By Dean

or 10 years, IBM has been using its software developer site as a watering hole for those who use IBM’s tools. Now the site is becoming a social network. The company said that it is getting hip with the times. Its own surveys found that developers are using forums, blogs, wikis and online newsletter to talk to each other. Hence, IBM is adding social networking features like those its developers already use on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. It’s a milestone for social networks, just like it was a milestone for virtual worlds when IBM gave its blessing to Second...

Not everyone can run a profitable blog. Of the 133 million blogs identified by Technorati last September, the majority were labors of love, not real businesses. But says it has figured out a way to enable more hobbyist bloggers to make a living as paid writers. The company has started a service that functions as a publisher and distributor for writers, a kind of middleman that is the equivalent of an old-world book publisher. With Triond, bloggers no longer post to their own blogs. Rather, they submit stories to Triond’s network of 30 blogs and publishing partners. Those sites...

Will Wright, the legendary game designer behind the wildly popular franchises SimCity and The Sims, as well as the slightly less-successful Spore, is leaving video game giant to lead his own “entertainment think tank,” At the same time, EA is investing in Stupid Fun Club (Wright and EA now own equal percentages of the group) and will work with Wright in turning the Fun Club’s ideas into video games. (EA does have a strong Research Triangle connection. The company maintains a studio in Morrisville, N.C.) Last week at a conference in San Francisco, Wright said he believes that successful...

Hal Halpin is the founder and president of the Halpin formed the nonprofit association to be an advocate for the interests of gamers. The group’s priorities include: First Amendment rights, universal broadband, network neutrality, and consumer protection. The latter issue flared up when Electronic Arts tried to place limits on the number of times consumers could install the game Spore on computers. He recently testified at the Federal Trade Commission’s Town Hall meeting on digital rights management. We caught up with him last week at the Game Developers Conference to talk about how to protect consumers’ rights in relation...

Tim O’Reilly, head of O’Reilly Media, kicked off the in San Francisco on Wednesday with mixture of optimism about the web’s future and sober recognition of the weak economy. Under the theme “the power of less,” O’Reilly said that times are tough, but he said he is encouraged that the web is getting smarter and will increasingly be driven by sensors that deliver useful information. He noted, for instance, that a plant can now send you a Twitter message when it needs water. And a new web site can tell you what appliance you just turned on — and...

is creating a social game site, Hollywood Player, aimed at movie fans. The company has figured out a way to “game-ify” movies so that they’re more engaging for consumers. The company plans to launch its beta test in the second quarter and formally launch the game site in the third quarter. The company was founded by Bill Kuper and Dave Long, inventors of the popular movie trivia DVD game series, SceneIt? The series generated 25 editions and more than $500 million in sales for Screen Life, the predecessor company. In their new startup, Long and Kuper are essentially taking...