>> Text messages may help fight AIDS in Africa. Walmart sells the G1 and digital music on the cheap. And Gene Simmons has his own Guitar Hero instrument. It's Wednesday, October 29, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get Loaded.
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>> Here's one thing Yahoo, Google and Microsoft can agree on, freedom of expression. The company has bonded together with human right's group to form the Global Network Initiative, protecting and advancing freedom of expression and privacy in the information and communication technology industry. You know what, we're just gonna call this GNI for short. The GNI is basically a consortium that bonds together to try to protect our civil liberties online. Here's a statement of what they wanna do. "The GNI establishes a framework for providing communications products and services the world over while ensuring a sustained commitment to protect fundamental human rights." Of course they don't really have any official authority over anyone. They're just gonna set some standards, isn't that nice? You can find more information at globalnetwrokinitiative.org. Everything is cheaper at Walmart including the G1 phone. The retailer will carry the G1 for the discounted price of $149 as opposed to $179, which is what it cost in T-Mobile stores. The phone goes on sale in Walmart today. Another thing that's cheaper at Walmart, digital music. The company has re-launched its music store. Everything sold there is DRM-free and cheaper. Standard pricing per song is 94 cents and some songs go as low as 74 cents. I don't know how they do that. The profit margin on digital music is not large after all, but I also don't know how they sell the toilet paper so cheap either. Google really wants you to vote. Twenty percent of registered voters didn't vote in the 2004 election because they couldn't be bothered to pull themselves away from work. Google launched a video series this week called Take A Vote Hour. It features CEOs across America such as Donald Trump, Dan Hesse from Sprint, Eric Schmidt from Google and more, they are imploring their employees to take off work to vote. Barrack Obama however wants you take the whole day off. His campaign launched a video encouraging us all to take the day off just to vote. I would love to, but I can't. I've got news to report on. You do it for me and let me know how it goes. Again, I will be asking for your twitters, e-mails and links to videos about your voting experience. I wanna know how it goes. We'll be showcasing this live on the CBS Early Show all day. So don't leave me hanging. Hulu now has movie trailers. You can find them at hulu.com/trailers. You can watch them in standard or higher resolution. The new Harry Potter movie trailer is there and it looks amazing. Personally, I'm not a huge trailer person. I know there are people in this world who can't seem to tolerate missing them before a movie, but I'm not one of them. I can always live without that part of the movie going experience, but there are trailers that I do wanna see like Harry Potter of course, so I can elect to watch them if and when I want. That's why sites like Hulu and Apple's trailer page are so convenient. If you're having a fancy Martha Stewart type party you'll likely be using Pingg to invite your guests. That's because Martha Stewart Omnimedia has made a deal with the online invitation service. Pingg tools will be worked into Martha's website and Martha Stewart's company will advertise on Pingg itself, as well as provide content for having prettier parties. While Evite is still the most popular online invitation, we can see that each service has its own demographic. I guess you could say now that Evite is for cagers, and Pingg is for tea parties. Microsoft has launched a partnership with Spanish language media company, Univision to launch a music store just for the Zune. If you go to univision.com or univision.com for you gringos, you'll find a page called Baja Zune Musica, which means download Zune music. The entire Zune catalog of over 4 million songs is offered as a download directly from the site. Also for a limited time, certain music from Latin artists will be sold at 50% off. Health experts are hoping that a text message campaign will help South Africans fight the AID epidemic. A program called Project M is blasting awareness messages about getting tested for HIV, AIDS or tuberculosis. Approximately, 90% of South Africans have mobile phones and they don't pay for text the way we do. Project M aims to use this medium to let South Africans know that there is no shame in getting the free test. Statistic show that only 2% of the South African population has ever been tested for HIV, yet nearly 1000 people die of the disease everyday. The resistance has to do with the stigma associating with getting checked out. Hopefully, the SMS campaign will change that. It does seem to be working so far. Since it started on October 1, the National AIDS Helpline in Johannesburg has received three times as many calls and inquiries. If this success continuous, Project M will be extended across Africa. LaCie is offering a free year of online backup if you purchase one of their hard drives. The company partnered with Carbonite to offer automatic backup. When the computer is idle and the drive is plugged-in, Carbonite will automatically find new and modified files. Encrypt them twice and then transmit them via HTTPS to a secure data center. This is a $50 value and it applies to all drives purchased after October 15. And don't write me to say I'm saying LaCie wrong. It's not LaCie. It's a French company and LaCie means "the company" in French. I learned that from watching GeekBrief. If you blew 190 bucks for Guitar Hero world tour this weekend, why not blow another 80 more to look cool playmate. Gene Simmons from Kiss released a model of his signature Axe Guitar that works at both Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The three quarter replica will come with the paint finish of Gene Simmons autograph and his Kiss face, tongue and all. Unfortunately, 360 gamers will not get to look quite as cool rocking out to the game. The Axe Guitar will only be offered with the PS2 and the PS3. Those are all your headlines for today, but I will be back tomorrow with more. Thank you for watching. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been Loaded.
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