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By Steve Gorman 2 hours, 59 minutes ago LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Barack Obama, flush with cash and ramping up his advertising in the final weeks before the November 4 election, is making U.S. political history by placing the first presidential campaign ads in online video games. The Democratic Illinois senator is using the Internet ads, featured in 18 games through Microsoft Corp's Xbox Live service, to promote his online voter registration and early balloting drive in 10 battleground states, a campaign spokesman said on Wednesday. Unprecedented in U.S. presidential politics, the video game buy is targeted mainly at young adult males who are difficult to reach through more traditional campaign advertising. "The 18-to-34-year-old male is the mainstream demographic for the hard-core video gamer," said Van Baker, an analyst for Gartner Inc., a technology market research firm in San Jose, California. "They're hard to get to because they don't watch much TV and the...

Putting aside whether we're actually in a recession, or not, I think it's safe to say that the "R" word is on everyone's mind. Given that I'm in sales, and I haven't had anyone tell me that "I'm not buying because I can't get a bank to give me a new credit card." Or "I'm not buying because I don't think anyone will buy my services in this economy - no matter how many leads I generate," I think it's probably safe to say that the economy is not affecting many of us. At the top, the economy is certainly showing signs of struggling - with bank failures, proportionally higher job losses, state budget shortfalls, etc. And this could certainly trickle down. Coincidence or not, we all are certainly paying more for food, gas and oil. So, this post is not meant to belittle hardships others are facing. But, I do believe that we can get ourselves out of this mess by basically stepping on the gas pedal of innovation and doublin...