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Here’s a riddle for all the sports fans who agree that watching sports other than live is just not worth it: what would you do if you wanted to watch Olympic freestyle skiing but you’re stuck at work because it’s Wednesday afternoon?

You watch it on NBCOlympics.com? Wrong.

NBCOlympics.com provides about 400 hours of live streaming from Vancouver. But its new authentication system won’t let you watch this unless you can prove that you subscribe to a cable, satellite or IPTV service provider in partnership with NBC.

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Something that really caught our eye at CES last week is Iron Will Innovations’ gaming glove, The Peregrine.

The Peregrine has 18 touch points and 3 activator pads that allow for over 30 programmable actions. Players map hotkeys to the pad, which eliminates having to look down at the keyboard for every command. Touching an activator pad – which are located on the thumb middle finger and palm – to a touch point triggers the command. Two of the activator pads are on the thumb; the other is on the palm.

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So far, U.S. online holiday spending is up 3 percent, according to comScore. That’s a fairly healthy increase, all things considered.

As of December 6th, consumers have spent $16 billion online this holiday season.

Online sales have dropped off since Thanksgiving and Black Friday’s respective growth of 10 and 11 percent. Cyber Monday sales grew 5 percent year-over-year to $887 million, while the following week’s sales fell to 3 percent growth before falling into the negative over the weekend.

“After a strong beginning to the week, we saw growth rates decelerate over the weekend to put this past week of holiday shopping in line with our 3 percent growth forecast for the season,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

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Due to Microsoft’s recent ban of modified Xbox 360s from Xbox Live, used consoles are now crowded in online auction forums and community classified listings. The systems were modified to play duplicated game discs, and last week Microsoft severed the connection to Xbox’s online community, which includes online game playability, game downloads, Netflix streaming and much more.

The ban of the “small percentage” of modded consoles on the network could amount to 600,000 or even a million players, depending on the source. With such a substantial population, it is less than surprising that sites like Craigslist and eBay are having a category shift from previous-generation consoles and b-list game lots to results such as “Xbox 360 banned from live with games - $100″ or “Year Old Modded Xbox 360 w/ cables - $125.”

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This week, Technorati is publishing its yearly State of the Blogosphere report, the biggest annual summary of blog stats and demographics.

The State of the Blogosphere’s first part, published today, focuses on blogger demographics and the blogosphere’s relationship with traditional media.

Forty percent of bloggers have graduate degrees, and the average blogging household makes over $75,000 per year. Overwhelmingly, they are male: only one in three bloggers is female.

While the gender difference is problematic, the main line of criticism levied against blogs – especially during the last year as print outlets seem to be shutting down daily – is of their legitimacy in comparison to traditional media outlets.

The study deflates that criticism.

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It seemed to be a good week to be a gamer. This week Nintendo announced its first US price cut for the Wii, readying them for Holiday Season competition. The other black belt game consoles, Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Elite recently dropped a bill off their price tag as well. In the distant future of Spring 2010 , a WiiMote-reminiscent motion controller will be available for the PS3. Back to the present, the Tokyo Game Show this week in Japan showcases the latest and the greatest for these platforms and the burgeoning market for cell phone games.

This last example documents the profound shift in the gaming industry, formerly populated with expensive bleeding-edge technology and hardcore gamers. But what started with the Wii and games like Guitar Hero and their friendliness toward casual gamers is picking up momentum, and some say its because of Apple.

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More than one in ten Americans have purchased virtual goods in the last 12 months, according to a new study by virtual goods marketplace playspan and research and consultancy firm Frank N. Magid Associates, based on a survey of nearly 2,000 Americans.

The 12 percent of Americans who bought virtual goods in the last year contributed to a market that is estimated to be worth $200-250 million in the U.S. , over $1 billion worldwide, and projected to be worth $17.3 billion by 2015.

Almost half of virtual good purchases (46 percent) are made by users of virtual worlds.

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Next-generation video will be immersive.

Immersive Media’s 360º spherical video is an impressive, potentially amazing, example of how our relationship with video will change in the coming decades, further incorporating our physicality, deepening immersion and allowing the lens to be guided by users’ subjectivity.

The Calgary-based  company’s Dodeca 2360 is a twelve-sided camera (as any Schoenberg fanboy will tell you), with 11 image-sensing lenses that record different angles simultaneously at 30 frames per second. The camera, the size of a softball, can be mounted on most things (demos show the camera mounted on helicopters, kayaks and BASE jumpers, for example).

The camera can record over at a million pixels per second, which is higher than an HDTV (apparently it can reach up to 2400 x 1200 pixels). Immersive Media’s technology will also allow data and metadata to be embedded directly in the video.

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The majority of the most popular Apple apps, according to comScore’s tracking of February 2009 downloads, are Games or Entertainment.

The most popular Apple app according to the number of downloads is Tap Tap Revenge, which has been downloaded by 32 percent of Apple App users.

“Tap Tap’s success demonstrates that there is ample opportunity in the app space for any publisher to obtain significant distribution with a product that engages users,” according to the press release accompanying the report.

“Since the number of app users is growing nearly ten percent each month, that opportunity will only continue to grow for both existing and emerging app developers,” according to the press release.

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I found this video on Scott Beale’s blog. SlateV.com, part of the Washington Post Company, created this original “mockumentary” taking microblogging down to the next level, nanoblogging.

The domain name Flutter.com was actually created in March 2002 by a UK company.