My wife and I debated buying a Wii for a long time. We would talk about it because the games are fun and something that people can enjoy doing together. However I objected to the controller quirks and the lack of HD.

When the Kinect came out I was thinking Wii without controllers. Thusly was not in a hurry to buy one. So Christmas rolls around and my wife and I are looking at the myriad of non-hardcore gaming options and there is the Kinect.

At $149 bucks its about the same price as a Wii, if you already have an xbox, otherwise its $299 for both the Xbox and the Kinect. However my Xbox is putting out HD (we can debate actual game video quality some other time). Also I thought the Kinext is cooler than the PS3 offering because there are no controllers.

Getting one was hard. We were looking after Thanksgiving. Every store was sold out. Luckly we were able to find one at a local grocery/department store that I (along with everyone else in my area, apparently) had overlooked.

So we hook this thing up and right off the bat its apparent this is no Wii. Where you can cheat by flicking the Wii controller the Kinect does not give you that option. When it wants you to jump, it expects both feet to leave the ground.

The game the Kinect comes with, Kinect Adventures is fun. But definitely family oriented. The best part of the Kinect Adventures for me is the game where you stand on a platform moving along a track, as the platform moves you dodge several obstetrical. At one point on a track called “The Olympian” it asks you to do a min of squat jumps. I did this after a lower body workout. I was sore for the next week.

Kinect adventures is really cool about the barge in barge out approach to players. At any time a second player can jump in, really cool.

After playing the crap out of Kinect Adventures we bought Kinect Sports. It was immediately apparent that whatever tech for interpreting what the Kinect is seeing, in the game, it better in Kinect Sports. It seems to lack the barge in barge out but it also seems to track moments more precisely.

The Kinect has facial recognition built in, when you stand in front of the Kinect it logs you in. Spooky. Kinect sports also irrily placed a ring on my Avatar’s left hand…. Also spooky.

Now its not perfect. It seems that in some games like Boxing, continuous flailing is better than tactical punches. But its bleeding edge tech, what do you expect.

So now instead of doing cardio at the gym my wife and I have mursiliously pwn beach voleyball n00bs 2v2 on Xbox live.

People all over have been making a fuss about Facebook’s new “Places” feature. While most whiners have been complaining that “Facebook is not watching them” or its “an invasion of privacy” I have been traveling the world.

According to Facebook I have been to:

• Everest Summit
• The White House
• Rio de Janeiro
• Pont d’Iena
• Moscow Kremlin
• Apple HQ

All in around about a week. Now as you have probably guessed, I have not actually visited these places. I just told Facebook I had.

Facebook won’t just accept that you are somewhere, you have to trick it. So here is how to hack Facebook Places.

1. You will need Firefox. If you are using IE, stop now and go have random intercourse with strangers, that is probably safer.
2. Download User Agent Switcher Add-on for Firefox. This allows you to make FF pretend to be an iPhone, thus redirecting you to Facebook’s mobile site.
3. Open notepad or your favorite text editor and create a document that says this:
   {"location":{"latitude":37.33182,"longitude":-122.03118, "accuracy":20.0}}
   You should be able to see where the lat and long go. Edit to your heart’s content.
4. Name your new document whatever you want
5. Next type “about:config” into the address bar. You will be asked if you know what you are doing. In my case the answer is “no”, but I say I do anyway.
6. Type: “wifi” into the filter box. You are looking for the Preference Named “geo.wifi.uri”

7. Double click on the “geo.wifi.uri” preference and point it toward your document. (Tip: because I like to cut and paste, I clicked on my document and opened it in FF, then cut the location from the URL bar and into this preference, thus no typos.)
8. OK, now its time to have fun. Using user agent switcher set your user agent to iPhone 3.0.

9. Go to “facebook.com”
10. Click the places option
11. FireFox should be asking you if you want to share location, click “share”.
12. Continue with the check in like normal

Now Facebook does have some logic to prevent people like us from globe hopping. So I have been updating this every day or so. Also Firefox seems to have cashing issues with the Facebook places. If you place is not updating, first go to Google make and click the blue find me button. If it shows you in your faked location, mission accomplished, if not you screwed something up and should review the above directions. If the Google maps thing works and you are still having problems, restart Firefox.

Pretty Cool, Pretty Easy. Have fun messing with your friends.

Moral of the story, Facebook is not invading you privacy you just need to control what you put out there.