When done right, nothing is more instantly recognizable and associable as a catchy sound bite. Once upon a time, instantly recognizable jingles were the backbone of the advertising industry. Today,  audio clips are a little more pervasive, considering our seeming dependence on electronic devices. Receive a phone call? Catchy audio clip. Get an email? Catchy sound bite. Turn on just about any modern electronic device? Memorable tune. We’re living in a world where companies and devices need to differentiate themselves from the competition as much as possible, and an instantly recognizable sound bite is a three-to-ten second mean to that end. So, come with us as we check out some of the most instantly recognizable, brand differentiating, nostalgia inducing sound bites in tech.

Yesterday, a post on the Playstation blog reported that there was recently a hacking attempt against Sony online network family. It appears that the neer-do-wells managed to liberate a list of accounts and passwords from an unknown third-party and proceeded to throw them up against the PSN, SOE and, SEN walls to see if anything stuck. A scant 93,000 accounts (thats less than .1% of the global user base)  were affected, and Sony reports that those accounts were locked down with all due haste; very few had the chance to be active before being locked. Also, no credit card numbers are at risk. Phew.

Considering their track record with this kind of stuff, it’s good to see Sony be upfront about exactly what’s going on with them. Of course, it also looks really good in this case, because they seem to have taken care of it well and it totally isn’t their fault. The announcement stresses that Sony will reimburse any purchases that are confirmed to be unauthorized and also stresses the importance of using unique login-password pairings, gently suggesting “If your account was affected, it’s kind of your own fault.” It kind of is.

Ever since the “It Only Does Everything” campaign, Sony has been pretty good at marketing. The character of Kevin Butler was one of the most amusing things ever to happen to video game marketing, but now Sony is traveling off of the comedic path and doing something a little more serious. With this new ad, part of the “Long Live Play” campaign, Sony has collected their current famous mascots and iconic characters from games that appear on their platforms, put them in a tavern, and has them praise “Michael,” a representation of the everyday gamer; essentially a representation of you.

The ad features a bunch of favorites, including Uncharted’s Nathan Drake recounting a story to Final Fantasy XIII’s Lightning (okay, maybe not everyone’s favorite characters), God of War’s Kratos, a chimera from Resistance, inFamous’ Cole MacGrath discussing Empire City’s ambivalence toward him, Metal Gear Solid’s Old Snake thankfully quoting everyone’s MGS meme line, Twisted Metal’s homicidal ice cream truck driver Sweet Tooth playing chess with LittleBigPlanet’s adorable Sackboy, and even Portal’s Chell for one second in the background (1:15 into the above video). A few other notable characters make a quick appearance. Not has Sony made it fun to watch an ad over and over again, trying to discern who makes an appearance, but they made iconic characters like Nathan Drake and Kratos honor you. Good work, Sony.

(via PlayStation Blog)

There’s always buzz about when the next PlayStation or Xbox is going to come out, or who’s going to win the next presidential election, but have you ever thought about how many more PlayStations, Xboxes or presidential elections you’re going to see before you bite the dust? Well, whether or not you have, this original Geekosystem infographic will tell you. By doing a little research, a couple of maths and ignoring a massive number of potential variables like premature death, bankruptcy, game-changing inventions, and the end of the world, I came up with 12 things that you will see before you die. Get ready to get pumped for the PlayStation 11.

While the Kinect has been getting most of the love from the hack-minded gaming community — and Microsoft, smartly, is encouraging innovation by working on a Kinect SDK — it’s neat to see that Sony’s PlayStation Move hasn’t been totally left behind. pabr.org has used the Move to build what it calls a Copernitron, which plays on a keen understanding of physics to measure the Earth’s rotation.

The rumored PlayStation phone is real after all, and Engadget has the prototype pictures to prove it. Aside from the PlayStation-inspired triangle, square, circle, and X buttons, the main connection this Sony Ericsson-made smartphone will have to the beloved console line will be “a custom Sony Marketplace which will allow you to purchase and download games designed for the new platform.” For more phone-like needs, it’ll be built on Android; Engadget surmises that it’ll be Android 3.0, a.k.a. Gingerbread.

The PlayStation phone’s specs: A 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 chip, 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and support for microSD cards, with a screen “in the range of 3.7 to 4.1 inches.” No word on a release date, but it’ll likely be in 2011.

More pics at Engadget.

Update: The Escapist thinks it could be a fake:

Both Sony Ericsson and Sony Computer Entertainment have refused to comment on the existence of a PlayStation Phone, saying that they do not comment on speculation or rumor. The images of the phone are now thought to be faked however, thanks to certain irregularities in the device’s interface.

Engadget is sticking by their story, however. No word on what those “irregularities” are, btw.

Real Dragon*Con Missed Connections (Creative Loafing)

Film Industry Hiring Software Firms to DDoS Filesharers? (Sydney Morning Herald)

A Dozen Facts About Lost In Space (Neatorama)

Blizzard Accedentally Implements Draconian StarCraft 2 DRM, Promises Patch (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Best Unfounded Rumor We’ve Heard All Week: Dr. Strange by Pixar (ScreenRant)

PlayStation Fans Infographic(Joystiq)

Robo Copolean On A Unicorn (You Heard Me!) (Fashionably Geek)

(pic by avid, via Geeks Are Sexy)

While celebrating the original PlayStation’s 15th anniversary of its North American launch and thanking Sony for the years of fond gaming memories, it helps to know from exactly where the console that brought gaming to the forefront came.

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With the release of Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Kinect looming on the horizon, it’s worth looking at the history of competition within the industry to see the potential impact the two devices may have.

Most gaming generations have hot topics, memorable controversies and stiff competition: However, from this gamer’s point of view, most generations haven’t been as interesting as this current one due to the increasingly high stakes.

For all of the ways that Sony’s PlayStation shook up gaming when it entered the fray in 1994 — as an entrant into the gaming world that wasn’t made by Sega or Nintendo, as a 32-bit system that didn’t suck — one quiet change came in the form of its controller buttons. Previous systems from the Sega Genesis to the Super Nintendo to the Atari Jaguar to the Neo Geo CD had all identified controller buttons with letters: With its triangle, circle, square, and X, PlayStation was one of the first to use shapes.

Interestingly enough, they weren’t picked arbitrarily, but actually had carefully considered meanings corresponding to their roles in gameplay. In a recent interview, Sony designer Teiyu Goto spills the beans as to what he had in mind with each button: