by Jeff McKinney (follow me on Twitter)

This little tid-bit has nothing to do with video games but it’s fun so I figured that I would share it with everyone. If you have a FaceBook account, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the home page and click on the words “English (US)”. Then when the languages window pops up, select “English (Pirate)” for a swashbuckling new look.

Here is my page after Pirating:

Sphere: Related Content

Play Categories: Internet

By Jim Silver (Follow Jim on Twitter) 

If you go into a Toys “R” Us over the next few months, you will see a big change in their product offerings. In approximately 50% of their stores, Toys R Us will no longer carry apparel for kids 4 and older. Instead, they will have a special section called the “R Market”, stocking their shelves with “everything you need for a child”.

While not reducing the number of toys they will be carrying, they will now feature: Paper Goods for Birthdays, Kid Snacks and Breakfast Foods, Drinks (Milk, Bottled Water and Juicy Boxes), a larger assortment of Diapers, Wipes, and Formula, plus every day cleaning supplies and laundry detergent.

This is just a small sampling of some of the items you will now find at Toys R Us.

As a consumer, you have to like it. People love one stop shopping, as Wal-Mart and Target can attribute their great success to that. I hate it when I shop and you need that last item, but you’re forced to go to another store.

While many of the new offerings will be successful for Toys “R” Us, some probably won’t. But from a consumer’s point of view, I don’t care because this just makes shopping easier for me while I’m in a Toys “R” Us. If you’re heading to Toys “R” Us to buy a birthday gift, now you can pick up themed cups and plates for a party. One less stop! Or if your out of juice or milk, its there for you.

People are asking my opinion on this. Here’s my summation: as a parent, anything that will make my shopping life and experience easier and better, I’m all for!

Play Categories: Industry News, Opinions

by Jeff McKinney (Follow me on Twitter)

Great news for gamers or anyone who knows a gamer who might be celebrating his birthday in late May (hint, hint). Best Buy is currently holding a huge video game sale, with more than 100 game titles on sale for $9.99 a piece.

These aren’t the usual grab-bin duds but games that we really want to play including Rock Band, Guitar Hero 3, Soul Calibur 4, Disney Sing It, NFL Head Coach, and TNA Impact. You will find something for all game systems, except the PSP, and from all ratings (Everyone through Mature).

This sale ends on Saturday, May 2.

Play Categories: Deals, Video Games, gifts

By Jim Silver (Follow Jim on Twitter)

Spring is finally here! When the warm weather arrives, I know by the young kids playing on the block I live. It feels like the Daytona 500 with all of the Power Wheels vehicles driving on our street, except real racecar drivers are more conservative. Different types of balls everywhere, and bubbles everywhere. Lots of bubble solution on the ground; when will people learn to use No Spill Bumble Tumblers. And, if you haven’t checked out Sidewalk Crayons, it’s a must have! These crayons allow kids to draw on the driveways or streets, and it all washes away cleanly. It’s time for summer fun, and to get the kids outside playing.

Play Categories: Experiences, products

by Jeff McKinney

Earlier this month, I reported on a rumor that Microsoft was going to offer a new Xbox 360 bundle deal. Today, I can confirm that rumor. Starting next Month (May, 2009), the Xbox 360 Elite (top of the line model) will be sold with the two video games, Halo 3 and Fable 2 for the price of $400.

These are two of the most popular games among teens and adults currently available for Xbox so getting them free with the purchase of an Xbox is a great deal. You can preorder the bundle now at Amazon and look for this deal is stores mid-May.

Play Categories: Video Games

by Jeff McKinney (Follow me on Twitter)

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and TT Games are joining forces with the LEGO Group, Harmonix and MTV Games, to create Lego Rock Band. The game will combine two of the most popular gaming franchises (Rock Band and the Lego video games) to make a family friendly Rock Band game populated by Lego’s characters and building play-patterns.

Players will have the ability to literally build their band and head out on a musical journey to stardom as they jam along to popular songs. The music in the game has been chosen to appeal to both kids and adults to create a Rock Band game that the whole family can play together. So, for every kids’ band, such as Good Charlotte, there’s an adult-fav like Europe–can someone tell me what they sing?

Lego Rock Band will be in stores in time for the holidays and will be available for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Nintendo’s DS and Wii, and Sony’s PS3.

Play Categories: Video Games

By Jim Silver (Follow Jim on Twitter) 

This is National Turn off the TV Week that promotes turning off the television and finding other activities. In my house, you will not find the television turned off.  I liken this to a crash diet that you lose 10 lbs in a week but then return to your normal lifestyle and way of eating the following week.

I don’t believe in crash diets; I do believe in lifestyle changes. Whenever the weekend weather is nice and our kids should be outside, we have a house rule that the TV is off between the hours off 11am to 5 pm (except when the NY Giants are playing!). I think parents need to set rules and parameters for screen times allowing today’s technology to be incorporated in their kids lives.

Play Categories: Advice, Opinions

By Matt Nuccio

After a long New York winter it’s fantastic to finally go outside and enjoy some nice 70 degree sunshine for a change. I love spring; the weather is ideal and the bugs haven’t made their way out yet. It’s the best time to play outside with my boy. One of the biggest bonuses of having a toy designer for a father is that we receive many toy samples for evaluation.  I’ve been sitting on an arsenal of awesome outdoor toys for months waiting for spring to come.  All fall and winter I’ve been sitting and waiting to bring the surplus home and let my boy take a go at them. The excitement made me feel like a kid again. So with the awesome weather outside I brought out a top notch RC 4 x 4 (this baby is bigger than him), miniature Lacrosse sticks, Foam Rocket Launchers, Gator Golf and countless knick-knacks… you know what? … He came outside and went straight for a stick… go figure. 

Play Categories: Experiences, Opinions

By Christopher Byrne (Follow Chris on Twitter)

For a week now, the world has been buzzing about the performance of Susan Boyle on “Britain’s Got Talent.” If you haven’t seen it, and I can hardly believe anyone hasn’t, click here, it’s worth it. She has become an overnight video sensation, a staple on talk shows, the kind of instant star that our culture creates. With her beautiful performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables, she became a global topic of conversation, an inspiration to more than 26 million people on YouTube alone, and a topic of bloggers all over the world.

Me too.

And, of course, given the nature of the blogosphere, everyone has a perspective on it. We need the Susan Boyle’s not just for their talent, but to start culture-wide conversations. The Internet is unifying human experience the way that television did. On one level it speaks to the passing of the technology torch to a new, virtually instantaneous medium that links us all, giving masses of the world’s population the access to something in hours.

The conversation Boyle has inspired is bias and our surprise that someone who is appealing but not movie star gorgeous could touch us so deeply. The media, and the online world, are full of commentary on the shallowness of judging people by their appearance. But why should we? Ms. Boyle entered a singing contest, not a beauty contest. It’s the music that comes out of the package that matters. People in the music business know this. Auditions for most orchestras happen behind a screen so appearance is taken out of the consideration.

But here’s where I think this has relevance to our kids. How often do we hear, “She’s not pretty, but she has a wonderful voice.”  Or, “He’s not very attractive, but he’s an academic prodigy.”

Our hierarchy of values places appearance at the top of the list. To be fair, we see someone before we know anything else about them, and our reptile brains make pre-conscious decisions about what we see. We can’t help that, but we can go beyond that. Susan Boyle shows us that the visual is only one piece of information about a person, and when we make judgments on that level alone, we may miss something—a lot as it turns out.

Every child has heard, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” And yet we do.  It’s a natural human behavior, and we’re not going to change it. What we can do is encourage the children in our lives—and ourselves—to look deeper, to see what each person has to offer. Allowing children to evaluate a person no more deeply than an initial reaction to appearance does them a horrible disservice. It allows them to form opinions on the most superficial levels. When we do encourage kids to take the time to look into others more completely, we go a long way to fostering deeper appreciation of everyone in ours and our kids’ lives, and it makes such childhood disasters as bullying less possible. It’s hard to be mean or dismissive to someone you know and care about. (At the same time, we set the intellectual stage for looking into anything beyond just our superficial, emotional and pre-conscious response.)

In Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim places the artist Georges Seurat in a park in Paris with his mother. They are bemoaning that the world is changing, that it doesn’t look like it did. The mother laments that what is new isn’t “pretty.” Not to her, at least. Seurat replies. He sings:

“Pretty isn’t beautiful, mother.
Pretty is what changes.
What the eye arranges
Is what is beautiful.”

And there I think is what we can teach our children. What we now know about Susan Boyle from the myriad interviews we’ve now seen and begun to know—her incredible voice, her devotion to her family, her simple honest expression and her lovely, good humored sense of herself—makes her beautiful. Ironically, all the media exposure doesn’t really let us know her any more than a look at her appearance does. She becomes beautiful, when we see the wonderful things in her and long for them in ourselves. And, honestly, it hasn’t taken much to get there. Just a little bit of looking.

And that’s the thing: We have to look for beauty. Pretty is obvious and unavoidable. Standards of prettiness change with fashion and time.

As Helen Keller said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”

Beauty is both less easy to discern and calls on much more of us—and its perception demands a deeper investment from us. It helps us define who we are as individuals and bring us closer to our hearts and the people in our lives. Given the shared joy worldwide that Susan Boyle has inspired, don’t we want to teach our kids to do that? Don’t we want to that for ourselves?

Play Categories: Experiences, Internet, Opinions