If you like gaming, you better warm up your mouse for Pet Shop Hop™, the newest title from PlayFirst! The game, which follows in the footsteps of PlayFirst's wildly popular Diner Dash game, appeals to the animal lover in all of us.

In Pet Shop Hop, players have to help the main character, Cassie, take over her grandfather’s pet store business and make wise selling and purchasing choices in order to turn the modest pet shop into an exclusive boutique and drive a pet store chain out from the neighborhood. The game combines business simulation and time management mechanics with new 3-D gameplay and general cuteness.

It's up to players to make the right upgrades to the shop, match customers with their ideal pets, sell additional products to increase profits, avoid being gobbled up by the competition and drive Megapet out of the neighborhood for good. You can also play in challenge mode to keep your customers happy by catering to increasing demands.

PlayFirst is offering a free 60 minute trial to play the game and an exclusive geeksugar offer for 15 percent off the game. Enter the code: PETSUGARPC. Coupon expires 3/31. Thank you to PlayFirst for sponsoring this post.

Whether you know it or not, there is a storm-a-brewin in the video game industry. Recently, there has been new interest surrounding violence in video games. Does violence + video game = violent peeps in real life? Boston Mayor Thomas Menino seems to think so and is backing bill HB1423, aimed to block the purchase of violent video games to minors—as it would with pornography.

Although there has been no evidence or studies to prove a connection between violence in games and actual violence, Massachusetts officials met yesterday to discuss the bill. If it passes, it would make it illegal for persons under the age of 18 to purchase games with violent content. To see the details, just read more

Other than Beacon (which has thankfully improved over the months), the biggest thing that irks me about Facebook is its confusing and hard-to-manage privacy settings. Say you only want a certain someone to see your photo albums, and only want to share your mini-feed with family members, it can be a painstaking task to try and tweak the privacy settings for each person on your friends list.

Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been ignoring the requests to improve Facebook's privacy settings, because starting today, you'll be able to give different groups of friends access to various pieces of info on your Facebook page. The New York Times reports that these new group privacy controls allow users to send messages to selected friends or filter what personal details various groups can see. Now let's see if it actually works! And what about the rumor that Facebook is launching a new IM chat feature? All true. Stay tuned for its launch in the next few weeks, with no additional software to download.

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Before hitting stores on April 28, lucky Vodafone customers will be able to get seven of the eleven tracks off of Madonna's latest album Hard Candy!

According to the Times Online, songs will go on sale one week before the album release date and can be downloaded for 24 hours before being replaced by the next track.

Each song will cost 99p, with the hot new single, "4 Minutes" being available immediately for 75p! Now for the bad news, Vodafone spans across ten European countries. . . Which means U.S. fans are gonna have to be super patient, or wait for leaked versions to hit the net.