Gaming

  World of Warcraft restaurant opens [WoW Insider] – A new restaurant has opened up with a Warcraft theme, from the decor to the food. The entrance is designed to look like the Dark Portal, and there’s a recreation of Tel’drassil in the center of the dining room.

  First look: Metallica gets ‘Guitar Hero’ treatment [USA Today] – The legendary hard rockers are providing the latest riff on Guitar Hero, with a game based on their music expected in stores during the first half of 2009 for Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3 and PS2. I used to scoff at this ‘fad’ until I learned The Guitar Hero franchise did around $1 billion in sales last year!

  ‘Rock Band 2′ To Hit Wii, PS2 Before Christmas [RockBand PR] – Gamers who don’t own a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 — and aren’t expecting one under the tree this year — may still be in for a treat.

Gadgets

Buy a BlackBerry and get John McCain’s number at no extra cost! [CSM] A Fox news affiliate in Washington DC bought John McCain’s BlackBerry at a ‘going out of business’ sale. The Blackberry had not been wiped it seems, so the Senator’s e-mail was still on it and some high profile phone numbers were in the contact list.

RadioShack To Offer $100 Netbook With AT&T [InformationWeek] -  The offering reflects an emerging trend among wireless providers to subsidize PCs and cell phones in return for customers signing service contracts. If you think it’s too good to be true, guess what?

Science

Flame retardants prove ineffective on fresh-cut Christmas trees [Science Blog] – This Christmas season, think twice about spending money on a commercial flame retardant for your Christmas tree. The good, old-fashioned method—keeping your tree in a container of fresh water—is probably all you need to keep your tree green and healthy.

 Why do women with dense breasts have more breast cancer? [ScientificaAmerican] – Doctors know that women who have dense breasts have as much as six times the risk of breast cancer as those who have less dense breasts. But they haven’t been quite sure why until now. Biopsies of healthy women showed differences in the cells of dense and non-dense tissue that may contribute to the development of tumors.

 Striking differences between brains of rich and poor [Science-A-Go-Go] – Measuring the brain activity of kids from a variety of backgrounds using an electroencephalograph revealed that the prefrontal cortex activity in the children from poor families resembled that of a stroke victim

Good News:

Netflix adopted Silverlight to act as their platform for streaming movies via the browser on Windows and Mac PCs. One of their VPs recently announced on the company blog that the Silverlight adoption has resulted in a better user experience with fewer technical problems to be solved – that’s the good news.

Bad News:

As the VP reports, the bad news is that the improved user experience has resulted in Netflix needing 50 fewer Tech Support employees…so Netflix is trimming the support staff in January.

Merry Frakking Christmas!

What an odd thing to announce in the company’s blog in the tone that it was given in (almost as a point of pride), I hope those 50 folks get an opportunity to stay on at the company in another capacity, that would be a better PR move than this announcement.

While the announcement is interesting yet odd, the comments responding to it are even better. Some of the anonymous comments seem to have more details on the layoffs and may be from insiders.

[found on Jim O'Neil's MSDN blog]