British pensioner becomes YouTube star

YouTube, the popular online video site, has an unexpected star--a septuagenarian British widower--whose soft-spoken, humble manner has won the hearts of users of the youth-dominated Web site.

Peter posted his first video on YouTube about a week ago, under the user name geriatric1927, which refers to the year of his birth. He called it "first try."

In the clip, which starts with "geriatric gripes and grumbles" and some blues music, Peter tells how he became addicted to YouTube.

"It's a fascinating place to go to see all the wonderful videos that you young people have produced so I thought I would have a go at doing one myself," he says, sitting against a backdrop of floral wallpaper and family photographs.

"What I hope I will be able to do is to just to bitch and grumble about life in general from the perspective of an old person who has been there and done that and hopefully you will respond in some way by your comments."

YouTube is one of the fastest-growing sites on the World Wide Web and announced last month that 100 million clips are watched every day. The site has almost 20 million visitors a month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

In his profile, Peter says he is widower living alone in the country in the middle of England. His favorite music is blues and he has loved motorcycles all his life. He says has no piercings or tattoos. His profile says he is 78 but he says in a video clip he is 79.

He has since posted another five videos on his YouTube page and has had about 79,000 viewings and 6,500 subscribers, putting him at the top of the most-subscribed list on YouTube in the past week.

In his second video, Peter starts with a photograph of himself on a motorbike and says he has received more than 4,700 e-mails. "I am absolutely overwhelmed and don't quite know what to say," says the white-haired pensioner who keeps his eyes closed for most of his videos.

"I just need to say thank you...this YouTube experience has been one of the major changes and breakthroughs in my life and given me a whole new world to experience."

Peter, who talks about his life, the horrors of war and police harassment, has received wide praise for his videos and for proving technology is not just for the younger generation.

"It's great that someone from your generation has chosen to share their views on life, and a shame more elderly people don't too," wrote one commentator.

"I don't have a grandpa, but if I could choose, I'd want you to be mine!" says another.

A few who mocked him were quickly rebuked by the rest of the online community.

"IGNORE all the rude comments because obviously the people who leave nasty comments on your page are those who have the least number of comments on their videos!" said one.

Attempts by Reuters to contact Peter by e-mail were not immediately successful with the latest YouTube star inundated with e-mails.

Story Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

HP offers Debian Linux support

Debian is a steadfastly noncommercial version of Linux. But Hewlett-Packard will give it a big corporate hug Monday with the announcement of a plan to provide support for the open-source operating system.

"We've had a number of customers continuing to ask us to have broader support for Debian," and HP decided to oblige, said Jeffrey Wade, worldwide marketing manager at HP's Open Source and Linux Organization. Red Hat and Novell will remain HP's main Linux partners globally, however.

HP announced the news in conjunction with the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based computing company will offer technical support for installation and configuration during a server's warranty period, Wade said. And later this year, it will begin selling "care packs" to help customers with Debian problems, he said.

The move reflects the continuing price pressure that exists in the Linux marketplace, where free versions of the open-source software always are an alternative to paid versions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server.

Sophisticated HP Linux customers requested the Debian support, after wondering if they could get "a better value with a distribution that doesn't require a subscription fee and subsequent renewals for that subscription," Wade said.

Debian won't be on the same level as Red Hat or Novell, though, Wade said. HP won't market it, and customers will have to download the software on their own. Software combinations with partners such as BEA Systems or Oracle won't be available with Debian. And HP won't formally certify Debian for its servers.

HP expects the Debian offer to appeal chiefly to sophisticated customers who usually have internal software support and a long history of Linux expertise. However, the company is pleased with its support; of the 48,000 Linux-related support calls HP got in 2005, the company answered 99.5 percent on its own, meaning that only 180 had to be transferred to experts at Red Hat or Novell, Wade said.

HP's offer will apply to the current "Sarge" version 3 of Debian and to version 4, "Etch," due in December. (Debian versions are named after characters in the movie "Toy Story.")

The company has a long history of cooperation with Debian. It formerly employed one Debian leader, Bruce Perens, and another former leader and current contributor, Bdale Garbee, is chief technologist of HP's Open Source and Linux Organization.

Play your own Xbox game

Microsoft is trying to turn hard-core gamers into Xbox programmers.

The company plans to show off on Monday a new set of developer tools that will let college students, hobbyists and others create their own games for the Xbox 360 console, for a Windows PC or both.

Dubbed XNA Game Studio Express, the free software is expected to be available in beta form by the end of the month, with a final product available sometime this holiday season.

"The tools we are talking about make it way easier to make games than it is today," said Scott Henson, director for platform strategy for Microsoft's game developer group. Microsoft will demonstrate the new software at Gamefest, a company-run show for game developers that takes place in Seattle this week.

The approach is similar to one Microsoft has taken with software development in general, selling its Visual Studio tools to professional programmers while making a more limited "express" version free to hobbyists.

Microsoft released the first version of its XNA tools for professional developers in March 2005, ahead of the Xbox 360's release the following November.

With the hobbyist release, the software giant is hoping to lay the groundwork for what one day will be a thriving network of enthusiasts developing for one another, something akin to a YouTube for games. The company, however, is pretty far from that goal.

In the first incarnation, games developed using the free tools will be available only to like-minded hobbyists, not the Xbox community as a whole. Those who want to develop games will have to pay a $99 fee to be part of a "Creators' Club," a name that is likely to change. Games developed using XNA Game Studio Express will be playable only by others who are part of the club.

Next spring, Microsoft hopes to have a broader set of tools that will allow for games to be created that can then be sold online through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft will still control which games get published, and it'll get a cut of the revenue.

Down the road, probably three to five years from now, Microsoft hopes to have an open approach, where anyone can publish games, and community response helps separate the hits from the flops.

That would mark a major shift in the gaming world. While people have long been able to create their own PC software, console game titles have historically been created by a far more limited set of developers.

Everyone says they could do better if only they had a chance, says Envisioneering analyst Richard Doherty. Now gamers can match their skills with the pros, he said. "They may not have a popular game, but they can at least try it."

Plus, in creating a new outlet for enthusiasts, Microsoft is looking for one more way of winning the hearts and minds of the hard-core gamer set ahead of the release of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, both due later this year.

Sony tried something somewhat similar with the original PlayStation, releasing in limited quantities a $750 add-on kit called the Net Yaroze that let people write their own games.

Part of the impetus for expanding the pool of developers is the growing expense of making major video games. Many games take 18 to 36 months to develop Henson said, meaning big game companies only want to back sure hits. "Future titles look like existing titles," he said. "There's not a lot of branching off and taking risks."

A particular target of the new program is colleges, with Microsoft having signed up 10 universities to use the new software as part of their curricula, some as early as this fall.

Doherty said Microsoft is the biggest beneficiary of the program as the effort both helps tie gamers to the Xbox and potentially leads to new ideas.

"I think some new talent is going to come out of it," Doherty said. "I'm not saying it's going to be 'American Idol.'"