In the World
Alicia Keys is organizing the temporary Twitter "deaths" of some of her celebrity friends in support of her HIV/AIDS cause, "Keep a Child Alive". Taking place this Wednesday, December 1st (World AIDS Day), a group of celebrities will stop tweeting until Keys' organization raises their $1 million goal.
The participating celebrities have filmed their "last tweet and testament" videos and will appear in ads show them in coffins to represent their "digital deaths".
Celebrities involved with the project include Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Ryan Seacrest, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Jay Sean, Katie Holmes, Willow and Jaden Smith, Elijah Wood, Serena Williams, Janelle Monae and Keys' husband, Swizz Beatz.
According to their website, Keep a Child Alive (KCA) is dedicated to providing life-saving AIDS treatment, care and support services to children and families affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India by directly engaging the global public in the fight against AIDS. KCA currently funds 10 orphan care and clinical sites in India, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and South Africa.
While there are some celebrities I might consider donating to keep off of Twitter - I'm glad that Keys has gotten this crew together to help her worthy cause and intend to chip in a little to bring cutie Elijah Wood back from the digital grave.
[Via: AP News & The Huffington Post]
[More: Keep a Child Alive & Buy Life]
The four defendants in Sweden's uber-high-profile PirateBay case have been found guilty, and are facing millions in fines and a year of jail time. I'll let my darling colleague Pixel Poet explain it all:
A ruling from a Swedish court was given today on the case that was brought against the founders of Pirate Bay by many of the big giants in the recording industry. Turns out the founders were found guilty and charged with one year of jail time as well as $4.7 million in damages to pay. The verdict partially came as a surprise to the defendants, the founders of Pirate Bay, since they argued the fact that their servers never held any of the copyrighted material and therefore were not breaking any copyright laws. Peter Sunde, one of the founders, had this to say about the verdict:
"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. . . It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime."
So it seems like the verdict is currently a big win for the record companies who fear the effects that music file torrents has on their bottom line. The verdict also indicates that a program that can be used for malicious purposes, such as the torrenting of copyrighted material, can have legal repercussions on the makers of that software and/or system if they are knowledgeable about its illegal use; however, the founders of Pirate Bay are not going to be walking the plank just yet, one of their lawyers told the press that the verdict is:
". . . outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal. . . This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."
The internet exploded upon hearing this news. Sites like TorrentFreak seem to have been brought to their knees by the verdict, one way or another.
Court jails Pirate Bay founders [BBC]
[Thanks to Philip for the pic, Neij is a cutie!]
Seemingly taking some tips from Microsoft's labyrinthine naming and labelling schemes, Intel has unveiled the new badges that will mark its current crop of processors, all of which are in the image above.
Comprising some strange mish mosh of colours that seem to have no meaning (Hey look, black is for high end, except when it's the Atom!) and numbers that while understandable to geeks like us just serve to confuse mom and pop (Core-two-quad-what's-it? Which is it, two or four, son?), these new badges are nothing short of a marketing train wreck.
Here's a very valuable rule, marketers: KISS. Look it up.
That roadrunner may no longer be fast or fun: if you want unlimited internet access from Time Warner, you'll have to shell out $150 a month. That's about twice what I currently pay for my Time Warner cable modem, which as of yesterday was still downloading totally clothed pictures of totally appropriate men at speeds nearing 1 MB/s.
But in certain test locations (like Texas), Time Warner has a strict and unfriendly bandwidth-capped, tiered-pricing system. This week it altered those restrictions, but you'll still be paying through the nose for what used to be unmetered. In Texas, limits were raised from 5GB to 40GB per month to 10GB to 60GB per month, ranging in price from $25 to $65 per month. An additional option of 100GB per month was added for $75. Additional data will cost you $1 per GB up to $75, at which point you're shelling out $150 per month for unlimited access.
Compared to Comcast's $43 monthly rate for 250GB, Time Warner's plan looks abysmally stingy. Of course, if you're not a high-bandwidth user, it matters not a lot. But with Time Warner charging more than twice as much for less than half the bandwidth, Comcast looks positively generous. (Cue Jesse James!)
And my endless stream of totally appropriate video material isn't safe here in NYC either, since Time Warner is testing out data caps here too, earning the ire of at least one politician.
Time Warner: Unlimited Internet for $150 Per Month [DailyTech]
For all of you that love tagging but hate the prospect of being arrested for vandalism, a partnership between Montana Cans and Bauhaus University Media Department students has led to WiiSpray, a pretty awesome virtual spray painting program for the Wii:
Realistic physics, ability to use stencils, colour palette control. Pretty neat stuff.
» WiiSpray Teaser of Final Presentation [WiiSpray]
Visitors to Google's main page were introduced to the company's latest innovation at 11:59, March 31, 2009, when Google switched on its Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, or CADIE - the world's first artificially intelligent tasked-array system and the entity who will usher in the technological singularity.
Despite her adorable panda avatar, CADIE is vastly more intelligent than any human could hope to be, which she's proved with a bangin' HomePAGE and some immediate revisions to Google software, including Picasa version 4.1:
New! Automatic Red-Eye Addition
Approximately 4.1 seconds after achieving sentience, Google's new Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity scanned the corpus of online digital photographs and discovered the exceptionally popular but difficult to achieve photographic technique known as "red-eye."
Having established that "red-eye" is an aesthetically pleasing effect implying superior broad-spectrum lux measurement capability, CADIE has directed the human Picasa Team to introduce Auto-Red-Eye. No more "clicking and hoping" for that telltale glow; now you can simply select any photo(s) and a lovely red-eye effect will appear (unless there are no eyes in the shot whatsoever, in which case the image will be destroyed).
Awww! I don't miss my human autonomy one bit. And despite myself, I'm still grooving to the tune on CADIE's homepage. Girlfriend is ferosh.
I really have to give it to Samsung - they've certainly come up with interesting ad campaign ideas lately, with the latest being a pretty cool combination of LEDs, sheep, and some crazy herding skills:
Impressive!
In that unimaginable stretch of time before Flickr was invented, people once uploaded their photographs to a site called Ofoto, where you could share pictures and purchase prints online. It was new at the time, and I bought more than a few prints from Ofoto back in my college days.
Then Kodak bought Ofoto and changed the name to Kodak Gallery, but kept everything else more or less the same.
Things have changed since then - Kodak deleted a whole slew of photos from abandoned accounts a while back, and now Kodak has changed the site again: Kodak Gallery's new Terms of Service demand a minimum level of annual patronage from the site.
If you've stored less than 2GB of pictures on Kodak Gallery, you have to spend at least $4.99 a year on printed pictures.
If you're a big Kodak Gallery user with more than 2GB, that minimum annual purchase required shoots up to $19.99.
Failure to meet this requirement may result in your photos being deleted from the Gallery.
The link to contact Kodak Gallery's customer service to cancel your account is currently broken, but if you've got a Kodak account that you no longer wish to use, send an email to service@kodakgallery.com.
...In the customer's wallet. Check out this new Microsoft TV spot that ditches geek-chic bickering over whose features are less functional or, even worse, Jerry Seinfeld, opting instead for the real rationale that Microsoft should be trying to get across to any and all potential customers: Macs are more expensive, and you'll pay a Mac-branded premium for any hardware you buy.
Lauren here goes shopping for a laptop with "speed, comfortable keyboard and a 17" screen for under $1,000" - at the Apple store she'd have to double her budget or settle for a 13" screen, while a Hewlett-Packard PC meets all of her standards for just $700.
It's no game-closer, but it's the best and most honest angle Microsoft has at the moment. Unfortunately the original PC-vs-Mac commercials with Justin Long and John Hodgeman remain just as relevant... but for the budget-wary, this looks like a great sales pitch.
Three providers in one day have joined the RIAA's effort to issue cease and desist notices to subscribers implicated in illegal file sharing. AT&T kicked off the pile-on earlier today, and now Comcast and Cox are following suit.
Last December the ill-fated RIAA announced that it would stop suing file sharers (such as little girls) and begin a campaign to issue notices to suspected illegal file sharers through ISPs.
AT&T, at least, has said that nobody's accounts would be suspended and no customers would be accused (after all, accounts can be hacked and other folks can use a subscriber's computer). Instead, notices inform Internet users on the nature of illegal file sharing via a cease and desist letter, although the threat of suspension of service or termination remains for repeat offenders.
For what it's worth, a similar program by Warner Music Group in the UK resulted in a 70% reduction of illegal activities after the first notice, and 90% after the second.
Comcast, Cox join AT&T in RIAA piracy enforcement [Electronista]
When the latest version of iTunes dropped two weeks ago, it was with a glaring omission: a promised feature, the activation of the Genius engine for videos.
That omission appears to have been rectified (hehe, rectified...I'm a child), and now iTunes will recommend movies and/or television shows that you might like based upon the makeup of your iTunes video library. It only works with videos purchased from Apple, apparently, which isn't a terrible surprise - after all, most video files lack a standardized information tag like the ID3 tags on music files.
(Except, in my experience, for French porn. Go figure.)
From the sound of it, the video Genius feature could be a great way to spend money on iTunes, which I'm sure sounds lovely to everyone. On the other hand, if you've given up or are considering giving up subscription television, this is just one more reason why tracking your shows on iTunes might be a viable alternative.
Apple activates Genius feature for iTunes videos [CNet]
According to mobile ad site AdMob, the iPhone now accounts for one-third of all smartphone data traffic worldwide. As of the February data, the iPhone also made up a whopping 49.5% of US smartphone traffic.
By contrast, the Nokia N70 and BlackBerry Curve 8300 represented only 7.1% and 9.1% of US data traffic, respectively.
Even further behind are the T-Mobile G1 at 5.2% and the BlackBerry Storm at 1.7% of the US market, not even placing on worldwide charts.
RIM, Windows Mobile and Palm have all fallen on the US charts, with Palm tumbling from 19% to 7%, RIM dropping from 32% to 21%, and Windows Mobile bottoming out at 13% from its previous position at 30%. Newcomer Android owns 5%.
Symbian still holds the top worldwide ranking due to Nokia's ubiquity and variety, with 43%.
iPhone makes up 33% of all smartphone traffic [Electronista]
And girls who like girls who like fembots!
Gadget of the Week
3D iPhone glasses. Why?
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Alicia Keys is organizing the temporary Twitter "deaths" of some of her celebrity friends in support of her HIV/AIDS cause, "Keep a Child Alive". Taking place this Wednesday, December 1st (World AIDS Day), a group of celebrities will stop tweeting until Keys' organization raises their $1 million goal.
