Morning Quickies 2/9/2011

ABCNews reports Google is working to gain ground on Apple by hiring programmers to make Apps. Their report is fairly basic, check it out here, or a more in depth report by Digitaltrends.com – Check it out here.

Msnbc.msn.com has a pretty funny story about a game called, and I’m not making this up, ‘Smuggle Truck’. In it you load up a truck with illegal immigrants on a truck and try and get across a boarder. Check it out here.

The not so portable computer.

Cbsnews.com has a neat little retrospective on computers. It brings to mind an old quote. “By the beginning of the 1990s, a Hallmark greeting card embedded with a microchip allowing it to play “Happy Birthday” contained more computing power than existed on the entire planet in the early 1950s.” Check it out here.

Compare that to the new toy from Sprint, a dual screen smart phone called ‘Echo’. We’ve come a long way. Check it out here over at CBS.

Over on kongregate.com you can find Bubble Tanks 3. Its pretty, plays well, decent sound, and if you let it save its games on your computer you can get into upgrades and the like. Check it out here. Cant go wrong, its free

For the WoWers, Blizcon has been set for October 21-22 at the Anaheim Convention Center. thealistdaily.com has the basics. Check it out here.

People Can Fly ‘s parody of Call of Duty was hugely successful. Industrygamers.com carries a pretty typical story that sounds sort of surprised. Check it out here. Now I’m not surprised since they also made Painkiller, which was so awesome ZP’s Yahtzee goes on quite a bit on how fabulous a shooter this is. Check it out here.

Computerandvideogames.com has an interesting story on Tim Schafer (Double Fine Head and maker of Psychonauts) and why humor was so rare in games. Tim blames self censorship. Check it out here.

Internet privacy and Facebook is the centerpiece of a video story on CBSNews.com. A Teacher lost her job over her Facebook page. Check it out here.