Movies, Music, Video Games, Social Networks and Lifestyle News And Reviews
Product reviews and news of digital entertainment products and services in movies, music, video games, game streaming, social networks and lifestyle products.
YouTube may rule supreme in the melded world of online video and social networking, but Microsoft has a new trick up its sleeve that it hopes might steal some eyeballs away from the competition. Launching today in 20 countries and 12 languages is Microsoft's Messenger TV service, integrating online video directly into Microsoft's Live Messenger...
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A tweet deal for Twitter? Well why not, as they've managed to snag another round of financing.A source familiar with the negotiations tells me that Twitter signed a term sheet for "either $15 million or $20 million" last week. We're still trying to find out who is in, but the word is that it's largely an inside round of funding with one outsider...
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Why give them the opportunity to get used to an ad-free experience? Twitter Japan is launching, but unlike the U.S.-based version, with ads from Day One.In a conversation Tuesday evening, Joi Ito of Digital Garage, the Japanese company Twitter tasked with some of the Japanese localization, told me that Twitter decided to launch in Japan...
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Anyone ever watch the movie The Cheyenne Social Club? Well, this ain't that kind of social club. Thursday Rockstar Games announced the Rockstar Social Club, scheduled to launch (drum roll) on the same day as Grand Theft Auto IV, April 29th (go figure).Today Rockstar announced a new website called the Rockstar Social Club. Essentially a high...
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Facebook has been garnering all sorts of bad press lately about the iffy security and privacy of their users' information. Today's version of Whoops! for Facebook is a security lapse that allowed unauthorized strangers to see personal photographs posted in areas on Facebook that were supposed to be private. And I wasn't just making a cheap...
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You may recall that Chris Avenir, a first-year chemical engineering student at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, faced expulsion after it came to light that he had created a Facebook-based chemistry study group. The horror, the horror!Chris Avenir's apparent exhortation to fellow Ryerson University engineering students to "input...
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In a somewhat surprising move, AOL has shelled out $850 million dollars to acquire social networking site Bebo. If you add Bebo's 40 million users worldwide to AOL's customer base for AIM and ICQ, AOL can now boast 80 million unique users. And AOL can show those 80 million users advertising while they're on their service. I imagine it's a...
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Mobile computing has come a long way in the last few years. Notebook manufacturers have been squeezing more power and features into ever more portable packages. As technologies have continued to be refined, shrinking in size and power requirements, manufacturers have been able to expand their creative ideas, bring ever more...
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If you've followed the tech sector for any appreciable amount of time, you've no doubt heard the tale of Dell Inc. - one of those stories where a guy with a dream founded a company and eventually built it into a corporate giant. Right from the beginning, Michael Dell believed that the future of PC sales...
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Lance Ulanoff can't help noticing that the social networking site Facebook has more than a passing resemblance to AOL just before it went down like the Titanic: disgruntled users, ill-advised and unsuccessful attempts to monetize traffic, and inflated user rolls kept artificially high by the difficulty of removing your account from the service....
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For many of you, Maingear Computer may not be a household name and that would probably be just fine with the folks out at the shop in Union New Jersey. Loosely classified as a specialty high performance system builder and retailer, Maingear's mission statement on style, performance and quality claims that they strive to not...
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Well, although there's likely a security hole there somewhere, the WSJ Online has accepted Facebook's friend request with the "Seen This?" feature.Hoping to tap into the growing buzz of online social networks, the Journal is adding a feature to its Web site that will allow readers to see which Journal stories are popular among that user's...
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Many of us have fond memories of playing video games in the arcade of a local bowling alley, popping 25 cents into the machine on a regular basis to keep the fun going. Back then, that was the main way to get your game on, displaying your skills for all to see. If you can remember dropping quarters into the slot of a...
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Everyone keeps telling me how smart Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook is, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. Fresh on the heels of his disastrous foray into datamining with Facebook's Beacon service, he seems to be unclear on the concept of copyright infringement. Hasbro and Mattel, owners of the copyright for the Scrabble word game,...
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Phishing scams grow more sophisticated every day. And as sites like banks and credit card companies become hardened against attack, crafty information thieves find ways to steal information further out in the digital landscape. Facebook users reported a phishing attack on Wednesday that is disguised as a message left for them from a trusted...
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Dell's XPS brand is instantly recognizable in computer hardware and gaming circles. Whether you've owned one or not, there is no debate that XPS branded machines, desktops and notebooks alike, are serious competitors in the high-end and ultra high-end performance markets. While the XPS brand is over fourteen years old, it didn't receive acceptance...
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Facebook has gotten all the bad publicity anybody could ever want over their intrusive "Beacon" marketing/advertising/information gathering widget. On top of everything else, researchers have discovered that despite Facebook's modification of their permission settings, Facebook is still collecting information about all your purchases...
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Some users of online community Facebook are complaining that Facebook's latest marketing widget, called Beacon, allows other users to see what you're buying online from vendors participating in the program. They feel it's an invasion of their privacy. You're allowed to opt out of the process, and given two opportunities to...
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The stereotype is that geeks can't dress themselves, or rather, that they can't dress stylishly. Technology is here to help them get past that minor obstacle.If you've ever stood in front of your closet trying to figure out what to wear for an important meeting, a new high-tech wardrobe invention might be just the thing for you.The "smart...
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Just about everybody has heard some sort of interesting search-related fact that has to do with pornography on the Internet. First it was that searches for Jesus Christ came up with less results than the word porn on Google. Then it became a big deal to be 'bigger than porn' when it came to Google hits.But the number of search...
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A recent survey indicated that as many as 25% of people would be happy left all alone, as long as it was in cyberspace.Conducted by Zogby International, a polling firm in Utica, N.Y., the survey questions were e-mailed to a scientifically selected sample of nearly 9,800 U.S. adults, who offered precise feedback to not-so-burning questions...
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Microsoft actually managed to beat Google at an acquisition, or rather, in this case, a partial stake in a company. Google had also been rumored to have been pursuing a minority stake in Facebook.The final deal resulted in a 1.6 percent stake in the social-networking company, notably smaller than the 5 to 10 percent that had been talked...
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