Paisley Does Dallas Dance Music

Microsoft holds firm on Xbox 360 pricing

Link: Microsoft holds firm on Xbox 360 pricing | CNET News.com.

Microsoft on Tuesday said it will hold firm on pricing for its Xbox 360 game console, defying widespread expectations that it would respond to a price cut by rival Sony for the PlayStation 3. Instead, Microsoft voiced confidence that a slate of upcoming titles targeting both hard-core and casual gamers would be strong enough to give it the lion's share of consumer dollars in the coming months.

NBA Gets a Second Life

Unlike many corporate areas in the virtual world, the NBA Headquarters incorporates capabilities designed to keep fans coming back, including real-time 3-D diagrams of games as they're played.

The NBA on Tuesday plans to launch NBA Headquarters, a Second Life area with games, interactivity, and community features designed to provide basketball fans with a place to get together and get involved.

NBA's area can potentially bring Second Life basketball fans back for repeat business. That's a contrast to many of the other corporate areas in Second Life, which are sterile places where visitors might come once, but never return. NBA Headquarters, by contrast, has multiplayer games and a variety of other features designed to draw repeat visitors.

The professional basketball organization is trying to recruit fans who are already in Second Life, as well as generate new fans, NBA commissioner David Stern said. NBA Headquarters in Second Life is part of the NBA's strategic drive to embrace new media, including Yahoo, Facebook, wireless communications, and online video including YouTube.

"This is an area we find to be very exciting," Stern said. "It's causing us to rethink overall the concept of how our fans consume NBA content." Stern spoke at a live announcement in two media: Second Life, and a conference call.

NBA recruited The Electric Sheep Co., a virtual worlds consultancy, to help build NBA Headquarters. Electric Sheep looks to help real-world businesses set up areas in Second Life and other virtual worlds. It occupies a position in the virtual world economy similar to the position occupied by Web marketing companies in the first years of the Web.

The simulation has the potential to capitalize on one of the strengths of Second Life. The virtual world is really a social medium, where people from all over the world come together for chat and activities in real-time, using a 3-D interface. Popular activities in Second Life today include listening to live and recorded music and participating in discussion groups. It's a natural step for people to gather in Second Life to watch a real-time diagram of a basketball game in progress, while chatting with each other about the play and watching the game on TV in their separate, real-life living rooms.

NBA Headquarters includes a virtual basketball court, where avatars can sit and watch a real-time, 3-D diagram of NBA games:

And a shop where you can buy NBA-logo virtual merchandise for your avatar. The front of the shop is a reproduction of one in Manhattan:

One feature that will appeal to Second Life users -- the chairs in the basketball arena are "scripted." Once a user sits his avatar in the chair, the user can flick his point of view from the playing field (with its real-time diagram) to the scoreboard, and back again. That's a convenience; in most places in Second Life, the user has to manually change his camera point of view by combinations of keystrokes and mouse movements. The NBA area also features a downloadable toolbar (in Second Life jargon, those are called HUDs, for "heads-up displays") to provide a realtime feed of NBA news and control a couple of in-world games, which allow avatars to play basketball against each other. The games include the playground basketball game H.O.R.S.E., where players take turns shooting baskets, as well as another in which avatars attempt to dunk the ball.

The area also includes four video lounges where fans can watch past playoffs and highlights of past games.

And users can get their pictures taken with the championship trophy. That's my avatar, Ziggy Figaro:

When posing with the trophy, the point-of-view automatically moves into position, and the user has a choice of several goofy poses.

During the press conference, Stern said the NBA was attracted to Second Life in part because of its massive user base, which Stern said was 6 million users. Actually, that's not quite true. As of Monday at 3 p.m. Pacific time, Second Life was indeed on the verge of rolling the odometer over to 6 million accounts created since the virtual world open for business four years ago -- 5,968,396 accounts, to be precise.

However, the number of actual users of Second Life is much smaller. Linden Lab itself estimates the user retention rate at about 10% -- which would be almost 600,000 active accounts. And dedicated users will often create more than one account (the secondary accounts, in Second Life jargon, are called "alts.")

Still, Second Life does have an impressive growth rate, 20% per month, and 40% of the users are women, Stern noted. Second Life will be part of the NBA's effort to diversify its fan base, which also includes programs to recruit Hispanics and women as fans.

The NBA and Electric Sheep declined to comment on financial details for the area, except to say that it is supported by advertising from partners including T-Mobile, Toyota, and Cisco Systems. Different parts of NBA Headquarters bear prominent corporate sponsorship, for example: The T-Mobile Arena and T-Mobile Half Court Shot Contest.

The area is free to all Second Life users.

The NBA is selling merchandise at its store. Pricing is competitive with other virtual merchandise sold in Second Life. For example, a team logo jersey, that users can put on their avatars, is priced at 100 Linden Dollars, competitive with other virtual clothing for avatars. The Linden Dollar is Second Life's in-world currency for micropayments, priced at about 260 L$ per U.S. dollar.

The NBA has an advantage in marketing its site -- it has the vast marketing machine of NBA behind it. The Second Life area will be marketed on the organization Web site, television, blogs, wireless, and broadband channels.

NBA fans will be able to join Second Life through the NBA Web site.. Once that's done, the fans will bypass the general Second Life orientation area, and instead go to one operated by the NBA, where the fans will go through a self-teaching program to learn how to move in Second Life, look around, and interact with other people. NBA is providing the customized logins through a set of APIs that Linden Lab -- the company that created, develops and operates Second Life -- makes available to any company. The cable TV channel Showtime has a similar setup for its show, The L Word.

The NBA area occupies four separate "sims," or software servers, at the data center of Linden Lab, said Michael Morton, a producer at Electric Sheep, who functions as a project manager for the company.

Electric Sheep built the software using the building tools that come standard with the client software that every user uses to access Second Life. They also used Adobe Photoshop for importing images into the game.

Some of the features of the area -- including the online trivia game -- required access to software running on Web servers, which was accessed by Second Life using the Web's standard HTTP and secure HTTPS protocols.

I loved the detail in the press-room build: The tables draped in cloth, the backdrop hung from a bare metal pole, the bare wooden floor in front of the tables, the uncomfortable folding chairs. I've been at about a million press conferences like this in real life. That's me in the hat in the front row, below:

Latest target in the ad game

SAN FRANCISCO - Crouched in military fatigues, you peer through night-vision goggles and brandish a semiautomatic weapon as you hunt down terrorists who've overtaken Las Vegas.

While patrolling a neon-decorated side street in the video game Rainbow Six Vegas, you spot a jar of body wash. Body wash? Spray the container with bullets, and a 60-second video pops up - of whimsical bloopers and billboard advertisements of scantily clad women hawking Unilever's Axe shower gel: "Score with Axe."

In the new world of video gaming, software companies are becoming more imaginative in wringing money from gamers.

Link: Philadelphia Inquirer | 01/07/2007 | Latest target in the ad game.

Co-founders quit Microsoft game studio Rare

Link: Co-founders quit Microsoft game studio Rare | CNET News.com.

Two of the three co-founders of Rare have left the Microsoft-owned game developer, the software giant confirmed this week. Brothers Chris and Tim Stamper have both left the British game studio, which was acquired by Microsoft for $375 million in 2002. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker confirmed the departure in a statement, but did not give a specific reason why the two are leaving.

Nintendo to recall 3.2 million Wii straps

After several weeks of pressure due to some breaking straps on the controllers of its Wii video game console, Nintendo has announced it is recalling 3.2 million of the straps.

According to Kotaku, a video game blog, which quoted an Associated Press article, Nintendo said Friday it will offer replacements for the straps.

"After staying mum on the issue since launch, the publisher finally admitted they had an issue to the Associated Press," Kotaku reported Friday, "and then announced that they are replacing Wii straps for those who would like the peace of mind of knowing that when they play Wii Sports they won't be caving in the front of their $3,000 plasma screen."

n related news, Nintendo also said Friday it would be recalling 200,000 AC adaptors for its DS and DS Lite handheld game consoles in Japan.

Link: Nintendo to recall 3.2 million Wii straps.

Women outnumber men in online games, survey finds

While male video gamers still outnumber women 2 to 1, women have the edge in online games, a survey has found.

Of the 117 million active gamers in the U.S., 56 percent play games online. Sixty-four percent of those online gamers are female, according to results of the survey, released by Nielsen Entertainment on Thursday.

The survey defined active gamers as those who are 13 years or older, own at least one game device, and play at least one hour of video games a week. Game devices include game consoles, personal computers and handhelds. Nielsen surveyed 2,200 active gamers online in July.

Link: Women outnumber men in online games, survey finds | CNET News.com.

Blockheads Take Up Lightsabers

Lego Star Wars II may be the perfect video game to play with your significant other. This is not to say that it's the best multiplayer game ever, or even the best co-op game, but if I had to recommend a game to a pair of spouses, lovers, co-habitators or partners in crime without conducting an in-depth interview, this would be it.

Reason one: It's both adorable and action-packed. Now, personally, I'll happily play anything from Sunshine Starpuff and the Happiness Consortium to Evil Blood Six: More Gore Ashore if it's a good game, but some people are picky about what they'll be seen playing. Lego Star Wars has cute little Lego guys, but they're cute little Lego guys with blasters and lightsabers, so that should be OK with nearly anyone.

Reason two: It's not that hard. Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate a challenge. But look at the person you'll be playing the game with. Do you want to spend the rest of your life with that person? If so, you don't want to be arguing 20 years from now about who should have pulled the lever and who should have shot the robots in the final boss battle. Lego Star Wars II is very forgiving. You have infinite lives, instant re-spawn, and the worst that can happen is that you lose the "studs" that you collect to buy extras like unlockable characters.

In the game, you run through 18 levels that span all three episodes of the original trilogy, playing out expanded versions of scenes from the movies. In the very first level you start out as Princess Leia and some random rebel, running through a spaceship in search of R2-D2 and C3PO. In the last level you're the Millennium Falcon and some random X-Wing, diving into the guts of the Death Star to blast the reactor core or the atomic pile or whatever McGuffin they were taking out.

In between you escape from the Death Star and battle Imperial Walkers and interact with Ewoks and do everything you've done in any number of Star Wars games already, but it's OK because you've never done it in Lego form. The designers know that taking down a whole comic convention's worth of Imperial storm troopers is no longer inherently thrillful, so they pack the game so full of bells and whistles you'll think you sat on a clown.

There are seemingly endless little jokes and clever references, they throw extra gameplay into now-familiar scenes (you've taken down AT-ATs with a snow speeder before, but you've never had to roll explosive bowling balls across the ice fields of Hoth) and they pack in all sorts of extra gameplay modes, including a series of missions in which your pack of bounty hunters have to track down nearly every major good guy in the original trilogy with a time limit breathing down your back.

There are flaws, though. The game is unpleasantly buggy; at least the GameCube version I played is. My girlfriend and I never got completely stuck, but there were two or three points where it looked like we might have to restart a level, and a bunch more where poor camera angles or weird staging cost us tragic amounts of studs.

Secondly, a few of the extra game modes could have used just a skosh more explanation. We spent several minutes flailing around Mos Eisley before realizing the object was to collect a million studs in a short amount of time.

In the end, though, the worst thing about Lego Star Wars II is that there isn't a third trilogy to inspire a third game. At this point, I've lost all faith in George Lucas' vision of a galaxy far, far away, but I'd sit through another three lackluster sequels for a chance to play through them in Lego form.

Link: Wired News: Blockheads Take Up Lightsabers.

Building an empire, an Xbox at a time

In mid-November, both Sony and Nintendo plan to release their next-generation video game consoles, the PlayStation 3 and Wii, respectively.

But as the video game world prepares for those new consoles, and the first round of games for them, Microsoft's Xbox 360 will have already been out for a full year, and therefore have a year's head-start in games, accessories and related initiatives. Further, while the Wii is getting a lot of good press for its $250 price tag, Sony's decision to put Blu-Ray players in the PS3 and thus price its high-end console at $599 has resulted in a lot of criticism.

Link: Newsmakers | CNET News.com.

Sony delays PS3 launch in Europe

Sony will delay the European launch of its PlayStation 3 game console by about four months to March and cut its target for worldwide shipments this year by half, the company said Wednesday.

Sony had planned to launch the new version of its blockbuster PlayStation console in November, setting the stage for a three-way showdown with Microsoft and Nintendo during the key holiday-shopping season.

Link: Sony delays PS3 launch in Europe | CNET News.com.

Fantasy football key to NBC Sports site revamp

The week that regular-season "Sunday Night Football" debuts, NBC Sports will transform its Web site to include more fantasy sports and in-depth football coverage with a new online editorial team.

The new NBC Sports Web site will feature not only football but eventually will attempt to encompass major sports, including Major League Baseball, the NBA, college football and basketball, golf, tennis and the Olympics. The content won't immediately include video highlights--NBC doesn't have the rights to that--but the company means to make it a fully featured sports data and content site.

Link: Fantasy football key to NBC Sports site revamp | CNET News.com.

MAXIM Road Trip recap - Maxim road trip atlanta to dallas

Link: MAXIM Road Trip.

At this point, we met a Dallas DJ named Paisley and he took a beautiful blonde and Erran on a side adventure while the rest of the team drank at Reno’s. They quickly moved through a side door, across the street, in one side of a bar and out the other, across another street and into a hip-hop club for a quick stage appearance where the host MCs blessed our road trip and almost torched Erran’s throat with some rather aggressive shots. They broke out back to Reno's where they gathered the Atlanta boys and a couple girls and headed out the front. Rain then chased us into our friend Elizabeth’s SUV. Elizabeth goes by the affectionate moniker The Antichrist. We took a quick trip to yet another bar named Republic.

Sony has much riding on PS3 launch

With the launch of its PlayStation 3 video game console six months away, Sony is gearing up for an all-out battle to put the electronics and entertainment conglomerate back on a growth path.

At stake is not just pole position in the $25 billion video game industry, but dominance in the next generation of DVDs, the commercial viability of Sony's Cell microchips and possibly control over living-room electronics around the world.

Sony needs a hit. During the past four years, its revenues were virtually flat as its operating profit rose 3 percent.

By comparison, rival consumer electronics company Matsushita Electric Industrial, the maker of Panasonic brand products, boosted its sales by 20 percent and saw its operating profit soar more than threefold.

Link: Sony has much riding on PS3 launch | CNET News.com.

WSJ.com - Portals

Second only to watching a company achieve great technological and business success, there is nothing Silicon Valley enjoys more than figuring out how, once attained, that company's success might be outdone. A great deal of this scheming is currently directed at MySpace, the social-networking site that has become the online equivalent of the local mall, a place for teens and twentysomethings to spend lots of time -- lots! -- hanging out.

Because the MySpace business story couldn't be simpler or more spectacular -- two friends start it in 2003 and 24 months later it's bought by News Corp. for $580 million -- there are now dozens of start-ups trying to do to MySpace what MySpace did to the first big social-networking site, Friendster. (Buyouts are being made all the time, like the $102 million Viacom said it will spend for Xfire, a gaming site.)

Hundreds of business books and untold thousands of hours of consultants' time have been devoted to advice on how to make these sorts of industry "disruptions" happen. Many are a combination of deft strategizing, shameless copying, wishful thinking -- and some grasping at straws.

Always curious about how entrepreneurs approach the chessboard of competition, I found four MySpace pretenders and asked each the same question: If there is going to be the next MySpace, why is it going to be you? The question is necessary because to the casual observer, most of these sites look the same.

Link: WSJ.com - Portals.

Maxim road trip - louisiana

The Maxim Road Trip continues as the crew of Douchebag and Wingman, El Supremo, Max from Armada Magazine, Alocholnik and so Fain cross into Louisiana on their way to Dallas.

Washington Post Caught in Metadata Gaffe?

The Washington Post's online arm has apparently been caught in a metadata gaffe that exposed the whereabouts of a 21-year-old hacker who confessed to controlling thousands of compromised PCs for malicious use.

Link: eWeek.

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Who is Leroy Jenkins?

Do you think they would use a character's name that has killed the most dragons, completed the most quests, gained the most fortune? Hell no, Leeroy is the most notable figure, most talked about, most hated. Most prolific n00b is the history of online gaming.

Link: Putfile - Who is Leroy Jenkins.

Celebrities taking a gamble

Jesse Ventura is no longer governor of Minnesota. But he is still pushing an agenda--in this case, sports betting over the Internet.

Ventura is the new spokesman for BetUS.com, a Web site operated from Costa Rica that lets people wager on sports contests from their home computers. "This is a step toward bringing something above-board that clearly many people want to partake in," Ventura said.

In a sign of an increased acceptance of Internet gambling, online casinos in recent months have signed endorsement deals with a group of celebrities, including Tom Arnold, the actor; Brooke Burke, a model turned television host; and Jim Kelly, a former quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.

Link: CNET News.com.

'Dungeons & Dragons' goes virtual

When Turbine Games releases "Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach" early next year, executives there are hoping the new creation can reach the untold millions who played and loved the original, paper-based role-playing game.

Turbine's game developers say D&D Online is designed to stay as true as possible to the paper-based version and offers a reasonable online alternative to the more than 4.6 million people still playing D&D just in the United States. The game--in which players create imaginary characters and adventure through fantasy forests, castles and other environs--has been around for more than three decades.

The company has built the online version specifically around the teams of fantasy adventurers that made the original D&D so popular. John Foster, Turbine's director of public relations, said D&D Online requires players to quickly find others with whom to join forces and set out to complete quests.

Link: CNET News.com.

"Grand Theft Auto"? No, make mine Volvo

Remember the Vin Diesel-Paul Walker racing movie "The Fast and the Furious"? A new racing video game for the Microsoft Xbox system, created on behalf of Volvo, might be billed "The Safe and the Cautious."

The game, actually called "Volvo Drive for Life," serves as a showcase for the Volvo nameplate, three Volvo models and the longtime Volvo brand identity as the car designed with safety foremost. Unlike most racing video games, which reward players for speed, "Volvo Drive for Life" encourages them to proceed judiciously by taking them through a training course at the Volvo proving grounds in Gothenburg, Sweden, before sending them out on famous highways to drive while avoiding accidents.

The Volvo video game, with an initial run of about 100,000 copies, also includes a virtual tour of the Volvo Safety Center and a "greatest hits" collection of film from actual crash tests. It is being distributed by Volvo Cars of North America to Volvo dealers across the country, who are being asked to set up Xbox systems and monitors in their showrooms for visitors to play "Volvo Drive for Life."

Volvo Cars, a unit of the Ford Motor, is also giving the dealers copies of the game cartridges that they can give to prospective and current custom

Link:News.com

"Grand Theft Auto"? No, make mine Volvo

Remember the Vin Diesel-Paul Walker racing movie "The Fast and the Furious"? A new racing video game for the Microsoft Xbox system, created on behalf of Volvo, might be billed "The Safe and the Cautious."

The game, actually called "Volvo Drive for Life," serves as a showcase for the Volvo nameplate, three Volvo models and the longtime Volvo brand identity as the car designed with safety foremost. Unlike most racing video games, which reward players for speed, "Volvo Drive for Life" encourages them to proceed judiciously by taking them through a training course at the Volvo proving grounds in Gothenburg, Sweden, before sending them out on famous highways to drive while avoiding accidents.

The Volvo video game, with an initial run of about 100,000 copies, also includes a virtual tour of the Volvo Safety Center and a "greatest hits" collection of film from actual crash tests. It is being distributed by Volvo Cars of North America to Volvo dealers across the country, who are being asked to set up Xbox systems and monitors in their showrooms for visitors to play "Volvo Drive for Life."

Volvo Cars, a unit of the Ford Motor, is also giving the dealers copies of the game cartridges that they can give to prospective and current custom

Link:News.com

Virtual club to rock pop culture

The gamer who bought a virtual space station for $100,000 (?56,200) says he wants to turn it into a nightclub to change the face of entertainment.

Jon Jacobs, aka Neverdie, won the space station, currently being built within the online role-playing game Project Entropia, in an auction. He wants to call it Club Neverdie and sees it as the perfect vehicle to bridge reality and virtual reality.

Link: BBC NEWS | Technology .

Virtual property market booming

A gamer who spent ?13,700 on an island that exists only in a computer game has recouped his investment, according to the game developers.
The 23-year-old gamer known as Deathifier made the money back in under a year. The virtual Treasure Island he bought existed within the online role-playing game Project Entropia.

Link: BBC NEWS | Technology.

Malaysia gamers face night curfew

A Malaysian city is introducing a curfew for online gamers in a bid to stem a rise in the number of addicts.

The authorities in Subang Jaya, near the capital Kuala Lumpur, say that from next year they will close down net cafes which allow patrons to play games late at night.

Politicians decided to take the action after being approached by a worried mother whose son had gone missing. The teenager was found in a cyber cafe where he had been playing for 48 hours.

Link: BBC NEWS .

Risk via Google Maps v0.9.5

Love the Game Risk? I have the board game, the version on a handheld by coleco or someone... and also the playstaion 2 version.. now you can play online with Google Maps.

GMRisk v0.9.5 by TehDiplomat

Link: Risk via Google Maps v0.9.5.

Attention deficit disorder? Try video games

When her 11-year-old son was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder last year, Janet Herlihey warmed up to an unthinkable solution for his problem: video games.

What sold her on games instead of medication was NASA technology. The technology would help "tune" her child's brain to focus and relax while he played fairly innocuous, off-the-shelf games like "Ratchet and Clank" on Sony's Playstation 2.

The system, called Smart BrainGames, essentially monitors her son's brain waves through the use of sensors in a helmet while he plays a game. A box that can be hooked up to PS2 then initiates changes in the game. The more the player concentrates, for example, the faster a car will go in a racing game.

Link: CNET News.com.

NFL - Terrell Owens agrees: Eagles would be unbeaten with Favre

Terrell Owens thinks the Eagles could be undefeated at this point in the season if they had Brett Favre at quarterback.

Link: ESPN.com.

- here is what T.O. said to piss the Eagles off.

Miniconomy

In the game Miniconomy you can trade with thousands of other players. Apart from trading, you can also make a career by being a police officer, mayor of one of the many cities, real estate agent, bank manager or even president.

In the virtual world, where everyone is on a mission and everyone plays a role, it's up to you to choose how you live your virtual life: Will you be going for riches, power, new friends, or would you rather be a politician?

It's up to you: in Miniconomy anything is possible!

Portable GTA Is a Repeat Offender

The Grand Theft Auto series hits the PSP in a game that's so reminiscent of the ground-breaking GTA III that you may find yourself reaching for a nonexistent right analog stick. Is this a good thing? It depends on your expectations.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is set in the same city as GTA III. There are a few changes to the scenery, but if you spent more than a few hours on GTA III, the familiarity hits you like a stolen SUV. All the familiar roads, escape routes and hooker pickup corners call softly to you. Driving around is like visiting the city you grew up in. Hey, there's the old gas station! And the auto lot! And the place you go to have a bomb wired to your car! It's very strange to feel nostalgic about the site of your first gang war.

Link: Wired News.

The Art of Privacy Invasion

Michelle Teran is the pied piper of wireless networks. Leading a band of followers through the city streets, the Canadian artist drags along a screen embedded in a suitcase that is showing supposedly secret images captured from cameras inside surrounding buildings.

Call it war-driving for video. Although many people assume new surveillance technology that lets cameras transmit footage wirelessly to TVs and computers is private, Teran is on a mission to show them otherwise.

Link: Wired News.

Real money in a virtual world

An average day in suburbia? Not quite. This is a day inside "Second Life," a virtual world created by San Francisco-based game developer Linden Lab.

Welcome to the virtual economy, where currencies such as the Linden dollar trade against the U.S. dollar, companies like Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE) create markets for everything from magic shields to potions, and entrepreneurs sell notary services and the latest fashions. One of the most popular games, "World of Warcraft," reached 1 million North American players in August, three months ahead of its first anniversary. The games are particularly hot in America and Asia. After "World of Warcraft" was released in China last June, 1.5 million paying customers signed up in a month.

Such ventures--known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games--have spawned economies that would rival those of a small country but fly largely under the radar of economists, government statisticians and people beyond the 12- to 35-year-old demographic. However, these economies are becoming increasingly important, says Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter, adding that they could redefine the concept of work, help test economic theories and contribute to the gross domestic product in the United States. "Increasingly, these virtual economies are leading to real money trades, " notes Hunter, one of a handful of academics closely following this trend.

Link: CNET News.com.

College Football - BCS Rankings

Texas Longhorns #1 in BCS Rankings!!

The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame is responsible for the weekly tabulation and release of the Bowl Championship Series Standings. EXPLANATION: Team percentages are derived by dividing a team's actual voting points by a maximum 2850 possible points in the Harris Interactive Poll and 1550 possible points in the USA Today Coaches Poll.

Link: ESPN.com - NCF - BCS Rankings.

cowboys 33 - eagles 10

cowboys 33 - eagles 10

hook 'em horns

hook 'em horns - Texas 45 - OU 12

my lucky sweatshirt?

my lucky sweatshirt? Hook 'em horns!

It's "Red River Shootout" Weekend

Link: It's "Red River Shootout" Weekend.

It's "Red River Shootout" Weekend It's the football weekend everyone is talking about. It's time for the Texas vs. OU football game at the Cotton Bowl. For all you Texas Exes, find out what's going on with your fellow Alums and make a great weekend of it.

the Eyes of Texas Are Upon You Fight MP3!

Texas - OU Party Headquarters - SynBar on Lower Greenville in Dallas, Texas.

City of Heroes

City of Heroes - be a super hero, seriously. I figured if your choice is

a. die

b. vote and possibly die

c. don't vote because someone will kill me.

and you choose to vote even though there is a high possibility you will die.
then that would make you a hero/patriot.