If flirting on Facebook is easier than flirting in person, surely flirting via cuddly animals on a Facebook app should be easiest of all - no? That's what Pet Society are claiming anyway as we face the final few days before Valentine's Day. They suggest getting your furry Pet Society avatar to kiss to your love object's pet as a romantic icebreaker.

If you fancy a less direct approach you can hug them, give them flowers or buy them a drink.

It's like in "real life" when your dogs get tangled up in the streets, your eyes meet, 5 weeks later you're married etc, etc.

Of course your love object might not be on Pet Society, or they may have forgotten and routinely ignore notifications along the lines of "xxx just bought you a drink".

Still - it's a worth a try. Maybe back it up with a Plan B strategy (like stalking them through FourSquare and accidentally bumping into them?) That's my tip for the moment.

Pet Society is a social game played by over 21 million people which lets you create and look after your own virtual pet. Your pet lives in a town, populated with the pets owned by all of your Facebook friends, so you can go round for a visit and just kiss them, in a way you wouldn't in real life.

Yes it's a Wii Accessory but does it match your sofa? Or does it at least fit behind the sofa so you don't have to look at a mound of tilt-sensitive plastic when you have you some people over for drinks?

It's a pertinent challenge for game accessory makers especially for Wii ones which tend to hang around the sitting room where the console and TV are. One company I talked to that were specifically making wii accessories with a low-impact on the sitting room is RiiFlex. As far as they're concerned the weighted wiimotes they make are good-looking, easy-to-store and practical for the sitting room as well as all the usual aerobically tested stuff.

Their Wii Dumbell accessories are smaller and a little more ergonomic than the other models I've seen. Something to bear in mind. They look a bit like ninja turtles as well.

RiiFlex Dumbbell for Wii, £24.99

Previously you'd have been excused for thinking that a Video Game Group offered rehabilitation for people who couldn't be separated from their Xbox for longer than it takes to make a peanut butter sandwich and those who prefer World of Warcraft to sleeping.

But no. Where old-school geeks have book group, new-school geeks have video game group - where they meet up and chat about the themes, plot twists and easter eggs in their favourite games.

That's the idea anyway. EA Games hope that these "console clubs" will take off. They started the ball rolling by getting a group of gamers together in a London pub to talk about new game Mass Effect 2 out on Friday. Tom from EA told us that it was a mixture of hands-on play, red wine and debates over character motives, themes and plot points.

Since Mass Effect is a sci-fi narrative game with lots of characters it does lend itself to the book group treatment in a way that other don't.

The notion of console clubs definitely reflects changing attitudes to video games. And proves once and for all that yes, gamers can talk IRL in "social" situations.

Already in a VideoGame club? Do you meet in pubs? Tell us about it...

Physios in Australia are using a Nintendo Wii accessory to help them rehabilitate people who have had a stroke, according to an article in The New Scientist.

It turns out that the £69.99 Wii Balance Board is a useable alternative to the lab-grade "force platforms" currently in use that cost £11,000. When re-teaching people how to stand and walk after serious accidents or strokes, it helps physios to be able to record how much weight a person is putting on each foot to judge how good their sense of balance is.

The cost of the official "force platforms" means that many physio clinics can't afford them.

The Wii Board needs to be hacked and customised a bit but according to the New Scientist, Clark and his colleagues at the University of Melbourne, Australia, were impressed by results rendered up by the strain gauges and accelerometers found in a Wii Balance Board. "We found the data to be excellent. I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up." he said.

The data is clinically comparable to that gained from force boards.

Wonder if there are any other ways that the medical professions can incorporate computer games into their practise... using computer games to stimulate finger movement after broken arm bones perhaps, or just Hello Kitty Online projected on the ceiling to promote soothing feelings at the dentist...

[via the New Scientist]

While over 6million Christmas trees were sold in the UK in December '09, there was a roaring trade in virtual Christmas trees being done as well...

Facebook game Pet Society, created by Playfish, sold 4.2million Christmas trees to Pet Society members. In the game players create, train and care for a pet and they can decorate their animal's house with items like Christmas trees.

Admittedly these trees cost a bit less than the real-world equivalents - clocking in at under a pound in real world money, but the demand is still impressive, showing the strength of Facebook games.

Last month Facebook game Farmville from Zynga was revealed to be the most popular game in the world - by number of players - showing the power that Facebook games have. While Pet Society is played by over 21 million people each month. These Facebook games mesh the power of the social network with traditional game structures to create sociable and co-operative games that you play with your real-life friends.

The model of having a free game but selling virtual goods for real money has been successful for Farmville and it seems for Pet Society too. Every day game-makers Playfish sell around 20 million virtual items through its 11 games, with users spending £3 every week on average. Last Halloween, Playfish sold 8 million pumpkins in Pet Society to people wanting to create a spooky home for their pets. More in fact than got sold in real-life in the UK, around 1 million.

See Playfish for more information http://www.playfish.com/?page=game_pets
Pet Society on Facebook http://apps.facebook.com/petsociety/gameinfo?pf_ref=x1019

CES has thrown up a few little surprises as well as the serious gadgets you'd expect. Take the augmented reality helicopter that you can control with you iPhone for example. Oh yes. The AR Drone Quadricopter (that's a four propeller helicopter) is a game accessory made by Parrot and looks like loads of fun.

Controlled by either an iPhone or an iPod touch, the AR Drone lifts up and flies. Raise the iPhone and the copter raises, tilt to the left and the device tilts to the left. The Drone boasts two cameras: one for controlling the device and another which streams images back to the iPhone/touch.

Just make sure you don't take a phone call while controlling it or someone's window is going to take a hit.

It's great fun as a standalone remote control toy. But where the AR Drone gets really fun is when the augmented reality kicks in and you can use the helicopter as part of a game. While flying the copter in the real world, you can compete against other copters in virtual airspace over the web using a specially created Parrot site.

Parrot is also issuing an SDK in the hope that developers will create even more fun uses for the device. There's no firm price yet but Techdigest suggest a figure of around $500.
AMAZING.

[via TechDigest]

See all stories from CES 2010 here

The first gaming notebook to feature a multi-touch screen has just been released at CES. Made by game-ware manufacturers iBuyPower, the Battalion Touch CZ-10 takes advantage of the multitouch capacity on Windows 7 to let gamers use the whole screen as a control.

And when's that useful? well the touch screen is "perfect for Real-Time strategy gaming titles like the upcoming strategy title R.U.S.E from Ubisoft" say the manufacturers.

In case you didn't know it was a gaming computer the Battalion Touch CZ-10's got a flame-coloured leopard on the back. Not the most artistic of designs but it gets the point across.

The 15-inch multi-touch gaming notebook will be the first in a line of multi-touch gaming notebooks from iBuyPower.

No prices yet, but check the ibuypower website for more details

Serious wow. Some genius/madwoman has linked up her wii to her Christmas lights controller, put some speakers outside and created this masterpiece. The song is "Cliffs of Dover" in case you're wondering.

We found this on Kottke. He says: "This is possibly the most American thing I've ever seen. Such ingenuity combined with such conspicuous waste."
We say: "can this person run the 2012 London Olympics?"

Related: Why the Wii is a girl's best friend

So many everyday items are becoming Wii accessories that I'll barely bat an eyelid when someone informs me that you can buy Wii-compatible cats.

The latest addition to the roster of Wii accessories is the Rubik's cube. Now available in Europe, this brain-teasing WiiWare is available with a series of games from Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy.

One for spatial puzzle fanatics - I'm sure this is amazing for your brain. It lets players explore 3D cube and structure problems on the screen and it also gives you virtual tutorials on how to solve real-life Rubik's cubes, letting you compare your time with masters of the cube.

Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy: RUSH will be released on December 11th on WiiWare in Europe and on December 14th in North America.

See Puzzle Galaxy site for more information

We reported last week on the Nintendo Wii's success among the ladies, and now looks like it's getting a lot of success among the Brits too. (No jokes from Americans please).

Nintendo's Wii has become the fastest-selling home console in the history of the UK, surpassing six million sales after just three years on the market. Launched in December 06, it sold 185,000 in its first few weeks and did particularly well in 2008, selling 2.7 million.

It's not the UK's best-selling console of all time - that's Sony's PS2, a system which has sold a whopping 10 million units to date.

But Gerald on TechDigest is among those pointing out the stickier side of the story: falling sales in the past year.

"it has been a tough year for the Wii, with both the PS3 and Xbox 360 generating far greater interest in the second half of 2009. A lack of killer software and even perhaps market saturation have been blamed for the Wii's sliding popularity".

Related:

Wii accessories are getting bigger. That simple tilt sensitive controller will shortly be joined by a full-blown wii-connected exercise bike.

Made by Big Ben Interactive the Cyberbike is an exercise bike - but an exercise bike made interesting by its connection to one of the decade's biggest games consoles. No longer do you just have to stare at the undulating bottom of the person in front of you at the gym, you can wander off in Wii World.

You don't have to ride a bike onscreen either - hell no - use the Cyberbike's controls to pilot submarines, helicopters and mine carts around the game world.

Of course like a normal exercise bike you can set the difficulty level and like any Wii product you can measure the exertion you put in. The same company are also releasing two 500g dumbbell peripherals which each house a Wiimote and include a variety of programmable exercise routines.

These sounds like products that could change the nation's sitting rooms. Video demonstration of the cyberbike below:

Not available yet, try the BigBen Interactive Wii Accessory site for more information.. we'll post up when these hit the market..

Related: The black Wii and Why Wii is a girl's best friend

Eighty per cent of female gamers own Wiis, show stats just released by Nintendo. Xbox has 11% of the market and PlayStation 3 has 9% but - with a staggering majority it's clear that Nintendo PWNs the female games console market.

A quarter of the total number of games console owners in the States are female, that's 11.7m players.

Take our poll on why you think the Wii is the most female-friendly games console:

Update: The TWITTER REACTION
@AndreaPetrou: has some insights on the Wii's appeal to girls:
Because it's more interactive, makes you feel like you're doing a bit of exercise and the retro games

@ali07
"Because we can live out popstar dreams via Guitar hero &try &pretend we do exercise via Wii Fit! However PS is best4singing!!"

@Diggerlisa sez:
I've got a Wii and love it. So much more active fun that moving your fingers

Harvest Moon did it for @britl
"Harvest Moon. Sold me on the Wii. I think we like mini-games a bit more too... Smooth Moves is bigger among girls I know."

Not everyone agrees with Nintendo's statistics: namely @alasdairf
"no comparable stats for males if only 33% of 33.3m males play Wii there are more male primary Wii users"
and: "lies, damn lies , and statistics ... never trust 'em"

@Shinysparkle can't get her poor head around it - LOL (IRONY)
"All the other consoles are too difficult for my pretty little bimbo head."

Out on 27th Nov, new Nintendo DSi game Hair Salon from 505 will let you be a virtual hairdresser -and cut your friends' hair on screen.

Capable of incorporating photos of you and your friends, the game uses the DSi's facial recognition to get exactly the right size and angle of shot. You can then use yourself or your friends as models or customers.

Time to give your little sister the pink up-do you always thought she would suit.

Ooo, Take That comes to the Singstar catalogue tomorrow. Fans around the world can now sing / howl tunelessly to the boy band's energetic pop tunes and soulful ballads. The latest addition to the Singing game's catalogue includes 25 of the classics and a few more off-beat hits.

The dreams of gamers are providing useful insight into the purpose of dreams.

Apparently gamers who dream about playing video games perform better than those who don't. A study by Harvard Medical School doesn't definitely prove the correlation, but the studies strongly suggest that dreaming and learning are intertwined.

Nintendo will sell a limited number of black Wiis in the UK and Ireland next month, from November 6.

It's an entirely superficial change, but it may get the Wii fans out lusting for the new colour, especially as the Christmas buying season starts. The black Wii hits mainland Europe two weeks later on November 20.

No, Nintendo haven't invented dog tennis - but they have invented a way to let you to hook little Fido up to the Wii Fit. He doesn't actually get to play games, or even do any dog specific exercises, but you can weigh him and see how his diet is doing.

The key feature of the original Wii Fit game is the plastic Wii Balance board, which doubles up as a game controller, calorie burn counter, and now in the new Wii Fit Plus game it also serves as a weighing machine for your pet.

You can also create a Mii avatar for your dog. I think that's something we've all wanted to do for a while.

At last - the geography geek comes into her own!

A new iPhone game ask you to place the cities of the world on a map - and the more accurately and quicker you can do it, the better you do. The game, Geomaster costing £1.19 from Visuamobile is also available on the iPod Touch. Finally those youthful hours spent poring over atlases will be useful.

Played over time, of course this would actually teach you about the world's geography as well. Where is Addis Ababa for example. There's a US cities challenge as well as the worldwide one and more challenges planned: a US state game, countries of Asia, Europe, South America... and a lot more.

Perhaps this should be made compulsory for those people they always interview in documentaries who think Afghanistan is in France etc.
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Related: Super Obama World: The best virtual Obama gameage yet

If there's anything that would improve your living room surely it's some large pieces of green plastic from the games accessories manufacturer Thrustmaster.

Though they may look like pieces of a nu-rave S&M bondage kit, these are muscle and fitness enhancing accessories which can combine with your Ninentdo Wii. As the days get chillier, exercising outside gets less appealing and staying in the sitting room with your Wii becomes a more pleasant option... so Thrustmaster has designed their products to maximise the exercise benefits you get from a Wii game.

There are weighted wrist and ankle bands, devices which make you burn that much more energy when you move those particular parts of your body, and a step aerobic riser that makes stepping up and down that much more strenuous.

Follow on after the jump

For those Hello Kitty fangirls out there, there's a new cute cat in town, Angel Cat Sugar. From the creator of the world's most famous cat, Yuko Shimizu, she is the star of a new computer game, coming out the 1st October.

Combing three lovely things in her name, she has angel wings and spreads love and happiness through her kindness to others. She's been around since 2002, but is only hitting the games market now. Angel Cat and her best friends Basil, Parsley and Thyme all feature.

The game, on Nintendo DS, brings Angel Cat Sugar to life as it takes players into "the magical Angel World, where they too can help make the world a better place through kindness".

See the story of the game after the jump