Let’s assume for a moment the rumours are true: what form would this network take? If it was simply a clone of Facebook it would be dead in the water before it even launched, so Google will need to offer something different and new to attract users; here are a few ideas I had about how they could do that.

A focus on privacy – one of the single biggest criticisms of Facebook is a perceived lack of care over the privacy of it’s users. There have been a number of alterations to the privacy settings, with varying degrees of success, but many people still find them bewildering and are unwittingly sharing private information with the world. (I recently removed a large amount of personal information from my profile because no matter what I did, it was still showing up in public, and call me picky, I’d rather not give my location or phone number to complete strangers.) I’m a bit (OK a lot) of a geek, if I find the controls confusing it’s understandable that less tech minded people will struggle.

Google also received criticism for the privacy settings on Google Buzz, but as far as I know this was remedied. However, an emphasis on maintaining the privacy of people who use a Google games network could be a big selling point. Simple, logical options that give a user complete control of their data would be an attractive feature. This could include an option to display data on a person by person basis; so, you can decide to share some details with friends, but not with your boss or mother. Facebook does offer this if you create groups of friends, but it can only be done on a group by group basis, not for individuals within groups.

It should be spam-free – the amount of spam generated by some Facebook games is astonishing. Certain games show pop-up messages asking if the player wants to share their achievements with their friends; some do this for almost every action performed within the game. So, you buy a new chicken, and share the news with your friends; you harvest some potatoes and share the news with your friends; you complete a collection of seemingly pointless objects and share the news with your friends ….

Players can refuse, but many don’t, and those messages appear in their news stream where they are seen by not only those who also play that game, but also all their other friends who don’t. This is a great way for the game makers to get some free advertising, it’s also good for people like me who write about the subject – we can easily see what is popular – but for anyone who has no interest in the game, it’s really, really annoying.

A Google games network should make it possible to switch off these notifications if you know you are never likely to want to tell your friends about your chicken acquisition. They should also be customisable, so that those who do send them can make sure they are only seen by people who are likely to be interested.

Games could be more complex – a lot of Facebook games are fun, but after playing them for a while they do become very repetitive and samey. This is fair enough, they are supposed to be casual games so won’t have the depth of something you’d buy for a console or computer. However, Google could capture the middle ground with games that go one step further than point and click, but which don’t involve spending hours planning a strategy or building a base. Speaking personally, I’d really enjoy games that actually required me to think a little about the tactics for my next move.

Over to you – what would you like to see in a Google gaming network?

A Google Games Network – how could it differ from Facebook? is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

War on the Margins by Libby Cone started life as a thesis, however, the author has reworked it into novel form. The book is set on Jersey during WW2, so in a sense works as a prequel to the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The story revolves around the characters of Marlene Zimmer, a young town hall clerk with Jewish ancestry, who finds herself in the terrible position of having to comply with Nazi edicts to register all Jews on the island, while at the same time knowing she may very soon come under scrutiny herself. Eventually, fearing betrayal, Marlene goes into hiding before being taken in and protected by resistance activists, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, otherwise known as surrealist artists and writers, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.

As the story progresses, we learn more about the work of Cahun and Moore and other resistance workers, as Marlene assists them in their attempts to spread misinformation and dissatisfaction among the German soldiers, often at great personal risk. We also get an insight into the terrible suffering of political prisoners brought to the islands as slave labour through the character of Peter, a young Polish man who is captured after fighting in the Spanish Civil War.

War on the Margins is a fast and quite gripping read, and Cone effectively mixes the narrative with contemporary documents such as: edicts from the occupying forces, and letters sent by the ‘real life’ characters. It was a very brave step to include the latter in the book, and I was  concerned about how they would be depicted; often real people in novels come across as either flat and unconvincing, or are treated too sympathetically. That wasn’t the case here, although Cahun and Moore are portrayed with kindness, they also seem very human and well rounded.

The fictional characters are beautifully drawn, and Marlene is believable as the shy secretary who initially joins the resistance almost by default, but who quickly learns to live on her wits. It is laudable that Cone did not make Marlene a paragon of virtue; as the novel progresses we discover she is susceptible to the influences of fear and paranoia sweeping the islands, as a result of which she makes a terrible error of judgement.

Secondary characters provide a good supporting cast, and their stories are interesting and often heartbreaking. I particularly liked Mrs Richardson whose dubious origins make her the subject of Nazi suspicions, but who escapes their attentions with great style. We also see how some islanders take advantage of the new regime to further their own agendas. Conversely, the Germans are not depicted as universally evil, with some having sympathy for or even siding with the locals, while others become disillusioned with the actions and ethos of their government.

Despite the grim subject matter, there is a great deal of humour in War on the Margins – admittedly some is very dark – which helps to lighten the mood. The attention to detail and use of language help to create an credible vision of 1940’s Jersey, and was so authentically British I didn’t realise Libby Cone was American until I read the fly-jacket at the end of the novel.

Any criticisms? The novel could have been longer; I would like to have read more about the day-to-day life of Marlene, Lucy and Suzanne, and also about Peter’s experiences before he encounters Marlene. However, overall, War on the Margins is a well researched and fascinating insight into both a very dark chapter in our recent history, and also the incredible bravery of ordinary men and women.

Book Review Tuesday: War on the Margins is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

News that the Swedish horror film, Let the Right One In (based on the book of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist) is to be remade in English probably didn’t surprise anyone – there is a long tradition of remaking popular foreign language films, with varying degrees of success. However, what was surprising, to me at least, was the news that it was being produced by Hammer Films because as far as I knew they’d gone out of business years ago. Apparently not.

Hammer started to make films back in the 1930s, although their output then would not have been recognisable to the legion of fans who know them only as Hammer Horror. For the first twenty years of it’s existence, Hammer concentrated on mainstream films, especially thrillers and mysteries, and it wasn’t until the late 1950s that it became synonymous with the horror and sci-fi genres.

It’s first big success was the film adaptation of The Quatermass Experiment in 1955, which was retitled The Quatermass Xperiment - because, apparently, an X is much scarier than the correct spelling. The film was an unexpected success, and so was it’s sequel, Quatermass 2 (1957). However, it was The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) that set Hammer on the course that would make it’s name a byword for a particular sub-genre of horror.

Although both films seem quite dated and tame to modern cinema audiences who are used to the likes of Saw (2004), back in the ‘50s, they were groundbreaking. Filmed in glorious, glossy technicolour, they could portray blood and gore in a way that had never been possible in black and white, and the film makers used this to great effect, leading the British Board of Film Censors to comment, “”We are concerned about the flavour of this script, which, in its preoccupation with horror and gruesome detail, goes far beyond what we are accustomed to allow even for the ‘X’ category.”

Of course, cinema goers on hearing that the censors had a problem with these films flocked to see them in even greater numbers.

Both Frankenstein and Dracula starred the legendary double act of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, along with strong supporting casts. Strong casting became a feature of subsequent productions, which were populated with the cream of British film and theatre, despite the low budgets. Lack of money didn’t affect the appearance of the films either, with costumes and sets that were lavish and beautifully detailed.

Hammer’s popularity continued to grow throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, and although they did occasionally produce non-horror films, they were mostly known as the purveyors of the finest vampires and monsters and zombies. Sadly, with the rise of a new kind of horror in the mid-70s their star began to fade. They were overtaken by such classics as The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976), and did not fight back in any realistic way, instead relying on a wave of more downmarket films which focused heavily on lesbian vampires. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for lesbian vampires, but they really aren’t a match for Gregory Peck fighting to save the world from the forces of darkness.

By the early ‘80s, apart from a voyage into television with The Hammer House of Horror, Hammer films had all but disappeared. But they hadn’t been forgotten. As a child at the time, I was far too young to be allowed to watch the ‘new’ horror films – no parent in their right mind would sit their offspring down in front of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – but no one seemed to mind us watching Christopher Lee exsanguinating entire villages. And so a new generation grew up who loved what we referred to as ‘those old horror films’. Initially this was because they were all we were allowed to watch, but in time I think we realised they were classics of the gothic horror genre, and while they weren’t as overt as anything we see now, they were beautifully made and more complex than we could have guessed at the age of eleven.

Whether the modern incarnation of Hammer will do justice to Let the Right One In remains to be seen – although the trailer (above) looks very good – but it is great to see them back making films again. For over a decade the horror market has been saturated with films which are either bland and about as scary discovering the milk has gone off, or which fall into what I call the ‘too much gore and not enough plot’ genre. It will be interesting to see what a company who have a proven track record of creating highly watchable horror can contribute.

Will Hammer Films Make a Comeback With Let Me In? is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

The following list features some of my favourite doom-mongering computer themed films from the ‘80s and ‘90s, why not share your favourites in the comments!

Tron (1982) - Jeff Bridges plays a programmer who hacks into the computer systems of a games company in an attempt to find evidence that they had stolen some of their most popular titles from him. However, he is ‘kidnapped’ by the system and forced to compete as a sort of cyber-gladiator. His only hope for escape lies in the built-in security programme, Tron. Proof, if it were needed, that computers are not our friends, and just want to lure us in and make us do their bidding.

Bridges also stars in the sequel, Tron Legacy which is due to be released later this year.

War Games (1983) – Matthew Broderick as a young gamer who inadvertently connects to a defence computer believing it to be a game server, and accidentally starts the countdown to World War 3. Of course, we now know you’d have to be a bit dim to mistake NATO for Steam, but for anyone who grew up during the Cold War this was one of the scariest films ever.

Terminator (1984) – Although the plot actually revolves around the battle to protect the unborn, future resistance leader, John Connor, the film is based on the premise that computers have banded together and decided to take over the world. While Terminator is a classic of it’s genre, I’ve always thought it odd that no one thought to just unplug all those murderous Spectrums.

The Lawnmower Man (1992) – Pierce Brosnan stars as a scientist who develops a way of increasing intelligence using virtual reality. When he tests his theories on his gardener, Jobe, the initial results are promising, but things soon spiral out of control when Jobe – believing he now has God-like status – rejects real life in favour of his virtual one and connects himself permanently to the computer intending to take revenge on everyone who wronged him. Like Tron, this is evidence of the dangers of getting too close to those tricksy, conniving machines.

The Net (1995) – Sandra Bullock as the software analyst who finds herself on the wrong side of a shadowy government organisation when she is sent a disc containing sensitive information. When her whole identity is deleted and replaced with a fake one that implies she is a criminal, she must find a way to prove her innocence with only a network of online friends she has never met to help her. Of course, nowadays she could just tweet Stephen Fry or Ashton Kutcher about it, and the whole thing would be sorted in no time.

You’ve Got Mail (1998) - Tom Hanks falls in love with Meg Ryan over the internet, little realising she is the owner of a small book shop his publishing company are trying to put out of business. Obviously, this film isn’t as apocalyptic as others in the list, but the implications are still pretty scary: use the internet and you’ll find yourself being stalked by Tom Hanks!

Six 80s and 90s Films About Dangerous Technology is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

The story begins when five young boys discover that disappearances in their town are linked to the local school, and their attempts to alert adults to this danger are dismissed. Even more alarmingly, some adults are actually working with this dangerous force, making it all the more likely that they won’t be believed. The boys team up with a girl from the ‘wrong side of town’, and together they set out to destroy the evil and make the town and it’s people safe.

In Summer of Night, Simmons creates a believable and evocative world which captures the spirit of childhood perfectly. He uses the fears common to most children – the monster under the bed, the face at the window, the creature in the closet – to great effect, and also turns the resentment many children feel towards compulsory education into something completely logical; who wouldn’t fear teachers who really were trying to kill you?

Simmons also draws on the natural anxiety many children feel as they head into their teens and struggle to come to terms with growing independence and the knowledge that their parents can’t always make their problems go away. These themes are combined with a delightful depiction of the joys of the long summer holiday from school which makes a wonderful backdrop to a story that is part Famous Five, part Stephen King and part To Kill a Mockingbird.

As I mentioned above, Summer of Night has been compared to It. However it is quite different, both in terms of the plot, and also Simmons’ writing style which tends to be more succinct than Kings. Although the book is 600 pages long, it is quite a fast read. If I have any criticism it would be that some of the geographical details are a bit confusing – I saw one reviewer suggesting a map might have been helpful – but this doesn’t detract from the plot as a whole. To sum up: if you’re looking for something truly creepy to while away a long summer evening, Summer of Night definitely fits the bill.

Book Review Tuesday: Summer of Night is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

My patch on Frontierville - any volunteers for weeding?

Farmville now has a rival for the title of most popular social game in the form of Frontierville, although this is good news for Zynga the company behind both games. The premise behind Frontierville is that the player is a settler in an untamed wilderness which must be cleared to create a farm and a small pioneer town. To make the game more challenging, and also to advance through the levels, players must complete ‘quests’, which can be anything from clearing a certain number of trees, to constructing a certain type of building.

Anyone familiar with Farmville should find Frontierville pretty easy to understand. You grow crops, keep livestock, build houses and shops. The game goes a little further though; instead of working on a pristine area of land, your Frontierville plot is overgrown with trees and grass which have to be removed before work can begin. Along the way, players will encounter bears and snakes, the former must be scared away, but the poor old snakes get ‘clobbered’. Once you’ve dealt with these intruders you receive bonus points, coins and other items. While clearing land, players can collect special objects which form part of a collection, this is also a feature of Farmville, but in this case they do actually have a purpose: a complete collection can be traded in for useful tools and items.

Another major difference between the games is the energy bar. In Farmville players can work on their farms for as long as they like; in Frontierville, every action uses up one unit of energy which can be replenished with meals bought using slices of pie collected throughout the game. If you find you are too tired to carry on working you can hire neighbours to take over, but there is a limit to how many you can use in a single day. If I have a criticism of the game, it is that it’s very easy to run out of energy before completing all the necessary tasks, and it takes too long to collect enough pie slices to top up by more than a small amount.

Livestock is quite different too. Farmville animals can be ‘harvested’, but they don’t need any other care. Frontierville animals must be fed, and only grow into full-sized animals after a specific number of meals. However, they don’t seem to produce anything.

The biggest difference between the two games though, is the addition of extra characters. I’ve only been playing for a short time, and currently need to complete the tasks required for me to gain a spouse. Once I’m all married and decent, my spouse and I can start a family of mini-pioneers. This a big change to the solo-player formula of Farmville, and most other social games.

Overall, Frontierville is fun to play, and a little more challenging than it’s predecessors. Anyone who finds the many existing farm games a little samey would enjoy it, and although the energy requirements can be limiting, this does work to the advantage of people who prefer games they can dip in and out of over the course of the day.

Updated to add: having played the game for a little longer I’m finding the constant pop-up messages asking me to send objects or requests to friends seriously annoying. Unlike other games, Zynga doesn’t give players the option to turn these notices off, and they appear every couple of minutes. I think this is a real oversight; many people do not want to post pointless messages to their Facebook feed and constantly urging them to do so will only put them off playing the game.

Social Game Review: Frontierville is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

One of the more amusing aspects of the hugely popular Sims 2 and 3 games is the inclusion of real-world songs sung in Simlish – the unintelligible language spoken by sims. The songs sound just like the original versions, and are performed by the original artists, just not in English. Amongst the acts who provided tracks are Howard Jones, Lily Allen (see the video above), Barenaked Ladies, Natasha Bedingfield and Depeche Mode, but there are plenty of other familiar tunes. I don’t know how much the musicians were paid for their participation, but they earned every penny just for being able to sing such lines as, “Na boo blotzork cubba tubey noobs”, with a straight face.

If, for some reason, you don’t like the default tunes in your copy of the Sims, or you’d like to expand the selections, you can import your own music into both Sims 2 and 3.

First make sure the songs you want add are in mp3 format. then navigate to your Sims music folder.

In Sims 2 this is My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Music.
In Sims 3 the music folder is My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Custom Music.

Save your chosen tracks to the relevant folder, then open up the game and go to the options panel.

Click the audio options tab and check that the music you just added is enabled – you’ll need to click the check boxes if it isn’t. You can also disable the existing songs, although I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to sing along with Kajagoogoo’s profound lyrics, “Boo neeb neeb wush wush, eeb lo jeeb”, which actually makes more sense than the original version.

To play your new music in Sims 2, simply select the relevant radio channel – jazz, new wave etc. In Sims 3, you need to select the custom music channel.

And that’s it, your sims can now boogie along to the Foo Fighters, Handel or the Birdy Song – although the latter would probably be considered a form of cruelty to artificial lifeforms.

How to Import Your Own Playlist to Sims 2 and 3 is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

The series revolved around the two title characters, mysterious beings whose purpose was never completely explained but who seemed to be agents working to repair rifts in time. Unusually, the characters were not heroic types working for the good of humanity as seen in other sci-fi and supernatural series, but were more ambiguous, and placed the success of their mission above the safety of the humans they encountered.

Although categorised as sci-fi, Sapphire and Steel could more accurately be described as a supernatural drama – the writer, Peter J Hammond, was inspired to write it while staying in a haunted castle – and each of the six stories had a decidedly ghostly theme that was quite reminiscent of the legendary, MR James. Possibly because the series was broadcast in the early evening, it did not include the gory special effects that had become part of mainstream horror by that time; instead the writer created a deliciously creepy atmosphere, which was enhanced by the use of lighting and sound effects.

While all six stories in the series were pretty scary – especially for younger viewers of which I was one – the one that has always stuck in my mind is the second. Set in a haunted railway station, the enigmatic duo are confronted with a malevolent force which feeds on the resentment of those who died too young. One scene involves nothing more than a deserted station platform, and the mournful sound of a World War 1 song being whistled; it was the scariest thing I had ever seen! After watching this I literally checked under my bed and slept with the lights on.

As far as I know, Sapphire and Steel hasn’t been repeated on any of the nostalgia channels, but it is available on dvd. If you can get hold of a copy it’s well worth taking a look. As one might expect, Lumley and McCallum are excellent, but it’s also a great example of just how good British television is at producing off-beat programming.

Retro Television: Sapphire and Steel is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

Daily Links - This is the Chrome equivalent of Firefox’s Morning Coffee, and a great way of accessing all the pages you use on a regular basis. Add your favourite sites, then open them up with one click. You can change the settings to determine which days you load each site, and whether it loads in a new window or the existing one.

Feedly – A feed-reader extension, that works in conjunction with Google Reader. Feedly has a really attractive magazine-style layout, and offers you a choice of reading a digest of your favourite blogs, or catching up with the latest updates. You can read by category, subscribe to new blogs using the list of related blogs, and synchronise with Google Reader – this means that when you read or subscribe in Feedly, it will update Google Reader automatically. You can also use the Twitter tool to keep up with tweets, or share links with your followers.

Monkeyfly - A nifty little add-on that adds extra columns to your Twitter page. So, when you log in, instead of just seeing a page of the latest tweets, you can add a panel to show @replies, or tweets from one of your lists. This might not work too well if you have a smaller monitor, but otherwise is a great way of turning the main Twitter site into a Twitter client without needing to download extra software.

StumbleUpon – A version of the SU toolbar is now available for Chrome. It doesn’t have all the features of the Firefox/Internet Explorer versions, but that is being worked on. However, it does let you stumble, like, share and review pages.

Google Mail Checker – Simple little extension that tells you how many emails you have, and lets you access your inbox at the click of a button.

Xmarks Bookmarks Sync – Synchronises your bookmarks across different browsers and computers. This is really useful if you use different computers at work and at home, or if you have more than one machine for performing different tasks.

Google Chrome Extensions: Part Three – General Browsing is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology

Set in 1946, the story begins when a writer, Juliet Ashton, receives a letter from a Guernsey farmer, Dawsey Adams, which explains that he found her name written on the cover of an old book and was writing to her in the hope that she could recommend others by the same author. A series of letters passes between them, and Juliet learns that Dawsey is a member of the literary society of the title, which is in fact a book club set up on the spur of the moment when a group of islanders were caught by the Germans out and about after curfew. To maintain their cover they began to meet regularly, and gradually the pretend book club evolved into the real thing as each member discovered or rediscovered a love of literature.

As the story progresses, we meet other members of the book club, and learn more about their own personal experiences of the war. We are also hear about Elizabeth McKenna, an islander who went missing during the occupation, and who never actually appears in the book, but who is still an important central character. There is a tantalising will-they won’t-they love story between Juliet and Dawsey which keeps the reader guessing till the end.

Before I began to read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society I did wonder just how authentic it would be considering Mary Shaffer was American. However, she does create a believable vision of not only the post-war Channel Islands, but also a Britain that was worn out and battered after so many years of bombing and rationing. I was also concerned by descriptions of the book as “uplifting” and “heartwarming”, fearing they may be euphemisms for twee and saccharin, but on the whole Shaffer avoided this trap. In fact, the warmth of the characters, and the cosy relationships they have with each other, and with Juliet, are welcome, because the sections dealing with the occupation made for very bleak reading.

Should you read it? My copy arrived just as I came down with a nasty bout of swine flu, and it certainly helped to make the time I spent recuperating more bearable. It’s quite an easy read populated with likeable characters who all have an interesting story to tell. Although the plot doesn’t shy away from the horrors of the occupation, there is also a lot of humour. If I have a criticism it would be the ease with which the characters correspond – surely the British postal service has never been that efficient – but I suppose the story wouldn’t work as well if half the letters were ending up in Glasgow not Guernsey. On the whole though, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an enjoyable and engaging book which leaves the reader with a great deal of admiration for the people of Channels Islands.

Book Review Tuesday: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a post from: eggnchips.com - cracking good technology