Sony Online Entertainment has re-launched Station.com which now includes? free trials of the majority of SOE’s MMOs; casual games such as PopCap’s Bejeweled® 2, Jeopardy! ® and Wheel of Fortune®; and mobile games such as Q*Bert™, Snoop Dogg Cruisin’, and the recently released God of War™: Betrayal. In addition, the Station Pass (Infantry, Cosmic Rift and Tanarus) has transitioned into a free online game service available to all players.

Checks it: http://www.station.sony.com

I typically use Trillian to handle my ICQ, AIM, MSN and Yahoo! Messenger accounts so I don’t need to install each application and have to jump between applications to find my friends (because of course, every big network needs to make their own IM client), but was recently told by a friend of mine about a new application called Pidgin? (supports Windows, Linux, BSD and other Unixes), that has some extended capabilities beyond ICQ, AIM, MSN, IRC? and Yahoo!. It also supports Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP and Zephyr — which is great since I’ve been looking into Google Talk. If there’s a network I’d prefer to support, it’s Google.

Of course you could use Meebo as well which has support for AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, MSN and Jabber… I just don’t care for having yet another browser window or tab open. Working on the web,? I work too much within Browsers and tend to close/open them frequently depending on the task at hand, and I would get quite annoyed if I kept closing the windows by accident. But, if you’re not like me with browsers, that’s a good alternative. Many co-workers swear by it.

I’m still not sure what to think about Pidgin yet. The interface isn’t the greatest in comparison to Trillian, and I don’t use Google Talk yet, so Trillian would work just fine for me until I do need the use for expanded networks. However, for the sake of trying something new - I am going to give Pidgin some more time.

When you have to keep up with every social networking and blog site and it takes you hours to do so. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Zoominfo, Personal Blog (this), and every other “specialized” site out there that you might use such as eBay.

Then you have the passwords… and if you were like me and didn’t realize that there are great ways of keeping track of passwords, and it’s now too late since you have thousands of them — and you? spend about 5 minutes getting your passwords wrong when you’re trying to check your messages.?

Then you have the friends and colleagues… who either use the site you’re on or don’t, because they prefer a different site that they just told you about, and now you have to sign-up for that site to be able to keep track of them and to stay in touch.

Then you have your life, work and family… so, where am I going with this rant? I have no clue, but thought I’d vent it before going to sleep so I don’t have nightmares.? If you have the solution to my troubles, such as “how to? keep up with the Jones’”, I? would love to hear it.?

Nite!