Media News and Analysis

" The latest software update for Sony’s PlayStation 3 appears to be locking up some people’s systems, leaving them unusable. Polygon reports that Version 4.45 of the PS3 firmware was just released on Tuesday, but already, 23 pages of responses related to the issue have been posted to the PlayStation Community Forums. While not everyone that has the new software is reporting the error, it does appear to be widespread, and we’d advise holding off on that latest software update until Sony responds. We’ve reached out to the company for comment and will let you know as soon as we hear anything." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Since the story broke last week of the NSA’s secret compilation of Americans’ phone call metadata, the overwhelming response from government has been "nobody is listening to your telephone calls" — that the data being collected is limited to things like phone numbers and call durations. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it now looks like the feds are listening. Or at the very least, they don’t require a court order just to do so. CNET has posted text from a Thursday House Judiciary Committee hearing at which FBI director Robert Mueller (pictured above) testified that the government would need a "special, particularized order" from the secret FISA court in order to target a particular individual’s phone for a wiretap. After checking to make sure the details weren’t classified, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) challenged Mueller's statement, saying, "we heard precisely the opposite at the briefing the other day. We heard precisely that you could get the specific information from that telephone... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

#TheConstitutionIsDead #SurveillanceState - Bluesun 2600

"George Lucas and Steven Spielberg think the film industry is heading towards a cliff. The pair behind some of the most successful franchises in movie history think that conservative programming choices and rapidly evolving distribution schemes have set the stage for a massive upheaval — and internet-based services may become the dominant medium when moviegoing as we know it crashes and burns." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

Like the Star Wars prequels and that awful Crystal Skulls movie weren't these guys' fault. :D - Victor Ganata

"With only three weeks remaining before Google Reader disappears for good, Feedly has completed its transition away from the dying service and onto its own backend cloud. Feedly has been among a host of third-party Reader clients searching for a new way to handle their users RSS feeds, which have long been loaded and synced over Google's servers. Now that Feedly is officially supported by its own backend, the service can continue to work after Reader shuts down on July 1st, and give users what should be a seamless transition away from Google. A number of different companies have committed to building a Reader alternative, and with today's transition, Feedly is among the first out of the gate — and it's the most promising option so far. In large part, that's due to just how easy Feedly has made it for third-party clients to integrate with its new cloud. It already announced that a slew of major RSS clients would be supporting it by the end of June — so if you're not a fan of Feedly's own apps, there'll be more than few alternatives to try out." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

IMO -- Feedly hasn't been competitive with Prismatic, Zite, Flipboard and my6sense for quite some time -- no smarts about prioritizing news. - Sean McBride

In an age of extreme information overload, we need all the smart news algorithms and Big Data mining we can get. Some folks get it, some don't. - Sean McBride

"The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"The Fox television network this week confirmed that officials from the Justice Department notified its parent company nearly three years ago of plans to seize the telephone records of James Rosen, a Fox News correspondent who allegedly revealed top secret US intelligence on North Korea. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Justice Department told parent company News Corp. of the investigation in August 2010, three months after a judge signed off on a subpoena of Rosen's phone records. Fox had previously expressed outrage over the seizure, claiming that prosecutors had never notified the network of the operation as they claimed to have done. Now, Fox says that the Justice Department did in fact notify News Corp., but this information was never passed down to the network. A News Corp. spokeswoman tells the Journal that the company is investigating the oversight. Federal prosecutors allege that Rosen reported on secret information that was leaked to him by Stephen Kim, a former State... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Since launching Drive last year, Google has offered users 5GB of free Dropbox-style storage for documents and their Picasa / Google+ photos — but Gmail has long had its own, separate 10GB of storage. Now, Google is unifying storage across its products, something that should automatically make Drive a lot more useful to many users. All Google users now get a combined 15GB of shared storage across Drive, Google+ photos, and Gmail that can be used as they wish. If you're a light Gmail user, you can devote some (or all) of that 15GB to Drive — immediately making it one of the larger free cloud storage options out there. Unfortunately, Google has also done away with one of its storage tiers — previously, users could add 25GB of storage to Drive for $2.49 per month. That option is now gone; the cheapest extended storage option is adding 100GB to your Google account for $4.99 per month. That's half the price of Dropbox's 100GB plan, and some recent improvements to Drive have made it even... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Samsung's been teasing its flexible, full-color display technology since 2011 when it acquired Liquavista, but it never actually shipped in a consumer product. One of the few companies that still has a viable e-reader business, Amazon today confirmed to CNET that it had purchased the company from Samsung, following early reports from The Digital Reader. With tablets, e-readers, and rumored plans to get into the phone game, Amazon should be able to take advantage of Liquavista's electrowetting displays (EWD) that enable flexible, full-color, low-powered touchscreens. Amazon told CNET that it bought Liquavista with an eye toward putting their technology into future products. "It's still early days, but we're excited about the possibilities." In March, Bloomberg reported that Samsung was looking to unload Liquavista for less than $100 million. While Samsung hasn't given up on flexible displays — it showed off a prototype handset with a flexible OLED display at CES this year — the... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Last year, leaked training materials prepared by the Sacramento sheriff's office included a form that would require Apple to "assist law enforcement agents" with "bypassing the cell phone user's passcode so that the agents may search the iPhone." Google takes a more privacy-protective approach: it "resets the password and further provides the reset password to law enforcement," the materials say, which has the side effect of notifying the user that his or her cell phone has been compromised. Ginger Colbrun, ATF's public affairs chief, told CNET that "ATF cannot discuss specifics of ongoing investigations or litigation. ATF follows federal law and DOJ/department-wide policy on access to all communication devices."" - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

What about the iPhone 4/5 encryption when using a password? - Stephan Planken from iPhone

From my understanding it's any of their produces that are connected to the internet. So this is something inherent in both iOS and Android. - Bluesun 2600

"TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft is trying to buy the Nook ebook and device ecosystem — for $1 billion. According to documents TechCrunch has obtained, Redmond hopes to buy the digital assets of Nook Media LLC; that's the Barnes & Noble subsidiary behind the ebook business, as well as the Nook e-readers and tablets themselves. The documents also reveal that the current Nook tablets aren't long for this world. They reportedly state that Nook Media plans to discontinue its Android tablets like the Nook HD by the end of its 2014 fiscal year. The focus would then shift to what is referred to as "third-party partner" devices. It's not clear what those devices specifically would be, but according to the document they're scheduled to be introduced next year. There's no plan to immediately discontinue the Nook e-readers, however; they're expected to eventually be phased out as e-readers themselves become less of a focus for consumers. The Nook business as a whole hasn't been performing... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"A Japanese internet service provider has begun offering broadband plans with 2Gbps downloads and 1Gbps uploads to residents in Tokyo and six surrounding districts. The service provider believes that these high data speeds make it the world's fastest for commercial internet. PCWorld reports that the fiber internet service was launched today by the Sony-owned So-net and costs just under $51 per month, including rental of networking hardware that can accept the high speeds. However, the service requires an initial installation fee of around $537, and it must be purchased on a two-year contract. Extremely high-speed internet is more commonplace in Japan, according to PCWorld, but So-net's offer still stands in stark juxtaposition to internet speeds in the United States. The US is only now beginning to see gigabit internet thanks in part to efforts from Google. After simply announcing the launch of gigabit internet in a second city, Google has done enough to shake up the broadband... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Wired reports that Apple has agreed to pay out $53 million to settle a class-action suit over its failure to repair some of its mobile devices while they were still covered under warranty. According to a leaked copy of the settlement agreement— signed by Apple chief litigation counsel Noreen Krall — the payout covers previous-generation iPhone and iPod touch owners who were denied repairs because the liquid contact indicator tape had been activated. This tape, used to determine if a device has been exposed to water, was manufactured by 3M; Wired reports that 3M has since indicated that humidity alone could activate the tape in some cases" - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Talk about mixed messages: when Aereo first began offering consumers a way to get free network TV over the internet — on any device and on demand — CBS CEO Les Moonves said last year that the service wasn't causing him any loss of sleep. Fast forward to yesterday and executives from News Corp are warning that, if Aereo persists, Fox may pull programming off the free public airwaves and make it available only to paid cable subscribers." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Roger Ebert loved movies. Except for those he hated. For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers. “No good film is too long,” he once wrote, a sentiment he felt strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. “No bad movie is short enough.”" - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

damn. - Joe Silence

What I appreciated about him was that he not only wasn't afraid to have a strong opinion, he also had the willingness to admit that his opinions could change over time and that his initial impressions of something might evolve. His view of GroundHog day was one example. He hated it at first but then came to regard it as a great movie. - Kevin (aka ThreadKilla)

"A new player in the cloud storage market is offering 100 GB of space to the first million people to sign up to its service. To sign up, just head to www.zoolz.com and follow the instructions. However, there's clearly a waiting list for the service, so you won't get your free space right away. Is it any good? Will the service work properly? We don't know yet. But it seems sensible to sign up now, just in case it does turn out to be excellent. You have nothing to lose. Especially if you sign up with a non-critical email address rather than your primary one." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Seeing natural synergies with its bookselling business, Amazon on Thursday said it was buying recommendation site Goodreads. “Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world,” Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti said in a statement. “Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike.” Amazon didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but said it should close in the second quarter. Goodreads will keep its San Francisco offices, Amazon said. It’s not the first time Amazon has bought a social book site. Back in 2008, the company acquired Shelfari." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

I'm really unsure how I feel about this. :/ - Bluesun 2600

well, shit :( - smallq

"In a dramatic show of support for the open access movement, the editor-in-chief and entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration announced their resignation last week. In a letter to contributors, the board singled out a conflict with owners over the journal's licensing terms, which stripped authors of almost all claim to ownership of their work. In a blog post after the resignation, board member Chris Bourg cited her experience of "a crisis of conscience about publishing in a journal that was not open access" in the days after the death of Aaron Swartz. The board had worked with publisher Taylor & Francis on an open-access compromise in the months since, which would allow the journal to release articles without paywall, but Taylor & Francis' final terms asked contributors to pay $2,995 for each open-access article. As more and more contributors began to object, the board ultimately found the terms unworkable. The ultimate future of the journal is still... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"“Particularly after the election, Fox keeps turning to the left,” said Stan Hjerlied, 75, of Fort Collins, Colo., and a participant in the boycott. He pointed to an interview Fox News CEO Roger Ailes gave after the election in which he said that the Republican Party and Fox News need to modernize, especially around immigration. “So we are really losing our only conservative network.” The three-day boycott lasted Thursday morning through Sunday morning, and is the second time this group of activists have gone Fox-free in an effort to steer the coverage. Organizers say a two-day boycott earlier this month knocked 20 percent off of the network’s regular viewership. (A Daily Beast analysis of the same data showed that the boycott had little effect.) A spokeswoman for Fox News did not respond to a request for comment." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

For now, anyway. At least, until FOX stops telling them to lay off the immigrant bashing. - Steven Perez

Celebrate Akira Kurosawa’s March 23 birthday with Hulu and the Criterion Collection. Until midnight on Sunday, all twenty-four of the legendary Japanese director’s films on Hulu are free of charge to nonsubscribers (with commercial interruptions, and only in the U.S.). It’s a great opportunity to watch both the iconic classics, like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo, and lesser-known but enormously moving gems such as No Regrets for Our Youth, One Wonderful Sunday, and Dodes’ka-den. Also available is Kurosawa’s beautiful final film, Madadayo, not on Criterion Blu-ray or DVD. And remember, if you sign up for Hulu Plus for just $7.99 a month, you can see them all the time, ad-free! - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"InterTrust is looking for another big paycheck. On Wednesday the digital rights management pioneer slapped Apple with a broad patent infringement suit that encompasses most of its products and services. Filed in federal court in Northern California, the suit alleges infringement of 15 InterTrust patents across everything from iOS and Mac hardware to services like iTunes and iCloud. It was brought against Apple after the two companies failed to reach a licensing agreement. And InterTrust is taking Apple to the mat in a pretty big way. Not only does the suit seek preliminary and permanent injunctions against further infringement and a reasonable royalty for Apple’s continued use of InterTrust technology, it requests pre- and post-judgment interest on those royalties and a judgment of willful infringement. Such a judgment would triple damages levied against Apple. InterTrust is not messing around. And while this is clearly yet another case of royalty negotiation though litigation, it’s... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"A new study by #Nielsen and SocialGuide confirms the relationship between #Twitter and #TV #ratings. In addition to analyzing Tweets about live TV, the study compared the impact of Twitter against a number of key variables in order to gauge the strength of the relationship of Twitter with ratings. In evaluating the Fall 2012 premiere and midseason program ratings of over 140 broadcast and cable programs, Twitter proved to be one of three variables - - including prior year rating and advertising spend - - to positively impact TV ratings in a statistically significant way. "We expected to see a correlation between Twitter and TV ratings, but this study quantifies the strength of that relationship," said Andrew Somosi, CEO of SocialGuide. "We see three key factors. While prior year rating accounts for the lion's share of the variability in TV ratings, Twitter's presence as a top three influencer tells us that Tweeting about live TV is likely a significant indicator of program... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

When I heard Google was planning to kill Google Reader as part of a “spring cleaning exercise,” I was appalled. Google had decided to disband the team of paperboys that delivered me the news every morning. While RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is years past its heyday, it had become a wonderful and efficient way to read news untarnished by the social networking age. It was my firehose of headlines, straight from the source. And Google Reader is a lot more than an RSS client. It syncs news feeds between different apps, and makes sure you can always pick up right where you left off. It’s also simple and free, which means it drove most competitors out of the market long ago. Once Reader dies July 1st, we’ll be left with apps that don’t rely on its backend to sync your feeds — which isn't very many apps. Various denizens of the internet and companies like Digg have volunteered to create new backends of their own, but for now, picking an RSS client you can trust means you’ll need one that... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Feedly is reaping the benefits of Google's decision to ax Reader. The RSS app picked up more than 500,000 new users in the two days after the Web giant announced last week that it would retire its RSS app, the company said in a recent blog post. Google's decision to sunset the service on July 1 disappointed many on the Internet, leading to the creation of a handful of online petitions at Change.org that begged Google to reconsider. "We have been working on a project called Normandy, which is a Feedly clone of the Google Reader API - running on Google App Engine," the company wrote in its blog. "When Google Reader shuts down, Feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using Feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless." Feedly was the top RSS replacement suggestion of Nick Bradbury, the creator of the popular Windows desktop RSS reader FeedDemon, which also announced on Wednesday that its service was shutting down... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

I switched from Feedly to Google Alerts, my6sense, Zite and Prismatic quite some time ago, from Google Reader to Feedly much longer before that, and embraced Google Reader from the instant it was released (that now seems like several eras ago). Feedly lacks smarts in terms of automatically personalizing and prioritizing news. (I don't get why so many people still don't understand the permanent value of RSS.) - Sean McBride

Most of the time I've been using Feeddemon I've flirted with Feedly on and off over the last few years. Mainly I've used greader to sync across multiple platforms. With them killing it things could become much more complicated. I've never really like their web interface. - Bluesun 2600

" NPR Music might not have the instant name recognition of the broadcaster's news programs, but it's become a surprisingly successful online venue for artists who want to reach its large, affluent, and relatively young user base. Among its top achievements is "First Listen," which offers listeners a chance to hear unreleased albums in their entirety. At The Wall Street Journal, Steve Oney describes how the five-year-old website successfully connects its eclectic selections, and how it can lay claim to coolness despite NPR's stereotypically bourgeois image." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"The lockscreen on your phone may not be doing a good job of keeping intruders out. A new bug has been found on the Galaxy S III that can let users bypass the lockscreen and access all phone functions, and we've just confirmed its efficacy on a Sprint version of the device running Android 4.1.1. To get in, one need only click the emergency call button followed by "emergency contacts." Once there, if one clicks the physical home button followed quickly by the power button, the lockscreen will disappear when you wake the phone again. It requires a bit of timing, but we were able to successfully reproduce the bug, which was first discovered by Sean McMillan, without much difficulty. After bypassing the lockscreen using the bug, it remained disabled until the phone was rebooted. The security offered by lockscreens has been challenged before, with users finding bugs in the systems like one recently found in iOS 6.1 that also leveraged the emergency dialer. We have reached out to Samsung for comment." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"By analyzing search data, researchers can now discover the unknown side effects of prescription drugs more quickly than before. Using data from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, researchers discovered trends that accurately correlated with the symptoms of drug interactions. The New York Times reports that this new method can alert researchers to side effects before the FDA's warning system would be able to. Google has been tracking the spread and severity of influenza using search data since 2006 — and this new research applies a similar data-mining technology. The research team — a collaboration between Microsoft, Standford, and Columbia University — found that people who had searched for the drugs paroxetine and pravastatin over the past year were about 10 percent more likely to search for terms related to the side effect hyperglycemia, and 30 percent of those people would search for symptoms relating to both drugs on the same day. That's enough for the research team to consider it a... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Twitter has announced that it will be discontinuing several TweetDeck apps in favor of the web client. The Android, iPhone, and Air-based desktop clients will all be affected; the apps will be removed from their stores in early May, and stop functioning soon after. Facebook integration will also be removed. The apps rely on version 1.0 of Twitter's API, which has just been superseded by 1.1, and as such the company warns that performance may be sporadic until it finally stops offering the products altogether. The newer desktop clients won't be killed, though they're yet to receive an API 1.1 update. In a blog post, the TweetDeck team says that in order to "offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we're going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck." "We think these web and Chrome apps provide the best TweetDeck experience yet, and that they are the apps in which you'll want to see us add new capabilities first, followed closely... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"Soon after Verizon transitions to Voice over LTE for ordinary telephone calls around the end of the year, it could start selling phones without CDMA chipsets, reducing costs and associated subsidies, said the company’s CFO Fran Shammo. At Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet, and Telecom conference, Shammo spoke about how a switch to "pure LTE" phones beginning in late 2014 could reduce subsidies over the next two to three years. "We will ultimately get to voice over LTE, probably end of this year, beginning of next year. Then if you look out into late 2014 then you start to think of things like, okay, so now I can start to take the CDMA chip out of the phone and just have a pure LTE handset. That also starts to reduce subsidies. So over the next two to three years I think we will start to see subsidies come down." The end of subsidies has been a hot topic in the wireless industry over the past year, and while T-Mobile has been particularly enthusiastic about the idea, Verizon’s CEO... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"It's been over a year and half since Comic-Con 2011 gave us our first glimpse of the fantasy action comedy Knights of Badassdom from director Joe Lynch. Taking cues from Three Amigos and Tropic Thunder, the film follows group of LARPers (Live Action Role Players) who inadvertently summon a deadly succubus during the middle of a big fantasy battle and must fight her in the real world. The cast includes Ryan Kwanten, Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage, Summer Glau, Steve Zahn, Community's Danny Pudi and Margarita Levieva. However, since the tease at Comic-Con and release of the first trailer, there haven't been any official updates on the release. Now we finally have some troubling news on that situation. SlashFilm noticed that the official website for the film, badassdom.com, contained an open letter to “what remains of the Board of Directors of IndieVest, the production company and manager of the film known as Knights of Badassdom.” It sounds like some of the people who worked on... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"A NASCAR race at the Daytona International Speedway today was disrupted by a harrowing crash that sent debris flying into the stands and left some fans injured. As CNN reports, shredded debris flew into the racetrack barrier, with some reaching 20 feet up to the second level of the track's stands. At least one fan who witnessed the event caught it on camera and promptly uploaded it to YouTube — but the video was blocked by NASCAR on copyright grounds just minutes after it went live. (Update: YouTube has restored the original video, which you can watch below.) NASCAR, like other sporting organizations, claims all rights to film and broadcast anything that happens at its events. But taking down a video of a dangerous crash that injured spectators has sparked a backlash from observers who see it as an improper use of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which is typically used to suppress pirated content like music and movies. Despite the takedown request, the eyewitness video has... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet