For gamers, it seems that when it comes to rocking out, money is no object.

When Activision, publisher of the hit "Guitar Hero" franchise, announced in April that it would start selling additional songs for the game through the online service for Microsoft's Xbox 360, the initial excitement of fans quickly turned to distress at the pricing: a three-song pack cost $6.25. Moreover, the nine tracks on offer were ones from the first "Guitar Hero", which wasn't available on the Xbox 360. Fans who crunched the math complained that at those prices, it would cost nearly $100 to buy all the songs Activision is able to sell for $40 in the version for Sony's PlayStation 2. 

But it seems that many would-be guitar gods grudgingly opened their wallets anyway. Activision, which reported its quarterly financials on Thursday, said it had seen more than 200,000 "Guitar Hero" downloads in the seven weeks the content has been available on Xbox Live. That would indicate a fairly high portion of players are downloading tracks. May sales figures aren't out yet, but Activision sold 197,000 copies of "Guitar Hero 2" for the Xbox 360 in April.

Michael Griffith, chief of Activision publishing, said on a conference call:

"Downloadable content for 'Guitar Hero' has been strong. We continue to get more experience overall with downloadable content and micro-transactions.

It continues to be a small part of the revenue model, but it is growing. We did $10 million, we should double that to $20 million this year, and 'Guitar Hero' will be a big part of that."

Griffith and other executives waxed optimistic about the future of the franchise, citing its success as a reason behind a more optimistic revenue forecast. The next installments of the game include a 30-song collection of 1980s tunes for the PS2 and "Guitar Hero 3" hitting the 360, PS3 and Nintendo Wii in time for the holiday season. Griffith said Activision had signed up multiple manufacturers to make sure there were enough guitar controllers to go around, and that there would be a "full selection of downloadable content".

"We feel like we're just getting started. Consumers seem to have an insatiable appetite for more songs, whether that's through additional games or downloadable content."

Asked about expected competition from Electronic Arts, which plans a game called "Rock Band" featuring drums, a microphone, guitar and bass later this year, Griffith said "Guitar Hero" would still thrive due to its brand, support from retailers, rock-solid supply chain and new innovations.

If you're driving in the Seattle area, don't be surprised if an ordinary-looking 2000 Audi S4 blows by you on the highway. It's just Dan Greenawalt, game director for "Forza Motorsport 2", the new Xbox 360 racing game from Microsoft.

"Forza 2", which finally hit shelves earlier this week after a 6-month delay, is Microsoft's answer to Sony's "Gran Turismo", widely considered the grand-daddy of super-realistic racing games that aim to simulate every nuance of motorsports and how different cars actually handle on the road.

Greenawalt spoke with Reuters about the game, the competition, and his own souped-up ride. Here is a condensed account:

Tell me a little about the game and what is new compared with the original.
"The ultimate goal of this game was to try and infect the world with the same sort of car passion we have on the team. Even though we are a sim, the sim part is almost a means to an end, to really express the glory of cars and of car culture. 

We really embraced Web 2.0. You can customize cars, paint jobs ... we empower creative individuals. In 'Forza', you could put 600 layers on your car and we thought that was more than you'd ever need. It turns out that people were building the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, things like that. In version two, we have 4,000 layers. Within the first day we started seeing these amazing paint jobs."

Talk about the cars in the game.
"There are 312 cars, more than 300 cars. That's everything from your entry-level Civic, which speaks to certain people, all the way up to supercars like the Ferrari Enzo. 
     
We increased the resolution of the physics to 360 frames per second. It's something most people wouldn't even think about, they mostly think graphics at 30 or 60 frames. But at 200 miles per hour, in one-60th of second, you can actually cover 10 meters, so bumps on the road and stuff, none of that will register." 

"Forza" is known for its super-realistic gameplay. Are you worried that will turn off potential players?
"I look at games, and there's not a lot of learning going on. Rather than dumb down the game, you raise up the player, you help players understand what's going on. I used to teach before I did game design. People learn better when they can get their hands dirty, and 'Forza' allows you to do that, it's just a big sandbox of motorsport. 

Whatever you learn in 'Forza', applies in the world. So if you learn something about turbos, you can go to a party and talk about it with your friends and you're not talking out your ass."
     
Do you see "Forza" as a "Gran Turismo" killer?
"I got into this genre because of 'Gran Turismo', it sparked that passion in me. It's not my goal to make a 'Gran Turismo'-beater or 'Gran Turismo' on the Xbox. I don't want to make someone else's game. We've really embraced Web 2.0. Online was 5 years ago, today it's about online communities. I think both franchises do wonderful things in different ways."

What do you drive? What's in your real-life garage?
"I have a 2000 Audi S4, with a V6, bi-turbo, it's got catback exhaust, new intake manifolds, fuel rails, a lot of stuff. It still looks stock, that was important to me, that it look stock. It produces 480 (foot-pounds of) torque, 475 horsepower. People say I should buy a new car, but I'd just do the same thing to it."

See? We told you that the Huffington Post was about to enlist some new talent.

Former CNN anchor Willow Bay has signed on as an editor-at-large at as part of a recent expansion at the news-and-blogs site run by political commentator and one-time California gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington.

Bay, who is married to Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger, will oversee the site's new lifestyle section, called Living Now, and will "help shape the site's recent content expansion beyond its noted politics coverage, on the business, media and entertainment pages," according to a statement.

Bay, a former model, currently hosts and produces a feature series called "Spotlight 25" on Lifetime Television, a cable network partly owned by Disney.

Remember Winamp? RealJukebox? Musicmatch? No? Chances are you own an iPod.

Before the dawn of iTunes (companion to those 100 million iPods), the race to manage desktop digital music libraries was fought by the companies that made software programs, along with Microsoft's media player, which is built-in to most PCs.

RealNetworks on Thursday took a shot at getting its buzz back with the launch of the latest RealPlayer, which has one game-changing feature: it records streaming video. You know, YouTube. (Yes! Now I can watch that Mentos/Diet Coke video offline!)

But the software might toss Real into the heat of the copyright infringement battle. Favorite "Lord of The Rings" moments? Click. Save it for later. Old "Cosby Show" clips? Collect then from YouTube and let Real burn them to a DVD for your "personal use."

Forrester analyst James McQuivey says the pressure to deal with RealPlayer's ability to easily record streaming video isn't on Real -- it's on Google, YouTube's parent.

"It is all the more reason for Google to step up to the plate and start enacting brutally strict filtering of its YouTube property to make sure that the media companies don't take a year to watch this and see whether or not it's going to be good for them. If you can make it good for the media companies from day one or at least day two then you are going to see a flood of content out there which is good for everybody."

"(But) If you have major player like Google-YouTube who take no responsibility for what their web site is doing, it actually slows down the content owners, slows down the viewer, which then slows down YouTube. They are harming themselves by not advocating more aggressively on behalf of the media companies."

I never planned it this way, but this blog, which is supposed to be one-stop shopping for sarcasm and cynicism, is also rapidly becoming a regular source for pictures and video of lovable animals. Judging from the traffic we get for such content, readers seem to accept the apparent contradiction.

Today's dose of cute comes in the form of Thumbelina, a dwarf miniature horse who is raising money for children's charities. Renae Bunney reports:

In case you're unaware, voting is going on for a new list of seven wonders of the world, since most of the old seven wonders no longer exist. There are 21 finalists, so it's too late to nominate Pamela Anderson or your neighborhood Ben & Jerry's.

Just about anybody can vote, even if they don't bother to look at the itty-bitty pictures on the official Website for an informed decision about whether the Taj Mahal is more wonderful than the Sydney Opera House. After all, who is better placed to choose the new wonders than millions of folks who may never have seen any of them?

Anyway, here's what's happening. China is so worried that its Great Wall will not be named one of the magnificent seven, it has actually launched a campaign to get Chinese people to vote for it. If you compare their population of 1.3 billion people with that of Easter Island, population 2,000, you can do the math and figure the chances we'll be seeing those Moai statues among the final seven. Here's the story:

More Oddly Enough Blog

A view of "Moai" statues in Ahu Akivi, in a 2003 photo. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Does Mark Cuban's budding love affair with professional football mean he's cooled on buying the Cubs?

The owner of the Dallas Mavericks pro basketball team has been mentioned as a possible contender for Chicago's iconic, loveable baseball losers, but plans to buy a team in the United Football League, the new competitor to the NFL. (See this New York Times story that broke the news.)

The UFL, which also is getting backing from Hambrecht + Co. investment bank founder Bill Hambrecht and Google executive Tim Armstrong, will start with eight teams and play on Friday nights.

The league will include teams in such NFL-less cities as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Mexico City, which last year hosted the most heavily attended regular-season game in NFL history (Plans for a UK game are in the works as well).

Cuban, who has expressed interest in the past in buying the Cubs, stands ready to gamble on the UFL succeeding where the World Football League, the United States Football League and the XFL failed. Even the Canadian Football League failed when it tried to establish a presence in the United States.

Cuban could still be in the running for the Cubs, which Tribune has put on the block, but Major League Baseball tends to favor local owners, which may be a reason why Cuban is looking to the gridiron.

Side note: See this other New York Times article -- which is a story by one reporter at the paper talking about how his colleague got the exclusive report... if you can follow all that.

There's an interesting article in the latest issue of American Journalism Review about the resurgence of advertising on the front page of U.S. newspapers. While it may not seem like a big deal, plenty of editors and reporters see it as an incursion on sacred territory.

But they're dealing with it for the most part. Any advertising is good advertising when sales are falling and budget cuts loom over newsrooms. In fact, the situation is downright grim in the newspaper business, as you have no doubt heard over and over again.

What caught our attention -- via the Romenesko journalism blog -- were the comments of John Kimball, the marketing chief of the Newspaper Association of America. Here's what he told AJR contributor Donna Shaw:

"That just really, really drives me nuts, because that is far from reality ... To think that we are somehow in this death spiral, I just don't understand that," he says. He can see why that view prevails in newsrooms that have endured repeated cuts and reduced circulation, "but that's not an industry that's fighting for its life that's one that's going through transition."

It just happens to be a transition that involves billion-dollar leveraged buyouts, layoffs, buyouts and dire threats about the destruction of editorial integrity and an independent press. So let's just all chill out, OK?

Don't you just hate those end of season matches where both teams having nothing to play for? It is even worse if your side are scrapping for their lives yet your relegation rivals have an easy game against a team whose season is over.

The end of Serie A this year was a classic example. Five teams were in danger of falling into the final relegation place on the last day and unfortunately for strugglers Chievo and Catania, they had to play each other.

Meanwhile Reggina, Parma and Siena had home games against Champions League-weary Milan, Empoli and Lazio who all had nothing to play for. Reggina, Parma and Siena all won and Chievo were condemned to Serie B after losing to Catania. Chievo have moaned that Carlo Ancelotti picked a second string side against Reggina while they were unhappy with Lazio's casual defending for Siena's 85th minute winner which kept them up.

But is there a way to avoid such occurrences? Some bright spark wrote to Gazzetta dello Sport this week with an idea to combat the problem: the points gained in the last five games of a season will count towards your total in the next season, meaning every team must try their hardest to win.

Although no one in official circles has mentioned such a scheme, I suspect there'd be plenty of supporters around the globe who would like to see it introduced. What do you think?

Mark Meadows is a Reuters sports correspondent based in Milan 

Beatles fans for years have searched for deeper meaning in Beatles songs, from "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" to "Glass Onion" and "She Said She Said."

We see no reason not to continue that tradition, but in a slightly different way: What are people trying to tell us when they quote Beatles songs?

Exhibit 1: Apple Chief Exec Steve Jobs at The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference quoted from the song "Two of Us" off the "Let It Be" album. The line he quoted goes like this on the album: "You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead." He was referring to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, with whom Jobs shared the stage as part of a rare joint appearance.

But never mind the singular nature of that event. We're trying to figure out if this is Jobs' biggest hint yet that iTunes is getting ready to carry the Beatles catalog. After all, Apple sealed its deal for the rest of the EMI catalog, and Paul McCartney finally got with the digital program earlier this month.

What is Steve Jobs telling us?

On a separate note, we thought it was too bad that Jobs didn't quote the other good line from that song:

Two of us riding nowhere,
Spending someones
Hard-earned pay.