Daniel Terdiman will head out on Road Trip 2010 in June and wants help figuring out where to go. If you’re a Halo fan, this is your ticket into the Halo: Reach beta.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
A group of hard-core Halo 2 players that’s refused to give up access to Xbox Live has remained logged in for 15 straight days now.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Oil spill cleanup is largely a low-tech field, but there are an increasing number of new technologies being used in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Oil spill cleanup is largely a low-tech field, but there are an increasing number of new technologies being used in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
The Call of Duty publisher announced Thursday that it has struck a ten-year exclusive deal with Halo developer Bungie.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Not surprisingly, the best apps for the Pulse smart pen are tools that help users with common problems, like translation, spelling, and more.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
45 minutes on IM: Wine blogger and social media consultant Gary Vaynerchuk talks about baseball cards, life changes, and his all Q&A conference.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer is the world’s sixth-most powerful. Servicing the entire space agency, the computer has been measured at 973 teraflops.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Air Force Capt. Mike Henson Henson explains to CNET what the annual Cyber Defense Exercise is about and what the military hopes to achieve.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Set to release this fall, “Legendary” edition is $150 with a 10-inch, 10-pound Noble Team statue; “limited” edition is $80 with exclusive armor, new secrets.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
this is one of those stories that is almost too good to be true, yet there it is. Apparently some Apple engineer “lost” one of the pre-production / test versions of the yet to be announced version 4 of the Iphone. Someone happened to find it, and apparently for a few dollars (10k, apparently) he gave his find over to the people at Gizmondo, who played with the new phone. They didn’t get all that far considering Apple quickly did a remote bricking on it, but they have shots and some reviews of the new software they saw.
Interesting featuring include the case (perhaps ceramic) which should help signals get in and out. A Front facing camera is also an indication that Apple might be going down the “visual phone call” route at some point.
It’s an interesting read, check out the full story here. Let’s just say that the buzz out there is suggesting that Apple isn’t very happy about this at all. I wonder if Gizmondo might find themselves with a whole lot less access to Apple for the next little while?
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access
Face-off between San Francisco 49ers field goal kicker Joe Nedney and a ferocious combat robot shows how even the most derided NFL position requires a human being.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Organovo start-up is working on bioprinting tech that could eventually make it possible to use specialized 3D printers to repair or replace blood vessels.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
There has been much discussion the last year or so about the ratings decline at CNN. Since Lou Dobbs left, the numbers if anything have gotten worse, perhaps making Lou seem like the only smart one in the bunch. Christiane Amanpour wisely signed on to ABC to host This Week, and likely to do more journalistic work much more in the public eye. All this against a background of CNN slipping to third in the news channel ratings, now behind MSNBC.
This New York Post article talks about the situation with Larry King to some extent. He is signed through mid 2011, and he pretty much seems to have no desire to retire. Yet, the numbers are in and things seem to be pointing only one way for CNN as a whole and a weeknight schedule that is tied around his 9PM prime time talker.
In this New York Times article, you can see that the latest ratings show that “Mr. King s audience dropped 43 percent for the quarter and 52 percent in March. He dropped to 771,000 viewers for the quarter from 1.34 million in 2009. More alarming perhaps, Mr. King, whose show has been regularly eclipsed by Rachel Maddow s on MSNBC (and is almost quadrupled by Sean Hannity s show on Fox), is now threatened by a new host, Joy Behar on HLN (formerly Headline News.) “. Effectively, CNN’s main network is being eaten up by it’s sister channel, the inappropriately named “headline news” which is also more of a talker than a news channel anymore.
Right now the tide is against CNN for many reasons. Foremost is that the Obama revolution has started to galvanize people to the right and center right, away from the more liberal / centrist opinions of the CNN on air staff, and more towards the left leaning fox news or the more strident groups at either end of the spectrum. Celebrity interviews and such are nice, but the current culture of instant TMZ and Perez Hilton gratification makes Larry King’s interviews often out of date or over taken by events even as they happen. The lead in from Campbell Brown is soft, and even Anderson Cooper is losing out, dropping audience even as he has traveled around to cover the news such as in Haiti. The other issue for CNN is that viewers trust them for the news, but they seem to tune away from their talkers. With a soft news cycle for the last year or so, it has been hard for CNN to get people to tune in when there isn’t news.
Finally there is King himself. At 76 years of age, has he reached the point where he can no longer connect with a younger audience? I can’t imagine too many people under 40 wanting to tune in to see what grandpa has to say, and I think that this is key to the overall decline of CNN. With King’s show right in the middle of the evening, it makes it hard for viewers to stay tuned in for the whole evening of programming. I personally cannot stand to listen to Larry King, even during one of his “breaking news” shows where CNN somehow feels obligated to let a talk show host deliver news and interview people. He is enough to make me tune out, and apparently many others are doing the same.
My suggestion for CNN is this: Give Larry King his retirement party already. Put the news hour back at 8PM, start Anderson Cooper’s show at 9PM, and then bring in some actual talk show magic at 11PM to compete right in the time frame people are more comfortable with celeb talker shows. Maybe try out Joy Behar at that time. Stop trying to out talk Fox News, that isn’t going to happen. The liberal / centrist message isn’t strident enough to amusing enough to keep viewers, Fox has that market sewn up and MSNBC is working hard to get the other part of it. CNN needs to just go back to what they do best, update their on air staff to people under 70, and give it another shot. Sorry Mr King, but even a king needs to know when to cede his throne.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel
After months of decline, industry has something to smile about with 6 percent year-over-year sales increase. Hardware revenues continue to dive.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
A gala event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first–and only–manned dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench highlights just how much work needs to be done if mankind hopes to rescue the planet’s oceans from their rapidly degrading health.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Microsoft did Monday what has been speculated a month ago about the Pink phone, releasing the brand new Kin 1 and Kin 2 phones into the marketplace. The Kin 1 is what was pictures last month as the Pink phone, and the Kin 2 is a more traditional slider style phone with a few twists. The real key in all of this is Microsoft moving aggressively into the social networking market for phones with the Kin 1, and a little more serious but still social Kin 2. Kin 1 is a rounded slider phone with a nicely done keyboard that is intended for heavy texting and social network updating. It also has a 5MP camera, full wireless inclusing 802.11 b/g, and a 2.6 inch touch screen Kin 2 is the more traditional slider, with a larger 3.4 inch screen, stereo sound, 8MP camera, and more potential for storage (up to 8gig).
Check out the Microsoft Kin Site for more info.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access
A recent rash of celebrity sex scandals has made me wonder how all of this has come about. Is there more cheating going on in Hollywood, or has scandal become so fashionable that nobody tries to avoid it anymore? Actually, I think the real answer is money and the 15 minutes of fame.
Tiger Woods’ well publicized sex scandal has made instant stars out of any number of girls. Many of these girls appear to have either sold their stories for cash to the tabloids, or have used their Tiger connections to boost appearance fees or generate press. Anything connected to Tiger Woods is money, that is for sure, and being attached to him in such an infamous way is certainly not hurting these girls too much. In fact, more supposed players keep coming out of the woodwork, so it isn’t like shame is driving them to hide, now is it? Tiger has done a well publicized stint in rehab, and his near triumphant return to golf has be closely watched – and well marketed by one of his few remaining sponsors, Nike.
Jesse James situation is even a little weirder, because he is married to Sandra Bullock, who many consider just too damn sexy to stay away from. Yet, Jesse has been connected to a collection of tattooed girls, odd Nazi references, and even weirder group sex stories that will have you shaking your head. When you look at those girls and Sandra Bullock, it is really weird to think anything would have happened at all. It seemed that pretty much every nut job with a tattoo was coming out claiming to have some sort of sexual relationship with the West Coast Choppers builder. Jesse has apparently also gone down the rehab road, and already fallout comes with the cancellation of his “Jesse James is a Dead Man” series, which had actually done pretty well on SpikeTV.
The latest scandal involves movie star, cop, and martial arts master Steven Seagal. This one is particularly weird, if only because the charges leveled by a former model are so out of character for him as to be a little hard to swallow. Kayden Nguyen alleges that she was hired to be a personal assistant, but upon starting the job she discovered it was more about being his personal sex toy. It’s a bit of a head shaker for sure. The question now will be how many more girls will suddenly come out of the woodwork to claim their 15 minutes of undeserved fame?
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel
The young company has scored big with Farmville and other Facebook hits. Gaming pros, though, see lots they don’t like, and they’re not afraid to say so.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Known as ChatImprov, the Facebook application aims to take the best parts of Chatroulette–connecting people with strangers–and offer them in a safer, more comfortable environment.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
A clever video showing an almost salacious unboxing of Apple’s new tablet from domain registrar GoDaddy spoofs 1970s-era porn movies.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
The 1980s new wave band will let its core fans decide which 12 of 16 songs will make it onto its forthcoming album.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
An England-only version of the game will allow proper nouns, backward words, and other nonsense. But the original continues to prohibit proper nouns. You can relax.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
A new organization launching Tuesday aims to crowdsource millions of 99-cent gifts to fund hundreds of science and technology start-ups that could help solve the world’s biggest problems.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
Package delivery giant is saving millions in dollars and gallons of fuel by applying complex data analysis to info coming daily from its trucks.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
The third installment of its original franchise doesn’t come out until June 18. But an advance screening at Pixar’s headquarters shows that the studio is still very much on top of its game.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
