The hype surrounding Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 keeps heating up.
After Gamestop announced last week a $40 trade credit for those who preorder the game and bring it back to a Gamestop store by December 13, Amazon.com has launched a competition, dubbed "The Call of Duty-est Town in America." The contest is seeking the town or city with the most preorders of Modern Warfare 2.
According to Amazon, any town or city with a population of 5,000 or more can compete. It determined population size using the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.
Whenever a person preorders Modern Warfare 2 from Amazon, the location is tallied. The goal for each location is to have the highest percentage of preorders. Realizing that population plays a role in those figures, the number of orders doesn't factor into the competition.
Amazon said on its contest page that it will give a $5,000 gift certificate to a charity that serves the winning town. If the competition had ended at the time of this writing, the winner would be Grand Forks, N.D.
The page also features some interesting information about those preorders. As of this writing, the Xbox 360 version of the game accounted for 61 percent of Amazon preorders. The PlayStation 3 and the PC versions captured 31 percent and 8 percent of the preorders, respectively.
"The Call of Duty-est Town in America" competition ends on the game's release day, November 10. The winning town will be announced that day.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
MTV.com announced a new homepage design Tuesday that focuses more on content, rather than aesthetic changes. It will launch Wednesday morning.
MTV.com's basic color scheme will remain the same. The navigation at the top of the site will also remain unchanged. Even the prominent promotional box toward the top of the page, which MTV calls "The Marquee," will maintain its position on the new home page.
Not much has changed from the current page.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)The biggest change made to MTV.com comes in the form of a new module, called The Daily Fresh. Placed just below The Marquee, The Daily Fresh will feature content MTV grabs from both its own pages and third-party sites.
The Daily Fresh is basically a news feed. As MTV.com's editorial staff creates more content, the best stories will be hand-picked by MTV editors and placed in the feed. Those same editors will also place user-generated content that relates to one of the company's television shows, music videos, or news stories into the module. To accommodate those site visitors who want content outside of what MTV provides, The Daily Fresh will feature articles or videos its editors find from other sites across the Web. Eventually, MTV.com plans to feature a "submit" link to give site owners the opportunity to have their content featured on the music site.
The Daily Fresh underscores what is a slightly modified strategy for MTV. Instead of being a place for visitors to check out music news and the latest music videos, MTV wants to make MTV.com a hub for all the other online content MTV Networks offers on sites like VH1.com and MTVU.com. To do so, MTV.com will now syndicate some of the better content from its sister sites to the home page.
MTV also wants to give users a voice. To do so, it has partnered with a video technology firm called Innovid. Through its partnership with Innovid, MTV is allowing users to tag specific moments in videos, write a comment about the moment, and share that with friends on Facebook and Twitter. Those comments are also featured in the video's timeline. So far, the feature has been rolled out in a few videos on the site, but the company hopes to make it available on every video the site offers in the near future.
Although MTV wouldn't divulge exactly how it plans to "create more innovative ads"--a key component in its strategy for quite some time--it did say that it plans to hold a special advertising event on September 9 to celebrate the release of The Beatles: Rock Band on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii.
The new site, complete with The Daily Fresh
(Credit: MTV Networks)When visitors get to MTV.com on September 9, they will see an ad that will display exclusive, unreleased content from the game. MTV said that the ad will feature seven "touch points" that visitors can click on. When they do, they will see in-game videos, sneak peeks of gameplay elements, and other features it wouldn't disclose.
MTV plans to offer Facebook Connect support at some point in the future, but it wouldn't say exactly when. Based on how the company's executives were talking, though, I'd expect to see it sooner rather than later.
Although I didn't have the chance to demo the new home page, it looks like an iterative update. The top half of the site has barely changed, while the bottom half features a few new modules that some users might find useful. If they don't find them useful, MTV said that it's willing to change. According to the company's execs, the update is experimental and it plans to modify the site's design based on usage patterns.
With its new home page, MTV wants to become one of the many sites Web surfers visit every day. It wants to be a media hub for entertainment. It's certainly possible. But whether visitors will respond well to the site's few changes when it launches Wednesday morning remains to be seen.
Guardian Robot wants some love. The electronics for the bot totaled just over $97.
(Credit: guardian.co.uk)A tiny robot made of cardboard and $100 of electronics can monitor your Twitter feed and help spread good karma.
Developer Ken Lim's Guardian Robot is gloriously low-tech, with only two servos and a basic control board. Its body was fashioned out of an old Wii Sports Resort box.
But it saves on Twitter reading time.
Profiled on a blog sponsored by the Guardian newspaper, the little guy watches Twitter feeds for keywords indicating happy or sad posts. It reacts to happy tweets by raising its arm in triumph, and to sad ones by lowering its head despondently like Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Guardian Robot remains in either state until it gets a "high five" when a switch on its hand is pressed, or a "hug" through a switch on its belly.
It also sends out appropriate replies though its Twitter account.
Lim is encouraging others to build their own robot slaves by posting the code for the bot. He finds his creation comforting: "I simply have to glance at the robot to get a status update, or simple ignore it when I have to. He has become as reassuring as a wall clock."
Ken Lim's Guardian Robot from InsideGuardian on Vimeo.
(Via Open Platform)
YouTube on your PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii looks a little sexier with a new portal site designed specifically for video game console browsers.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)Don't have an Apple TV or a TiVo box, and have been lusting after watching YouTube videos from your couch? If you've got a Nintendo Wii or a Sony PlayStation 3 video game console, the Google property has just released an overhauled version of its living room-friendly console interface that puts it about on par with those two offerings.
By visiting Youtube.com/TV in your Opera or PS3 browser, you get a new layout that lets you browse and search through videos. Additionally, videos can be set to go full-screen by default, including large, remote control-friendly buttons that don't make you squint. There's also an option to autoplay the next video in a playlist or from search results after the current one is over.
One thing to note is that the special TV version of the site cannot be accessed in your PC's browser without using a special browser add-on like User Agent Switcher, which can trick YouTube into thinking that you're visiting the site from your console. If you've got a Mac Mini hooked up to your TV, this might be your best bet.
In light of Tuesday's announcement of the click-to-buy option heading to YouTube videos, it's worth mentioning Nintendo and YouTube's two-week old special promotional page for the Wii game Wario Land: Shake It. What makes it so special? It dynamically deteriorates based on what's happening in the video.
Coins explode out of the top of the player and trickle down the page, while various elements get knocked down with each headbutt, explosion, and power up. There's no way to regenerate items as they fall off without refreshing your page, although you can pick up each piece and throw it around, which is almost as much fun as watching it fall apart. Some things like the share and favorite buttons remain clickable too.
Useful if you were trying to read the video information while it flies off the screen? No. Mind-bogglingly cool and memorable? Definitely.
As the video plays bits and pieces of the page fall apart, including the video itself.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
The BBC's iPlayer TV catch-up service is making its way to the Nintendo Wii today. British residents who navigate to www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer using Opera's Internet Channel browser will be greeted by the same selection of streaming programs made available for PC users.
The BBC promises to bring a slightly updated version in the coming months that will add additional functionality, the same way Opera did with the specially designed version of its browser made just for the Wii. Best of all, it will be a standalone channel app. The BBC's Anthony Rose hopes this will fit the needs of users who don't want to have to load up the browser and navigate to their iPlayer bookmark, or pay for the Internet application in the first place.
This is the first time the iPlayer has made its living room debut. Previously the only way to get iPlayer programming on your TV set was by hooking up your home PC or laptop to your television. Enterprising iPhone users were also able to take advantage of the streaming on their TV sets, as long as they had the AV cable pack and a universal dock, which costs about £70.00 ($139) combined.
Previous iPlayer coverage:
iPlayer gets iPhone support
BBC's iPlayer getting Mac version in 2008, Web version continues to dominate usage
BBC moving to Adobe Flash, iPlayer on the Web soon
BBC puts shows online
Halloween is the one day of the year when it's OK to go all-out on a geeky costume. CNET News.com reporter Caroline McCarthy gave us 10 suggestions for techie Halloween costumes this year.
While we editors didn't see any dancing Mark Cubans or software pirates (believe us, we kept our eyes peeled), we did see a pair of LOLCats, a Nintendo Wii avatar, and...Facebook. Brace yourself for our techie Halloween slide show, and start your planning for next year.
Yesterday an update rolled out from the folks at Opera, bringing the highly popular Wii Internet channel into the 20th century with full support for USB keyboards, widgets, and link sharing. Normally this news would not excite me, but as a Wii owner, having struggled to actually type an e-mail, or enter anything more than a URL or login using a Wiimote on the onscreen keyboard, believe me when I say this is big.
In addition to the keyboard news, Opera is now supporting two very interesting Web features. The first is a new "Widget View" mode, letting users take advantage of Opera's collection of Web widgets that you can download straight to your system. The catalog is mostly the same for Wii users as the desktop version of the Opera, and includes useful things like Internet radio, instant messaging, and eye-optimized news feeds. There are also a slew of games, opening up your system to an extra layer of free entertainment.
The other new feature is link sharing, which lets you take any URL and share it with other Wii users via their friend code, or to anyone else via their e-mail address. This works with any page you're currently on, or those stored in your favorites folder (which has also been upped from 48 to 56 slots). It's essentially giving the Wii its own, closed social network. Opera and Nintendo are calling it "send-to-a-friend," but I think a more apt name is "Wii.licio.us."
With this move the Wii is actually getting closer to a desktop PC than you'd think. Until now, Sony's PlayStation3 has had the edge on the Wii with its multiwindow browsing experience and the option to install Yellow Dog Linux (with Firefox) on top of the system's OS. It's also getting a leg up on the iPhone when it comes to business use from a consumer-oriented tool. Both share an often maddening proprietary keyboard input system, that, up until now, you were stuck waving your arm around to operate. And as we recently noted, the iPhone is not ready for business.
The update is available for free to anyone who's already got the Wii browser. For new Wii users, you can pick it up for 500 Wii points.
The Wii browser just got a little more social. You can now send links to your friends.
(Credit: Opera Inc.)
Up until this weekend I hadn't really been too excited about seeing the upcoming Simpsons feature-length movie. That was until I laid my eyes on the film's Web site.
Like most other movie marketing sites out there, it's full of a lot of Flash with bouncy navigation and a nearly unbearable amount of sound effects. There are the usual mini-games (both of which I might add are quite enjoyable), and links to the movie's MySpace profile (it is Fox, after all). The real gem however, is the Simpsons avatar builder--a piece-by-piece character maker that lets people create their own Simpsons-esque persona right down to nose shape and facial hair coloring.
I've played with two other high-profile avatar creators before, one emulating Nintendo's Mii maker, and another that lets you make your own Picasso--missing ears and all. The Simpsons version is a little closer to Nintendo's offerings, giving users a wide array of body parts to choose from, along with a color pallet for further customization. There's also a "roll the dice" button that will spit out a randomized character.
When you're finished, you can print your character out to stick on the fridge, or save it for use around the Simpsons Web site. What it's really missing is the option to save it as an image file, IM buddy icon, or as a good size for social-networking profiles--the typical fodder for viral marketing.
Related: 7-Eleven stores turned into Kwik-E-Marts (Flickr photoset)
Design your own Simpsons character piece by piece with this avatar creator.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The BBC's iPlayer will be making it's official, public beta debut July 27 to U.K. residents who are legal TV license holders--a yearly taxation system that pays for TV ownership and usage. The small desktop software client allows users to download and view episodes or entire series of BBC television programming on their PCs.
Lucky U.K. residents will soon get to enjoy the iPlayer on their PCs, and then Macs as well.
(Credit: BBC.co.uk)In addition to launching the Windows client, the BBC will also be rolling out integration of the iPlayer to the BBC's U.K. site, and later to YouTube. The team behind it is also working on versions of the iPlayer client for Macs and Windows Vista.
The BBC is in talks with Virgin Media to create a set-top box equivalent, akin to a DVR with on-demand capabilities for watching archived programming. It will also be adding the option to subscribe to a series, and to watch shows right away without having to wait for them to finish downloading.
Also, as a tidbit, from this promo video that was uploaded to Vimeo two months ago, it looks like there's also Web interfaces in the works for Nintendo's Wii and Apple's iPhone. File it in the rumor bin for now.
