Xbox 360 Fanboy

In today's edition of what's wrong with this picture, we present to you a "candid" photograph of a few Google Zurich employees taking some time off from their Googling stresses in the company's Guitar Hero III lounge. So, what's wrong with the picture? (begin obnoxiously long Jeopardy thinking music ...) Time's up! The problem with this candid photo is that it really isn't all that candid, it's actually very staged. The GHIII intensity seen in the Google workers' eyes is actually the result of playing the Xbox 360 dashboard. Yup, on the screen to the left you can see exactly what they see. No intense GHIII face-off, it's just the 360's dash. Staged photos FTL ...

In the recent acquisition of Adscape, Google picked up an interesting patent. It seems that Adscape was granted a patent in 2005 for a "system and method for interactive on-line gaming." While it's true that Xbox Live has been active since 2002, the patent was actually filed in September of that year, months before Xbox Live launched. The description is fairly vague, though: "The customer located equipment is connected to the gaming service provider through a broadband access network, and includes a gaming console." That could apply to almost any online service, depending on one's definition of "gaming console." Still, if there is one thing big business isn't shy about, it's patent lawsuits. Both Google and Microsoft have recently stepped up their efforts to enter the online gaming ad space. It will be interesting to see how things develop.

[Via Xbox-Scene]

Colin, at the humbly named Colin's Blog, got bored so he decided to make a Google Maps app for Media Center. Simply download the file here and place it into your media center folder on the Start menu.

The controls are simple: use ChUp/ChDn to control zooming in and out and use the arrow buttons to move around. You see where we're going with this now; using the 360's Media Center extender capabilities, you can sit on the couch and check out maps of the entire world, through your 360!

There is a web-based version here, which can be controlled with the arrow keys and the PgUp/PgDn buttons. Why you ask... what's the point? Because you can!

[Via Jake Luddington]