Openfeint is one of the iPhone world’s social gaming engines much like Xbox Live is to the 360. It shares achievements, adds friends, and gives you an incentive to keep playing games and buying more titles. Soon though, this service could fall under the colossal cloud of the new Apple Gaming Center.

With the new 4.0 firmware announced today, Apple said it is creating a new social gaming element for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad dubbed the “Gaming Center”. Since the powerhouse devices have become a popular platform for gamers, Apple decided it was time to implement a technology that has been used countless times by numerous others, a social gaming platform. With this new platform, supposedly it will be like the Nintendo DS’s market mixed with Xbox Live elements (pure speculation at this point) providing users the choice to play friends, gain achievements, and share them on social networks. Wait wait wait, isn’t there something like this already? Oh yeah, OPENFEINT! The service does everything described above and is already in place on your device right now, no update needed. I’m sure the interface of Apple’s ripoff will be phenomenal and make it hard to resist (plus it’ll already be there on your device), but don’t let OpenFeint fall to the wayside. Maybe Apple could provide us with the ability to import achievements and friends from the service if it is going to destroy it. Hopefully, this rant is completely wrong but atleast it may open some minds.

UPDATE: OpenFeint responds to Apple Game Center [Link]

This is just a quick post about snow. Snow is falling in my area right now as I type this. No problem for me, I’ll drive my Civic home tonight no sweat. This isn’t how everyone else feels. This morning while I was getting gas, I drove by our local Krogers store and to my surprise the entire parking lot was full. Driving through the cluster of idiot drivers and Wal-Mart minded pedestrians, I notice a lot of people were simply carrying bread and milk. What the hell are you going to make with bread and milk? “Hmm I think I’ll have some liquid fat and some bleached wheat.” It’s been the same ever since I can remember snow equals crazy actions and no milk or bread left in sight. It really sucks living in a backwards town sometimes

Is it just me or does it seem like everyone “caught” for downloading music are only downloading popular music. I mean stuff like Akon, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Insert Boy Band Here, etc etc etc; your basic sounds exactly the same as the next one music. Is this because lables only target people who download today’s “hit” music, or is there something more in depth I’m missing?

Most of the techy people I’ve met listen to basically the same music or have very similar taste. Most of these people use the more digital deviant side of P2P (Bittorrent) to get there fix of screamo, hardcore, heavy metal, techno, dubstep, and even alittle reggae, while the average computer user uses Frostwire or something similar that also requires no thought process to use. Now with most of your average users downloading pop and redneck rock, most of the people attacked by the RIAA and the like are these people.

Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing if you look at it like this. Having these people removed from the Internet for awhile may actually promote some creativity. With that said, attacking these people only fuels the ever burning fire that rages within the tech savvy. Even though a majority of the time these users aren’t even targets, they take these blows as personal attacks. They hate the music but the hate for the companies that attack their less tasteful comrads even more.

The reason these folks are attacked (in my opinion so take it only as that, MY opinion), is because these musical “artists” will make their cause more mainstream; stopping pirates at all cost. By making this a public knowledge, it makes pirates look like evil people who will steal candy from children if given the chance. Trust me, this is not the case with pirates at all. In a recent study, pirates actually purchase more hard media (DVDs, books, music, games, and software) as well as technology to listen or play them on while the non-evil non-pirates buy way less.

Still, pirates are targeted more than these people. Why? Most artists would rather give away music and have more concerts or swag sales than less fans by taking legal action against a few of them. It’s almost like the companies are biting the mighty hands that feed them. So the next time you read of someone having to fork out a ton of money for 24 illegally downloaded songs, look at that list, because chances are they are or were chart topping hits.