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Latest Gear Live Videos
Wal-mart Offers Movie Downloads
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Home Entertainment, Internet, Movies,
After a trial run a couple of months ago, Wal-mart has reached agreements with Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox, and are now offering downloads of DVD Releases. They come in 640 x 480 resolution, 1,500 to 1,700 kbps rate for PC, X 240 resolution with 500 to 810 kbps average for portable devices, and a combination download for PC and portables that requires 30% more storage. Considering that the costs can be as much as $19.88, don’t work on iPods, and that the site is still in the beta stage, we think we will just stick to our unlimited Netflix. After all, you can only watch those pirates so many times.
Read More 
| Wal-mart Media Download
Gallery: Wal-mart Offers Movie Downloads
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Can AdMomentum Topple King Google and Queen Yahoo?
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Google, Internet,
Fast Search and Transfer has created AdMomentum, which they believe to be a solution for websites who are desirous of being less dependent on Google and Yahoo when searching. This is a second chance for the Norwegian company, who had previously created another search engine, AlltheWeb. When that and other affiliates failed it was sold off for $100 million in 2003 to a company that was eventually bought by, you guessed it, Yahoo, who uses it as a testing ground for alternative search engines.
Read More | Fast Search via USA Today
Gallery: Can AdMomentum Topple King Google and Queen Yahoo?
Wesleyan University in Bartlesville, Oklahoma has put up a scholarship for bid on eBay. Worth approximately $23,000, the package includes tuition, room, and board for an entire school year. Designed to create publicity for the college, bidding is available until February 11th. Last time we checked, the latest bid (one of 23) was for $16,100. Good for Wesleyan, and kudos to the highest bidder for being smart enough to know that there is more than one way to get into college.
Read More | eBay
Gallery: Wesleyan University Offers Scholarship on eBay
You CAN Teach an Old Computer New Tricks
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Internet, Movies, Music, Software,
Some of us just can’t go out and invest in all the wonderful technology now available. Using a rather ancient HP Computer that crawls along on Pentium II and only contains a 12 GB hard drive, we decided it was time to at least gain the capacity to play DVDs. After a bit of research, we found that our technologically crippled members of Gear Live had access to download the free VLC Media Player with decoder from VideoLan. Around for a couple of years now, its Version 0.8.6 was released December 10, 2006 and works just fine. Take that, overpriced WIN DVD.
Read More | Videolan
Gallery: You CAN Teach an Old Computer New Tricks
Sun Visor Theatre Helps Passenger Pass Time
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Internet, Movies, Music, Portable Audio / Video, Transportation,
If you abhor being a passenger on long car trips, but don’t want to crawl into the back seat and watch Disney movies with your kids, the Sun Visor Theatre could be a simple solution. With a 7-inch 16:9 widescreen LCD, it features a built-in DVD player that can also play CDs and MP3s, a TV Tuner, an FM transmitter, and a SD card reader. A USB port allows you to plug into your laptop and a remote is included. The Sun Visor carries a MSRP of $299.95, but don’t watch anything too engaging, as the driver may decide to pull over, watch with you, and make your drive even longer.
Read More | Gadget Universe
Gallery: Sun Visor Theatre Helps Passenger Pass Time
To go with its latest series of EXILIM digital cams, Casio has released its second model, the Zoom EX-Z1050 which features eBay Best Shot, one of 38 total modes. It captures images that are optimized for eBay and includes Auto Macro for smaller size items, such as jewelry. It even goes so far as to store them in an eBay directory. With 10.1 mp images, a shooting speed of 7 shots per minute, a 3X optical and 4X digital zoom, rapid-flash, and auto-focus, you can concentrate more on what you are selling than your ability to display it. Available in silver, black, pink, and blue (which we think is more of a purple,) the EX-Z1050 carries a MSRP of $299.99.
Read More | Casio
Gallery: Casio Camera Caters to eBay Afficianados
The Internet Takes Over Superbowl XLI
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Home Entertainment, Internet, Videos,
Was there ever a time that a website wasn’t used in conjunction with a TV commercial? We can’t remember that far back, but we did notice a preponderance of spots utilizing or featuring computer technology, including GM, GoDaddy.com, Garmin CPS, Budweiser, and Pepsi. If you missed any of them (which cost companies $2.5 million+ apiece,) you can catch them on online at CBS. Our fave, hands down, has to be one of this year’s Coke commercials, coming back to the venue after an almost 10 year disappearance.
Gallery: The Internet Takes Over Superbowl XLI
Viacom Nixes Pix on YouTube
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Movies, Music,
Viacom has asked YouTube to remove over 100,000 unauthorized clips from its site. The company claims that after several months of negotiating with the popular site, “it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users.”
YouTube had previously come to such an agreement with the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, but seems to have failed to do the same with Viacom, who owns Paramount Pictures, MTV, Nickelodeon and VH1. No lawsuit is in the works at present, but YouTube had better come up with a solution before legal authorities decide to intervene.
Read More | USA Today
Gallery: Viacom Nixes Pix on YouTube
Flixter Goes to the Movies
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Home Entertainment, Internet, Movies,
Flixter, a San Fransisco based site, is all about movies. It allows users to discuss and rate movies, features a movie compatibility test, videos and pictures, gives the latest gossip, and has the lowdown on actors to the point that it almost rivals IMDB. Claiming over 8 million subscribers, Flixter is free to join and offers a chat forum so that you can find others who are into the same genre as you are. This is certainly a fine alternative to sites such as My Space, where we now get lost looking for new friends.
Read More | Flixter
Gallery: Flixter Goes to the Movies
Faster IBM Computer to be Utilized by National Weather Service
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Announcements, Internet, PC / Laptop, Science,
The National Weather Service’s parent agency NOAA has announced that it is implementing a new set of IBM computers that will increase the power used for our current weather forecasting by 360%. It can process 14 trillion calculations per second and ingest more than 240 million global observations daily. Reported to be the 36th fastest system in the world, it features 16 1.9 gigahertz Power5+ processors and 160 terabytes of storage. Now if it could just make that massive “Manitoba Mauler” storm coming to the Midwest go away.
Read More | Live Science
