According to research from NPD and hat tip to Tech.co.uk, the Xbox 360 console sells the most games per console. I’m sure this has been greatly helped along by Halo 3 which set the single day sales record of $170 million.

Now if only they would make consoles which actually stand the test of time, we just had our fifth Xbox 360 go bad (”unreadable discs”), not covered under the new extended warranty. Your hardware sucks, Microsoft, but it still doesn’t matter (gamer crack, I tell you). Fortunately the Elite pictured above is still running ok, BTW, and my gamertag is XboxTDavid in case anybody reading wants to add me. I’m no challenge at most games any more but enjoy when there’s time to play.

One of the best games for the Wii already comes with the system, Wii Sports, which must be hurting the game to console ratio for Nintendo. Don’t feel too badly for them as they are quickly catching up with Microsoft and have a number of promising titles coming including Super Mario Galaxy (yes!!) and for the overweight and underexercised gamer population: Wii Fit.

Meanwhile, the PS3 library is showing some promise with online titles like Warhawk and the creative card game Eye of Judgment (drats, still haven’t beaten the computer on ‘Normal’ difficulty). The Playstation 3 still has the most games in full 1080p, but that hasn’t tipped the scales. Maybe the release of a cheaper PS3 will help.

The Blu-ray Spider-man package (all three movies) could be worth buying, although I’m not sure how many have or will buy a PS3 as a Blu-ray player. The Wii doesn’t have this as a selling point and it hasn’t mattered. Anecdotal: CNET users are looking more forward to Zune 2 than the Wii (#2) or PS3 (#3). The Xbox 360 didn’t make the top 20 but guess what did? Yup, Halo 3 at #14. On the handheld side, the PSP ranked #11.

I’m still holding to the real console war will take place in holiday season 2008. It’s impressive and at the same time a bit sad that Nintendo still can’t keep up with demand for the Wii console. As long as demand is there, it won’t be long before there are more Wiis in homes than Xbox 360 or PS3. Nintendo will be able to meet demand by next holiday season.

It’s encouraging to see the Wii sell so well without the emphasis on superior graphics. Maybe we’ll get back to simpler but more fun games to play. Games that don’t cost more than making some Hollywood movies. As a longtime gamer I could care less about beautiful cinematic video unless it’s somehow interactive.

Congratulations to all the people around the world who have contributed to make the Sony PS3 Folding@home project the most powerful distributed computing network in the world! Back in March, I pointed out that the PS3 may have been selling poorly but was doing very well with distributed computing.

The Sony Press release has more details:

The record was initially set on September 16, 2007 as Folding@home surpassed one petaflop(*1), a computing milestone that has never been reached before by a distributed computing network. In addition to this, the collective efforts of our users have enabled PS3 alone to reach the petaflops mark on September 23, 2007.

The record is a testament to the widespread participation of PS3 users from around the world—currently more than 670,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the Folding@home network, bringing the overall computing power of the program to more than a petaflop.

Another exclamation mark for petaflop! So what is all this computing power being used for? This enables scientists to make greater progress studying diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and some forms of cancer. Great cause, I need to join one of these teams and let our PS3 do more folding@home work.

Any readers with PS3 not involved with the Folding@home project?

On Halloween 2007 the Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) juggernaut has pushed past $700 for the first time ($703.93 as of this writing). Tomorrow they will be launching an OpenSocial API at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial which they hope will provide developers the ability to create applications that will run on multiple social networks.

Except for Facebook and MySpace. Facebook employs their own markup language while Google will use Javascript and HTML, similar to what they did with Google gadgets. If you know Javascript and HTML, you’ll only need to learn what API calls to make. It’s a juicy proposal and one that has my mind clicking and whirring with the possibilities. Looking forward to tomorrow to see and start playing around with the OPenSocial API.

As for the stock price? When will Google slow down? I’m not going to even try to guess, but remain curious what others think. The movement from $600-$700 was fast. Yahoo (YHOO) and Apple (AAPL), two other stocks I own, are also doing well. Gotta love how Q4 has begun and hopefully will forget the misery of Q3.

Some thoughts on the $240 million investment deal in Facebook that Microsoft is reportedly making. They will get to load Facebook down with Adcenter ads or, perhaps, sell items via micropayment or — and this is probably the most obvious reason: blocking another web pooh point oh deal going to Google. This sentiment is shared by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

How about sending virtual beer to your friends? You do know that this costs $real money$ on Facebook, right?

I’ll get back to virtual gifts in a moment.

Google still has the advantage, hence the score in the title (original title was changed before publishing), but this does give Microsoft a win. It puts them on the board. That’s an important difference in the cool crowds. If Facebook tanks, Microsoft can write off whatever they didn’t make back in an advertising deal. Google on the other hand could be locked out of one platform I’m sure they very much wanted to get into.

I’m speculating here, so please keep that in mind, but this also gives Microsoft a golden opportunity to spread their micropayment network. They could also build a new MMO version of the Xbox Live Dashboard to counter Sony HOME. Don’t laugh. I know Sony is in third place, but HOME + some good games could put the PS3 back on the map.

Some people enjoy buying virtual stuff via micropayments on Facebook (back to the virtual beer) and who has the network already setup to do that? Microsoft. Zune about to go social … thru Facebook? There are many, many possibilities here.

The good ship Google has sprung a few more leaks today.

A fascinating move by Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) that appears punitive for blog networks excessively crosslinking (B5Media and AOL/Weblogs) as well as some of the bloggers and, get this, mainstream media sites, who sell text links and don’t use rel=nofollow or JavaScript. Some are speculating that this is also being extended to paid reviews and paid to blog sites.

Just check out a couple of well-known sites that had their page rank downgraded:

(AOL/WIN) Engadget - PR7 to PR5
(AOL/WIN) Joystiq - PR6 to PR4
(AOL/WIN) AutoBlog - PR6 to PR4
(B5) Problogger - PR6 to PR4
Search Engine Journal - PR7 to PR4

And I’m sure you’ve heard of these sites:

Seattle Times - PR6 to PR4
Forbes - PR7 to PR5
Washington Times - PR6 to PR4

Notes: daily blog tips has more. Andy Beard who founded the NoNofollow group at Bumpzee has a nice write-up on the topic with a few more listed. Andy’s Page Rank was slashed awhile back and is a PayPerPost blogger.

Curious if former frontman of Weblogs, Inc, Jason Calacanis, has weighed in on this situation? Nothing on his blog as of this writing, nothing in his Twitter stream. He’s not on Skype at the moment or I’d ping him there. I’d like to know how he feels about this since he was a direct beneficiary in the sale to AOL of network crosslinking. Check the comments below. Maybe he’ll leave an answer there.

Acquistion by AOL not the case for the B5Media network, they have to weather the storm. Except for Duncan Riley who managed to get through a post at his TechCrunch writing gig entitled “Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms” without mentioning he used to be one of the partners at B5Media and departed somewhat suddenly.

Lately B5Media CEO Jeremy Wright’s personal blog (PR4 now, don’t know what it was formerly) is filled with daily unrelated Twitter updates (offtopic: lame, can’t people just follow these on Twitter, Jeremy?), no word on the B5Media blog about this Google situation either. B5Media company line is silence? I doubt that. When I interviewed Jeremy about B5Media last year it struck me that they had some good things planned over there. Is this a noteworthy setback?

Darren Rowse puzzledly addresses the issue in the comments section of his Problogger blog:

At b5 we link to other blogs in a channel in our sidebars - so that people can find more content on similar topics - it’s about giving readers more content that they can use and showing them what else we do. If it helps with SEO I guess I could see why they might disallow the power of such links - but to penalize for them is a little bizarre as they are a legit part of our business of showing people where they can read more content that we produce.

Is Darren legitimately confused or naive? Nepotism links on blog networks are essentially crosslink spam in the eyes of search engines. These links have been touted as a benefit for buildinig and running a blog network. It’s how crappy blogs like the ironically titled spam blog at Weblogs, Inc made the original CNET top 100 list, but were later replaced when CNET readers complained.

Fewer, higher quality blogs in blog network seems like better strategy
The Gawker blog network (Lifehacker, Gawker, Valleywag and others) seems to have a philosophy of fewer, higher quality blogs make a better overall network, but even they’ve had to shutter some blogs (Sploid, Screenhead) in the past.

B5Media is boasting over 290 blogs and 10 million unique visitors a month. Gawker does a lot more traffic than that with a dozen or so blogs. AOL has more traffic too, but with a number of blogs somewhere in the middle. Different blog network strategies.

Is it right for Google to punish sites that sell links passing PR?
I’m going to do something unusual in this post. Instead of giving you my opinion on this question, I’m going to request yours and carefully digest the answers. Long time readers know I’m not a big fan of blog networks and how writers work is treated (undervalued like most of the publishing industry), but this issue goes beyond blog networks.

I’m going to talk to other webmasters and bloggers in further depth on the issue. Let’s discuss this in the comments below, on Twitter, in your blogs, your place or mine, whatever.

Obviously these PR penalties are having no financial impact on Google. And some people are saying that the Page Rank isn’t that important any longer. Several of the sites having their PR reduced are fans of Google and follow their every move. Hmm, indeed!

Transformers on HD-DVD set a single day next generation DVD record selling 100,000 copies on the first day and selling another 90,000 the first week. Paramount reports that 20% of the purchasers connected to online content through the Transformers HD-DVD as I outlined doing myself a couple days ago.

Transformers which was an HD DVD exclusive didn’t beat the first week of the movie 300 which sold more than 250,000 copies (166,000 in Blu-Ray and 83,333 HD-DVD). And when compared to DVD of Transformers the numbers aren’t even close points out reghardware.co.uk:

The Transformers DVD sold 4.5m copies on its first day: almost 24 times as many as the number of HD DVDs sold.

Encouraging to see a positive sales response, especially the geek factor playing a part in the web-enhanced features. Hollywood should be spending more time and energy developing more web interactive movies. Gaming studios should be more involved. Maybe someday we’ll be able to play something like Dragon’s Lair in the movie theater, perhaps with alternate viewer screen glasses or HUD (Heads Up Display) like in Second Life. The theater experience could give us so more for the extra $dollars$.

Checking over Digital Leisure I see the HD DVD version of Dragon’s Lair is now available to match the Blu-Ray version. Both are $49.95. I’m going to wait for these prices to come down. Would like to see Dragon’s Lair II and Space Ace in HD too. Looks like they are on the way.

Kept next to my desk is a $2 bill which to date I’ve always thought of as kind of a novelty.

If the U.S dollar value continues to slide then this $2 bill might move back into fashion someday — seriously. Washington economic consultant Charles McMillion calculates 20.5% of the US dollar’s value has decreased since October 2002. McMillion has his eye on the Australian dollar being possibly the next to pass the US dollar if the situation doesn’t change.

See the downward spiral of the US Dollar using the Yahoo currency converter.

via gulfnews.com:

During that five year period, the dollar is down 43.9 per cent against the euro, down 61.8 per cent against the Canadian dollar, down 10.2 per cent against the Chinese yuan, down 5.6 per cent against the Japanese yen, down 30.6 per cent against the British pound, and up 5.8 per cent against the Mexican peso.

Wow, we’re only gaining ground on the Mexican peso under the Bush administration? Now there’s something to hang your hat on, President Bush. When will somebody in the White House realize we can’t afford the Iraq war? Forget about revenge, nation rebuilding or whatever idealistic middle east fantasies we have, let’s pull the troops out of there ASAP and work on restoring financial stability on our own soil.

The heavily advertised *$0 stock trading site Zecco has added something new in beta that allows sharing investment data across members they’re calling Zeccoshare.

It’s open and getting involved requires free registration or, if you’re already trading on Zecco, activating your profile.

In the announcement email sent to all community members, they are claiming to have 70,000 members. This is an optional service that those with Zecco accounts must activate their profiles to use. If you choose to elect to share trading (pictured below), which again is completely optional, the actual dollar amounts of your trades are not disclosed, only what investments you’re buying and selling and the percentage to your overall Zecco portfolio are shared.

Also, the Motley Fool CAPS rating is next to each stock. You can check out what my Zeccoshare profile looks like:

My wife and I have already been sharing the Google spreadsheet with the dollar amounts and additional details as part of our friendly stock competition we started a couple months ago. For those new, here’s what we’re doing: we started with $500 USD and are making trades through Zecco and tracking the trades using Google spreadsheets so others can follow along in near real time. Understanding this history, I don’t mind sharing this information at Zecco too, as third party verified data showing I’m actually making the trades indicated in the Google spreadsheet I’m making add credibility. Or perhaps, when your overall portfolio is -11.10% like mine currently is, take some away.

My wife who is roundly kicking my butt in the competition, with a current portfolio +20.72% as of his writing, doesn’t seem interested in Zeccoshare yet. But when I first mentioned Zeccoshare to her it was three o’clock in the morning. Later today or in the coming days when she’s more awake she might be more receptive to activating her profile. Her decision, of course.

*As of January 1, 2007, the Zecco free trades will be going away unless one or both of us add more money to our accounts, or get on an extraordinary streak. The minimum account balance for 10 free trades a month at Zecco will be changed to $2,500 USD for existing members and is already there for new members.

Now if only Zecco would add some sort of API to let us get to this shared data programmatically … (hint, hint).

Patrick Gavin leader of the crew behind ReviewMe, Text-Link-Ads and more at MediaWhiz, just sent me a private invite to their first ever cost per click (CPC) program Shoppingads. I signed up for use on our group website and we’re checking it out. Early thoughts: the UI is similar to Google Adsense code generator and uses JavaScript for the ads. You heard that right, it’s compliant with the Google God’s advertising wishes.

The signup form requires the basic information and right now the only payment option is by PayPal. Next month Patrick indicated “other payment options” will be available. Minimum amount earned before payout is $50 which is more/different than how they do ReviewMe and Text-Link-Ads.

The easy to use generator allows ad creatives in the following sizes:

728×90 leaderboard
468×60 standard banner
336×280
300×250
250×250
234×60 half banner
180×150
160×600
125×125
120×600 skyscraper
120×240 vertical banner

You can choose the keywords for the ad or use the “Automatic Popular Keywords” feature. We’re trying that to start. Seems like the ads are sort of targeted. These ads aren’t contextually generated so you can run them alongside Google Adsense.

Shoppingads offers an automatic webmaster referral affiliate program too, but none of the links in this post are using these links. Nice feature having each ad that displays carries a link that will pass along webmaster referrals as well, so if some webmaster visits your site that is displaying ads and signs up through that you’ll earn 5% of all revenue generated by that webmaster for six months. 30 day cookie on all referrals.

Consider this a preview, not a review, since I have no idea how well Shoppingads will perform. You can see the ads running in the sidebar at the group blog I participate in: VTOReality.com.

If you’d like in to Shoppingads private beta since I don’t have any invites, just drop Patrick Gavin a line. If you’re already in one of the other programs he runs you might have an invite code waiting there automatically like we did. BTW, I checked with him directly before publishing this and those of you with access are allowed to blog/Twitter about this, despite the text of the email that says: “Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited.”

In 1998 a university professor from North Carolina created a site that focused on providing exhaustive descriptions of how stuff works.

Nine years later, Discovery, the folks behind Animal Planet and Discovery Channel are paying $250 million for all those juicy Google search results.

Acquiring HowStuffWorks will give Discovery the online firepower it has been lacking, Mr. Zaslav says. He wants to make the site, which draws about 3.8 million unique U.S. users a month, according to comScore Media Metrix, the foundation of Discovery’s digital push. HowStuffWorks says it has 11 million users globally.

A search query at this blog for ‘howstuffworks.com’ results in two links, the most recent link in February on how beer goggles work (pictured) and the first link in August 2003 showing how mood rings work. HowStuffWorks is a good site with solid content. It’s nice to see a payday for a site with good content.

IP Democracy digs deeper into Discovery’s plans, which will focus on video specifically:

HowStuffWorks is planning to embed videos from Discovery’s various channels as well as serve as an oulet for the display of new short-form videos that could very well turn into long-form series for Discovery’s cable networks if they prove to be popular or sticky enough.

I think the relationship will work better using HowStuffWorks content on the TV shows than trying to focus on video content from the TV show. Here’s an even better idea: take user submitted how stuff works like content and put it on TV — now that would be good for both. At the least Discovery needs to make it easy to embed in websites a la YouTube rather than forcing people to view only at HowStuffWorks. The ironic thing is Google and other search engines still don’t provide good search of the content inside videos.

Mathew Ingram points out that Discovery also purchased Treehugger for $10 million. The $250 million is Discovery’s biggest purchase to date.