The Seattle-Search.com Blog

Rabid video gamers could get some help keeping in touch with the outside world this weekend as Nintendo Co. launches an online news service through its popular Wii console.

The Wii News Channel, scheduled to debut Saturday, will primarily feature top news stories and photographs from the Associated Press.

Consoles with a broadband Internet connection and the Opera Web browser will be able to access the free news channel, which will offer AP news in multiple languages.
There were no immediate plans to sell advertising space, said Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing at Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

News will be displayed through an interactive map, which users can navigate with the Wii’s wireless controller, Kaplan said.

A recent blog entry from Microsoft’s Live Search announces, Use Live Search and We’ll Donate to Team Seattle and Ninemillion.org.

If you search at http://teamseattle.live.com/, Microsoft will donate $1 to Team Seattle’s Seattle’s Children’s Hospital fund. Each time you search at http://teamseattle.live.com/, Microsoft will donate $1, but it has to be at teamseattle.live.com.

In addition, if you search at http://click4thecause.live.com/, Microsoft will “contribute to ninemillion.org, a UN agency-led campaign providing education and sports programs for the nine million refugee youth around the world.” The specific amount of that contribution was not disclosed or immediately found.

To celebrate the upcoming consumer release of the Windows Vista(TM) operating system, Microsoft Corp. and AMD have launched “Vanishing Point,” billed as the largest puzzle game in the world and featuring a grand prize that is simply out of this world.

Each week, twelve puzzles are posted online. “Vanishing Point” requires contestants to gather clues in order to complete parts of a puzzle. The clues are being revealed at real-world events including a takeover of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino fountains and cryptic skywriting messages. Such sights are driving people to find out more, with hopes of winning the grand prize: a trip to space, courtesy of Rocketplane Limited.

This week, more clues will be unveiled at some of the most well-known structures in the world. Projections appearing on the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the National Gallery in London, the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto and the Victoria Theater in Singapore will advance the intrigue in this mysterious game.

The action hinges on the true identity of the mysterious Microsoft Puzzle Master. While the Puzzle Master is keeping many details highly confidential, Microsoft has hinted that more offline events could happen later this month.

Online conversations about “Vanishing Point” can be found at http://www.technorati.com/search/vanishing+point+game. More information, official rules and coverage of the offline events are available at http://vanishingpointgame.com/.

Exclusive Festival Coverage and Video Clips Posted Daily From Park City

Seattle’s RealNetworks launched today its film and entertainment news site Film.com, featuring film previews, movie trailers, DVD releases, and coverage of television programming and celebrity news. Real is introducing the new Film.com at Sundance, where reporters for the Web site will post daily exclusive video reports and commentary from the film festival. Read the rest of this entry »

FindByClick.com is the place to find 10,418 Starbucks locations in the US, Canada and Hong Kong and 3,046 Tim Hortons locations in Canada, US and Afghanistan (yes, Afghanistan). They have completely overhauled the user interface (it looks fantastic) and have added heaps more locations. They have links (on this page - look at the very bottom) to copies of the Tim Hortons and Starbucks databases used in this mashup, in case someone wants to create their own mashup! Be sure to also find the 4 Easter Eggs on this site.. and post a comment when you find them!

Wetpaint is out to make blogging easier by allowing groups to collaborate. Call it a wiki-meets-blog mashup. Accel Partners said Tuesday it liked the idea, backing the Seattle start-up in a second round of funding worth $9.5 million.

The Wetpaint Collab-a-blog (our words, not theirs) addresses the fundamental problem with the idea of blogging - that of fatigue.  One person, acting alone, can get weary of posting every day, but many hands can make the work lighter.

Joining Accel in the round were existing investors Trinity Ventures and Frazier Technology Ventures. The latest round brings the company’s total funding to $14.8 million, and will be used to further develop the company’s software tools.

Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, a general partner at Accel Partners has joined Wetpaint’s board.  Wetpaint has signed up 150,000 community sites ranging from church and gaming groups to civil air patrol outfits. It’s also caught the attention of prominent brands including AOL, major broadcast networks like ABC and CBS, as well as American Express Publishing, and T-Mobile.

Competitors include small start-ups like Berkeley-based PersonalBee and titans like Google and Yahoo.

Top Seattle online shop AQuantive Inc. now has a presence in the Japanese market, having acquired a 19% share of content firm Digital Palette Inc., whose majority owner is Dentsu Inc. Beginning Feb. 1, the firm will be known as Dentsu/Avenue A/Razorfish, with Dentsu executive Reo Watanabe as its CEO.

On January 8th, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Disney chief Robert A. Iger introduced the new Disney.com portal which has taken more than a year to redesign. After criticism of the Disney.com site that deemed it to be “amateurish and hard to navigate”, the New York Times reports that site improvements include better navigation, video and interactive features, as well as a sleek appearance.

Iger made the upgrade of Disney.com a top priority and has been pushing for Disney’s entrance into the digital realm of media. Still, Disney may face a challenge within this revamping, as experts and analysts have posed a question of who will actually run the Internet properties.

Other Disney sites include ESPN.com, ABC.com and Disney.com, which is run by the Disney Internet Group and a strong Seattle presence. The Disney Internet Group also looks after the online business within Disney’s film, television and theme park, but the conflict is rumored to rest with executives wanting more control over their respective online creations.

Media analyst Harold L. Vogel, states in the NYT piece, “It’s inevitable that each division will be in the Internet space, I don’t detect that Disney has resolved this. Someone is going to have to coordinate and, at the same time, not quash the creative side. I’m sure there will be political fights over this constantly. It will happen at every media company.” In 2005, Iger notably disbanded the strategic planning unit at Disney, allowing individual units more power.