Darknet

Second Life's CTO resigns

Associated Press: Second Life's CTO resigns.

Virtual world Second Life's chief technology officer -- a colorful Navy veteran who delights in mocking creationism -- has resigned.

Cory Ondrejka, employee No. 4 at San Francisco-based Linden Lab, which owns Second Life, quit Tuesday and will depart at the end of the year.

Sorry to hear that. I interviewed Cory for a chapter in Darknet on Second Life and found him smart, talented and colorful.

Microsoft democratizes the Xbox

San Jose Mercury News: Microsoft hopes to recruit future video game developers by making it possible for just about anybody, working from their home PC, to create games for the Xbox 360 video game console.

Avatars among us

Wired News: Avatars Among Us. In which Douglas Engelbart, Larry Lessig and Cory Doctorow (avatar above) make appearances in the virtual world Second Life.

Lessig enters a virtual world

Prof. Lawrence Lessig is coming to Linden Labs' Second Life virtual community for an appearance -- complete with avatar -- this Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30 PT. He'll be interviewed by Philip Linden (the alter ego of Linden Labs CEO Philip Rosedale), reports Hamlet. If you're not a member of the Second Life community, you can sign up on the waiting list to enter the event.

Australian court: Gamers can mod their Playstations

Down Under news ... Consumer Reporter: Australia's High Court chips away at Sony's stranglehold. Computer games enthusiasts are free to modify their Playstations to run cheap games bought overseas or online.

Thanks to Ken Doran for the pointer.

Hitting LA for 'Attack of the Show'

G4, the game network (and descendant of TechTV), just invited me to appear on Attack of the Show, a daily live dose of pop culture, technology and gaming that airs out of Los Angeles. I'll be flying down to talk about "Darknet" and Ourmedia.org on Friday, Aug. 26, at 4 pm PT. It airs on Channel 354 on satellite's DirecTV. More later.

All about game modding

Lots about game modding in the news lately, thanks to last week's release of the "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'' video game, rebranded with an Adults Only rating.

Dean Takahashi in the San Jose Merc: Pressure on game publishers intensifies.

The Merc's readers also weigh in.

Meantime, an anti-game crusader is pressuring Electronic Arts to take action against those who modify another game, ``The Sims 2."

Hey video game industry, welcome to the culture wars, where freedom to mod offends the moral puritans and control freaks throughout the land.

Video gaming goes Hollywood

If you missed this the other day, NPR's Day to Day had a report by Xeni Jardin and Wil Wheaton on the E3 video game convention.

Xbox enthusiasts uncover its versatility

In Sunday's Washington Post, Daniel Greenberg writes about the verstability of Microsoft's Xbox, a subject I cover in one of the chapters of Darknet. Writes Greenberg:

For something sold for $150 in big-box stores, Microsoft's Xbox video-game console is turning out to be a surprisingly versatile machine -- with a little unauthorized help.

As designed by Microsoft, the Xbox can already perform some non-game functions: A $30 remote-control kit turns it into a DVD player, and the recent $80 Media Center Extender kit enables a networked Xbox to play music, photos and video stored on a PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition.

But Xbox enthusiasts, taking advantage of such computer-derived Xbox components as its hard drive and network adapter, have taken this green-and-black box far beyond its maker's intentions.

Other game machines, like the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube, lack such PC resources, though determined hobbyists have been able to tweak those as well.

The most successful such effort may be XboxMediaCenter, or XBMC. This free program (www.xboxmediacenter.com) lets an Xbox connect to a wired or wireless home network and perform many more media-sharing tricks than Microsoft's Extender add-on allows.

Those kinds of capabilities normally require spending $250 or more for a separate wireless media receiver from such firms as D-Link Systems Inc., SlimDevices Inc. and Roku LLC.

For software created by hobbyists in their spare time, XBMC is surprisingly capable. As a music box, it plays a wide variety of music, including Web radio broadcasts as well as MP3, Windows Media, AAC, RealAudio and many other file types -- excluding the copy-restricted files sold at such stores as iTunes, Wal-Mart and Napster. Pop a CD into your Xbox, and XBMC can even copy its tracks to the Xbox's hard drive in the format of your choice.

If you use Apple's iTunes, XBMC ties into that program's own sharing feature, providing access to all of your custom playlists.

Switching to video, XBMC supports an equally broad range of computer formats, including MPEG-4, DivX, QuickTime and RealVideo. If you have a ReplayTV digital video recorder on your home network, this software can even stream recorded shows from it for watching on the TV plugged into the Xbox. But although XBMC can play DVD movies, it can't display their menu screens. If you have a computer monitor or high-definition TV connected to the Xbox with the right cables, this software will also upgrade the Xbox's video output to high-definition resolutions.

Last, you can plug a standard computer keyboard and mouse into an XBMC-endowed Xbox (after you plug a $10 adapter into the Xbox's controller port) and browse a limited menu of Web content -- not much more than weather forecasts and Internet Movie Database lookups -- on your TV.

This program isn't for the technologically faint of heart, though. You can't load XBMC on a standard Xbox -- you must modify one to accept this new program, either by soldering or plugging in a new chip inside the case or patching its software through arcane routines.

Such an Xbox "mod," if you don't perform it yourself, will cost from $50 to $100 when done by a firm such as FriendTech Computer Ltd. (www.friendtech.com) or the private individuals who market the service on local forums such as Craigslist (www.craigslist.org).

More to the point, it will void the Xbox's warranty. Subscribers to Microsoft's Xbox Live service may also find themselves banned from it if their modified machines are detected by Microsoft's servers.

The company has frowned on these adaptations in part because they are often used to play pirated copies of games. "Microsoft investigates and makes case-by-case determinations as to whether specific mod chips enable piracy," said Molly O'Donnell, a Microsoft spokeswoman.

That risk, however, hasn't discouraged Xbox tinkerers from experimenting. Among other odd achievements, they've managed to craft multiple Xbox versions of the Linux operating system that turn an Xbox into a full Internet PC. And for those who just want to play video games on an Xbox, another add-on lets it play titles for older game consoles such as the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo.

Sales in virtual goods top $100 million

NewScientist.com news service: Real-world sales of virtual resources gained within multiplayer online computer games has surpassed $100 million worldwide, according to a new estimate.