(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET) Thanks to a new agreement with Paramount Pictures, subscribers of Amazon's Prime service will now get access to "hundreds" of films, including as "Mission: Impossible 3," "Braveheart" and "Mean Girls." Sure, these are catalog titles that are long in the tooth and many of them have been in Netflix's library for some time. But the point is that Amazon continues to close the gap in regards to the amount and quality of films offered by Netflix, the top video-rental service on the Web. Amazon Prime is a membership program that costs $79 annually and offers customers free two-day shipping. In addition, members get access to the expanding pool of movies in Prime Instant Video. "We are continuing to invest in building a ... Continue reading →
The app, Air Graffiti, is being developed by AT&T but is still a twinkle in the eye of developers, who say it is a long way from being available to consumers. The app will enable users to leave location-based messages for one another in a street-view map. In the episode, Mr. Sutherland points his smartphone at a building and sees a message — a series of numbers — that was written by his son. Highlighting what is only on the drawing board, which the company also does in some television commercials, helps promote AT&T as an innovation-driven company — and the message is aimed not just at consumers. “Our business is certainly with customers, but our business also is with Wall Street, and with the ... Continue reading →
Nowadays, you look up a book on a library computer screen, but you usually have to go fetch it on foot. Until recently, we’ve had the same situation with searching the Web. You could look up a Web page using Google and Bing, but you still had to go fetch it. But that’s about to change. In the last couple of weeks, both Google and Microsoft have added new features that try to spare you that last step. Now when you search at Google.com or Bing.com, you don’t just get a list of Web pages that match your search. Off to the right, where the search results page used to be empty, you now see actual information about the subject of your search, carefully packed ... Continue reading →
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which distinguished itself amid great adversity during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is about to enact large staff cuts and may cut back its print publishing schedule to several days a week, according to two employees with knowledge of the plans.Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the Times-Picayune, will apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor, Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann Arbor News, emphasized the Web site as a primary distributor of news and in the process instituted wholesale layoffs to cut costs.A request for comment from the newspaper’s editor, Jim Amoss, late Wednesday night was not returned.The plans have been kept under wraps, but the newspaper will likely cease to exist as a ... Continue reading →
23 May 2012 Have boys bottomed out? A new TED Book says yes. The culprit: the rampant overuse of video games and online porn. In their provocative ebook The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, celebrated psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan say that an addiction to video games and online porn have created a generation of shy, socially awkward, emotionally removed, and risk-adverse young men who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school, and employment. Taking a critical look at a problem which is tearing at families and societies everywhere, The Demise of Guys suggests that our young men are suffering from a new form of “arousal ... Continue reading →
The kitchen as family information center. Technology is only as good as the human needs it fulfills. A detailed look at how real people actually use their kitchens reveals why an iPad is such a great addition. The kitchen is the one room in the house where every family member is likely to find themselves every day. So it’s very common to use the refrigerator door as a message center, art gallery and reference library. What’s on your fridge door right now? There’s nothing paper and magnets can do that the iPad can’t do much better. Digital photos can display in a revolving slideshow. The iPad can photograph finger-painted words or anything else for the picture gallery. Notes and notifications are easily shared. The iPad ... Continue reading →
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge, PC operating system; 300bps was a fast Internet connection; WordStar was the state of the art word processor; and we liked it. His work has been published in everything from highly technical publications (IEEE Computer, ACM NetWorker, Byte) to business publications (eWEEK, InformationWeek, ZDNet) to popular technology (Computer Shopper, PC Magazine, PC World) to the mainstream press (Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek). Continue reading →
