Goodbuy Robert Goulet
As you may know, Actor – Singer Robert Goulet has passed.
Who’s Gone Crazy Here?
You may have heard that Musical Artist Prince has been on a mission to remove his copywritten music off of Social Networking Sites such as MySpace and YouTube. We learned this weekend of a case however in which a women named Stephanie Lenz received an email from YouTube telling her that the video she had on her YouTube account had been taken down due to copywrite infringement. The video featured her 18 month young baby boy playing and dancing to the Prince Song “Let’s Go Crazy.”
The “Crazy” thing about this is that the music is on in the background and the total running time for the video is about 29 seconds. The song can barely be heard but the name of the YouTube post “Lets Go Crazy” is certainly what caught the attention of Prince and the Universal Music Publishing Group who demanded the video be removed. According to ABC News, Ms Lenz was advised to refrain from further copywrite violations or she would have her account deleted. At the time the video was taken down she only had recieved about 28 views from mostly friends and family.
After transistioning from fear of the music group to anger, she contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is suing the Music group citing abuse of the DMCA. YouTube restored the video after a filing with them from Ms Lenz. It was my belief in film school that music in the background of a scene could be legally heard, the DMCA may have changed all of that? we’ll have to wait and see how this one plays out.
Read the Full ABC News Story
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3777651&page=1
See the YouTube Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ
Sprint has a New Toy in its stable and it looks AWESOME
We received word this morning from Sprint that they will have the latest HTC SmartPhone available November 4th, The HTC Touch!
The Touchscreen Wireless Phone device runs Windows Mobile 6 features a 3″ Touch screen and allows emailing, listening to music, watching over the air video and checking out on demand services from Sprint. As a part of the On Board Memory, user will find a 512MB MicroSD card which is upgradable to 4GB. A on board camera captures at 2.0 MP camera and can also capture video with the phone with up to 5X zoom. Users of the Bluetooth® will like the Stereo bluetooth capabilities and Voice-activated dialing.
The Phone is priced at $249 with a two year agreement from Sprint with a $100 mail in rebate.
Wacom delivers with the new Bamboo Line
Wow! That’s the first word that came out of my mouth with the unboxing of the latest Wacom Tablet products under the new Bamboo Line. Not only does Wacom deliver with a tested and strong product but also with packaging that gives the user the feeling they are opening up a long cherished gift handed down through the generations or something you would find on the bed of a 5 star
resort.
An opening of the box will present the user of the Bamboo Fun with a welcome that states “This is your Bamboo, Use it to get more out of your computer. Let us know how it goes. “It is signed by Dennis Hoff, Wacom Consumer product manager. The Bamboo and the Bamboo fun both offer 4 programmable buttons that Wacom identifies as ExpressKeys to set up as Undo, Copy or a wide range of the commands most frequently used. A Ring in the center of these keys can be used for Zooming in and out of projects. The Bamboo and the Bamboo Fun work with both Mac and PC and supports Win2000 – Vista on the PC Side and Mac OS X on the Mac Side.
We opened up the Bamboo Fun Medium size unit in Silver. The Active Area for the screen is 8.5’Wide and 5.3″ from top to bottom. Wacom has two different sizes for the Bamboo Fun, Small and Medium. The Small size Bamboo Fun features an active area of 5.8″W x 3.7D. There are 512 levels of pressure sensitivity with the Bamboo Fun and the resolution is 2540LPI. The colors available are black, silver, white and blue.
The Bamboo Fun ships with the tablet, USB cable, a Bamboo Fun Mouse and Bamboo Fun Pen. Both the mouse and the pen use Wacom’s Patented No batteries, Wireless technology. The stylish looks of the tablet itself spill over to both the mouse and the pen holder which can be displayed nicely on the desktop. Software on DVD also ships with the Bamboo Fun to get you up and running with Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Win/4.0 Mac, Corel Painter Essentials 3.0 and Nik Color Efex Pro 2.0 GE. we love the feel of the Bamboo Fun unit, it is in line with the other Wacom products we have looked at including the Intuos 3 which offers more in detail and fine desktop graphics work. Users for this will still enjoy the ability to Edit, Paint, Draw, Handwrite and be up and running in no time. More information can be found at http://www.wacom.com/
The other product we took a glance at is the Wacom Bamboo Small Unit with an active area of 5.8″ x 3.7D. This unit is available only in Black however also features the 4 ExpressKeys and Zoom in/out ring. This unit is more designed for the user that will work this into handwriting type of features which are a part of Windows Vista or with the Mac Inkwell program. The tablet and included pen will work with Windows 2000 as well as XP and Vista as well as the Mac OS X 10.3.9. The Software bundle that ships with the Bamboo Fun is not available with this unit however with the recent release of the Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 it is certainly worth getting that program to work with the tablet. The Bamboo unit has an SRP of $99 while the Bamboo Fun in the Small size retails for $99 and the medium for $199. You can find the Wacom Bamboo products at most computer retailers. We found the Bamboo at CompUSA in the Mac Section.
Give a Laptop and Get One
Give a Laptop and Get One
Nicholas Negroponte hopes the One Laptop Per Child’s “Give 1 Get 1” initiative will jump-start distribution of the new XO Laptop.
After two-and-a-half years of relentless organizing, product development, and evangelizing, the so-called $100 laptop is ready to go into production in October. At a time like this, you’d think that übertechnology visionary Nicholas Negroponte and his team at the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization would be stockpiling champagne for a blowout celebration. Far from it.
While the notebook computer for schoolchildren in underdeveloped nations is just about ready for prime time, the goal of distributing tens of millions of the cute green-and-white machines still seems a far-off dream. The reasons: The computers, now called XO Laptops, will cost about $188 each to produce initially, nearly twice the original estimate; and, so far, not a single government has written a check.
That’s why on Sept. 24, the OLPC announced a money-raising gambit called “Give 1 Get 1.” Originally, the organization had no set plans to sell or distribute the computers in the U.S. Now it’s hoping to capitalize on widespread interest from American gadget fans to raise enough money to pay for shipments of XO Laptops to four countries that are among the poorest of the poor: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, and Rwanda.
Laptop Donations
Under Give 1 Get 1, which will run for two weeks starting Nov. 12, U.S. customers will be able to pay $399 to buy two laptops: one for themselves and one to be shipped to a child in one of those four countries. About half of the purchase price will be tax-deductible. Also, starting Sept. 24, people can simply “give” a laptop by making a $200 donation. Those who’d like to participate can sign up for e-mail alerts on the Web site www.XOgiving.org. The machines, which are being built in Taiwan, will begin shipping to U.S. customers in January or February.
While the highly quotable Negroponte has been a master at getting publicity for OLPC, this effort is mostly about cash: “It has become important for us to raise money this way,” says Negroponte. “I have met with about 30 heads of state. They’re all enthusiastic. But there’s a huge gulf between a head of state shaking your hand and a minister making a bank transfer.” Negroponte won’t predict how many laptops might be sold through Give 1 Get 1, but factory capacity presents no limitations: Quanta Computer in Taiwan can produce 1 million XO Laptops a month, if need be.
Interviewed during a stop in Europe, Negroponte admitted that the difficulties of his task sometimes discourage him. “You wake up some mornings feeling that way, but then I think about all the good people who are helping us and supporting us,” he says. He hopes that by subsidizing the purchase of computers in the four countries, OLPC will prompt other countries to make their own investments.
Read more about the Give a Laptop and Get One at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/.