You may have noticed the word "Display" magically appeared in the center of our title bar sometime yesterday. That isn't a mistake, turns out our magical technicians have rolled out a new feature on Kotaku.

If you hover over the word it will let you sort the entire site by a number of pre-determined tags. Alas, Fahey's Bulging Biceps isn't one of them. But here's what you can sort by:

All: The classic viewing showing all of our artistry in full effect.
Top: Only the stories we mark as being the big ones of the day. These are the babies that pop up at the top of the page.
Popular: The most popular stories of the day, as tracked by page views.
Review: All of our game reviews.
DS: Just stories about the DS.
PC: Just stories about the PC.
PS3: Just stories about the PS3.
PSP: Just stories about the PSP.
Xbox 360: Just stories about the Xbox 360.
Wii: Just stories about the Wii.

Pretty nifty huh?

It's disheartening to think that it has come to this, that unless we're talking about the relatively safe topics of consoles and their direct by-products there can't be intelligent discourse on Kotaku. And I don't understand how we've arrived here.

Commenting on this site has a short and interesting history. It wasn't allowed for more than a year and when it did come, after much pleading on my part, it came in the form of an invitation. You were invited to come into the site. This wasn't because we didn't want dissenters on the site, it was because we didn't want trolls here, inside with us. Because whether you believe me or not, commenters are as much a part of making Kotaku, what it is, as it's writers are, perhaps even more a part of that process.

Over time we opened the door more, allowing anyone to apply to be a commenter, something that I hoped would bring a wealth of new and interesting opinion into the site. But what it seems to have done is created not a chorus of thought and reason, but a mob mentality, a desire to post first, to speak loudest and to rarely read through the entire article or think about the topic at hand. It's created a cacophony of stupidity that drowns out our many well-reasoned readers and dilutes their intelligent discourse.

Race is a big issue. It's an issue that's right up there with religion and politics. People get angry, I get that, and of course you have the right to get angry. But what you don't have the right to do is to turn off your brain and turn up your mouth.

If you disagree with someone then disagree, but don't resort to calling names, don't use caps, don't generalize. Dissent with smart, thoughtful comments, create a dialog or go somewhere else, because frankly, you're embarrassing me.

No more will we waste your time by detailing the movements of game company CEOs, revealing early the secrets of consoles and developers alike, instead we will work to push Game Caking to the frosty heights it so richly deserves.

Expect in the weeks, months, years to come detailed secrets on the people behind the cakes you know and love, tips on how to prepare your own Game Cakes and nuanced features on the inner machinations of some of bakings greatest.

As always we will strive to stay in front of the pack, covering the game cake industry as both an outsider. Some might argue that all Game Cakes need is a cold glass of milk, but we at Kaketaku knows it needs some hard-nosed journalism.... too.

Kaketaku

You may have already noticed the stars that have begun appearing next to posts by certain commenters. This is a way for readers to quickly scan the comments on a page and stop at comments that are likely to be of high quality. Commenters get star status when they have a large number of followers. We can also reward especially elucidating commenters with a gold star. It's so elementary school, I love it!

Now we need to come out with the opposite of a star. Oh right we already have that, it's called the ban hammer.

If you're interested in giving up your weekends for a chance to run things at Kotaku Towers when almost no other writers are around, then look no further. We're looking for a solid writer who also has excellent news judgment and a love of the video game bizarre.

If you're genuinely interested, have the time, the patience and the skill, then drop me an email with a run down of your experience, some writing samples and a convincing argument why I should hire you. Keep in mind that I'll probably be getting a lot of these and I'm extraordinarily picky, so you better make it good.

:)

Keeping up for some can be quite a drag. So we created the day and night notes. Not only does this allow Ash and I to communicate with one another, but it gives us both a chance to point out some of the best stories of our shift.

But that still might not be what you're looking for. So here's another solution, the master list to all of our tagged RSS feeds. That's right every single tag we use on the site, from 1080p to Zune, has its one RSS feed. Go hog wild, but don't come complaining to me when you miss a feature on Objectivism on BioShock or us breaking the news that Peter Moore quit Microsoft.

RSS Feeds Master List [Kotaku]

Just a little heads up to those of you who read Digg and Kotaku and maybe have seen the "Kotaku steals photos" story floating around out there. Here's the full story.

The owner of a site we linked to a few months back, also using a cropped version of their pic, emailed me yesterday to let me know we had used his pictures without his permission or authorization.

I sent the info on to HQ and then headed out to spend the rest of the day setting up for our Child's Play fund raiser in Denver. Hours into the fund raiser, the emails starting rolling in pointing out the story that, I can only assume, the site owner had written, saying we had stolen his images.

This morning I got a hold of the site owner and we were able to resolve the issue. Now back to nursing my Child's Play fund raiser hang over.

This isn't news. This isn't about gaming... not really.

After three weeks of Australian-flavored vacationing I'm back, well at least in mind I'm back. I'm actually still here in Australia for another couple of weeks, hanging out with my in-laws on the Central Coast, north of Sydney.

It's been a fun, and fruitful vacation. I managed to finally take up surfing, taking lessons from a surfer just south of Surfers Paradise. Never mind that he had to tow me out past the breakers the second day of lessons because I was shot, I still managed to catch some big waves, something I've always wanted to do.

I read through seven books:

Snow Crash: Just to finally get to the bottom of the whole Hiro Protagonist stuff... yes, tragically late. Good book, flat ending.
The Cleft: Author Doris Lessing won this year's Nobel Prize for literature. Her latest novel, The Cleft, examines the relationships between men and women by telling the story of the first men and women. Definitely worth a read.
His Dark Materials trilogy: I decided to pick this up after reading how annoying religious groups were getting with the upcoming movie based on The Golden Compass. The books, all meant for a young adult audience, are quite interesting and really get you thinking about the place of religion in the world, which makes sense since the author is a confirmed atheist. I'd call the three books a most read for anyone with any interest in fantasy or religion.
Parasite Eve: It's said that Hideaki Sena changed the face of horror in Japan, reading this book I can believe it. It manages to slip deftly between intriguing details about the mitochondria and graphic, chilling descriptions of a murderous bacteria. My copy of the book was given to me by a Kotaku reader at our New York Party at the beginning of the year. Oh, and the book was made a PS2 game by Square. Go figure.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: The book is one part Gibson, two parts Kafka with a measure of Borges thrown in for good measure. Of course I loved it. Ashcraft tells me he would hug Murakami if he ever met him and recommended Dance, Dance, Dance to me, though I think I might sink into The Trilogy of the Rat or Kafka on the Shore the next time I dig into him.

I've started reading Pashazade, a book I picked up at a used book story last week totally randomly, not sure if I like it yet.

It sounds corny to say it, but I've really missed you guys. Sure Kotaku is a job, but it's so much more for me as well. It is my friend, made up of both readers and writers, my family, a tiny piece of me, though I'm glad it's grown beyond that, becoming, perhaps, a piece of everyone who both writes for it and reads it regularly.

When I first arrived in Australia, like with all my breaks from the site, living apart from Kotaku was sort of like (to steal a notion from Murakami) living apart from my shadow. Overtime, of course, I got used to it. And Australia is an amazing place to lose your shadow.

It's a country of incredible incongruity, for those of you not lucky enough to live or have visited here. Its a country of beautiful, modern cities in the middle of vast rain forests, deserts and mountains. My first, most vivid image of Australia, from my visit here nearly ten years ago, remains the most accurate: An freeway retaining wall lined with dozens of wild, white cockatoos. Australia is a splash of the wild and fantastic in an increasingly tame and mundane world.

Well enough of that, back to work, to writing, to my shadow.

Not only did the kind folks over at PC Magazine list us, along with IGN and 1UP, as the "best in breed" for classic gaming sites this year, but they went on to include us in their 100 favorite blogs.

Eric Griffith writes in the entry for classic blog that:

Gawker's entry in the world of console gaming blogs is everything a gaming blog should be: tenacious, passionate, and full of rumors. It's not afraid to take on the big guys, as demonstrated by a well-publicized falling out with Sony earlier this year over a published rumor. But that's where the site excels, keeping gamers instantly up to date on the latest news about their favorites titles and platforms for couch-sitting. Kotaku's apt motto: "Don't get a life just yet."

While Whitney Reynolds writes for the favorite blogs entry that:

There are plenty of video-gaming blogs out there, but few are better than Kotaku. This blog has every bit of industry news and rumor you could want, and occasionally mixes things up with pictures of nerds dressed up like Link and cakes shaped like Master Chief.

OK, I guess I can't fire Fahey now.

Our 100 Favorite Blogs [PC Mag]

Perhaps you noticed, perhaps you read it in last night's day note, either way I'm sure you've come to discover that Kotaku has a slightly new look.

The biggest difference is that spiffy new image dealio we have up at the top of the page, though our designers have also made a number of other slight adjustments. Let me break it down for you:

The scrolling thumbnails at the top of the page show our most recent and biggest stories. You can click on the arrows on either side to move through them and then click on the image to jump to the story.

Once a day an automated Stat Feed pops up which automatically lists the most popular headlines and how many views they received that day.

Once signed in, you can now track friends by simply clicking on a commenter's name and clicking follow commenter. You can also click on the Follower's link to find out who is tracking you. Despite what your personal page may say, you have friends.

While not new, it's a little known fact that you can add comments to your RSS feed, as well as track specific categories.

There's now a drop down box that lets you easily email, digg, facebook or clip a story. Clipping a story adds it to your profile so you can easily find it on your personal page.

And that's about it. The site is still the same width on the front page, though wider on the jump pages, but it looks narrower to me because the top of the page no longer stretches all of the way across, if that makes sense.

Now go out there, clip articles and make friends.

For those of you Kotaku-lifers out there, you might remember that back in the day, the Brian(singular)-only day, yes even before McWhertor, Ash and Luke Smith, I went through a few interns. Heck, I even had my brother writing for me for a few months.

Well, after much finger-pointing by the other Gawker site leads and a general make-funnery at my expense for not having interns, I've decided it's time to get some back on board. I'm looking to hire one or two. And by hire, I don't really mean pay.

To make the cut you'll need to have aspirations as a game journalist (that's with a capital J) and an overwhelming needing to write about stuff. The work is tons of fun and will include a mix of grunt work, some research and maybe even a bit of writing. You will report directly to me or perhaps Ash and while hours are a bit flexible, you'll be expected to be around during a typical work day...virtually. Pay is next to nothing, but this is a calling right and you'll be getting some very worthwhile experience and perhaps, just perhaps, a toe in the door here at Kotaku Towers.

While it's been awhile since I was an intern, decades in fact, I was a pretty steady mentor at the Rocky Mountain News up until I left, training up and coming reporters and interns to be disgruntled and jaded cop reporters. The work was tough, and the pay little, for those that interned with the Rocky, but the experience was worth it, or so they said. Hopefully, you'll feel the same way.

If you're interested, are at least 21 and have the time for the commitment, email tips@kotaku.com with "intern" in the subject line. While I'll look at people from all locations, extra attention will be given to those in the Denver area with transportation and a willingness to meet up at Kotaku HQ every once in awhile. Include in the email your location, a letter explaining why we should hire you, along with a list of your five favorite games and why, and a sample post. Please no attachments. Ignore the rules, and I'll ignore your email.

Our first Kotaku shirt has officially arrived.

This first swing at the Kotaku t-shirt is only available in a limited edition run, so to ensure you get yours, order now. Keep in mind when ordering that the sizes are way off.

We are in the process of figuring out which slogan shirt to go with as well. As soon as we select a slogan and it hits our store, I'll make sure to let you know.

Alright, proceed to whining. Brian Crecente

The Kotaku Logo Shirt [Gawker Store]

That's right that "Top" navigation bar that's always been up there is gone, replaced by a much cooler navigation strip that lets you do all kinds of neat things.

The new Nav Bar features a couple of new things and some old stuff in one wonderful strip of nav-bar-i-ness.

Picks Toggle: Now you can decide how to read Kotaku by selecting Popular, Picks or All. Picks is the view of the site you've come to know and love. Popular sorts the stories based on recent pageviews. and All (something coming shortly) shows everything from the site along with a selection of other sites. That's right we're giving other game sites real estate on Kotaku's front page. Ain't we grand?

Views Toggle: Lets you view the day's stories in blog (standard) format, summary format (sorta like what you might see in RSS) or thumb format (graphically).

Topic Toggle: Shows the most frequently used tags on the page.

I know this might take some getting used to, but in the long run I think you're going to like it. Brian Crecente

Today the Gawker tech's added a spiffy howto on the bottom of comments explaining how it's done.

Essentially, you have to audition to attain the right to comment. To do this you first write a comment which will entertain or interest the commenting team (which I believe is one poor soul right now.).

After writing your comment choose a username and password and click on the button. Brian Crecente

The thing is, getting in isn't the trick, staying in is.

To get commenting access you just need to make a comment that, as I like to put it, "adds to the conversation." In other words, not:

This is not news.
Not News
How is this news.
Why are you writing this, it isn't news.
Que news?

After making your witty or smart comment, leave the username and password blank and click on submit and it will jump you to a tiny registration page where you can create your account.

Once you're done, the comment is shipped off to a real live person who is forced to read each and every one of these posts and decide if you should stay or should go.

If you get in you just need to remain a thoughtful and interesting poster. As soon as you dip into tool territory, I or Ash will make sure to boot you from our enclave and the whole thing starts over. Brian Crecente

Here at Kotaku we have instituted the latest in pre-comment certification. To gain the ability to write comments on Kotaku the first thing you need to do is write a comment. That's right, you need to post something to earn the right to be able to post something. It's not as Kafkaesque as it sounds.

Hit up the site, post your comment and click submit. A couple of boxes will show up asking for your information and you will have completed your application to commenting.

Make sure whatever you wrote is filled with the painfully keen insight or uproarious humor because the only way you get access is if your comment isn't something typically found spouting from a braying jackass... or one of our writers.

Once submitted, you comment is plucked from the steaming coils of Kotaku's Intertube intestines and rushed, via splayed-foot dromedary, to the mailroom of Gawker Inc. From there roving bands of gypsy pot-makers test the comment for durability before swaddling it in a compound of mint leaves and tobacco juice and placing them in a bucket of reconstituted prunes.

These are then lifted the 35 floors to the offices of the head clerk and chief comment procrastinator where overfed squirrels chew away the outer shells and sort them by category (poor grammar, overuse of double entendre, so witty they make the writers look stupid) before tossing all of them into a rubbish bin.

The ones that happen to fall from the bin as the janitor, a 75-year-old former lion trainer with 8 toes (six on his right foot and two on his left), carts them from the room, are placed on the desk of the clerk who picks through them in her leisure, granting privileges to the comments that make her smile as she drifts along the tepid sea of post-opium melancholy.

And just because you get in the club doesn't mean you can't get booted right back out. We routinely "execute" annoying commentors for such infractions as saying something isn't news, posting "first post" and generally not contributing to whatever meaningful or thoughtful conversation happens to be on tap at the moment. Brian Crecente

If you're not already gifted with the divine right to post comments on Kotaku, just type up your comment in the box at the bottom anyway and then click submit. That should then bring up a little page that lets you choose a username and such.

Once you submit your hopeful comment, it will be shunted away to GawkerHQ where castigated squirrels endowed with super-human intelligence, but lacking the ability to feed or dress themselves, will sort through your missives in an attempt to find something worthy of post-itude.

If deemed worthwhile, and be warned these are some surly squirrels, the post will go live and with it your leap into full commenting privilege.

With this greater chance of getting into the kingdom of Kotaku comes a much greater likelihood of getting booted right back out. Commenting privileges are not something to be taken for granted. If you start filling posts with idiotic ramblings, spam, trolling or things that don't add anything to the story or conversation, expect to have your login ripped from your clawing hands with zero notice.

The good news is that no banning is permanent, you can always take your chances with those squirrels again. Brian Crecente

Starting today, Kotaku will have a new commenter approval system that will essentially be based on granting permission to people who can offer a comment that is interesting, substantial or highly amusing. (Hmm, I better go check and make sure they're not going to remove my commenting ability.)

Here's how it will work:

People who want to comment, including those without access, just type in their comment and then enter a username and password. After hitting the submit button, the posts made by people not in the system will be whisked away to Sugar Plum Mountain where a bevy of gelatinous blobs will trundle the comment off to the Grand Gingersnap Prince for inspection. If the comment is deemed worthy the Prince will confer honorary membership on you and send your candy-glossed comment through a series of tubes back to the fiefdom of Kotaku where it will go live.

From there on out the witty commenter will enjoy all of the rights and blessing of full commentingdom at Castle Kotaku.

Speaking of commentingdom, the avatars appear to not be working. It might take awhile for your various and sundry cache's to clear and see all the marvelously tiny images, but they're there. Also, if you can't seem to comment, try clearing your cache, that seems to fix most problems. Actually, clear your cache just for the hell of it, maybe people will start loving you again.

Now's probably a good time to point out that while I no longer have to handcraft each invite in the steaming innards of my home entertainment center, I still am in full possession of the ban stick and I plan on using it liberaly. Brian Crecente

By now I hope you've realized that Kotaku is no longer a place for just my own meanderings, but has also become the mental stomping ground of two fine game writers. Luke of Detroit and Brian A. of Japan have been posting here since September so no, I don't have a split personality. (Well, I suppose that's debatable.) Things are going to get even more confusing today, when we add a healthy dose of um, what's that called again, the non-testosteronie thing? Anyway, the UK's own Alice from the much-linked-to Wonderland is going to be posting on Kotaku for a bit.

I've always been a huge fan of her stuff and she likes to call people pet, which is just too awesome. So make sure you keep up on your Kotaku reading this week and try to play who's who with the posts. Just assume I've written all of the crap. Oh, I as in Brian C. (and the thousands of humming voices that keep me awake at night staring at the vent in my ceiling waiting for the red clown nose to fall out of it.)

Proof that Alice Really is going to do a bit o Kotaku writing [Wonderland]

Perhaps I'm a needy, needy, needy writer. Perhaps I'm grasping at straws, but I think it's hella cool that Kotaku made CNet News.Com's first ever Blog 100 list. We are listed under Digital Lifestyle with our bros over at Gizmodo and eleven others. As if making the list wasn't good enough, the only other gaming site I noticed us sharing space with was the magnificent and always heady Terra Nova. Sa-weeet!

Digital lifestyle
Engadget
Freedom to Tinker
Gizmodo
Justin's Guide
Kotaku
Lifehacker
PVRblog
Terra Nova
The Gadgeteer
TiVoBlog.com
TVOver.net
JKOnTheRun
PCS Intel

The Blog 100 [CNet News.Com]

As you read this I m sitting uncomfortably in a Qantas plane watching some crappy movie for the fourth time, or trying to make sense out of the bad video games built into the seats (which somehow don t have multiplayer — I mean, come on!). I arrive in Los Angeles about three hours before I leave Sydney. (Don t try to understand it, it will just make your brain hurt.) I ll be back on home turf Monday morning and raring to go. Sorry to all of those whose emails I ve ignored or packages I haven t opened. I plan to do a lot of catching up.

Weeeeee!

Next week I m leaving for a month-long vacation in Australia, (I m planning to hang-out mostly in the Sydney area.) so you're going to have to survive without my poor grammar, bad spelling and run-on sentences for a bit.

I'm looking forward to weeks of Aussie hospitality, sight-seeing and doing nothing, but dreading the 24 hours of travel (door-to-door) it takes to get from my house in Denver to my in-laws place.

While I m gone Brian Ashcraft will be taking over the postings at Kotaku from Japan. Ashcraft, a contributing editor for Wired and Cargo Magazine and columnist for Ready Made Magazine, spent a week awhile back posting on Kotaku to get a feel for things.

Better still, Ashcraft will be making the trip from his home in Osaka to Tokyo to cover the Tokyo Game Show live. Man, I m jealous. Expect to see tons of interviews and first-hand write-ups from the mega gaming show.

Ash will be posting for the first three weeks of my vacation and then I ll take over to post a week of gaming stuff from Australia. I m hoping to find some interesting Oz game culture while I m down under so if you have any tips feel free to shoot them my way.

At some point Ash s contact info will be added to the site s contact info over on the right side of the page.

You may have also noticed that we have added a guest editor to the site. Kourosh Karimkhany has covered the gaming industry as a journalist for Bloomberg, Reuters and Wired. He also worked at Yahoo Games and helped set up their video game products. Most recently he was an editor at Wired News. Let me tell ya, he s a nice addition to the staff.

Hey, I just realized Kotaku finally has a staff. Now I can say we in a literal instead of a crazy cat lady way.

As you may remember I (the Intern) had my wisdom teeth extracted earlier this week. It's not all that bad, as long as you don't mind barely eating and being totally grouchy. To take my mind off all this jaw pain I'm going to take in a friend's baseball game this weekend. Secretly I'm hoping that there is a brawl that I can charge into, all Vicodin'ed up. While I figure how many pills I'll have to gulp to make this happen, check out my favorite stories from the week:

Get Your Hot Coffee T-shirt

PSP Instead of Roses?

Breaking: ESRB Recalls San Andreas

The Warriors First Look

Street Fighter 4

Clinton's Bill Equates Video Games With Cigarettes

Doom Movie Won't Suck?

Kotaku Japan: The True Meaning of "Japan Only"

-SM

DS Contest Rules [Kotaku]

-SM

After insulting half of New York, anyone who has anything to do with technology, most of his readers and me...repeatedly, Joel has decided to step down from his duties at Gizmodo and become a literary hermit. Join me in stoning, I mean wishing him a fond farewell. Shoot him a message with any last minute diatribes or product pitches today or forever hold your piece.

Joel, I'll never forget that night with you, the Intern, the crazy lady and the tattooed bartender: Thank God for Hank's Bar.

Joel's Last Day [Gizmodo]