The Blip Festival is a four-day international cultural event taking place in New York City this December, focusing on the 8-bit scene — musicians and artists who use low-bit videogame and computer hardware as their creative tools.

The festival is the widest-reaching event in the history of the form, boasting a roster of over 30 international artists performing and exhibiting from places as diverse as Austria, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and across the United States. The Blip Festival is a four-day international cultural event taking place in New York City this December, focusing on the 8-bit scene — musicians and artists who use low-bit videogame and computer hardware as their creative tools.

…Nintendo Entertainment Systems and Game Boys roaring with futuristic floor-stomping rhythms and fist-waving melody, art-damaged Sega hardware generating fluctuating and abstracted video patterns — and that’s only the beginning. An exploration of the chiptune idiom and its close relatives, the Blip Festival is the biggest and most comprehensive event in the history of the form, and will include daily workshops, art installations, and nightly music performances boasting an international roster larger and more far-reaching than any previous event of its kind. Small sounds at large scales pushed to the limit at high volumes — the Blip Festival is an unprecedented event that is not to be missed.

The show is in NY from Thu Nov 30th to Sunday Dec 3rd. More info and ticket info available from http://www.blipfestival.org/

As of yesterday London’s Leicester Square will have free 8mbps ‘no catch’ Internet access. The connection is available 24 hours a day for anyone with a wifi enabled laptop or device. The service is being provided by PR company Four Communications. The PR company state:

No longer will you have to purchase a coffee, a burger, or confusingly priced vouchers to access the web. The free connection, ‘Four’s Free Hotspot’, has been set up by the Leicester Square based PR and marketing firm in a bid to create an area anyone can visit and keep in touch with work, family or friends or just surf the internet for information.

A fair use system is in place to stop people hogging all of the bandwidth. If anyone is in the area and want to check it out you need to search for “Four’s Free hotspot” a helpline number is also available should you have trouble 0845 453 3543.

Oscar winner Nicole Kidman is the highest paid film actress according to the Hollywood Reporter’s annual list.

The 39-year-old Australian is paid $17 million (£8.7m) for each film, moving ahead of last year’s leader Reese Witherspoon, who can command a $15m (£7.6m) fee.

Renee Zellweger is in third place, also banking $15m per movie.

Julia Roberts did not make the list for the first time in its five-year history, as she has taken time off acting to raise her twins.

But Kidman, who won an Academy Award for playing writer Virginia Woolf in The Hours, was unable to match the feat of fellow Oscar winner Roberts, who has commanded $20m (£10.2m) per film.

Charlie’s Angels co-stars Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz were in fourth and fifth place, respectively, both scoring $15m.

Two more Oscar winners, Halle Berry, who won for her role in Monster’s Ball earned $14m (£7.1m) per movie, and South African actress Charlize Theron - Academy Award winner for Monster - earned $10m (£5.1m).

Angelina Jolie makes eighth spot with $10m, followed by Kirsten Dunst with $8m-$10m, with former Friends star Jennifer Aniston with $8m (£4.1m).

Finally, after more than five years since the launch of Windows XP, business users can now upgrade their computers with Microsoft’s new operating system.

Vista is a replacement for the firm’s current Windows XP operating system and today (November 30th) marks a significant time for the PC market.

However, the delay of the new OS is two years late and the consumer version (for home users) won’t be available until January 2007.

In preparation, Microsoft has invested a vast sum of money and enormous effort to get Vista ready.

More than 10,000 workers reportedly have worked on getting the operating system ready for deployment.

The company says that Vista is designed to be much more secure than any of its previous operating systems (with the latest anti-Virus and Spyware software), while home users can look forward to much better game play and the integration of Microsoft’s media centre into the main operating system.

The XP successor will come in six versions, from very simple installations for low-powered computers to fully loaded corporate editions. Different prices are applied to each. The six versions are:

• Vista Business
• Vista Enterprise
• Vista Home Basic
• Vista Home Premium
• Vista Ultimate
• Vista Starter

In addition, Microsoft has combined the launch of Vista with the release of the newest version of its productivity software, Office 2007, and its networking software Exchange.

The suite of applications - featuring a word processor, spreadsheet, database and more - can run on both Windows XP and Vista.

Microsoft says that the combination of Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange combined will allow corporate customers to make substantial productivity gains.

For more information about Windows Vista, please click here

Lilly Allen the 21 year old UK pop star known for her brash behavior and topping the UK pop charts with her single ‘Smile’ forget the lyrics to her own song halfway through a charity bash.

Sheepishly halfway through singing ‘Everything’s Just Wonderful’ Lilly Allen had to stop and apologize to the audience. Whilst someone back stage had to google for the songs lyrics which were than passed onto her.

The song was restarted with Lilly Allen reading her lyrics from the printed pages.

See kids too much alcohol at a young age isn’t good for you.

The Nintendo Wii which is slated as the must have Christmas present for 2006 and due for launch on the 8th of December, can be a lil harmful to health as our US buddies have already found out.

In America, where the console was launched earlier this year, gamers have noticed the effects it has had on them, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Kaitlin Franke, 12, from Kentucky, said her right arm started to feel numb soon after playing on a Wii.

Ryan Mercer, 21, a customs broker in Indianapolis, suffered severe muscle strain, even though he regularly lifts weights.

He said: “I was soaking wet with sweat, head to toe — I had to go take a shower.

The next morning I had trouble putting my shirt on.”

Jeremy Scherer and his wife, from Minnesota, spent three hours playing Wii tennis and bowling games.

Mr Scherer, a computer programmer, who described himself as “not very active”, said his shoulders and back were aching the next day. “I was using muscles I hadn’t used in a while,” he added.

[Source]
Image from flickr user: doryexmachina.

The Sims on the PC remains the best selling franchise from EA Games and Maxis. And after appearing on different formats in particular the consoles, the makers of the most successful game will now turn their attention to the Nintendo Wii.

On The Sims 2 website, EA announced that a new Sims game is being developed exclusively for the Wii. EA doesn’t reveal much, saying only that more details are expected in the coming months and a trailer and screenshots are available at the game’s official Japanese Website (link to the site).

Game play footage of the upcoming game, titled “Boku Sim” (translation “Town for Me and Sim”), shows a very different looking group of digital characters from the cast of The Sims 2. The anime-styled designs are reminiscent of the Wii’s cartoon-like Mii avatars, and appear to be aimed at the Japanese market.

The website and video are all in Japanese, but it appears that the basic Sims-type game play is still intact. As in other Sims games, players will build houses and explore the neighbourhood with created characters.

Looks cute in my honest opinion. I wonder if you can visit each town similar to Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS?

Trailer:
[youtube]U9kTsCQACDc[/youtube]

Redoctane’s Guitar Hero II is now setting the trend for guitar rhythm games from the likes of Konami’s original Guitar Freaks, now Tenacious D is now paying homage with a Flash-based web game.

Check out the link at the bottom of this article to play Tenacious D’s new flash based Guitar Hero knockoff.

To play the game, you will need to press the A, S, D and F keys and Space Bar on your keyboard to strum. Hitting the “sparks” notes will increase your “Rock-O-Meter” that, when full, doubles your points in “Righteous Mode.”

Link to the Flash game

Japanese game manufacturer Nintendo will be pleased this week as the Wii console has sold more than 600,000 units. This is an amazing achievement when you consider that it’s only been eight days since the new game machine went on sale in North America.

This figure is more impressive when you compare to rival Sony, who only managed to sell 200,000 PlayStation 3 units in the US.

The Nintendo Wii went on sale in the US and Canada on November 19th, two days after Sony’s PlayStation 3 made its Western debut.

Both are competing against Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which is going from strength to strength with great looking games (like Gears Of War) and online features (Xbox Live now comes with downloadable TV/movie content).

Nintendo says it will ship four million Wii units across the US and Canada by the end of the year, while Sony has a target of one million.

“Even with sales already in excess of 600,000 units, demand continues to exceed supply, as it’s clear this is one of the ‘gotta-have’ products for the holiday season,” said Nintendo’s US president Reggie Fils-Aime.

“We’ve shipped retailers several times the amount of hardware the other company was able to deliver for its launch around the same time - and we still sold out.”

In addition, The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess has accompanied 454,000. This is significant figure as it shows how popular the Zelda franchise is. Twilight Princess is on target to become the first million sellers on the Wii if Nintendo can (presumably) reach those two million in the US by the end of January 2007.

As for the European launch of the Nintendo Wii, it will be on sale on December 8th priced £179.99.

Source: GameDailyBiz

The sequel to the Pirates of the Caribbean has become the UK’s fastest-selling DVD of all time, says distributor Walt Disney.

Nearly 1.5 million copies of the Johnny Depp film have been sold in just one week - one in every four DVDs sold in the UK.

Demand has been so great that Disney says it has had to order another one million copies from its production facilities - in the Caribbean!

Last year’s biggest-selling DVD was another Disney film, Pixar’s The Incredibles, which sold 1.9 million copies in nine months.

The film company says that if demand for the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD is sustained, it expects to sell more than three million before Christmas.

Dead Man’s Chest set box office records during its cinema showing earlier this year, when it became the fastest film to reach the $300 million (£162m) total at the North American box office.

It is now the third-highest grossing film of all time, having taken more than $1.003 billion (£536m) at the global box office.

However, it still lags behind Lord of the Rings: Return Of The Kings, which took $1.1bn (£590m) and Titanic, which sold $1.8bn (£965m) of tickets.

A third Pirates film, At World’s End, is due to hit cinemas in May 2007.