wired

If you've followed the RIAA's antipiracy efforts, perhaps you've wondered how they find suspected pirates. Yesterday, the The Chronicle for Higher Education published an article in which an RIAA spokesperson--anonymous for fear of hate mail--outlined the organization's surprisingly low-tech methods.

The RIAA hires an organization called MediaSentry, which has developed an automated program that scans LimeWire for song titles that match titles of copyrighted material in an RIAA database, collects the IP addresses of the computers where these songs have been made available, then reports this information back to the RIAA. The article doesn't reveal … Read more

I received an e-mail this morning from Pearl, the source of whose frustration is the failure of a prompted update. She writes:

I have been using LimeWire Basic for about four years with no problem. This morning I was using it and a box came up telling me to download an update, which I did. Then it all disappeared from my screen, and also took with it my original LimeWire, too. So I tried to download it again only to be told it was a corrupt file. I did this a couple of times with no joy.

I have been … Read more

HDMI has certainly had its growing pains, but the connection is finally beginning to deliver on its original promise: a single-cable solution for delivering high-bandwidth, all-digital HD video and multichannel audio. HDMI is nearly universal in the home video market, present on all current HDTVs and Blu-ray players, as well as nearly all HD-capable cable and satellite set-top boxes; DVRs; game consoles; AV receivers; upscaling DVD players and recorders; and network video streamers such as the Apple TV. In fact, you realize just how convenient HDMI is when you come across a product without it--I'm looking at you, Nintendo Wii--and then have five cables (three component video wires plus two-channel stereo) instead of one crowding the back of your home entertainment system.

But one aspect of the HDMI promise remains unfulfilled: wireless HDMI. It's an attractive idea, especially for anybody with a wall-mounted flat-panel TV or a ceiling-mounted projector: have all of your HDMI-capable gear running into an AV receiver or HDMI switcher with a wireless HDMI transmitter, and have the TV equipped with a matching receiver--thus allowing you to have all your AV sources across the room from the actual display. We've been hearing about it for years, but to date, there are few--if any--products that you can actually buy. Here's a quick update on the wireless HDMI products we've heard about to date--including when (or whether) we can expect to see them: … Read more

If you're still wondering why the media world is getting turned on its head, consider the following anecdote.

A few years back, representatives from the Industry Standard, Wired, and Upside were invited to a public-relations gathering to talk about how they decide what to cover. After they finished their prepared remarks, a young woman in the audience stood up to ask a question.

"You talk a lot about tricks and tips on what we should do," she said. "But I've done all that and I still can't get you to cover my clients." … Read more

How should one measure the value of corporate PR against the coverage it subsequently engenders? A few years ago, that question never would have merited more than a moment's consideration. Here was the way things worked: Flacks sent out releases, the press decided what was important, and readers read what was deemed newsworthy. End of "story."

That's ancient history. During the course of any 24-hour news cycle, PR releases often rank higher on news aggregation pages like TechMeme than do professionally reported articles or blog items. I began noticing the shift about a year ago, and … Read more

Before the emergence of digital music, album covers were an integral part of music buying.

As people thumbed through record racks, eye-catching album art could prove to be a deciding factor on whether people bought. The cover could convey something about the music inside or whether the act was creative or cool.

Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love, Led Zepplin's Houses of the Holy, Peter Gabriel 3, The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed and The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are just a few classic works.

But in the digital age, people hunt for music … Read more

BlueLounge is a company that makes cable management cool, as seen by its SpaceStation desktop organizer we featured about a month ago. Now it has announced the Sanctuary, a dish that holds your personal artifacts with cables that stick out of its base to charge various mobile devices.

Under its inner tray is a large AC adapter with many compatible connectors for devices from such big-name brands as Apple, Nokia, and Samsung. It also has a built-in USB port so you can plug in a USB charger for any connector the Sanctuary doesn't have. You pick the connectors you … Read more

The demise of the desktop PC has long been foretold. The prophets say laptops will one day rule the Earth, feeding off the carcasses of old ATX boxes, belching Iomega Zip drives as they go. The doom-mongers are probably right, but let's be clear: as great as laptops are, nothing beats a desktop machine for sheer value.

Take, for example, the Wire2Fire Diablo Ultima. It's an exceptionally capable gaming PC, and it only costs 699 pounds Stirling. It uses an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 overclocked to 3.2 gigahertz, a BFG 8800GT 512MB graphics card, 2GB of … Read more

Those crazy guys behind the LimeWire file-sharing application have set up a DRM-free music store--LimeWire Store--where users can choose from 500,000 MP3s, taken from the catalogs of absolutely no major labels. Alternatively, users can download free, lossless versions of millions of songs from every major label using the usual LimeWire "technique." Which, RIAA lawyers would likely argue, is illegal.

If skepticism were a flavor of ice cream, we'd be sitting here with the world's most excruciating brain freeze. Napster managed to redeem itself by having its name bought by another company, having its … Read more