First-Look, Behind-the-Scenes Featurette
Friday, March 18, 2011
Call of Duty, Heavy Rain Top BAFTA Video Game Awards
The "Call of Duty" franchise continued its wave of success Wednesday when its latest release won the Game Award of 2010 at the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) Video Games Awards in London.
The PS3 game "Heavy Rain," meanwhile, took home three top awards.
"Call of Duty: Black Ops" won the Game Award, which is the only award at this ceremony voted on by the public, and the third year that a "Call of Duty" game has received the honor. "Black Ops" was released in November, and has since topped $1 billion in sales, while players have logged at least 600 million hours of play time.
"Can't thank all you voting fans enough!" Josh Olin, community manager for Treyarch, the studio that created "Black Ops," tweeted earlier today.
Meanwhile, "Heavy Rain" won BAFTAs for original music, technical innovation, and story.
"The whole team is very, very proud!" Quantic Dream, the French production company that created the game, said on its Web site.
It was Bioware's "Mass Effect 2," however, that took home the BAFTA for best game. It was lauded by the jury as a "combined achievement of technology, art, design [and] audio… a beautiful complete gaming experience."
"Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood" took home the action award for its "exhilarating chases [and] heart-thumping shadowing missions."
"Civilization V" won in the strategy category, the second BAFTA for the series. "Civilization Revolution" won in this category in 2009.
For less violent games, "Kinect Sports" won the best family game, while "Super Mario Galaxy 2" won for best gameplay. The original "Super Mario Galaxy" won the best game award in 2009.
The video game BAFTAs added a new social network category this year, and the award went to "My Empire," a Greco-Roman themed city-building game for Facebook.
Other winners included:
Handheld: Cut the Rope
Sports: F1 2010
Multiplayer: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Audio: Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Artistic Archievement: God of War III
Friends With Benefits
The relationship between two friends (Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis) gets complicated when they decide to get romantic.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Facebook, Google 'must adhere' to strict EU privacy rules
Facebook, Google and other social networks and sites with a presence in Europe must heed to the European strict data privacy rules, said EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.
Companies outside the 27-strong nation European wall, including the United States, must now begin changing their own privacy practices to continue working from within Europe.
The EU began its overhauling of its privacy laws last November, with new legislation expected to give greater powers to the end consumer, and stricter penalties for those who break the rules.
Though Facebook was not directly mentioned, it was made clear by the speech Reding gave in Brussels today that Facebook was in her sights.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“A U.S.-based social network company that has millions of active users in Europe needs to comply with EU rules. To enforce the EU law, national privacy watchdogs shall be endowed with powers to investigate and engage in legal proceedings against non-EU data controllers whose services target EU consumers.”
Yet from the Guardian, it is clear that Facebook is most definitely a target for the highest data protection officer in Europe. Matthew Newman, spokesperson for Commissioner Reding said:
“A year ago she issued Facebook a warning because the privacy settings changed for the worse and now she’s legislating to put flesh on those bones.”
Following on from her speech last year, Reding wants users to have the right to delete data they see no longer fit for purpose on websites like Google and Facebook. Reding also made clear that companies should make clear why personal data might be collected to justify its purpose.
The European Union has enabled strict data protection rules, far greater than that of the United States, since 1998 when all European countries were told by EU directive to apply new legislation.
For European companies and US wholly owned subsidiary companies in Europe to send data from within the EU to the United States must adhere to the mutually agreed Safe Harbour principles, which dictate data privacy and security regarding to data transfer.
However, the United States has a long way to go before the European Commission deems it a fully compliant nation with its standards in regards to privacy.
Until the US legislates, all the Commission can do is legislate itself and force privately held companies like Google and Facebook to comply, to retain its presence in the region.
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