XplanaZine

Here’s our take on news that matters for Thursday, March 23. Today’s theme is extensions, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming — In an interesting mix of analog and digital worlds, Jeopardy is putting tests online to screen for potential game contestants. Also, while there are serious problems in the serious games market in general, some on-the-job video interactive training tools are captivating employees and saving companies money
  And, finally, Sony has officially announced its online service for PS3. This has been an area of dominance for Microsoft and it will be interesting to see how the new service stacks up.
  

• Blogging, mediacasting, and online creations — Both eBay and Amazon are extending their RSS features. EBay now lets its users create content-syndication feeds for searches they conduct on its online marketplace, and over on Amazon RSS feeds now can be created for all of its users’ wish lists. And, first it was soccer moms and now it’s podcasting moms? Yes, Mommycast is real and they’ve even received $200,000 sponsorship from paper giant Dixie.
• Handhelds – Yahoo announced today that is is launching its Instant Message phone in the U.S. This is a Skype-like service that lets people make phone calls through the company’s instant messaging software. Yahoo Messenger with Voice rates average between 20 percent and 30 percent lower than those charged by Skype to many major markets outside the United States, according to a comparison furnished by Yahoo. This seems to be a common strategy with Yahoo — copy an existing and popular service (iTunes or Skype) and try to bully your way into the market with lower pricing. Here are some Screenshots of the service. Finally, analysts are finding Microsoft’s first round of “push e-mail” software lacking. There are at lest three primary weaknesses: 1) Mobile Outlook is still too hard to navigate on a mobile device; 2) Windows devices still use too much battery power compared to the Blackberry; 3) The security and manageability features in the 1.0 release are inferior to those on the Blackberry.
• Social Networks – It’s pretty obvious that the mainstream movie folk don’t know exactly what to make of YouTube. If you want to know where people are hanging out, think about this. YouTube has twice the traffic of Yahoo! Video and more than three times that of
  Google Video and AOL Video.
• Technology Talks — At last, it’s official. Dell is buying Alienware.The deal gives Dell a chance to tap into the profitable high-end PC gaming market.