Be careful with larger items...I've noticed that Amazon often has a much higher price on certain heavy/difficult to ship things like furniture when they're "Prime Eligible". It's sometimes cheaper to buy it elsewhere (even with a shipping charge) than to get the "free" shipping that's actually built-in to the higher price. For normal stuff (books, electronics, media, etc.), Prime is great.

From the article: "Within the cinema industry this tool will feed powerful marketing data that will inform film directors, cinema advertisers and cinemas with useful data about what audiences enjoy and what adverts capture the most attention"

Hint: We don't enjoy the adverts, especially after paying almost $12 for a ticket. Perhaps if the whole audience gives the camera the finger through all of the ads, they will get the message? :-)

All Kindle browser traffic does go through an Amazon proxy and always has. Going to whatismyip.com from my Kindle returned 8.18.145.128 which is an Amazon proxy server (as opposed to the Sprint address I would get if I went to the same address using a Sprint Overdrive which uses the same 3G network). They do this for a number of reasons, including giving them the ability to control how much data the Kindle devices can consume (they can block content types and sites; for example, you cannot download PDF files to the Kindle through the browser).

The end result, unfortunately, will probably be for China to block the Kindle browser altogether, since they wouldn't be able to easily filter the traffic (unless it's not using SSL, in which case they probably could but it will be clunky). Otherwise, Amazon would have to cooperate and do the filtering on their end.

Yeah, that's the main reason why I didn't ditch cable a long time ago (that and a little bit of laziness, the other alternatives are far less convenient than just turning on my DVR and watching TV). I can't get all of the over-the-air channels with an antenna where I live. I do get Fox in HD over-the-air, though.

I'll most likely be doing a combination of either Linux or Windows 7 Media Center recording the over-the-air channels that I can receive with my antenna and getting the rest from Hulu (with proxying around a Cablevision block if necessary), Netflix, Amazon VOD, and iTunes.

Part of the issue is that Fox programming can be received over-the-air with an antenna for free. Sure, they should obviously be allowed to charge the cable companies (whatever price the market will bear) for non OTA channels (Fox News, Fox Sports, etc.), but they shouldn't be cutting off what are known as "broadcast basic channels" - those channels are already freely broadcast and funded by advertising. The only cost to the cable companies to carry OTA channels should be whatever it costs Fox to provide them a clean feed of the signal.

My solution:

1) Cancel my Cablevision TV service (their rates are way too high anyway). I've been thinking about it for a while, and I think this latest dispute is the last straw.
2) Connect antenna to TV.
3) Watch FOX.
4) No profit for either of them.

I can buy all of the shows that I want to watch from iTunes or Amazon and still come out way cheaper than my current cable TV bill. And that's ignoring the "torrent" option that many people will choice to use instead...

I used to use Bloglines years ago, but switched to Google Reader quite a while ago. I guess I wasn't the only one... I'm glad to see they're making it easy for remaining users to move their feeds to a new service instead of just quietly disappearing one day. (Although it's a good idea to back up your feed list to OPML periodically regardless of who your newsfeed provider is, just in case.)

Apps that do just that are starting to appear...Check out Waze if you haven't seen it yet. They've built entire country maps from scratch with their client (they started with a base map first in the U.S.)

I would guess that the official major studio YouTube accounts are exempt from this "feature."

You can buy multiple tickets together, but the cardholder must be attending the event. So for a kid, a parent would have to go too, put it on their credit card, and pay for a ticket for themself. And that's why TicketMaster loves it...

Nope. From the article: "On its Web site, Ticketmaster tells would-be gift givers to buy paperless tickets 'on the credit card of the person attending the event and [then] reimburse them.'"

Too bad I no longer have access to PSN since I refused to install the update that would have removed Linux support from my console, so I won't be able to use this premium subscription. Maybe I'm cynical, but I read "nothing planned will impact the service’s current free aspects" as "of course, any NEW multiplayer games you buy will be subject to the new 'premium' requirement to play online"... Sony does have a documented history of promising one thing and then doing exactly the opposite.

Not that I'm aware of. If it is a requirement (and I've never heard that it is), they're certainly not doing it. I can see my Amazon purchases on my order history page going back to 1999 (when I started shopping there.)

Yes he looked like an RPG guy to me too, acted suspiciously, and could've taken down the chopper at any moment. This is not Call of Duty, you don't get to reload when your chopper blows up because of your "good faith in men".

How do you like Raleigh? My wife and I are considering moving to South Carolina from Illinois, and while I know Raleigh is a bit to the north, I'd be interested to get your take on the area.