Please, ladies, do not allow your (straight) boyfriends to subscribe to the UrbanDaddy newsletter, for it will only unearth whatever latent homosexual tendencies they may have been keeping submerged successfully for years. To wit, today's installment, about new men's fashion line Loden Dager (we think that's Swedish for big cock), started by a couple Marc Jacobs refugees:

But where the Loden Dager boys really step it up is in the subtle touches that only you'll notice. The Cassidy peacoat has double-sided Italian wool stitching and the cotton button downs have added screen printings on the inner yolk. And since someone has to watch over your wallet, check out the inner lining of the Taylor jean pockets, which are reinforced with paisley-printed fabrics to prevent unwanted tearing.

Don't say we didn't warn you.

Lod Up [UrbanDaddy]

The video piece for Absentstar's "Half Life" was created by NYC artist Jonathan Rosen (www.jrosen.org) who's illustration was recently featured in the NY Times special section on Sleep. "Sea Trials," Absentstar's debut album produced by Dan Wilson (www.myspace.com/danwilson) will be released next Spring on Canvasback Music (www.canvasbackmusic.com)

350,000 StarCraft and Diablo 2 users banned for using third-party hacks.
Blizzard has administered a mass-suspension of 350,000 StarCraft and Diablo 2 accounts from its system after detecting the users had been using "third-party hacks" on the Battle.net service.

Click here to read the full article

The Locoroco team have added a page at Sony careers' section where they announce they are looking for new members to work on the new PSP game.

If you look at the central processor in Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360 you will see something that can trace its ancestry right back to the Intel 8086 of 1978. Over its evolution this has forced endless fudges and compromises. An analogy might be trying to build a working supertanker on the plans of a model rowing boat. And the 360 itself owes its architecture to the IBM PC of 1981 and so carries with it the accommodations that this architecture imposes. These factors, ultimately, must impinge on the working of the console.

Compare that to Sony (SNE), who were able to design the processor and the console it is in with a clean sheet of paper. The Cell processor, designed jointly with IBM and Toshiba at a cost of $400 million is the state of the art in processor dessign. It is scalable, highly flexible and excellent at distributed processing.

So it is little surprise that the PS3 now holds the Guiness world record for the most powerful distributed computing network. Or that an astrophysicist has replaced a supercomputer with eight PS3s. This is one very special and very powerful machine and when game programmers eventually work out how to get the best from it we are going to see some spectacular results.

But there has been a price to pay. Whilst the 360 was cheap to develop and cheap to make, the PS3 has cost a fortune. Sony has absorbed some of this cost in losses and passed some of it on to end users in the form of higher prices, which has hit sales. Sony has bet its computer entertainment division and maybe the whole company on this device.

PlayStation 3 consoles were selling at about a 50 percent mark-up on their retail price on Saturday evening in Japan, about 12 hours after launch.

The Hundred Years' War, the brutal, tragic conflict between England and France over claims to the French throne, is a subject greatly lauded and retold in fiction, film and (perhaps more recently) videogames. KOEI has entered the ranks of those that attempt to capture and depict these exhausting, blood-soaked times with Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War, its newest title developed by Omega Force. While it suffers from a number of serious problems that many other KOEI games face, Bladestorm is surprisingly enjoyable. Were it not for the technical and presentation-oriented flaws that plague it, this could be one of the best KOEI games IGN has seen in a while, delivering a refreshingly different experience than the Dynasty Warriors series, which has been intensely stale as of late.

Overall score: 6.5/10

This kid manages to fall masterfully.

Editor's Note: "In a world where the big conglomerates and industries tend to roll over the little guy, it was really nice to see the government of Nigeria put the kibosh on Microsoft's planned takeover of the Mandriva/Classmate PC deal in that country..."

Here is a behind-the-scenes look at Beowulf and voice actor Ray Winstone!

According to IGN's GamerMetrics, the current top ten most-anticipated titles are as follows (ranked by percentages of mindshare among IGN's audience):

1. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) 5.00%
2. WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2008 (PS3) 3.11%
3. Assassin's Creed (XB360) 2.63%
4. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) 2.54%
5. Mass Effect (XB360) 2.33%
6. WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2008 (XB360) 1.99%
7 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) 1.91%
8. Assassin's Creed (PS3) 1.86%
9. Rock Band (XB360) 1.70%
10. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) 1.29%
11. Crysis (PC) 1.24%
12. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Wii) 1.13%

In addition, GamerMetrics analyzed IGN's traffics of Assassin's Creed for different SKUs (see the image below) and forecast that the game will sell 1 million units for Xbox 360 and 350,000 units for PS3 by the end of the year.

Filed under: Industry, Programming, Web

Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick are responsible for creating some of my favorite TV shows: thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again. They've influenced my writing and even my desire to write for TV probably more than anyone else in Hollywood. They've been absent from the TV landscape for a couple of years, and I've definitely missed them.

Luckily, Herskovitz and Zwick are back with a brand new series, called quarterlife. The series, however, will not currently be available on ABC or any other network. Herskovitz and Zwick are bringing this new series to life on the web. And in a recent L.A. Times item, Herskovitz explains why they've left traditional television behind.

Herskovitz believes "the business of television has become an exclusive club, closed to new members," which has some producers "turning to the internet to have a voice."

Continue reading Thirtysomething co-creator explains reasons for leaving TV

 

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Under discussion are the current "casual gamers" trend in Sony and Microsoft's marketing plans. What does this mean for the industry going forward? Will either publisher tap into Nintendo's stranglehold on the console industry? All these questions and plenty more are answered:

IGN Games Editorial Manager, Jeremy Dunham sits down with video vixen, Jessica Chobot, PlayStation Editor Greg Miller, and News and Features Editor Daemon Hatfield.

It's hard to deny the appeal of a World War II game. You have the historical backdrop with all of its massive battles; Nazis, the ideal evildoers whom you can kill with reckless abandon, are your enemy; and, being a world war, there're plenty of diverse locations to see. With such a convincing trifecta, It's no wonder we have so many of them and why they sell so well.

Bet you didn't see this one coming.