Sony officially announced the PSP Go at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, reports surfaced that the electronics maker was already working on a follow-up to the handheld device. According to a report out of Japanese business newspaper Nikkei in June, Sony began assembling a product-development team tasked with combining the PSP’s game-playing functionality with Sony Ericsson’s mobile phone technology to better compete against Apple’s iPhone.Following on from that initial report, the Wall Street Journal claims knowledge that Sony is readying a whole line of new handhelds, including smart phones capable of downloading and playing PSP games. Sources tell the WSJ that Sony is also prepping a multifunctional iPad competitor that combines the capabilities of a netbook, the Sony Reader, and the PSP.


Both products are expected to launch sometime in 2010, the WSJ reports. However, many details, including pricing and specific features of the devices, have reportedly yet to be nailed down.

As previously reported, the new devices are intended to combat Apple’s dominance of the portable market. The WSJ notes that Sony intends to have the new devices integrate with its iTunes competitor, currently called Sony Online Services, which is expected to launch later this month. Sony promises it will deliver content to a wide array of devices, including PlayStation 3s, PSPs, PCs, and Internet-enabled HDTVs and Blu-Ray players.

Sources also tell the WSJ that the new devices are central to Sony’s turnaround plan, an initiative the Japanese giant began in earnest by cutting some 16,000 jobs in December 2008. It also comes as Sony struggles in the mobile market. Sony Ericsson cell phone shipments fell 41 percent in 2009, the WSJ notes.

The publisher also drastically cut its PSP shipment expectations from 15 million to 10 million for its fiscal year ending March 31, 2009, as part of its earnings report last month. The decline comes despite Sony’s attempt to carve out a larger share of the handheld gaming market with the launch of the UMD-less PSP Go for $250 in October.

Last November, when Google launched Open Social we asked readers if Facebook would join Google’s platform. The results were split right down the middle, but as we get farther from the Open Social launch, and the two sites continue to launch competing APIs (Google FriendConnect vs. Facebook Connect, for example — the former banned by Facebook), that seems less and less likely. This is becoming a social networking cold war according to Duncan Riley.

Even though the battle for social networking supremacy is a fight between Facebook and MySpace, the social networking arms race is really being played out between Facebook and Google. Google has demonstrated the unique ability to bring rival social networks together around its proposed open standard APIs, such as Open Social, FriendConnect, and the Social Graph API. Google has built up its own little iron curtain with MySpace, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Ning, and the Google-owned Orkut to prop up its open source platform initiative. (Don’t bother trying to follow the Cold War analogy all the way through — it doesn’t really work.)

Facebook is now planning to follow Google’s lead and open source their platform. Previously, Facebook’s platform technology only powered an app development platform on one site outside its own — that of rival social networking site, bebo (recently acquired by AOL). An open sourced platform means that any social network could implement Facebook applications. More details should emerge in the next couple of days, according to TechCrunch, who broke the story.

Two questions immediately spring to mind following this news: 1. Does this help users? 2. Do platforms even matter?
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It seems a given that mobile social networking is going to be “the next big thing”, but squinting at tiny text is still a pain on today’s phones. To deal with this issue, Blabnote, a British startup that is currently in private beta, has created what may be the world’s first “vocal social network.”

To login to the network, you simply call Blabnote from your phone, which uses caller ID to match you to your profile. From there, you can vocally enter any number of commands. For example, if I wanted to create a group for TechCrunch fans, I might say, “Create Group called ‘Team TechCrunch’”. Members can be added by saying, “add Mike and Mark”, and you can send messages to group members in a similar fashion.

Blabnote has no shortage of obstacles to overcome, to put it mildly. For one, the entire system is going to rely on voice recognition, which isn’t exactly a perfected technology. Imagine creating a very personal voice message and sending it to an ex-girlfriend on accident - the setup is ripe for disaster. And should you get sick of talking (and listening), you’re out of luck: there is no web management interface, though Blabnote says it will provide an API for third parties.

Blabnote could be a useful organization and notification tool for established groups, like soccer teams or clubs. But if it aspires to become a large social network, this company is going to be teetering perilously close to the DeadPool.

The coolest ad technologies aren’t the ones that cost the most–they’re the ones that engage users. Thankfully, this year’s crop of cool tools doesn’t require the kind of attention your MySpace page does. From reaching people on their mobile to enhancing your online videos, these innovative ad trends can set you apart as a tech-savvy company while reaching users right when they’re ready to buy–and encouraging them to buy more.Bar Codes With Extra Info
While you may think of “airline check-in” or “mail tracking” when you see the black-and-white squiggles that make up QR, or “Quick Response” codes, these 2-D data matrices are beginning to find their place in advertising.

Members of international social network hi5 will now be able to access and play massive multiplayer online-style casual online games with friends, family and colleagues on other popular social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, through the first social gaming community, Mytopia.

Launched on March 24, 2008, by company owners and siblings Guy and Galia Ben-Artzi, Mytopia is, according to its creators, the first casual MMO and aims to bring together the social features typically found in hardcore MMO games to timeless, casual favourites like chess, backgammon, bingo, dominoes, sudoku and Texas Hold’em, to name a few.

“Bringing Mytopia to hi5 users is part of our mission to help the world play together – from any social network, any widget, any online entry point,” said Guy Ben-Artzi, founder and chief executive officer of Mytopia. “Today, online social networks are isolated from one another. Members of different communities really can’t socialise with each other freely.

“Mytopia and others in the games industry are changing that. We’re building bridges, uniting these islands of isolation to form a larger, converged community that welcomes internet users from every corner of the modern web.”

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