Digital Trends
For rabid fans of the well-known and universally respected Halo franchise, no more exciting news emerged from E3 than the announcement of Halo: ODST, an unusual new chapter in the series that will allow players to move on from Master Chief to play as a different type of soldier in the war against the Covenant. We packed into a tiny theater with Bungie developers and other journalists for an early peek at gameplay from the hotly anticipated title.
Game publisher THQ announced it plans to combine the rhythm and action game genres in a new title Band Mashups that will let players compete against each other across 150 musical tracks to decide who’s the musical heavyweight. THQ plans to launch the game for the Nintendo Wii, and take full advantage of the Wii’s motion-sensitive controller to offer a unique game experience as players battle it out in their preferred musical styles.
These last two weeks have been interesting. Before CES, Warner Brothers basically gave up on HD DVD and Toshiba (in what was an amazing lack of good judgment) clearly putting HD DVD on the ropes (and the newly lowered prices came too late to make a difference). This was followed by CES which really lacked anything that I would call a true break-out new product of the iPod or iPhone caliber. This week we had MacWorld, and while it is focused and everything that Steve Jobs announced effectively stood out, it was like the middle movie in a movie trilogy in that there really wasn’t a whole lot to get really excited about, unless you are an Apple fan and for them just having a MacWorld is likely excitement enough.
A report in the New York Post (of all places) says the New York Times plans to stop charging Internet users $8/month to access TimesSelect, an area of its Web site which features Op-Ed pieces, columnists, and other selected content. Citing a source who claimed to have been briefed on the decision, the timin of the changeover depends largely on the technical issues involved in managing TimesSelect and transitioning that content out of its current locked garden.
TimesSelect is accessible to both subscribers to the print edition of the paper, as well as Web-only subscribers. According to recent figures, the TimesSelect online service has about 220,000 paid subscribers.
Old media met new media as The New York Times today said that a new podcasting feature which began on January 26 had already found its way into the top five most requested downloads on the iTunes Music Store’s top 100 daily podcasts lists. The one in particular which was generating the most buzz is a summary of the newspaper’s front page stories.
The New York Times podcasts, the newspaper said, focus in on, besides front page news story summaries, reviews from Culture and Dining, an Olympics Update and select interviews from The New York Times speaker series, TimesTalks, including media reporter Bill Carter’s recent interview with Larry David from The Times’s fifth annual Arts & Leisure Weekend.
And the New Oxford Dictionary 2005 Word of the Year is…podcast. This was the choice announced yesterday by the publishers of the venerable dictionary, beating out bird flu, ICE, lifehack and reggaeton, among others.
Podcast, defined by the New Oxford Dictionary as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio playerâ€, was chosen by the dictionary’s editors because of the huge growth in popularity the term as seen since last year. The word of the year is reportedly chosen through a complex process which involves looking at online and offline publications and taking reader suggestions.
Microsoft Corporation announced today it has reached a settlement with former self-proclaimed "spam king" Scott Richter and his Colorado company OptInRealBig, LLC, for some $7 million. The settlement is contingent on bankruptcy proceedings against the company being dismissed by a Denver court, but Microsoft says, after recovering its expenses from the case, it plans to re-invest all money from the settlement, including putting $5 million towards enhancing technical investigative support for law enforcement and $1 million to the state of New York, which also sued Richter in December, 2003.
Intermix Media Inc. which calls themselves a web marketer will be paying the state of New York $7.5 million dollars over the course of three years to settle accusations that the company installs spyware on user’s computer systems.
As part of the new agreement, Intermix Media will also stop any ad-related downloads from being distributed, although the company says they have voluntarily stopped distributing their adware products and programs to users.
Although Intermix Media has settled on terms, they have not admitted any public wrongdoing. For those unfamiliar with Intermix Media, they own several websites that feature online games, jokes, quizzes and other entertainment products. Believe it or not, Intermix Media is a publicly traded company which you can own a part of.
“After experiencing three nights of network outages in less than a week, BetaNews has learned that in at least one case in southeast Michigan, a customer received a credit of $2.86 on their bill to compensate for the two days of service he complained about.
While the number may seem arbitrary, it’s actually the $42.95 monthly charge divided by 30, which yields a $1.43 a day fee for access to the service.
Two other subscribers from New Jersey and New Hamsphire reported they had received about $5 and $6, using the same formula as the Michigan subscriber. “
Quoting anonymous sources, the New York Post article states that Time Warner executives have in recent months discussed with Microsoft the possibility of selling AOL to the Redmond, Washington, software vendor.
The New York Post story also states that Time Warner lawyers have begun studying possible antitrust roadblocks to a Microsoft acquisition of AOL.
Read the full story at PC World.
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