How 'Minecraft' became an Xbox blockbuster

(CNN) -- Do gamers prefer to build or destroy? A look at the combat-intensive themes of most top-selling console games would suggest the latter. But then along came "Minecraft" for Xbox. The long-established PC game that focused on building and crafting was released for the Xbox earlier this month -- and the results should shake the notion that gamers just want to kill something. In the first 24 hours of the May 9 release, the Minecraft Xbox 360 edition was downloaded more than 400,000 times, smashing the Xbox Arcade's first-day digital sales record and becoming the fastest selling Xbox Live Arcade title in history. Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft, tweeted that this console version of Minecraft was "profitable in an hour." Since release, Minecraft has been skyrocketing...

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Pulitzer winner to publish new story, one tweet at a time

(CNN) -- At first blush, it sounds like a torturous way to read an 8,500-word short story. But in a nod to the social media age, The New Yorker is offering up new fiction on Twitter in a series of 140-character bursts. "Black Box," a new story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan, was to begin appearing on the New Yorker Fiction Twitter account Thursday at 8 p.m. ET. A single line will be published every minute for the next hour, then from 8-9 p.m. on each of the following nine nights, through June 2. While waiting for new snippets might not sound like the most fun way to consume a story, lovers of the written word can take some solace in the fact that Egan, no stranger to nontraditional storytelling, wrote "Black Box" with Twitter in mind. Egan's 2010 novel, "A Visit From...

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IBM worries iPhone's Siri has loose lips

(WIRED) -- If you work for IBM, you can bring your iPhone to work, but forget about using the phone's voice-activated digital assistant. Siri isn't welcome on Big Blue's networks. The reason? Siri ships everything you say to her to a big data center in Maiden, North Carolina. And the story of what really happens to all of your Siri-launched searches, e-mail messages and inappropriate jokes is a bit of a black box. IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT's Technology Review this week that her company has banned Siri outright because, according to the magazine, "The company worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere." Apple's new...

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Inventor of the TV remote dies

(CNN) -- The inventor of the TV remote, Eugene Polley, died on Sunday at 96. After his death was announced on Tuesday, the Internet paused -- get it? -- to remember the man and the wireless television remote control, which ushered in the era of channel surfing and couch potatoes. Some tributes were humorous. Others were fawning. "Gush all you want about Facebook, Twitter and other recent tech innovations. I'd stack Polley and his TV remote against all of them," wrote David Lazarus at LATimes.com. "After all, which would you be more willing to give up -- Facebook or your remote? ... Thought so." Polley, who died of "natural causes," according to a news release, invented Zenith's "Flash-Matic" wireless remote control, which was introduced in 1955 and was heralded as the first of its...

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Microsoft launches a 'social search' network

(CNN) -- Does the Web have room for one more social network? Microsoft thinks so. With Facebook hogging the spotlight last week and Google working to stay in the game with Google+, Microsoft has quietly launched So.cl, which it describes as a social-search tool to share information and meet people with common interests. What it's not, Microsoft says, is a rival to Facebook. "So.cl is an experimental research project focused on the future of social experiences and learning, especially among younger people," Microsoft said Monday in an e-mail. The tool was launched late last year for students at a handful of colleges and universities. Last week, the company quietly made it available to anyone for a public beta test period. Among the features of So.cl (pronounced, of course, "social")...

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