Duran Duran to perform live on Second Life?
Wow, washed up rockers can live forever in their Second Life. This is huge!
DirecTV ships HD DVR
Might be time to start looking at DirecTV again. Have I mentioned how the Comcast DVR is Sucktastic? [via Engadget]
Life Explained
Now here is a video sharing site I can use. VideoJug shows you how to do stuff like tie a windsor knot, unblock your toilet, and of course how to make a Knickerbocker Glory, whatever the hell that means. Great site if you can get past those wacky British accents. [via PVRWire]
New York Times compares Canon’s H10 to Sony’s HC3
HD camera smack-down! It’s pretty amazing how quickly these cameras dropped in price.
User created games on Xbox 360
Looks like MS made it a lot easier to create games for the Xbox. This really opens up 3rd party development for the Xbox to almost anyone who develops games.
Peter Moore on the Long Tail of Gaming
Xbox head honcho talks about rationale for opening up the Xbox.
Fox to sell video download on MySpace
Between this and the Google deal, I think this whole MySpace thing might make Rupert Murdoch some money after all.
Microsoft Photosynth demo
Wow… I never say wow about Microsoft products (unless it’s wow, that’s lame or wow, have you heard of usability?). But this is a very cool 3d photo visualization tool. [via Addicted to Digital Media]
Jeff’s Quick Guide to TV on the Net
Get your fix here. Comprehensive guide to repurposed television shows on the net. [via PVRBlog]
Newton takes down Samsung UMPC
No love lost for the Newton, but a brand new piece of tech taken down by the old school handheld… gotta love it. [via Engadget]
WSJ has a great profile of video and audio social media moguls. No surprises here, but Chad Vader sure was fun.
While I’m pretty familiar with the world of user created content, I hadn’t ventured into the world of user created games. Fancy Pants Adventure on AddictingGames is the rightful successor to the Super Mario side-scrolling crown. With simple, yet effective graphics and terrific physics (now those are two words I’ve never put together), it adds up to a truly addictive game.
Show me the money – well, this is the WSJ and nothing is more exciting than a hobby that pays. Apparently their pals over at Eepybird.com have made over $30k for their Mentos-meets-Diet-Coke-meets-Bellagio video brilliance and their partnership with Revver.
Trashiest link – clearly Forbidden’s MySpace page takes that dubious distinction, with her not-work-safe mega ad for both her and her new line of jeans. This also serves as a good example of the kinds of ways that people are building businesses off of social media.
Great article and a great way to waste a Saturday afternoon.
Tags: video, social media
Mergers, wikis and movies, oh my!
AMD buys ATI
Are any TLA companies starting with “A” safe from this insanity?
SocialText goes open source and JotSpot goes 2.0
Two wikis enter, one wiki leaves. Will the open source wonder take down its more usable, more expensive foe?
Amazon to offer movie downloads
Jobs better get their service out soon before everyone else does.
While the blogging world is falling all over itself in praise of Yahoo!’s release of the so-called “DRM-free” Jessica Simpson track (I won’t even comment on the fact that the track is from Jessica Simpson, oy), I think that the music industry is indicating how desperate they are to break from the iTunes hegemony that they have created and how they aren’t really willing to get rid of DRM any time soon.
First, let me address the DRM issue. The downloadable Jessica Simpson track is available as a personalized track. If your name is Jason, Jennifer, or Jared, you are in luck and pay $1.99 for a personalized track from Jessica Simpson, which if you think about it, is a pretty cool idea. But if you continue to think about it, unless your entire social circle has your name, most of your friends won’t really want to copy your song. File trading networks probably won’t have a comprehensive version of this song, so while the Jason’s of the world could probably find their version of the song on BitTorrent, I’m betting the Jordi’s of the world are probably out of luck.
You see, the Jessica Simpson track is only available as a personalized track and therefore, the DRM is social.
Second, even if I’ve overplayed the impact of personalization (I haven’t heard the song), this still signals what the music industry really wants to do, and that is to raise prices on music downloads. The music industry has created a monster and that monster is more concerned about the user experience than about making a quick buck.
Despite all of this, I wonder if the music industry is starting to realize the truth, DRM-free music is the easiest way to break iTunes’ dominance on music downloads. The music industry loves price fixing, but not so much if someone else is doing it. DRM-free music removes most of the advantages that iTunes currently enjoys and allows any number of resellers to distribute music for any price that they (or the labels) want.
So, come on, music labels… let’s hop to it. I’m a huge fan of Apple, but DRM sucks and we all know it.
Movielink to allow movies transferred to DVD
Didn’t they already do that? Maybe it was the other guys.
Build your own iPod HiFi
Two in wall speakers, $200. Two dead Mac Classics, $25. Retro iPod HiFi, priceless.
Yahoo! to the 9’s
Daily video feature of the top 9 videos from the web. No podcast, so you gotta watch it on Yahoo! And just as an aside, apparently Yahoo! finally figured out how to do video that works with a Mac. Maybe one day Launch will actually work outside of IE6 on Windows.
[via CNET]
CinemaNow gets more funding
$20mm should help… I thought bandwidth was free?
GUBA inks deal with Sony
These guys are on a roll.
Efax: How not to treat your customers
I had a free account cancelled for overuse. Apparently, their customer service isn’t so great, either. [via Daring Fireball]
Looking back at Hotwired
Hotwired rejoins Wired so what better time than now to look back it’s interesting history. [via Daring Fireball]
The TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is held every year in Monterey and attracts bigwigs from the various industries they represent. Occasionally, you’ll hear about what these luminaries talk about and present, but by and large, what’s talked about in Monterey, stays in Monterey.
Until now, that is. TEDTalks is a series of presentations from this year’s conference including Al Gore, David Pogue and (shudder) Tony Robbins. TEDTalks will be releasing a new video each week.
I’ve watched the Al Gore video this morning at the gym and it is amazing how Gore can connect with the audience on both an emotional and intellectual level. Where the hell was this guy in the 2000 election?
