FCC gets earful blasting at media limits hearing
Speaking during a public hearing Tuesday on media consolidation, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein drew frequent cheers by delivering a lengthy critique of media consolidation. Members of the Hollywood community also made impassioned statements during the first of six public hearings on media ownership, held in a packed auditorium on the University of Southern California campus before an often vocal audience. The conservative majority of FCC commissioners kept their comments relatively short, emphasizing they were there to listen. The commissioners were followed by members of the television industry. Veteran writer-producer Stephen J. Cannell recalled how being an impendent producer allowed him to maintain his original vision for series such as "The Rockford Files" and "The Commish". Representatives for the producing, directing, acting and writing guilds also spoke, several appealing for a mandate that broadcast networks should buy 25% of their programming from independent sources. The guilds made similar appeals during the last public hearings regarding media consolidation, in 2003.

Geekspeak still baffles web users
According to research from Nielsen/NetRatings, people are buying cutting-edge technology but often don't understand the terms that describe what their device actually does. So while 40% of online users receive news feeds, 67% did not know that the official term for this service was Really Simple Syndication. Terms such as podcasting and wikis are still meaningless to many. Acronyms in particular foxed users. 75% of online users did not know that VOD stands for video-on-demand, while 68% were unaware that personal video recorders were more commonly referred to as PVRs. Millions of people keep in touch via instant messaging but some 57% of online users said they did not know that the acronym for it was IM. Terms such as blogging and podcasting have achieved a high enough level of exposure to have made it into dictionaries but there are still plenty of people who don't understand the terms. 35% of online users had heard the term podcasting but didn't know what it meant and a quarter had never heard of it. Similarly with blogging, 34% said they had heard of it but weren't sure what it meant.

QUICK GUIDE TO TECH TERMS
VOD - video-on-demand
Wikis - Collaborative technology for editing websites
IPTV - internet protocol television
RSS - Really Simple Syndication alias automated news feeds
PVR - personal video recorder
Web 2.0 - user-generated ccontent phase of internet
Triple-play - internet, TV and phone in one subscription
VoIP - voice over internet protocol
IM - instant messaging
Blogging - frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts on the web
Podcasting - internet broadcasting for playback on MP3 players

Google launches literacy portal
Google has launched a portal to connect literacy organisations around the world. The Literacy Project enables teachers, organisations, and those interested in literacy to use the internet to search for and share literacy information. Users can search for information in digitised books and academic articles, and share information through blogs, videos and groups. The tool also allows people to find literacy organisations around the world using a searchable and zoomable map. The move ties in with the search engine giant's foray into the literary world: Google Book Search. Users can now use it to search through an archive of digitised books to uncover the literature that contains their words of phrases of choice. Publishers, such as Penguin and HarperCollins, and libraries, including Oxford University's, have allowed Google to scan their books. If the book is in copyright, users can only access limited information; if it is out of copyright, it can be downloaded. But it is not without it is critics. Some believe Google is infringing copyright law by digitising works without the copyright holders' permission, in fact the Authors Guild of America, the Association of American Publishers and publishing company La Martiniere is suing the company. But the search engine claims that by only revealing snippets of text, no copyright is being violated.

The battle over Vista security
Microsoft and a top security software firm are doing battle over the upcoming Windows operating system. McAfee says Microsoft is making it difficult for people to protect their computers from Internet intruders. McAfee CEO George Samenuk says Microsoft isn't cooperating with security-software makers, by making the internal workings of its OS available to those who create security software. The charges are launched in a full-page ad in the Financial Times. For its part, Microsoft says it isn't freezing out security companies or promoting its own security products at the expense of others.

Gaming Market will be $44 billion in 2011
According to a series of new reports from DFC Intelligence the worldwide video game and interactive entertainment industry is expected to grow from about $29 billion in 2005 to as much as $44 billion in 2011. This forecast includes revenue from video game hardware and software, dedicated portable system hardware and software, PC games, and online PC and console games. The biggest area of uncertainty is which video game console system will be dominant. The video game business is changing in major ways. Sony and Nintendo are shaking up the industry with new business models. These are uncertain times where neither conventional wisdom nor historical data necessarily predict who the winners and losers will be during the next three-to-five years. Forecasts the market using three different scenarios for each of the new video game systems, the Sony PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii and the Microsoft Xbox 360. Overall market growth is about the same under all scenarios. However, under each scenario individual platforms have very different results. By 2011 we forecast that all console software combined will only account for about a third of worldwide sales, with multiple console platforms, a growing portable market and online game market .

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"PS3 vs Wii", a parody of Apple's latest commercialson Youtube, it got me to giggle..

Here's a great rebate deal on this highly rated MP3 player, which offers lots of features for a reasonable price. The 4GB SanDisk Sansa e260 for only $129.95, after a $30 mail-in rebate SanDisk Sansa e260 4GB Digital Multimedia MP3 Player w/ miniSD Expansion Slot SDMX4-4096-A70, its at Buy.Com .

AOL's new high-speed software
The AOL OpenRide software lets people access multiple e-mail accounts from AOL and other providers, send and receive instant messages, browse the Web, listen to music, view photos and watch videos--all through one integrated screen. OpenRide offers access to the AOL Buddy List and Address Book and, if a contact is not online, the software turns an instant message into a text message or e-mail. The OpenRide software screen is divided into four parts that change size depending on what the user is viewing. Elements of one window, an e-mail message for example, can be dragged and dropped into another window, such as the contact name on a buddy list.

Today's Site To Peek At:
Fanpop is a network of social portals where communities of fans can discover and share content and participate in discussions around their favorite topics of interest. Rather than visiting multiple websites and forums or hunting and pecking through search results, passionate users bring the best content together in one place. Fans can submit, organize, and rate digital content such as videos, articles, sites, and blogs for topics. This saves people the time and trouble of having to scour the web for quality content that other knowledgeable fans have already discovered. The underlying belief is that people that are fanatical about something tend to be the best and most reliable source of information for that specific something. The site combines a little bit of everything: polls, social bookmarking, social network, news, and forums. The site has multiple portals, so that Fanpop can keep topics somewhat contained since a fifty-year old mother of three who is a fan of knitting, luxury travel, and parenting is unlikely to go into the Britney Spears, geeks or Being a Man spots and vice versa.

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