Restaurant City is up! Added Photo Feed & Gourmet Street

Restaurant City is up! Initially I was puzzled why there is a maintenance and wondered if Playfish will add in new features for Restaurant City. Some of the online forums have plenty of speculations about what Playfish will add after the maintenance.

Well, they added a Photo Feed function! This is similar to what we have for Pet Society actually so it is not that big a deal. Nonetheless it is still fun to have photos taken of your restaurants (and others too). You can also take photos at the 'Dress Yourself' function screen.

What is more interesting is the Gourmet Street! Now, instead of random street where you could take a look at the decoration of other unknown players, there is this Gourmet Street where most restaurants are well decorated and furnished! It is great to be able to get inspiration about how to decorate your own restaurant using ideas from among the best restaurants in the game.

Keep it up Playfish!

See also:
- Restaurant City: Latest Playfish Game in Facebook
- Restaurant City - New 'Drinks' recipes & option to serve more dishes

Want to know when the new fibre network will reach your home?

The news is out! There is now a website where you can key in your postal code and check the rough dates where the Next Gen National Broadband Network will reach your house.

With the latest network, you can surf from speed of 100Mbps. Currently the network is not ready yet but in the coming quarters we should be able to see commercial offerings.

Hmm I'm paying about $40 for my miserable 3Mbps due to contract. Hopefully by the time the new fibre network reaches my place, my contract will have expired and I can get better deals.

The website is http://rollout.opennet.com.sg/

I think the site is still somewhat buggy and so give them a couple more weeks to sort out the minor map bugs.

CommunicAsia 2009 - Quick Pictures

I was at Communic Asia 2009 today and took some pictures of the phones as well as the event itself. I didn't have enough time to really tour the place or ask more questions about the phones. The number of booths seems to be less and I didn't see any Sony Ericsson or SingTel booth. The CommunicAsia 2009, together with Broadcast Asia and Enterprise IT 2009, will be held from 16th to 19th June 2009 at the Singapore Expo.

Here's the pictures from the LG booth. I guessed I was impressed by the new LG GD900, the latest crystal slider phone with transparent keypad. It comes with a 8 megapixel camera!

Other than the booth girls, we also have the cute mascot! I think there was some lucky draw where lucky participants could walk away with free phones.

he new Viewty model (pic above) looks good. Of course, there were also display of the new phone models. Some were rather weird, e.g. these wrist phones. I think it is not the culture yet to have people speaking to their wrists. T

Of course, we also have the Samsung Mobile booth!

Omnia series continued to be the main highlight I believe.

Yupz, we have the Samsung Galaxy powered by the Google Android. More applications coming for wider range of phones.

Ok that is a very quick post about the CommunicAsia 2009 event and we will definitely see more blogs about it over the next few days. :) Other than phones, there were also a number of interesting announcements, including an extended Wireless@SG programme with higher speed of 1Mbps, that will last until March 2013. So yupz this will be an exciting week!

Afternote:
Here's two more pictures, one of the Powerwave racing car, and the Yahoo! free drinks. Not sure why are there racing cars actually. Free drinks are great crowd pullers, but the two times I was there Yahoo! said their slurpee had not frozen enough yet. Hmm.

Pet Society - New Gardens Function

Pet Society is up after some maintenance and Playfish added in new gardens for everyone! I think everyone has one to two gardens depending on your pet's level. The garden is pretty empty and you can plant seeds to grow vegetables, flowers and trees! My tree has grown a little since last night (lower right).

Together with the gardens, Playfish has also introduced the garden shop that sells you seeds and pots, and potted plants. The seeds are quite expensive, ranging from 100 to 500 coins.

Here's the description of the different seeds that you can buy. I think they will add other new options in future. Planting the seeds is as easy as dragging the seeds from your inventory to the dirt spots in the gardens. It will be fun to grow a fly eater plant. Hmm.

Well, the new garden function makes Pet Society interesting to play again. Keep up the good work Playfish! Guess it's worth the wait during the maintenance.

Oh, after the plants are grown you can sell them for coins or eat them as food! See the pic below.

See also:
- Pet Society in Facebook

Lawmakers & Games

It is a curious phenomenon that people like the lawmakers who have no extensive knowledge of games, often want to impose their views and opinions on those who play games. Just a couple of days ago Germany news announced that 16 Interior Ministers have banded together to ask their Parliament to ban the production and distribution of violent video games.

What is violent video games? If 'violent' is the main concern, then should video movies be banned as well? What is violent is the first place? Isn't violence linked to a society's norms? If so, that is a changing norm which cannot be defined clearly enough to be put into law, right?

I wonder why would intelligent people like lawmakers want to define ever changing boundaries into hard set laws. Perhaps the industry would be in a better position to have self imposed rating systems, and encourage the parents to be more vigilant about the games their kids play. Afterall, scoping the social norms for children is part and parcel of the responsibilities of their parents isn't it?

MyBrute on iPhone and iPod Touch!

MyBrute is coming on iPhone and iPod touch. This is announced on the game page itself. There will also be new features and skills. Wonder if the MyBrute apps will be free or will it come with a cost on iPhone.

Other than the announcement, there are also YouTube videos of MyBrute. I'm not sure about the authenticity of the video though, but it looks real enough.


See also:

- Abilities in MyBrute (some)
- MyBrute Flash Game - Simple Review