Michelle Shildkret, 360i on behalf of TIME.com writes “JV Games was all set to release ‘Beer Pong’ for the Nintendo Wii when parents and lawmakers got a whiff, forcibly renaming the game to Pong Toss and filling its pixelated cups with water instead. But the game is still rated ‘T’ for teen, and anybody who encounters it will be able to draw clear conclusions as to its intended purpose (drink and get drunk).” Lesson: Don’t play games that simulate drinking before you play games that simulate driving, or larceny.

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(0d0 writes “Some researchers at Columbia University’s Computer Vision Labratory have developed software to automatically replace faces in batches of pics. Practical applications include protecting the identities of people in Google’s Street View, coupling it with a digital camera’s burst mode to create a perfect group photo, or protecting the identities of witnesses or law enforcement and military personnel. Other links to coverage include Boing Boing, American Public Media, and New Scientist.”

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porcupine8 writes “Good news for those that have had a hole in their heart (and Facebook profile) since Hasbro forced Facebook to remove Scrabulous over copyright and trademark issues. The creators of Scrabulous have wasted no time in tweaking the game and have launched a new tile-based game called Wordscraper. In addition to changing the name, they have changed the board look so as not to directly copy the colors, etc of a Scrabble board, and have even made provisions for players to create their own board layout! Interested Scrabulous fans can add the application now. Only time will tell if the changes were extensive enough to keep Hasbro’s lawyers at bay.”

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palegray.net writes “Two female Yale law school students have used the courts to ascertain the identities of otherwise anonymous posters to an World wide web forum, with the intent of prosecuting them for hateful remarks left on the boards. At a minimum, the posters’ future legal careers are certainly jeopardized by these events. While I’m not certainly not supporting or encouraging hateful speech on the internet, these controversial actions hold potentially far-reaching consequences for Internet privacy policy and free speech.” According to the linked Wired Law article, “The women themselves have gone silent, and their lawyers — two of whom are now themselves being sued — are not speaking to the press.”

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Antiglobalism writes to tell us that an Alameda County Judge has ruled against Sprint Nextel in a class-action lawsuit, awarding customers $18.2 million in restitution for early termination fees. “Though the decision could be appealed, it’s the first in the country to declare the fees illegal in a state and could affect other similar lawsuits, with broad implications for the nation’s fast-growing legions of cell phone users. The judge - who is overseeing several other suits against telecommunications companies that involve similar fees - also told the company to stop trying to collect $54.7 million from other customers who haven’t yet paid the charges they were assessed. The suit said about 2 million Californians were assessed the fee.”

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malign noted that AT&T has said that using P2P on their 3G wireless network is grounds for disconnection. The lobbyist told congress “Use of a P2P file sharing application would constitute a material breach of contract for which the user’s service could be terminated.”

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An anonymous reader writes “Citizens of the world are striking back at 24/7 state surveillance by pulling out their cameraphones and filming inept officials, deadly healthcare lapses and thuggish cops. So-called Sous-veillance is seeing more and more people posting damning footage of official misdemenours to sites such as YouTube to shame them into action.” I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.

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MattSparkes writes “Cuil might only have launched this week, but it seems that they’re already enjoying late-’90s boom-style comforts. ‘Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbeque, to see if everyone’s in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.’ Seems like an awesome place to work, but how long will their $25 million VC funding last at this rate?”

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Freeware, Beta, web 2.0

Sure, most RSS readers give you a few button that lets you share interesting stories you’re reading with friends, loved ones, and enemies via email or a link blog. But what if you want to broadcast a story to your Twitter friends, or send a story by instant messenger? Apprise is an RSS reader designed to save you the few seconds it would take to duplicate and paste the link.

Apprise lets you sign into your AOL IM or Twitter account and send a page to your contacts with the click of a button. The reader is built on Adobe AIR, which means it should work on Windows, Linux, or OS X. But it’s worth noting that Apprise is available as a public beta at the moment, which means you might experience some bugs. After importing a few hundred feeds, I found that Apprise crashed every few minutes. The Linux version is described as an alpha.

Aside from the Twitter and AIM integration, Apprise has a few other tricks up its sleeve. For example, you can view the full web version of any feed item. You can search your feeds, and you can import and export OPML files. One things you can’t do? Email a story to a friend.

[via Sizlopedia]

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Filed under: Web services, web 2.0

If you’re still into Twitter (and apparently a lot of you are), TweetParty offers a yet another service based on the Twitter API that you might want to check out.

To get started, just sign in with your Twitter user name and password and you’re shown the “my groups” page. Enter a name for your group, click the “create” button, and TweetParty will add it to the current page.

Clicking “manage” gets to the good part: a simple drag-and-drop interface to turn Twitter friends into group members. When you’re done, click “update party” and you’re done– there’s no limit to the number of groups you can set up.

Add TweetParty as a friend on Twitter, and you’re set. Send a direct message to TweetParty with #yourgroupname in front, and they’ll take care of the rest. It’s a great service, especially on days Twitter is functioning properly.

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