Online Games

A Pittsburgh-area couple apparently have won the $52 million Super 7 jackpot but were too scared to travel to the state lottery headquarters here to claim the prize, lottery officials said yesterday. Lottery spokesman Mark Schreiber said two lottery officials went to the couple's home yesterday to inspect the ticket and have the couple fill out claim forms. "They were frightened to travel to Harrisburg," said Schreiber, adding that the officials' excursion to get the ticket was unusual, but not unprecedented.

Haverford Township's Seventh Ward Commissioner, James E. McGarrity, likes being thought of as just a regular guy. He said he wants people to continue to think of him that way, now that he is a regular millionaire. On Saturday, McGarrity, 50, realized he was the owner of a lottery ticket worth $1,000,000.05. McGarrity, a first-term Republican commissioner, said he was feeling rushed that day. He was on his way home from attending a fund-raising event and he knew his wife, Fran, wanted him to do some painting around the house.

If Deloitte L.L.P.'s John Hagel III is right, your next key executive hire may be someone who has proved his mettle by becoming a top guild leader in World of Warcraft. Actually, the odds of that are pretty good, given that the massively multiplayer online role-playing game now has 11.5 million subscribers. But why would you want to hire from that group? Because, Hagel said, such games are developing new leaders. "World of Warcraft may be the most effective leadership-development method we have," he told those gathered in Huntsman Hall on the University of Pennsylvania campus Wednesday for the 14th Wharton Leadership Conference.

HARRISBURG - Democratic lawmakers are taking aim at GOP Gov. Corbett's administration's move to privatize the Pennsylvania Lottery's management, saying that it is shrouded in secrecy and will result in a corporate giveaway that diverts hundreds of millions of dollars from the state's services for the elderly. In a letter Friday, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, asked Corbett for a slew of documents, including the proposed management agreement between the state and Britain-based Camelot Global Services, an unredacted copy of Camelot's bid and a full explanation of the scope of expanded lottery gambling being considered.

A power outage at Pennsylvania Lottery headquarters near Harrisburg led to a four-hour blackout in betting yesterday afternoon for players of online numbers games. At 2:25 p.m., the lottery's automated wagering system went down and was out until 6:30, said Wendi Taylor, spokeswoman for the Revenue Department, which oversees the lottery. Lottery officials "felt it might be a power surge. It flickered on and off, on and off, and then it went down. And they kept it down to make sure the data in there was not lost," Taylor said.

Can Barbie and her friends translate their appeal into virtual reality? Mattel hopes so. The country's number-one toy-maker officially unveiled Mattel Media Inc. yesterday on the first day of the American International Toy Fair, with more than a dozen CD-ROM products slated for fall shipping. The new company is going after what it sees as the largely untapped girls' software market. About 80 percent of the current CD-ROM market caters to males, perhaps because most of the popular games are filled with combat, kick-boxing and other violence.

HEATH LEDGER's final film has begun shooting again in Vancouver, and filmmakers insist that Ledger's performance will be saved. The Hollywood Reporter says that the producers of Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" also confirmed rumors that Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law will help finish the film, which shut down after Ledger's death. "Since the format of the story allows for the preservation of his entire performance, at no point will Heath's work be modified or altered through the use of digital technology," the producers said in a statement.

With an astounding 130 million cell phones already in use in the United States, the wireless industry is fretting that it could lose momentum, even as it begins to introduce fancy new phones and high-speed data services. "The key issue that everyone is facing in the wireless industry is that the extraordinary growth of the last 15 years is slowing down," said Scott Ellison, wireless and mobile communications program director at the research firm IDC. Not that wireless companies are wringing their hands in despair.

Marty Howe sat a little unnerved after being exposed to Web sites with scantily clad women and the prospect that one of these photos could serve as a disguise for a cyber stalker. The Havertown father has a son, 6, and a daughter, 3. "I'm so conscious of predators now," Howe said immediately after a 90-minute presentation, "A Cyber World of Trouble," at Haverford High School Monday night. "It's certainly an eye-opener. I'll try not to throw the computer out when I get home.

Even though parents are concerned about maintaining privacy on the Web, most youngsters between the ages of 10 and 17 say it is OK to divulge personal information to online marketers in exchange for gifts, according to a study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center to be released today. A new federal law restricts the personal information that commercial Web sites and Internet service providers can ask of children under 13 without their parents' consent. But the Annenberg survey, taken before the law went into effect last month, found that teenagers were more willing than the younger children to reveal information about themselves and their parents - information that online marketers can use to create profiles of families.