Over at Bungie.net, there’s a Community Spotlight on Maximum FEAR, an adminstrator over at Games in Action. Go see what it takes to run a Bungie-based fansite!(Louis Wu 21:26:19 UTC)

IceWeasel started up a new blog – with a heavy focus on Halo (and Halo 3). Add it to your list!(Louis Wu 20:42:32 UTC)

If you swing by the Bungie.net forums, you can see a full listing of the changes to Halo 2 Matchmaking on Xbox Live – these changes went into effect a little bit ago. Thanks, Hexudus.(Louis Wu 19:32:04 UTC)

Paul Maestri points out Halo Heads 49, in which one of the newest described features of Halo 3 is examined more closely. Maybe TOO closely.(Louis Wu 18:12:23 UTC)

Microsoft has begun sending out emails to everyone registered back in December for a shot at the Halo 3 beta; these notes basically say that all 13,333 invites have been distributed, and if you haven’t gotten one yet, you’re not going to. (It also suggests that you can still get into the proram by buying Crackdown.) To those who made it – congratulations. To those who didn’t – not ALL non-Crackdown slots have been filled yet, though if you absolutely positively don’t want to miss the beta, it’s certainly your best bet. Update: Heh.(Louis Wu 17:38:15 UTC)

We got email from Erik “P3PP3RM4N” Fikkert yesterday – he had a bunch of fan music he’d created, wanted to know how to get it out to our audience. Well, that’s easy, right? We just post it, and tell you to go listen! Some of these pieces are really slick – I’d suggest starting up a forum thread if you’re interested in working with Erik on a machinima project; Halo vids are always better with original music!(Louis Wu 16:29:47 UTC)

XerxdeeJ stopped by with this week’s Tied the Leader Tuesday Update – there’s a 22 Questions interview with Sean Gailey, of J!NX apparel, and a Community Profile (née Clan Profile) of O7AH. Go read! (Louis Wu 16:20:38 UTC)

A few days ago, we mentioned a pretty cool thread at Bungie.net, containing a bunch of elite renders. Mike Jensen, the modeler, stopped by our forum last night with some new stuff – check it out!(Louis Wu 13:28:19 UTC)

Over at halowiki.net, there’s an article from XyonsWrath about ‘The Crazy Method‘ – it’s a description of a strategy that has a good chance of working against your average Matchmaking opponents. As someone who ‘acts crazy’ a lot, I can see where this is useful! Thanks, PEZ.(Louis Wu 13:24:25 UTC)

Interesting article at 1Up.com – Luke Smith reports that according to Phil Spenser, Head of Game Development for Microsoft Game Studios, Microsoft would like to spread Bungie’s matchmaking code around to most (all?) first-party 360 games; the reason it didn’t make it into Gears of War was a timing issue, not a code protection one. Heh – so right about the time that other games are catching up to where Bungie was in late 2004, we’ll be seeing the NEXT evolution of their user interface in Halo 3. Sounds about right…(Louis Wu 13:10:53 UTC)

F1rsTxLas7, from Halomega, sent us a massive email – site updates, new movies (montage | 1v1 | montage trailer | 1v1 gameplay), plus sponsored videos, Sig of the Week contest, Snipe of the Month… go check ’em out.(Louis Wu 13:05:42 UTC)

Mister Froggy let us know that Halo, Articulated #13 is now available. In it, the Master Chief is having trouble suspending his disbelief.(Louis Wu 12:23:10 UTC)