"Idol" Mario's "Gallery" Opening
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So apparently quitting American Idol can be right up there   with winning. Sometimes.
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LOS ANGELES  - Emerging artists are  getting a new route for breaking through with the debut of  Who's Next? -- a showcase and competition initiative by  Yahoo!'s music destination Launch.
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Gabe: We're playing Pokemon (the TCG) Tuesday the 12th at the Comic Stop. We got off schedule because of a Magic tournament last week but we're back at the regular time starting tomorrow. We'll start the matches as close to 6pm as possible. New players are always welcome.The latest copy of EGM arrived at the office today. Apparently their adologists have finally broken the single cover barrier. It used to be that magazines only had one cover to sell but now EGM comes with a second cover pasted over the real cover like some kind of shell. It says "your favorite magazine starts inside" up at the top of this new cover cover. Unless you consider ads to be content this statement isn't very accurate. I guess "your favorite magazine starts in eleven pages" doesn't have the same ring to it.-Gabe out
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Tokyo has played host to an exhibition showcasing the latest attractions for gamers.
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Gabe: There is some really nice HD footage from PAX available over at gametrailers.com now. They have a pretty slick behind the scenes look at how the show comes together as well as an interview with Gaybe and Tykoh from Pennies Arcadez!
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Media Groove launches Chipuya Town, a virtual world accessible on any Flash-enabled keitai. Users create a custom avatar, then step into a cute-ified version of Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district that's accurate right down to the advertising overload.
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Site dedicated to Nintendo's new console is reportedly the first in a series of brand-oriented moves for the web giant. In Monkey Bites.
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Artist creates a hat with LEDs on it that play sequenced animations: scenes from Space Invaders and Pac-Man, as well as bouncing hearts and the alphabet.
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The first major U.S. exhibition of  Rubens drawings opened here on Friday, offering what organizers  said was a truer picture of the master's work than many of his  more famous paintings.
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Microspft's new version, Pac-Man Championship Edition,'will have the first new mazes in 26 years. From Crave, CNET's gadgets blog.
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Tycho:  I'm aware of Spore, but it's not a game I look around for in an active mode.  Here is a preview of the game, for example, but I haven't read it so I don't know if it's good or not.  I'm especially disinclined to read previews in particular, because I think it's a game that is likely to preview well.  You aren't likely get past the novelty stage in am Official Press context - it's going to be pure discovery from beginning to end, wall to wall tendrils and eye stalks, ginning up hobbling quintapeds whose journey to the mailbox is difficult, if not impossible.  The incredible outpourings of support for the game are themselves incredible to me, but what they've done is try to create a product whose potential is as raw as possible.  We seem to value that ethereal quantity differently than most.
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The Brooklyn Museum has set out all, or a great many, of its jaw-dropping objects or artworks for our delectation in its new open-storage display.
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Italian fashion house Valentino has taken  a first step into China with the opening of a boutique at a  Beijing hotel, to be followed by an own-brand store in May, the  company said in a statement.
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Gabe: The Penny Arcade store has been updated with some new items. First we've got a brand new zip up hoodie.    It's got a slick PA logo on the front and Tycho's speech from the comic strip "I Hope You Like Text" on the back. We've been getting requests for a zip up like this for a long time. I don't want to sound like a used car salesman but my guess is that these will not last long.     We've also added a new sticker pack. This pack includes Tycho, Gabe, Annarchy, Charles, The Merch, The Fleshreaper, The Fruit Fucker and two bumper stickers.  The sticker pack is $10 but we've got a special deal going right now. If you spend $50 in the store we'll toss in the sticker pack for free.    Also, don't forget that you can now purchase prints of just about all our comic strips. If you're looking for strips with specific characters or games, Pennypacker is a great way to search our archives. I've had a few people ask me what my favorites are or which ones I think would make for especially nice prints. Tycho and I are each working on a list of our favorites but off the top of my head I'd say "The Hawk And The Hare" series would look pretty classy all framed up and hung on someone's wall.     -Gabe out
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At San Francisco shindig, Mac community gets first look at book-size budget PC and low-end music player.  Photos: Scenes from Macworld
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Walt Disney World will host its own  version of the hit TV show "American Idol" starring park  visitors at a new attraction set to open later this year, the  Walt Disney Co said on Thursday.
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Tycho:  I should have all the science lined up by the end of the week, ready to stuff into the piano black lozenge I've obtained to celebrate my return to personal computing.  Wish me luck; I've never before had the opportunity to fry four processors at once.       I know things.  Specifically, things that may be of interest to you.  For example, I know if playing Eye of Judgment online is an onerous as it might seem.  It is not!  I cannot express my relief.    Well, let's try.  In my last, vast expose, I broke down a card's unique language and expressed some misgivings about online play - ultimately just accepting it, because what they're trying to do is so weird that there's no prior art.  Essentially, you "register" your thirty card deck with the system itself, where it is stored and named for future use.  This process is extremely straightforward:  it is simply a matter of you laying your cards anywhere on the mat, a few at a time.  It will probably take two minutes if you really keep on it.  Then, you jump online, choose what nation you want to play for, and track down a partner.  At this point, the game will "draw" you your five card hand by showing you the card art onscreen.  You get one Mulligan (or redraw), but if you like your hand you move into the game proper.  We laid out our deck by element, face up, and this smoothed the turn to turn process considerably.      In the build we have, and I hope this is changed for release, it shows you these cards in a single file line without their name or text - just the art.  Once you got familiar with these images, slightly modified from their card format, it's pretty quick - but the names should be displayed on this screen.  You can use the controller to pull up the names, but let's be serious - at no point should the player be forced to interact with a mundane controller once the game is underway.     You should know that the game really wants a well-lit environment.  You don't need a flare gun or anything, but we didn't have what we needed before and certain squares would slow down the game flow with partial reads that would only resolve after several attempts and minute card adjustments.  I should state that here in the office, we removed all the overhead lights, installing a single track of illumination that we point at the ceiling, where lights used to be.  We tend to transform any place we live into a cave.  So, our scenario might be somewhat atypical.    Also, I know if playing Rock Band with all the instruments off of a USB hub is onerous.  You will be happy to know that it is not - we played said instruments spread out on an actual stage, and found it more than satifactory.  The reality is that the drum kit already needs its own wire, so it isn't as though the future had actually arrived anyway.  Plus, the mic isn't wireless either. This makes the contrived brouhaha over wired guitars a fairly transparent traffic ploy.    This is a matter quite apart from Microsoft's reticence to play ball with unique, third party hardware.  And when I say "play ball," I'm taking about the shakedown operation they've got going licensing their wireless technology, which either makes products for their system more expensive or (in the salient case of Rock Band) results in them bundling a wired controller for the same price as a wireless one on a competitor's system.  This is the last holiday they can get away with this sort of thing...  right?