Sound and fury are the hallmarks of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest video gaming event of the year.

Amid the spectacle — bubbly cheerleaders, businessmen and costumed cartoon characters jostle for photo ops with wide-eyed fans — it’s easy to lose sight of what people here really should be talking about during the trade show in Los Angeles this week: the games.
» Continue reading “Top 5 video games from the E3 Expo”

As news spread that the White House won’t release photos of Osama bin Laden’s body, federal authorities and security experts on Wednesday were urging Web users to be careful clicking on fake links claiming to offer images or video about his death.

Since the U.S.-led raid that killed bin Laden on Sunday, e-mail inboxes and social-media sites like Facebook have been flooded with bad links that, at best, are unwanted spam and, at worst, contain harmful computer viruses.

People in the cybersecurity industry aren’t surprised. Big news events, as well as popular public figures (think Anna Kournikova and Justin Bieber) are often used as click bait for spammers and scammers.
“I suppose this was inevitable,” Dave Marcus, head of security research for McAfee Labs, wrote in a blog post. “The reported death of Osama Bin Laden is just too good a lure for cybercriminals and scammers to pass up.”

» Continue reading “Fake bin Laden links spreading malicious software”

UPDATE We’ve just heard from the NHL, who tell us: “The NHL is not in discussions with YouTube to stream live games. The NHL has not had conversations with the Google spokespeople mentioned in the Bloomberg report.”

YouTube may be a hot bed for lip dub videos and life-casting teens, but soon sports fans could find a good reason to flock to the site: YouTube is reportedly in talks with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League to broadcast games live.

Last year, YouTube announced that it would begin live-streaming Indian Premier League cricket matches, a venture that was apparently very successful. According to Business Week, the games brought in 55 million visits from more than 250 countries.

Gautam Anand, Google’s director of content partnerships for Asia Pacific, recently said that YouTube plans to show more live sports, but declined to elaborate on the particulars of talks with the NBA and NHL.
» Continue reading “Sports fans could soon tune in to YouTube”

Facebook wants your address and mobile phone number.

But it’s not sure exactly how to ask.

It’s a complicated digital courtship, particularly because Facebook doesn’t just want this data for itself — it wants to “share” this info with all of its friends, which in this case happens to be app developers (think FarmVille, Compare People and Where I’ve Been — all that non-Facebook stuff that pops up in your news feed).

That may sound confusing, but the debate over this Facebook phone-number-sharing — which caused Facebook to backtrack a bit from the request after bloggers and users expressed outrage this weekend — essentially comes down to two related questions:

Why does Facebook want your phone number and address?
» Continue reading “Why Facebook wants your phone number??”

From an explosion of social games and iPhone apps to the rise of motion controls, cloud computing and retro revivals, 2010 has been a year of surprises and revelations for gaming enthusiasts.

But it’s also been a generous one to PC and home console owners, with dozens of gob-smacking titles available for almost every system.

Between the launch of long-awaited epics such as “Gran Turismo 5″ and “BioShock 2,” and the return of heavyweights such as “NBA Jam” and “GoldenEye 007,” choosing the year’s top 10 titles is a Herculean task.

It’s doubly so when you consider how subjective every player’s list is, with one man’s “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” another’s “Fallout: New Vegas.”
» Continue reading “The 10 best video games of 2010″