Archive for March, 2007
“Comedian Carol Burnett has filed a copyright infringement suit against the makers of Fox TV’s cartoon sitcom “Family Guy” over an episode poking fun at the performer and her variety show from the 1960s and ’70s. The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims “Family Guy” violated Burnett’s exclusive rights to her name and likeness by depicting her signature cleaning-woman character in a segment last April without her consent…” (Read full article here)
March 18th, 2007
“Of all of the proposals aimed at improving America’s failing schools, there’s one idea kids will really like: More video games and fewer books. At least a number of educators hope so, arguing that children would get more excited about school and that video games can present real-life problems to solve. Nobody is talking about putting violent video games such as “Doom” or “Mortal Kombat” into classrooms, particularly given concerns they may encourage aggressive behavior. Instead, educators such as Indiana University associate professor Sasha Barab are developing alternative video games that can teach as well as entertain…” (Read full article here)
March 17th, 2007
“Given all of the good things we’ve been hearing about Core 2, all of the amazing performance, all of the people switching from AMD to Intel (because Intel’s Core 2 is now the best performer), the market overall has been rather slow to respond. While the zealots were heading out in droves to buy Intel, they apparently were a small minority. A report compiled by iSuppli was seen copied onto The Inquirer today, replete with graphs, showing that year on year, from 2005 to 2006, AMD shot up from #15 to #8 in annual revenue, increasing 91.6%. Intel, meanwhile, while remaining at the #1 slot, saw its revenue decline by 11.1%…” (Read full article here)
March 17th, 2007
“Fujitsu claims that it has developed a key technology that would allow the company to quintuple today’s highest commercial storage densities in hard disk media. If researchers will be able to transfer the technology into commercial products, we could see 5 TB desktop drives and 1.5 TB notebook drives in the not too distant future…” (Read full article here)
March 17th, 2007
“Skype Ltd. has released a new version of its Internet telephony and instant messaging software that adds a feature to let users create business reviews, and another one to sell expertise, as the eBay Inc. subsidiary promotes interaction among its users. Skype 3.1, available for Windows, features SkypeFind, designed to let Skype users post and find reviews of business establishments. It also introduces a test version of Skype Prime, a marketplace where Skype users can market knowledge and advice to others. The company unveiled SkypeFind last month in a beta version of Skype 3.1. Already, SkypeFind contains around 4,500 listings from 124 countries and Skype expects it to have over a million listings by year’s end…” (Read full article here)
March 17th, 2007
“Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end run around one of Microsoft Corp.’s key antipiracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today. Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista’s registry lets users put off the operating system’s product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely…” (Read full article here)
March 16th, 2007
“Cisco Systems Inc. said Thursday that it will buy online meeting company WebEx Communications Inc. and a file storage management provider called NeoPath Networks. Cisco, which is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and employs approximately 2,700 people in the Triangle, makes routers and switches that direct data over computer networks. The networking giant (Nasdaq: CSCO) will pay about $3.2 billion in cash, or $57 per share, for WebEx. That represents a 23 percent premium over Santa Clara, Calif.-based WebEx’s closing price of $46.20 on Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market…” (Read full article here)
March 16th, 2007
“StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com), the best way to discover new sites and videos on the Internet, today announced that it now has more than two million users. The immense popularity of StumbleUpon and its dedicated video site, Stumble Video, is driven by an active base of ‘Stumblers’ who have rated more than eight million websites and videos, and who have stumbled more than 1.4 billion times…” (Read full article here)
March 16th, 2007
“Earlier this month, the Copyright Royalty Board, the oversight body created by Congress to settle royalty disputes in the music business, issued a higher fee structure for web music broadcasts, and web radio executives plan to fight it. For small, publicly funded stations and web radio startups, the new structure could mean the end of their business, writes CNN.com. Roger LeMay, general manager of WXPN-FM, a web-based radio station, says that his station could be paying about $1 million a year in royalties under the new ruling. National Public Radio spokeswoman Andi Sporkin said it would cost stations 20 to 30 times what they are paying now in royalties. To fight the new fees, NPR officials will file a petition for reconsideration. If that fails, NPR has said that it will bring whatever legal challenges necessary to overturn the decision…” (Read full article here)
March 16th, 2007
“Wikia , Inc., the leading provider of community resources for building free content on every topic, today announced the addition of four new communities to its “open source magazine” project. The new user-driven sites, which focus on music, cars, gaming and health, continue Wikia’s mission to give people the interactive tools needed to easily collaborate online with others around their favorite topics. Wikia’s growing ‘magazine rack’ also includes user-driven sites on politics, entertainment and hundreds of local communities across the United States…” (Read full article here)
March 15th, 2007
“Microsoft continued to build on the success of its Xbox platform by extending it’s popular Live gaming platform to Windows PCs. The service would debut on May 8, and would connect gamers on both platforms together. “Shadowrun” will be the first PC and Xbox 360 title to allow gamers on either platform to play one another in a single environment starting in June, although the Vista version of “Halo 2″ due May 8 will permit person-to-person matches across either platform…” (Read full article here)
March 14th, 2007
“LCD HDTV prices could drop as much as 35 percent before year’s end, according to iSuppli. The research group predicted yesterday that roughly 75 million LCD sets will be sold this year, a 42 percent increase over last year. iSuppli last year had forecast that only 72.9 million sets would be sold in 2007. However, the group said dropping prices will drive even more sales of the flat-panel TV. For instance, a $2,000 46-inch LCD HDTV could be priced as low as $1,299 by the holidays…” (Read full article here)
March 14th, 2007
“The next major wave in entertainment technology is only two years away from making a huge splash on audiences across the world. Dreamworks just announced that starting in 2009 it will release all of its features in 3-D. You may remember some of the crappier attempts Hollywood has made at 3-D in the past (Jaws 3, anyone?), but this is entirely different. There are already about 600 3-D capable screens at the present, but that number is expected to climb drastically in the future…” (Read full article here)
March 14th, 2007
“Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA - News and VIA.B - News) today announced that it has sued YouTube and Google in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for massive intentional copyright infringement of Viacom’s entertainment properties. The suit seeks more than $1 billion in damages, as well as an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement. The complaint contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times…” (Read full article here)
March 13th, 2007
“As announced last week and expected for this week, Intel today launched their line of power-efficient quad-core Xeons, with impressive TDPs as low as 50W. In the press release, Intel states that with the power requirement of only 12.5W per core represents a 10-fold reduction in power requirements in just under two years, making it one of the most significant advances in the performance-per-watt arena for a long time..” (Read full article here)
March 12th, 2007
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