Google announced today the previously rumored social networking features in Gmail with a new product called Google Buzz. It’s obvious that Buzz is a direct answer to Twitter and Facebook. What makes Google an immediate threat to twitter is the leveraging Gmail for the content types allowed and user base it should spread like wild fire. Check out the introduction video after the break.

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Straight from a tweet form one of our readers, Mathew has posted screen shots of how the new Facebook is looking like.  Personally, I have never been a fan of Facebook’s current layout, but then again, I doubt I could do any better.  Past the break are the screenshots of the future of Facebook.  After viewing these, I think I’ll be happy with the design.  It’s very reminiscent of the iTunes/Mac OSX Finder layout.  Simple shortcuts or menus on the left, and everything else happens on the right with a simple search bar at the top.

Good job, Facebook. I look forward to your achievement of keeping productivity down in schools and businesses across the world by 25% or more.

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Another week in Tech has flown by as we head into December and the inevitable Christmas rush. This week we’ve had the good, the bad and the down-right ugly rear their heads in the world of consumer technology.

In a break from tradition we’ll start with the bad. Virgin Media announced this week that it would be  snooping into 40% of it’s customers traffic using a technology called CView, which conducts Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) in an effort to determine the rate of music piracy across it’s network. Yes that’s right, Virgin is going to examine everything that goes to and from your computer if you happen to be in the lucky 40%. What does this really mean? Well if you’re pirating music across an unencrypted network like BitTorrent, VM will know and what they’ll do about it is unknown. Virgin are set to launch a music service in conjunction with Universal and their official line is that they want to gauge piracy levels. I don’t know about you, but piracy or not, I don’t want people snooping at everything I do or send across the Internet including email, IM, Waves and surfing. Maybe it’s time to protect yourself by changing providers or using a SSL tunnel to a proxy you trust.

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In an article on Techradar, Mark Zuckerberg says that “69 million active users are using FarmVille alone, that’s more users than Twitter.” Wow. That is a lot of farming. If Farmville was a free-to-play MMO or turned into one, they would have Blizzard’s baby, beat. I myself have never played this game or any Facebook game. I don’t know what all the fuss is about, but now I have to check it out to see.

Do you play any Facebook games? Do you play Farmville? If so, what is it about the game or games that keeps you playing?

If you missed last night’s live broadcast and recording of the Pixelated Podcast, then I’m sorry. You missed out on another free Zombie Shooter 2 Steam Key that was given away. But no worries, we still have more contests in the horizon. Here is what we talked about in this weeks episode:

• Thanksgiving weekend
• Black Friday purchases
• The upcoming Google Phone
• Sony Confirms PSN Premium Subscription
• Our new site look
• Assasin’s Creed 2
• Social Network Gaming
• Megan Fox VS Kristen Stewart for worst actress

Play the podcast below | Subscribe via iTunes | Download the MP3

It’s that time again, time to review some of my cherry picked smaller stories of the week for those that might have missed them. This time round we’ve got an Adobe Flash update that doesn’t suck. OK, sucks a little less. Flash 10.1 beta was unleashed to the willing public with GPU video acceleration for certain Nvidia cards on Windows, but perhaps more importantly reduced CPU usage across all platforms. What does this mean? YouTube that doesn’t make your Mac or PC red-line that’s what. A step in the right direction Adobe, maybe Flash isn’t a lost cause after all. I’ve certainly seen some improvements on my netbook and Mac.

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Facebook has certainly taken the world by storm and created dozens of time sucks for demographics ranging from tweens to empty nesters. Facebook learned early on to open up their architecture for developers and suddenly hundreds of click based games appeared along with fundraising and even more ways to connect.

Team Ohai followed this architecture and created the click based games called Vampires/Zombies/Slayers/Werewolves. The objective of the games are simple, recruit as many of your friends as you can to become a more powerful being while ranking up and fighting your way to the top of the leaderboards. This is fun to do however it becomes a bit daunting because of the repeated amount of clicks you must perform day in and day out with resulting in little momentum of skill levels.

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Hey guy or girl.  Wanna be the cool kid on your block? You can by entering to win Rock Band 2 (for PS3 or Xbox 360, YOUR CHOICE!) and a four-pack of 3-day passes to GameX.  So, not only can you jam with your friend if you win.  You can also take them to one of the best video game expos in the east coast.

All you have to do is go to their Facebook page, Like and Share this post.  Winner will be chosen randomly.  It’s free to enter, so what do you got to lose?!

Do it now! – Enter here

Netflix just released season 3 of the hit U.K. sitcom, I.T. Crowd.  One of their opening sequences makes fun of Facebook or “FriendFace” and compares it to a disease or a plague.  Which is true.  I have almost 150+ germs on my FriendFace right now! Awesome!

Facebook has been busy lately, first introducing Facebook Lite, a stripped down simple version of the site for those who don’t want to wait or sift through the main site. The second introduction today is the inclusion of @mentions in status updates. Taking a page from Twitter, people can tag their friends in updates using the @ tag to induce a user selection screen. The @ symbol isn’t actually displayed in the update, but it just goes to show that the @mentions that started first with Twitter have transcended the social networking site to become a more universally recognised tag.

[Via Facebook Blog]