Today, May 19th, is the official launch for the much talked about Nintendo Wii Fit. It’s been a big success in Japan, but is American ready to leave the couch and embrace so called "exergaming"? I think the answer is both yes and no. The Nintendo Wii’s groundbreaking controllers pioneered a new wave of what I call “off-couch” gaming and the success of video games such as “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” has solidified that trend on other game consoles. But just how much fun the the Wii Fit?

There once was a time when the release date of an album was exciting. For our favorite artists we knew when the last album came out and when the next album was due. If you loved the artist you bought it. If you didn't you either bought the single or you listened to the album with your friends and then decided. As the price of records and then CDs increased year by year, spending 20 bucks for a CD became a purchase you needed to be sure of rather than a no brainer or impulse buy.

CES 2008 - What happens in Vegas this week won't stay here for too long. If you have been watching or reading any media at all this week, you have seen all the rampant coverage of everything from CES. Being here at the epicenter of the hype has been an interesting experience. Think of it as a cross between a museum exhibit of never before seen artwork, and walking past storefront display windows on 5th Avenue.

I've seen several posts circulating in the blogosphere postulating on the demise of Facebook given a drop in the sites traffic over August and September of this year. My immediate reaction was to turn to Hitwise data and provide a little more granularity to provide insight to the question of Facebook slowdown v. seasonality (my hypothesis on the recent drop in traffic).

Would you like to rule the web? Mark Frauenfelder’s new book will help you do exactly that. I thought I knew about most of the cool stuff on the web, but thirty pages into this book it was clear to me that I was deluding myself. Mark is the founding editor of BoingBoing.net and editor in chief of Make. His book is called Rule the Web. Here are ten things that I learned about by reading it. I am sure you will discover many useful and cool tips in this book. He’s got a blog to keep up to date too.

Standing out for your online news offering is rapidly becoming almost impossible for publishers.  After all, as we each get smarter about using RSS feeds to only get the content we want, the old "news portal" sites of several years ago are becoming less and less important. 

Want to be inspired? Check out this collection of videos about social entrepreneurs from around the world. It’s called the FRONTLINE/World series. Here’s a description:

I don't wear ties.  It's not so much a rule as it is a preferred statement - learned over being in the interactive industry for more than ten years.  Instead, I often wear button down shirts, which leads me to the most serious of all wardrobe questions that men around the world deal with on a nearly daily basis ... how many buttons do you leave unbuttoned? 

Business 2.0 has had another trend defining staff departure, following the departure of blogger Om Malik last year to launch his own media company. Now, the news is that Business 2.0 editor Owen Thomas will be the new editor of Valleywag, the tech gossip blog run by gossip monger Nick Denton (picture). What I find interesting about this news is how it reflects the evolution of magazine media — particularly the staffing model.

Paris Hilton entered jail on June 3 for violating her probation in a drunk-driving case. In true Paris fashion, she managed to make headlines even in jail, by going home for supposed medical reasons, re-entering jail, and talking to Barbara Walters about her newfound maturity. The gossip blogs, of course were flooded with commentary, rumors, and speculation about Paris' jail stay, as was the major news media. US traffic to TMZ and Hollywood Tuna was up 60% and 85% respectively, making this the third highest traffic week in celebrity news in the past year, after Anna Nicole Smith's death and Britney Spears' lack of wardrobe malfunctions.

Never underestimate Steve Jobs. After all of the hand-wringing over Apple’s iPhone being a closed platform, today Apple announced that the iPhone will indeed be open to third-party applications — ingeniously, through integration with Apple’s Safari web browser, which has just been released for Windows (which itself is a huge smack against Microsoft, which has really been taking it on the chin lately, e.g. Google Gears).

1. O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference has been “Mapping Central” for four years now. This year, it got 800 people. It is a great, unique event. But expect its focus to get increasingly broader as it tries to stay ahead of industry trends. For sure, the developers that have been its mainstay audience are sad to see it becoming more “corporate.” Even “the suits” say it isn’t as much fun (although time well spent).