Xbox Live Avatars to rock out in Guitar Hero 5

I like where Microsoft is taking their Avatars. They're not just limited to your profile to put on a face and look all cool 24/7. We've seen them go for a Joy Ride, we've even seen them playing golf. This time, Microsoft and Activision have joined hands to integrate the Xbox 360 avatars into Guitar Hero 5 (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii), where we will be seeing ordinary avatars living out their rockstar dreams.

If you download the special Guitar Hero 5 trailer from the Xbox Live Marketplace, you'll see the bigwigs Don Mattrick, Shane Kim, Phil Spencer, and Marc Whitten all rocking out with their avatars. Activision has made the annoucement, and this is for real.

Major Nelson should be in touch with the Guitar Hero 5 producer today, and he'll let us all know how that goes via his weekly podcast. Avatars will be rocking out by September 1sy, 2009.

Microsoft Deal with Yahoo! Looks To Next Generation

Microsoft (MSFT) has talked about using it Bing search engine to search the internet “real time” to pick up Twitter messages and other information and data that rockets across the web nano-second by nano-second.

In theory , mappingthe web as it evolves may be nearly as valuable as indexing old pages which is what search engines have done for years.

Wall St. has assumed that Yahoo! (YHOO) would stop devoting resource to search technology now that it will use Bing for its search functions. Yahoo! is making clear that is not true, even as the ink on its deal with Microsoft is still in the process of drying.

According toReuters, Yahoo’s Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs, said that the company could potentially “mine” messages from Twitter, the popular microblogging service, to offer Web surfers search results beyond those offered by Microsoft’s Bing.

Yahoo! may have decided that it does not want to leave its entire fate in the search business to its ten-year alliance with Redmond. The portal company has to contend with the fact that market leader Google (GOOG) will continue to improve its product. It may even be able to increase its 65% market share in the US. Google still has the opportunity to add features to its core search features and those improvements could bring it even more customers.

Yahoo!’s concern now must be that even if it can bring new search features to market, they may not be ones that the market cares about.

There is no clear indication that consumers or business care about what goes on across the internet “real time”. Twitter messages, texting, figures that are transmitted from point-to-point without analysis may be so much “space junk” circling the world of the valuable data the Google delivers with its basic product. Real time search may produce results so raw and disorganized that no one can use them.

Yahoo! may have some success delivering the next big thing in search engine results but it may not be anything people care about.
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