Media

Windows Home Server really available, sort of

Bill Gates announced Windows Home Server to much fanfare at January's Consumer Electronics Show.

The energy seems to have dwindled some during the product's elongated path to market over the past year. Microsoft finalized the code back in July, but HP said it would wait for an update to the software before releasing its MediaSmart server, in what was seen as the biggest endorsement of the product.

On Monday, Microsoft announced "general availability" for the software, although HP's product will not be shipping to consumers until later this month. Some servers from smaller computer makers … Read more

Suicide by strike

From the New York Times:

A strike by Hollywood writers began in New York just after midnight Monday...

[M]ore than 12,000 screenwriters represented by the Writer Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East in the early morning hours in New York began the first industry-wide strike since writers walked out in 1988. That strike lasted five months...

Throughout the weekend, guild leaders held orientation meetings for strike captains, who would supervise picketing teams, and otherwise prepared for an effort to shut down as much movie and television production as possible...

The sides have been … Read more

Give Reddit some credit: They know how to pack a bar

FREE BEER!!!!

That was the rallying cry for the Reddit party in New York's East Village on Saturday night, the latest stop on the social news site's "Drankkit World Tour 2007"--an event series that has made it to San Francisco and Boston so far, with Toronto, Chicago, D.C., and a few others still to come. The Gotham installment took place in a woefully undersized Alphabet City dive called The Hanger Bar, and was not-so-woefully under-publicized. Reddit had reason to keep the rabble out.

That's because the beer was free all night long. Guess … Read more

How not to reinvent media in the Digital Age

Associated Press chief Tom Curley knows journalism. He just doesn't have any idea how to save his profession from a rendezvous with irrelevance.

Or at least it's not readily apparent to this former AP employee.

During the course of a keynote speech delivered Thursday night at the annual Knight-Bagehot dinner, Curley did acknowledge that young people "don't prefer our traditional platforms and packaging."

So far, so good. Unfortunately, I was hoping he would offer more than the usual corporate bromides. Curley included just two--that's right, two! references to the Internet. And the word "… Read more

GOM Media Player: First Look

The GOM Media Player (hands-on review) is more than meets the eye. The free multimedia player has presets to optimize sound quality (see CNET video) and some interesting built-in tools for capturing images (see CNET video) and correcting exposure for video playback. It also supports subtitles for karaoke glory.

Meet GOM Media Player in the First Look video below, or see other First Look videos.

Stephen Colbert ousted from presidential race, but Facebook fans won't give up

Shortly after the nascent Stephen Colbert '08 presidential campaign filed to run on the Democratic ballot in South Carolina's primary, the state party voted on Thursday to kick the colorful comedian out of the race. According to the Associated Press, party officials met for approximately 40 minutes and then voted 13-3 to remove Colbert from the ballot.

Meanwhile, many members of the "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" group on Facebook, which currently hovers around 1,300,000 in membership, refuse to give up.

"I think it's stupid that they are trying to … Read more

MediaMaster's mobile music streaming service goes live

MediaMaster is a Web based jukebox and music storage service we've covered a few times here on Webware. It launched in mid-March, and has since gone on to roll out a successful Facebook app, and a directory of user-created radio stations, which are playlists people have decided to share. In a nutshell, the service lets you upload your music and manage it in a Flash-based jukebox that's about as easy to use as Apple's iTunes software. Today they're launching their mobile service, which lets anyone with a Palm Treo or a Windows Mobile handset access their … Read more

Political-media alliance to Fox News: Let debate video ring

The nonpartisan alliance that formed this spring to advocate the open use of presidential-debate footage isn't very happy about Fox News' cease-and-desist letter to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign over a McCain ad that used footage from a Fox-sponsored debate.

On Thursday, the nameless group announced that it has called on Fox to rescind the letter, as well as related missives to other Republican presidential candidates.

The McCain camp, meanwhile, has continued to air the ads, claiming that using 19 seconds of a 90-minute debate constitutes fair use.

"John McCain deserves praise for taking on Fox … Read more

Is HoneyShed the end of the future of online advertising?

Call it branded entertainment, advertising-as-content, or just brand-vertising: obviously inspired by TBS' veryfunnyads.com, which according to MediaPost claims more than 73 million views since launching last year, brands and advertisers are teaming up to push the envelope of online advertising even further. Recent example: Publicis Groupe, Droga5, and Digitas have joined forces to quietly launch what they had already announced in May this year--a site dubbed HoneyShed on which advertisers can air brand-specific programming. Clips can be shared by viewers via e-mail or embedded on blogs and other sites. HoneyShed also offers instant e-commerce: "I want it." … Read more