Tech News

Not long after its CEO, Jason Kilar, left the stage after his talk with Peter Kafka at D: Dive Into Media to­day, Hulu re­vealed a teaser for the TV ad that will pro­mote the on­line video ser­vice dur­ing Sunday’s Super Bowl. Here, Hulu re­turns to the cam­paign it launched in 2009, which starred Alec Baldwin and in­volved an alien plan to turn hu­man brains in­to tasty “mushy­mush.” You see, your moth­er was right about TV turn­ing your brains to mush, and Hulu is just the se­cret weapon to make it hap­pen (...)

The days of the op­ti­cal disc are num­bered. More of us are turn­ing to stream­ing me­dia for our en­ter­tain­ment, with the on­ly re­al draw of Blu-ray be­ing the high-qual­i­ty 1080p im­age, in­ter­ac­tive ex­tras, and abil­i­ty to watch your phys­i­cal copy when­ev­er you choose. Even PC own­ers don’t re­al­ly need an op­ti­cal drive any­more. Most soft­ware [...]

RIM 'London' BlackBerry 10 pic­ture shows no key­board; BlackBerry 7 plat­form wins se­cu­ri­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for U.S. and Canadian gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees.

Non-stan­dard apps and cloud ser­vices are sneak­ing in­to the work­place. Here's what you need to be pre­pared for.

Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales ban to re­main in force Apple's de­mand that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 be banned from sale in Germany has been on­ce again con­firmed by a German court.…

While thou­sands of lucky fans will brave the crowds at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. to fill the cov­et­ed seats at this Sunday’s Super Bowl, many more in the U.S. will en­joy the game from home­—in front of the TV, with mo­bile phones and tablets at the ready. As the New York Giants and New England Patriots pre­pare for kick­off, here are sev­er­al ways to make the most of the big game with Google—wherever you’re watch­ing. You can ex­plore the full list in our Game Day with Google (...)

slew writes "This is a fol­lowup to this ear­lier sto­ry about 2 of 3 of Rambus's 'crit­i­cal' patents be­ing in­val­i­dat­ed. Apparently now it's a hat-trick." There's some­thing that seems un­sa­vory and waste­ful about a busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in which a com­pa­ny's stock val­ue "fluc­tu­ates sharply on its suc­cess­es and fail­ures in patent lit­i­ga­tion and li­cens­ing." The linked ar­ti­cle of­fers a brief but de­cent sum­ma­ry of the way Rambus has prof­it­ed over the years from the­se now-in­val­i­dat­ed (...)

We've had plen­ty of sto­ries about the ridicu­lous­ness of se­cu­ri­ty the­ater at air­ports, but it's been spread­ing else­where as well. Last week, I was in Washington DC from Monday through Thursday, for a few things (most­ly re­lat­ed to the SOPA/PIPA de­bate). On Thursday morn­ing, I took part in a press brief­ing about the SOPA/PIPA fight (this was be­fore it had been shelved, but after the web black­outs) at the US Capitol. I was ac­tu­al­ly head­ing to the air­port soon after, so I had checked out of (...)

"Have any of you no­ticed that Google's new "Search Plus Your World" can be short­ened to SPY World?"

If you were asked what it would take to get Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Aol and other to come to­geth­er, agree on some­thing and work to­geth­er to ac­com­plish some­thing that would ben­e­fit most of the on­line world, what would it be? That is a pret­ty short list of op­tion for sure but one thing has worked: a push to elim­i­nate phish­ing scams in the e-mail space. According to Wired On Monday, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and eleven others out­fits an­nounced they had formed a new al­liance to (...)

David Farber, a vet­er­an of Internet tech­nol­o­gy and pol­i­tics, dropped by Cambridge, Mass. to­day and was gra­cious enough to grant me some time in be­tween his nu­mer­ous meet­ings. On leave from Carnegie Mellon, Dave still in­ter­ve­nes in nu­mer­ous pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions re­lat­ed to the Internet and "plays in Washington," as well as host­ing the pop­u­lar Interesting People mail­ing list. This list delves in­to dizzy­ing levels of de­tail about tech­no­log­i­cal is­sues, but I want­ed to pump him for big ideas about (...)

"Connect it to Facebook, vi­ral spread, boom, boom." I have no idea what that means but I do know that for some rea­son, I'm still not tired of the Sh*t [fill in the blank] Says meme. This video is for any­one who's spent more than five min­utes read­ing Techcrunch, knows what Y Combinator is and has faced the (some­times) ir­ra­tional ex­u­ber­ance of a tech en­trepreneur. "Overheard: Time to piv­ot." Sponsor (...)

It isn’t just the sun’s ra­di­a­tion storm get­ting all up in Earth’s face this week. An as­teroid the size of a school bus, dis­cov­ered mere days ago, came about five times closer to us than the moon Friday. The good news is an as­teroid that size would have burned up in the Earth’s at­mo­sphere. The bad news is there are still plen­ty of larg­er near-Earth rocks we haven’t dis­cov­ered yet — and we may not dis­cov­er them un­til they come fly­ing at us. Asteroid 2012 BX34, after all, had plen­ty of com­pa­ny. (...)

As Flash's ubiq­ui­ty be­gins to erode, stan­dards-based Web tech­nolo­gies are go­ing to be­come the path for­ward for de­vel­op­ers who want to of­fer a user ex­pe­ri­ence that works across all screens. The HTML5 video ele­ment is al­ready wide­ly sup­port­ed in mod­ern Web browsers, but the ca­pa­bil­i­ties and codecs that are avail­able dif­fer be­tween im­ple­men­ta­tions. A new State of HTML5 Video doc­u­ment of­fers some clar­i­ty by paint­ing a clear pic­ture of the cur­rent sta­tus of stan­dards-based video across the (...)

Facebook may file a prospec­tus for its ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing of stock as ear­ly as next week. The com­pa­ny is still ham­mer­ing out a fi­nal date, but it is ex­pect­ed to sub­mit its fil­ing to the Securities and Exchange Commission with­in the next three weeks.

There's no way around it, Facebook Timeline is here. And as Jimmy Kimmel says, "You will like it." Don't want to take the time to up­date your new pro­file page? Expect a vis­it from the Facebook Police to force the so­cial in­ter­ac­tion out of you, as seen in a dra­mat­ic reen­act­ment from Kimmel's late night show.

Microsoft and BlackBerry mak­er Research in Motion (RIM) are team­ing up to­day on the pub­lic re­lease of BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365, a name which sure­ly Microsoft it­self had a hand in cre­at­ing. The new ser­vice will al­low cor­po­rate cus­tomers to man­age their de­ployed BlackBerry de­vices us­ing Exchange Online, the host­ed ver­sion of Microsoft’s mes­sag­ing plat­form. The ad­di­tion comes at no ex­tra cost to cur­rent sub­scribers of the Office 365 suite or the stan­dalone (...)

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal, and others are work­ing to­geth­er on a stan­dard that can be used across the Internet for block­ing phish­ing e-mails.

The race to make RAM that keeps its mem­o­ry in a pow­er outage

After years of ex­per­i­ment­ing, the top video des­ti­na­tions on the Web are sud­den­ly flush with orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming: doc­u­men­taries, re­al­i­ty shows and script­ed series. Over the next few months, YouTube, Netflix and Hulu will roll out their most am­bi­tious orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming yet -- a dig­i­tal push in­to a tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion busi­ness that has money, a bevy of stars and a bold at­ti­tude of rein­ven­tion. The long-pre­dict­ed col­li­sion be­tween Internet video and broad­cast tele­vi­sion is fi­nal­ly (...)

Another year, an­oth­er SXSW fes­ti­val com­ing up in just a few weeks. What will this year’s event hold? Last year seemed like a big shift for both the event and for at­ten­dees. The event was split up in­to many lo­ca­tions (I think this was a huge mis­take), more com­mer­cial­iza­tion than ev­er and it seemed like lots of peo­ple came to Austin but didn’t buy a badge – they just surfed the hall­ways of the con­ven­tion cen­ter and al­so at­tend­ed lots of Sixth Street non-of­fi­cial events. Each year the event grows (...)

My wife is trou­ble. But she knows how to be fru­gal when it makes sense. Free is even bet­ter than an em­ploy­ee dis­count! Kristine Gray orig­i­nal­ly shared this post:+Louis Gray said the kids don't yet have any Google+ schwag. I told him to hand me a sharpie and I'll just add a "+" sign to all the Google schwag they al­ready have. Problem solved. /via My Google+ Profile.More: louisgray.com | RSS | E-mail | Cell: 408 (...)

FREELANCERS AND STUDIO HEADS, learn what your rates say about your brand, and dis­cov­er how to make more money by rais­ing your rate strate­gi­cal­ly. A List Apart: Pricing Strategy for Creatives by JASON BLUMER. Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart Magazine.