Sony continues to show support for loyal Home users. In the next update of Home, one feature that has been talked about for ages will finally be a reality; universal game launching. By inserting a game and following on screen instructions, you will go directly from Home to the Start Menu of the game you launched.

Another big update will give every user a camera that will allow for pictures to be taken in first and third person view. All pictures snapped inside Home will save to the the Photo section of you XMB, which can then be uploaded to the picture frames hanging in your virtual space.  In addition to these two items being added in v1.3 of Home, here's a list of smaller things:

• All store items from clothing to furniture will now be able to be previewed in 3D
• A "My Purchases" item has been added to the menu pad to keep track of things bought easier
• More objects like the bubble machine will be made available to the community
• You can manually hide any portable object you encounter
• Your avatar will have some new emotes, including a "coin flip" and "pick a number between 1 and 100"
• New avatar poses to go along with the camera addition
• The targeting system has been optimized
• You can choose your Home cache size to make navigation easier (3, 5, 8, and 12 GB)
• SingStar game space will launch right around when v1.3 will be available

These are just a few of the new things expected from the v1.3 Home update, expect the full list of what will be included when we get closer to the launch date.

Speaking in a recent interview with PC World, PlayStation Network director Eric Lempel weighed in on the infamous PS3 clock overlay glitch that cropped up when in-game XMB functionality was added.

For those not clued up on the situation at hand, when pressing the PS button while in-game the battery indicator overlaps that of the clock overlay for a couple seconds before fading out of view. While far from a crucial issue, it is rather embarrassing for Sony as this particular bug has stuck around for over a year now. People often crack jokes in reference to whether it was fixed or not whenever a new firmware update hits.

For those clamoring for a fix, Lempel assures one is coming. Sooner rather than later, we hope.

I personally don’t like that either, and it’s something that’s definitely being corrected. You can put me in the angry camp.

All we can say is: it’s about time.

Eric Lempel Weighs In On PS3 Clock Overlay Glitch, Says Fix Is Coming - [eXophase.com]

It’s true, apparently. The entire PSP and PS3 XMB interface, otherwise known as the Xross Media Bar, was made a reality by a single person — Japanese-based UI artist Yasuhiro Yamanaka, according to the man’s LinkedIn profile. In it, he claims he “designed PSP and PS3 User Interface all by myself.” Yamanaka is also in charge of all on-screen localization, meaning all those dialogue pop-ups and menu item descriptors were written by him.

Pretty impressive. With products such as the PS3, companies usually have at least a few people working on planning and laying out a design template. Clearly Sony was trying to cut costs here or more likely, they were fascinated with the XMB interface and just went ahead with it, without having others collaborate. For what it is, I think the XMB works well, so I’d say he did a great job. But there are others out there that are bound to disagree. And well, if you are one of those people, now you know who to blame for the monstrosity.

superannuation [Superannuation]