Like a Phoenix!

No, Free Gamer has not met a premature demise! I am merely temporarily really, really busy.

Still, there were a few notable releases in the last week. ScummVM hit version 0.9.0 which brings GUI enhancements and support for [at least] two [new] games.

Legends jumped 0.0.0.1 versions to 0.4.1.40, and you should see the changelog. I've already ranted about discussed versioning debacles issues.

Warsow bumped out another release and really seems to be picking up momentum both as a game and a community. They have started up a development blog. This is a great idea and it would be cool for every major Free game to have one; then we can have Free Game Planet!

I spotted yet another 3d engine on Freshmeat: Nelit2. Information is sparse but the screenshots show off some fancy features. It has a long way to go to compete with the heavyweights of this division like OGRE and Crystal Space.

I also saw Carworld as well. It looks like it could be a very cool driving simulator if the author got a bit more motivation (or a bit of help).

Speaking of driving games, VDrift looks to be gearing up for another release. Improved GUI, car handling, graphics, and more cars and tracks are part of what seems to be emerging as the leading Free Software driving game.

There's great news for Mario fans with updates to Mega Mario and Secret Maryo Chronicles.

Finally, a couple of updates sourced from the Game Tome - SEAR and Runescape have been updated. The former is a major component of the ambitious Worldforge project and the latter a popular Java-based MMORPG.

I hope I didn't miss much and I'm in too much of a rush to plagiarise organise screenshots. Next week normal service should be resumed, as well as the forthcoming layout update that will build on the current list. Enjoy your games in the meantime!

What have we done for you lately?

Posted by Jon Steinback, Product Marketing Manager

As you might imagine, we on the Google Video team use it for pretty much everything. It shouldn't be such a surprise, then, to know that the feature requests we get internally mirror those that you send to us. Namely, just like you, Googlers want to pay less and interact more. So this past week, we've been very busy rolling out changes to make this a reality.

First, more things are now free. We're doing a sponsored video test so you can watch premium videos without paying. (Perhaps we were inspired by the conversation Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett had about philanthropy with Charlie Rose).

Next, have you been itching to tell us (and the rest of the world) what you think of our videos? Now you can rate, label, and comment on them. We know you're dying to say something about this David Hasselhoff clip or the latest one about Diet Coke + Mentos.

Last, we made it easier for you to blog some of these entertaining pieces under the new "Share this video" link on the playback page. A few clicks and your current favorite is directly embedded into the most popular blogging platforms like Blogger, TypePad, MySpace and LiveJournal.

Stay tuned for another batch of features - and meanwhile, enjoy these.

Find it with Google. Buy it with Google Checkout.

Posted by Benjamin Ling, Product Lead, and Louis Perrochon, Engineering Director

We've heard time and again from users: "I find great stores through Google search, but every time I try to buy from an online store, I have to re-enter the same billing, shipping, and credit card information. There are too many steps. Why can't it be as fast as a Google search?" This motivated us to improve the online purchase process, and so today we're announcing Google Checkout, a checkout option that makes buying across the web fast and easy.

One cool feature of Google Checkout is that you can buy from stores with a single Google login – no more entering the same info each time you buy, and no more having to remember different usernames and passwords for each store. To help you find places to shop, you'll see a little icon on the Google.com ads of stores offering Google Checkout. It's an easy way to identify fast, secure places to shop when you search. And after you've placed your order, Google Checkout provides a purchase history where you can track your orders and shipping information in one place.

Because we see big benefits for shoppers as the service grows, our immediate priority is to help more online stores join Jockey, Starbucks Store, Levi's, Dockers, Buy.com, Timberland, Zales, and others to offer Checkout on their sites. To keep website integration simple, we've built a range of integration alternatives such as cut and paste buy buttons, pre-integrated ecommerce partner offerings, and an API that supports more advanced integration.

Beyond flexible integration options, Google Checkout also works with Google's search advertising program, AdWords, so online stores can more easily attract new customers, increase sales and process them for free. We're especially excited about combining Google Checkout with AdWords because it gives our advertisers a more complete solution for attracting customers through Google and processing the sales that result. Just so you know, you don't have to be an AdWords advertiser to use Checkout on your website, so don't let that hold you back.

We hope this new service makes online shopping sprees faster, easier and much more fun. For our advertisers and online store partners, we hope this service also helps you serve your customers and grow your business. Learn more by watching these videos for shoppers (which you can also watch below) and merchants - and remember to visit http://checkout.google.com.

Update on wi-fi in San Francisco

Posted by Minnie Ingersoll, Product Manager

In April the City and County of San Francisco chose the bid from EarthLink and Google to offer citywide Wi-Fi access, and we're thrilled about that. A key part of this project has been keeping citizens apprised of our progress and answering questions along the way. Towards this end, we recently sent a letter to the City of San Francisco that addresses our commitment to user privacy. We look forward to continuing our work with EarthLink and the City to build a citywide wireless network.

Germany and the Google Books Library Project

Posted by David Drummond, SVP and General Counsel

We're delighted that WBG, a German publisher, today decided to drop its petition for a preliminary injunction against the Google Books Library Project. WBG (whose legal action was supported by the German Publishers Association as an industry model) made the decision after being told by the Copyright Chamber of the Regional Court of Hamburg that its petition was unlikely to succeed.

It's our belief that the display of short snippets from in-copyright books does not infringe German copyright law. Today the Court indicated that it agreed, drawing a comparison with the snippets used in Google web search. And the Court also rejected the WBG's argument that the scanning of its books in the U.S. infringed German copyright law.

We've always recognized the importance of copyright, because we believe that authors and publishers deserve to be rewarded for their creative endeavors. And we specifically designed Google Book Search to respect copyright law - never showing more than two or three snippets around a search term without the publisher's prior permission, which they can give through our Partner Program. This is separate from the Library Project, the subject of this petition. By helping people to find and buy books, Book Search enables publishers to reach a much larger, and more global, audience.

Google is passionate about the digitization of books, which we believe benefits everyone by making the world's knowledge more accessible. And we're also passionate about being responsible partners who can work closely with our thousands of partners around the world – publishers, authors and libraries – to help make this dream a reality.

Update: changed title.

Spend your summer with Google Desktop

Posted by Mendel Chuang, Product Marketing Manager

If you're a Google Desktop fan looking for something to do this summer, it's time to get your creative juices flowing and create a submission for the Google Desktop Gadget Contest. Winning a cool T-shirt almost goes without saying, but you could also win the top prize of $5,000. To help you along, there's the Google Desktop Gadget Designer, a WYSIWYG development environment.

And since Google Desktop 4 is now available in traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Korean, Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Turkish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovenian, Greek, Slovak, Croatian, Catalan, and Bulgarian, be sure to think globally as you design your gadget. And speaking of version 4, thanks to all the testers who gave us feedback, we're now able to bring the English version out of beta. So if you've been waiting to easily search and personalize your desktop, here's your chance.

Lastly, if you need some inspiration for the contest, check out our list of Google Gadgets. You might be surprised at what you find...

More of the world in your pocket

Posted by Abhijit Kalamkar, Software Engineer

Today Google's mobile web services get a bit more worldly: We've just added a raft of new languages to the pocket-sized versions of Gmail, News, and Personalized Home. Along with U.S. and U.K. English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, and Turkish interfaces to most of these products.

If you've already used any of Google's products on your mobile device (like Maps), you know it's a great way to stay connected to the Internet, even if your PC is miles away. What's handy about these three products in particular is that they keep you in touch with the information that matters most to you.

Personalized Home, for instance, displays the same customized content as your personalized Google homepage on the PC, but in a phone-friendly format that's easy to read and navigate. (If you've been looking for a fast, easy way to view any feed via your phone, here it is.)

Then there's Gmail. If you've ever been on the road, desperate to remember something like a flight confirmation number that's stashed in your inbox, or directions to a party you were sure you could remember, this mobile version of Gmail lets you quickly search, read, and reply to email wherever you are. (And note the nifty mobile-specific features we've added, like Gmail's ability to directly call buddies in your contact list.)

News can get personal, too: now you can search across mobile news sources to reel in the latest news on whatever subject you're a fan of, whether it's 'arsenal football' or just all things 'macintosh' -- wherever and whenever. So give 'em all a whirl -- visit Google in your mobile phone's browser, and click the News, Gmail, or Personalized Home links.

You might just discover the little communications device in your pocket has just become a whole lot more valuable.

Protecting children online

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel

Google is deeply committed to providing a healthy and trusted online environment for all of our users, and especially children. While the Internet provides an amazing opportunity for people to connect with useful information, some online material poses serious risks to children and families, and some online behavior violates the law and should be eradicated. Child pornography, in particular, is a horrific and vicious crime. Today, I testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about Google’s efforts to keep kids safe online. Among the initiatives that I highlighted:

- Google has a zero-tolerance policy on child pornography. We prohibit any advertising related to child pornography. When we become aware of child pornography anywhere in our search engine or on our site, we immediately remove and report it to the appropriate authorities.

- We work closely with law enforcement to help track down child predators, and respond to hundreds of child safety-related requests per year.

- We help families stay safe online with tools like SafeSearch, which enables users to filter adult content from search results. We also promote online safety through our support of the WiredSafety education campaign.

These are just the beginning. We believe that much can be done to combat child exploitation online, and are committed to doing our part to protect the Internet as a safe place for all.

A Sitemaps update

Posted by Vanessa Fox, Google Sitemaps team

Website owners will want to know about a raft of new features we've just released for Google Sitemaps. This is just the latest in a long line of recent additions, including:

• robots.txt analysis tool
• quick snapshot of the status of your site in the index, notification of violations of the webmaster guidelines and an easy-to-use re-inclusion request form (here)
• comprehensive webmaster help center

If you don't have a Sitemaps account already, get started with the site status wizard.

Know your market - OPTIMISE!

Going back to Yoda Soccer, I had earlier talked about performance issues on my 1ghz laptop. Upon reporting the problem, I had this response:

This is likely because the game requires a graphics card with 64MB of video ram.

Let me get this straight. A remake of Sensible Soccer - a game that ran on the Amiga 500, an Atari ST, the SEGA Mega Drive, and a 486 PC - requires a 64mb graphics card? That is ludicrous.

If you are making an open source game, know your market. Your market is typically not people with high-end graphics cards. If anything, it's people with older PCs who have less cash who do not want to invest in an uber-PC to play games. Of course, you have the ideological few who purchase a Cray to play Supertux, but they are the minority.

So, with your market in mind, and knowing the kind of graphical and computing intensity your game requires, an open source developer should not be satisfied with something that performs badly.

Optimise, and optimise early.

Why optimise early?

• Your game will be respected more by players if it performs well, regardless of how complete it is
  
• More people will come to play your game and spread the word about it
  
• You will understand the underlying architecture of your codebase better if you focus on refining it
  
• Your codebase will become cleaner as you work on optimising it
  
• You will naturally eradicate bugs and improve user experience during the course of optimisation
• You'll become a better programmer through learning while optimising code
  
• Future development of your game, by yourself or by attracting new developers, will be easier because of the above reasons
  

Is your game slower than it should be? Why are you waiting? Stop feature creeping and start making it faster and smoother. A simple game that plays well is better than a complex game that barely works. Of course, the pragmatic position lies somewhere between those two extremes but err on the side of the former because that is what will impress people the most. It will also help keep you motivated because of the reasons I have mentioned.

Certainly, requiring a 64mb video card for a game that was written on 15 year old hardware is outrageous. Perhaps it is because they use BlitzMax, but surely BlitzMax can't be that inefficient. Hopefully in the future the Yoda Soccer developers will consider porting away from BlitzMax so this game can be enjoyed by those of us who are not using fast machines.

Adobe and Google team up for Toolbar

Posted by Sundar Pichai, Director of Product Management

Starting today, Adobe is offering the Google Toolbar to its customers as a free download -- a great way to take Google search with you anywhere on the web. You can access Google search capabilities from any website, block pop-ups, see search suggestions as you type, personalize your toolbar by adding buttons from your favorite sites, and more. We're excited to partner with Adobe to make these features available to their users, and look forward to finding other ways to work together.

Calling for federal consumer privacy protection

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel

Google is committed to protecting your privacy and to supporting an Internet environment that also respects individual privacy. Today, we're joining a group of notable U.S. companies calling for federal consumer privacy legislation.

Here in the U.S., we have a growing patchwork quilt of state privacy laws, disparate industry-specific privacy laws (for example, different laws covering health-related data, financial data and children's online data), and a similarly-mixed bag of data security laws. This matrix of laws is complex, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory. For consumers, the result is a set of privacy protections that are uneven at best.

On an Internet beset with spyware, malware, phishing, identity-theft, and other privacy threats, enforcement of privacy protections has become an industry-wide challenge, and highlights the lack of a coherent regulatory structure. Google strongly supports the adoption of a federal consumer privacy law. It would be good for our users, and would contribute to consumer trust on the Internet as a platform for communication, expression, e-commerce, and so forth. Americans care about their privacy, and so does Google. A baseline U.S. federal consumer privacy law will help protect all of us online.

Publishing your Google Calendar

Posted by David Marmaros, Google Calendar Tech Lead

Lots of people already use Google Calendar to stay organized and schedule their lives, and that's great. But maybe you want to publicize an event for a group of people -- say you're the captain of a dragonboat racing team who needs to coordinate the practice and race schedule for your crew. Possibly you're a soccer fanatic who wants to publish all the 2006 FIFA World Cup matches. Or maybe you'd like to publish a calendar of cool events around town to share with friends.

Now you can get the word out to anyone, because we just added a new publishing feature that lets you show an interactive calendar to others -- even if they don't use Google Calendar. All calendars now have a simple web page that you can point people to, and you can even incorporate one into your own website, profile page or blog. A few quick steps and you'll be ready to show others what's going on in your world.

Oo the Madness

To any regular readers, apologies for the lapse in posting - I did, though, have a valid reason. It tooks 2 weeks to get infected and 2 days to get out of it! I blame myself for not using protection, especially when it's freely available.

Balazar Brothers

Arkhart

There was an update to Balazar Brothers over the weekend. This fun 3D platformer has great visuals for a Free Software game and is a little brother to Balazar. It comes from the same stable that produced Slune and Arkhart, the French setup Nekeme Prod[uctions?].

Delving deeper into Nekeme I found out that Arkhart is still being developed with a release (0.2.0) scheduled for Christmas. Whether this sees the light of day is yet to be seen, given the 3 years that has passed since the last Arkhart release, but it's good to know that the project is not dead. It's one of those open source games that you look at the website and screenshots and your jaw drops, only to close it with a sigh when you see how [in]complete it is.

Also of note whilst browsing Nekeme Prod was Bankiz!, a worms-like inspired by Liero. It's not available yet (at least, not released) but the [French] news was updated just a few days ago.

Open Source Game Engines

ScummVM



FIFE



OpenTTD

Today is a game engine special on Free Gamer. These are the projects that take your favourite [old school] titles and provide not only a native port but also fix all the nasties that had you saving and loading or even resetting your PC in the past. I remember the days of autoexec.bat and making every byte of that 640k count. Well these won't give you that fun but at least you get to play your old games!

Let's start with the exciting FIFE: Flexible Isometric Fallout-like Engine. Started as an attempt to make a Fallout engine, it is becoming more ambitious and there are even rumours of a FIFE-based game in development. It should be able to run fan-made Fallout mods like the aptly named Fan Made Fallout.

I have a pet favourite among RPG engines - GemRB. (I respect the steady progress on a difficult project.) This Infinity Engine emulator aims to be able to run the Baldur's Gate titles and even improve the experience they offer. The development version is advancing nicely and hopefully the next release will give BG fans something to clamour about even if it still won't be quite capable of playing a full game.

Let's not forget ScummVM, one of the grand daddies of Free Software engines. This enables a host of old-school adventure games to be playable in a modern environment. Since it's inception, some of these adventure games have even been made freely available by their publishers, notably Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen. Sadly they show their age. As fickle as it is, the low resolution makes it harder to enjoy the game when we live in an increasingly detailed and beautiful digital world.

FreeSCI is another adventure game engine for the many old Sierra titles out there. Like ScummVM, it boasts an impressive list of supported games with more added each arbitrary period of time that goes by.

Moving on to RTS games, we start with the evergreen TA Spring. I gave it column inches yesterday and it's thriving community doesn't need the publicity so I move swiftly on.

The classic project of the open source RTS engines is Stratagus. Once named FreeCraft, it has survived a blizzard and been made stronger for it. The available games, not counting Warcraft support through Wargus, are still a little rough around the edges but the future looks good.

Speaking of snow stormy games, we come across SCSharp, a C# adaptation of Starcraft. It's not yet capable of much more than loading a few game objects but it's worth watching out for.

Of course no RTS-related round-up is complete without a mention of something C&C (or should I say Dune 2 reincarnate). The main effort here is FreeCNC. Or should I say FreeRA, as it appears FreeCNC development has ceased so somebody has taken on the codebase under another moniker.

We finish with OpenTTD. This has breathed life into an excellent old-school game. Transport Tycoon is addictive and OpenTTD (partially inspired by TTDPatch) fixes the old problems such as vehicle limitations and then adds even more features to the game. However they are still working on the crazy railroads the AI tends to create! They are working on a hires replacement graphics set which will make OpenTTD a game in it's own right, hopefully by the end of the year.

I can only mention so much so left out the various engines ID have open sourced. However, if I missed any other cracking open source engines please comment below!

Sauerbraten and TA Spring

Sauerbraten

There is an updated release for Sauerbraten. This innovative open source 3D FPS is an evolution of the popular game Cube. For those who don't know, Cube and Sauer are not just FPS games but live map modding tools as well where you can manipulate the game world in real time. The game maps are combinations of deformable cubes giving map creators massive control with minimum complexity. There are already some jaw dropping maps available for Sauer which is adding new eye candy all the time.

The developers are designing a roaming action RPG using Sauerbraten engine called Eisenstern. The entire game world will be in one massive level which the player will have to battle around. It seems to be more in a proof-of-concept stage whilst Sauer matures but is definitely one worth looking out for.

TA Spring

In other news, playing TA Spring just got a whole lot easier for Ubuntu (Dapper) and Debian (Sarge+) users. There's an entire guide to getting it up and running over at the DebSpring project.

TA Spring really does look beautiful lately. There are some incredible screenshots on the website. This game, more than anything else, makes me want to upgrade my PC. When I do you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be a 7-page review up on Free Gamer.

Finding government info

Posted by Kevin Gough, Product Manager

Want to find those IRS forms to get in your taxes on time? Need to figure out where to send your DMV fees, or find the phone number for your local parks and rec department? Google U.S. Government Search launches today -- it's a site on which you can 1) search across a huge index of U.S. Federal, state and local government websites via a single search box, and 2) stay up to date through personalized content feeds from government agencies and press outlets. Off you go.

For easy bookmarking, go to http://usgov.google.com.

Set Your Games Free

I'll start by acknowledging I've been mentioning games I've not yet added to the list. I'm redesigning the layout to be tri-columnar - 3 columns - so they are going into that design and not the current one. The new design should make browsing the list even easier.

I'm busy putting together a special on game engines. So for today I'll just make a note inspired by the fate of Parsec in the hope it will encourage freeware developers to publish their games under a proper open source license.

It is a lesson for all freeware developers to heed; just because you have glorious plans and motivation now, know that the future is known to no-one. It is as easy to lose the desire as it was to initially dream. By keeping your project closed you exclude the world from it's development. Should life take you in another direction nobody will be there to pick up your project. Your efforts will be wasted and that is a tragedy only the Freedom of software can avoid.

Do you have any more freeware come rotware stories to share?

The 36th edition of Google News is Arabic

Posted by Mohamed Elfeky, Software Engineer

As we increase the number of languages supported in Google News, and as the number of Arabic news sources available on the web grows, now there's Google News in Arabic. This edition is a little different than the other 35: normally, we target editions to a specific region like a country, but the Arabic edition targets the entire Arab region of the world -- so Arabic speakers from more than 20 countries have access to an especially wide variety of perspectives on the news being published in their language.

Arabic readers can visit the Google News homepage to see a compilation of links to top news headlines all in one view, look for news just in their favorite categories, or search within news stories for particular terms. We're glad to be launching Google News for a whole new audience, and we look forward to bringing it to even more people around the world.

Nexuiz 2.0 Released

Nexuiz, a rising star of open source gaming, has reached milestone 2.0. This version brings improved and optimized graphics, weapon balancing, new maps, bug fixes and a single player campaign with "advanced AI" (possibly incomplete changelog).

Here are some screenshots from the showcase video which can be seen on youtube or downloaded in a higher resolution.

My machine is not powerful enough to play this, but it looks absolutely fantastic. If you have the hardware, check it out and support the best Free games; they are community dependent.

I could, however, play Bontago. This Windows-only (boo!) freeware (boo!) title is an innovative (yay!) 3D RTS (yay!) where you use blocks to build structures and use special features to destabilize your opponents. I've contacted the authors and encouraged them to make the game Free Software so that it can be ported to other platforms and it's development continued.

Along with the Nexuiz 2.0 release, there was a note on 3delement.com, a site for 3D development tutorials:

3delement is a tutorial database site, holding tutorials dealing with all aspects of 3d development. Rather than going through many users sites, we catagorize thousands of tutorials for easy access. Register on our forum also to discuss 3d development.

It’s all about the photos

Posted by Adrian Graham, Product Manager

Reading feedback from Picasa users is one of the best parts of my job. And lately the feedback has been especially clear and direct: please offer an easy way to share photos online. Today, we’re delighted to begin testing a new Picasa feature that does just that. It’s called Picasa Web Albums.

In case you’re not familiar with Picasa, it’s Google’s free desktop photo management software. Picasa is a quick download that makes it easy for people to organize and edit their pictures using something that’s simple and clutter-free. It’s all about the photos. And now we’ve tried to bring that same experience to online photo sharing with Picasa Web Albums. Just pick a bunch of your photos from Picasa and upload them into a web album in a couple of clicks. Once they’re online, it’s super-easy to share them – click the “Share” button from anywhere on the site or, just email friends the URL for your public gallery.

Take a look at the photos that our tester wants to share: Try flipping through photos using the arrow keys (we pre-fetch photos so they load quickly). Zoom in and out to check out details or see the whole photo. Or maximize them on a large monitor. We focused on the photos, not ads or archiving, because we know how important your photos are to you especially when you want to share them. Of course, there's a lot we want to add and improve — which is why for the moment, we're only testing this feature by invitation. If you’re interested in making your own Picasa Web Albums (and helping us make it better), give us your Gmail address here. We’ll be sending out invitations first come, first served.

Once you have an invitation, you’ll be able to download the latest version of Picasa with the web uploading feature. And actually, it’s not just about web uploading -- there’s also downloading. We wanted to make sure you can keep enjoying the photos your friends have shared with you. With this in mind, when viewing others’ galleries, you can download an entire album of photos directly into Picasa with just a couple of clicks. For uploading and downloading to and from Picasa Web Albums, you’ll need the new version of Picasa – again, it’s only available to invited users for the time being.

Finally, you may be wondering if this costs anything. No, and no hidden fees either. Picasa is free as always, and Picasa Web Albums comes with 250MB of free storage space. That’s enough for approximately 1,000 wallpaper-sized photos at 1600 pixels each. We also offer an easy-to-understand storage upgrade option if you have a whole lot more pictures to share.

We’re working hard to make both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums better. And we’re excited to start making our most commonly-requested feature available to more people. Try it out and tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you.

The Bard's the thing

Posted by Jen Grant, Google Book Search team

Summer in New York: kids running through fountains, steamy subways, P. Diddy's White Party in the Hamptons, and ... Shakespeare. Today, Shakespeare in the Park kicks off its 50th year with free performances of Macbeth in Central Park. To help celebrate (and because we love a good excuse to delve into old books), we've created a place to find and search the complete plays of Shakespeare. Here, book lovers and theater fans alike can explore popular favorites and lesser-known gems right from their desktops with Google Book Search. (Note that some print versions of Shakespeare's plays may not be in the public domain everywhere in the world. Where copyright status is in question, we protect the publisher by showing the Snippet View. As always, we encourage you to let us know if you believe a publication should be in Full Book View, and we hope you bear with us as we confirm the status and, whenever appropriate, change the display.)

Finally, if you want to learn more about how Book Search is helping people around the world browse and discover books of all kinds, be sure to check out our new blog too.

More gadgets, more places

Posted by Sophia Brueckner, Software Engineer

We've released the Personalized Homepage feature in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and New Zealand, so that more of you around the world can put the information you want on your Google homepage.

And given the football frenzy now underway, we've included the gadget for the World Cup in these new editions to make live scores, standings and schedules available. So hop to it now for soccer updates or other info (like news, weather, recent Gmail messages, and feeds from your favorite sites).

Happy Birthday, Google Earth

Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Earth and Google Maps

We got so excited around here about the first anniversary of Google Earth that we decided to celebrate a bit early. Beginning today, you can download a brand new version, Google Earth 4. Running on OS X? Feel the love. Prefer Linux? Ditto. Yes, we're releasing simultaneously for PC, Mac (universal binary for full performance on both Intel and PowerPC based Macs) and for the first time ever, native support for popular Linux distributions. And we should say "salut," "ciao," "hallo," and "hola" to our French, Italian, German and Spanish users, because Google Earth is now fully localized for those languages in addition to English. This includes a UI localized to French, Italian, German, and Spanish, as well as local search, driving directions, geo-coding, and unique local information layers for those countries.

Got data?
The streamlined new UI is bound to make you crave new places to explore, so we put together a little update to our database — we increased our global coverage by about 4X. Google Earth now covers more than 20 percent of the landmass of the entire globe with high-resolution satellite imagery (soon Google Maps will too). When we say "high resolution," we mean the good stuff: you can see cars, houses, buildings in more than 200 countries and territories. Not every house is covered, only about two billion of them. That's our best estimate, anyway — that about 1/3 of the population of the Earth can now see their homes in high-resolution. Google Earth has had medium resolution global satellite coverage since the beginning. But that was at 15 meters per pixel. This new global coverage was produced in conjunction with our exclusive satellite partner, Digital Globe, and is at approximately 70 cm per pixel. We have even better data for many countries, up to 10 cm per pixel.

What global insights can this new data produce? Google Earth has already helped save tsunami, hurricane, and earthquake victims, not to mention find a lost Roman villa, track severe storms, discover new meteor craters, track the outbreak of avian flu, visually index magazine articles and photos, host travel videos, redefine the house-shopping process, track airplanes in flight, recognize every Medal of Honor recipient, and many other uses we never expected. Only time will tell what it will bring, and it will only be fully realized when energetic and creative people use powerful tools like KML to exploit the new data and features.

Why not KML in Maps?
We asked that too. KML is such an amazingly flexible way to create and share geographic information - whether it's sharing vacation photos with your friends or publishing important data like the realtime earthquake feed from the U.S. Geological Survey — we thought it would be useful to be able to view KML in Google Maps. So here it is! You can now view KML in Maps by entering the URL for your KML file. To browse hundreds of thousands of interesting KML files, see what the half million members of the Google Earth Community have created.

Feeling inspired?
Google SketchUp and Google 3D Warehouse have enabled creative individuals around the world to model their world in 3D. A new version of SketchUp is available today that enables the export of fully-textured 3D models to 3D Warehouse and Google Earth. This will bring even more realism to the collectively-authored 3D world SketchUp users are creating.

Ready to mashup?
Our legion of Maps API developers asked us to support geocoding. So we decided to push that out today too. Street-level geocoding is now available for the U.S., Canada, Japan, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Let the mashing begin.
Correction: Street-level geocoding is not available in Japan.

Are you enterprising?
Finally, now there's Google Maps for Enterprise, offering a fee-based service and support for businesses that want to embed a Google Maps experience in their websites or internal applications. It leverages the Google Maps API to enable businesses to map customer locations, track shipments, manage facilities or view any other data source in a geographic context.

Whew. I'm exhausted from writing all of that. Our first year has been a busy one. We hope you enjoy these latest efforts in our mission to geographically organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Weekend Scourge

Well a few days without posting is put down to an all-day BBQ and the trappings of such social occasions. After a good rest I can think lucidly once again.

I'll start with the news that Scourge 0.14 is ready. This is a very promising RPG game that is beginning to pick up pace with new artists recently joining the project to enhance it. Whilst I'm not a massive fan of the premise for the storyline (aged has-been adventurers... need I continue?) the main developer is focused on making the game easy to extend and mod so hopefully, before long, a more serious background will be developed by the playing community.

RG Pro Hockey is a promising looking 3D ice hockey simulation. I emailed the developers and, despite the project showing few signs of recent life, they are actively working towards a 1.0 release at the end of this year. I did advise an earlier, interim release.

Release early and release often - this is the mantra of the most successful open source projects.

There was a Beats of Rage update. This old-school beat 'em up is a throw back to the arcade action of Double Dragon and also has a fork, OpenBOR. The OpenBOR forums are thriving with mods although they mostly re-use graphics from old arcade games which is legally dubious. Sadly OpenBOR seems to only be available for Windows but Beats of Rage is cross platform.

Open Source 3D Space Games

Welcome to a space game special on Free Gamer!

No Gravity

Vega Strike

Oolite

Parsec

Crimson Space

At the heart of open source space game development is Vega Strike, a 3D space trading and combat game. With a dynamic universe and dynamic econmies, there is massive depth to the game. However the current stable version (0.4.3) is aging. While there is an update to the development version, it is not yet stable nor easy to try but does include some great new models and art on top of various gameplay improvements. Feature-wise it rivals commercial counterparts and the next releases should restore Vega Strikes position as one of the showcase open source games.

Vega Strike is highly moddable and has spawned some excellent mods. There's something for Babylon 5, Star Wars, and Star Trek fans, with the latter moving forward nicely.

The most well-known mod is Privateer Remake, a modernization of Wing Commander: Privateer - an offshoot of the Wing Commander series. Privateer Remake was forked to form Privateer Gemini Gold, a version more true to the original Privateer. Both games breathe life back into a popular franchise, dragging it into 20th century gaming with vastly superior graphics to the original. There are more Wing Commander game remakes being developed out of the Vega Srike mod stable, springing from the meta-project Wing Commander Universe that spawned Privateer Remake.

No Gravity is a 3D arcade space shooter set in a fantastic universe made of 5 intergalatic worlds. The website is one of the best looking sites I've seen for an open source game. The game itself does not look as pretty as more recent titles like Vega Strike, but it looks fun nonetheless. It's gameplay reminded me of X-Wing vs TIE Figheter although it's been a long time since I played that so I could be mistaken.

Another space game whose progress has been steady is Oolite. It is basically Elite for the modern PC and was developed as a response to the withdrawl of Elite - A New Kind from the Internet (although it is still available from a few freeware sites). Oolite continues to exceed Elite in many ways and should delight fans of the original as well as attracting new players to the Elite brand.

Then there's FreeSpace 2. I was somehow under the impression that the whole game had been made Free Software. However, I could only find the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project which did not contain much useful information, let alone a useful download. Increasingly convinced that the original FreeSpace 2 data was required and not Free, my interest quickly waned. If I'm wrong then could somebody please correct me.

Sadly there are those game development efforts that never quite make it. I came across Reaper whilst poking around the Internet. It's development ceased in 2002. Another space game whose candle went out a while ago is Andromeda 9, so it joins the echelons of once-promising projects.

Then there is Parsec. Once a darling of Linux gaming, Parsec suffered from being closed source. By the time the developers realised their mistake and open sourced Parsec, it was too late to interest a future maintainer.

Update: I have stumbled across Crimson Space that looks intriguing - you can enter a planet's atmosphere, it has several ships - although I'm uncertain of how complete it is and development ceased in 2002.

For people wanting an immediate fix, I would suggest No Gravity, Oolite, and Privateer Gemini Gold. No Gravity has the polish, Oolite has the depth, and Privateer the great 3D graphics. For people who are not afraid of rough edges, Vega Strike and it's burgeoning mod scene will push your 3D cards and engross you at the same time; Vega Strike is the open source future of this genre. One thing is certain, the open source 3D space game scene is very healthy.

Please comment if I missed an important open source 3D space game.

Movers, shakers and hoops on video

Posted by Jon Steinback, Product Marketing Manager

There are so many videos available on Google Video that we don't always know where to start, so we turned to you viewers to help us decide what to watch. We use algorithms to identify videos that are suddenly becoming popular, and then rank them based on how popular they are -- and how suddenly they became popular. We've been using this list internally, and now it's ready to share with you, so check it out. Right now this feature highlights videos from close to 40 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and New Zealand, to name a few.

And by the way, we're guessing there might be some interest in the NBA Finals, too. We're not going to miss a minute -- and now, neither will you.

Being a good sport

Posted by Manu Rekhi, Product Marketing Manager

Summer’s that time of year when a lot of Googlers channel our inner Tiger, Ronaldinho, Venus, Shaq or Albert. Admittedly, most of us are weekend warriors and couch potatoes, not to mention keyboard jockeys — and we tend to fall into a few other categories, too. Fortunately Google can help us all out: we’ve got some new sports-related products and search features launching. When it comes to sports information, do you recognize your type here?

Hometown Hero. Whether across continents or across branches of the family tree, you’re fiercely loyal to that team that stirred your childhood passions. But time zones, TV broadcast schedules, and the demands of, say, work or dinner may not always cooperate. Now Google can deliver up-to-the-minute scores, stats, and schedules 24x7. Check out:

- Google.com — Fire it up on the browser of either your PC or mobile device to search for your favorite World Cup group or team to view real-time scores and schedules

- Sports Gadgets — Add these to your personalized Google homepage, including a new one with World Cup info

- Google SMS — Text-message a team name to 46645 (GOOGL) in the U.S. for World Cup scores and schedules. Fans in Germany, Japan and Canada can also give it a whirl.

- Google Desktop - Get live World Cup scores right on your desktop with this Soccer Scores gadget

Sports-Commentator-In-Training. Forget “le mot juste” — you’re about “le stat juste” or “le uplifting personal story juste.” You color commentator-wannabes have to have the latest data in hand and want to connect with others just like you, since your significant other has probably long since tuned you out). Check out:

Joga.com — Football (a.k.a. “soccer” in the U.S.) fans, build your own groups and clubs, share all kinds of football-related info, upload photos and video, and get updates on matches and events

Google Alerts — Get current news and website changes as they happen by creating Alerts for your favorite teams and players

Google Video — If you can't be in Germany this month, feed your football fever at this special section of Google Video

The Intellectual. You look underneath the sweat and adrenaline to explore the cultural and psychological underpinnings of sports and sporting events. Big questions like football vs. soccer, or perhaps basketball vs. ice hockey as a preferred winter sport. Or maybe the impact of major sports events on worker productivity. To further indulge your curiosity, there’s Google Trends.

The One with Team Pajamas. Enough said. If you're a fan of both football and Firefox, soon you can grab this Joga.com extension built in collaboration with Firefox to show support for your team (or all 32 of them) while you're surfing the web. You'll have a constant pulse on games, players, and stats.

Update: Google.com results currently support group or team search only. Added Google Video link; added link to Google Desktop Soccer Scores gadget.

Updates & More Updates

I have an ever-growing list of games to add. Soon the existing organisation of the games list will be inadequate so I'll be forced to think of how to make the list more scalable. I'm thinking of an AJAX driven table where I can assign more information to each game and make it orderable and searchable. However I don't want to commit to something requiring too much manual management; the current list is quite simple to maintain. Ideas on a postcard (or in a comment) please! Anything I can host on blogger.com is best.

Several games got recent updates; Empty Clip 1.0.2, OpenArena 0.4.1, and Vulture's 2.1.0 were some notable ones.

I downloaded Enigma which is a good test of your mouse handling ability. Inspired by two retro games I've never heard of, you manoevure a ball with the mouse to find matching stones. It was simple and fun, and felt like a complete game for what it is. As a potential distraction from work, I had to pay Enigma the compliment of deleting it immediately.

Next up was Yoda Soccer. First thing to note was that only the custom teams were avialable to play with - you need access to the original SWOS data to get the proper teams. Pressing ahead, I relished reliving the memories of repeatedly scoring the perfect Sensi goal. No such luck with Yoda Soccer; on Windows the game was unplayably slow - less than 1fps on my 1ghz laptop, unforgivable given the simple graphics. So I had to pay Yoda Soccer the insult of deleting it immediately. I reported the problem and will try it on Linux tomorrow.

Finally, testing my girlfriend's patience, I tried out Empty Clip. Again there were issues with performance - GUI elements made the game unplayably sluggish. When there was no GUI on-screen the game ran fine but I did not have the patience to stutter through the tutorials and initial stages of the games which were littered with GUI pop-ups. Still it looked fun and, again, I reported the problem and will try again on Linux tomorrow.

I've got a 3D space game special lined up for tomorrow. Ciao 'til then, folks!

Karting Race to GPL, VDrift

I contacted the author of Karting Race with regards to open sourcing the game, and he agreed! There's something to be said for GPL advocacy after all.

I really think it's a good idea... I think the main reason, that I haven't opensourced it yet, is that I think the code is too bad. Same thing when people mail me for the sourcecode because they wanna learn from it; It's just not good enough. But maybe it doesn't really matter when it comes to opensourcing...

Do you think I should just upload it to my own homepage, with a link alongside the final game?

I recommended a sourceforge project so we'll wait and see.

On a racing-related topic, VDrift will come as an autopackage for it's next release. The VDrift forums are alive with development progress and I look forward to an update to this very promising racing game. With new features and bug fixes plus cars and tracks being imported from the Racer community, this game seems to be picking up momentum.

I fully endorse Autopackage as a means to get Free games immediately available to players without the overhead of supporting multiple distros.

I'll finish off todays post by noting a few smaller games I added:

• I remember playing Pipemania years ago and it was fun, so imagine my delight when I discovered Pipepanic last week.
• I came across Intellidiscs a while ago too. For once a Tron-game that does not base itself on light cycles.
• I also had not included Tower Toppler until now. For me the gameplay was slow-but-hard, a strange combination. Also the pixellated main character doesn't add much atmosphere.
• Super Transball 2 is a fun take on the thrust genre.

As usual I can't really give each game I mention the column inches they deserve. If you want to highlight your favourites then please write a review and send it to me. Presuming it's reasonable, I'll be happy to publish any fan reviews on Free Gamer.

The Debate over Net Neutrality

Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, Senior Policy Counsel

The debate over "net neutrality" is coming to a boil in the next week as the House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that could determine the future of the Internet. The big phone and cable TV companies want Congress’s permission to create a new, unprecedented regulatory bureaucracy on the Internet – a private bureaucracy of broadband monopolists with the power to determine what content gets to you first and fastest. Google believes that forcing people and companies to get permission from, and pay special fees to, the phone and cable companies to connect with one another online is fundamentally counter to the freedom and innovation that have defined the Internet.

Our CEO Eric Schmidt believes this situation is so important that he has written an open letter to Google users asking them to speak out on this issue. We urge all of you to read his letter and call your representative in Congress at 202-224-3121. For more information on the issue, and more ways to make your voice be heard, visit It'sOurNet.org.

Update: For those following this debate closely, the key House vote is happening Thursday night or Friday morning on the Markey-Boucher-Eshoo-Inslee Amendment, which would add meaningful net neutrality provisions to H.R. 5252, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act. We believe anything less that this amendment would be a loss for freedom and innovation on the Internet.

Get in sync

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

What could be worse than forgetting to bookmark the obscure page you found that maps out the perfect walking tour of Venice? Having bookmarked it on the computer sitting on your desk back at home, 6000 miles away, instead of on the laptop you brought along. Or how about the frustration of being on a new computer and not remembering your passwords because your browser on your old computer automatically filled them in for you?

These sorts of frustrations inspired us to build a Firefox extension that keeps your browser settings for all your computers in sync. Google Browser Sync unifies your bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and persistent cookies across all the computers where you install it. It also remembers which tabs and windows you had open when you last closed any of your browsers and gives you a chance to reopen them. We think you'll enjoy how it handles sync conflicts and "just works," enabling you to bring your browser with you everywhere.

Meanwhile, we've also been improving version 2 of the Google Toolbar for Firefox. We've fixed a bunch of bugs and made it more stable, so we're stripping off the "beta" tag. We'll be updating all Toolbar users to this new version in the next couple of weeks.

Stunt Playground Source Released

I'll start with the exciting news that the source to Stunt Playground was released at the end of May. This is a really cool looking game written using the OGRE 3D engine. It really highlights the spreading understanding of the importance of Free Software when reading the reasons behind the decision:

I have decided to release the entire source code for Stunt Playground 2.0, to aid those interested in Ogre / OgreNewt / Newton Game Dynamics programming. The source is available under a free license, and might be of particular interest to people using the Newton Game Dynamics vehicle constraint, as it was used for the vehicle physics in the game.

How could I forget two of the classic Free games - Liquid War and Jump n Bump, both frollicking fun. It seems that Liquid War 6 is under development. Whilst not expected before 2008, it is always good to see the ongoing development of original Free games. I hope it brings a nice update to the rather garish graphics of it's predecessors. Still, if you haven't heard of the Liquid War games before, I highly recommend trying Liquid War 5. It is a worthy fill of a few minutes of your time.

I also spotted FreeSCI, on linuxgames.com, which is looking active. For those who don't remember what SCI is, it is the engine Sierra used to implement their original adventure titles before things got ugly. This harks back to the time when adventure games ruled the PC game market. With SCI Studio, a tool for creating SCI-based adventure games, being released as Free Software, hopefully we'll be seeing some good Free adventure games in the future.

On Freshmeat I saw an update to Rescue! Max, an action adventure space game written in Java. I haven't yet played the game but it looks interesting. Has anybody else tried it yet? If so, please comment on your experience.

Finally (for today - I have so many backed-up games to mention and link) I have added a digg.com entry for Free Gamer, so please support your favourite Free gaming resource (I mean this website) and digg FG!

Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a Mac Video Player.

Posted by Matthew Vosburgh, Software Engineer

We just released the Mac version of the Google Video Player. Now Mac users can buy and download the premium shows on Google Video. Go on, grab an episode of CSI you forgot to TiVo, or perhaps an old favorite episode of Star Trek Voyager.

For added coolness, the Mac Google Video Player is a Universal binary, so it runs natively on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. Our new player will also play the free videos from our site, so you can download and keep movies like Cat on Ice, this very cute wombat or my personal favorite, Talking Cats. This is the perfect excuse to run out and get one of those cute new black MacBooks...

It's nice to share

Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager

Many of you must be wondering, “Whatever happened to 2Web Technologies?" Um - no? Anybody? Well, if you're wondering, we joined Google's New York City office last year to come up with a solution to a problem we understood all too well: how to quickly and easily share information in real time. Spreadsheets were a clear target. They can have real power, but there are equally real drawbacks to collaborating and sharing them. This fact led our little team to explore making spreadsheet software, and the spreadsheets themselves, available on the web. And now, Google Spreadsheets is available as a limited test on Google Labs. Even when it was only partly developed, we used Google Spreadsheets (alpha!) to manage our task lists, our feature lists, our bandwidth estimates, our storage estimates, even our complex team event voting ;). We now know the true meaning of "share."

Now when I say “share,” I don’t mean “send group email,” and I certainly don't mean "time-share". (That’s actually the root of the problem we are trying to solve: multiple out-of-sync versions that are email attachments.) I do mean “use and update the same spreadsheet.” When I use Google Spreadsheets to organize events with the other parents at my kids' school, we’ll be looking at the same details at the same time. If I change the agenda of next Friday’s teacher’s meeting, the other parents will see that change immediately. When my brother-in-law’s bike club uses Google Spreadsheets to track rides, they’ll be in sync -- and if I change the time of next week's ride, the other riders may actually show up.

So don’t be surprised if you are soon invited by someone to share a spreadsheet. (We're rolling this out as a limited test.) Your kid's sports coach, your aunt in Omaha trying to organize a major family reunion, your friend who promised to compile a list of all your favorite hiking trails (and now wants you to help), or your project team which now has a way to keep tasks and status in one place for all to see.

One Point Nought

I added a few more titles to the list: Runescape (online only), FreeCNC (game over), and Karting Race (freeware).

Those readers who are Game Tome regulars may already be aware of an update to Armagetron AD. It's reached version number 0.2.8.2 which is something I want to talk about.

To me, version 1.0 of a project represents a stable release of the original concept. Not the perfection of that concept, but the playable implementation of it's core features. Armagetron passed this mark a long, long time ago. Also, the popular X.Y.Z versioning usually has respective major, minor, and bugfix connotations. For brown-paper-bag releases there is an occasional 4th digit version number.

Strikingly, this update (0.2.8.1 to 0.2.8.2) implemented new features. I just can not grasp such a minor version increment for a feature-based release. It's nonsensical. It almost reduces the significance of the new features.

Armagetron AD should ditch the 0, putting the version at 2.8.2 - more representative of the maturity of the codebase. Versions with new features should bump up the Y number, not the Z, so that people could better differentiate between more advanced versions of the game.

Another sinner in this regard is TORCS whose changes between Z increments can be very significant. Yet people who tried 1.2.1 don't bother to try 1.2.4 because they'll think nothing much has changed when that's not the case. The players miss out, the project misses out on players, and all because the developers thought it'd be better to be frugal with version numbers.

The moral of this rant is that if you want people to really notice the improvements between versions in your Free game, then treat versions numbers properly. Don't abuse them but do not be too respectful either. A developing game naturally should have a corresponding version number but it should represent the state of the game and not the state of mind of the programmer. 1.0 is not perfection. You'll never reach it if it is.

Football Focus

There was an update for the only well-developed Free football management simulation I know of, Bygfoot 2 was released. Sadly the lead developer is moving on so it may be the last release if nobody takes over maintainership. Saying that, open source project addiction may bring him back.

Bygfoot is fun but the user interface can be fairly non-intuitive and the game lacks depth when it comes to player management and information - e.g. there's no indication of a player's performance in the game. Outside of the players, there are plenty of features. With some UI love and elaboration on the player management it could be a very competent footy manager.

There was also an update to Alien Arena 2006; another mod-turned-standalone freeware deathmatch game. Since Q3A now is available under a Free license, I wish these mods would adopt a similar approach. Still, that is their perrogative.

Today I received a laptop with Windows installed, so if you know any Windows-only Free Software games then please let me know. I'm going to have to make the games list a little more refined (add a platform indicator of some sort) but I'd like to promote all Free games, regardless of their platform.

Campaign - FreeTrain Localization

[UPDATE 2009] FreeTrain was translated quite sometime ago, thanks to people who saw this campaign and helped out! It still only runs on Windows but there is hope of a port to Linux - contact the team via the mailing list if you think you can help. There is a project, website, forum. [/UPDATE 2009]

FreeTrain is a clone of A-Train. I can't find much information right now (please comment if you know where to look) but it's a long-running series developed by ArtDink and is primarily marketed to the Japanese. I remember playing A-Train 3 about 10-12 years ago and quite liking it.

The problem with FreeTrain is that it's only availabe in Japanese. The game needs localizing and translating. I have spoken to the author before and he's open to contributors. From the website:

I wanted to do a proper localization of FreeTrain to English at some point, but the game just doesn't have enough interest outside Japan to justify the effort to myself.

The lack of interest probably stems from the fact all the game material is in Japanese!

There is a mailing list linked on the game page. However, if you are really serious, I suggest contacting the author Kohsuke Kawaguchi directly - email also on the FreeTrain website.

So the first Free Gamer campaign is to get FreeTrain properly localized and translated into English. I don't even know if it runs on Linux. Not the most organised of campaigns but hopefully somebody will check it out anyway!

Update: Ok, I can confirm this is currently a Windows-only game. So the campaign is extended to porting it to Linux as well.

Introduction to Wing Commander

Thanks to those out there who pointed out the broken Wing Commander Universe link in the exciting prospects section. The link is fixed, now pointing to the WCU section of the Vega Strike wiki (WCU is a VS mod). The original project page currently serves as the homepage for Privateer Remake which has, as far as I'm aware, been superceeded by Privateer Gemini Gold. PR was created from the WCU codebase and PGG was a fork of PR. It does make sense, I promise.

Privateer is a classic PC game from the mid-90s and was an off-shoot of the Wing Commander series. You play the role of a space merchant and/or mercenary who fights his way across the galaxy in a game where you travel without limits, sometimes following the storyline if you were so inclined.

PGG and WCU development is still very active and there are more WC games expected to be created out of the WCU project. The next PGG release has high-res base backgrounds, more graphics, more balancing, and lots of bug fixes so look out for it.

Those interested in Wing Commander may be interested in Wing Commander Pioneer, a freeware game still in development by some of the prominent modellers of the WC fan community. It won't be released any time soon but the models and teaser screenshots are very nice.

Privateer was revolutionary and one of the best gaming experiences I ever had. Origin (now defunct) had a habit of doing this - think of the long-running Ultima games. I will do a Free Software perspective on them some day.

Acumen Fund’s 2006 Fellows

Posted by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund

Recently I wrote about the new Acumen Fund Fellows Program, with a call for applicants. We were overwhelmed by the response: Some 600 candidates from 52 countries applied for the opportunity to spend a year with Acumen Fund, first for training at our New York office and then working to support an investment in the field. The applicant pool demonstrates the powerful desire among the next generation of leaders to merge financial and analytical skills and business experience with the social, political and environmental needs of our world.

After an intense three-month selection process, we are extremely pleased to announce our eight 2006 Fellows, who hail from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

• Jocelyn Wyatt (U.S.) Previously India Country Director for Scojo Foundation
• Nadaa Taiyab (Sri Lanka) Former World Bank Consultant in Indonesia
• Keely Stevenson (U.S.) Created first online community for social entrepreneurs, Social Edge for the Skoll Foundation
• Fabrice Ndjodo (Cameroon) Former investment analyst with International Finance Corporation
• David Lehr (U.S.) Reuters Digital Vision Fellow, Stanford University
• Adrien Couton (France) Senior Associate at McKinsey & Company
• Eric Berkowitz (U.S.) Founder of management consulting firm ESB Partners
• Ayeleen Ajanee (Pakistan) Previously with Unilever, Pakistan

Our goal in creating the Fellows Program was to build an “entrepreneurial bench” of talented individuals for the social enterprise sector. Key to our ability in attracting and selecting these Fellows was the strong involvement of the Acumen Fund community. The support we’ve received from Google.org has been invaluable in launching the Fellows program, as well as in building our management capacity worldwide and in fueling new investments.

Again, we are delighted to be announcing this cohort of extraordinary individuals, who will be starting with us in September. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting more information on each Fellow on the Acumen Fund blog, as well as updates from each with observations and insights as they begin their work this fall. We hope to see the Fellows program serve as a model for developing leaders with the skills and moral imagination to build solutions from the perspective of the poor.