Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace returns to theaters in 3D February 12, 2012
It's time to mark your calendar Star Wars fans, whether you plan to be first in line to check out the new 3D-converted editions of each movie, protest their rerelease in a new format or just avoid the theater altogether now that The Phantom Menace has officially been slated to return next year on February 12th. The effects guys at Fox, Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic reckon the immersi
It’s A Good Day To Be An iPad Competitor . . . Oh Wait, It’s Not
Editor’s Note: Jim Dalrymple has been writing about Apple for more than 15 years. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple and on his Web site at The Loop. Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday introduced the iPad 2 at a special event in San Francisco, taking even more momentum away from its competitors. I’ve had a lot of people in the last 24 hours tell me that the iPad 2 isn’t as revolutionary as
What can we expect from the new Blade Runner movie? We asked the producers.
Yesterday we learned that the rights Blade Runner was getting a sequel or a prequel. We spoke with the producers behind this project, and asked them your burning questions. So, will it be Blade Runner 2 or Blade Runner Origins? More »
Ditto: The Social App For What You Should Be Doing
Think about Foursquare right now. You can tell everyone what you’re currently doing, but there’s no good mechanism for planning something to do or for getting a recommendation for something to do. Sure, you could use “shouts” that way. But no one does. It’s an aspect of realtime that doesn’t really work. Enter Ditto, a new service in the space. Ditto is an iPhone app in the location space that goe
Wednesday Reads
My afternoon reading material: • Sexual Economics, Erotic Capital (Slate) • Bernanke Doesn’t Rule Out More Bond Buying to Aid Economy (Bloomberg) but see We’re Just Gonna Inflate Our Way Out Of It! (ContraryInvestor) • China’s Highly Unequal Economy (The Diplomat) • Four time bombs that will blow up Wall Street (MarketWatch) • Leonhardt: Union Contracts, Not Pay, Are States’ Problem (NYT) • Accide
What’s New in iOS 4.3
While much of the focus at Apple’s iPad 2 event might have centered around the sexy new hardware, Apple showcased some of the new features in the upcoming iOS 4.3 as well.Developers have had the opportunity to work with beta versions of iOS 4.3 for several months. The new OS release isn’t going to introduce as many features as the iOS 4.0 update or the unifying iOS 4.2 release, but the improvem
No “One More Thing” At Today’s iPad 2 Event
Despite being on medical leave since January, Steve Jobs took the stage at today’s Apple event to a standing ovation. After revealing that over 100 million iPhones and over 15 million iPads have been sold total and introducing the 1/3 thinner, 13.3% percent lighter rainbow-covered iPad 2, Steve Jobs made his requisite concluding remarks and exited the stage without giving one of his legendary “on
iMovie for iPad: Precision Editing and Multitrack Audio
Apple is bringing iMovie to the iPad, which takes full advantage of the iPad 2's new A5 dual-core processor, promising precision video editing, multitrack audio recording, Airplay compatibility and the ability to export movies in HD. Oh, and it's also coming as an update for iPhone and iPod touch devices. It will cost $5 when it comes out on March
The Race to Build a PageRank for the Social Web Continues
As the race to build the social version of Google’s PageRank heats up, PeerIndex has added a new source of data for its rankings: the company said today that users can now connect their Quora profiles to the service, which will use their activity at the popular question-and-answer site — including any votes that their answers get from other Quora users — as another tool to measure their authority
RedRover App Builds Geo-Social Network for Parents
Kathryn Tucker recalls the time she missed her daughter’s friend’s birthday party because she lost track of the information. It’s a thought the mother of two returned to when she developed RedRover, a social location-based network for parents, that helps them connect, plan play dates and discover new kid-friendly locations. The service, which launched this week as an iOS app, speaks to the power o
10 Ways to Turn Your Local Business Into a Global Success
Jani Penttinen is a founder and CEO of PremiumFanPage, a service that helps brands connect with their fans in any language, and Xiha, a multilingual social network with users in more than 200 countries speaking 140 languages. He blogs at janipenttinen.com.Today’s Internet represents a momentous age in the history of global commerce. Never before have so many people met in one, international mar
Keen On… Peter Guber: “The Idea That Music is Dead is Ludicrous”
Yesterday, movie, music and sports mogul Peter Guber told me why there’s no business without story business. In the instant best-selling Tell To Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, his new book released today, Guber urges everyone to unleash the power of story. Today, Guber’s attention shifts from the power of storytelling to the future of the entertainment industr
Panasonic puts pricetags on 2011 Blu-ray players, HTIB & soundbars
Of course, it's not all about new TVs, as Panasonic also took the opportunity today to bust out MSRPs for a slew of other home theater products. As it mentioned at CES, the connected features of its 2011 Blu-ray players are taking center stage, with Skype access through Viera Cast, while they also claim to feature the industry's fastest playback, measuring at half the booting and loading time of
Boxee Raises $16.5 Million For Its Vision For The “Future Of TV”
Boxee has announced on its blog that it has raised $16.5 million in third-round funding. This brings the total capital raised by the company to $26.5 million. The investment comes from new investors Pitango and Softbank, with participation from prior backers General Catalyst, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Boxee points out it has grown from 12 to 34 employees since its last ($6 million)
Now Starring You, in a Movie About You
Trey Ratcliff, creator of 100 Cameras and I The Oscars are over, but we will all be talking about the winners — and the losers — for days and weeks to come. Why? Because we love movies. We love movie stars. What’s not to love? They have the drama, the glamour, the shiny bright lights and, not to mention, fantastic amounts of money. No wonder everyone wants to be like them! And while not everyo
A Look At The Lawsuit Against Michael Lewis, In Which We Find That Brad Pitt Has Bought The Movie Right To "The Big Short"
Earlier today, some hilarious news hit the tape after it was made public that disgraced CDO trader Wing Chau has decided to go nuclear and sue Michael Lewis and Steve Eisman due to their all too honest representation of the Harding Advisory asset manager, in Lewis' book "The Big Short" (not spared from the lawsuit was even book publisher W.W. Norton). "Michael Lewis was sued by Wing Chau, presiden
The Oscars and the Death of the Water Cooler
If advertisers have their way, a lot of the Oscar buzz this year will have nothing to do with the best picture nominees.As with the Super Bowl, advertisers during the second-biggest advertising night of the year (the Academy Awards are known in the industry as the “Super Bowl for Women,”) are trying to inject themselves into social media conversations happening during the event.But while the Su
Sorry Entrepreneurs: You’re Probably the Rule, Not the Exception
I was in the air an average of 30 hours a month for the last two years, so I watched a lot of movies — typically semi-delirious on Ambien– that I wouldn’t ordinarily. One of those was the star-studded rom-com “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Note: You won’t see this movie at the Oscars tonight, or any night, and that’s not because it was cruelly overlooked. But as a plane movie, it sufficed. I’m ass
The Social Network’s Journey to the Oscars
video The 83rd Annual Academy Awards are rapidly drawing near, and the question on everyone’s (in the tech realm) mind is: Can a movie about Facebook win the Oscar?The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin-penned, David Fincher-directed, black horse of 2010, has trod a long road to the Oscars. While it’s now nominated for numerous awards — including Best Film — the movie was once a veritable joke.We’ve be
Memes Could Hit The Silver Screen In “The Chronicles of Rick Roll”
Move over, Chronicles of Narnia, there’s a new dreamworld of magic in town. That’s right. Andrew Fischer, CEO of Colorado-based marketing company NURV, has recruited a stellar cast of Meme-lebrities, including Antoine Dodson of Hide Yo Wife, Hide Yo Kids fame, Double Rainbow videographer Paul Vasquez, Brian Collins (the “Boom goes the dynamite” kid), and “Numa Numa” vocalist Gary Brolsma, for a fe
Android Market adds e-books; movies and music soon to come?
The Android world's been a-buzz this last week over a few new Android Market URLS, including http://market.android.com/music/ and http://market.android.com/movies/. In case you thought there was nothing to this tip, guess again: the third member of this trifecta (http://market.android.com/books/) has gone live. That's right, visitors to the Android Market can pick up Glenn Beck's mile-a-minute th
Guest Post: Robotics, Part 1 – Where Are We Today?
Submitted by Doug Hornig of Casey's Extraordinary TechnologyRobotics, Part 1 – Where Are We Today?In the field of robotics, we have no Newton. No one who, assisted by a falling fruit, cried out, “Eureka, I have it, and it is called a… I know… a robot.”No, the concept of a robot first occurred to some unknown person in some far distant time, as he or she, engaged in a grinding, repetitive task, dre
The Future of Your Wireless Home Network
David Henry is a senior director of product marketing for NETGEAR where he works on high performance, dependable and easy home networking, storage and digital media products to connect people with the Internet and their content and devices. You can follow NETGEAR on Twitter @NETGEAR.The future of home networking will see multiple devices connected to the Internet and to each other. At the 2011
How Outfit7 Built A Toy App Powerhouse
While Angry Birds grabbed headlines last year, it wasn’t the only breakout mobile app success story. Slovenian start-up Outfit7 last year managed to quietly rack up more than 60 million downloads of its Talking Friends apps, led by its breakout hit Talking Tom Cat. The company, which is now up to about 72 million downloads, has built a fast-growing empire by side-stepping the mobile gaming market
HANDS ON: Amazon’s Prime Instant Video
On Tuesday, Amazon rebranded its Video On Demand as Amazon Instant Video, and — perhaps in a bid to take on Netflix — will be offering Amazon Prime members unlimited access to thousands of its titles.Amazon Prime is a membership program that provides households with unlimited two-day shipping and other fast shipping options for $79 per year. The new Prime Instant Video service is a free additio
Next Question: What’s A Publishing App?
We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps. —email attributed to Steve Jobs There’s been so much confusion in the wake of Apple’s new subscription billing policy for apps that Steve Jobs felt the need to issue the proclamation above via his preferred method, a personal email. (It’s his version of the burning bush). While Apple’
The PayPal Mafia Puts $525K In CapLinked, A LinkedIn-Meets-Salesforce For Private Investing
There a few platforms that aim to connect investors and startups on the web, including AngelList, but for the most part investment transactions and venture funding is done face-to-face, many times with a hand shake involved. A new startup, called CapLinked, is hoping to change this by offering a collaborative platform for entrepreneurs, private investors and advisors to find each other, build rela