Another HBO toolbar, this one from Keyes. No pic, but in his words, ” a news searcher, popup blocker, chatroom for toolbar users, handy dandy links, quick link to HBO, and a scrolling front page news ticker.” Works in IE and Firefox (on XP). Sounds handy!

David “wlkng nghtmre” Antunes sent in a bunch of pics showing off a table he made last year – the ultimate TV stand, as he puts it. Pretty fun battle scene! Check it out.

Broken Console Productions has posted Episode 5 of their ongoing machinima, The Squadron – grab it from their Videos page. Things are about to heat up… writing is a fun mixture of serious and silly, filming is topnotch. Go watch! (19.3 mb in WMP9 format, 18.1 in QT.)

Hehe – I have SO acted out today’s One One Se7en in real games… man. Sometimes, a comic just hits home. (Though Stuntmutt assures me that he had someone completely different in mind when he wrote this particular strip…)

TychoVII sent word of a video he and some friends finished up over the summer. In his words, it’s “a blend of the infamous Halo 2 gametype ‘Zombies’ and the movie ‘Shaun of the Dead’ using songs from the SOTD soundtrack.” It’s funny, well-filmed, and showed me a number of cool jumping tricks to use in my next game of Zombies. Quality is quite good. It’s available from their server (QuickTime format, 63.7 mb, over 10 minutes long), though I’d host it in a heartbeat – it’s definitely worth watching. Grab a copy, and enjoy!

Two more episodes have gone up in Webshift’s reordered I Love Bees audio files. Things are starting to get crazy – go listen!

Z sends word of another pair of montages at Halo2Forum.com – one is a trailer – Crypty teases for his upcoming montage vid with very nice editing reminiscent of Dan Chosich’s Framework vid from a couple of years ago (15.8 mb), and OscarMayerNinja’s Montage 4 is five minutes of effect-laden sticks and snipes (63.3 mb). Both are WMP9 format. Go watch.

Well, I was wrong – there IS some Halo-related content in the OrigenXbox360.com website… the TeamXbox people snagged the XML file that contains all (well, maybe not all) the actual content, hidden or not, on the site – you’d think they’d have learned to protect that by now – and apparently, two of the available spots to visit Origen will be taken up by the top of the Double-Team leaderboard at Bungie.net. Go read the rest of the article for more details, including info on the OTHER spots. (We’re not going to be announcing more news about this unless it’s Halo-related – but it seems that SOME news, at least, WILL be.)

Wow, very cool. This is the first clip I’ve seen of the Video Games Live production of the Halo music – visit this page, as of right now it’s the first ‘Live Performance’ (a few down from the top). Short film, but makes me want to see that show! Thanks to Schedonnardus for the heads-up.

I hesitate to post this, because the LAST new website Bungie touted went offline for bandwidth overages within a few hours… but hey, they’re still up now. Halo Movie Online was set up to discuss ‘the latest rumors and facts as they come forward’ about the Halo movie. (Here’s hoping all the ‘who do YOU want to see in X role?’ threads go there, too…) Check it out! Thanks, Frankie.

Sponsors vs Freeloaders Episode 8 will be coming out a bit over a week – but they’ve posted a teaser to whet your appetite. (If you haven’t seen this series, you really should watch the later episodes – the actual storyline kicks off around episode 5, and since then they’ve been getting better and better.) The trailer is a brief 35 seconds long, and available in WMP9 format (7.2 mb) from one of their servers. If you’d rather watch it in QuickTime, I’ve re-encoded a copy (6.1 mb).

The re-ordered I Love Bees files continue in their release schedule – episodes 5 and 6 are now available. All of the files so far have been mp3-encoded WAV files… but apparently, some folks have had trouble with them, so we’re also making straight MP3 versions available as well. (If you aren’t having trouble with the WAVs, you should stick with them – the re-encoding process might have degraded the quality of some a bit.) Webshift has also written up an intricate forum post detailing the interconnectedness of this story to the main Halo storylines; Joe Staten has been quoted as saying that the ILB content is not strictly canon… but it’s not really a ‘is-it-or-isn’t-it’ question, there are DEGREES of linkage. Go read. (And don’t forget to grab the latest files!)

Coot dropped us a line about an upcoming Halo 2 Jump Tournament – rules and prizes can be found in this thread on the High Impact Halo forum. Signups close on October 15, so get jumping!

UNSCDF wanted folks to take a look at his website – he and M6D have been working on characterizing the weapons in Halo and Halo 2. It’s a freewebs site, so be gentle.

XerxdeeJ wrote with a weekly update for his Tied the Leader blog. There’s a rant against a modder (who was banned about an hour after the game in question was played), an opportunity to buy a rubber bracelet for a worthy cause, a great recounting of a very personal battle, and a hilarious poster stolen from the 2old2play website. Go read!

For the 8 million people mailing us about the OrigenXbox360.com website… thanks. You can stop now. This has nothing to do with Halo (yeah, I know, it’s another ARG, but it’s a bit wider this time than the Halo franchise), and it seems to be a Europe-only promotion (that is, there is no American flag hanging from the tree – for that matter, there’s no Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan, etc…). I’m sure the details will become clear over the course of the next day or so – but it’s not really relevant to this website.

Bizarre – IN-FUSIO, a French mobile-games maker, has made a deal with Microsoft giving them rights to make mobile games (and other products, like ringtones) based on the game. Ringtones, I can understand… but mobile games based on Halo? What, like Blood Covenant? (Blood Covenant is fan-made, and has nothing to do with In-Fusio… it’s just an example of what MIGHT work as a mobile Halo game.) More info as it becomes available – for now, you can read articles at Yahoo.com (thanks, Douglas Griffith) and Eurogamer.net (thanks, 3Suns).

MLGPro.com has posted a photo essay as a retrospective of their first full Halo 2 season of play. Go put faces to names! Thanks, 3Suns.

Wow, busy morning – lots of Halo news has come in, without being posted. Sorry. First up – it’s podcast day, i guess. Podtacular! has posted episode 10 – 1:24 (that’s hours:minutes, not minutes:seconds), 31 mb large (map focus is Terminal), and H=MC2 has posted episode 3 – 38 minutes long, 17.4 mb, highlight is an interview with Stuntmutt. Go grab ’em both!

After watching the most recent episodes of Sponsors vs Freeloaders, Elnea was inspired to create a piece of fan art illustrating a scene in Episode 7. We’ve added it to her art collection here. As she says, this is “fan art of a fan series about a fan series about a video game” – shades of Oliver Stone. Take a look!