Atomfilms becomes a joke, UGC gets Comedy Central airtime
Professional short form video's longest-running site AtomFilms has merged with user-generated content partner AtomUploads.com into what is now simply called Atom.com, and has shifted its focus exclusively to comedy.
With the site change, Atomfilms' partnership with sister company Comedy Central takes a more central role. The cable comedy network recently began airing a late-late-late show called AtomTV that airs much of the Atom's content and serves as a showcase for the weekly winner of the site's Upload Showdown contest. Its champion is determined by audience voting, and participants are amateur video makers who get a chance to sign a "professional" contract (a nonexclusive licensing agreement for their video) and earn a $500 prize.
Bye, Bill. A fond remembrance
On this final day of Bill Gates' salaried employ at the company he founded, we recall a period of history way, way back -- an era when Gates was one giant among many, and just as likely to survive the shakeout as any other.
The computing industry was built by brilliant people with colorful personalities and extraordinary talent. We have forgotten most of them. Chuck Peddle, Adam Osborne, Clive Sinclair, Federico Faggin, Les Solomon, Gary Kildall...these are among the names we knew by heart and often knew personally, for those of us who grew up with the dawn of the computing era. We knew these people often because we had met them in person -- during the first computer conferences, they were part of our second family, even if they only showed up in name only.
Reports claim that the 3G iPhone will include MMS
An Apple enthusiast blog claims it has seen an internal AT&T memo intended for its customer service representatives, stating that picture and video messaging are part of the new iPhone's feature set.
As iPhone Atlas mentions, AT&T's employees are not known for their accurate information. However, if verified, the emergence of this memo would mean the carrier is adding one of the missing features that the device has received some flak for failing to include.
Innovative MP3 speakers to 'leave the shelf' for living rooms in July
After two years of development, Altec Lansing finally plans to ship the M812 -- the latest addition to its line-up of digital speaker systems for iPod, Zune, and other MP3 players -- on July 15.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) -- "Actually, the M812 won an innovation award at CES 2007," pointed out Patrick Beck, marketing manager, talking with BetaNews this week at Pepcom's Digital Experience show. "But then, it got shelved," he acknowledged.
Rogers, Fido detail iPhone 3G plans for Canada
Both Rogers and its smaller wholly-owned subsidiary Fido announced plans for the iPhone 3G -- along with the longest mandated contract length so far of any iPhone carrier: three years.
Rogers is Canada's largest wireless provider, serving some 7.1 million subscribers. Fido is the fourth largest, serving 1.3 million subscribers, and has been a subsidiary of Rogers since November 2004.
ICANN publicity may have triggered malicious behavior
On a week when ICANN's decisions were headlining hundreds of tech news sites, several of the group's pages were defaced by a group of hackers, and a phishing scam spoofing the group's page hit inboxes across the country.
Yesterday, a Turkish group known as "NetDevilz" -- which is linked to a reported 31 perpetrated attacks just this year, as tracked by site Zone-H -- hijacked icann.com, icann.net, iana.com, and iana-servers.com, all sites belonging to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
BlackBerry users still await update for MS Office doc creation
BlackBerry users worldwide will one day be able to use DataViz' Documents to Go to create Microsoft Office files on their phones. Yet so far, only a couple of ISPs have provided their customers with this update to BlackBerry services.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) -- At this week's Digital Experience show in New York City, DataViz gave demos of Documents to Go, its software suite for creating, viewing and editing Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files and attachments on smartphones.
New Google gadget makes you the 'media server'
Google recently launched what it's calling a media server gadget, a new Windows-only application designed to send videos and images from a user's computer to any universal plug and play (uPnP) device.
Typical uPnP devices include the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, and the number of uPnPs available to consumers is growing dramatically. Google Media Server should auto detect all uPnP devices connected to the computer, so users should only have to install and briefly configure the gadget before it works on its own.
Vizio debuts new plasmas, introduces high-end line
The quickly growing company will soon have plasma displays as cheap as $599, and is showing an interest in breaking into the high-end market with its XVT models.
Plasma TVs have traditionally been more expensive, which has fueled the growth of LCD TVs as the primary driver of the HDTV market. However, with Vizio's two newest entrants -- the 32" VP322 for $599 and the 42" VP422 for $799 -- that could begin to change.
ICANN moves toward completely opening top-level domains
One of the biggest news items this week, according to The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), could result in the biggest expansion to the Internet in forty years.
ICANN unanimously voted in favor of introducing new top-level domains, which will include internationalized forms, including in non-Roman alphabets. This could open the door for top level domains to be longer, more descriptive or ultra-specific: such as .free, .paris, or .spaß.
One more Yahoo reorganization, this time out of necessity
It is an obvious scramble by Yahoo's leaders to reassess a corporate structure that appears to have been shattered in recent weeks, and assemble a template that makes it appear the shards fell into place intentionally.
During the 1990s, Microsoft used to provide its customers and shareholders its vision of where the company was going by updating its running hypothesis for the future of Windows, always three years out or longer. The way Yahoo has performed the same task throughout the last three years has been by reorganizing and reshuffling its divisions.
Preview of 160 GB ClickFree backup drive
At the Digital Experience show last night, Storage Appliance Corp. previewed a new 160 GB ClickFree Automated Backup device, not set for official announcement until July 3.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - In a meeting with BetaNews at Pepcom's annual press extravaganza, Storage Appliance Corp. President Ian Collins said that, aside from offering extra storage, the new $169.99 backup device will provide the same capabilities as ClickFree's already available 120 GB external hard drive.
GPS real-time tracking products begin to catch fire
With GPS becoming more common in people's everyday lives, new products are making use of the information gleaned from GPS to provide real-time tracking applications for cars, people, pets, and corporate assets.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - At the Digital Experience press event on Wednesday, two companies in the GPS tracking applications sector took center stage: While Zoombak seems focused on the consumer, FindWhere offered similar services aimed at the business set.
ATI seeks to break back into the GPU game with barrier-breaking cards
This week, AMD launched two new graphics cards that each give the Sunnyvale- based company two new firsts:. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 is the first teraflop graphic card, while the ATI Radeon HD 4870 is the first to feature GDDR5 memory.
Both cards in the 4800 series reportedly represents what AMD describes as a "2X performance jump" over the older Radeon HD 3800 generation; providing one trillion calculations per second, when the previous generation of cards could only offer up to half a trillion calculations. This marks one of the first times the speed of GPUs has been measured in teraflops.
Seagate intros 1 TB Maxtor home NAS for $329.99
Seagate's latest portable, external storage device -- a black desktop unit in a distinctive, semi-tapered shape -- was accurately described by Seagate's own representatives yesterday as a trapezoid.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) -- At Pepcom's "Digital Experience" event last night, Seagate rolled out Maxtor Central Axis, a rebranded edition of the earlier Maxtor OneTouch home network storage drive which adds a remote access capability, introduces a new form factor, and raises capacity to one full terabyte.
BetaNews, your source for breaking tech news, reviews, and in-depth reporting since 1998.
Regional iGaming Content
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.