tv shows

Trivia Millionaire is a basic trivia game that's modeled after the popular television show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Unfortunately, the things that made that show so entertaining--the timing and suspense--are wholly lacking from Trivia Millionaire.

The program's interface is basic and sleek; it's also fairly intuitive, which is good, given the program's lack of Help file. Users are asked a series of trivia questions and must select the correct answer from four choices. When users are stumped, they can have the program eliminate two wrong answers, select an answer for them, or … Read more

As one of the most popular programs for managing music and video content on a personal computer, Apple's iTunes software has become an indispensable part of our digital life. Version 10 of iTunes brings a handful of enhancements to Apple's ubiquitous media software, though notably absent is a much-anticipated cloud music service follow-up to LaLa. By far the biggest change to the jukebox is the addition of a social functionality called Ping.

Interface

The look and layout of iTunes 10 is essentially identical to that of iTunes 9, with just a couple of noticeable differences. The first is … Read more

In preparation for the third season of its hit series "Mad Men," cable network AMC has put out a new marketing tool called "Mad Men Yourself." It lets fans of the show create themselves (or their friends) as early-1960s cartoon characters using a variety of costumes, props, and body parts that are loosely tied to the world within the show.

Set to rhythmic lounge lizard music, you can assemble your virtual self piece by piece. When done, you can then download and export your creation in sizes ready for Twitter, Facebook, and as desktop wallpapers.

It'… Read more

Apple said Thursday that it has sold 200 million TV episodes on iTunes. This might sound like a lot, but the money that TV networks see from the deal may still be relatively small.

The company also announced that the download store would offer high-definition TV shows from all four of the major broadcast networks--CBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC--and that it had sold 1 million HDTV episodes since last month.

To put the 200 million number into context, Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider figured it this way: Apple sold the 200 million episodes over three years. If each show … Read more

We hope you're thirsty because Jeff is back on the show today and everyone is soaking wet with haterade. He hates on the new Nintendo DSi and the Wii, he hates on the upcoming Robin TV show, he hates on Jack Black, he even hates on his poor, innocent co-hosts. How ironic that the chat room had an unusually large crowd today.

Dan the Mantern here. Also on today's show, Wilson gushes about his love for Google. Perhaps he has "employment envy," but Wilson is really into the Goog. With Google's new plan to save the world by eliminating fossil fuels, the search engine goliath has reached a new level of ballsiness. Don't get me wrong, we all love our ubiquitous search box. I mean, what would the world be like without the power to know anything in less than .00001 seconds? But isn't anyone else afraid of an organization that stores mountains of data about people's Internet habits, purchasing habits, emails, personal calendars and, soon, telephone conversations? It's not what they do with the information, it's what they could do with it that makes me paranoid, like telling everyone how many times Justin watched the Mini-me sex tape. Look, I'm not going to cancel gmail or stop using Google, I'm just sounding off. Besides, as long as the search term "The 404" brings you to this blog, I think I can live.

Amazon.com on Thursday made available to the general public its video-on-demand service, through which ad-free movies and TV shows can be streamed on Macs, PCs, and Sony Bravia flat-screen TVs.

The broader release of the Amazon Video on Demand service comes two months after the online-retailing giant began offering the service to a limited number of its users.

Amazon's service aims to enable users to instantly watch movies or TV shows via a Web browser on their Mac OS or Windows machine. The online retailer is also teaming up with Sony to enable users to purchase or rent … Read more

More than 80 percent of Americans with a DVR can't live without it, according to a recent survey commissioned by NDS, a provider of technology solutions for digital pay TV.

The survey (PDF) was conducted in July 2008 in the U.S., U.K., Italy, and Australia, with more than 1,000 DVR owners participating. Overall, the device ranked as the third most indispensable household item (62 percent), just after the washing machine (97 percent) and the microwave oven (86 percent). In the U.S., however, a higher number of people (81 percent) cited their DVR as their most … Read more

Last week I got a chance to meet with J.D. Heilprin, the founder and president of a new video service called Modern Feed. It's a smart product, taking hosted video programming from a variety of sources and consolidating it into a single directory that's curated by human beings. The entire experience revolves around a small navigator that sits atop your browser in its own frame. It lets you browse around playlists, search for your favorite shows, and jump around to various content providers without getting lost.

What makes the product noteworthy is that it's taken some … Read more

The New York Times is reporting that HBO is launching its own online distribution service for a portion of its content both past and present. Starting this week, lucky residents of Green Bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be the first to get dibs on the new software application that can be set up to download and stack episodes old and new that can be watched on their PCs. Cable provider Time Warner (the same folks working on the lovely bandwidth metering down in Texas) is sending out the application on an CD to current HBO subscribers "soon."

Already … Read more