Filed under: Audio/Video, Video Games

After the launch of the Xbox 360 console, Microsoft was quick to add a video-on-demand service, stuffing the Xbox Live Video Marketplace with content ranging from episodes of ‘Family Guy‘ to movies like ‘Bourne Identity.’ It’s been a (relative) success, out-pacing Amazon’s digital distribution service last year. Sony is jumping in the video download game, at least in Japan, with the announcement of its own video distribution service for PlayStation 3.

The first downloadable videos will all be related to the upcoming ‘Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.’ First up will be a three-part documentary on the immensely-popular Nissan GT-R, a series produced by the BBC . The first will be free (as usual), but it’s unclear whether future episodes will be free as well. It’s unclear just how this will fit in with the already announced Gran Turismo TV, a sort of in-game movie player, or whether those video downloads that will appear in-game will be free. Subsequent videos, which presumably will feature something other than automotive porn, will come sometime early next year, costing around $1.85 each.

Still no word on U.S. plans for direct-to-PS3 video downloads, but since you can already stream just about whatever you want from your PC or Mac to your PS3, does anybody really care?

From Evil Avatar

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This is fast - both the iPhone and iPod touch have already attained a 0.1% (0.09% and 0.01% respectively) share of browser usage since their release. While that amount might not seem like much, it has already edged out Microsoft’s Windows CE platform that currently holds a 0.06% share of the market, a pitiful amount considering Windows CE devices have been circulating since 1996. Granted, mobile Internet really took only until recently, but there are still millions of Windows Mobile devices out there.

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Filed under: Recipes, Cocktails, Happy Hour, Spirit of Christmas, Christmas

There are many cocktails that can warm you up on a cold winter evening (I know, it’s only December 3, but when it’s Christmas time and much of the nation has been hit by a snowstorm, it’s winter), but there aren’t many that can honestly be called “hot.” This one can.

It’s the Red Hot Santa Tini, and not only do you rim the glass with cayenne pepper (added to cocoa), the main ingredient is chili-pepper infused vodka. And on top of the whipped cream you put a little chili pepper! Full recipe after the jump.

Continue reading Monday Happy Hour: The Red Hot Santa Tini

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Filed under: Polls and Surveys, Community

In light of recent events, the Poll Police are scrounging up every resource they have to scramble to the streets and get your thoughts on the conundrum that befell Gamespot. If you are unaware of the scenario, read up on it here, or listen to a very short version by us. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot for a ton of rumored reasons, the most prominent being a negative review of Kane & Lynch, which caused Eidos to pull out all the advertising revenue from the site. Advertising pressure to give a game a positive score, mostly. Anyhow, we’d like to gauge your thoughts on the situation: is there more than meets the eye, or is this all there was to it? Is it fair or not?

Whatever the decision, we can’t reverse what’s happened. A lot of Sony fanboys criticized Gamespot for having a glaring anti-PS3 bias in their reviews, which may or may not be substantiated by equally questionable pressure from “advertisers” or “sponsors” or whoever. If this is part of a restructuring for Gamespot in their practices, and letting Jeff go was the first step in getting the site back in order, that’s a different story. However, the world is a shady place and the lack of solid information in this event makes us wonder what the scoop really is. Last week’s poll results are after the jump.
How about that. We’ve got about half of you saying that over the Eat Lots of Food holiday, PS3’s were getting sold fairly well. A quarter of you saw nothing out of the ordinary or even saw returns of PS3’s. Really? We don’t buy it, though we’re logical in thinking “who the hell would return something on Black Friday?” What’s nice to see is that about the last quarter of you (give or take a bit, we’re rounding up) are readers from out of the country. It’s great to know our readership extends this far, as it didn’t just a year ago. Not relevant to the poll, but still good to know our site is on your mind! Thanks for voting!

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Filed under: Deals, Launches, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), AT and T (T)

It is old news, really. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will be bidding on some of the wireless spectrum to be offered by the FCC in January. Speculation is that it will buy a piece of the regulated airwaves and allow consumers to connect to a large number of devices for little or no charge. The airwaves would be “open.” Google would make money from selling advertising on the handsets that access the service. The deal would also drive incumbents like Verizon Wireless and AT&T (NYSE: T) crazy by offering a new model for mobile consumers.

Or, it goes something like that. The media has never been able to exactly pin it down. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google “has said it wants to make mobile networks more open, so that consumers can use any Internet service and application and move their handsets between carriers without onerous restrictions.”

It is not clear how Google will make back the billions of dollars it would have to pay for the spectrum. It is also fuzzy how Google would deliver the system. Would it make an investment in expensive wireless infrastructure like cell towers? Would it lease those from a third party? The project is much more expensive than just buying the spectrum.

The whole thing seems to be just as bad an idea as Google getting into the green energy business by investing hundreds of millions of dollars in alternative energy.

Granted, Google does have to diversify beyond its search energy ad base. At some point, that huge growth engine cannot keep expanding at current rates. But how about buying something a little closer to home, like some other media properties? Google wants to supply advertising services to television and newspapers. A media investment appears to make more sense than cell towers and green electric generation.

At some point, Google’s track record of never making a significant strategic mistake has to come to an end. The company may be almost there.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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It has been reported that Aamir Khan has turned down a three film offer worth Rs. 60 crores from Adlabs because of no proper script in hand.Money has not at all a prime concern for this actor. All he needs is a good script. Previously Adlabs offered Aamir Rs. 50 crores for this deal but […]

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When Mozilla released Firefox 2.0.0.10 last Monday, the release notes made it out to be a relatively minor update correcting, as usual, a small number of security issues. As it turned out, however, the release contained a nasty surprise for developers whose sites relied on Canvas.drawImage, a JavaScript feature of recent browsers that lets developers display images with effects like rotation and drop shadows.

Firefox 2.0.0.10 completely broke this feature, causing images to disappear from sites that relied upon it. JavaScript effects libraries like instant.js suddenly stopped working, and developers had no way to fix the problem, because, as far as Firefox was concerned, everything was working perfectly.

A bug report was quickly filed, and helpless developers began reporting in. “Customers are complaining because their Firefox automatically updated to 2.0.0.10 and now they can no longer order photo prints in our shop,” wrote Klaus Reimer, highlighting just how serious a bug like this can be in the real world.

Mozilla developers mobilized quickly, and were able to produce a fixed version of the browser just 16 hours after the original bug report. The release team then took over to push Firefox 2.0.0.11 out the door in record time. “It’ll be the fastest turnaround between Firefox releases to date,” wrote Firefox developer Nick Thomas ahead of the new version.

With Firefox 2.0.0.11 now generally available, Mozilla is reviewing the circumstances under which this bug was allowed to make it into a public release. Automated regression tests have been put in place to prevent this particular bug from reappearing, of course, but other steps are being taken too. Mozilla developer Marcia Knous responded to requests for web developers to receive early notification of upcoming product releases by announcing a new Betatesters mailing list for developers interested in testing new Firefox and Thunderbird releases before they go live.

Summing up the episode, Jonathan Flack, Tools Architect for Feature Film VFX at GMP Worldwide, posted his thoughts:

[…] in our book the response to this was absolutely stellar. As developers ourselves we recognize that from time to time you are bound to introduce bugs like this. Anyone who claims that their company is procedurally immune from this kind of thing is completely delusional.

This, in our book, is a bright example of why open source development of this sort is working. I could never have imagined a closed source vendor responding to a critical fix with an actual release in +/- 48 hours.

This article provided by sitepoint.com.

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Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Disney, DVD Reviews, Home Entertainment, Remakes and Sequels

As you’re no doubt aware by now, I’m a big fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. At this point, you either love the series or you’re completely disinterested in the franchise, so I’m guessing this DVD review is meant for the “already fans.” We’ll start off with some material from my original review of the film, then some thoughts after my second third time with the flick, and then we’ll finish off with a blow-by-blow on the DVD goodies. (The DVD hits the shelves on December 4 in a solo-disc or dual-platter format. This review covers the two-disc special edition, which is scheduled to go “into Disney moratorium” as of September 2008.)

Sometimes the big-time franchise makers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: Churn out a skimpy “Part 3″ that just rehashes what was offered in Parts 1 & 2 and you’ve got something vaguely entertaining but clearly inferior like Shrek the Third. Try too hard to jam too many arbitrary plot threads and flimsy characters into your third entry and you’re stuck with a lurching behemoth like Spider-Man 3. And then you have the middle ground: The sprawling, gorgeous and massive adventure epic Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which while far from a flawless film, aims to stay faithful to its predecessors while still upping the ante (a lot) with a boat-load of new plot developments, characters and surprisingly nifty subtext. Yep, this particular popcorn movie runs almost three full hours, but if producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski had produced a quick-buck 92-minute third chapter, then the complaints would be legion. You can’t win. Except at the box office, obviously.

Continue reading DVD Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

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Filed under: Cellphones

Even 6 months ago, it would have been inconceivable to imagine the CEO of the biggest cellphone operator in the US sniping at its primary competitor’s hints at becoming more open. The key point being that none of the cellphone operators in the US are actually “open” by any objective definition, so maybe AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson should have bitten his tongue rather than stating that his company is “probably one of the most open networks in the world,” in a mild rebuke to Verizon’s open network plan for 2008. Also Randall, stating that “all of the handsets we sell are Java-equipped” might be a little unwise considering that AT&T’s flagship handset, and probably the most widely publicized handset (ever?) is clearly not. At least the debate is moving forward: hopefully his statement that “[all carriers] are all going to be open over time” will come to fruition with a little more gentle prodding coupled with the occasional kick up the arse.

[Image source]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Computers

Some Web sites has as many lives as cats. One of the Web sites that helped launch the blogging craze, Live Journal, has been sold by its American owners Six Apart to Russian business partner SUP. The one-time haven for teenage emo girls has declined in popularity over the last few years, and been replaced by MySpace, Google Blogger, and Yahoo 360, which are at the top of the list of most popular blogging hosts.

But even though its popularity here in the States has waned, Live Journal has gradually become the blogging outlet of choice for Russian intellectuals, who are increasingly looking for ways to break through their government’s increased crackdowns on media and free speech. So, naturally, SUP was eager to step in and take this blogging pioneer to its next chapter.

Under its new owners, Live Journal will continue to operate as normal, and will be established as a separate company from SUP.

From Reuters

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