Amazon announces new tie-in with Discovery Networks…

Below is text from Amazon new content from Discovery Networks:

Dear Customers,

Today we’re announcing our biggest addition yet, bringing nearly 3,000 more titles to Prime Instant Video. We’ve struck a deal with Discovery Networks to bring some of the highest quality, non-fiction, informative and entertaining content about the world to our Amazon Prime customers. Rolling out over the next few weeks are TV shows from Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, and Science. Prime members, at no additional cost, can now stream more than 17,000 titles.

The new titles include hits such as Deadliest Catch, Mythbusters, Man vs. Wild, Dirty Jobs, Gold Rush: Alaska, and Shark Week, TLC series like Say Yes to the Dress and Cake Boss, as well as content like How It’s Made from Science, and The Jeff Corwin Experience from Animal Planet.

Interesting – seems like Discovery has “found” a digital outlet for content – it will be interest to see who else joins in….

March 15, 2012
Categories: Inside Hollywood, News you can Use, Technologies, Vendor News . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Hatsune Miku virtual japanese popstar coming to LA…

This seems a bit out there, but read about the ticket sales…

(Tokyo) – Having just closed a 4-concert tour in tokyo, japanese pop star hatsune miku is among the most successful contemporary
japanese performers, but she is also virtual: an avatar with a computer-programmed voice, who sings songs compiled
of lyrics written by her fans.

The voice-synthesizing program that powers the popstar is the work of crypton future media, which bills hatsune miku
as ‘a virtual singer who can sing any song that anybody composes’.  and indeed her songs are generated by her own fans,
arranged based on suggestions from as many as twenty different people. she originated as a way of showcasing
the company’s music software, but has since encouraged an entire movement of consumer-generated media,
spread originally via the nico nico douga sharing website further facilitated by crypton via the piapro portal for collaboration
and posting.

The 10,000 tickets for the four tokyo performances last week, each priced at 6300 yen (76 USD) sold out within hours,
as thousands more watched telecasting of the performance in movie theatres in shanghai, hong kong, and taiwan,
and others paid about 40 USD for their own access to the live video streaming feeds. the virtual popstar has also already
sold out shows in LA, and aluminum plates with her image on it composed part of the spacecraft akatsuki (launched may 21st, 2010)
after a petition towards the project received over 14,000 signatures. ‘project diva‘ by sega offers both at home video games
and standing arcade models of rhythm-testing games featuring the singer, with a new release called ‘project MMT’ expected in 2012.

March 14, 2012
Categories: Events, News you can Use, Technologies . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Javier Bardem spotted as Villain in new JB film

Javier Bardem won an Academy Award for “No Country for Old Men,” in which he played one of the scariest baddies in cinematic history. Now, the Spanish star is back to his villainous ways in the upcoming James Bond flick, “Skyfall,” and he looks a lot more blond than we’ve ever seen him before.

The first photos from the film set have leaked online, and they show Bardem, who reportedly plays a villain named Silva (obsessed with world destruction, natch), looking anything but evil as a London police officer in disguise.

Photo by INFphoto.com

Little is known about the plot, except that Bond’s MI6 agency is under attack and “007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.”

Bardem isn’t the only Oscar winner associated with “Skyfall.” Dame Judi Dench returns as M, and Sam Mendes (“American Beauty“) will serve as director. The film also features five-time Oscar nominee Albert Finney and two-time nominee Ralph Fiennes. Not to mention the man we’re all counting on to save the world, Daniel Craig as James Bond.

If blond hair if good enough for 007, why wouldn’t it also work for his nemesis?

“Skyfall,” the 23rd Bond movie, hits theaters in November.

March 12, 2012
Categories: Inside Hollywood . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

The story of Keep Calm and Carry on

You have heard this, or seen this.  Now, here the story behind this iconic phrase..

 

March 6, 2012
Categories: News you can Use . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Congratulations to Universal – 100 Years!

Here is the new opening banner for Universal, celebrating 100 years!

March 5, 2012
Categories: Inside Hollywood . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

New Amazon Locker Service Offers Postal Delivery Options

Amazon’s locker banks have today turned up in New York City, the third location after the company rolled out the lockers in Seattle and London last month. AmazonLocker is a neighborhood self-service pick-up facility that consists of oversized post office boxes installed in a variety of locations such as several Gristedes, Rite-Aid and D’Agostino stores in Manhattan. The service offers an option for people who can’t or prefer not to take delivery of a shipment at their home or office.

While Amazon has remained mum on its test markets, Amazon customers in NYC, Seattle and London may have noticed the Locker option on their shipping page during checkout. When an AmazonLocker location is selected, Amazon delivers the package to a designated locker and sends an email with a six-digit code to unlock the box. Amazon has installed eight locker banks in each city so far.
What city is next? Amazon is not saying, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed that the lockers will come to more locations soon

March 2, 2012
Categories: Technologies . Tags: . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Smart vs Dumb phones

While it’s fun to watch the iPhone vs. Android battle happen in real time, the one type of phone I am always amazed to see crop up again and again is the “dumbphone,” or the old school cell phone – flip style, candy bar, 8-bit ringtone retro goodness.
That got me thinking. Was I so caught in the app store, cloud syncing and text talk bubble hype that I missed dumbphones making a comeback?
Turns out they never left.

 
Last month ExtremeTech reported that a total of 1 billion feature phones (which are just a smidgen less dumb than dumbphones) were sold in 2011. Contrast that with a total of 250 million Android phones and 120 million iPhones. Another interesting thing: Profit margins are better for these retro units than they are for newer ones: Nokia makes more from a $50 phone than Samsung does with a $200+ smartphone. True, most dumbphone sales are in emerging markets like China, India and Brazil where lower costs are crucial.  Point is that while all the media hype is about Apple and Smartphones, the reason they get such attention is that the phone companies make more money on these with their data plans in the long run.

March 1, 2012
Categories: News you can Use . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: 1 Comment

Google plans to launch glasses with a heads-up display by the end of 2012

Google plans to launch glasses with a heads-up display by the end of 2012, the New York Timesreports citing sources familiar with the matter.

The glasses, who were previously rumored to have a front-facing camera with flash and a voice input interface, will be Android based, sources say.

They will include a display, mere inches from the wearer’s eye, streaming real-time info about your surroundings, similar to the various augmented reality applications we’ve seen on smartphones.

The data will be fetched through a 3G/4G data connection, and the glasses will retrieve information about their surroundings through GPS and several sensors.

The glasses will cost “around the price of current smartphones,” sources say. While definitely not very precise – current smartphones cost anywhere from $150 to $600 – this price range shows that Google intends the glasses as a product for the mass market.

Will these glasses be something you need as opposed to want? We doubt it – we haven’t seen a must-have augmented reality application yet, although we have seen some very cool ones in the past.

AR heads-up display glasses, however, are the stuff sci-fi dreams are made of, and it’s a product we’d definitely like to see in the real world – even if they make us look like total geeks.

February 29, 2012
Categories: Technologies . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

New ‘Bourne Legacy’ with Jeremy Renner

After keeping pretty quiet on the promotional front, Universal Pictures chose February to start selling The Bourne Legacy.  Today sees a whole new image of Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, an exceedingly industrious and dangerous graduate of an assassin-training program very much like Treadstone, the secret operation that created Matt Damon‘s Jason Bourne.

The teaser trailer that debuted two weeks ago did a pretty damn good job of introducing the rather odd notion that a Bourne movie doesn’t necessarily need Jason Bourne by playing up familiar stylistic elements of the franchise and incorporating familiar faces from previous installments.  Still, it seems as though a substantial portion of the audience isn’t too keen on an ass-kicking adventure without Damon or Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass.

Tony Gilroy, who had a hand in oh-so loosely adapting Robert Ludlum‘s novels for the previous three films, takes over as director here.  Gilroy made his directorial debut in 2007 with Michael Clayton and followed that Oscar-nominee up with Duplicity in 2009.

With Renner beating the hell out of people and jumping off stuff in the lead role, Gilroy’s surrounded him by an impressive supporting cast that includes series standbys Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, and Albert Finney, along with franchise newbies Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Corey Stoll, and Stacy Keach.

The Bourne Legacy does its leaping in theaters on August 3rd.

February 27, 2012
Categories: Inside Hollywood . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Google’s Safari Tracking: Here Come the Lawsuits

Interesting article regarding the continuing saga of tracking software; this time Safari  (see below)

Google’s Safari Tracking: Here Come the Lawsuits.

February 25, 2012
Categories: News you can Use, Technologies . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

« Previous Page — Previous page Next page — Next Page »