Daily Marauder


Meet Retrobot by Marauder
January 27, 2009, 9:18 PM
Filed under: Feature | Tags:
img_5900
It used to be an Airwalk shoe box. Transformed by the artist Jordan!, it’s now known as RetroBot.

Mobile post sent by Marauder using Utterli. reply-count Replies.

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WE LOVE YOU FILM: HIPPIES UNITE by Marauder

WE LOVE YOU FILM: HIPPIES UNITE

we-love-you-film

During a fun-filled night at the SXSW pre-party in NYC last night, a man handed me a flyer for this film.  From Three-Time Academy Award ®-nominated producer Steve Kalafer, this film focuses on The Rainbow Family of Living Light.  Never heard of it?  Neither had I.  This group has been gathering in a remote location in the woods to pray for world peace since 1972.  It’s like Burning Man but will less nudity and more peace-signs. Groovy…

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MOVIN ON UP: OBAMA’S VICTORY LAP by Marauder

MOVIN ON UP: OBAMA’S VICTORY LAP

obama-victory-mix

Still reveling in the inauguration celebration from last week? While President Obama is moving ahead issuing an order to close Guatanamo Detention Center and sending a special envoy to the Middle East and Europe on a “listening tour,” we’re still celebrating. Here’s your soundtrack. DJ Z-trip has issued a second edition re-mix featuring speeches from President Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. and samples from artists ranging from Gil Scott Heron, MIA, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Public Enemy, The Pointer Sisters, The Chemical Brothers, Arrested Development and about a dozen more.

Inspiring and beautifully produced, this is worth a few listens. Click here for the second edition and here for the first edition. The best part is, you can download both for free.

The Obama Mix by DJ Z-Trip is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. You are free to share, copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the condition that you are to credit and attribute this work to DJ Z-Trip (with a link).

cc

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BROADCAST/CABLE by Marauder

BROADCAST/CABLE

NBC says it has landed the “first television interview from the White House” with President Obama since his inauguration. The live interview, with NBC News’s Matt Lauer, will air during the pre-game show before Sunday’s Super Bowl. More of the interview will air the next day on “Today.” (Iwantmedia 1/27, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/01/61930374/1 1/26)

obama3

Advertisers are paying NBC as much as $3 million for 30 seconds of airtime during this year’s Super Bowl — 11% more than the $2.7 million that Fox charged during last year’s game. Companies say they’re spending big because no other event captures the interest of 100 million viewers. (Iwantmedia 1/27, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-superbowl27-2009jan27,0,7885040.story 1/27)

Tire maker Bridgestone Americas Inc. is again sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show and will unveil two new TV ads, including one set in space that an executive says is very “high-tech as far as the graphics.”

super-bowl1

Lifetime’s “Prayers for Bobby,” the story about a woman whose gay son kills himself, attracted 3.8 million total viewers and a 3.1 household rating in its debut this past Saturday. The premiere pulled in 1 million women in the 18-to-49 age group and 1.1 million women 25-to-54, the network’s two most-important demographic categories. Multichannel News (1/26)

prayer

The next season of “Project Runway” may never make it to television, but producers plan to film the big New York Fashion Week finale anyway. The show remains tied up in lawsuits between NBC’s Bravo, its producers at the Weinstein Company and new “Runway” owner Lifetime. (Iwantmedia 1/27, http://www.nypost.com/seven/01272009/tv/can_runway_make_it_work__152186.htm 1/27)

project-runway

CBS revs up for the fourteenth edition of The Amazing Race on February 15 at 8p with Phil Keoghan as host. (Cynopsis 1/27)

amazing-race

ABC will debut the new Better Off Ted March 18 at 830p following Scrubs at 8p. On Thursday nights beginning March 26 at 8p, ABC will pair the new Megan Mullally/Cheryl Hines comedy In the Motherhood followed by Samantha Who? at 830p. (Cynopsis 1/27)

ted

News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch, who turns 78 in March, is said to have “hazy” succession planning. Murdoch dying in office without an anointed family heir could force News Corp.’s board to appoint a new CEO itself — and that person might not be any of Rupert’s offspring. (Iwantmedia 1/27, http://www.businessday.com.au/business/decision-time-is-looming-for-the-murdoch-family-20090126-7q1f.html 1/27)

ABC approved a redo of the 1980s miniseries V about alien lizards landing on the planet. Scott Peters (The 4400) writes the new adaptation and also will executive produce along with Jason Hall of HDFilms. Warner Bros. Television produced the original miniseries and will produce the pilot. (Cynopsis 1/27)

CBS okayed a pilot presentation for a reality program titled Missing You from executive producer Shaun Cassidy about a team of investigators focusing on new missing-persons cases each week. Cassidy and Ned Nalle created Missing You and Nalle will also executive produce along with James Bruce and Raquel Productions. (Cynopsis 1/27)

The Senate passed a bill that would extend the transition to all-digital TV signals from Feb. 17 to June 12, with the hope that those who have not yet prepared for the switch will do so in the additional months. ClipSyndicate (1/26) , The Washington Post (1/27) , Reuters (1/27)

In his first meeting as acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Copps said the FCC’s near-term agenda will be “DTV, DTV and DTV,” and he urged commissioners and staffers to conduct business in a more inclusive manner. These changes, Copps said, will “make the FCC more transparent, open and useful to the stakeholders that we serve. And when I say stakeholders, I include not just the industries that we regulate but, more importantly, all citizens.” TVWeek.com (1/26) , Broadcasting & Cable (1/26)

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ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA by Marauder
January 27, 2009, 4:45 PM
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: , , , , , , ,

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Yahoo released its fourth quarter 2008 earnings today. Its non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.17 a share, above the $0.13 consensus. (Yahoo lost $0.22 a share on a GAAP basis due to restructuring and impairment charges). Total revenues came in at $1.8 billion, with net revenues (after what Yahoo pays to network partners) coming in at $1.375 billion. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/yahoo-ceo-bartz-i-did-not-come-to-yahoo-to-sell-the-company 1/27)

yahoo-financial-highlights

Facebook will feature a live worldwide performance of Lil’ Wayne’s new single “Prom Queen,” on two AT&T pages tonight at 9:30PM PST, streamed live on both AT&T’s Freedom of Choice page as well as its Mobile Music page. Fans will be able to purchase ringtones or mp3s of the full track following the performance. Lil Wayne is the logic choice for the experiment; he sold more ringtones than any other artists last year on the AT&T network and attracted more visitors to his Facebook page than any other artist. (Cynopsis 1/27)

Time corrected from Cynopsis.

lil-wayne

eBay has signaled its intent to sell its Skype internet telephone division after reporting weak Q4 profit, reports The Times (UK.) The auction site acquired Skype 4 years ago for a princely sum of $2.6 billion but has struggled to effectively monetize its massive subscriber base. (Cynopsis 1/27)

skype

The troubled economy doesn’t seem to be hampering Netflix, which just announced fourth-quarter profit was up 45%, to $22.7 million, on revenue of $360 million, a 19% bump from the comparable period in 2007. The company reported 9.39 million subscribers by the end of the quarter, which exceeded the high end of its previous range forecast. The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires (subscription required) (1/27)

If you want to track the most popular fan pages on Facebook, AllFacebook pushed out a new Facebook Pages Tracker last night that keeps stats on 611,213 fan pages on the social network. Only about 57,000 of those pages have more than 1,000 fans. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/facebook-users-are-becoming-big-fans-of-masturbation-and-other-fan-page-stats 1/27)

Both sales volume and online CPMs are down significantly in the display ad market according to an informal survey of publishers and advertisers conducted by Ad Age. The low end of the ad market – the kind of products aggregated by remnant ad networks – continue to drag down the rest of the market as the average CPM on ad networks has dropped from $1.10 to only 60 cents/thousand impressions. (Cynopsis 1/27)

Hulu, the joint video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., will be running a commercial during this Sunday’s Super Bowl. The big game airs on NBC, one of Hulu’s corporate parents. Hulu’s announcement of the spot promises that the ad will “reveal the secret behind Hulu.” (Iwantmedia 1/27, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10150197-36.html 1/26)

hulu

MTV Networks has signed on to be the exclusive ad sales rep for comedy Web site JibJab.com, a deal that also includes brand integrations and custom sponsorships on JibJab. The site had about 105 million visitors last year and maintains more than 6 million registered users. ClickZ (1/27) , The New York Times/Gigaom (1/26)

Fox Interactive Media is eliminating more than just free lunches. News Corp’s digital arm is trimming nearly 100 jobs across several business units, including Photobucket, MySpace, Scout Media, Rotten Tomatoes, and corporate. The total comes to a little under 5 percent of FIM’s domestic U.S. workforce, and about 3 percent of its global workforce of 2,900. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/26/fim-trims-about-100-jobs-mostly-at-photobucket-and-corporate 1/26)

fox-interactive

YouTube uploads for the week ending 2009-01-24
1. CNN (205)
2. Fox News (196)
3. MSNBC (132)
4. ABC (125)
5. CBS (54)
6. CNBC (39)

YouTube views for the week ending 2009-01-24
1. ABC (780,302)
2. CNN (602,095)
3. MSNBC (544,343)
4. Fox News (470,993)
5. CNBC (106,257)
6. CBS (65,208)
7. AP (1,063)
Source: Affine Systems

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WIRELESS by Marauder

WIRELESS

The Disney/ABC Television Group, ESPN and Verizon announced a deal to offer a broader selection of programming to Verizon Wireless VCast and mobile web customers. The agreement covers mobile distribution of on-demand, full-length episodes to VCast Video, complementing existing short-form content already available from ABC and ESPN. Full-length programs now available include Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost and Ugly Betty from ABC; Nightline, This Week with George Stephanopoulos and 20/20 from ABC News; and Hannah Montana, The Suite Life on Deck and Phineas and Ferb from Disney Channel. (Cynopsis 1/27)

After losing some 1.3 million subscribers during Q3 Sprint Nextel announced it is preparing to eliminate some 8,000 workers or 14.3% of its workforce by the end of March (the same month that Palm is rumored to introduce its new Pre smartphone on the Sprint network.) (Cynopsis 1/27)

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TECHNOLOGY by Marauder
January 27, 2009, 4:35 PM
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY | Tags: , , , , , , ,

TECHNOLOGY

Internet giant Google plans to launch its Google Drive service, which could make PCs obsolete. The GDrive would allow users to access their personal computers from any Internet connection, eliminating the need for a hard drive. But some privacy experts are concerned about users storing personal files on Google’s servers. The Observer (London) (1/25)

My only question is…when can I have one?

gdrive

iLife ‘09 is finally available on store shelves, and while most of the attention will probably go to iPhoto’s spiffy new face-recognition, there’s a feature tucked into GarageBand that might be making headlines very soon: premium lessons for piano and guitar, presented by the artists themselves. Dubbed ‘Lesson Store’, Apple’s online marketplace for music lessons has all the makings of a revolution in music learning that could prove to be incredibly popular and lucrative. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/the-garageband-lesson-store-could-be-apples-next-revolution-in-music 1/27)

(Below) Watch out Palm.  Apple will undoubtedly now be gunnin’ for your Palm Pre.

Apple has won potential protection against its iPhone and iPod Touch rivals in the form of a patent that covers technology for “detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch-screen display” to enter commands. The patent covers such methods as finger or thumb swiping, twisting or spreading to flip pages, rotate views or enlarge images, according to an online filing on the U.S. Patent and Trade Office’s site. Google/Agence France-Presse (1/27)

A new report from In-Stat says that about 39 million U.S. households contain a high-definition TV, but only 22 million of those hi-tech homes have signed up for HD programming. On a more positive note, the report said the number of high-definition households with both an HDTV and HD programming was up 40% last year. TWICE (1/26) , Cartt News Service

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