Some good news for the wider Kotaku family with our sister sites blogging brothers Gizmodo and Defamer snagging nominations for the 2008 Weblog Awards. Yay them!

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The last thing the world needs is another set of plastic musical instruments cluttering our collective living room. Nintendo knows this, and their answer to music hungry fans is Wii Music, a game all about jamming and enjoying playing with your friends. There's no competition, no rhythm, and no timing.

"This game is one of the titles we started designing around Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit" said Miyamoto, who had appeared on stage during the game's introduction, playing the sax. "We designed Wii Music to allow everyone the joy of performing music".

Details are still forthcoming, but we know that around 50 different instruments will be playable, from traditional Japanese drums with balance board support for drum kits, standing bass, violins...a virtual symphony. The game even features drum lessons for the rhythmically challneged.

The game supports four players, and can not only evaluate your performance, but also record videos of your performance to share with your friends.

Nice! all the fun of a Rock Band game without making you look like too much of a tool for failing.

Have a QR-enabled phone and a burning desire to win a PS3? Then head over to our sister site, Gizmodo AU, and check out its exclusive PS3 competition! Things wrap up on July 4 (this Friday), so there's really no time to dilly-dally!

If you're wondering if your phone is QR-enabled, here's the info you need (taken from the Giz AU post):

... Either a NextG handset from Telstra (you'll probably have to download the software to make it work), or certain Nokia phones (with additional software).

Sony's First QR Code Is A Giz AU Competition To Win 10 PlayStation 3s! [Gizmodo AU]

The moment is here that you've been waiting 3 or 4 days your whole lives for. Kotaku readers from around the globe assembled in the hopes of finding America's Next PSP2 Concept. How did you all do?

Let's just say we had mixed results. So hit the jump to vote for your favorite of our best picks. Then laugh to your heart's content at everyone else.

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Today's Playstation Portable firmware update came with a little touch of Skype (except if you live in China, go figure). Once patched, the Skype option shows up under Network. I was able to pretty quickly register for a new account using the PSP and get it working in less then five minutes.

It's a pretty cool build of the software and while I'm not sure how often I'd use it around the house, I definitely plan on bringing it with me when I travel for some free calls. Also plan on abusing the hell out of it to harass Ash since it only cost me $US 10 to buy seven hours worth of worldwide Skype to phone service. (Skype to Skype is free) That's right seven hours of me rambling to Ash... can't wait!

I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: Fourty different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

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Want to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut at the cinema? Once in a lifetime opportunity and all that.

There's a competition to win tickets for two over at our beloved sister site Gizmodo AU. All you have to do is come up with a haiku that pays homage to the cyberpunk classic.

I should mention that it's at the Astor Theatre in Melbourne, so only Mexicans need apply, unless you're willing to make the trip down.

All the details here.

'Blade Runner: Final Cut' Melbourne tix giveaway [Gizmodo AU]

For those of you who don't follow the gadget world as closely as my alter ego who writes for Gizmodo, there have long been rumours of a Google Phone (as in cellphone) hitting the market and revolutionizing life as we know it. Today the Google Phone was officially announced, not as one particular phone, but as a software platform (like Palm or Windows Mobile) that will run on Sprint and T-Mobile phones produced by big companies like LG, HTC, Motorola and Samsung when launched in 2008. So why should gamers care?

The 34 members of the Open Handset Alliance will be helping to develop this important software—one of whom is NVIDIA, the same company who makes up the yin of ATI's yang in providing 3D bliss to gamers on different platforms around the world. This partnership by no means implies that the Google Phone will be a gaming machine ala N-Gage, but that Google is taking the right early steps to support the potential of some pretty gaming on their newest endeavor. So now you know.

GPhone is Official - A Software Platform For Cellphones [gizmodo]

As predicted, we lost the first ever Kotaku versus Gizmodo Halo 3 challenge last night, 4 to 2.

While the games were close, we should have had a clear, spotless victory since Kotaku alum and Bungie superstar Luke Smith was on our team. I blame, besides our general suckatude, the fact that we never played as a team prior to last night while Giz made the right decision to train as a unit nightly leading up to the event.

Hit the jump for the full report.

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Watch live video from kotaku on Justin.tv

Live casting starts now. Watch and don't mock! Game starts on the hour best of seven. Guardian, Pit, Isolation, Construct and High Ground. Hit the jump for the live-ish blog!

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