Happy day-after Easter. Witness the resurrection of the Microsoft blog. Our former Microsoft reporter Benjamin J. Romano departed The Seattle Times two weeks ago for another opportunity, and I will be blogging to you from here on out.

I've been reporting for The Seattle Times for more than a decade, and I've covered everything from the failure of Seattle's high-tech toilets to Christina Aguilera's concerts. I wrote about personal technology, wireless and telecom and video games several years ago here. My last job writing about business ended with an investigation of accounting tricks and dubious deals at InfoSpace.

My dad was an early adopter. We had a Commodore VIC 20 we connected to our television set in the living room, and I wrote junior high science papers using Wordstar. It once dumped my entire junior-high science paper at 9 p.m. because I forgot to save to the floppy drive. In the interest of full disclosure, I currently use Microsoft software on my Seattle Times laptop and my home PC; but my cellphone runs on BlackBerry, my iPod runs on Apple, my Sansa runs on Napster and my Wii runs on Nintendo.

That could all change in six months. The technology landscape is constantly shifting. Microsoft's challenge is to maintain its business with Windows and the PC while expanding on the frontiers of computing -- mobile, television, netbooks, search, social networking. Our challenge is to help you make sense of it.

What you can expect from me in our paper: fair and accurate, local and global coverage of our region's most important tech company, and why it matters to you.

What you can expect here at Pri0: the latest news, multimedia, polls, live blogs, an active dialogue with you.

Let's start with you: What do you want to see on this blog?

Nintendo, the runaway leader in the video game business, is priming the market for its new Internet-connected handheld gaming system and adding storage capabilities to the best-selling Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said during the Game Developers Conference today in San Francisco that the Wii has now sold more than 50 million units since launching in 2006.

Credit to games industry news site Kotaku for tracking this: When the NPD Group released February video game sales figures last week, Wii Fit, the fitness game for Nintendo's market-leading console, sold 644,000 units, topping the software charts.

And that was enough to surpass "Halo 3," in lifetime sales. The blockbuster from Kirkland-based Bungie Studios, exclusive to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, has sold 5.9 million units in the U.S. since launching in September 2007.

Wii Fit just hit 6 million, NPD Group told Kotaku. Wii Fit passed "Halo 3" despite costing $30 more (it comes with a balance board, the creation of which I detailed in this story) and launching eight months after "Halo 3".

This story on Nintendo's through-the-roof Wii sales -- in which a Nintendo executive reiterated the company's commitment to increase inventories in the U.S. by 50 percent to alleviate shortages -- doesn't jibe with the experience of reader Scott Milburn.

"For weeks, we have been searching for a Wii for our family this Christmas, and it is amazingly difficult," he wrote in an e-mail.

Read on for an account of their search.

The best-selling video game in August, according to The NPD Group, was Madden NFL '09. Nearly 2.2 million units were sold in the U.S. After reading a great essay on the game's namesake, John Madden, I'm wondering how many were purchased by aspiring (or actual) NFL defensive coordinators.