By Gary Johnson-Laird

So Google + is the new social network in town and already Facebook is stamping its feet in a tantrum.

For those of you who haven't heard of it, Google + is a new social network created by, you guessed it, Google. It has been referred to as an upgraded Facebook. It's pretty similar to Facebook, you have a profile that displays all your information, you can find friends and there's a home page called stream that displays posts from your friends. Google allows you to sort your friends into circles, you can create and name a circle, for example Work, and then drag your friends into the appropriate circle. You can then choose to share things only with specific circles. Google + doesn't allow businesses to create pages so it's aimed solely at people.

People that have been lucky enough to be invited to try Google+ have noticed that finding all your Facebook friends on Google+ can be a tedious task so naturally someone has come up with an application that does it for you. Facebook Friend Exporter is an extension for Google Chrome that allows you to export the list and contact info of your Facebook friends for use with other services.

Facebook noticed people doing this and decided to put a stop to it stating that it violates Facebook's terms of service which states: "you will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission." . Most people think this is ridiculous as Facebook doesn't own their friends contact info, it's just a tool to save potentially hours of browsing through friends pages. This isn't going to stop the developers who are already working on a new version of the extension.

Facebook has also removed an ad for Google+ from its advertising and deleted the account.

It seems that Facebook are getting pretty petty and they obviously see Google+ as a threat and who can blame them, i bet Google+ gives Facebook nightmares. Facebook was great at first but the constant layout changes, application requests, viruses and pointless groups (Don't you hate it when you get home and an octopus has stolen your toaster) have ruined it. But its early days for Google+ so who knows what will happen, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

By Gary Johnson-Laird

It's a big week for technology this week, on Monday Apple announcedsome interesting stuff at the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) , Tuesdaysaw Sony and Microsoft take to the floor at the Electronic Entertainment Expo(E3) and then Nintendo took the floor on Wednesday.

Firstly Apple announced their new operating system for macs,this one is called Lion, apparently it has 250 new features and its available for just $29.99 (which will probably be £29.99 for us) exclusively from Apple'sApp Store.

They then announced anew online backup service called iCloud. All your apple devices areautomatically backup up and stored to iCloud and any document changes areautomatically pushed onto your other devices too, this will come in handy forsharing your photos between devices. iTunes match will also be used by iCloudto share your music between all your devices, including files not purchased fromiTunes.

Finally they announced IOS 5, the newest operating system for iPhones and iPads. They have packed some interesting new feature into thistime. The annoying POP UP notifications have now been collected into anotification centre, a small bar underneath the time bar shows how manynotifications you have, very similar to Android phones. iMessage is a new appthat lets you send texts, photos , videos or contact info to other IOS 5 usersfor free, this will be integrated into the existing messages app. Sounds verysimilar to RIM's Blackberry messenger. Twitter has been integrated into severalthings such as the camera app, allowing users to keep their followers informedquicker, hmm sounds pretty much the same as the Windows 7 phones. Another great feature; users can finallyupdate their devices over the air, eliminating the need to find the USB cable everytime you want to add a song to your device. A few other improvements include: a camera button on the lock screen, using the+ volume button to take pictures when using the camera and customisablevibration alerts.

No new iPhone model announced this year, guess the rumourswere true that its being delayed till September to boost sales for Christmas.

At E3 microsoft showed off some new games for its Kinectsensor, launched last year, looks like they are trying to encourage hardcoregamers to buy it by including functionality in games such as mass effect 3 andFable: the journey. Some nice games being showed off such as Gears of war 3 ,Halo 4 and Bioshock Infinite, exciting stuff but no new hardware fromMicrosoft, unless you count their steering wheel peripheral.

Sony took the opportunity to apologise for their recentsecurity intrusions and to showcase their new portable console that wasannounced back in January, originally named PlayStation NGP, the PlayStationVita (which is latin for life) is going head to head with the Nintendo 3DS, the3DS isn't doing so well at the moment so Sony have a good chance to win theportable console race. PS Vita boasts an impressive 5 inch touchscreen display,with 2 analogue sticks, a D-pad, the usual 4 Sony Buttons, 2 shoulder buttons,a playstation button, start and select buttons and a touchpad on the back. And ifthat wasn't enough it also has a front camera, a rear camera, SIX-AXIS motionsensor, GPS, Wi-Fi , Bluetooth and 3G. Sony have really crammed a lot into thisconsole, which is made even more impressive by its size. Games are going to bedistributed on NVG cards, which are basically flash memory cards, and will comein 2 sizes; 2GB and 4GB.

Nintendo finally unveiled to the public its new console,named the Wii U. Rumours have been floating around about this console formonths and it seems like most of them were true. The new Wii has finally caughtup to the other main consoles by displaying games in 1080p HD. It also features a new controller that has atouchscreen display, front facing camera, microphone as well as the usualcollection of buttons. The controller can actually be used as a full display ifthere are no TVs handy. This controller has obviously been designed to emulatetablet devices, such as the iPad, that have become very popular recently. TheWii remote, nunchuck, classic controller and the balance board will be compatiblewith the Wii U as well. The games will be distributed on "proprietaryhigh-density optical discs" which will be able to hold 25GBs of data,which is about 3 times the size of the current discs used. Expect a releasedate somewhere after April 2012. This should give Sony and Microsoft anincentive to rush their new consoles, hopefully we will be seeing them at next year'sE3 with release dates all before Christmas 2012. Suppose I better start savingup.

By Gary Johnson-Laird

Ever since the Xbox 360 was released gamers have been collecting GamerPoints for every game they play. GamerPoints are awarded for completing a certain task or Achievement, in a game. This can be as simple as pressing start (The Simpsons Game, 5G), or as tedious as killing 100,000 enemies (Gears of War 2, 50G). The amount of GamerPoints earned usually depends on the difficulty of the Achievement. Retail games usually have a total of 1000G and Xbox Live Arcade Games have a total of 200G, though both these totals can be increased by purchasing downloadable content. GamerPoints are then stored on the players Xbox Live account, and GamerTag, and displayed on their GamerCard. For example my GamerTag, Lardy136, currently has 33529 GamerPoints.

This was a brilliant move by Microsoft, so brilliant that the Sony Playstation 3 released their own form of Achievements, called Trophies. The concept is basically the same but instead of collecting GamerPoints players collect Trophies. There are 4 types of trophy Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. The trophy earned depends on the difficulty of the achievement; Platinum trophies are awarded when the player has obtained every other trophy in a game. Each Playstation Network player has a trophy level and a percentage bar that increases with each trophy gained. Platinum Trophies are worth more than Gold Trophies, Gold Trophies are worth more than Silver... etc.

The main purpose of GamerScore and Trophies is bragging, players can compare with each other to see who's earned the most achievements, or maybe just a particular one that's very difficult. Achievements also encourage players to replay games as most games require several playthroughs to earn every achievement. Some are hidden until they are earned, encouraging the user to explore the game(or use a search engine) to find out what they are. Achivements may even unlock things in other games, for example if you have unlocked the "A Dish Best Served Cold" Achievement in Gears of War then General Raam is unlocked as a multiplayer character in Gears of War 2.

There is one major downside; players are so used to having achivements as a reward that they are hesitant to play retro games or games on other consoles that don't have them.While this isn't a problem for Microsoft or Sony, it's a problem for Nintendo. But since Nintendo consoles are usually aimed towards the young or the occasional granny it's not a major concern, until they decide to draw in teenagers and young adults who are the majority of serious gamers. The answer to this is to put the older games onto the Xbox Live Arcade (or PSN) and add achievements; this has already been done to some games but not enough in my opinion.

So do you get satisfaction from earning achievements? Is it worth neglecting older games with no achievements to brag about? You decide.