Sony to begin restoring PlayStation Network Sunday

TOKYO — Sony said it would begin a phased restoration of its PlayStation Network games service on Sunday on a country by country basis and expected the process to be complete by May 31.

The company said phased restoration of the Sony Online Entertainment PC-based online games service would also begin on Sunday.

The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant apologized to customers for the outages and said in a statement a range of new security measures had been introduced.

"I can't thank you enough for your patience and support during this time," Sony No. 2 Kazuo Hirai said in the news release, acknowledging that customers were "anxious" to use their products again.

"We are taking aggressive action at all levels to address the concerns that were raised by this incident, and are making consumer data protection a full-time, company wide commitment."

Sony discovered on April 19 its PlayStation Network, which enables PlayStation games console owners to download games and pit their skills against rivals, had been breached by hackers, who accessed personal details on 77 million accounts.

It shut down the network and its Qriocity online music and movie service, frustrating many users, but later found out that a separate online games service had also been accessed, forcing a further shutdown.

Users of the Sony Online Entertainment service will be offered free game time as compensation for the outage, the company said. — Reuters

"Modern Warfare 3" New Trailers

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is an upcoming first-person shooter video game. It will be the eighth installment in the Call of Duty series. Due to a legal dispute between the game's publisher Activision and the former co-executives of Infinity Ward - which caused several lay-offs and departures within the company[ - Sledgehammer Games will assist in the development of the singleplayer, and Raven Software will develop the multiplayer.The game is said to have been in development since only two weeks after the release of their previous game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Sledgehammer is aiming for a "bug free" first outing in the Call of Duty franchise, which also sets a goal for Metacriticreview scores above 95 percent. On May 12 2011 on the official YouTube page for the Call Of Duty franchise, four teasers were released entitled: America, England, France and Germany, indicating possible location for the game. The "e" in each name was stylised in the trailers with a Modern Warfare stylised number "3".

Sources said that SEAL Team Six, men who killed Osama Bin Laden, is possibly included in MW3. But according to Ward, "not all of the leaked information was accurate, and urged fans to wait for the official reveal."

In addition to the reported appearance of SEAL Team Six, there are spoilers aplenty in Kotaku's series of reports on the upcoming first-person shooter, the eighth installment in the Call of Duty series.

Modern Warfare 3 reportedly kicks off with a Russian invasion of Brooklyn (picking up from where Modern Warfare 2 left off) and takes players to more than a dozen more locations around the world for special-ops missions and out-and-out battles. 

source

Portal 2- Countdown

Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game developed by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 2007 video game Portal and was announced on March 5, 2010, following a week-long alternate reality game based on new patches to the original game.

Though initially slated for release in the last quarter of 2010, the game was postponed to the week of April 18, 2011. The game was released by Valve through Steam for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, while the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and retail Windows/OS X versions of the game are distributed by Electronic Arts. The game's release on Steam was preceded by a second multi-week alternate reality game, the Potato Sack, involving 13 independently-developed titles, culminating in a distributed computing spoof to release Portal 2 several hours early.

How To Earn Money Online while enjoying facebook and tweeter?

Did you know that you can earn money while enjoying your stay on social medias like facebook and tweeter? Filipinos love social networks such as facebook and tweeter but fewer knows the big oppurtunity to earn money from this social networks via Churp Churp Philippines. Anyway, ChupChurp Philippines has found a way for twitters and facebook users to take advantage of these sites and not just to be another social routine. You get paid by sharing a message on your twitter or facebook. They quoute “You have influence. Get rewarded for it”.

They started up with a PHP 15.00 referral on every successful sign up. Now imagine this. If you were able to sign in 500 of your friends, that’s an instant PHP 7,500. What more can a 1,000 friends account can possibly earn? A whooping PHP 15,000. It’s totally free and easy to join so there’s nothing to lose in trying.

Here’s your chance to take advantage of that! Get rewarded for sharing the message of different brands on different social networks! Churpchurp has arrived. Churpchurp aims to reward social media influencers who spread the word from our friendly neighborhood advertisers! Interested? Come out the site, ph.churpchurp.com.to register.

Here’s are 3 simple step on how to join:
1. Go to ChurpChurp Philippines.
2. Complete the Churper Registration
3. Allow allow ChurpChurp application to access your facebook and twitter. Start sharing the message on your facebook wall and tweets.

Recently they got this 'Mother's Day Program- Just by posting links of PLDT Mother's Day Youtube Greetings they have paid churp churpers Php. 6.00 for each friends click for the link that you posted on your facebook wall. But I believe they limit it to P2k per person which means only 334 of your friends need to click for you to earn a maximum Php2k otherwise I could have earn more since I have more than 2k friends on my network. Therefore I'm looking forward for their next Churp Churp campaign. However for inviting friends to Churp Churp where they pay Php15 pesos per registrants- the earning is unlimited.

Brink - Video Game Trailer and Review

Greatness is rarely achieved without ambition. Jumping into the battlefields of Brink, you get the immediate sense that you are playing an ambitious first-person shooter. Four interdependent soldier classes and three distinct body types combine to create a diverse array of ways to kill your enemies, support your allies, and move around the battlefield.

Brink's team-based skirmishes are rich with opportunities, but they are also plagued with technical problems and design shortcomings. Visual issues and online lag frequently interrupt the fast-paced flow, and problems with the movement system and the artificial intelligence can be downright frustrating. There is definitely some fun to be had in these frenetic firefights, but for all its ambition, Brink falls well short of greatness. Read More here...

Capcom posts $1.2 billion annual sales- fiscal year ended March 31

Capcom today released its results for the fiscal year ended March 31, painting a rosy picture of the past year, one in which revenues rose sharply and a record five games from the publisher achieved the million-units-shipped milestone.

The publisher posted ¥97.7 billion ($1.21 billion) in revenues for the full year, up 46 percent from the ¥66.8 billion ($830 million) it managed the year before. Its net profits were up even more significantly, with the reported ¥7.8 billion ($96 million) more than three-and-a-half times the ¥2.2 billion ($27 million) bottom line of the previous year.

Although Capcom also deals in arcade and mobile games, it still draws most of its income from the console and handheld division, which produced more titles that shipped a million copies than in any previous year. The PSP release of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd was far and away Capcom's biggest release of the year, shipping 4.6 million copies despite only being released in Japan. That was enough to make it the company's fourth biggest game ever in terms of units shipped, trailing only Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo, Resident Evil 5 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and Resident Evil 2 on the PlayStation.

It's not as if the rest of the world was unkind to Capcom, as the publisher's next four biggest titles were all targeted at international markets. Dead Rising 2 was the next biggest hit (2.2 million units shipped), followed by Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (2 million shipped), Super Street Fighter IV (1.6 million shipped), and Lost Planet 2 (1.5 million shipped).

While Capcom considered the results "favorable," it is not optimistic about its ability to exceed them in the current fiscal year. To start with, the publisher said the Japanese economy is currently facing "unparalleled crisis" due to the March earthquake and tsunami. (The publisher noted that 10 of its arcade locations were shut down by the quake, and to date, only three have reopened.)

"In the video game industry, a downturn in consumer confidence is feared as the consumer mindset voluntarily moves away from spending, such as entertainment and recreation, and leans excessively towards self-restraint, including refraining from going out. Accordingly, it is believed that time will be required for the domestic game market to recover."

As a result, Capcom expects revenues to be down 12 percent to ¥86 billion ($1.1 billion) for the year ending March 31, 2012, with net profits down 10 percent to ¥7 billion ($86.9 million).

source: gamespot

Infamous 2 Trailer- First Footages

Sucker Punch Productions' upcoming Infamous 2 follows the continuing adventures of unlikely hero Cole MacGrath. The anticipated PlayStation 3 sequel finds the electrically empowered bike messenger finding his legs as a hero (or as a jerk, depending on the choices you'll make in the game), and travelling to new places.

SONY PlayStation Hacked

Sony Corp's Executive Deputy President Hirai sits in front of a screen

showing how their data was hacked at a news conference in Tokyo

NEW YORK — Sony Corp. said Monday that hackers may have taken personal information from an additional 24.6 million user accounts after a review of the recent PlayStation Network breach found an intrusion at a division that makes multiplayer online games.

The data breach comes on top of the 77 million PlayStation accounts it has already said were jeopardized by a malicious intrusion.

The latest incident occurred April 16 and 17 — earlier than the PlayStation break-in, which occurred from April 17 to 19, Sony said.

About 23,400 financial records from an outdated 2007 database involving people outside the U.S. may have been stolen in the newly discovered breach, including 10,700 direct debit records of customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, it said.

The outdated information contained credit card numbers, debit card numbers and expiration dates, but not the 3-digit security code on the back of credit cards.

The direct debit records included bank account numbers, customer names, account names and customer addresses.

Company spokeswoman Taina Rodriguez said Sony had no evidence the information taken from Sony Online Entertainment, or SOE, was used illicitly for financial gain.

“We had previously believed that SOE customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company, but on May 1 we concluded that SOE account information may have been stolen and we are notifying you as soon as possible,” Sony said in a message to customers.

Sony said that it shut service Monday morning to Sony Online Entertainment games, which are available on personal computers, Facebook and the PlayStation 3 console. Its most popular games include ‘EverQuest,’ ‘Free Realms’ and ‘DC Universe Online.’

The company said it will grant players 30 days of additional time on their subscriptions, along with one day for each day the system is down. It is also creating a “make good” plan for its multiplayer online games.

On Sunday, Sony executives bowed in apology and said they would beef up security measures after an earlier breach caused it to shut down its PlayStation network on April 20.

The company is working with the FBI and other authorities to investigate what it called “a criminal cyber attack” on Sony’s data centre in San Diego, Calif.

The company said it would offer “welcome back” freebies such as complimentarydownloads and 30 days of free service to PlayStation customers around the world to show remorse and appreciation.

PlayStation spokesman Patrick Seybold, in a blog post Monday, denied a report that said a group tried to sell millions of credit card numbers back to Sony.

He also said that while user passwords had not been encrypted, they weretransformed using a simpler function called a hash that did not leave them exposed as clear text.

- Associated Press

Friendster to Reformat on May 31, 2011

Friendster, a pioneer social networking site launched in 2002, issued the warning as it prepares a "new and improved version" in the coming weeks.

According to FRIEDSTER TEAM:

“Your Friendster account will not be deleted. You will still have the same email login and password in the new Friendster. Also, your list of friends will be preserved, along with your basic profile information. However, all the photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs, forums and groups that you may have now will no longer be part of your account by May 31, 2011.

We understand that your photos, blogs and other private data are important to you. An application is available in the “Apps” section of the site, until May 31, 2011, to help you download or export them securely to third party sites, such as Flickr or Multiply. The application is available here.

Firefox surpasses 100M downloads after launching on March 22, 2011

Mozilla launched the latest version of its Firefox browser last March 22. The new browser had promised faster performance and a more streamlined look.

As of this writing (6:10 P.M. Philippine Time- +8GMT ) Firefox 4 has already been downloaded 105.6 million times and still counting.

DOWNLOAD FIREFOX 4 FOR FREE HERE!

An article in PC Magazine pointed out that European Firefox users have contributed the most to Firefox 4's download share, accounting for 38.6 million downloads. As far as countries go, the United States is leading the download charge with more than 24.4 million downloads to its name. That's crushing the total of second-place Germany and its 7.3 million downloads of Firefox 4 to date. However it still Fails to Eat IE or Chrome Market Share.

CBCP's Online Visita Iglesia hits surpass 100k mark

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines' "Visita Iglesia" site breached the 100,000 mark shortly after noon of Good Friday as online church visits by Filipino Catholics continued to peak during the Holy Week.

As of 12:15 p.m. Friday, the number of visitors to the CBCP's Visita Iglesia site had reached 100,011.

It was more than double the 47,473 visitors who made a virtual Visita Iglesia last year.

The number of visitors to the site had already reached 88,431 as of 5:10 a.m. Friday, an increase of 30,000 from Thursday morning.

Last year, visits to the site peaked on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday.

So far, the site had shown no signs of slowing down or experiencing technical difficulties due to the high traffic.

The CBCP launched the site last April 1 for overseas Filipino workers who could not make it home, and for Catholics who cannot physically make the church visit.

This year's version features many improvements from its 2010 predecessor, including catecheses and video introductions. — LBG, GMA News