XplanaZine

Here’s our take on news that matters for Friday, March 17. Today’s theme is March Madness!, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming — At least one gaming company is pushing the idea of building video games as serialized entertainment.
  The next game from Tom Mustaine’s Ritual Entertainment, a first-person shooter called “SiN,” will be
  released as TV-style episodes. They’ll have cliffhangers, recaps of previous installments and a story path partially steered by the player community’s response to past episodes.
  May we could start doing our school courses this way to make kids more interested.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting — This article talks about the podcasting craze spreads to children’s programming. Well it’s certainly a no-brainer. Parents need audio to play to the kids in the car, while they’re sitting in their high chairs in the kitchen, and when they put them to bed at night. This may actually be one of the most pragmatic uses of Podcasting.
• Handhelds – Yahoo is releasing its updated version of Communicator, its Skype competitor.
  The pricing for the callout numbers is not certain as yet, though the
  current generation communicator allows unlimited incoming calls for
  $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year.
• Social Networks – Rumor has it that Time Warner wants to turn Netscape into a social network hub. Well, it’s available and not getting much use. Why not? Also, Transmedia released Glide Effortless 1.1 yesterday. Their aim
  is to balance self-expression with self-protection through digital rights management, parental controls, and user preferences.
• Technology Talks — Finally, from the we never would have guessed category, this article on Google’s plan to make a big splash in the online retail business. “According to
  href=”http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6dd2bef6-b456-11da-bd61-0000779e2340.html”>an article published in Financial Times, which includes portions of an interview with European Google exec Nikesh Arora, it has been revealed that Google is undertaking the move to allow retailers to host their wares on the Google Base site.” Now all your base will belong to them.