Gamertell

In the Los Angeles Times, writer Alex Pham reports that the San Fernando Library encourages youth to play video games and even invites them to be as loud as they like.

“It lets teens be more comfortable with the library and become familiar with librarians,” San Fernando librarian Lydia Harlan told Pham. “And it’s what kids are into these days.”

In the article, Pham reports that more libraries are turning to video games to connect with technologically savvy youth who might be losing interest in books and stories. In New York, the New York Public Library has even added a collection of books, films, music and maps about video games.

Click through for the full article and a list of recommended books…

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The dinosaur-slaying comic character Turok made his debut in video games in 1997 with the release of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, a Nintendo 64 and PC game. This January, the series returned on PS3 and Xbox 360 and has already gone platinum.

Turok’s publisher Touchstone announced that the game has sold 1 million copies since its release. The publisher also announced a new map pack called Velociraptor that will include…

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In the five months since its release, the military first-person shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has proven to be one of the best video games in recent memory. Since November 2007, Call of Duty 4 has sold more than 7 million units around the world, won of dozens of awards and (since early 2008) remained the number one game on Xbox Live. Now fans will have more reasons to stay online for another 5 months with the first expansion to the popular series.

On April 3, 2008, Activision and Infinity Ward will release an expansion pack titled Call of Duty 4: Game of the Year Edition (GOTYE). This new expansion won’t include any new additions or upgrades to the single-player game but instead will focus exclusively around four new multiplayer maps for…

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As if gamers needed another reason to spend more time online playing Call of Duty 4, Activision and Infinity Ward has announced new maps for the game are on the way for download, both through Xbox Live and the PS3.

The yet-to-be-named maps are the first wave of downloadable content for the title that, just a few weeks ago, did the impossible and beat Halo 3 as the most played game on Xbox Live. Both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 maps are scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2008. New maps for he PC version have not yet been announced.

As of yet, Infinity Ward hasn’t said what environment types will be presented or what gamers can expect to pay for this first download, only that they promise that these new additions will be worth the wait and will thrust gamers into a hot zone of added combat across a variety of intense multiplayer locales.

Read [IGN] Also Read [VideoGamesBlogger]

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If you weren’t already confused by Nokia’s repruposing of the N-Gage name, get this. Nokia has also announced that it is launching a new web service, Ovi, that combines both the N-Gage service and the Nokia Music Store.

For now the home page has one of those long Flash videos that tries to make the site look cool in lieu of anything useful. Once through the annoy-imation, the links are active, though most of the pages are barebones PR info that makes it sound like Nokia wants in on the social networking game as well.

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