XplanaZine

Here’s our take on news that matters for Thursday, January 19. Today’s theme is combining forces and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming — Curious what’s available in new online roleplaying games (i.e. why the interest)? Check out the new game Minions of Mirth and some of its offerings.
  • Auto-patcher that delivers immediate content and feature upgrades.
  • Full single player support.
  • Player vs Environment and Player vs Player multiplayer.
  • No monthly service fees for multiplayer.
  • Form your own party of up to 6 characters. Join other players in online alliances with up to 36 characters.
  • 16 playable classes, 12 playable races, Multiclass characters in three careers up to level 100.
  • 3 playable realms: Fellowship of Light, Minions of Darkness, and the Monster Realm.
  • 14 huge and diverse zones to explore.
  • Unlock monster templates to create your own stable of monsters.
  • Fight the onslaught of vast armies in epic battles.
  • A tremendous amount of unique NPC’s, creatures, items, and quests.
  • 2 hours of original music.
  • Free dedicated world server with source code is available. Host your own persistent world with your own original content

  Also, you might enjoy this timeline of notable video game villains. And, if you don’t think this will have some kind of impact on video games, Disney is in talks with Pixar about an acquisition.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting — Disney announced yesterday that it has sold more than 1.5 million episodes of TV shows via iTunes and that it will widen its list of programming available for handhelds via vodcast.

• Handhelds – Cingular to sell handheld with Microsoft software Walkman sales boost Sony Ericsson. Strong demand for mobile phones with camera and music features has helped Sony Ericsson to report record fourth quarter sales and profits. Sony Ericsson added it had shipped three million of its Walkman branded handsets since August last year. Television ads coming to a small screen near you (as in, “in your hand”). http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124390,00.asp
  A few months later than planned, Opera Software announced Wednesday
  that it has released a beta version of its first Web browser for the
  Windows Mobile Pocket PC.
• Social Networks – According to the Chronicle of Higher Education,
  some students are discovering that sharing personal details on social-networking Web sites can have unintended consequences. On a different take, Napster announced yesterday that it has passed the 500,000 paid subscribers mark.

Now, here’s a recap of our favorite posts from the edublogging community from the past 48 hours.

• From Ben Vershbow : Post with more grist for the “pipes” debate.
• From Paul Chenoweth : Post on how the digital divide can become a digital dump.
• From Jeremy Hiebert : Post on learning outside the school.
• From Will Richardson : Post on Lawrence Lessig and the significance of the Read/Write Web