howard stern

I've been a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber for ages, but I'm ready to pull the plug. I still think some of the music and talk channels are pretty good, but the sound quality has always been iffy. The treble sounds like it's underwater; it "swishes" and sounds garbled. I got around that by playing Sirius over my Tivoli PAL table radio, and since the PAL doesn't have a tweeter it softens the sound enough to make Sirius less irritating. The Tivoli is also on the other side of the room, and that helps to … Read more

Google is hoping to give its foundering Google TV effort a jump start from shock jock Howard Stern.

Satellite radio provider Sirius XM told Reuters that it will make all of its programming available on Google TV through a new app that will allow listeners to pause live programs and play back up to five hours of content. Sirius XM is expected to announce the deal tomorrow at Google's I/O developers conference in San Francisco. (Update, June 27 at 7:25 a.m. PT: It's official: SiriusXM says it's coming soon to Google TV.)

The app, … Read more

Perhaps you failed to see the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg movie "Super 8." It is 82 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so it must be good.

This might explain why there is some enthusiasm for pirated versions of it online.

Interestingly, Torrent Freak reports that there exists one especially high-quality version that has reportedly appeared in several very fine P2P groups. However, each iteration seems to have come from the same DVD screener.

Here is today's vast controversy: the film is reportedly watermarked "H Stern."

This highly incriminating watermark runs through the whole of … Read more

Apple will announce the next iPad 2 today, so imagine our surprise when all Wilson wants to talk about is Charlie Sheen joining Twitter! There may be hope for our Apple suckling fanboy just yet...

The rumors fluttering around the next iPad are growing, with the latest batch wondering about a MobileMe update that will allow streaming media to iOS devices.

This isn't the first time we've predicted this upgrade, but a new rumor claims that an Apple employee has said today's update will indeed allow all media including music, TV shows, and iTunes-purchased movies to stream in the cloud. Since you still can't iTunes on multiple computer libraries without a clever workaround, this could be a huge boon for the next iPad.

But you just want an iPad to consume news and watch movies, it may make more sense to either wait a month for a first generation iPad price drop or wait until the end of a year, when a third generation iPad may surface with more significant upgrades. Either way, we're done with the Apple rumor mongering for today.

Moving onto the more important news of the day (to Wilson), @CharlieSheen has finally joined the Twitterverse and is adding friends at an astonishing rate of 2,000 followers a minute.

Business developers, marketing professional, and public relations experts should take note of his social media strategy: your first tweet better have porn stars, or… Read more

Last night, IBM's "Watson" supercomputer competed against the top human competitors on "Jeopardy" to test Watson's ability to use artificial intelligence in the context of the English language.

Represented by a lighted blue avatar, Watson performed well against quiz game champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, finishing the first round with a tie against the latter at $5,000. It did this with the help of 10 racks of IBM Power 750 servers running Linux, although like everyone else we wonder if the speed at which Watson can "press" a buzzer is fair to the other contestants.

Either way, this sounds like the exposition for an unwritten Roland Emmerich movie starring Will Smith, so start loading up your ID4 viruses.

Howard Stern's "Private Parts" aired on HBO last weekend, and the King of All Media himself pulled a Tang and liveblogged behind-the-scenes commentary throughout the showing. In addition to answering questions from fans, Stern also talked about his co-stars, revealed details about specific shots, and even dished about adult film star Jenna Jameson's antics onset.

Stern's arrival on Twitter is an obvious move, although it took him a while to jump on the bandwagon--the star joined the Twitterverse on February 3, the same day he defended David Letterman's honor and galvanized his crew on "The Late Show."

Stern's incendiary approach to celebrity gossip and media makes Twitter an apt medium for speaking to his more than 270,000 followers. The Lord of Fart Manor can be found at @HowardStern.

Next on the show, we discuss Gawker and Facebook's recent site redesigns. The Internet is giving a cold shoulder to the Gawker network after it debuted an app-style blog layout last week.… Read more

Howard Stern will sign up for another five years with Sirius XM, and the move opens up a few app possibilities.

On his radio show today, Stern said Sirius is the best place for him. The move is likely to allay fears that the satellite radio company would lose a big chunk of subscribers if Stern left. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but are likely to wind up in a regulatory filing.

The more interesting wrinkle with the Stern deal is that his show will now be available on the Sirius XM app, which is available on various … Read more

Sirius XM is savoring a strong 2010, with a net gain of more than 334,000 subscribers in the third quarter and more than 1 million so far this year.

By contrast, the satellite radio company said today, it added 102,000 net subscribers in the third quarter of 2009 and suffered a net loss of 488,000 in the first three quarters last year.

Sirius XM now has 19.8 million subscribers.

A big chunk of Sirius XM's growth is coming through its Sirius operation. The company said that over 620,000 of its net subscribers this year … Read more

HD Radio is the best way to listen to broadcast radio. AM and FM HD Radio stations simultaneously broadcast analog and digital signals, and these stations can display the song title, artist, and other data. The first HD Radio stations went on the air in 2003. Too bad HD Radio is a secret.

Based in Columbia, Maryland,iBiquity Digital is the developer behind HD Radio. I recently spoke with Bob Struble, HD Radio's president and CEO, to catch up on what's new. Struble told me there are 2,000 stations broadcasting HD Radio in the U.S., and … Read more

Though we take great pride in the First Look product videos we shoot here at CNET, there's always room for some competition. The latest entrant in the technology journalism scrum may be a surprising one: it's longtime Howard Stern producer Gary Dell'Abate.

A longtime technology enthusiast, and occasional local news TV talking head on the subject, Stern listeners frequently hear about Gary's home theater setup and other tech topics. To further the cause he has apparently put aside his usual "Baba Booey" nickname for a new identity: Technobeaver.

To keep viewers interested while talking … Read more