to have a presence on Facebook, he said, but they do not quite understand who sees their pitches and whether they lead to greater sales.” And somehow Facebook has to figure this out without turning off a whole lot of users--who only clicked on that ad for mirror-ball-pants to laugh at them.

Obama has a Dashboard

That’s about all his re-election campaign will admit too. Dashboard is the new social networking game that the campaign’s digital gurus hav come up with and will debut within the next couple weeks. The Guardian reports:

The hope is that it will become the election equivalent of the Facebook games CityVille and FarmVille, where online participants cooperate with their social networks to run a city or manage a farm. In this case, Dashboard's creators hope to bring the power of the social networking right to the doorstep of the American voter.

The brains behind Dashboard have enlisted all sorts of number crunchers, advertisers, predictive modelers, and, I don’t know, a couple of LOL cats* to harness, in real-time, the power of the Internet. So when Sally from Poughkeepsie enters her stats on the campaign’s website, neighborhood volunteer organizers can immediately start tapping into Sally’s skillset. Conversely, as the Guardian notes:

The hope of Dashboard is that data acquired by volunteers from voters canvassing in Ohio will immediately be synced with that gathered by those running phonebanks in New Hampshire and with the outreach efforts of volunteers at myBarackObama.com, giving campaign bosses a real-time master view of the president's re-election efforts throughout the country.

Dashboard is undergoing final testing by staff right now, but you can sign up to be notified when it’s live. *So far, no cats have actually been reported as being part of the campaign