The owls (or rather pigeons) are coming! As if Facebook and Twitter aren't enough, we've also got accounts for chat messengers: Google, Yahoo, and MSN.If you're a brew developer, publisher tipster, fan, anti-fan or whatever, here's a faster, faster way to communicate with the QJ Team. So add and chat us up, ayt? :P Help us fill our buddy list.

 

Well, if it isn't April Fools Day, it's certainly a time for strange news. As reported on digg.com">Digg and first broken by Squid News, it seems that Richard "Dampe" Denton, the creator of video game Ocarina of Time 2D, may not actually be dead.

The post on Squid News outlines a rather plausible account of fact-checking the events behind Dampe's death. Furthermore, it seems his accounts on MSN and MySpace have remained active, which does indicate that someone's using his accounts, at the very least.

Unfortunately, due to the timing of this news, we're still calling this a rumor for now. It could just be a very bad joke, but it also could be an attempt of the developer to get away from the pressures of having to work on OoT2D. In either case, we're hoping more evidence points to his being alive than dead, just so everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.

Finally someone has got round to making a Wii-browser-specified website to allow you to use AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) on your Wii browser. There's already been MessengerFX to allow MSN messenger users to contact friends for free online using their Wii, and some of you may have noticed that AimOnPsp works on the Wii browser too, but of course this has been designed for the PSP and therefore doesn't have the full functionality of a Wii-specified AIM client.

So the guys behind AimOnPsp decided to make WiiAim. For the Wii, by users of the Wii. WiiAim will come with a completely new customized interface designed to work well within the Wii browser. The first fully-compatible Wii browser version of AIM is on the way, and since the teaser site is already up the real thing can't be far away! We'll tell you when it's up.

Thinking of giving people a shout out using your Wii? Have a gander at MessengerFX. It's a web-based messenger program that is compatible with the Wii's web browser.

Since it's web-based, there are no downloads involved. All you need to use MessengerFX is an MSN account. Just point your Wii browsers to MessengerFX.com and you can sign up from there. If you feel like using tabs to browse the website, check out this previous QJ article on how you can do so.

Anybody else know of other good sites accessible via the Wii browser? Leave a comment below.

Get out of here even if for just one moment you thought Microsoft wouldn't say anything regarding console launches from rival companies. Of course they would say something, and what better way to do it than with a Microsoft-owned MSN article. While the article didn't mention specifics, the X360 came out as the victor during the earlier stages of the war.

"Retailers had a great four-day run and pretty much everything is gone. Sony dropped the ball and Nintendo didn't do that much better," the MSN article mentioned.The article then continued, "Retailers and analysts across North America confirm that the hottest selling gaming console this past weekend was the Xbox 360."

It seems that the article was based from the reports that there have been an apparent lack of Wii and PS3 stocks because of very high demands. "Microsoft was the big winner. They had lots of systems and they had them priced right with game bundles that gamers were interested in," the article concluded.

To be quite frank, claims without details and from-the-same-corporation do not sound and smell quite good. If it turned out to be true, then kudos to Microsoft and its one year old next-gen console. But until Nintendo and Sony come up with official statements or until the Holiday is over (and statistics will start to pour), it is better to keep our opinions to ourselves...for now.

Nintendo's revealed their slogan for their marketing campaign in Europe (or at least the UK). What is it? Well apparently, "Wii Move You" is the message they want to get across. What exactly they mean by that isn't clear just yet, but they're spending a  larger amount of money on advertising this time around with a £10M-£11M (US$19 -US$20M)  budget set aside for it.

A large portion of their campaign will be done online at popular websites. Major search engines like Lycos, Yahoo!, and MSN will be filled with Wii. They especially want to ramp it up during the launch week so that everybody knows  that the Wii is out. They're going to be capitalizing on the PS3 delay.

Whether or not this same campaign will be used in North America is unknown. Canada has had the "Too Much Fun" campaign for a long time. The new campaign might or might not be "Wii Move You." We'll see soon enough! If we don't, then I guess that means their campaign would have failed, right?