Remember how Sony promised that PlayStation Home's launch this fall will be similar to Gmail's own launch, in that it's going to be an open, working beta? If you're worried that the service would probably be some half-baked launch just to be able to show something to gamers after so many delays, PlayStation Network director Eric Lempel clarifies on a few things. Details in the full article.

Following the batch of screenshots we saw yesterday that showed the latest build of PlayStation Home, a bit of news has come out from no less than the PSN's senior director. Susan Pamico told a magazine recently about the virtual world's release window and even compared it to Gmail. More after the jump.

 

With the release version of Opera for the Wii out, Games-Digest wanted to do a side-by-side between that and the PS3's built-in web browser. The short version of their findings is that when it comes to surfing the Web 2.0 hallmarks, the Wii does have a slight edge compared to the PS3 in some cases (it is Opera, after all), but things can, after all, change with an update.

The more concrete results:

• Games-Digest found that Google Maps and Bloglines, for example, "didn't work at all on the PS3 browser." On the other hand, a comment to that article charged that is is possible to do Bloglines ("hold down the X button on a news link and the RSS feed will open in a new window").
• The PS3 browser does have some issues formatting certain sites, or that browsing on some sites is less smooth or incomplete (e.g., Digg, Last.fm, MySpace). Both browsers also have browsing hitches with other certain sites (del.icio.us and Vox being examples, as well as Gmail).
• The PS3 seems to hold the advantage in uploading photos "and (possibly) video" vs. the Wii (Flickr).
• Both browsers performed equally well on other sites (Twitter, YouTube, eBay and Amazon).

The survey's writer also mentioned that the sites themselves could be redesigned in the future to have PS3 or Wii-specific mirrors that the browser will be redirected to. It is also quite possible, from where we sit, that firmware updates to either console could improve the browsing experience on either with a few tweaks and updates.

Besides, this is just one comparison. People will need repeated tests to get definite results.

We don't know if you'll ever meet a guy who is claiming that the Playstation 3 browser is somewhere between that of a mobile device and a regular desktop. Well, we did - not in person, but through his online site Design215. He's Robert Giordano. His claims, if we may add, were not caused by moments of loneliness and hundreds of PS3 units stolen. Giordano has a little experiment to back them up.

First, he stated that the console uses a version of the NetFront Browser as its web browser - the very same software mainly used on mobile devices like phones and pocket PCs. He then began with a document object model. According to Giordano, he created a test page that "displays the user-agent and HTTP-accept headers sent to the server, and if JavaScript is available, loops through the list of supported mime types and plugins."

The result? The PS3 apparently does not send an HTTP-accept header to the server. It supports Javascript but he will not divulge which version. Despite that, the console reports no mime types, no plugins, and no Javascript errors. He then proceeded with a couple more of tests that concern DHTML layers, AJAX Support, as well as Flash Support.

Some worked fine, but others didn't. It was quite funny that Giordano was delighted to know YouTube works. The details of the experiment can be viewed via the Read link below. But because we love you, here's a summary of Giordano's work:

• Framesets and iframes are not supported. The browser will attempt to open some framesets in separate windows but the results are less than desirable. This is bad news for people who use hidden iframes for their Web 2.0 apps.
• CSS2 seems well supported and Standards compliant pages look good, especially if they are XHTML 1.0.
• Javascript is somewhat supported but there doesn't seem to be any AJAX support.
• Certain events are missing (as they would be on mobile devices) like "onkeydown" and so on.
• Using "for(x in y)" to loop through the properties of a Javascript object doesn't work but you can test for the existence of individual properties.
• Dynamically loading external Javascript files after the page has loaded doesn't seem to work. More bad news for Web 2.0 apps.
• When using the on-screen keypad, the browser will add a space after each word. It does this on password fields as well, which can cause a bit of frustration if you don't remove the extra space at the end before you try to log in. I discovered this trying to log in to Gmail.

Customizing your Google home page is quick, easy, and gives you all the info you want right on your Google page. Here is a tutorial on how to customize your Google home page with XML feeds from the QJ.Net site network.

To begin with, you will need a Google account. A Google account is free, doesn't create spam, and you do not need to have Gmail to get a google account, you can sign up with any email account.

Once you have created, and signed into, your Google, account, you will need to visit the Google personalized hompage site at http://www.google.com/ig . Here is what you will see:

This is your basic page layout. You can edit the weather and word of the day boxes by clicking on the edit tab, or close it out by clicking the ?x?. After you have that customized, head to the top left corner of the page, to the ?Add Content? button. When you open the add content bar on the right, you will see the following:

Simply open the "Create a Section" tab, and you will see the "Search by topic or feed URL:" entry box. Here is where you can select and add our RSS feeds into your Google Homepage.

Once you enter the URL of the appropriate XML feed that you want on your page, you can rearrange your page as you see fit. To customize the locations of your XML feeds and windows, simply drag and drop them where you would like them:

--> -->

Repeat the above step for each of the XML feeds from the QJ.Net site network that you are interested in. When you have added them all, you are done. You will be able to use this personalized page for your homepage whenever you are logged into your google account.