I'm postulating here (haven't had a chance yet to play The Sims 3, neither in 'leaked'/previewing or purchased form).
I am going to guess that the launcher (getting some confusion reading through the comments here -- was there a form of the launcher in the leaked version? This comment only makes sense if there was a form of the launcher on the leaked version), if it integrated the web-based features - or even just had the framework in place for the web components to be added in -- likely they are making use of a web analytics company like Omniture.
I've noticed various applications making use of Omniture for their web analytics. Photoshop comes immediately to mind, with Photoshop CS3 sending requests through the router to 192.168.112.2o7.net and being extremely puzzled/concerned about it initially - as honestly, the CS3 suite academic packaging in Canada, and the registration key process did not look anywhere near as polished as all the previous suites 7, CS, CS2 were.
(Aside: yes, my licensing is valid, and yes it was purchased through a legitimate college bookstore -- but when the previous suites are higher quality packaging and inserts, and then finding just the disc and printed leaflet instructing you to go to a non-Adobe website to obtain the registration key, it makes you kind of go "hrm...")
My confusion had been cleared up re: Photoshop when John Nack posted on the Adobe blog about it, but it made me aware of Omniture using the look-a-like 192.168.112.2o7.net in gathering analytics for companies, resembling at a quick glance internal network --- and saw various other software doing it as well (as well as strict web based apps as well)
Just a tiny little invisible image, that's all it takes.
Of course, there is also the other possibility in EA's "telemetry" -- scraping blogs/social networks to see countries of origin, languages being posted in, of screenshots and excited babbling users playing the game before it was released.
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Re: Re: Re: Hmmm
I am going to guess that the launcher (getting some confusion reading through the comments here -- was there a form of the launcher in the leaked version? This comment only makes sense if there was a form of the launcher on the leaked version), if it integrated the web-based features - or even just had the framework in place for the web components to be added in -- likely they are making use of a web analytics company like Omniture.
I've noticed various applications making use of Omniture for their web analytics. Photoshop comes immediately to mind, with Photoshop CS3 sending requests through the router to 192.168.112.2o7.net and being extremely puzzled/concerned about it initially - as honestly, the CS3 suite academic packaging in Canada, and the registration key process did not look anywhere near as polished as all the previous suites 7, CS, CS2 were.
(Aside: yes, my licensing is valid, and yes it was purchased through a legitimate college bookstore -- but when the previous suites are higher quality packaging and inserts, and then finding just the disc and printed leaflet instructing you to go to a non-Adobe website to obtain the registration key, it makes you kind of go "hrm...")
My confusion had been cleared up re: Photoshop when John Nack posted on the Adobe blog about it, but it made me aware of Omniture using the look-a-like 192.168.112.2o7.net in gathering analytics for companies, resembling at a quick glance internal network --- and saw various other software doing it as well (as well as strict web based apps as well)
Just a tiny little invisible image, that's all it takes.
Of course, there is also the other possibility in EA's "telemetry" -- scraping blogs/social networks to see countries of origin, languages being posted in, of screenshots and excited babbling users playing the game before it was released.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Rhandom.
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