Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category
Social media in plain English June 1st, 2008
Here is a great video from the Common Craft people about social media:
Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.
Just looking at their site there are a couple things that really tickle me. For one thing their videos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives license which means you can download them legitimately, post them on your blogs (which I think you could do through YouTube, Vimeo and Blip.tv anyway through their terms of use) and even pass them around as long as you don’t re-sell them, use them commercially or mash them up). I also like that you can license the videos to use at work (the link didn’t work when I tried it now so hopefully they’ll sort this gremlin out soon).
Common Craft produces a really fantastic service which helps explain some of the confusing jargon to people new to these concepts.
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creative commons, common craft, tutorial, social media, license
Posted in Entertainment, Tutorials | Comments (0)
Low-down on Hulu from Daisy Whitney April 4th, 2008
I came across this video which turned out to be a quick video about the popular Internet video site that has a number of mainstream shows in the US called Hulu:
The woman in the video is Daisy Whitney who I found out about in This Week in Media. Actually I listened to an episode and heard her voice and she kept coming back onto the show. She sounded really interesting so I looked her up and found her site.
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daisy whitney, hulu, this week in media
Posted in Entertainment, People, Podcasts | Comments (0)
iPod Touch in my future? March 23rd, 2008
I have lustful thoughts about acquiring an iPod Touch when it comes time to upgrade my aging 5th generation iPod. When I first thought about an iPod Touch a while ago my concern was the limited drive space (the current high end model is a 32GB model) where what I really wanted was/is more space. I conducted a little experiment this morning and looked at how much space I would need if I only took the media I actually consume with me on my iPod and a 32GB iPod Touch could probably be enough for me although that wouldn’t include email and other application data.
I know what some of you have iPod Touch’s. What are your thoughts about an iPod touch as an iPod/Internet tablet option? Nokia has its N810 and I have heard mixed reviews about it. My issue is that I would want my music player/podcast device to be my iPod because all my content is in iTunes and I am a rookie Mac fanatic so I don’t see myself shifting to a Nokia device as my media device.
I came across this video by Tom Raftery where he talks about why the iPod Touch is a superior Internet tablet. The size does appeal to me, as does the functionality and interface. I would like to see an iPod Touch with a bigger drive though (64GB or so at a minimum) so I am inclined to wait and see if Steve Jobs unveils a bigger model in the coming months …
Any words from the wise? Is this a silly idea? Should I just go with the iPod Classic with its 160GB drive and leave this touchscreen foolishness behind me?
Posted in Devices, Entertainment, People | Comments (2)
You know the song from the MacBook Air ad? February 9th, 2008
It turns out this is the song from the MacBook Air ad:
The artist is an Israeli singer Yael Naïm whose self-titled album is up there on the iTunes Store. I think I’ll take a look at more of her music …
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yael naim, macbook air ad, macbook air, naim, yael
Posted in Entertainment, Media, People | Comments (0)
Amazon MP3 to the rescue January 27th, 2008
I have ranted about how decent music downloads are hard to come by here in South Africa, at least legal music downloads. There is the iTunes Store workaround but then that isn’t exactly in accordance with Apple’s terms of service. There are a couple options available like eMusic but the catalogues are rarely chock full of mainstream releases.
Thankfully there is light at the end of the tunnel. Amazon has announced that its Amazon MP3 service is going to open up to international customers sometime this year.
“We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can’t wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future,” said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital Music. “We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year.”
Launched on Amazon.com in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers Earth’s Biggest Selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Every song and album in the Amazon MP3 music download store is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software and is encoded at 256 kbps to deliver high audio quality. Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any music management application, such as iTunes(R) or Windows Media Player(TM); and burn songs to CDs for personal use.
This service is currently restricted to US customers and enables them to purchase DRM-free, 256kbps MP3 files which you can play on the device of your choice. Amazon MP3 is one of the few real competitors iTunes has and if Amazon opens the store up more than the iTunes Store then I can see Apple having a tough time hanging on to its dominance in the digital music download market.
I will certainly be there with my credit card to buy music from Amazon if the store becomes available here. Songs cost between $0.89 and $0.99 and albums cost between $5.99 and $8.99. To boot, Amazon is selling music from all 4 music labels and you can be pretty sure this is partly the music industry’s response to Apple’s refusal to introduce flexible pricing for music historically.
What a win!
(Source: Engadget)
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apple, amazon, amazon mp3, music downloads, mp3, drm-free, no drm, announcement, legal music downloads, itunes
Posted in Companies, Entertainment, Media, Sharing | Comments (8)