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I got the Amazon alert today, Assassin’s Creed is finally available for pre-order only and is due to be released 25 Sept (begin of school for kids… so sad). The game is listed for PS3 and XBox 360, but I could not find it for PC :(. As the game is developed by the same team behind the Prince of Persia trilogy, it has been getting lots of attention from the press and is considered one of the top anticipated games this year. I do hope we get a PC version soon, though I would love to try the graphics on PS3, I think I’m somehow better as a PC gamer. A friend of mine told me you can never finish Prince of Persia using keyboard. I think his statement is true for me with gamepads.

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Definitely not the best ending he’s hoped for. Ken Kutaragi, the father of Play Station who brought 4 gaming consoles to the market is retiring, leaving behind the struggling costly PlayStation 3 console in the middle of the waves. It is really unfortunate when a man with such successful record has to step down at such a low time. Ken him self spoke about the reasons for PS3 struggles. Cost, delay, and lack of big hit games are all reasons behind. Mr. Kutaragi will remain an honorary chairman and senior technology adviser for Sony after his retirement.

Fare well Ken, you’ve brought joy and fun to the hearts of millions around the world.

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Or should I say Happy Birthday Ron? This years marks the 20th anniversary of SCUMM, the scripting utility Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert created to aid in the development of adventure game Maniac Mansion. The utility became the foundation of many other adventure games, like the legendary Monkey Island. A virtual machine is in place now and is adapted to different platforms to keep the old franchise playable. Nintendo DS now is able to play the old games while you are on the move. Read a short interview with Ron Gilbert on IGN.

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Few months back, Google was picked as the best company to work for in the U.S. Now, Google have added another achievement to their record. The logo you see up there is worth $66.4 bn, more than double it’s value last year, making Google brand the most valuable global brand in the market, on top of General Electric, Microsoft and Coca-Cola. Something for sure will not please Steve Ballmer who swear to have Google and Eric Schmidt out of business. On the contrary however, the search engine giants business seems to be going bigger and bigger exponentially with time. Read more on the news from Silicon.com

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Once again every 3 months, we read a similar article. Google’s quarter revenue has exceeded expectations, and the stock price goes up again as always. Eric Schmidt talks in pride about how strong their core business is, and how it keeps getting stronger and stronger with time. This is really great, and I as a Google believer have no doubt about it. But what Mr. Eric is trying smartly to hide here is Google’s failure to generate revenue in any other type of business. Google Answers closed last year, Google Checkout is so bad it has rating 4.2 (up from 3/10 two months back) on CNET, Google Apps is also not getting the best of reviews they hoped for. Google is expanding in many areas, I’m not sure how successful they are with the new advertising channels they entered, but anything that has nothing to do with advertising is just not going through. A reason for some analysts to say Google has a weak business foundation that could collapse in any minute.

So how could Google really fall down? I don’t think that would happen anytime time soon, but with the next wave of evolution:

• New advertising mechanism that would outperform Google: Google so far is trying to get into what ever advertising model there is, so it’s very unlikely.
• New major advertising channel: Every month we hear of a new booming site that is having strong community gathering. Search engines rush in acquiring those startup sites. But if one day, a very strong solid community starts building it’s own advertising solution, and this is where Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon are trying to get into, they could start drawing advertiser’s attention quickly with competitive prices compared to how keyword price keeps rising at Google.
• Google Killer, and I mean Google Search Engine killer. Since once you have that, many people are likely to ignore all the other Google features and just stick with what you have. Every year new search engines come (and go). We have seen Accoona, Ms. Dewey, the European Search Engine project, and many others who are trying to implement human like queries as well, something that Google have yet to seriously invest in sometime soon. There is no real threat in the horizon what so ever, but continued attempts mean someday someone will hit the target, and then that might be it.

These are all just thoughts I have about Google and where they’re heading, despite how much I love and admire Google’s value and what they have to offer. What do you think?

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This is although late, but still might be useful to many. Windows XP from A-Z is a nice site that lists small short hints on various Windows XP options, categorized from A-Z as the name says. While Vista is already out, I’m sure there are many people who still want to keep using XP than those who want to upgrade to Vista, temporarily at least until most of the hidden holes in Vista are exposed and fixed. Hope you find the link useful.

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Computer geeks tend to like depending more on the keyboard rather than mouse, and in fact, if you master it, it saves a hell lot of time. This link from LifeHacker is a very good introduction to optimizing Firefox existing shortcuts, and directs you on how to configure your own.

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