time warner

Cable still best for video on demand

Editors note: This story incorrectly reported that Stage6 operates on an H.264 codec. Stage6 runs on the DivX codec.

The Internet was supposed to be the primo way to distribute movies, but the past week has seen the sector take some body blows.

Google told customers on Friday that it's getting out of the video-on-demand business. Earlier in the week, five of the top motion-picture studios unloaded Movielink when they sold the online VOD service to Blockbuster for around $20 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The cost to develop the service: $100 million.

Even good news … Read more

NBA playing ball online

Expensive sports rights are a major cost for the United States television industry. Sports also brings huge ad revenue and a male audience that is much prized by advertisers because it's so elusive.

Now the NBA has signed new TV deals that run nearly a decade. This time the buyers get significant rights to Internet distribution of games, highlights and related content. Clearly, this is just another step toward the Internet becoming a full-fledged alternative to typical TV distribution. An ESPN executive said its Web site had a million unique visitors daily during the NBA playoffs earlier this year.… Read more

Attention IM developers: Exit means exit

The open-source programming movement prides itself on giving people control over their own computers.

So why is it that even in the latest version of Linux I've been trying, Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, clicking the Close button in the upper-right corner of the GAIM instant-messenger software only minimizes the program?

It's not just GAIM, the default IM client software for GNOME. Kopete, the client for the rival KDE user interface software project, exhibits the same behavior.

This program behavior has always bothered me with Windows-based IM software, such as AIM and Yahoo Messenger. But why … Read more