| Close to Home Dolls gone wild: When toys get smarmy
The girls have gone wild, bemoans last week's Newsweek. Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Nicole and their ilk are running around, possibly sans underwear, setting a very, very bad example for all the little worshipful girls of America. This may be so, but I'll tell you, I am much, much more worried about dolls. Launched to the market in mid-2001 by MGA Entertainment, Bratz dolls have conquered 40 percent of the fashion doll market (move over Barbie!) and will bring in no less than $3 billion in sales this year. And while celebrity girls dress skimpy, it is clear Bratz are dolls-gone-hooker. And while Paris and Lindsay may be on kids' screens and iPods, the dolls are in their bedrooms, where I fear they may be making a deep and lasting impression. Bratz are equal-opportunity skanks.
Major League Gaming and GameStop Team With Cause to Bring Video ...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Injured Soldiers recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center enjoyed an evening of video game competition yesterday at a gaming tournament organized by Cause, a nonprofit organization that provides comfort items to and organizes recreation events for wounded Soldiers. GameStop, the world's largest videogame retailer, donated 10 of the highly coveted Nintendo Wiis to Cause during the event and Major League Gaming (MLG), the world's first professional video game league, provided technical assistance and sent personnel and their top professional gamers to help Cause run the tournament. "Recreation and entertainment are vital to the recovery process, and the healthy competition and the social aspects of videogaming are very beneficial to these young men and women," said Barbara Lau, executive director of Cause.
Poker Eon launches Spanish version
(PRESS RELEASE) -- Online poker room Poker Eon keeps on growing with a Spanish version of the website that is already available in English and Swedish. Welcoming players from all over the world, Poker Eon provides all the required info, poker school game guides, and promotions in one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. The new Spanish pages will be soon joined by additional fully localized versions of the poker website. Poker Eon has recently moved to a new network to accommodate all players and has launched a new schedule featuring guaranteed events and exciting freeroll that can be seen on PokerEon.com at the tournament schedule. $1000 Free rolls are offered three times a week: Every Tuesday and Thursday there's a free roll at 9:00 PM Eastern US Time, to suit North and South American players.
Platform Shoes Forum and YMCA Alliance of Maine announce Zoey's ...
The YMCA Alliance of Maine will be participating in a Zoey's Room Sign-Up Marathon, in conjunction with Platform Shoes Forum (PSF) beginning March 1, 2007. The game is on until the end of the month and part of this March madness is a $500 cash prize to the YMCA that signs up the most girls during the month. Zoey's Room was launched in 2002 with the endorsement of former Maine Governor Angus King. Zoey's Room (www.ZoeysRoom.com) is a national online community for 10-14 year-old girls, encouraging their creativity through science, technology, engineering and math. Fewer than a dozen Science, Technology, Math, Engineering (STEM) websites are currently available online for tween girls right now. Zoey's Room is also one of the safest online communities available for girls. Each girl who registers to participate must have her identity verified twice, requiring permission from both a parent and a secondary verification from a community partner, such as her local Y.
Shell is Made to Move as 2007 Nextel Cup Season Gets Underway
HOUSTON, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Just in time for the 2007 Nextel Cup Season and to support a new relationship, Shell Oil Company announces an integrated marketing platform aimed at raising its brand profile with NASCAR fans on and off the track. NASCAR's 75 million fans are sure to take notice that Shell has made its way back into the world of NASCAR through a relationship with one of the best teams in motorsports, Richard Childress Racing (RCR), and fan favorite, Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 Shell- Pennzoil car. "I'm very excited to be working with Shell and Pennzoil because they both have a very long and successful history in motorsports," said Harvick. "I've been blown away by the commitment they've shown to me and RCR. I think their passion is evident in all that they're doing to support this relationship from what you see in the Shell locations, at track and internally with their employees.
Virtual-Reality Video Game Helps Link Depression To Specific Brain ...
Science Daily Scientists are using a virtual-reality, three-dimensional video game that challenges spatial memory as a new tool for assessing the link between depression and the hippocampus, the brain's memory hub. Spatial memory is the memory of how things are oriented in space and how to get to them. Researchers found that depressed people performed poorly on the video game compared with nondepressed people, suggesting that their hippocampi were not working properly. .
New On DVD this week
STRANGER THAN FICTION: Will Ferrell plays an IRS agent who discovers he's an endangered character in a novel being written by Emma Thompson. With Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah. Extras: deleted scenes, making-of featurettes, on-set moments. A GOOD YEAR: Russell Crowe plays a hard-charging London banker who's transformed when he inherits a vineyard in Provence in this romantic comedy. Extras: commentary, making-of featurette. HEART OF THE GAME: A locally produced documentary that traces the seven-year climb of the Roosevelt High School girl's basketball team to the state championship and its star player's fight for eligibility after she gets pregnant. Extras: commentary, making-of doc, deleted scenes, follow-up interviews. THE RETURN: Sarah Michelle Gellar's horror flick finds her as a sales rep who is triply stalked in a Texas town by an abusive ex-boyfriend, a filthy hillbilly and a mysterious, sexy stranger.
Wii Can Work It Out
Video games are actually important. For those outside the gaming subculture, this may be hard to believe, or, frankly, even to consider. But it has been a little over three months since the advent of the newest generation of video game consoles, and what has happened to this multi-billion dollar industry because of it marks one of the most interesting and exciting journeys of business and product development in recent times. With Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii joining Microsoft's Xbox 360 on GameStop and Best Buy shelves all over the world, the video game industry has propelled itself into an era of innovation and accessibility unlike any it has seen before. Press coverage has increased, sales have increased, and technology keeps getting better. So what's so great about this recent growth of industry? And, more importantly, why does it matter to people both inside and outside its traditional demographic?
The Nintendo Wii, with its unique, interactive motion-control gameplay, is perhaps the best exemplar of what the new generation of video games has to offer.
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