Top Items:
New York Times:
Warner Bros. to Sell Movies and TV Shows on Internet — Warner Brothers plans to announce today that it will make hundreds of movies and television shows available for purchase over the Internet using BitTorrent software, which is widely used to download movies and other copyrighted material illegally.
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Bob Tourtellotte / Reuters:
Warner Bros. to sell movies via BitTorrent — LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Warner Bros.'s video unit on Tuesday unveiled plans to sell movies and television shows to BitTorrent Inc. for legal downloads from the Web site that was once blamed for aiding the swapping of illegally copied films and programs.
Discussion:
IP Democracy
Greg Sandoval / CNET News.com:
BitTorrent inks studio distribution deal — BitTorrent, the creator of the file-sharing software that for some has become synonymous with piracy, has struck a landmark distribution deal with a Hollywood studio. — Warner Bros. Entertainment Group has agreed to use BitTorrent's peer …
Gary Gentile / Associated Press:
Warner Bros. to distribute films on Web — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Warner Bros. will become the first major studio to distribute its films and TV shows over the Internet using peer-to-peer technology developed by BitTorrent Inc., the home of a popular tool for trading pirated copies of movies.
Paul Miller / Engadget:Warner Bros. to team with BitTorrent for movie sales
Discussion:
eHomeUpgrade
Staci / paidContent.org:
AOL Buddy List's Social Network Expands With AIM Pages, Phoneline [by Staci] — The way AOL execs pitch it, the AOL Connections strategy is all about giving users ways to communicate whether it's IM, file sharing, video or the upcoming launches of social networking service AIM Pages and free phone service Phoneline.
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Steve Gillmor / Steve Gillmor's InfoRouter:
Back in the USSR — Nick Carr is truly the gift that keeps on giving. His latest can-opener concerns the alleged Google strategy of converting all reading interfaces to search and keyword (i.e. tagging) interfaces. Nick's genius (I think he is the leader in the post-dvorak world of meme-baiting) …
Discussion:
The Doc Searls Weblog, J. LeRoy's Evolving Web, Newsome.Org, Expert Texture and Valleywag
RELATED ITEMS:
Robert W. Anderson / Expert Texture:The Link Discussion — I've finally gotten around to listening …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Live Messenger Opens to Public — The Windows Live Messenger, previously available by invitation only (sort of), is open to the public starting at 9 pm PST tonight (Monday). It is available for Windows PCs only, must be downloaded with IE (no Firefox), and is available at ideas.live.com.
RELATED ITEMS:
James Ransom-Wiley / Joystiq:
Joystiq hands-on: new PS3 controller — Immediately following the Sony keynote, we pushed and shoved our way to a quick and dirty session with the new PS3 controller. Warhawk was the only playable demo touting six-axis sensing functionality; so naturally, our destination was the setup featuring that game.
Matt Marshall / SiliconBeat:
Google looks Olive up and down, but then rejects it — Google has walked away from acquiring Santa Clara company, Olive Software. — We wrote earlier that Google was negotiating to buy Olive for $70-80M, to gain access to Olive's technology that helps transfer off-line content into a form …
Elinor Mills / CNET News.com:
How deep is the online-ad well? — The memory still makes some in the financial community cringe. — During the dot-com boom, more than a few Internet start-ups planned to support free Internet services—and theoretically turn a profit—by selling online advertisements. — Needless to say, for many it didn't work.
Discussion:
Clickety Clack
Glenn Fleishman / Wi-Fi Networking News:
Peer Review of Patents — Those working in the wireless and hotspot space are well aware of what damage and benefit patents have wrought: For every hard-won, hard-science patent that represents the unique result of expensive research and development that produces a non-obvious outcome beneficial …
Rob Semsey / features.teamxbox.com:
E3 2006: Microsoft Reaction to Sony Press Briefing — Only seconds after Sony's E3 2006 Press Briefing ended and many gamers had made their annual "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" conclusions. Now whether Sony's E3 kickoff was a success or a failure will be contemplated from now until the release …
Tom Evslin / Fractals of Change:
Vonage IPO and SPIT — SPIT is Spam over IP Telephony. — Yesterday I got an email from Vonage offering me a piece of their IPO because I'm a long-term customer. I was fine with getting that mail although I don't intend to take advantage of the offer for reasons I've posted here.
Discussion:
Realtime-VoIP
Hoyun / Popgadget:
Water bottle and solar lantern combo — This water bottle from Solight does double duty as a solar-powered lantern. The LED light charges up while you're hiking or fishing or whatever, then at night you can hang it on a tree or set it on a table or on the floor of your tent.
David Hambling / NewScientistTech:
Robotic tentacles get to grips with tricky objects — Robotic "tentacles" that can grasp and grapple with a wide variety of objects have been developed by US researchers. — Most robots rely on mechanical gripping jaws that have difficulty grabbing large or irregularly shaped objects.
Discussion:
Engadget
Adam Sherwin / Times of London:
Now a TV series only on your mobile — THE demise of traditional broadcasting will move a step closer when the man behind Big Brother introduces the first British interactive reality series made exclusively for mobile phones. — Get Close To . . . , which begins on Friday …
Howard W. French / New York Times:
As Chinese Students Go Online, Little Sister Is Watching — SHANGHAI, May 8 — To her fellow students, Hu Yingying appears to be a typical undergraduate, plain of dress, quick with a smile and perhaps possessed with a little extra spring in her step, but otherwise decidedly ordinary.
Discussion:
Techdirt
USA Today:
Newspaper sales dip, but websites gain — NEW YORK — Newspapers offered a mixed story Monday as new data showed a circulation decline industrywide — by alarming rates at some papers — while visits to their websites grew. — Average weekday circulation fell 2.5%, to 45.4 million …
