PITTSBURGH – Mister Rogers cared deeply about his neighbors and his neighborhood, both in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe and in real life.

Now, friends and colleagues of late television icon Fred Rogers want to honor his legacy with a national day of volunteering on his birthday. Rogers, who died in 2003 after battling stomach cancer, would have been 82 on Saturday.

David Newell, who played Mr. McFeely on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” said volunteering meant a lot to Rogers.

As a boy, Rogers volunteered at his hometown hospital in Latrobe, Pa., rolling bandages for soldiers during WWII. And, Newell said, public television, where Rogers’ series began, relies on volunteers.

The idea for the Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Day grew out of Sweater Day, which Family Communications Inc. of Pittsburgh has promoted over the past several years to honor Rogers. Rogers created the company to produce his show and other family friendly educational fare.

Of course, people still are encouraged to wear sweaters in Rogers’ honor.

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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) –
HBO has put Sunday’s first hour of its WWII mega-budget production “The Pacific” on its Web site. Don’t get used to it, though, the other nine hours will air only on HBO (until the DVD release, of course).

Since HBO is a pay channel that re-runs its best content for decades, it tends to be shy about putting content on the Internet. The network has uploaded the pilot episode of some series online, though not movies.

The amount of violence and profanity in “The Pacific” is a concern, so registration is required to watch (hey kids, can you type “1991″ as your date of birth? Then you’re in luck).

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SAN FRANCISCO – Motion controls and social gaming were the hot topics at this week’s Game Developers Conference, the annual convention of game designers, programmers and executives.

Sony shook up the conference with a splashy introduction of the PlayStation Move, a new wand-shaped PlayStation 3 motion controller system that will rival Nintendo’s popular Wii.

Sony showed off several games that use the new system, which utilizes a PlayStation Eye camera to detect players’ movements. Among them were the action brawler “Motion Fighter,” over-the-top party game “TV Superstars,” athletic simulator “Sports Champions,” mini-game collection “Move Party,” third-person shooter “SOCOM 4″ and wacky downhill racer “Slider.”

“It’s just scratching the surface,” said TechSavvy technology analyst Scott Steinberg. “If you talk with game developers themselves, they will tell you they don’t know what they’re quite capable of doing because they’re just coming to grips — no pun intended — with the hardware itself. At this point, we’re just seeing some very early possibilities.”

The biggest buzz, however, seemed reserved for social gaming, a form of easy-to-play online multiplayer games. With the success of such social games as the real-time crop-growing simulator “FarmVille” and the gangster role-playing saga “Mafia Wars,” several conference sessions this year were devoted solely on how to tap into the gaming world’s Next Big Thing.

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WASHINGTON – Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Elizabeth Dole are joining 250 veterans at the World War II memorial in Washington to honor their service.

HBO brought the veterans to the memorial Thursday to coincide with the network’s premiere of a 10-part series called “The Pacific.” Hanks and Spielberg are part of the production team, following their “Band of Brothers” miniseries in 2001.

The series begins Sunday. It focuses on the lives of U.S. Marines fighting the Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The veterans will include a 100-year-old man. Veterans from Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla., will make the trip.

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BOULDER, Colo. – The students in Michael Dubson’s physics class at the University of Colorado fell silent as a multiple choice question flashed on a screen, sending them scrambling for small white devices on their desks.

Within seconds, a monitor on Dubson’s desk told him that 92 percent of the class had correctly answered the question on kinetic energy, a sign that they grasped the concept.

Clickers — not unlike gadgets used on television game shows — first appeared in college classrooms over a decade ago and have since spread to just about every college and university in the country thanks to cheaper and better technology.

But as clickers have become commonplace, a divide has emerged over just how sophisticated they should be.

Some professors like Dubson endorse simple, straightforward devices that stick to multiple choice questions. Others embrace fancier models or newer applications for smart phones and laptops that allow students to query the professor by text or e-mail during the lecture or conduct discussion with classmates — without the cost of purchasing a clicker.

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