Whiz of the Web: Tuesday Torpedoes

The shapeless dough of the internet, formed into tasty pellets and baked to perfection, just for you.

• You might have heard about a little game called Halo 3 getting released late last night/early this morning. Game|Life has the details on the midnight release party at a Best Buy in Manhattan, while Joystiq covers a non-launch in Boston and an actual, celebrity-infested launch in LA. Beware, however! Rumor is that the limited edition packaging for the game is defective and the disc inside ends up scratched.
• Starbucks has made a deal with Apple to give their customers more than 50 million songs to download on iTunes. Apparently Starbucks will be giving out iTunes Digital Release Cards every day from October 2nd through November 7th. It's all a way for Starbucks to promote its iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, a new service that will "enable Starbucks customers to wirelessly download music onto their iPhone, iPod touch or laptop computers." The article doesn't say when Starbucks in Philly will be getting iTunes Wi-Fi Music Stores, but apparently 25% of Starbucks will have them by the end of 2008. (Via Jill)
• Download Squad tells us what to expect from an upcoming redesign of Amazon's website.
• Holy crap, the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation is here?! We remember when that show started! Argh. Anyway, before we start putting in our hearing aid and grabbing a cane, here's the good news: CBS and Paramount are marking this anniversary with the release of a new, huge DVD collection that will include every episode of all seven seasons of the show. The mammoth set comes out on October 2nd.
• Sarah Paulson will play Dr. Ellen Dolan, the police commissioner's daughter, in Frank Miller's live action film adaptation of The Spirit. She joins an impressive cast that already includes Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johnansson as femme fatales (or is that femmes fatale?), Gabriel Macht as the title character, and Samuel L. Jackson as the Octopus. Production begins in October in New Mexico's Albuquerque Studios.
• Variety says Jessica Biel is in talks to play Wonder Woman in the JLA movie. Huh. Can't say she'd be our first choice, but we could see how she could work in the part. Meanwhile, there's also a rumor going around that Australian actress Victoria Hill has tested for the role of Wonder Woman, apparently also for the JLA movie (via).
• The company running the Chinese massively multi-player online game King of the World apparently has frozen the accounts of men playing female characters, and is now forcing players who choose female in-game avatars to prove their gender via webcam in order to get into the game.