Over the years, the innovation and investment that went into 3D immersive environments like Second Life has gone increasingly to social games and kids worlds.
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At its first-quarter media event, Nintendo unveils newest DS handheld game machine, touts record 2009 sales numbers, and announces Super Mario Galaxy 2′s launch date.
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Duck, the cat belonging to music professionals Becca Laurie and Andy Silva, has attracted more than 70,000 visitors to a site filled with screens shots of her hanging out on Chatroulette.
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A new prototype application from the Swedish firm The Astonishing Tribe can auto-discover social-networking information about someone based on nothing more than a mobile phone photo.
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A proposed standard from Wordnik and supported by a roster of A-list media companies could bring valuable new context to any kind of digital text.
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Well, two races into the 2010 season, and NASCAR, aka NAPCAR, is already showing some serious signs of crumbling at it’s foundations. The sheer volume of empty seats in California this past weekend, even noted on the NASCAR.COM site, shows that things are not all good and going to plan.
Over the winter, all sorts of changes have come to NASCAR, seemingly somewhere between rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and wild desperation. Viewership in 2009 was way off, attendance was way off, and even the official collectables / t-shirt company has been in financial trouble. A number of tracks “revamped” their seating, which is to say that they got rid of many seats and changed around others. Daytona got rid of a back stretch grandstand and replaced it with a fan fun area, and they announced that none of the back stretch seating will be open for the July 4th weekend races. Richmond lost almost 20,000 seats, and overall NASCAR tracks apparently lost more than 100,000 seats for events from 2009 to 2010.
NASCAR made some major rule changes, put the driving “back in the drivers hands”, and have announced that the rear wing on the CoT (Crap on Track, I think) will be ditched in favor of the more familiar blade spoiler, which has been a part of stock car racing for as long as I can remember. It was little surprise to most fans that when the CoT took over, the best racing was actually in the Nationwide series, as the cars were the older style blade cars and just ran better. NASCAR also added more green white checker attempts to try to get a green flag finish to races, and so on.
Yet, two races into the season, attendance is down, and just as importantly, viewership is down. If a product is in demand but people can’t afford it, they will watch it on TV. NASCAR faces the hard reality that fewer people are turning up to the events and fewer people are watching on TV. Only the presence of one Danica Patrick has given them a ratings boost for their undercard series, which have done better than last year.
In the end, the big problem for NASCAR is their ill conceived attempt to become a national sport. Not every market wants or will support a race by buying tickets, and the California situation is a perfect example. All the population in the world, a rabid car culture, and half filled stands. NASCAR also has too many look-a-like tracks, D shaped 1.5 mile ovals that often produce dull follow the leader racing. These are tracks designed to make the track owners happy, not to produce good racing. All this is against a background of classic shorter tracks without NASCAR dates, yet that would likely pull better crowds and produce a better racing event. Rockingham has new owners and is apparently doing well with series like Pro-cup and others, and even North Wilkesboro is back in action with racing back at this classic facility.
NASCAR would do well to forget their overdone plans and slide back to the things that made them popular to begin with. Without that, the deck chairs will look nice but the ship will continue to sink.
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While Twitter is clear about how celebrities can reclaim accounts in their name, average users have little they can do to grab inactive IDs. But there are steps you can take.
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Fast growing cell phone manufacture HTC is hedging their bets and making sure they don’t miss either side of the phone markets. To that end, they announced that they will be a supporter of the new Microsoft Windows 7 Mobile, while continuing to build and sell many Google Android phones.
I would appear to be a wise move, as it means that they will be able to handle any market shift between the phone types. It also means that they don’t have to always directly compete with the Google phones with their own products, and expands their potential market.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access
Microsoft is running as fast as they can to keep up in the wireless phone and mobile market, which is quickly getting dominated by Apple and Google Android phones. Even though Microsoft was one of the first movers in the market originally, they have not been able to keep up. With the announcement of Windows 7 Phone, they are attempting to get back in the game, and get more into the consumer / entertainment market, it seems.
The OS is based on a widget sort of layout, looks very much like Windows 7 in font and display, and appears pretty easy to follow along with.
Check out the story here, and also a nice review on ARS Technica
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The restaurant chain invites its dinner customers to visit its Twitter account, but thanks to a misprint on the four-month-old menu, diners are pointed to a Taiwanese man’s account.
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The World of Warcraft publisher announced Wednesday that it has begun beta testing of the sequel to its 1998 hit, StarCraft.
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Following Kodak’s infringement complaints against the iPhone and BlackBerry makers, U.S. International Trade Commission is doing its own investigation into matter.
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Famed game designer Richard Garriott is a co-founder of Portalarium, a startup that will make games for social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Its first offering in a poker title.
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Public-private partnership finds devices added to the nation’s trucks could increase fuel efficiency by up to 12 percent, saving the industry more than $10 billion a year.
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After a record-setting month in December, the video game industry returned to its major 2009 pattern: sharp year-over-year monthly sales declines.
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At a game showcase event in San Francisco, Microsoft lets the game press see what it has in store for the year. Its Halo announcement is probably what has the most people excited.
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A new film suggests that there are legions of “Star Wars” fans who cannot stomach what the films’ creator did to their beloved franchise. But are those people in the majority?
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The game was designed so that any of the development team could push changes live almost immediately. It is Web-based but could soon have smartphone elements.
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Well, Apple has upset the apple cart as it were, and pretty much pushed the new Google phone right out of the headlines with the announcement of it’s upcoming Ipad tablet portable reader thingie. First off, I have to say that this is a terrible name, the jokes about Itampon, feminine hygene products in general, and bad jokes about the thing not working 1 week out of the month have come out all over. In many non-english countries, the name is too close to Ipod to be seperated in speech. Overall, no matter how good the product, the naming is terrible and terribly lame. There are also complaints that the data partner for the device will again be AT&T, which is having a hard time keeping up with just Iphone data bandwidth demands.
That being said, there is a pretty good Ipad review with video at Engadget. Plenty of interesting comments at PC World, and the Guardian in the UK has a pretty darn good review as well.
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As a long time fan of the Deadliest Catch, since the time before the show existed as was just part of the a Dangerous Jobs series, it saddens me to report that Captain Phil Harris, the gruff but loving master of the F/V Cornelia Marie passed away on February 9th, as a result of complications from a stroke suffered less that two weeks ago. Captain Harris had some past serious medical problems including blood clots (one that passed through his heart at one point), but had recovered well and returned to work. While offloading in St Paul during the crab season, he suffered a stroke and went into a coma. While he came out of the coma, he finally did succumb a few days after. His two sons work with him on the boat and appear on the show, and they posted this:
It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our dad – Captain Phil Harris. Dad has always been a fighter and continued to be until the end. For us and the crew, he was someone who never backed down. We will remember and celebrate that strength. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers. – Jake and Josh Harris
RIP, Captain Phil Harris, we will miss you.
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It took Tiny Speck–which announced what it was working on Tuesday–many months to decide what the official back story for its new game was. But before the final version, it considered many options.
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To build Glitch, the Flickr co-founder put together an impressive team of some of his earliest collaborators on the popular photo-sharing site.
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The new online social MMO from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield’s Tiny Speck puts players through a wide variety of paces. Quests, egg growing and clouds on a string are just a part of it.
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Stewart Butterfield and his friends are back at it with a new company. CNET’s Daniel Terdiman was given exclusive, behind-the-scenes access as they built it from scratch.
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On Monday, the 747-8 Freighter took off for its first flight. The passenger version of the iconic plane is about a year behind the cargo model.
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The aviation giant on Wednesday released a picture of an actual 787 interior, rather than a mock-up. The picture is of the third test flight 787, known as ZA003.
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The mobile version will reportedly feature all the functionality of the “real” in-game auction house, and will allow iPhone-equipped players to continue their financial wheeling and dealing on the move.
Originally posted at Crave
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According to a report on software sales in the U.S., Japan, and the United Kingdom, 2009 was a poor year. But how could it not be? The year before was the best ever.
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Although no one should be surprised about the three films that were nominated for visual effects, the folks behind ’2012′ are probably feeling pretty sore today.
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When Oscar nominations are announced Tuesday, Weta Digital will surely get a nod for “Avatar” visual effects. Unfamiliar to many, the studio has been on top for years.
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