Microsoft Copy Cat

Microsoft is recruiting Apple Store managers to come and work for Microsoft stores that are in development. The company is wooing the managers over by giving them pay raises and paying for moving expenses. They even plan on imitating the genius bar. Good luck with that one Microsoft.

In other news, the house built entirely made out of legos in Dorking, England was demolished. It was offered for free to anyone who could take it to a new location, but when there were no takers, they just decided to get rid of it.

New Amazon.com Feature

Amazon.com is coming out with the "AmazonBasics" store, which sells basic products like usb cords, blank discs and flash drives for a significantly lower price than its other competitors. People are suspecting that if the store does well, then major companies will have to drop their prices as well.

Also, the FCC is putting a ban on Internet companies slowing internet speeds while people are streaming things. The purpose for this practice was to get people to watch shows online less so that they would not drop their cable companies.

Left 4 Dead 2 Banned and Itunes Prices Raise?

A company that represents artists and collects fees for them is asking Itunes to pay them more. The4 company would like if the artist was paid for each time a 30 second clip of material is played, and paid for songs played in TV episodes bought on Itunes. If the company gets what it wants, we can expect to see a major price raise in songs and other things bought on Itunes the future.

Also, Left 4 Dead 2 was banned in AUstralia because the country deemd it "too violent". The game shows human on hum,an violence against people with a rabies-like disease and was said to be too violent for anyone under 18

Star Tours Gets Revamped and MMS Comes Early

The Star Wars attraction at Disneyland called Star Tours was announced to be closed down in 2010 for remodeling. It was originally opened in 1987 and has not been changed since. It will reopen in 2011 and will include 3D graphics and new voice overs from Yoda voice Frank Oz.

Also, MMS messaging for Iphones was released a little earlier than anticipated, but only to certain customers. Apparently there is no rhyme or reason why, and no standards for who gets it early and who doesn't.

Steve Jobs and Apple Keynote

This year Steve jobs came out and talked a little about the new things itunes has to offer us. First, he said somethings about the Iphone; 30 million iphones were sold in the last 2 years, 75,000 apps were sold, and 1.8 billion downloads were made. he also introduced the new iphone os 3.1 wiht an app store now makes suggestions. Also, now 30,000 ringtones for $1.29 each are available in the itunes store.

In itunes 9 news........
-Itunes is now in 23 countries, and is the #1 music retailer in the world
-8.5 billion songs sold, with 100,000,000 paying accounts
-Genius mixes plays endless mixes of songs from your library
-There's improved syncing, which also allows you to sync albums and faces from iphoto, as well as managing apps on ipod touch and iphone
-Another new feature is you can stream music from other libraries in your home. With home sharing you can copy songs tv shows movies etc. with 5 authorized computers in the home
-Theer's a redesigned store
-And another new feature itunes lp: has lyrics, chronology of albums, videos, pictures, etc.

He-Man Movie Canned

Warner Bros. has decided to not do the planned live action He-Man and the Masters of the Universe movie that they had originally planned to do with Mattel. Luckily Mattel still got away with rights to all of the material, and they can still take the movie elsewhere, it is still a major setback for the movie and He-Man fans everywhere.

Also, a Norwegian bus driver got his named changed to the ultimate nerd dream: Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar- Jankova. It is the longest nerd name recorded in history. he realizes that he spelled "Chewbacka" wrong, and says he will correct next time he changes his name.

Anger Over PS3 Price Drop and Family Guy Outrage

After the PS3's dramatic price drop PS3 put out commercials saying that "You can't believe everything you believe on the internet, otherwise I'd a Nigerian millionaire by now!" The Nigerians were sincerely upset by this statement and they demanded a public apology. They obliged, and nixed the commercial as well.

Also, the March 8th episode of Family Guy got 179,997 complaints to the FCC, which is a bit over the norm of all shows collectively with 578 complaints.

Yoko Drops the Ball and LOTR Author Gets Paid

One of Apple's big announcements today was actually released yesterday by Yoko Ono in a magazine article. The announcement was that the entire Beatle's catalog was going to be available on Itunes. Sorry Apple, she just couldn't keep it in.

Also, after a long law suit, ti was finally decided who would gets rights to the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, New Line Cinema, or J.R.R. Tolkein. Tolkein won, and apparently they owe him millions upon millions of dollars.

New Fantastic Four to Come!

Fox is planning on picking back up on the "Fantastic Four" series, and is planning on hiring Akiva Goldsman, famous for writing "Batman and Robin" (my personal favorite in the previous series) to write the next film. Although considering it killed the series, which would make most people weary, I am excited for this new film.

Also Ebay sold Skype for $2 billion, whihc means they lost $1.1 billion in the sale.

WOW and IPhone News

World of Warcraft is now featuring a new option for people who would like to pay about $30 more where you can switch sides of the battles. So if you have $30, you don't have to worry about being stuck as solely an Elf or scary Ogre.

The Iphone now also has the capability to send pictures and videos using MMS messaging. You can get this but a simple Iphone software update, however it is only available for 3G, and 3GS Iphones.

Wikipedia, Possibly More Reliable

Wikipedia is going to launch a new feature called "WikiTrust" which will only be available to registered users, which uses a colored coated system to highlight which information on a page has been there the longest without being changed. This feature will allow people to see which information is the most trustworthy, hence, "WikiTrust".

Also, an app for the iphone that tracks where your iphone is, helped police for the second time this month catch criminals who had stolen a victims phone. it costs $99 a year, but hey, it just might be worth it.

New School Year, New Posts to Come

This is my first blog post for the 09-10 school year. Soon there will be media posts. Yup!