Digital Technology for Digital Living.
January 30, 2006
MTV Networks Adds Shows to iTunes
This weekend MTV Networks (MTV, MTV2, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and the N) added 14 popular television shows to the iTunes Music Store. The new content features top-rated favorites such as Punk’d, South Park, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants and Laguna Beach.
Networks adding TV shows to iTunes isn’t anything new. What makes this deal special is that select episodes from Comedy Central and Nickelodeon are being made available on iTunes in advance of their network airing. The other networks with content on iTunes currently only post shows for download after they have already aired.
On January 30th, Comedy Central will release a free episode of the animated series Drawn Together on iTunes. The same episode isn’t set for broadcast until February 1st - making it the first iTunes TV Premiere.
A couple quick notes about the 14 new MTV Networks shows:
- Nickelodeon’s Dora is the first preschool program available on iTunes
- COMEDY CENTRAL’s Stand-Up is iTunes’ first stand-up comedy program
- MTV’s Laguna Beach and Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Gauntlet 2 are the first reality-based titles available on iTunes.
There are now over 40 TV shows available for download in the iTunes Music Store.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Music, Portable, Video, Digital TV
January 16, 2006
Spacewar - The 1st Computer Game
These days, gaming is a billion dollar industry, but it all started as an experiment in 1962 by a programmer from MIT named Steve Russell.
Back in 1962, Steve gathered a group of MIT programmers* and spent about 200 hours creating a game called Spacewar! for an early computer called the DEC PDP-1. The object of Spacewar! was to avoid a black hole while trying to shoot your opponents.
“If I hadn’t done it, someone would’ve done something equally exciting if not better in the next six months. I just happened to get there first.”
Steve Russell may have gotten his name in the geek history books but unfortunately he never was never able to profit from Spacewar!. Back in 1962, computers were considered “serious tools” and were only used by governments, universities and corporations - not exactly your average gaming consumers.
It’s nice to read about the first computer game, but wouldn’t you really rather actually play it? Finding an original copy of Spacewar! and a DEC PDP-1 computer would be impossible. But thanks to three MIT students, Barry Silverman, Brian Silverman, and Vadim Gerasimov, Spacewar! lives on. Martin Graetz, one of Steve Russell’s original team members, gave these MIT students a 40 page print out of the original source code. They then re-typed it, and ran the code through several emulators and conversions to get it into a Java applet that will run in the average web browser. Thank you Barry, Brian and Vadim!
You can play Spacewar! on this MIT web page and experience a piece of computer and gaming history for yourself.
Before you run over and check it out, here are the controls for Spacewar!:
Player 1: left = a, right = s, thrust = d, fire = f
Player 2: left = k, right = l, thrust = ;, fire = ‘
Enjoy!
*The Spacewar! Programming Team: Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, Martin Graetz, Alan Kotok, Steve Piner, and Robert Saunders.
methodshop | Comments (0) | General, Console, Software
January 10, 2006
Google Video
Ok, so you know that Google has just released an online video store, but did you know that it’s possible to upload your own videos to the site?
Kap | Comments (0) | General, Video
January 03, 2006
iTrip LCD Review
The iTrip is a FM transmitter specifically designed for the iPod that allows you to play your music through any FM radio wherever the mood strikes you. The car, the beach, grandma’s house… it doesn’t matter, as long as you have access to a FM radio, your iPod can broadcast audio like a small portable radio station.
Griffin Technology, the maker of the iTrip, has made several major improvements to the new version of the iTrip, called the iTrip LCD. These features include a backlit LCD screen, tuning knob, a stronger FM broadcast mode call DX, and
the ability to broadcast to international FM frequencies.
Full Review: iTrip LCD - iPod FM Transmitter
methodshop | Comments (4) | General, Music, Portable, Peripherals
