Almost two years ago, Google launched a rather mundane attempt to compete with social media juggernaut Facebook. If you weren't reading about how detrimental social media is to your brain and your sense of morality (which you probably, and ironically found on your Twitter or Facebook news feeds), you may have caught this somewhat underwhelming SEO boost to your social network two Aprils ago.

This past Thursday, Google announced it had enhanced its Profiles section. I think we all remember what happened the last time Google created a social service that duplicated an existing one, but 8.5 million reminders of their mistake will hopefully avert anything similar this time.

Google users that decide to participate will notice that their profiles will update automatically as new features become available. For the time being, the page looks almost identical to a watered-down Facebook Profile page- but is that necessarily a bad thing? With so much noise in the social media ecosystem, it's almost refreshing to have a clean and simple profile page somewhere. Though Google Profiles integrates aspects of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, it does come with original features: a "Places I've Lived" Google Maps Interface, a "Bragging Rights" input field, and 10 personal tags for social SEO. All of the user's Picasa photos are of course readily available for posting, but there seems to be a 5-photo limit when posting on your actual profile.

Rovio has been enjoying their sky-rocketing success lately and have TV/movie spin-offs happening but also a new 'collaborative' Facebook game coming out. Currently the PS3 has a version of Angry Birds out on the PSN with Wii and 360 getting their shot soon.

The Facebook version, "there will be completely new aspects to it that just haven't been experienced in any other platform," said studio boss Mikael Hed, who confirms that due to the social site's 'collaborative nature', "the pigs will have a more prominent role". Launching in a few days is "Angry Birds Rio" which is a tie-in with a Fox movie and swaps the evil pigs for monkeys.

Rovio's strategy has been compared to Disney, with Peter Vesterbacka (Rovio's 'might eagle' in Business Development) saying "We're building an integrated entertainment franchise where merchandising, games, movies, TV, cartoons and comics all come together," he added "Look at how Disney got started. Steamboat Willie created Mickey Mouse, then they added more characters. You can see the same pattern today, but everything is happening much, much faster. Other brands used to build recognition over the course of decades. We've done it in one year."

I'm here at the last day of the GDC in dowtown San Francisco, hanging out and checking out the cool tech. Most of the things I'm going to see here are demonstrations of products and games that everyone already knows about from former press releases and the like, but it's still going to fun to play around with it. I wanted to get a first hand look at Nintendo's much-heralded 3DS, especially the AR interface, so my first stop was the Nintendo booth.

The Nintendo array is great- demos of many games including the new Zelda. A very helpful 3DS rep named Jamie introduced me to the AR games. The 3DS uses marker-based augmented reality, meaning the the images and experienced are anchored to a physical object, like a sign or a barcode. In this case, Nintendo uses a small card with the familiar Nintendo Question Mark logo. I played around with two games, the AR Archery game (which I think they should call ARchery if they haven't already) and a game called "Face Raiders".

Playing the games with the active 3D engine was disorienting at first. Developers have been working for a while to get past that particular Uncanny Valley, but my eyes adjusted to it after a moment. The archery game begins with a small box that appears to be harboring a small creature with bright white eyes. The game literally "unfolds" from there, as the user shoots the one box, which turns into many boxes, which turns into targets, and then things get crazy. The game somehow drops into the table, from which a very angry dragon emerges as the final boss. Didn't really notice a life level or any sort of negative incentive in the game, so I can only imagine the skill incentive is the end Time. I overheard two of the 3DS guys laughing about who had done it faster- the top score is 00:43, but I only managed a paltry 1:40. These games are clearly quick fixes and are not intended be profound experiences, just the simple and beautiful design and UI that we've all come to know and love (and be addicted to) from Nintendo.

The GDC is pumping out some great content today with Epic Games using the show as an opportunity to show off some updates to their Unreal Engine 3. The engine is now capable of DirectX 11 tessellation, subsurface scattering on characters, depth of field with bokeh effects for lights, fully modeled hair, and a new reflection effect that add a veneer of realism to the rain-soaked streets depicted.

The results of these additions are some very impressive looking screenshots, but for now the updates are near useless until we get some DX11-based next-gen consoles. The second we get next-gen consoles, I feel there will be an absolute explosion of graphics, right now we're very much held back. The tech and software is there, it's just a matter of time.

Minecraft cleaned up last night at both the International Games Festival (IGF) and Game Developer's Choice Awards (GDC), winning no less than 5 different categories, including the Seamus McNally Grand Prize and Best Downloadable Game. Indie sensation Minecraft, developed by Mojang, has enjoyed a huge success in mainstream and independent gaming communities alike.

Also of note, San Diego Game Firm Rockstar took Game of the Year and three other categories in the GDC, winning four awards altogether. Go SoCal.

Founder of Lionhead Studios Peter Moylneux walked away with the Lifetime Achievement Award, for his involvement and creation of games such as Fable, Black & White, and that favorite classic, Populous:

Another portable/tablet device (re: iPad 2, Xoom, 3DS, Galaxy Tablet, Playbook) announces Augmented Reality capabilities.

Yay.

The Sony NGP unveiled some AR demos at the GDC 2011 in San Francisco yesterday. This bit of exciting news also got lost in the iPad 2 Internet Frenzy Of 2011.

Do you have buckets of free time and love antiquated Microsoft operating systems? You might want to give this guy a call.

Youtube user TheRasteri (Andrew Tait) posted a 10 minute video of his Windows OS experiment. Using VMWare, this video tracks the installation of DOS 5.0 to Windows 1.0, and then every additional upgrade. Tait's intent was to determine how compatible with each other the various versions of Windows were, and tested this using color settings and programs installed in DOS at the beginning of the video. Based on the download times of each of often mammoth-sized updates, this experiment looks to have taken Tait at least a day to complete.

Turns out that in some instances Windows offers over 20 years of compatibility. Sadly, the fast-food restaurant color scheme that Tait chose and Doom II only lasted until Windows 2000. Strangely enough, Doom II came back in XP, but the color settings were still gone (even when Tait reset them in Windows 2000).

Amidst the craziness that was the iPad 2 announcement yesterday, Nintendo's exciting news about their own portable device may have been obscured.

President of Nintendo Saturo Iwata took the stage at the San Francisco 25th annual Game Developers Conference yesteday to deliver a keynote in which he spoke about the history of Nintendo and his own career. He also fondly recalled the origin of one of Nintendo's favorite characters, Tinkle Popo:

Wait what? Tinkle Popo?

Earlier on today I stopped by the BitFenix headquarters here in Taipei and spoke with product manager David about the Taiwanese company's new range of mid-range computer cases that are due to go on sale midway through April in the United States and Europe.

Shinobi is the name and there are two versions: the standard Shinobi coming in at $59 USD and the Shinobi Window coming in at $69 USD. You would be mistaken in thinking that the only difference between the two is that one has a side window and the other one doesn't. While that is partly true, the window version is actually more expensive since it also includes a well designed tool-free design for the hard drives and optical drives.

These cases are made of a nice soft rubbery material that is easy on the eye and feels great. The design is simple with no fancy lights or anything like that, but still manages to maintain a good level of style. Internally most of the important chassis design points can be ticked off with good color coding, impressive cable management, a CPU cut out for easily changing coolers without the need of having to remove the motherboard and more.

Even though there's no USB Port, iPad 2 still got some pretty cool accessories today at the unveiling.

Smart Cover

As you can see from the video, this cover is all magnets and intelligence. The cover, made of microfiber, attaches magnetically to the side of the iPad. It's unique design allows the user to fold it into two different stand positions, and it's quite lightweight as well. Not only does using the cover clean your iPad screen, it automatically puts the device to sleep, too- which will of course reawaken when you fold back the cover. Pretty darn nifty- and it's available in polyurethane (bright colors) or leather (earthtones), albeit at a moderate price tag of $39 and $69, respectively.