SofaRacing’s myPSN app for the iPhone and iPod touch does a seemingly simple thing very well, letting you log into the PSN portable ID interface in an easy to use and intuitive app. Firing up myPSN allows you to see who’s online from your friends list at any given moment, view your statistics including how many trophies you’ve won and see your current PSN level, whilst charting your trophy progression for each trophy enabled game you’ve played. myPSN also allows you to see you friends stats with comparison to your current level and number of trophies, finally enabling you to settle that raging argument about who’s the best right from the comfort of your local pub.

With in the limits of what Sony allows access to from outside of the PSN, myPSN delivers. It’s got a simple intuitive interface that remembers your credentials and syncs up when you load the app. The problem comes when you fire up the app and wish you could message your friends on the go; trash talking from your iPhone would be awesome. Sony however, doesn’t allow that kind of access to the PSN on anything other than a Playstation, so you can’t really blame the app for that missing golden feature.

Over all is myPSN useful? Yes, if you’re a keen Playstation gamer and wield an iPhone, then it’s certainly an app you should have on your pocket pal. Admittedly it has limited usage cases, but it’s worth it for the argument-ending power comparing your trophies on the go has. myPSN is yours for less than a pint, a bargain at £1.19/$1.99 [link].

It’s another week which means another release list. This weeks release list is of no surprise filled with Video Game goodness. Starting with the release of Final Fantasy 13 for both the PS3 and Xbox 360. While I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying this I may rent it one day. In other Video Game fun, Sunday is the release day for Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. I’m kinda excited about the game, but way more excited about the PokeWalker!!!!  In other areas specifically Blu Ray you have the release of Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone. Which I’m pumped to watch. While in Theaters it’s time for some Damon fun with Green Zone. If you see anything I missed drop a comment.

DVD
March 9th
Barbie in a Mermaid Tale
Greek: Chapter Four – 3 Disc DVD
Hachi: A Dog’s Tale
Hannah Montana: Miley Says Goodbye
In Plain Sight: Season Two
Matt Houston: The First Season
Old Dogs
Planet 51
Paris
Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete First Season
The Stoning of Soraya M
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
Tremors: Complete Series
Walker Texas Ranger: The Seventh Season
Wiseguy: The Collector’s Edition
Up in the Air

Blu Ray
March 9th
Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple – Season Two, Part One
Naruto: Shippuden, Vol. 7

Anime Blu Ray
March 9th
Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn Vol. 1

Blu Ray
March 9th
Old Dogs
Planet 51
Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
Up in the Air

Video Games
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger – PSP
Calling – Wii
Final Fantasy XIII – PS3, Xbox 360
Foto Showdown DSi – DS
Pokemon HeartGold – DS
Pokemon SoulSilver – DS
Racquet Sports – Wii
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition – PS3, Xbox 360
Sam and Max 2 Beyond Time and Space – PC, Wii
Spectral Force Genesis – DS
Supreme Commander 2 – Xbox 360
Yakuza 3 – PC

Theater
March 12th
Green Zone
Our Family Wedding
Remember Me
She’s Out of My League

Users turning on their original (fat) PS3s last night and today have been hit with a clock bug, reminiscent of the Y2K bug, that causes PSN connectivity issues, date resetting and most annoying of all, data loss. The official word on from Sony is: Don’t turn on your PS3 for the next 24 hours if you’ve got anything other than a PS3 slim. Dire words indeed from a company that should be basking in the glory of Hard Rain, a Playstation exclusive, conquering the all formats chart.

Hit the break to see what Playstation have to say

[UPDATE] Seems like it’s fixed, either that or Sony just waited out the bug and it’s OK on the other side. It’s not apparent what they did to fix it and they’re not telling us either. Chock this one up to Y2K10 and hope it doesn’t happen again.

From the Playstation blog:

We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.

Errors include:

• The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
• When the user tries to sign-in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
• When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.”
• When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
• Users are not able to playback certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.

Ouch! So we urge you, if you’ve not already done so, don’t turn on your PS3 until Sony’s fixed this bug otherwise you might end up with those hours upon hours of game progress lost.

[More information]

I remember hearing about Splitfish a while back when they introduced the Frag FX. Essentially combining both Analog and Mouse control to the PS3. It seemed it was geared more towards the FPS Crowd. Flash forward and it’s CES 2010. I got to meet up with Jason Johnson of Splitfish and get a demo of both the SFX Dual Frag Pro and the Dual SFX Evolution. The Demo was presented by Dennis zDD Dozier #1 Global Ranked PS3 C.O.D. Pro-Gamer. After the Demo I got some hands on time with the SFX Dual Frag Pro and got to play some Modern Warefare 2. The Controller was simply amazing, the controls felt really accurate while still keeping that analog console feel.

Video Demo of Dual SFX Evolution after the Break

So, here’s the deal. A couple of days ago on twitter, @EA gave away 50 beta codes for the US beta on the PS3 of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I jumped on it and got one for my friend, but he wasn’t interested in it. Most of my other friends don’t use PS3, so I’ll give it out here. Following EA’s method, first to comment on this post gets it. :)

Promoted from PixelatedGeek Unfiltered (Congratulations Link)
UPDATE: It’s gone, thanks for entering. Don’t forget to drop by and let us know how BC2 handles.

While Nelson thinks this video is hilarious, I happen to sympathize with girlfriend. I know what it is like to be disregarded and be chosen over a video game. *cough cough* WoW.

What Mr. Nelson does not know, is that in the past I have fantasized about murdering his precious level 70 female Blood Elf Mage, Jessel…

But since WoW is history, I am now in the process of devising a demise for his best friend, the iPhone…..O_o

Fake or not fake,  thank you Asian Girlfriend for giving me more ideas..KEKE

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via Ripten]

Now, Infinity Ward is developing a patch as fast as possible, and it appears Microsoft is helping deal with the gap in between. As reported over on 1up.com: “…players caught using the glitch will be suspended, according to Xbox Live’s director of policy and enforcement, Stephen Toulouse.”  On the PS3 however, it appears that the opposite is true, noting that that a Sony representative said “I don’t believe we are banning people for using the glitch.”

[via 1up]

We’ve heard that console gaming makes you a natural born UAV pilot, but now the US Air Force is taking their love of the PS3 to the next level and by ordering another 2200 PS3s to joining the 300 or so they were already using. Instead of practising their skills in Modern Warfare 2, they’ve been using them for HD video processing and wanted to boost the power of their PS3 cluster. It’s not the first time people have been using PS3 as processing clusters, after all the Folding@Home team have been using the distributed computing model on the PS3 in exactly that way in your own homes.

Talking about the PS3 and it’s Cell processor, I don’t know whether anyone’s told the USAF but, IBM is set to discontinue it’s line of PowerPC based Cell processors with it’s current PowerXCell-8i model. What this means for the next generation PlayStation is unclear, would Sony take the Cell chip in house or whether IBM will take the Cell line of chips in another direction? Never fear though, the current gen PS3 won’t be affected.

Retail giant, Tesco, announced this week that it’ll start selling Apple’s golden child, the iPhone, on it’s MVNO Tesco Mobile. It’s the fourth carrier to confirm that the iPhone will be gracing it’s network, although Tesco Mobile uses O2’s network so don’t think you’ll get better 3G coverage. Tesco already has several relatively cheap unlimited everything plans with texts, calls and data all included. If their current price plans are mimicked on their iPhone offerings, Tesco Mobile might be the way to go for the best value iPhone tariffs. Besides, now you can pick one up whilst you’re getting your soap, toilet duck and bog roll. How glamorous.

Talking of iPhones, the humble rickrolling iPhone worm evolved. Two new malicious variants of the worm have emerged, one that steals your ING Direct banking details and one that turns your pocket pal into a botnet zombie. Brilliant! Apple’s response? We told you it could happen, tough luck, don’t jailbreak your iPhone. The worms spread via WiFi or cellular networks between jailbroken iPhones with SSH installed and default root passwords. A rookie mistake not changing your root password, but if you’re not so ofay with the whole jailbreak process you might not even know that every iPhone has a default root password that basically allows someone nefarious to do anything they like with your precious iPhone without your knowledge. So if you’re rocking a jailbroken iPhone then download mobile Terminal and change your root password pronto!

That’s it for this week, hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and got some decent bargains today. Don’t forget, if you’re after a deal or two, you might find Cyber Monday rocks almost as many good and realistic deals this year as Black Friday.

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.

Talking of YouTube, Google introduced skippable pre-roll adverts this week to YouTube in an effort to finally make some meaningful money from its enormous purchase. It’s not the first time Google’s tried pre-roll adverts however, with previous efforts seeing a 70% bail rate before the video actually starts. Google’s hoping with skippable 15 second ads it will be able to see which ads fit and are acceptable with which content. Google also started the roll out of 1080p video for all the content that’s been uploaded in full HD. Couple this with the improvements Adobe is making to Flash and you might even be able to watch them without having to pack a Core i7!

Swindon is set to become the UK’s first free Wifi town rocking free WiFi across the entire city. Dubbed the ‘Swindon Mesh’, the £1 million wireless network will allow all residents completely free access to the internet. Residents who want greater speed, ‘up to 20Mbits’, will be able to pay Digital City UK for higher bandwidth, but a vast majority should be set with the free service. Those passing through will also be able to hook up via a PAYG scheme in which prices have yet to be set, let’s hope they’re at least competitive. Work starts December and Digital City UK is expecting to roll out the service to all Swindon residents come April 2010. Great, but sorry Swindon I still don’t want to live there, do you?

Talking of Wifi towns, the MPAA shut one down. Yes that’s right, the MPAA shut down a whole town’s municipal wifi after it detected a single copyright infringement. That’s what happens when you give companies the power to crush the little guy without due process or trial. So, if you’re expecting to connect for free in Coshocton, Ohio, sorry you’re out of luck for the foreseeable future just like the 100 or so active residents.

So we’ve seen the Beatles unleash music on apple shaped USB drives, but how about movies on flash drives? OK, you’ve got the odd movie distribution service via SD card, but I think novalty shaped flash drives with your favourite movies on them tops a lowly SD card. Yes that’s right, I’m talking about JJ Abram’s Star Trek hitting the small screen courtesy of some fancy flash drives. The movie comes pre-loaded onto a flash drive shaped like the new Star Trek logo so once you’re done watching the movie you can proudly display it as a piece of Star Trek memorabilia next to your model of the Enterprise and Warf’s head. Michael Bay fans haven’t been left out either with Transformers 2 set to follow soon on appropriately shaped flash drives. Yours for the bargain of £17.99 a pop. Think I’ll stick with the Blu-Ray but maybe that’s just me.

This week has also seen the shuttering of the Pirate Bay torrent tracker. Now it’s not all bad news for those amongst you who use BitTorrent as they’ve set up a Magnet link repository. For those uninitiated, BitTorrent has evolved to support a decentralised structure using the DHT and PEX protocols. Now what that means for you and your, umm, linux downloading friends is that you no longer need a .torrent location file to find and download files over the p2p network. In fact if you’re running one of the more up-to-date clients such as uTorrent or Azureus, you’ve had the magnet-link capability for a while and probably didn’t even know about it. The Pirate Bay is so certain that it’s search engine and magnet-link repository is the way forward for BitTorrent that it’s been canvassing other torrent trackers in an effort to get everyone to move over to the decentralised system. Whether this is a sinister plot by the Pirate Bay’s new owners or an honest to goodness evolution of piracy (and legal p2p) is unclear at this stage. What is clear is that this is an end of an era for BitTorrent and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.

Facebook, everyone’s favourite stalker hangout has made yet another move to conquer your life away from the computer this week. The PS3 saw an update that includes a somewhat weak browser based Facebook integration a rather rushed effort on Sony’s part to match the Xbox 360 which has proper Facebook and Twitter integration. OK, you might want to brag about your Achievements or Trophies to your mates on Stalkerbook or Twatter, but seriously, who is going to sit in front of their TV and use this on an 8-foot interface? I mean the Xbox doesn’t even have a web browser so how are you going to check out the links and pics that your friends send out via TwitFace?

Talking of Facebook, if the fuzz ever comes a knocking, your inane status updates could count as an alibi. Yes, you heard right, a 19-year old Harlem resident was cleared of charges resulting from a mugging in Brooklyn by an alibi provided a status update made on Facebook from his Dad’s house at the time of the crime. Am I the only one who could see this as being really easy to fake? You could just automate a status update, VNC into your computer or just get someone else to update on your profile for you from your computer. Still the courts subpoenaed Facebook for the IP address of the computer that made the status update, which of course pointed to his Father’s house where he claimed to be at the time of the mugging.

Last but not least from my picks of the week, Google Chrome OS. OK, it’s basically an OS built inside Chrome browser. I’m not surprised, that’s exactly what I thought it was going to be. What I am surprised about is that it won’t run on everything, Google doesn’t even support HDDs! I get that it’s meant to totally rely on the cloud for all data and applications, but not even supporting HDDs for local storage? Let’s just say it’s probably not aimed at me, or you reading this for that matter, but perhaps, maybe those non-tech-savvy buying netbooks might get used to it, I’m not sure though.

So you’ve heard that the God of War 3 collectors edition is going to steam roll you wallet ($100 for the privaledge) and you’ve noted that the demo will be available on the District 9 Blu-Ray (available 29th December) if you’re not too keen on buying the first two games again on Blu-Ray with the God of War Collection, but what does God of War 3 handle like? Should it have been an FPS? Is it more of the same? Does it deserve your hard earned rent money? Well Pixelated Geek is on hand to find out.

Well as you might expect GOW3 handles a lot like previous instalments in the series but with more interactivity and action. The power behind the PS3 has allowed up to 50 enemies on screen at anyone time and it’s obvious when you get into the think of it. Some of the original combos are there along with several new ones for the non-button mashing types among you.

Graphically the game looks great with really pretty textures throughout. Character models are highly detailed and well animated even when up close and personal. Pretty realistic looking blood also emerges on strike points on both Kratos and his enemies. There’s even more gore when you face up against some of the larger foe with blood and guts pouring out as you finish them off. Most of the cut scenes look fantastic but are in-engine making you feel still in the action. They also include the now pretty common quicktime events making you press buttons at the appropriate time in the cut scene to progress. So they’ll be no napping between fights whilst the cut scene plays through.

The combat itself is also engaging and fluid. Both button bashers and combo players will be happy, as there are times where both are called for. You enemies can be finished off quickly with fast and frantic bashing or you can trigger more gruesome finishing moves. Kratos is even able to pick up his enemies and either use them as a shield, rip off their heads or hurl them at other enemies.

If you liked the previous instalments in the series I have no doubt that you’ll love God of War 3. If you’re a fan of action games I’m pretty sure you’ll find something to like here and if you’re yet to be a PS3 owner, then this might be a system seller for you.

[Photo credits to Ben Smith]