Today we held the DivX Halloween party, a much anticipated annual event where the food and beer flows freely and our teams wardrobe looks slightly less out of place than it does the other 364 days of the year. Amidst the chaos of roaming children, pets, and the costume competition we ran into an unexpected visitor downstairs at reception..

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The Sims 3 is off to an astounding start. The PC sequel has sold 1.4 million copies in only its first week on store shelves; Further cementing the popular people simulation series as one to be reckoned with.

Those numbers mark the best-selling PC launch in EA’s history, if you can believe it. This is especially good news for the publisher given the fact that the game had appeared on piracy websites two weeks before its release. Regardless interest remained high in the game and its strong sales numbers reflect that. The sales numbers include both the PC and Mac SKUs.

Additionally EA announced that over 7 million downloadable pieces of player-created content have been recorded for the launch week. Also an incredibly high number.

“With more than a dozen press awards, strong reviewer scores and positive feedback from The Sims community, we are thrilled with the success of The Sims 3 launch and the early sales indicate that we have another hit on our hands,” said EA Play Label head Rod Humble.

“The volume of items created with The Sims 3 and downloaded online is a testament to how passionate The Sims players are. It’s their world now, we can’t wait to see everything players create and share.”

According to EA, the iPhone and iPod Touch version of The Sims 3 have seen similar success, reaching the number one spot in the Top Paid App list in the US within 18 hours.

“The game’s sales success along with its strong critical acclaim demonstrates that The Sims 3 mobile experience is a worldwide hit with our customers,” said EA Mobile VP of worldwide publishing Adam Sussman.

Last week mixi, the largest social network in Japan, become an OpenID Provider for all of their fifteen-million plus users; one in five Japanese web users are on mixi. While they are another large OpenID Provider �?? which some argue is a bad thing �?? they are the first large OpenID Provider to also support exchanging profile information. While early adopters using OpenID Providers such as MyOpenID.com, MyVidoop.com, and VeriSign�??s PIP have had the ability to exchange profile information for well over a year with the Simple Registration Extension, this is an important step forward with larger OpenID Providers seeing the value in exchanging profile information as well. This means that when a mixi user logs in to a site using their OpenID, the site is able to request access to things from their profile like their name.

Earlier today, ReadWriteWeb wrote more about how Mixi Brings Sophisticated OpenID to Millions of Japanese Users asking why Facebook isn�??t using OpenID for their Connect APIs and providing a good overview of why mixi adopting OpenID with Simple Registration is helping to push the envelope:

The moral of the story, though, is that another major social network now supports OpenID and is pushing the envelope with the features included. They aren�??t acting as a relying party yet, allowing users to login with OpenID from other networks, but the functionality of Mixi user profiles has now increased dramatically thanks to open standards.

Along with mixi�??s launch last week, Six Apart released a mixi commenting plugin for Movable Type. (Disclosure: I work for Six Apart) This plugin allows mixi users to comment on Movable Type powered blogs and have their name from their profile show up next to their comment.

All in all, great news for OpenID coming out of Japan!

Last week mixi, the largest social network in Japan, become an OpenID Provider for all of their fifteen-million plus users; one in five Japanese web users are on mixi. While they are another large OpenID Provider �?? which some argue is a bad thing �?? they are the first large OpenID Provider to also support exchanging profile information. While early adopters using OpenID Providers such as MyOpenID.com, MyVidoop.com, and VeriSign�??s PIP have had the ability to exchange profile information for well over a year with the Simple Registration Extension, this is an important step forward with larger OpenID Providers seeing the value in exchanging profile information as well. This means that when a mixi user logs in to a site using their OpenID, the site is able to request access to things from their profile like their name.

Earlier today, ReadWriteWeb wrote more about how Mixi Brings Sophisticated OpenID to Millions of Japanese Users asking why Facebook isn�??t using OpenID for their Connect APIs and providing a good overview of why mixi adopting OpenID with Simple Registration is helping to push the envelope:

The moral of the story, though, is that another major social network now supports OpenID and is pushing the envelope with the features included. They aren�??t acting as a relying party yet, allowing users to login with OpenID from other networks, but the functionality of Mixi user profiles has now increased dramatically thanks to open standards.

Along with mixi�??s launch last week, Six Apart released a mixi commenting plugin for Movable Type. (Disclosure: I work for Six Apart) This plugin allows mixi users to comment on Movable Type powered blogs and have their name from their profile show up next to their comment.

All in all, great news for OpenID coming out of Japan!

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Adium is a fast and free instant messaging client which supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Yahoo! Japan, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, and Lotus Sametime. Adium supports

13674usethis Version: 1.3.3 License: GPL
Tags: chat im msn jabber aim icq

Download | Comments | Screenshot | Homepage | Changelog

Adium is a fast and free instant messaging client which supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Yahoo! Japan, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, and Lotus Sametime. Adium supports

13674usethis Version: 1.3.3 License: GPL
Tags: chat im msn jabber aim icq

Download | Comments | Screenshot | Homepage | Changelog

Adium is a fast and free instant messaging client which supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Yahoo! Japan, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, and Lotus Sametime. Adium supports

13674usethis Version: 1.3.3 License: GPL
Tags: chat im msn jabber aim icq

This could well be my WebThing Of The Week: Ships, a ship simulator based on the Google Earth browser plugin. That normally wouldn’t seem too exciting - not least because it’s a crude proof-of-concept rather than any kind of workable game - but it’s got an airship in it! And I can totally fly around the world in real-time in an airship. At last, my dreams are partially realised.

Posted by rossignol. | 44 comments | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: planet in action, ships
This article is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. If you're reading it on any other website, they're stealing it from us without permission.

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Play wma content on your mac. Works as a Quicktime plugin.

9495usethis Version: 2.2.1.7b License: Freeware

Download | Comments | Screenshot | Homepage | Changelog

Play wma content on your mac. Works as a Quicktime plugin.

9495usethis Version: 2.2.1.7b License: Freeware

Download | Comments | Screenshot | Homepage | Changelog

Play wma content on your mac. Works as a Quicktime plugin.

9495usethis Version: 2.2.1.7b License: Freeware