Even on a holiday, interesting news pops up from the Valley. Here's a roundup of some of the headlines.

Bram Cohen, inventor of BitTorrent, has released a search engine [BBC report] to make it easier for users to find BitTorrent files. Cohne was

profiled in Wired magazine in January...

Sims creator Will Wright is working on Spore, a game in which players determine the evolution of species. The game will be multiplayer but not in the usual sense. The BBC reports:

The aim is to use a central computer to gather players' creations and share them with everyone playing the game. "You end up playing a galaxy of 100,000s of worlds. And because players are creating the worlds, everything will be different," said Mr Wright.

SVW recently published a scoop on IBM's blogging initiative, a story that generated a lot of interest and comments. IBM's stance on blogging was later officially released by IBM blogger James Snell. Here's the policy in a nutshell: You're speaking for yourself, not IBM. ...

The Wall Street Journal asked a stable of media experts what Old Media should do to survive. Here's a smattering of advice. Network news: Tear down the facade of how news is made. Network TV: Broadcast to PCs. Newspapers: Think about stories, not circulation; allow readers to create their own papers. Movies: Forget about DVDs, go online. Music: License P2P networks to sell songs. More at WSJ (Via CyberJournalist

Renee Blodgett has a report on Jeff Hawkins' new thing - computing systems based on the brain's neocortex. ...