C|Net has a story up looking at ways TV stations are moving online. An event on the subject was held during the annual marketing conference sponsored by the Television Bureau of Advertising. From the article: "For the first time, the conference was devoted to a single topic: the importance of the 'multiplatform'--that is, offering content and advertising not only on local broadcast stations but also online, on cell phones and other wireless devices, through video on demand and video iPods. The sole topic was intended to underscore that 'advertisers and their agencies are increasingly demanding a multiplatform strategy from all their media partners,' said Christopher Rohrs, president of the bureau, in a speech he gave to almost 1,200 attendees to begin the conference. "

devilsbrigade writes "The blog MusicThing is running an interesting interview with Andy Moorer. Mr. Moorer is the man who created the sound called Deep Note, now heard in every THX-enabled movie theatre. The interview is originally from last year, but the tech-heavy discussion is still a timeless analysis of a great sound." From the article: "The score consists of a C program of about 20,000 lines of code. The output of this program is not the sound itself, but is the sequence of parameters that drives the oscillators on the ASP. That 20,000 lines of code produce about 250,000 lines of statements of the form "set frequency of oscillator X to Y Hertz. The oscillators were not simple - they had 1-pole smoothers on both amplitude and frequency. At the beginning, they form a cluster from 200 to 400 Hz. I randomly assigned and poked the frequencies so they drifted up and down in that range."

cgenman asks: "My girlfriend is currently living abroad, but needs to make calls here in the States. I'm investigating Skype to phone gateways, but none seem to allow the person who is trying to Skype in remotely to initiate calls on the local phone network. What experiences have people had with Skype gateways which give remote people full local access? Are there other setups better suited for this purpose?"

Frank Clarkson writes to mention a ZDNet article about the upcoming release of 'Dapper Drake', Ubuntu Linux. They also give a mini-preview of Eft. From the article: "'I'm promising to impose (almost ;-) ) zero from-the-top requirements for Edgy, this release is entirely up the to development team to envision and implement,' he wrote. 'Almost everything that lands in Edgy will be driven from the development team, who get to play with whatever new technologies they fancy along the way. So that should give us a nice big bump in infrastructure and bling.'"

diverman asks: "It is very common for web applications (be them Java, Perl, PHP, .NET, or shell script) to need knowledge about credentials to access another resource. Perhaps it's a relational database login, an FTP account for transferring files, or maybe a authentication credentials to another web service. Whatever it is, most developers have likely had to write a program that needs to keep a password for later use. The big issue now is: where do you put them?"

In unsurprising news, Gamasutra reports that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all have pre-E3 events planned. From the article: "These conferences, which taken place during the two days preceding the three-day expo, have historically laid the groundwork for the entire week's events, revealing key information about the company's plans for the next year. 2005's press conferences revealed many initial details about the upcoming Revolution and PlayStation 3 consoles, as well as the Xbox 360 which launched later that year."

An anonymous reader writes "The final day of arguments takes place today in Santa Clara, CA, in the suit between Apple and the bloggers who outed their secrets." From the article: "Apple often dispatched cease and desist letters to the editors or these sites or initiated internal investigations to smoke out which of its employees were leaking information. But the lawsuit against the Power Page marked the first time that Apple attempted to use California law protecting corporate trade secrets to suppress the early disclosure of its product development plans by a Web media outlet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the Does, or the unnamed sources of the alleged information leak, contends that a ruling in this case could set a precedent that determines whether online sites can qualify as journalists who can work under First Amendment protections"

simoniker writes "Tired of doom and gloom from pundits predicting the sky falling on the video game industry? Long-time Gamasutra design columnist Ernest Adams offers up a contrary view in his new column, commenting: 'The industry may be as conservative as Pat Buchanan, and it may be going through a rocky transition between consoles right now, but video games are doing very well, thank you very much.' He goes on to make points such as 'The mass market is here', 'Games are getting easier to make thanks to inexpensive tools', and 'Game development education has arrived'."

permaculture asks: "This is a 'knowledge management' issue, on a University network. For many years we've had a network 'Message of the Day' that appears when any network user logs in. MOTD lists planned service outages for maintenance, progress on current issues, upcoming holidays, and other items that affect network users. Recently, this has been replaced by a page that announces general University business such as Open weeks, upcoming awards etc. There's a link on the page to the network MOTD that used to greet every user immediately after login. Does your network have a 'Message of the Day' that appears at login? Is it a Corporate business page, entirely related to network services, or something else entirely?"

GreedyCapitalist writes "Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post about environmentalists who are opposing renewable energy sources." From the article: "Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging. Along the coast of Nantucket, Mass. -- the only sufficiently shallow spot on the New England coast -- a coalition of anti-wind groups and summer homeowners, among them the Kennedy family, also seems set to block Cape Wind, a planned offshore wind farm. Their well-funded lobbying last month won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether."

Vitaly Friedman writes "A report in the Wall Street Journal today talks about how eBay is looking for partners to defend against the growing threat of Google. Specifically, Google Base and the payment system in the works in Mountain View are seen as possible dangers to eBay's auctions and PayPal payment operations, says the report. Google Talk just throws some salt in the wounds by looking for a toehold in Skype's turf."

Last week, along with attending an 'epic' debate, Ebert had the time to take in Silent Hill. Did he enjoy it? Not so much. From the article: "Now here's a funny thing. Although I did not understand the story, I would have appreciated a great deal less explanation. All through the movie, characters are pausing in order to offer arcane back-stories and historical perspectives and metaphysical insights and occult orientations. They talk and talk and somehow their words do not light up any synapses in my brain, if my brain has synapses and they're supposed to light up, and if it doesn't and they're not, then they still don't make any sense. Perhaps those who have played the game will understand the movie, and enjoy it. "

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net has an article up discussing a new way to win the patent race; hook up with the inventors." From the article: "'They are more concept type of patents. It is a very blue sky kind of thing,' Langer said of the patents that Intellectual Ventures is trying to develop. By contrast, the type of patents that Langer continues to file on his own are typically based on several years of lab research and targeted at very specific ideas, he said. Other researchers working with the firm include Eric Leuthardt, a neurosurgeon with St. Louis' Washington University, and Muriel Ishikawa, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "

ChelleChelle writes "'The two burdens that are probably most annoying to the user are a complex and difficult control interface and lack of reliability.' So says TiVo cofounder Jim Burton as he describes the challenges of designing and delivering an easy-to-use yet highly effective and reliable DVR service. The article is quite broad in focus, providing information on the design aspects of TiVo (hardware, security, source code, etc) yet also taking into consideration the human element, with a large section devoted to service design principles. Overall, a good read for anyone interested in purpose-built systems." Update: 04/21 18:54 GMT by Z : Tim Burton no longer cofounding Tivo.

Next Generation reports that Microsoft has already lined up a new CPU for their next-gen console. Production with the new chip should begin next year. From the article: "Singapore-based Chartered has been a supplier of less-advanced 90nm SOI CPU products since the Xbox 360 console launch. By implementing the newer 65nm SOI technology, the system's transistors will retain less charge, allowing the microprocessor to operate faster."