News

Stop Big Media reports:
In a near-unanimous voice vote tonight, the Senate passed a “resolution of disapproval” that would nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s latest attempt to dismantle longstanding media ownership limits.
Last December, the FCC voted to remove the “newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership” ban that prohibits one company from owning a broadcast station and the major daily newspaper […]

Last.fm reports:
A few days ago we sent out some cryptic invitations to a press conference in New York that Felix and Martin are presiding over. We’ve had fun in the office reading the rumors and speculation, but it’s time to spill the beans:
As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free […]

A coalition of educators, foundations, and Internet pioneers today urged governments and publishers to make publicly-funded educational materials available freely over the Internet.
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, launched today, is part of a dynamic effort to make learning and teaching materials available to everyone online, regardless of income or geographic location. It encourages teachers […]

Techies, get ready to be scared out of your wits.
On Halloween, Comcast Corp., in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment and Lionsgate, will unveil a horror-movie network called FearNet. Fans will be able to watch movies through Comcast’s video-on-demand service and on the Web at FearNet.com, where they can blog about, search and tag the spooky […]

Hmmm - I hope so, but it sounds too good to be true…
Microsoft and the world’s leading PC vendors have reached an agreement to promote the long-awaited Vista OS by offering PC buyers worldwide a free upgrade coupon, as a way of encouraging them to buy a Vista-capable PC as early as possible, […]

The popular Web calendar 30Boxes has improved its Webtop by adding a javascript windowing system. The Webtop is a way for you to have a centralized place where you can check your calendar, to-do lists, and other Web sites that you frequent often, all inside of 30Boxes. The new improvements allow you to […]

Sources from the 1394 Trad Association has told SvenOnTech that it has just confirmed that Micrsoft will have full support for 1394b or FireWire 800. The support should be available by the end of the year. This means it will be available outside of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s next operating system update. Details […]

It wasn’t that long ago that Alienware was considered the cream of the corn in terms of computers. It was (and still is) a very expensive gaming machine. Many users, on the other hand, think that the price is definitely worth it - and not just to have that little alien on the PC’s case! […]

Opera Software has announced that it has teamed with BitTorrent Inc. to include the BitTorrent protocol in the upcoming version of the Opera Web browser. Integrating this popular technology in the Opera browser means faster and more efficient downloads of large files.
Opera and BitTorrent have signed an agreement covering Opera’s use of the BitTorrent trademark […]

Madonna set to be first exclusive ‘Featured Artist’ on new online retail store.
In a first-of-its-kind agreement between a major music company and the leading Internet communications company, Warner Music Group Corp. has announced it will make available master recordings from WMG’s roster of world-renowned recording artists as ringtones to the more than 74 million registered […]

I like the last line of the article: “Gartner called the DRM scheme a ‘public relations and technology failure.’” A Sharpie is suggested as a better solution than tape in the reader comments. Tom Sanders of vunet.com writes:
The highly controversial XCP digital rights management (DRM) technology bundled by Sony BMG on 52 of […]

In the very near future more and more of the tools you will need to edit, write, collect, and publish online are going to be sitting and running on a remote server, and not on your local computer hard disk.
While many have long realized this, the largest part of Internet users has only seen […]

Jake Ludington is trying an innovative form of advertising for his tech site; he’s actually giving away an Xbox 360! The much coveted gaming console could be yours if you refer the most amount of traffic to his Web site in the month of January. Jake’s also decided to throw in a 12-month […]

Hey, look what sprung from CES! Ya, it’s the Sonos ZP80 - basically the little brother to the ZP100. Sonos now brings an affordable sibling to the amazing power of music of the digital home. The ZP80 is basically the ZP100 but with two Ethernet ports, digital out, RCA in and out, […]

Intel, chipset, Viiv, media

In EFFector 18.40 - which I received late Friday night - the EFF is planning an announcement on Monday, November 21, 2005, about its plans on the Sony CD rootkit issue. It has solicited responses from customers in California and New York who have been infected by the rootkit - I suspect a lawsuit […]

Free registration required to read the story. John Markoff of the New York Times writes:
In January, a group of Microsoft researchers set out to discover how much computing power they could buy for less than $4,000 at a standard online retailer.
They found the answer at NewEgg.com, where they were able to purchase - […]

Today is BlogDay, the day in which you can learn and discover new and truly valuable bloggers that you don’t know about.
BlogDay was initiated with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to know other bloggers, from other countries or areas of interests different than your own.
Today, all participating […]

Well, folks, it looks like file sharing trends are changing yet once again. Experts say that due to the ongoing piracy crackdown on BitTorrent and its users, less and less people are using it. That said however, traffic/amount of users on P2P service eDonkey is on the rise. Also, networks such as Gnutella and KaZaA […]

Many of you will be familiar with the show ‘Call for Help’ on what used to be TechTV (and ZDTV before that). Then G4 game network got hold of the property and things technological went downhill fast. Staff got fired and shows were falling faster than the leaves will in a few weeks.