R.E.M.’s new album, “Accelerate”, will be launched on March 24 on the social networking application iLike. The 11-song album will be free for iLike users and also for social networking websites that support iLike application. For example, Facebook and Hi5 will offer free streaming of R.E.M.’s album.

“It was one of those ideas that was presented to us and it seemed like a good one so we ran for it,” said Michael Stipe. Following the example of other online launchings, R.E.M. has created a big buzz. I think you’d remember Radiohead’s USB stick that was a total success. The official US release is scheduled for April 1, almost a week later than iLike streaming.

via Yahoo News

That’s a cool idea someone would say. I find it very interesting too and somehow very simple. Chris Armstrong, the business founder, started wondering about how difficult it is to rent a movie when he spent time in line to get one at a local store in Galway, Ireland. Then he thought to create a company that rents movies on flash memory cards.

The company called PortoMedia has kiosks where people can download movies directly on flash drives. The kiosks will have hard drives that can hold 350 to 5,000 titles. Depending on hardware speeds a movie could be download in less than one minute.  PortoMedia will use IBM’s help to develop the transaction system, hard drives from Seagate Technologies, and Samsung’s flash memory devices. Toshiba will fabricate the chips for the high-speed interface.

Armstrong said, its company has signed deals with several retailers from US. The MoviePoint kiosks have already been tested in Dublin at the end of 2007. PortoMedia will sell a proprietary ultra-fast USB interface for customers. A start pack will cost $60 and will include a flash key, a dock, and six movies. Then the customers will use the same flash key to buy other titles from the MoviePoint kiosks. As Armstrong said, the company will establish the future fees for the number of viewings.

Renting movies on flash memory cards will be a great business for movie makers, as well as for the stores. There are many advantages upon DVDs or Blu-Ray discs. First of all, delivering the movies on flash sticks will reduce cost for transporting and packaging the DVDs. Furthermore, the stores won’t have the shelves full of DVDs. Comparing with the Internet downloads, this solution is faster and safer.  I hope PortoMedia will be successful in this business.

The original story here.

If we were to take the definition Wikipedia gives to a drive-in theater it would say something like that “a form of cinema structure consisting of a large screen, a projection booth, a concession stand and a large parking area for automobiles”.

What you are about to see is probably the world’s smallest drive in theater. Under starry skies and the foliage of a potted oak tree and with the help of a one of a kind 1965 Ford Falcon Convertible that looks great, six people are able to see four decades of classic movies starting from 1960.

It’s dubbed DRV-IN, the address is 139 Norfolk Street, New York, and if you’re in the neighborhood have a few buddies or a sweetheart to impress (or have fun) then go on 139Norfolk.com and make your reservation for $75.

If it was popcorn you were concerned, yes they have a machine and you can slip one or two in the car. Just don’t forget to take it when the movie is over. See more pictures below.

Samsung have just announced their 3D-ready PDP plasmas to the Korean market, today.

Samsung PAVV Cannes 450 is the name, has 3D content support, comes in two sizes, both 42 and 50-inches with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and should work just fine with 3D glasses or high performance 3D software. It uses Cell Light Control, 2008 Daylight technology and a DNIe+ chipset and will have three entertainment modes : games, movies and sports. The prices are $1,850 for the 42-inch version and $2,656 for the 50-inch version.

There is also a HD version, dubbed Cannes 550 and should be sold for $4,145.

Electronic Arts is going to provide the 3D content.

Source and picture copyright: AvingUSA

If you haven’t heard by now the trucks or buses in Pakistan are given special treatment. All sorts of decorations and colorful paintings are applied no matter if it’s on the interior or at the exterior.

The result? Artists turned the streets of Pakistan into a national gallery without walls, an exhibition with something new every few minutes. They are against of mass production and this is how they fight it. Almost every truck or bus that gets out of their hands screams uniqueness.

Curious to know how much you’d have to pay to get your truck painted? It starts from $500 and goes above $1,000. If you need the body adjusted and then the truck painted then the price climbs up to $2,500 which is what a driver makes in two years. For special requests it even goes up to $13,000. Art is expensive …

If you have the time and want to read a small story about truck & bus paintings in Pakistan there’s a good one. Here is a small gallery. Let us know if you like them.

Pictures copyright : AutoMen, dibopics, iancowe, Khalid Bin Ismail, P Donovan, noorkhan, go2net, Suh@il , Raja Islam, Bobulix

A record fine of $1.3 billion has been issued today by the European Union to Microsoft because the company “charged unreasonable prices” for software information to developers that wanted to build Windows compatible products. If we were to make the total amount for the fines Microsoft has to pay we’ll end up with about $2.5 billion.

Though Microsoft had taken measure to make sure the company is meeting the anti-trust regulations in Europe, said that the issues for which they’re fined today have been taken care of.

Just to bring a smile on Bill’s face, EU Competition Commissioner  Neelie Kroes said “We could have gone as high as 1.5 billion euros ($2.23 billion). The maximum amount is higher than what we did at the end of the day”. They are still skeptical and have all their eyes on Microsoft to see their next steps.

After Microsoft’s offer of acquiring Yahoo, here comes the real buzz story. Yahoo releases a social bookmarking extension called Yahoo Buzz. It looks like a Digg clone, but more than rating news and articles, Yahoo Buzz combines the search relevancy with users voting to give a story a Buzz Score.

Social networking success has attracted Yahoo in the business. The company didn’t end too well last year, but now after rejecting Microsoft proposal, its name has gained popularity and sympathy. Currently Yahoo Buzz is in beta and includes content from nearly 100 publishers, each of which has a “badge” that lets readers vote and submit stories to Buzz in real-time. The users will generate a “BuzzScore” while rating the news stories, videos, images, or blog posts on the Web. The company said, the algorithm will include the top stories in a good placement on Yahoo.com. As an additional option, Yahoo Buzz will also allow users to submit Buzz stories to social new sites such as Digg, Facebook, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

Yahoo plans to develop a new ecosystem based on Yahoo Buzz. It will develop new syndication and monetization tools for publishers who share relevant content and advertisers. I like this new idea and I am sure Yahoo will certainly create some buzz.

via Yahoo News

Samsung is going to push hard to bring the 250GB SSD by the end of 2008, said flash memory marketing chief Michael Yang. They are already producing the 128GB version that should start shipping in the third quarter of the year while the 64GB SSD is already packed ultra-thin notebooks such as Lenovo ThinkPad X300 or Apple’s MacBook Air.

The new drive is going to use MLC technology (multi level cell) which is slower than the SLC (simple level cell) drive but reduces cost because it stacks more data on the same cell. However, there is no official word on using Parallel ATA like we have in the MacBook Air or they will upgrade to Serial ATA connectors.

Yang also mentioned the fact that they may start working on new dimensions (smaller of course) to make even thinner laptops. So far companies developed on the 1.8 or 2.5-inch platforms.

via CNET

Just because you paid a lot of money on your GPS navigator this doesn’t mean you are going to get to your destination (safe). To make the story short here is what happened to a truck driver that followed the instructions and got stuck on a “tractors only” road on Wednesday.

He truck was carrying timber from north Wales to Birmingham and managed to block the track at Halton in Wrexham county

“He knocked down branches on the way and damaged trees and is now well and truly stuck.”

The result is, farmer Margaret Evans became very sad because the truck stuck in her farm lane and she now has to use a two miles longer road to get to that particular part of her land.

The company that owns the truck, Maxi Haulage Ltd from Ayrshire, announced that the don’t provide sat-navigation on their vehicles, but the drivers use their own. More on that matter there was a big sign saying that the track was not suitable to heavy goods vehicles (HGV). How was the GPS navigator supposed to know it?

You’d better trust your own instincts, too, not just your GPS.

Source

We may not need futurist and inventor Raymond Kurzweil to tell us that solar energy is going to rule in 20 years or the fact that nanotechnology could give global warming a big chill (pdf link), but it’s always a good thing to be reassured. He is one of the distinguished futurists that predicted the demise of the Soviet Union and foresaw the explosive growth of the Internet and wireless systems.

Getting back to solar energy, Kurzweil said that we already have 10,000 times more sunlight than we would need to convert into electricity and serve the whole world. However, 1% of total energy we use comes from sunlight and wind. He also stated that we may be 5 years away from the point where solar power becomes efficient and competitive to fight fossil fuels.

“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”

A bright future

The technology is going to develop and becoming efficient is similar to using nano-engineered materials for solar panels which not only makes them lighter but also easier to install. This is something Google likes and invested in it ever since the technology was developed.

Other technologies that will bring solar power mainstream are solar concentrators made of parabolic mirrors that would collect solar energy from a very large area and sends it to a small collector or a small but efficient steam turbine.

“You could, for example, create hydrogen or hydrogen-based fuels from the energy produced by solar panels and then use that to create fuel for fuel cells, he said. There are already nano-engineered fuel cells, microscopic in size, that can be scaled up to store huge quantities of energy”, Kurzweil said.

Knowing Raymond Kurzweil’s history as a futurist, we can only be happy that the technology is on the right track to “rule” in 20 years. If you trust him and would like to know more on what is going to happen you can read his predictions : The Age of Intelligent Machines(from 1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (from 1999) and The Singularity is Near (from 2005).

photo by Jan Egil Kristiansen