NBC President Jeff Zucker Taking $30 Million Exit Deal?
In a merge of monstrous proportions, Comcast shelled out $30 billion to acquire 51 percent of NBC last year, a move that entitles them to the network’s television properties, theme parks and film enterprises. Even though NBC Universal CEO and President Jeff Zucker’s contract with Comcast and General Electric, which owns the other 49 percent of the network, is valid through 2013, the New York Post claims Zucker will be taking advantage of a $30-$40 million exit package that will allow him to leave the company shortly after the Comcast acquisition is finalized early next year.... read more
Google Pac-Man Devours an Estimated Five Million Hours, $120 Million
Fans of the classic Pac-Man video game were thrilled when Google embedded its own version of the game on its home page last week. Maybe a little too thrilled.... read more
Facebook, Yahoo, eBay Defend YouTube in Viacom Suit
Back in 2007, Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google’s popular video-viewing website, YouTube, claiming more than 63,000 copyrighted clips had been posted on the site. As reported by Bloomberg, YouTube is using the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects service providers as long as they remove copyrighted material immediately after being notified about the infringement, as its defense.... read more
Digital Edition of Wired Available on iPad
“The irony that Wired, a magazine founded to chronicle the digital revolution, has traditionally come to you each month on the smooshed atoms of dead trees is not lost on us,” a Wired article announcing the launch of the publication’s iPad-compatible digital edition reads.... read more
Apple Responds to Manufacturing Company Suicides
Foxconn, an Apple manufacturer based in China, has had 11 of their employees commit suicide this year. The factory workers were being urged to sign agreements with the company stating that they will not commit suicide mere hours before the 11th employee killed himself Sunday night, according to AFP.... read more
MySpace Closes Slingshot Labs
Has the fateful day come where MySpace finally gives up, rolls over and dies? Perhaps not quite yet, but it sure seems like doomsday is fast approaching. Just in time for the weekend, resident media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s social media lab, Slingshot Labs, a MySpace spinoff, closed its doors and bid farewell to its employees for good.... read more
George Lucas Praises Lost, Tells Producers to "Pretend You've Planned it Out in Advance"
Lost producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof were recently surprised with a letter of encouragement and advice from none other than Star Wars creator, George Lucas. According to the Los Angeles Times, in the letter, Lucas admits to making up his movie series up as he went along, and tells the Lost masterminds to do the same. “The trick is to pretend you’ve planned the whole thing out in advance,” Lucas reportedly wrote. “Throw in some father issues and references to other stories – let’s call them ‘homages’ – and you’ve got a series.”... read more
Diplo, Sleigh Bells, Spike Jonze, Many More Join Intel and Vice Digital-Arts Series, The Creators Project
Diplo, Phoenix and Spike Jonze are just a few of the artists already featured on the website for The Creators Project (via Pitchfork), an Intel/Vice collaboration that “aims at being nothing less than the first spark of creativity that gives life to the hopes and aspirations of the Twenty-First Century.”... read more
48 HR Magazine Hits Legal Trouble
Earlier this month, a cohort of West-Coast journalists had an idea: Using the digital network that’s so often decried at the death knell of print journalism, they would compile the makings of a printed magazine. Putting the word out via Twitter, e-mail, and a blog post on a Friday afternoon, they collected 1,052 submissions for their first issue, which they appropriately called “Hustle,” and had a finished product ready to roll by Monday. It was a whirlwind weekend that produced a magazine as diverse in its subject matter as it is in the types of content it contains—photo essays, fiction,... read more
LimeWire Liable for Copyright Infringement
The legal battle between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and file-sharing software provider LimeWire has finally come to an end. The verdict? LimeWire is being charged with copyright infringement and may be removed from the Internet if record labels choose to file an injunction, according to The Guardian.... read more
What Do You Call a Bestseller You Don't Actually Sell? A Kindle E-Book
Take a look at the price tags on Kindle’s top-selling e-books, and you’ll see plenty of zeros. As part of a strategy to get readers interested in the work of particular authors, publishing houses have gotten in the habit of giving away older titles. They’re hoping readers will like the old titles so much they’ll fork over some cash for the authors’ new releases. But is it working?... read more
Shop Talk: Overwhelming Undersharing
The New York Times published an article last week called T.M.I? Not for Sites Focused on Sharing. In it, Brad Stone wrote about the growing number of sites that allow you to share absolutely everything online, from your location (Foursquare and Twitter), to purchases you’ve made (Blippy and Swipely) to the number of push ups you’ve done (iPhone app Skimble). The underlying message of the piece was cautionary, discussing the possibilities of identity and financial theft, and when Blippy announced early this week that Google had crawled and saved users’ transaction data (including airline confirmation numbers and parts of credit... read more
Washington Post Co. Puts Newsweek Up for Sale
Anticipating another year of losses after a string of poor performance that started in 2007, the Washington Post Company just announced that it would sell weekly news magazine Newsweek.... read more
2010 Webby Award Winners Include Roger Ebert, Brad Pitt
The 14th annual Webby Awards were announced today, recognizing both people and organizations who can claim internet achievement.... read more
Internet Music Streaming Website Lala Shutting Down May 31
The internet streaming service known as Lala was bought by Apple last year, prompting speculation about what the company would do with the cloud-based music service. Now we know. Apple will be shutting down the service May 31, and as of today, is no longer accepting new users according to an announcement on the Lala site.... read more
Steve Jobs Issues "Thoughts on Flash" Manifesto
Since the iPad came out, there has been an ongoing debate about Apple’s refusal to allow Adobe Flash videos to run on iPods and the iPad. Until now, Apple had remained mum on the issue, even when self-described “Flash evangelist” and blogger Lee Brimelow told Apple to go screw itself over their refusal to adopt Flash software. Apple CEO Steve Jobs issued an open letter on his company’s website today titled Thoughts on Flash that details Apple’s reasoning behind barring the software from their gadgets.... read more
Spotify Bringing Music Sharing to Facebook
Spotify, the popular music-streaming service that may be headed stateside soon, has teamed up with Facebook, allowing users to share music through their profiles and messages. According to the NME, Spotify pages can now be posted on Facebook profiles, and users can share songs with each other.... read more
Shop Talk: Sleigh Bells' Good Bad Music
Last year, Wired editor Robert Capps wrote an article called The Good Enough Revolution in which he argued that your average tech consumer now prefers cheap, simple, sharable products over "quality" gadgets—Google Docs to feature-laden software, easy-to-use video cameras to hi-def camcorders, MP3s to CDs. He cited a study in which Stanford professor Jonathan Berger asked his students each year over six years to rate the musical medium they preferred; as the aughts progressed, an increasing number of them preferred MP3s. Capps suggested that, with music in particular, we not only prefer the ease of the digital format, but we... read more
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