News Feed

McCartney & Guns N' Roses Launch New Albums on MySpace

Tech Blogger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:45:19 -0500

Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and Guns N' Roses released their biggest hits on vinyl records and compact discs, but on Thursday, their new albums will debut online on MySpace.

Users of MySpace, the world's largest social network on the Internet, will be able to listen for free to "Electric Arguments," the new album by McCartney's side-project group The Fireman, and "Chinese Democracy," the long-delayed album by hard rock band Guns N' Roses, before the songs are in stores and at online shops like Amazon.com.

GE Using Blog to Communicate Directly to Investors

Tech Blogger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:43:22 -0500

General Electric Co has quietly changed the way it communicates with Wall Street over the past month, using a company blog, GEReports.com, to share news with investors.

In some cases the company has used the blog in lieu of more traditional tools like press releases and investor briefings.

Not all corporate governance experts applaud the change, though given the conglomerate's standing as a leader in corporate America, they expect other companies to follow suit.

Sci-Fi Renews First Successful Internet to TV Show

Tech Blogger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:37:58 -0500

A milestone was reached last week in the crossover from Internet to TV when Sci Fi Channel gave an early second-season pickup to "Sanctuary," making it the first TV show based on an online series to accomplish the feat.

With YouTube making it easy for anyone with a video camera to get noticed, the Web was anointed as the perfect breeding ground for TV talent. But crossing that talent (and their product) over to TV has proved tricky.

Obama's Tech Policy Group Announced

Tech Blogger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:56:56 -0500

The transition team for President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday announced which advisers will lead the team's efforts to develop technology policy for the Obama administration.

The three team leaders of the technology, innovation, and government reform policy working group are Julius Genachowski and Blair Levin, two former Federal Communications Commission staff members, and Sonal Shah, the head of Google.org.

Netflix Explains The Video Encoding Process

Tech Blogger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:50:34 -0500

This is Neil Hunt, Netflix chief product officer, with some technical background on the Netflix encodes used for streaming. We get a lot of questions about this, so I'm going to go deep.

First Generation Encoding

Our first set of encodes are based on WMV3 and WMA in ASF with WMDRM10 (Janus). We chose these standards because the Janus components have been widely adopted by our CE partners such as Roku, LG Electronics, Samsung, TiVo, and of course Microsoft Xbox.

Hulu's Holiday Widget

Tech Blogger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:56:54 -0500

Hulu for the Holidays Widget

There's more on Hulu this holiday season: more movies, more comedies, more new site features. Each day brings a new addition -- but we're not revealing anything just yet. To keep up with the latest, add the Hulu for the Holidays widget to your blog and social networking sites. Each day, it reveals the day's feature, so you don't miss a thing.

Just copy the embed code and post it to your site, then visit Hulu.com daily to watch your favorites.

Sears "An American Wishtory" Commercials w/ Vanessa Hudgens and LL Cool J

Tech Blogger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:26:10 -0500

Vanessa Hudgens is fresh off a hit movie with High School Musical 3 and now she is going even more Disney mainstream with a pair of Sears commercials. The new ad campaign if for the holiday season and is entitled An American Wishstory.

Commercial 1:

New Star Trek Trailer in HD & Website Revamp

Tech Blogger — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:45:01 -0500

The new Star Trek trailer premiered with James Bond this past weekend and is finally available in HD online. They have also amped up their Flash website.

WATCH: NEW STAR TREK TRAILER IN HD

The official site got a major makeover as well.

- It is Flash and beware those with low bandwidth.

- It pops up full screen.

- It does have sound.

- Use the left side navigation (the logo) to get around.

----- Navigation Includes:

----------- Home
----------- Videos
----------- Story

PETA Against Eco-Friendly Horse-Drawn Carriages

Tech Blogger — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:34:20 -0500

Kristen Johnston is speaking out against horse-drawn carriages – and stripping down in the process.

The 3rd Rock from the Sun star will appear in a new PETA ad campaign called "Don’t Get Taken for a Ride – Horse-Drawn Carriages Are Cruel." In her ad, Johnston, 41, appears naked on the back of a horse in a pose that recalls Lady Godiva.

Yahoo! CEO Steps Down

Tech Blogger — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:18:10 -0500

Yahoo Inc. founder Jerry Yang has never concealed how much he cares about his Internet company.

His emotional attachment is one of the reasons he balked at a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft Corp. six months ago. The same devotion finally led Yang to conclude he should step aside as chief executive, as the company seeks to bolster its depressed stock price and sagging earnings in an economic downturn that might prove even more wrenching than the dot-com bust of eight years ago.