gkunene writes in with the plaint of a veteran mobile application developer who vents his frustration with a list of 10 things he loves to hate about Android. "1. Open Source. Leave it to Google to place all the code for their handset platform in the hands of the masses. Not only does this mean anyone can download and roll a new version of their phone firmware, but it also means absolutely any maker can roll its own Android device. ... After all's said and done, I really must admit that Android, despite its relatively few flaws, is one of my favorite platforms to work with. Quite honestly, if my complaint about how the word 'Intent' makes for awkward grammatical constructions ranks in the top 10, I'd say the Android platform is doing pretty well for itself."

GameCyteSean writes "GameCyte is reporting that Harmonix, EA, MTV and Viacom have been targeted by a class action lawsuit. Customers allege that the companies knowingly shipped defective bass drum pedals for the music game Rock Band, then exploited customers' necessity for replacements by having the game's hardware warranty extension expire just as the sequel, Rock Band 2 — a game with improved pedals — was scheduled to release." I wonder if we'll see a similar suit against Neversoft and Activision over the equipment problems related to the Guitar Hero World Tour launch.

D3Publisher has announced Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, bringing everyone's favorite gun-toting superstar back to the forefront of gaming culture. Or at least, that's what they tell us. Nobody's actually ever seen or played a Matt Hazard title before; it's just a clever marketing campaign for what is essentially a parody game based on popular shooter standards. They've even made a fake history of Matt Hazard games. "Eat Lead parodies some of our fondest memories in classic gaming and pop culture, so gamers will have a laugh out loud experience everytime they pick-up the controller," said Pete Andrew, a D3P exec.

We recently mentioned an event at the Parsons New School for Design and Technology in which students were divided into teams, given copies of LittleBigPlanet, and had 24 hours to develop levels for the game. GameSetWatch has the story of how the design contest went, what the winners and other notable finishers designed, and how the judges were surprised that "what they played could be completed in 24 hours." Further coverage is available at GameSpot, including a videos of several different levels. "Team Good Sportsmanship's level consisted of a single massive moving monster. SackBoy had to find his way up the monster, go through its digestive track while dodging stomach acid and eventually get on top of its head. The level featured an anatomical tour of the beast, complete with rib cage, beating heart even a dangling uvula. Once the player made it up to the brain, there was a hand-drawn animation of what the beast was thinking: eating SackBoy. Once the player got past the teeth and used the tongue to lob themselves on top of the monster's snout, the level was over."

Shipment Date writes "ZDNet's Zero Day blog has some new information on what looks like a scary new browser exploit/threat affecting all the major desktop platforms — Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Adobe Flash. The threat, called Clickjacking, was to be discussed at the OWASP conference but was nixed at the last minute at hte request of affected vendors. From the article: 'In a nutshell, it's when you visit a malicious website and the attacker is able to take control of the links that your browser visits. The problem affects all of the different browsers except something like lynx. The issue has nothing to do with JavaScript so turning JavaScript off in your browser will not help you.'"

Sonnet_XVIII writes "According to DownloadSquad, A German company SRWare has developed a Google Chrome Spin off called Iron aimed at people who are concerned or have questions about Google's policies for collecting usage data."

sloit writes "Most people spend more than 25 per cent of their time online at work on personal activities. And 80 per cent of emails sent by volume in the workplace are personal. Bosses often have no way of tracking Internet activity or policies to define what staff can and cannot do. Paul Hortop, who reviews company network security for consultancy Voco, said the most common websites visited by personal web surfers were online trading sites, instant messaging/chat services and peer-to-peer sharing sites (allowing movie, music and software sharing)."

netbuzz writes "Someone finally took the time to do a count of all the Google apps marked 'beta.' And with fully 45% of its products carrying that familiar tag — including 4-year-old Gmail — Google says there's an explanation: Beta doesn't mean to them what it has long meant to the rest of the tech community. 'We believe beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web,' says a company spokesman."

cyrus_zuo brings us the latest set of reviews for recent independently-produced games. A panel of reviewers takes a look at 10 games, including The Spirit Engine 2, an action RPG which receives high marks, the humorous Strong Bad game, and Eternity's Child, which has earned quite a big of negative press recently. "Despite what some may have said, EC certainly isn't the disaster it is made out to be, not by a long shot. However, it feels like it is brushing up against greatness only to have its wings burned and that makes the short-comings feel all the more painful."

Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Bethesda's Pete Hines about the upcoming release of Fallout 3. He talks about dealing with misunderstandings about the game prior to launch, violence in modern games, and the fact that the game won't launch with mod tools. "Folk probably took for granted that every time we make a game, there's a mod tool. We explained to folk that it takes a lot of time and effort to get that tool ready for release, and it's not on our schedule right now. We need to get the game done and out. ... Right now, we can't say definitively 'there will be mod tools, and here is when they'll be out.' We discussed some Fallout 3 gameplay videos a few weeks ago. That work remains to be done." In related news, Interplay has picked up Chris Taylor, designer of the original Fallout, to help develop their Fallout MMOG.