Dungeon Masters, start your engines. Dungeons & Dragons, the original table-top role-playing game, is coming to Facebook.

Atari has created a new social game for Facebook called Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter.” Players can customize their own characters, find loot and fight ghastly, digital beasts.

The app looks much like a top-down strategy game — and somewhat similar to the actual style of the tabletop version.

While the game is known for long sessions and user-created narratives, Heroes of Neverwinter offers short bursts of gameplay and a largely standardized plot from the game’s creators. Fans of the slower, more complex original might decry this as breaking from the game’s root, but it’s probably a smart move to appeal to social gamers which are, for the most part, casual users who play for shorter periods of time.

The game will feature more than 50 dungeons, 40 monsters, 30 skills and hundreds of items. Gamers can play solo, recruit friends, or even become a sort of digital Dungeon Master and come up with their own mini-narratives as side quests.

Heroes of Neverwinter, which is currently in open-beta, joins a group of other games targeted to nostalgic players. Oregon Trail received a social gaming update for Facebook, and The Sims Social has been one of the top Facebook games since its launch at the end of summer.

It’s good to know Heroes of Neverwinter hasn’t foregone the traits that made its tabletop ancestor so popular. But will it be able to attract new users without alienating its base? If a sentence like: “Legions of Halflings, Dragonborn, and Eladrin will sharpen their blades and ready their spells as Facebook players around the world create their unique heroes and set forth for adventure!” appeals, this social game might just have some legs.

Will you gear up for Dungeons & Dragons as a social game? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Facebook, Gaming, social gaming

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Social Printshop

Quick Pitch: Social Printshop is an early-stage startup working to significantly alter the web’s relationship with the physical realm. Its first product, the Facebook Friend Poster, is the equivalent of a real-life Facebook Wall.

Genius Idea: Capitalizing on social interactions

Benjamin Lotan is the founder and CEO of Social Printshop, a startup that turns social media connections and photos into physical prints that buyers can put on display in their homes and offices.

On the surface, it’s a straightforward printshop serving the social media obsessed. Social Printshop’s products — Facebook fan/friend posters, Twitter prints, social media stickers and mini photo books — all add tangibility to social media relationships. What better way to experience those Facebook or Twitter relationships than to observe the avatars of these “friends” on your wall, in an art-like fashion?

There’s no controversy here, except that Lotan admits to building a business that caters to the ego and capitalizes on social interactions. It’s a regular business objective, but Lotan sees himself as a Robin Hood. “We’re almost stealing money from our customers,” he says, “to reroute money into projects we believe in.”

Lotan, a Visual Arts student working toward a Master of Fine Arts at the University of California at San Diego, believes in the artistic sensibility of those around him. Frustrated by seeing friends’ and fellow students’ solid ideas fail for lack of funding, Lotan chose a road that would potentially right those wrongs.

“I saw the tech route as the easiest route to get money pretty quickly,” he says. So, Lotan built and launched the Facebook Friend Poster in a week, and used it as a vehicle to mobilize friends and create a business.

Lotan speaks of a three- or four-year plan to make Social Printshop into a profitable company, at which time he’ll funnel the money into projects closer his heart.

The immediate goal is to feed off early attention, create a brand and work on a more meta goal of adding point-of-sale to social interactions, something Lotan refers to as both “supremely nice and supremely evil.”

Though a handful of other products have since been released, the Facebook Friend Poster remains Social Printshop’s most recognized product. Mashable, as a customer, will create the world’s largest real-life Facebook Wall to put on display in our New York headquarters as wallpaper. Our interest has spawned a me-too reaction from huge brands who want a giant life-sized social canvas of their own, according to Lotan.

The look-at-how-big-my-following-is motivation has an Old Spice Guy ring to it. Look at your Facebook fans. Now back at mine. Now look at all of the people who love me, and marvel at my greatness.

Lotan, omni-conscious of the ego-appeal in his existing products, may or not may soon release SuperEgo.me, a site that could take self-importance too far into the absurd.

The name alone sounds like everything that’s wrong with the web, and that’s almost the point. The app caters to the notion that you are your greatest fan. It will hook into your Facebook profile, strip out your friends, and just show you in all your glory.

SuperEgo.me started as a way to poke fun at Facebook photo app Pixable and online start page About.me. Lotan says that the irony behind these products is that people really only want to look at photos of themselves. Though, after continuing to iterate on the app, he’s now conflicted between building a product with real appeal and releasing something that could be perceived as a joke.

That battle wages on, but Social Printshop’s 15-person team — an unusual blend of developers, writers, musicians, poets and an investor with a soft-core porn background — is currently using its $70,000 in seed funding to build two photo-centric mobile apps, with associated for-charge print products, of course.

Today, Social Printshop processes anywhere from one to ten orders per day and handles custom corporate requests. “To get to be a 100 million dollar company,” Lotan says, “we’re going to need to produce something significant.” He talks of producing a print API and creating an ecosystem of its own to make that happen.

Still, Social Printshop traffics in the ego. And, is there any less art in that? A Twitter photo print of all my followers would be a cool way to represent four-plus years of social achievement. Where do I sign-up? Cha-ching.

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: art, Facebook wall, print, social media, social printshop, spark-of-genius, startup, trending, twitter

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Facebook rolled out a new way for users to read and understand its privacy policy. Although none of the terms of the privacy policy have changed, the new site and policy outlines has been rewritten, reformatted and reorganized in a way that makes it easy for non-lawyers to understand.

This trial format comes a day after Facebook responded to an inquiry from the the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In its response, Facebook said that it agreed with the FTC’s finding “that any privacy framework must be implemented in a way that both honors consumers’ expectations in the contexts in which they use online services and promotes the innovation that has fueled the growth of the Internet of the past two decades.”

Facebook explained the rationale behind the new human-friendly draft of its privacy on the Site Governance page, stating it had settled upon a few basic principles when trying to figure out what users want from a privacy policy.

These principles are:

1. First, it should be easy to understand, even when the concept is complicated or is of no use to anyone.
2. Second, it should be visual and interactive, because that’s the way people use the web today.
3. Third, it should focus on the questions Facebook users are most likely to ask, because that makes it relevant.

Looking at the draft policy and at Facebook’s official privacy policy, we know which one we prefer.

It’s really amazing what kind of difference larger fonts and well organized information can have on the readability of a document.

Make no mistake: Even in this early draft, the Facebook’s privacy policy is still a dense document. That said, information is much more understandable and the navigational aspects are a huge improvement.

Frankly, our hats are off to Facebook for putting this type of document together. We wish other companies (read: Google) would be so willing to better present this type of information.

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Facebook is moving out of its current office complex in Palo Alto and relocating to the former campus of Sun Microsystems in San Mateo.

Facebook has sent Mashable and other media outlets an invite to a press conference Tuesday, February 8, where it will it discuss its new headquarters. The event will be taking place at 1701 Laurel Street in Menlo Park, the location of the Menlo Park City Council Chambers.

It isn’t revealing much more than that, though. However, our sources confirm that Facebook will indeed be moving its operations to the 22-acre property used by Sun Microsystems before it was acquired by Oracle. Palo Alto Online also confirmed by checking city records that Facebook has acquired 312 and 314 Constitution Drive, properties next to the old Sun Microsystems campus.

Facebook has been headquartered in Palo Alto since Zuckerberg first moved there in 2004. Facebook is rapidly approaching 2,000 employees, and it won’t be long until its current headquarters will run out of space. And with $500 million in funding burning its pockets, Facebook definitely has the money to buy something as large as the Sun Microsystems campus, which will give it room for long-term growth and rapid hiring.

More About: facebook, Facebook Invite, sun microsystems

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This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.

 

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world today. We’re keeping our eyes on four particular stories of interest today. Google Is Going into Gaming Google is going into social gaming in attempt to win over some of the ad dollars that have gone to social networking sites, sources familiar with the matter have told The Wall Street Journal. The company has reportedly been in talks with top developers like Playdom Inc., which was acquired by Disney this week, as well as Electronic Arts’s Playfish and FarmVille creator Zynga. Checkins Coming to Google In further Google news, the company has indicated that it is working with developers to bring checkins to location-based applications via its Places API. Google Places is the new version of the company’s Local Business Center, designed to help local business owners gain an edge in search engine marketing. Facebook May Put Off IPO Until 2012 Three sources have informed Bloomberg that Facebook may postpone its initial public offering until 2012. “At some point along the path, I think it’ll make sense to have an IPO. But we’re not running the company to do that. We’re running the company to serve more people,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told ABC’s Diane Sawyer recently. Spotify’s U.S. Launch Faces Further Delays Negotiations between free music streaming service Spotify and U.S. record labels are faring none-too-well; the company is reportedly “back to square one.” The startup is still aiming for a late 2010/early 2011 launch in the U.S. Further News Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company is hard at work making Windows 7 a great OS for tablets; Redbox is adding Blu-ray rentals to its kiosks [via Variety]; Samsung confirms it will the Galaxy S smartphone will get Froyo in September [via Engadget]; and Google dispelled rumors that it was fully blocked in China. Disclosure: Microsoft is a Mashable sponsor.

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.

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This comes as no surprise as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has always been very careful on the subject. “At some point along the path, I think it’ll make sense to have an IPO. But we’re not running the company to do that. We’re running the company to serve more people,” he said recently.

Facebook’s IPO has been one of the burning topics in business circles in the last couple of years. With the company’s revenue (and valuation) rising swiftly, Facebook () is poised to become the next Google (), whose initial public offering in 2004 was wildly successful, with the company increasing its market capitalization fivefold over the coming years.

Despite the pressure to go public, Facebook’s IPO seems to be pushed further into the future every year. The wait, however, will give 26-year old Zuckerberg more time to gain more users, sort out the privacy issues that have been plaguing Facebook and, most importantly, boost sales and increase earnings.

The People’s Republic of Bangladesh has blocked Facebook in the wake of public protests against images of the Prophet Muhammad that were hosted on the social network. The block was also imposed in part because of unfavorable caricatures of prominent political figures.

The protests were in response to groups and pages like “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day,” which criticizes the Muslims who responded negatively to South Park’s depictions of the Prophet and suggested that thousands of Facebook users draw images of Muhammad — an act forbidden by Islamic law. The page has just shy of 3,000 fans, and it hosts several visual depictions of the Prophet.

Pakistan blocked Facebook allegedly for the same reasons last week. The bans will be temporary in both countries; it’s likely that access will be restored once the offending images are removed — and they will be. Facebook’s policy is to allow access to offending content outside of the countries where it’s offensive while censoring it in sync with individual countries’ laws within their own borders.

Tags: bangladesh, censorship, facebook, islam

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Excerpt

A Facebook phishing attack is on the loose this weekend — the third widespread attack on the site in the past three weeks. The attack attempts to steal your Facebook login credentials, install malware on your computer, and even get your home address.

The attack is spread via a “hilarious video” posted to Facebook walls, reports WebSense — when clicked, a form appears requesting your Facebook login.

The attack then returns you to Facebook, installs an app called “Media Player HD”, and asks you to download the “FLV player” — doing so installs malware on your machine. It gets worse: Depending on your location, you may also be presented with a contest to win an iPad … if you just enter your home address.

To avoid getting caught, simply remove the “hilarious video” if you find it on your Facebook wall. If you see it elsewhere on Facebook, don’t click it … and of course remember the obvious rule: Don’t enter your Facebook login anywhere other than Facebook.com.

If you already fell for the attack, change your Facebook password, uninstall the Facebook app (often called “Media Player HD”), and run a virus/malware scan on your computer.

The video below, courtesy of Websense, explains the attack.

Tags: facebook, phishing, social media, trending

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Excerpt