Using sophisticated imaging technology, NASA and the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) have produced the first topographic indication of Chicxulub, the impact crater on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Scientists believe the impact was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and more than 70 percent of Earth’s living species 65 million years ago
[National Geographic.com]
Pseudo spins hip-hop TV show on Kazaa
Digital broadcaster Pseudo.com is turning the tables on Hollywood, with plans to release a weekly TV show hosted by rap star Ice-T on Internet file-sharing network Kazaa. [CNET News.com (20 stories)]
Sony’s Idei – Part 2
At this year’s World Economic Forum, held recently in Davos, Switzerland, Tony Perkins sat down with Mr. Idei—with Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sony Corporation of America, at his side—to discuss their take on technology trends. In this second part, Mr. Idei and Tony debate the virtues of Linux versus Windows. Part 1 was posted on Tuesday.
Perkins: Because of Sony’s size, and number of customers, you can obviously have a huge impact on which standards… [AlwaysOn Network]
Grove: Centrino’s our No. 2 son
Chairman Andy Grove says the multimillion-dollar campaign for its soon-to-arrive Centrino chips is second only to the introduction of the Pentium in terms of its importance to Intel. [CNET News.com (20 stories)]
$300 Million buys a lot of priority in “family” rankings…
That Sense of Awe
Ara got his new SonyEricsson P800 last week and has a short write up about it today. You can just sense that level of awe that comes over geeks when they first start playing with these new phones. Just plain “woah.” You think, what more can I DO with this thing? It seems at first like every 10 minutes you’re discovering something new because it’s always with you or you go online and discover some app that does something completely unexpected. You buy the phone with one thought in mind, but very quickly start the grok the intelliphone mojo…
“I’ve got this computer with me… all the time. And it’s got an internet connection… all the time. And it takes pictures. And it plays music. And it runs Java.” And your mind just does a back flip of techno-lust joy: This thing ROCKS!
And then you read a blog about someone else’s phone with more features and you think, “ooh. What I really want THAT one…” 😉
Public Broadcasting Service Goes TiVo
AdAge.com: In an effort to develop hands-on experience with consumers’ digital video recorder viewing, the Public Broadcasting Service today announced it has signed a six-month deal with TiVo. “We’re preparing ourselves for non-linear viewing,” says a network rep. Thanks to… [JD’s New Media Musings]
AOL sees cable IPO by summer
The media giant intends to spin off its cable unit in an initial public offering by the end of the quarter or late summer, CEO Richard Parsons tells an investment conference. [CNET News.com Entertainment & Media]
MPAA, 20th Century Fox launch anti-Internet-piracy movie trailer in US theaters
Twentieth Century Fox and the MPAA have teamed up to produce an anti-piracy trailer intended to educate American filmgoers about the evils of movie piracy via digital file-swapping services like Kazaa.
Initially, the two-minute trailer that puts a human face on the victims of piracy will be shown at most Regal Cinemas, the nation’s largest theater chain. It will be unveiled Wednesday at [the entertainment industry convention] ShoWest, which runs today through Thursday. (…)
Um, The victims of piracy?
How Intel Gets Inside
Through Intel Capital of course…
1) Find a wireless company with a promising technology, be it a Bluetooth chip (Cambridge Silicon Radio plc (CSR)), an enterprise-oriented wireless LAN hotspot network (iPass Inc.), or funky mobile applications (Jamdat Mobile Inc.).
2) Make a “strategic” investment of $10 million or less in said company. For extra bonus points, seat an Intel person on the board.
3) Have the grateful startup guarantee that everything it does will work with Intel “platforms.” If you’re developing an application, that means doing the code-work on servers with Intel inside (TM), says our source. “Otherwise people would be using Sun [Unix servers],” he asserts.
“It’s cheaper than an ad campaign”
[Unstrung]
A little AppleScript goes a long way…
I just used a couple of freely available AppleScript widgets to enable auto-import into my iTunes library on a shared volume on my home network!
I can now transfer music I rip/share, at a friends house, at the office (we have a system with many CDs), where ever… to my home machine via ftp into a folder, which then enables iTunes to import automagically! Once the import is complete, I then have immediate access to tunes in SliMP3!!
What you need…
From Apple –
1. ScriptMenu
2. Folder Action Scripts
3. Add to iTunes Folder Action (scroll to the bottom)
Follow the instructions with each part – takes about 5 minutes…
This saves the double effort normally required to copy to the folder, then import into iTunes. I still go in and tweak certain ID3 tag pieces, but I can be jamming to the new tunes while that happens.
Sony’s CEO Unplugged
At this year’s World Economic Forum, held recently in Davos, Switzerland, Tony Perkins sat down with Mr. Idei with Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sony Corporation of America, at his side, to discuss their take on technology trends. In this first part, Mr. Idei explains why he would buy Palm if they would sell, how Nokia doesn’t get it, and why his music and entertainment group needs to get their act together if they want to stay competitive.[AlwaysOn Network]
LA Times: Apple to launch music service
A story in today’s LA Times (free registration required) reports that Apple is planning to offer an online music service for Mac users, and only Mac users, that several record labels approve of… [MacMinute.com]
4 days to renew my domain…
While I am certainly not going to let it expire, do I really want to deal with transferring from VeriSign?
Going to Extremes to Fight Spam
A new spam filter from the creators of AvantGo takes a draconian approach to killing spam: only approved senders make it into a user’s inbox. Trouble is, it will never work, spam experts say. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
InfoUSA Buys Yesmail
The e-mail marketing and list-management company is bought as parent company CMGI continues to pare down its portfolio. [internetnews.com: Top News]
Interesting to see how quickly and well they are able to package email to mailing address for a total view of the customer package…
Script to open POPFile links from Entourage X
Here’s an AppleScript script by Visa Kopu to open the link in the X-POPFile-Link header added by POPFile email filtering software in your default browser. This is useful when POPFile has done a classification error and you want to reclassify the message. [AppleScript Info]
very cool… just need to get this to work for Mail.app.
Absolut Online Committment
Keep in mind that Volvo did this first for the launch of the S60.
Absolut’s got some new Web stuff up.
Not only is an extremely media rich site (with an odd sort of infomercial introducing site features), but Absolut has decided to launch their newest flavor (Vanilla–I’ll let the lawyers discuss to whom an alcohol that tastes like an ice cream flavor is targetted) online. You can’t buy the stuff. You can only luxuriate in the brand.
Listen: this is a major investment by a brand maverick in online:
* It’s broadband only. This is, I believe, a further realization of the importance of at-work surfers. Especially the young and hip.
* It’s online-branding. Really it is. What else could it be? The product in not available anywhere yet. All you can do is experience the idea of the product.
Dare I say it? Party like it’s 1999. This time, hopefully we’ll be smart enough to understand how to use this creative energy toward marketing goals.
Amazon enters domain-name game
The e-commerce giant, which has greatly widened its retail business in the past year, gets the nod to sell Internet addresses to individuals and businesses. [CNET News.com Entertainment & Media]
Smart move from a smart player. With one click, it should be a heck of a lot easier to manage and buy domains and domain products…
WebSearches 1.1
This script, when executed through the script menu provided by Big Cat contextual menu plugin, allows users to search for the highlighted text in many places, including Dictionary.com, Mac OS X Hints, and VersionTracker, among others. Release notes: Uses plist for search list. Added option to add custom searches. [AppleScript Info]
a music business case study
This case study of how much a fictional million selling band actually pockets is hilarious. And as far as I know, pretty accurate. [Adam Curry’s Weblog]
Sad, sick and “true” – it is a fictional band after all… but makes you think that if the music business gave a shit about the customer or the artist, they would have collectively figured out how to reduce the cost of an album after all these years (perhaps eliminate a few layers in their reality distortion fields), which might then get people more interested in buying their mass market krap. We then also might have a viable option for subsccription services…though I guess we will just have to see what happens with AOL…