News

Hurrah! YouTube has finally put in editing options for their video service. If you have ever browsed through some of the amateur videos hanging out on YouTube you will know what a great thing this is. Of course The tools are not professional quality so do not expect miracles but they have included some decent ones to help user make quick fixes to the video without having to re upload the video all over again. Some of the options are rotating the video, adding fill light for dark areas, changing the contrast and saturation and also adding in some cool effects. This last option is sure to mean that we are bound to see more amateur teen videos, but now in sepia, posturized and even “cartoonish” (won’t this be fun).

All kidding aside these types of tools have been needed for a long time and it is a welcome addition to the YouTube interface; even if it does mean an upsurge or bad videos. For those that are wondering you cannot apply these edits to non-original content so that vision of a re-mastered Lady Gaga video you had in mind won’t be happening.

It was the poor quality of many of the videos that prompted this move, according to a quote from that YouTube Product Manager Jason Toff gave Cnet; "We noticed a lot of videos that had extra footage at the beginning that could have been trimmed off, or some footage at the end that could be trimmed off, a lot of videos that were really shaky and could use stabilization, and dark videos, etc." All we can say is that it is about time they threw this up and made it easy to use for even the most novice videographer.

Source and Quote Cnet.com
Discuss in our Forum

Yesterday all of the news was about Microsoft’s Build Developer conference out in California (Anaheim to be exact). Now this conference is (as you could guess) all about developing applications and software for Windows operating systems and also about Windows in general. So it should come as no surprise that one of the highlights was the talk about Windows 8. Attendees at the conference were treated to a preview of Microsoft’s next OS even though the Developer’s blog on Windows 8 has been very handy in keeping the press and the rest of the world up to speed on things. We have reported on one or two new features highlighted on that site and are looking forward to hearing about more of them in the near future.

However, all that aside, back to the Build conference. The attendees were not only treated to a more in-depth preview of Windows 8 they also heard from some of the manufacturers that are going to support Win8. One of these was nVidia as they talked up their new developer program for Windows 8 on x86 and Tegra. nVidia has been talking about Windows 8 for some time (as have we) and they are looking forward to it launch so that they can begin rolling out the Windows 8 based tablets for their Tegra SoCs.

Windows 8, unlike previous versions of Windows, will be something of a game changer. Microsoft has worked pretty hard to make this OS more hardware friendly including showing that you can run this on an older Atom CPU with as little as 1GB of RAM. Other nice options (very tablet friendly options) are things like full NFC (Near Field Communication) support. This allows you to interact with items like Bluetooth headsets with a single tap, tap-to-share file access, and other items once reserved for smartphones.  We have to wonder if Google and Apple are getting a little concerned about the Windows 8 right about now.

For those of you looking to try things out, there is a developer preview available for download.

Discuss in our Forum

It is certainly a sign of the apocalypse; common sense and actual intelligent thought is beginning to enter into the court system. A judge in Texas by the name of David Godbey has fined a lawyer for abusing this power. You see what happened was a lawyer by the name of Evan Stone had brought a suit against multiple suspected file sharers for allegedly sharing a German pornographic film. As it fairly typical in these cases the Stone thought he had an easy target. He asked Judge Godbey if he could have early discovery. Early Discovery is designed to allow for the suspect’s ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to be subpoenaed to get address information. Once the Lawyers have this they send out demand letters (they call them settlement letters) which claim the suspects must pay these fines or be brought to court.

Now this tactic is really is not much better than using the court system as a collection agency. In fact in another case a Judge actually made that comparison when he asked for a listing of all of the money a leading attorney had recently made in file sharing suits. However, while the lawyer in that case only committed basic contempt of court Evan Stone did a little more. Despite Judge Godbey’s refusal to allow him early discovery Stone went ahead and did it anyway.  What happened was that Judge Godbey had asked the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen to represent the accused as he was concerned that they had none and did not even know that a case had been brought against them. The problem is that when the EFF looked into it they found things were not as they should have been.

They found out that Verizon had already given out the information to Stone and Stone in turn had had sent out “settlement” letters to an unknown number of people in this case. Judge Godbey then fined Stone $10,000 claiming that he had “grossly abused his subpoena power”. Personally I think that Evan Stone should be disbarred for his behavior. Perhaps if these lawyers had to face the consequences of their abuse of the law they would think twice about it. I also have a feeling that if we look closely enough we will find out that Stone sent out his Subpoenas to the suspect’s ISPs well before he ever asked for permission.  

Source Fudzilla
Discuss in our Forum

We have said before that Big Corporations in legal battles often sound like little kids on the playground. We yesterday AT&T replied to the Department of Justice’s Anti-Trust suit intended to prevent the acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T with an argument that can be best described as Nuh-Uh!
The real response countered that the DOJ just did not understand how much the consumer (pronounce that AT&T) would benefit from this merger.  In fact the actual wording was “(The) complaint similarly fails to depict accurately the state of competition in mobile telecommunications today, the dynamic nature of the wireless industry, or the pro-competitive and pro-consumer impact of this transaction”.

Personally I think the DOJ hit the nail on the head when they stated that allowing AT&T to control 63% of the nation-wide market and ALL of the GSM traffic in the US is both anti-completion and severely anti-consumer. AT&T further states that they need TY-Mobile to prevent spectrum issues (AT&T has more of the spectrum that any other company as it is).  AT&T continues to want to look at things on a local level where there are numerous local competitors, but on a national scale those local companies sink into the word work where only four remain open.

Additional arguments by AT&T claim that T-Mobile is in financial trouble and blocking the merger will not help them and in turn hurt their customers. In short the response was not a response as it brought no new information to the table and only makes the very childlike proclamation of “You Don’t Get it”.
Further proof of this can be found in an e-mail that was sent with the response stating that AT&T will work with the DOJ to address their concerns with this merger.  We have previously talked about what type of concessions AT&T might have to make to get by the DOJ’s objections, but with a new suit filed by Sprint it might not be up to the DOJ any more….

Discuss in our Forum