3D Facebook Game of Buffett, "Margaritaville" Launching Soon

Jimmy Buffett, in collaboration with THQ, is bringing a new online social game "Margaritaville Online" to Facebook and all iOS devices, except iPad. The game will officially be released later this year but there will be an exclusive preview of the game for those attending E3 in Los Angeles. This casual online video game is aimed to generate user base from Buffett's fans, often called Parrotheads, and the 45 million Facebook who are addicted to games like FarmVille.

Though Buffett is touring at the moment, he will give a special appearance at the booth of THQ at E3, where he is expected to promote his new game. Buffett stated that "The Margaritaville laid back state of mind is inherently social, and THQ has captured the spirit of that lifestyle in this game." He added that "With Margaritaville Online, fans across the globe can party together any time and any place." This game is developed by Exploding Barrel Games, which has promised the players to have a thrilling 3D experience along with innumerable features showing a range from tropical environments to a full catalog of Buffett's music. Players will have features like creating their own island resort, play mini-games within the game and interact with special characters inspired from Buffett's own music and literary works, like Captain Tony and Joe Merchant.

Yahoo Finally Launches Its Email Service Overhaul

Yahoo Inc. has finally announced the makeover of its well-accepted email service, it had promised quite a while ago. This makeover is Yahoo’s shot at making its e-mail service more attractive as it keeps on trying to challenge the users’ mounting interest in new services like Facebook, Twitter, and Google along with other online communicative methods. This overhaul of the feeble service was announced on Tuesday, declaring to completely redesign the email format which Yahoo has kept in its testing phase for almost sevenths months now. The entire consumer base of Yahoo email service, almost 277 million users, is going to be shifted to the updated version in a phased manner over the next few weeks.

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This new makeover includes plenty new features, including an integration of Facebook and Twitter accounts automatically updated from within Yahoo's email boxes and many more. Whereas, many old features are improved as well, including the overall speed which is promised to be twice as faster and the capability of sending attachments as big as 100MB. Other miscellaneous developments include better junk-mail controls and the feature of chatting to your online Facebook friends. Yahoo is literally relying on this upgrade to not only appease the current email users, but also attract new users, since it is definitely in a time of need for the e-mail service. Majority of its users are adopting the rival Gmail service, run by Internet search leader Google Inc., which grows its consumer base steeply.

Blipsnips Updates Its App Adding Twitter Integration & Geolocation

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Socializing through sharing video is becoming extremely popular, just this Tuesday BlipSnips 2.0 made a special announcement launching an updated TechStars-bred mobile app which will be focusing on the tools like video sharing and tagging. The first BlipSnips for iPhone and Facebook apps were launched back in January 2011, thanks to the brave investors like Chris Kelly, who is the former chief privacy officer at Facebook. The first BlipSnips app released for iPhone totally gathered a total of 125,000 downloads. This release was highlighted and sold for its features like the ability of tagging friends through their Facebook accounts on a specific time in the video, along with adding comments to an exact time stamps within the video, like in SoundCloud’s mobile app. Users were easily able to share and post their videos on Facebook.

Now in this latest BlipSnip 2.0 app, the company promises to provide even more vigorous experience. The new additions and amendments from the last version includes a new “BlipSnip video theater” playable in HTML5 allowing the users to not only view but also tag and comment. Other developments include a public feeds list, ability to tag friends from both Facebook and Twitter, tag your geolocation in the video, sharing on Twitter, and an additional new following/follower feature. The company has further added a new mobile website, keeping its original website intact, where the videos can be tagged and shared on YouTube. The C.E.O. and co-founder of BlipSnips, John Bliss, stated that “In effect, what we’re trying to do is put the social into video, rather than creating a video app that has social as its by-product.” Further implying: “We’re more a social app first, video second.”

Google Expected To Reveal Its Mobile Payments Service on Thursday

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Google Inc. has finally decided to unleash its mobile payment system on Thursday, which will allow all the consumers to have the facility of paying through their mobiles at checkout instead of using any kind of cards. Reuters informed on Tuesday that the internet giant leader has decided to collaborate with MasterCard Inc., which is the world's second-largest credit and debit card processing network down to Visa, to launch this new system. Both MasterCard and Citigroup Inc. will be the right hands of Google Inc. in the development of this new system, revealed Wall Street Journal back in March.

Further Wall Street Journal reported that the initial retail partners of the system include Macy's Inc., American Eagle Outfitters Inc. and Subway, which makes it suspicious whether this project will be released nationwide or only in the New York City at first. Google has openly invited the media to "partner event" hosted this Thursday in New York, where it is reportedly going to demonstrate its "latest innovations." This new mobile payments system of Google will run on the Android operated devices of Sprint Nextel Corp, as informed by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

The Court Demands Samsung to Provide Its Product Details to Apple

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Just last month Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung, accusing it to be replicating its popular products like iPhone and iPad design. The products of Sumsung under question specifically include the Galaxy lineup. Samsung reacted with another countersuit accusing rather Apple to be infringing with iPhone and iPad on its various patents, also warning Apple to stop the production of these products along with an agreed compensation.

Samsung has straightforwardly lost the case and according to a court filing of 18^th May, the federal judge Lucy Koh has announced that Samsung has 30 days to present its product details of Galaxy S II, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G, and DROID Charge to Apple. After looking at the detailed plans of Samsung, Apple will then decide whether it demands an early injunction or not. Koh also clarified, in advance, that since Samsung has also started public advertising these products, it shall not be hesitative in providing the details to Apple.

Koh did however attempt to remain unbiased in her judgment as she also claimed that “Although the Court expresses no opinion on the merits of Apple’s claims, the Court notes that Apple has produced images of Samsung products and other evidence that provide a reasonable basis for Apple’s belief that Samsung’s new products are designed to mimic Apple’s products.” The official documents claim that this access is only provided to Apple, if it only wants to “take early action to stop the allegedly infringing activity before Samsung’s new products become established in the marketplace.” Furthermore the court requested that Apple deserves a “limited expedite discovery.”