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<title>Haaze.com / kiyushidt / Published News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2011 07:10:23 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA[Six tips for surviving the Sony breach]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=six-tips-for-surviving-the-sony-breach</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=six-tips-for-surviving-the-sony-breach</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2011 07:10:23 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kiyushidt</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=six-tips-for-surviving-the-sony-breach</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:iStockPhoto)It happened again--hackers at&amp;nbsp'LulzSecurity&amp;nbsp'exposed Sony BMG's vulnerabilities and took hold of at least 1,000,000 &quot;unencrypted users, unencrypted admin accounts, government and military passwords,&quot; according to the organization's&amp;nbsp'Twitter status.People at risk include those who have signed up for Sony, or Sony-related brands and sweepstakes, like SonyPictures.com, TheYoungAndTheRestless.com.&amp;nbsp'If you're one of these people, your personal data--e-mail address, home address, phone number, and date of birth--might be&amp;nbsp'compromised. Use these tips to survive the breach:1. Beware of fraudulent e-mails. Now that your e-mail address(es) has been exposed, you're vulnerable to phishing attacks. Look out for e-mails from seemingly legitimate sites (like Sony) asking you for personal information like passwords or bank account information. Be careful when clicking links or opening attachments in e-mails, even if they appear to come from someone familiar or trusted.2. Use a different e-mail for &quot;junk.&quot; If you're using your primary e-mail when signing up for things like sweepstakes, create a &quot;junk&quot; e-mail address and use that instead. Some of the Sony accounts exposed were those associated with giveaways like &quot;The Summer of Restless Beauty Instant Win.&quot;3. Look out for fraudulent calls.&amp;nbsp'Watch out for illegitimate calls--your phone number, accompanied by your address, gives criminals enough information to impersonate a representative from a company like Sony. So if you get a call claiming you won the Sony-Autotrader sweepstakes, think twice before accepting it.4. Use a unique password for every account. Although it's convenient to use the same password for all online accounts, your security is on the line. Create a unique password for every account and store them in a secure service like&amp;nbsp'LastPass.&amp;nbsp'5. Change your security questions. Your e-mail address, along with the other data exposed in the breaches, could be used to reset your account passwords. Change your security questions immediately, and consider creating your own unique question if the service gives you the option.6. Don't give up information in the first place. Before joining a service or entering a sweepstakes, consider the&amp;nbsp'necessity&amp;nbsp'of the account and the consequences of signing up. If you choose to sign up, check to see which fields are required, as oftentimes your home address and phone number are optional.&amp;nbsp'Senior writer&amp;nbsp'Elinor Mills&amp;nbsp'contributed to this story.&amp;nbsp'<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Zynga prepares launch of expansion game FarmVille English Countryside]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=zynga-prepares-launch-of-expansion-game-farmville-english-countryside</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=zynga-prepares-launch-of-expansion-game-farmville-english-countryside</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kiyushidt</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=zynga-prepares-launch-of-expansion-game-farmville-english-countryside</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In one of its most important moves as a young company, Zynga is announcing today that it will launch a follow-up expansion to its wildly successful FarmVille game, which has had huge audiences for the past 20 months but now needs a makeover.The social gaming company is launching FarmVille English Countryside as an expansion to the original game in the coming weeks. It is the biggest single change that Zynga has made to FarmVille. If Zynga gets this right, it could return FarmVille to its glory as the  game with the biggest and most profitable audience in the world.The Facebook game is not exactly a sequel, as it uses the same Facebook application as the original FarmVille. It will allow fans to create a parallel farm alongside their existing one. But the new farm is entirely immersed in pretty English country landscapes and themes.If there&amp;'s a big deal in this game expansion, it&amp;'s the sheep. Yes, while the original FarmVille lets you breed horses, in this game, you can breed sheep. You can combine sheep of different colors and you&amp;'ll never guess what the resulting color will be for the baby lamb. Todd Arnold, general manager of FarmVille, said in an interview that this is an &amp;''innovative feature&amp;'' of the game. I call it a mini-game.For most hardcore gamers, such puffery in the form of breeding sheep is what they hate about FarmVille, which drew considerable criticism as a farming simulation because it didn&amp;'t have much game play. But casual players loved it, and the game hit a peak of 83 million players in March, 2010, after launching in June 2009. FarmVille is one of the most successful games in history, surpassed only by CityVille, which got as large as 100 million players. Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, owes his billionaire status to the success of FarmVille.FarmVille became the talk of the industry because it proved that traditional game companies that focused on hardcore gamers weren&amp;'t thinking big enough' it took Zynga, a scrappy startup, to have the imagination to create FarmVille and market the hell out of it to a receptive audience of older women. (And of course, the imagination started with an earlier rival game, Farm Town, and with Chinese farm games that came before that and the original farm game, Harvest Moon on the Nintendo DS).FarmVille has been in a steady decline as Zynga focused on launching other games such as FrontierVille and CityVille. The game now has 44 million monthly active users and 14 million daily active users. The decline was so steep that writer Peter Yared insisted that Zynga had better launch FarmVille 2.In FarmVille English Countryside, Zynga has added more story and more game play to address not the critics, Arnold said, but the feedback from fans who wanted more things to do than raise crops. At the beginning of the new expansion, the player meets the Duke, who flies in on an airship with a British flag on it. You have to repair the Duke&amp;'s airship and then his farm. Then you have to invite some Facebook friends to your bon voyage party (yes, that&amp;'s Zynga&amp;'s not-so-subtle way to make the game viral). After that, you can fly in his airship to England.There, you can start farming your own plot with all-new crops, equipment, buildings and decorations based on an English theme. But Arnold said that the good thing about FarmVille English Countryside is that it does not force fans of the current game to start over. All of your FarmVille coins and cash, your gift box, farm size and your level of achievement can transfer over to the English Countryside game.The missions and quests are similar to the story-based play that you can pursue in FrontierVille and CityVille. In this case, the Duke periodically shows up to give you a task to do.Zynga has teased FarmVille English Countryside with its own fan page. The FarmVille fan page has more than 30 million &amp;''likes&amp;'' on Facebook. But the English Countryside fan page already has 1.5 million &amp;''likes&amp;'' without any promotion.Arnold thinks the new game will be popular because many players needed a second farm to express themselves. The company tested a number of concepts for a theme, and the English Countryside theme rated the highest.Zynga won&amp;'t say how many of its 1,700 employees worked on the game or how long it took, as it considers that a corporate secret. The FarmVille studio in San Francisco worked on it' Manuel Bronstein Bendayan was senior director of product on the title. The team is blazing a new trail with FarmVille and had many discussions about when to launch an expansion. Clearly, though, as users defect to CityVille, FarmVille needed its makeover.&amp;''The initial idea was to give people a fresh start with their farm,&amp;'' Arnold said. &amp;''We wanted to take it further than that, adding characters, story and more guided game play.&amp;''But the team wanted to preserve the free form, open-ended game play that made FarmVille so popular from the beginning. Just about every week, the team adds new features to FarmVille to keep users interested, and it will do the same for the English Countryside.And of course there was the sheep-breeding innovation. A farm hand character named Angus shows you how to do it. You can pick a ram and a ewe and then hope for the best while you wait to see what color combination results. You can speed the process along by offering the sheep a &amp;''love potion,&amp;'' which is an opportunity for Zynga to sell you a virtual good. So far, there is no advertising built into the English Countryside expansion.Another feature that Zynga added was a progress map that shows where you are in the different levels of the game. Now you can see exactly which friends are at the same level as you are and where you have to level up next. You can also help your friends get to the next level.Next Story: Why SXSW&amp;'s party in Austin matters Previous Story: Ngmoco&amp;'s Neil Young foresees multibillion-dollar mobile game companiesPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Farmville, FarmVille English CountrysideCompanies: Facebook, ZyngaPeople: Manuel Bronstein Bendayan, Todd Arnold          Tags: Farmville, FarmVille English CountrysideCompanies: Facebook, ZyngaPeople: Manuel Bronstein Bendayan, Todd ArnoldDean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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