MySpace adding restrictions to protect members

Starting next week, MySpace, the online social community giant, will begin adding restrictions to the service to protect minors.

• Users under the age of 18 will not get certain advertisements, such as dating sites.
• MySpace profiles will be able to be marked as “private”, and will only be available to friends.
• Site restrictions will be added for members 18 and over which contact member that are under the age of 16. Older users seeking to become friends with underaged members, will have to enter the recipients’ first and last names or their e-mail addresses.

However, 17 and 18 year old members will still be able to message members which are 16-years old and under, without any restrictions.

“A lot of 14- and 15-year-olds are friends in school with 16- and 17-year-olds,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer of News Corporation’s Internet unit. “We want to balance the openness of our community with the interest of protecting the member.”

Source: NYTimes

Give-away Contest #1 Winner Announcement

First of all, I like to thank everyone who commented and entered the first ever iBloggedThis free Give-Away contest. I would like to also thank all of our readers. iBloggedThis has been online for just a mere 3 months, and thanks to all of you, we have already greatly surpassed our own growth expectations, and will be reaching more than 150,000 page views by the end of this month.

Congratulations to Michael, from post #15, he is the first give-away winner.

Michael wins the Netgear 802.11g Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter.

Please look for our second free give-away contest, coming a week from today.

Attention Sponsors: If you are interested in sponsoring a free give-away contest, please email me to set it up.

Comcast tech falls asleep on the job

Imagine waiting at home for a Comcast tech to come out to replace a faulty cable modem. As if waiting for the tech to get there is not aggravating enough by itself, once he finally arrives, he spends an hour on hold on the phone with Comcast’s central office, and falls asleep in the process.. On your couch.

What do you do? You Record it, of course, and make a tribute video out of it.

Source: BoingBoing

Tivo adds iPod and PSP support with premium version of Tivo Desktop

On Wednesday, Tivo released a new premium version of the TiVo Desktop application for Windows, called “Tivo Desktop Plus”. The new premium version of the software adds support for transferring recorded programs to portable devices. Programs may be transferred to devices such as Apple’s iPod, Sony’s PSP, Treo, and any other device which supports MPEG-4 or H.264 video.

The cost of the Tivo Desktop Plus software is $24.95, and it may be purchased directly from Tivo’s online store.

The basic version of the Tivo Desktop software will remain free for all Tivo customers.

Source: BetaNews

HBO’s 2-page ad in Variety: “Aquaman” biggest box office splash in history

On Monday morning, a 2-page ad placed by HBO in Variety, the Hollywood trade publication, declared that the new James Cameron film “Aquaman,” starring Vincent Chase, was the “biggest box office splash in history,” bringing in an astounding $116 million in its opening 3-day weekend.

The ad did not mention that this of course took place on the HBO show “Entourage,” which follows the life of an upcoming movie star “Vincent Chase”, played by Adrian Grenier.

James Cameron said that he has received phone calls from acquaintances congratulating him and asking about the film “Aquaman”, not knowing that it does not exist.

Source

MySpace expanding into Europe this summer

The Financial Times reports that MySpace plans on expanding into 11 European countries this summer, and possibly into China and India in the future. France and Germany will be amongst those countries who will first see the international MySpace sites launched

The company will on Tuesday announce that David Fischer has been appointed as managing director for the UK and Europe. Mr Fischer, 40, was founder and chief executive of Xlantic Group, a music marketing company, and has worked at Pressplay and AOL Europe.

Mr Fischer, who will be responsible for negotiating with television and music content owners to develop local versions of MySpace, said the first foreign-language sites would be ready later this summer.

MySpace, which was bought last year by News Corp for $580 million, is currently the largest social networking website, with more than 86 million users.

Give-Away contest #1 - Last call

Tomorrow evening(Wednesday) we will randomly select the winner of our first give-away contest.

We are giving away a Netgear 802.11g Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter.

There is still sometime left to enter. To enter the contest, all you need to do is go to this post, and leave a comment. Please be sure to use your email address, so we may contact the winner. We will not spam you.

Good luck!

Live Action “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out” Reenactment

Some people have way too much free time on their hands, which is awesome for the rest of us. If you grew up playing the Nintendo Entertainment System in the late 80’s and early 90’s, then you will definitely appreciate this video.

Here is a live action re-enactment of the ever-so-popular Nintendo game “Mike Tyson’s Punch-out”.

Great stuff! Who remembers how to Beat King Hippo quickly?

Games like this on the Virtual Console is what’s going to make the upcoming Nintendo Wii an instant success.

Rumors: Nintendo Wii Development Kit under $2000; 3rd party games $40

Lets add this to the rumors page. According to a post at the wiivolution forums, Wii 3rd party games will be sold for $40. Also, more interestingly, it seems that the Nintendo Wii Development Kit will be priced under $2000

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata along with the Board of Directors answered many questions at a corporate management policy briefing held last week which revealed that the price of the Wii development kits would now cost as low as $1,732. Iwata expects to increase funding for research and development to prepare for launch.

No real solid information available yet, so take this as you may.

(Via: Digg)

Netflix “almost On-Demand” coming to a TV near you

We’ve been hearing about the possibility of an upcoming Netflix On-Demand service for over a year now. Variety reports that according to Eric Besner, a Netflix VP, the company is planning on releasing a proprietary set-top box, that will download movies overnight via a broadband connection.

Users would add movies they want to watch to their rental queue online as they do now, and those movies would then be downloaded to the boxes overnight rather than shipped through the mail.

Now, we wouldn’t exactly call this service “On-Demand”, as it appears that you’ll have to wait for the whole movie to be downloaded before you can watch it. It’s more like On-Demand Lite. Regardless, it’s a step in the right direction for Netflix.

The business model is still being worked out, however the new Netflix service could launch by the end of the year.