mtv

Jeff hasn't finished complaining about last year's Retina Display iPad yet and Apple went ahead and announced a new 128-gigabyte model for $799. But wait, haven't we been getting beaten in the head with Apple's cloudcentric messaging for the last two years? Why the push for local storage all of a sudden?

In pop culture news, we'll spend some of the first half talking about mistaken identities through the Internet and the "Catfish" show on MTV that just wrapped up its first season.

Some critics accused the episodes of being staged (like the film it was based on), but a casting application for Season 2 at least proves that the stories are staged at most, not entirely made up.… Read more

Dish Network is said to be asking cable networks such as MTV to consider offering their shows on a Dish-owned Web service, according to a published report.

In a Bloomberg story today, the news wire said talks have also involved Univision Communications and Scripps Networks Interactive, parent company of the Food Network.

Bloomberg says Dish's pitch to the TV companies goes something like this: offer a relatively small bundle of shows for Web viewing at a discounted price. Financial terms weren't included in the story. A Dish spokesman said the company wasn't offering "any guidance regarding … Read more

Got a battered old suitcase sitting around the house? Jeff Conley might be able to make music with it. The Boston indie-folk musician crafts working guitars and drums from vintage luggage. They're not something you'd find at the local Guitar Center, to be sure. But neither are the other offbeat entries to the Made of Imagination contest.

That project, co-sponsored by art site Booooooom, MTV, and Sony Xperia, tasks participants with creating their own instruments -- "beautiful, hopefully ingenious, and probably ridiculous" ones, that is. If they actually play music (or at least make noise of some kind), so much the better. … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

On this day in 1992, "Jeremy" premiered on MTV.

Great collection of what Olympic divers look like mid-jump.

NASA to air Mars landing in Times Square.

Digg unveils revamped home page.

FCC to Verizon: You don't have a right to block tethering apps.

Direction of Justin Bieber documentary to reboot He-Man movie.… Read more

Viacom fired another shot at DirecTV today, telling DirecTV customers that the satellite provider won't compromise with Viacom to restore programming.

Viacom continues to keep 26 networks -- including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET, VH1, Spike TV, TV Land, and CMT -- off DirecTV until the companies reach an agreement.

Viacom said in a blog post that DirecTV has "no intention" of working with Viacom and shows no "urgency" in compromising.

"We made a significant and comprehensive compromise proposal to DirecTV last Thursday that could have resulted in restoring all of our services to … Read more

Music video powers MTV and Vevo are finally back together again.

All of Vevo's music videos, which include clips from three of the four largest record labels, reappeared at MTV.com and its other Web sites on Friday.

CNET broke the news in December that the companies had reached an agreement after more than a year since those Vevo's videos owned by Universal Music Group disappeared from MTV sites. A Vevo spokeswoman declined to comment and an MTV representative wasn't immediately available.

The financial terms were not released.

Meanwhile, Vevo is sure making a lot of news … Read more

Love 'em or hate 'em, Facebook's timeline apps seem to be here to stay.

After news yesterday of Open Graph driving astounding amounts of traffic, Facebook announced today that 12 more media properties would be adding apps to Facebook's timeline.

"As media organizations build new timeline apps, initial results show significant increases in traffic and engagement, while allowing media sites to reach new--often younger--demographics," Facebook Director of Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky said in a statement.

The new apps include Buzzfeed, CBS Local: Los Angeles and New York, CMT, The Daily Show, GetGlue, Huffington Post, Mashable, MSNBC.… Read more

High-resolution formats like Blu-ray, DVD-Audio, SACD, and LP are all capable of delivering superb sound quality, but having music in those formats doesn't automatically guarantee great sound. The recording itself would first have to sound great, or to put it another way, a great sounding MP3 would sound better than a heavily compressed and studio processed 192-kHz/24-bit Master Audio Blu-ray.

Worrying about what sounds better--FLAC, WAV, or AIFF files--is a total waste of time if you're listening to an Adele or Black Keys album: the music's processing levels are so extreme, there's nothing for … Read more