Cyprus just decided to take part in the monsoon season. It's raining buckets and the streets are flooding. Rushing home to close some windows. Feels very 'Day After Tomorrow' here at the moment. Stuck in the car watching stuff float by.

Pointless Waste of Time's David Wong and Haimoimoi bring us the fantastic Gamer's Manifesto (kudos: Adrian). This is something every games publisher should read. The Sony Playstation 3 is going to cost $465.00. -- In the desolate economic climate of post-apocalyptic 2006, I'm thinking that's going to be a lot of money. Now, it's true that at E3 Sony was boasting the Playstation 3 could crank out 1.8 TFLOPS, or 1.8 trillion FLOPS. If that many FLOPS were piled together they would fill the Grand Canyon, assuming each FLOP were the size of a muskrat. So what do gamers want from all that money and FLOP? Just ask them. They continue by listing things that gamers really want to see like AI that's actually intelligent, no misleading videos (which, admittedly I've helped promote of late) and mostly less bullshit everywhere. I caught in last month's Edge that at this year's Game Developer Conference Nokia's game guy (sorry, no name in memory) proclaimed "we're all fucked!" This was met with thunderous applause from the crowd (made up mostly of game developers) as they all know it's true. With game development budgets bumping up to eight figures the pressure of making games more imminently marketable is omnipresent. Which basically means misleading graphics, celebrities and less gameplay. Welcome to Hollywood.

First of all, I am French so I have a right to meddle. Secondly, merde, merde, merde. France rejects the European Constitution (from Gaping Void strangely enough) and people start talking about the downfall of the European Union. People are sure quick to hit it when it's down forgetting that countries that were invading each other only 60 years ago now have open borders because of it. While listening to the BBC I heard interesting views about why people had voted no, one of them was "we don't want Europe to turn into the USA" -- one has to congratulate the "non" movement for a tremendously succesfull bit of marketing. "Fear of change" remains all powerful. No more politics for a while... What should I write about next? Something light maybe? Genetically modified crops, stem cell research or possibly software patents... Or I might just stick to posting about drinking.

The Long Tail's Chris Anderson goes all fanboy on us and gets extremelly excited about hijacking 3D objects from our favourite games and then turning them into real objects. Now, most games will "let" you export 3D models without much hacking about and this is deffinetly 1337 but I don't know how good a lifesize low-polygon plastic BFG would feel like in your hands.

First, Intel's head goes on the record saying basically that if you want security you should switch to a Mac and now we hear that Apple might plan on using Intel chips. What the hell is going on? I've managed to obtain a leaked shot of the next Intel-based iPod (now we know what the 'i' stands for). How odd it would be to have Intel-based Macs... How would the flame wars of the future be fought? "Yeah? Well my Mac has an Intel processor which is exactly the same as the one in your PC!!" -- "Oh yeah?! Well my PC uses a GeForce card that's exactly the same as your Mac's!" Welcome to the golden age of homogenization. UPDATE: Kottke offers some views on the fact that a) this has now officially changed status from "word on the street is" to "I read in the news that" and b) that Apple's move to Intel could mean a new non-x86 processor would be used or even a PowerPC chip. From the man himself: Even if Intel isn't going to be making PPC chips for Apple, they'll probably manufacture a modified version of an already produced chip that OS X will be refactored to run on so that the cheapo Wal-Mart PC can't run it. And if that fails, there's always DRM, which could be used by OS X to verify that it runs only on Intel chips sold in Apple hardware. DRM? I guess the week or two before someone hacks a DRMed OSX version to run on standard PCs is worth the effort. OS X can currently be emulated (very slowly) on x86 processors so the use of an x86 based processor would make emulation a lot more efficient if anything. Whatever happens a move to Intel means some interesting times ahead.

Talk about a great account... It has been announced that the consistently excellent webshop AKQA was in fact responsible for the Xbox 360 interface. While AKQA is obviously branching out I still think the term "webshop" is a fair description as that is primarily what they do and this leads me to something that I've been thinking about for a while: good web designers make great software interface designers. Why? Well here are a few reasons: Focus: web designers (the good ones at least) are focused on driving user experience. The community is large and varied and provides an excellent breeding ground for new ideas. Exposure: web designers are constantly exposed to each other's work and have the luxury of being able to quickly develop and release prototypes. Due to the quick turn-around time and nature of the business many will work on multiple interfaces (websites) in mere weeks or days juggling navigation systems, artwork and code. Flexibility: web designers work in an environment where they can quickly modify, tweak and correct their interface according to direct user feedback even while a site is live. This ability allows them to take more risks and learn more from experience. Know-how: due to the medium's inability to stand still, most web designers have developed an ability to work well within restrictions, become technically fluent and quickly adapt to change. This also makes them adept at quickly assimilating the pitfalls and advantages of various technologies. With Ajax and Flash steadily maturing it is safe to assume that the line between web and application interface design will continue to blur. While not the prettiest thing in the world, Gmail has shown us that web applications don't need to mimick software to be user friendly and the web development community continuously churns out exceptional interfaces at a pace that dwarfs anything the software industry can produce -- the way we interact with computers is being decided right here, on the web, by millions of people.

As you might already know I'm very excited about Sims creator Will Wright's forthcoming game Spore. The official EA site is up and has an intro that is really worth watching (for once). The rest of the site is a bit weak on content but you might want to check out the screenshots. I don't know how good a game like this is going to perform sales-wise, surely "from the creator of The Sims" should help shift quite a few units but this is definitely a tougher mainstream sell than The Sims or even SimCity. The geek buzz is huge but will the girls want to play it? To hell with sales figures, this is the most ambitious and original game concept to come along in a while and I'll be first in line. More on Spore in this Wired interview.

BBC News is all about genetics today. Firstly UK scientists clone a human embryo for the first time then Korean scientists growing patient-specific stem cells. It's also the first time I hear not one but two science stories at the beging of a news show. South Korean scientists say they have made stem cells tailored to match the individual for the first time. (...) The resultant cells were a perfect match for the individual and could mean treatments for diseases like diabetes without problems of rejection. This could mean big changes.

Netscape 8 is now officially out of beta and now based on Firefox 1.0.3 -- interestingly you can render pages using Mozilla or IE engines which could come in handy when developing websites. I am downloading it now, let's hope it's not as bloated as previous releases. Oh, it's already asking me if I want "FREE Current Local Weather" and "access to over 250 top puzzle, action and arcade style games", this isn't looking good... UPDATE: Actually, it's not all that bad. The IE/Firefox rendering is very useful, the interface quite clean and fast and while quite loaded, fully customizable so with a bit of tweaking it can be pretty lean.

Not much time on my hands but Sony is trying to steal some of Microsoft's thunder with the unveiling of its next generation console. For more please visit Engadget's live coverage of Sony’s PlayStation 3 launch. This is all getting way to exciting. (Thanks, Adrian) UPDATE: Managed to make time and look into some of the hype surrounding the (quite pretty) PS3. It would seem that the Sony marketing machine is now ploughing through the media at full steam. Xbox 360 got some mentions (outside of the specialised press) while Sony's new baby has been everywhere. Heck, it was mentioned on BBC World Service between European constitution referendums and the Chinese textile trade disputes. Indeed, one should not underestimate the power of the Playstation. Many call Sony's new controller sexy, I call it phallic. Having followed both campaigns carefully, it would seem that Sony has managed to steal a lot of the thunder away from Microsoft. While still a year away (which could be the X360's saving grace) the PS3 presentation has the whole world buzzing with anticipation. I believe Sony completely dwarfed Microsoft with its tech demos, while Microsoft was focusing on showing us disposable celebrities playing games on MTV, Sony is showing off breathtaking graphics (pre-rendered probably but still impressive) and talking about beautifully silly things such as dual screen High Def output and support for 7 wireless controllers. While Microsoft is also providing some impressive gameplay videos (in HD here) they haven't been at the forefront of the campaign taking second stage to say, custom faceplates and glowing buttons. Much will be announced in the next few weeks. Some details regarding Nintendo's next console (Revolution) are already floating about but nothing is yet confirmed as to what the predicted "revolutionary" peripheral will be. This is starting to get very interesting. A good side-by-side comparison of the specs is available here.