shockwave.com, a leading Internet entertainment site, announced new holiday additions to its award-winning site. The additions include new creative applications Toonmaker and Puzzlemaker; new festive greeting cards; and an improved Shockmachine experience. These free on-line gifts can be sent to friends and family. Toonmaker enables users to create personal cards and cartoons using well known characters such as the kids from South Park. Puzzlemaker allows users to turn their own photos into puzzles, add messages and then send them to friends.

The Jim Henson Company's MuppetWorld Web site will celebrate its first Yuletide with Kermit the Frog lighting an on-line Christmas tree. MuppetWorld offers a compelling interactive environment, allowing fans to play with their favorite Muppet characters. Fans may purchase Muppet merchandise, take cooking lessons from the Swedish Chef who offers weekly culinary masterpieces in the "What's Cooking?" location, and be able to tune into their favorite Muppet clips.

shockwave.com, One Infinity and Madlab Creative have produced Why2k@large which uses Flash 4 animation and MP3 streaming audio technologies to present an animated, multimedia series focusing on the approach of the year 2000. Live interviews were collected on the streets of New York City, New Orleans and San Francisco featuring what the American public thinks about the approaching Millennium.

Brazil's Justice Ministry has banned six video games it considers too

violent for the public. This ruling comes on the heals of last month's

deadly shooting rampage in a movie theater by a medical student. "The games

are considered violent and [are] affecting people who play them,

particularly children," a ministry spokeswoman said. "As for DUKE NUKEM,

the ministry regulation says its virtual world may have motivated Mateus da

Costa Meira to stage the cinema shooting on November 3 in Sao Paulo." All

"Spike & Mike" fest organizers, Mellow Manor Prods. has teamed up with
Netcaster IFilm to bring its twisted toon vault exclusively to Cyberspace.
The two year deal will allow Net surfers the chances to see animation
shorts only previously showcased at the "Spike & Mike's Classic Festival of
Animation" and "Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation."
BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD-creator Mike Judge, SOUTH PARK's Trey Parker and Matt
Stone, TOY STORY's John Lasseter, and the NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS'

The Downtown Athletic Club (DAC), presenters of the Heisman Memorial Trophy
for the year's outstanding U.S. college American football player, have
contracted with Lemon Custard Comics, the San Francisco-based computer
animation production house, to produce a Flash-animated comic strip for the
Web to tell the story of the trophy and football in general. The first
installment, "The John W. Heisman Story," will run simultaneously on
HeismanMemorialTrophy.com and LemonCustard.com. DAC plans to use the Web to

Harvey Entertainment Company has inked a deal with San Francisco-based
Spunky Productions, Inc., a digital media company, to produce and
distribute Richie Rich Web cartoons. The new toons will be available on
both SpunkyTown.com and the Harvey site. Spunky will adapt early comic book
adventures of the world's richest kid into 2 - 5 minute episodes to start
airing during the holiday season. Product tie-ins will be developed by both
companies to be sold on both of their Web sites. Dan March, Director of New

Shockwave.com has announced that they have signed Trey Parker and Matt
Stone, the creators of SOUTH PARK, to concoct 39 new works. The new shows
will first air on shockwave.com beginning in March. Stone and Parker's new
disfunctional toons will range from 2 to 5 minutes and could be one-off
shorts or pieces of an on-going series. In the L.A. Times on December 8,
1999, Stone was quoted as saying that "the real allure of [the deal] is
that we get to create another TV series but on a much smaller scale. We

The Reed Midem Organization, organizers of Milia 2000, have entered into a
far-reaching agreement with the Interactive Software Federation of Europe
(ISFE)
-- who include members from interactive industry organizations like AISI in
Italy, ELSPA in the UK, NVPI in the Netherlands, SELL in France and VUD in
Germany -- to co-produce the Interactive Entertainment and Online Games
conference for the THINK.TANK Summit. THINK.TANK will be a new two-day
conference and networking event for the interactive content industry held in

Sega Dreamcast, the most advanced videogame system to date, has gone platinum.
Sega of America, Inc. announced that the 128-bit, Internet-ready videogame
system has sold one million units in North America since its launch on
September
9, 1999. This milestone came six weeks ahead of corporate predictions and
before
the after-Thanksgiving holiday shopping frenzy. The platinum mark for
Dreamcast has broken sales records by other high-profile consumer and
electronic products.