Video

Chalk this up to overkill. The New England Patriots, victors in three of the past six Super Bowls, are accused of using technology to gain an unfair advantage last Sunday.

The NFL's front office has determined that the Patriots swiped defensive signals during Sunday's 38-14 drubbing of the New York Jets, according to a report published Tuesday on ESPN.com. League officials confiscated a video camera and tape from one of the Patriots' assistant coaches after he allegedly was caught taping Jets' coaches sending hand signals, ESPN reported.

A spokesman for the league could not be reached for … Read more

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped has information about a leaked video with details about Google Reader and the company's social efforts.

Lenssen was tipped off by a reader using the alias "Fanboy," who provided some notes from the video, which was presented by a Ben Darnell. Lenssen says he has confirmed that Darnell works at Google. The video is now offline.

The highlights from the video notes include: Google will create a standard for feed publishers to inform aggregators about changes and integrate more social features; "Mocha-Mocha" appears to be the code name for Google'… Read more

Rising up out of the chaos and career collapse that was Britney Spears' performance on Sunday are MTV's traffic numbers.

The cable channel's Video Music Awards were bad for Britney but a boon for Viacom, MTV's parent company. Users flocked to MTV.com to watch Spears' on-stage misadventures.

On Sunday, MTV.com saw 2.6 million visitors log on, a tally that smashed the site's previous record for daily Web site traffic. The site also delivered 7 million video streams on Monday as of 3:30 p.m. ET, which topped its previous best day of … Read more

MyFamily.com lets families create private Web sites where members can post news, share photos, and host live chats, among other things. It's a great way to centralize all your family communication--my own large extended family has had a MyFamily.com space for a few years--but the site's circa-1998 interface always left me wondering why we didn't start a simple Yahoo group, which has the same functionality.

Recently I got word that MyFamily.com was getting an overhaul (in fact, the link above leads directly to the beta of MyFamily.com 2.0) and logged on to check it out. Gone are the previous version's tightly spaced lists of text links, which have been replaced with plenty of white space and a row of nine tabs across the top of the page that help you navigate the site's features. The Videos, Files, and Members tabs are self-explanatory. Events leads to a calendar of events, where family members can not only list birthdays and anniversaries but also create invitations for parties or other gatherings; Gifts takes you to a MyFamily.com area on Qoop, where you can order family photo books and tchotchkes.

The four remaining tabs--What's New, News, Photos, and Stories--are where members are likely to spend the most time.… Read more

Before making your next iPod Nano fat joke, take a look at our latest slide show featuring Apple's latest lilliputian player, up close and personal. You might find that the Nano's new girth just offers more to love. For all the latest iPod news, jump over to CNET's iPod Central.

Apple is trying to convince Hollywood to reduce prices of downloads of TV shows from $1.99 to 99 cents, according to a story in Variety.

The trade publication reported Friday that TV networks have shown little enthusiasm to price cutting, although Apple is telling them that lowering the cost will boost sales, according to the story.

Last week, NBC Universal announced that it would not renew a long-term contract with Apple to sell TV shows via iTunes. Many in the entertainment sector have wanted more control in pricing their products at iTunes, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs has held … Read more

Vudu won't be shipping for another few weeks, but I was fortunate enough to get one of the first review units of the device--and my gadget-jaded eyes were somewhat impressed. The Vudu box aims to deliver a wide variety of on-demand movies to your TV (no PC required) via a broadband Internet connection--think Netflix or Blockbuster, but with immediate gratification. The idea of a dedicated video-on-demand box has been tried before (Akimbo, MovieBeam), but the Vudu sidesteps many of the issues that made those previous boxes hard to recommend. It's got actual content that you want to see--all … Read more

Again, the video here tells most of the story for this new sixth-generation version of the iPod, now called the iPod Classic. Still, there are a few specific details worth focusing some extra attention on.

Capacity

The iPod Classic is now the only iPod Apple makes with a storage capacity over 16GB. In fact, the base model ($249) starts with a whopping 80GB of storage, and the next model up ($349) jumps to 160GB. These are serious numbers that are bound to excite those of us who carry huge music and/or video libraries. Many people were worried that Apple would ditch high-capacity players altogether with their latest line of iPods, but maintaining a high-capacity legacy MP3 player makes sense. After all, the iPod at this point has become an icon of industrial design and a symbol (for better or for worse) of our current digital music economy.… Read more

At less than $200, the new 4GB and 8GB iPod Nanos will surely be the most popular tech stocking stuffer this year. While the updated iPod Classic and iPod Touch are equally drool-worthy, the new Nano is obviously priced to move.

I was fortunate enough to get some hands-on time with the all the new iPods at the launch event, and even though the iPod Touch is clearly the star of the show, the new Nano is really the one to watch for. The 2-inch screen packs a dense and crisp 320x240 video resolution that looks very nice. The revamped graphic user interface (shared with the iPod Classic) is graphically rich and uses both a Cover Flow method for browsing music content, as well as a split-screen view used for browsing music, videos, photos, and more.

There's lots of small touches included on the new Nano that are easy to miss. For instance, Apple's music shuffle function has evolved. With this latest generation of iPods, after launching the player's shuffle function, users can now access the shuffle mode settings (shuffle song/shuffle album/shuffle off) from within the Now Playing pane by pressing the center button four times. This might seem insignificant, but it effectively gives users the ability to steer the shuffle function--randomizing song selections until they find something they like, then effortlessly disengaging the shuffle function once they've found an artist or album they'd like to hear more from. Accomplishing the same effect using… Read more