Morning Tech Wrap: Apple, Nokia, Facebook

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Samsung claims to have been blindsided by news that Apple won a preliminary injunction against the sale of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Europe.

The South Korean electronics giant said it had never heard of Apple’s filing to a German court, and that it had not been given the chance to present its side. “Samsung is disappointed with the court’s decision and we intend to act immediately to defend our intellectual property rights through the ongoing legal proceedings in Germany and will continue to actively defend these rights throughout the world,” a Samsung spokeswoman told CNET. “The request for injunction was filed with no notice to Samsung, and the order was issued without any hearing or presentation of evidence from Samsung.”

The problems between the two companies began in April when Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung alleging a violation of intellectual property in the design of its mobile devices.

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Nokia is planning to stop selling feature phones and Symbian phones in the U.S. as it focuses on pushing its forthcoming range of Windows Phones to Americans.

In an interview with All Things Digital, the head of Nokia’s U.S. subsidiary said the company would be putting all its weight behind Windows Phones in the U.S. Nokia will also be focusing of sales through traditional wireless carriers, after previous carriers weren’t willing to subsidize or market the products.

“When we launch Windows Phones we will essentially be out of the Symbian business, the S40 business etc.,” said Nokia President Chris Weber. “It will be Windows Phone and the accessories around that. The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn’t matter what we do [elsewhere].”

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Soon after Facebook released its new Messenger app, 9to5Mac has reported that it is hiding a video component.

A quick look at the files and code within the new Messenger has shown several references to a video calling, with filenames like “AdminVideoCall.png” dotted around undisguised. According to 9to5Mac, the code appears to be very rudimentary at this point, and there’s no certainty that the feature could be unlocked with simple tweaking in the same way the Facebook-for-iPad app was unlocked just a couple of weeks ago.

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Several reports have cited a YouTube video proclaiming that hacktivist and trolling collective Anonymous will bring down Facebook on Nov. 5. According to CNN, some members of Anonymous are calling for a complete boycott of Facebook to coincide with its own attack on the date known for Guy Fawkes Night in the U.K.

“Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your privacy setting, and deleting your account is impossible,” says the speaker on the video, using the familiar modified voice often employed by Anonymous. “Even if you delete your account, all your information stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time.”

The video also makes the claim that Facebook sells information to government agencies and security firms, a claim Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has denied many times over the years.

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The Sims Facebook Game I Wanted isn’t the Sims Facebook Game I’m Getting

I’m not much for Facebook games; I’ve played FarmVille a bit, but it’s never quite gotten its hooks into me. Part of the reason for is that most of my friends don’t play either, and so I’ve never felt the social pressure that contributes to the game’s addictiveness. You know: “Dang, David’s barn is so sweet. I wish I had a sweet barn like that.”

But when EA announced The Sims Social at E3, I found myself intrigued. By combining the addictive, well-designed virtual dollhouses of The Sims with the constant connectivity of Facebook, EA seemed to be talking about a casual social game that I might actually want to play.

I was particularly intrigued by the game’s much-touted inter-sim relationships. In The Sims Social, your sim can befriend, date, and even marry the sims of your Facebook friends. And conversely, your sim can antagonize and become archenemies with other sims as well.

I’m picturing my sim getting into a committed relationship with the sim of a girl I know, then cheating on her; soon we’d become enemies. And, of course, it’d all take place in a custom house that I designed and built. The whole thing sounds much more fun than anything I’ve ever done in FarmVille.

And so it was with great curiosity that I attended a preview event for The Sims Social—which is currently in Beta on Facebook—yesterday in San Francisco. I played the game through an artificial Facebook account, which was already set up with friends waiting. All we had to do was log in and get Sim-ing.

First I designed my sim, a blond-headed creative type in a black T-shirt named KLARSHARK. I loaded up his house and began to go about my requisite sim duties—getting some furniture, eating out of the fridge, taking a shower. Then I went over to my neighbor “Bella Goth”‘s house—Bella had dark hair and a red dress, and didn’t look entirely unlike Kristen Stewart—and flirted with her a bit. I also went over to my other neighbor, Kylie Nelson, and fought with him a bit.

More specifically, I implied that his mother is a Llama.

Things were going quite well, but for one fairly large problem—The Sims Social lifts its interface from FarmVille almost wholesale. It’s Flash-based and cluttered, slow to respond, and generally a pain to use. And moreover, it’s a far cry from the comparatively slick interface of the PC Sims games.

It is clear that Zynga’s games have provided the financial model for progression and micro-transactions in The Sims Social. The game’s currency is broken into Simoleons and Simcash, which is a direct lift from any of Zynga’s titles. You can trade Simcash for the more common Simoleons, and of course, one assumes that the easiest way to get more Simcash will be to pony up, you know, Actual, Non-Sim Cash.

And then came the biggest drag of all, the thing that put me off of Zynga games for good—constant pop-up notifications and “Share This!” windows. Just like in FarmVille, the notifications in The Sims Social were a constant interruption and hugely distracted me from the game itself.

It’s looking like The Sims Social is a great core idea (Make a sim! Send it to play with your friends’ sims!) hampered by a strict adherence to Zynga’s formula and design. It’s understandable that Playfish and EA would use Zynga’s games as a template; after all, FarmVille and CityVille are hugely successful.

But is Zynga’s way truly the only way to build a successful Facebook game? Micro-transactions and sharing options may be the beating heart of any social game, but I’m not sure that they need to be so omnipresent and distracting. The notifications in particular strike me as unnecessary here—this is The Sims we’re talking about, after all! People already know and love the game. Surely there is a way to notify one’s friends about in-game activities that intrudes less on the game itself.

When I spoke with Playfish VP of Product Management CJ Prober, he was excited about how easy it would be to update and tweak the game after launch. I can only hope that means that somewhere down the road, EA and Playfish might scale back the irritating FarmVille stuff and focus on their great core idea: Playing The Sims with your friends.

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