The subject of computer game addiction has been pretty prominent in both mainstream news and online blogs for a few years now - especially in relation to World of Warcraft (even WIkipedia has a tab under WoW titled ‘Game Addiction’). The release last month of the latest expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, again coincided with similar - and mostly relevant and much-needed - debates on the issue.

(NB there is even now an online WoW rehab clinic, WoWDetox, for those worried about their use).

Like many others, this blog covered the debate - but since then has not featured much WOW or even gaming news. So this week we’re going to put the spotlight on something really positive coming out of the WOW community and try to redress the balance a little as regards some of the bad press that perhaps inevitably surrounds the addiction debate.

A few months ago we reviewed Google’s Chrome browser on this blog and found it a pretty high-standard product, roughly on a par with both IE and Mozilla. But we all knew that it would be nigh on impossible for any new browser to seriously rival IE on features alone, as it’s at the pre-install stage that Microsoft’s dominance is rooted. With today’s announcement from Google it seems the picture could soon look a lot different…

Having released 14 major updates in just over 100 days since Chrome’s launch, Google now feel they have an adequately stable and developed product to end the Beta testing stage. Though even now Chrome is by no means perfect, Google clearly feel it is ready to step out of Beta mode and into the pre-install ring with IE.

Following the recent departure of one of its key collaborators, Francois Zaninotto, Symfony has taken a fair bit of stick and has seen some users abandon the web app framework in favour of alternatives such as Zend.

It seems Francois’ frustrations with the closed nature of Symfony development (he says 95% of decisions are made by one man - creator Fabien Potencier) finally outweighed his enjoyment of working on the project, prompting him to leave (more details can be found at Redo The Web, Francois’ blog).

Despite boasting some pretty high profile users (Yahoo Bookmarks and Askeet to name a couple) and thousands of smaller ones (see this Symfony list of some of the key sites built on the framework), the initiative is seeing a slight increase in criticism, namely from some web 2.0 developer’s blogs.

A couple of days ago the now slightly infamous Yahoo CEO, Jerry Yang, announced he would be stepping down from his position once a suitable replacement has been found. Yang has only been in the job for just over 18 months and undoubtedly his tenure of the post will be remembered for only one thing - his rejection of a takeover bid valued at around $44bn from Microsoft back in early 2008. The obvious question now is - will this change fuel renewed takeover speculation and offers?

Simon Garfield of the Guardian has this week interviewed Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and the result is a very interesting and detailed article on Guardian online. One of the most curious things to emerge from it is Zuckerberg’s frequent emphasis on ’sharing’, which he sees as Facebook’s most primary function. But Garfield is astute to highlight the importance of asking ourselves; just what exactly are we sharing, why, and for whose benefit?

The issue is not a new one in relation to FB; we all remember the disasterous and intrusive compulsory Beacon app, which monitored user spending habits and harvested the info for corporate clients. Understandably the user backlash was so swift and severe that FB quickly pulled the app - but some of the principles behind it are evident still in other practices. I decide to log in to my Facebook account to assess the effects of the current level of advertising and commercialisation on my user experience…

One of etonDIGITAL’s newest clients and StudentBox founder, Carl Pihl, is currently appearing in the hit BBC Three series ‘The Last Millionaire‘. Carl is one of twelve entrepreneurs taking part in the show, which sees them test their wits and business acumen in a range of cities worldwide each week. The series has only recently started so you can still easily catch up with the action, just as the competition is really hotting up!

Carl is so far doing very well on the show, he was runner up in the first episode (each episode sees two millionaire contestants leave). Fluent in three languages and with a successful background in a range of business sectors by the time he left university, Carl is certainly a strong contender to do very well in the show - catch him in action on BBC Three at 9pm on Wednesdays, or visit the BBC website to watch online with iPlayer.

www.etondigital.com

There is a now pretty well known Facebook group entitled ‘If 10 million join Marc Zomberg will bring back the old Facebook‘ that I revisited the other day to check how user levels were doing. To my surprise the group has continued to grow and now has over 2.25 million members. There is more that’s strange about this than just the wierd mis-spelling of Zuckerberg’s name in the title (some users claim it is a joke, though I’m left slightly puzzled by it. I guess it does sound kinda silly…)

The odd thing is that there are over 400 such groups on Facebook at the moment, all taking the form of a petition to bring back the previous profile design (the single-page layout). It’s gotten to the stage that there are even groups being formed to petition against the petitioners. The Zomberg group is simply the most popular one, though as a rough estimate I think the total number of ‘protestors’ (accross all such groups) is closer to the 3 million mark.

Microsoft’s recent high-profile ad campaign featuring the American comic Jerry Seinfeld was not the success the company had hoped it would be. Responses were lukewarm at best, with most finding the ad to be slightly laboured and quite unfunny, like some awkward middle-aged attempt at quirky offbeat cool (read the original relevant blog post in our archive).

Anyway Valleywag has confirmed that as of tomorrow Microsoft will officially announce the termination of the working relationship with Jerry Seinfeld, stating that it had always planned only a brief working connection, and instead now focus on the new ad campaign, unveiled last week. Question is: is it any better than the old one? Or does the change of tact simply smack of panic and play right into Apple’s hands?

(The new ad can be viewed at Guardian online or on Youtube).

Website flipping is a pretty simple concept: a ‘flipper’ buys a site at auction, works on it to improve traffic and boost search engine rankings, thereby raising the profile and value of the site which can then be sold on for a profit or retained as part of a portfolio.

With start-up costs minimal (internet connection and as little as £20 to buy a first site) and potential earnings often as high as six figures for a year’s worth of work, flipping is quickly becoming the obvious choice for SEO experts wanting to work independently and flexibly from anywhere in the world.

The recent successes of Youtube and Myspace have done much to raise the potential rewards for such work (they sold for £884m and £330m respectively) but profit margins are high even on a smaller scale, with many £10 sites re-appearing on the same auction sites only a couple of hours after being sold, often for a few hundred pounds.

With this in mind here’s a few tips for would-be flippers:

When it comes to open source content management systems Wordpress is doing pretty well for itself. Last week saw the release of another update (to v2.6.2) which contains a few bug fixes and promises to resolve some recently discovered security loopholes. The update should go some way to silencing Wordpress’s detractors who criticise its fundamental architecture in relation to security. For the rest of us however the release marks yet another success for one of web 2.0’s biggest rising stars…

With such high profile users as Techcrunch, Reuters, The New York Times and CNN to name a few, Wordpress is doing extremely well in what is a fairly crowded field (see Wikipedia for a full list of current CMS options). With a ‘Wordpress for Dummies’ book published last year and various ‘Wordcamps’ taking place all over the world on a regular basis, there has never been a better time to incorporate Wordpress into your website or blog.