Rockstars of videogames

One is 24 and made more than $800,000 this year in tournament winnings and computer-parts endorsements, the other is 69 and works for MTV as a "senior" correspondent and game reviewer. Well, grandmother and gamer Barbara St. Hilaire may not exactly be a rockstar-type figure, but gamers obviously think she's pretty cool. "Grandson Timothy chronicles her Xbox, Playstation 2 and GameCube adventures in his blog, OldGrandmaHardcore.com," the Washington Post reports (see the online discussion with Barbara, Timothy, and people around the US at the Post - it dispels a few myths). As for the 24-year-old almost-millionaire gamer, "Fatal1ty" Wendel has won 5 videogame championships playing various games and is profiled in the New York Times and will be featured on CBS's "60 Minutes" (this Sunday, 12/11). He and other videogame "rockstars" are helping marketers reach the ever more elusive 14-to-21-year-old market, which is "consuming traditional media at lower rates every single year." Here's the San Jose Mercury News and the Associated Press on the growing power of product-placement ads in videogames.

Talking IM worm

Talk about social engineering (you know, when people are tricked into downloading worms, etc.)! Tell your kids, now there's a worm that chats with IM-ers, and they do not want to "go there." CNET reports that a new worm in AIM called "IM.Myspace04.AIM" comes in an instant message that says "lol that’s cool" and contains a link to a malicious file called "clarissa17.pif." "When unsuspecting users have responded, perhaps asking if the attachment contained a virus, the worm has replied: "lol no its not a virus," IM security firm IMlogic told CNET. Clicking on the Clarissa file opens a "backdoor" to your PC, disables security software, messes with system files, and sends the worm to everybody on your child's buddy list. Be sure every IM-er knows that, before clicking or downloading on any message supposedly from a buddy, they need to open a new window if the buddy's online and ask him/her if s/he sent that file or link. If s/he's not online, just don't click! For more, see "Tips from a tech-savvy dad."

Cable TV, family-style

A family package of TV programming is in the works for Comcast and Time Warner customers, USATODAY reports, saying the cable operators are bowing to pressure in Washington. Comcast and Time Warner are the US's No. 1 and No. 2 cable companies, serving some 33 million subscribers. The "family tier," which would include the Disney and Discovery Channels would be "free of sex, violence and rough language." The pressure USATODAY refers to is "the Federal Communications Commission's increasing concerns about offensive cable content and surging rates." Last week FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said "cable companies should make channels available on an individual, or a la carte, basis, so people only have to pay for what they want to watch."

'Podcast': 'Word of the Year'

Looks like FamilyTechTalk got going just in time, since "podcast" has just been declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. The BBC reports that the word will be added to the dictionary's online version early next year. Its editor-in-chief told the BBC that they thought about adding it last year, but not enough people were listening to podcasts yet. What else has been under consideration? One contender was "lifehack," interestingly referring to "a more efficient way of completing a everyday task. The other was 'rootkit,' defined as software installed on a computer by someone other than the owner, intended to conceal other programs or processes, files or system data. The term hit the headlines when Sony was found to have included a rootkit as part of the copy protection system on some of its music CDs. Other words that did not make it include bird flu, sudoku and trans fat."

The new Rhapsody.com

Rhapsody has moved onto the Web, the Seattle Times reports. Aiming for a bigger presence in blogging communities like MySpace (with 40 million users) and Xanga (with 21 million users), RealNetworks "s rolling out a Web-services platform that will allow third-party Web sites to link directly to albums and songs on Rhapsody. A blogger writing about a new song, for example, could post a link to a track that, when clicked on, will begin playing in a pop-up window." Before this, people had to download a software program (like iTunes) to use Rhapsody. Now anyone with a browser can download 25 songs a month for free, but the Times says the Rhapsody software will still have more features than the Web version.

File-sharing unabated

File-sharers may think I'm talking about Kazaa, whose parent Sharman Networks has complied with an Australian federal court order in an interesting way. Instead of adding a filtering system that blocks copyrighted music, as ordered, Sharman has only "cut off Australians' access to the Web site from which the file-swapping software Kazaa can be downloaded," CNET reports (for more detail and file-sharers' discussion, see P2P news site Slyck ). But what I'm really talking about is a USATODAY column that pretty much nails the current reality where piracy's concerned. An illustration: Columnist Andrew Kantor cites the big news last week that BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has agreed with the film industry to "go legit" - no longer let people search for pirated content (via "torrents," or "pointers to files available for downloading) on his site. The only problem is the workarounds, the many BitTorrent-indexing sites, among them Torrentspy, where "141,651 torrents available. Each represents a song or a movie or an image or a piece of software. And Torrentspy isn't the largest" (Kazaa traffic was long ago surpassed by BitTorrent and eDonkey, and there's speculation in Slyck the company no longer even has the resources to do the software upgrade the court ordered). Anyway, the music industry now views CD-burning to be a bigger threat (see my 8/19 issue).

Ill. videogame laws struck down

Two state laws banning sales of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors have been blocked by a federal judge in Illinois, Reuters reports. US District Judge Matthew Kennelly said they would "have a 'chilling effect' on the creation and distribution of video games." The laws were due to go into effect January 1. Gov. Rod Blagojevich said he would appeal the decision. Please see the article for an update on similar legislation in other states.