Practical Technology

How you know when your business has really been a flop? When, you drop it, and it’s only a week later that people realized that you’re no longer in it. That’s the case with Wal-Mart, which pulled out of online video sales on December 21st with a short note to its customers on the Wal-Mart [...]

[Read more →]

According to the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corp., which also owns Fox, Fox is getting ready to rent movies to Apple’s iTunes users. This come as no great surprise since Apple has been planning on going into the movie rental business for months now. The story doesn’t go into any details. [...]

[Read more →]

Whether you like Microsoft one bit, you have to admit Microsoft is pretty darn bright at some thinygs–Excel, Windows XP SP 2, rolling over its competition–but when it comes to multimedia and DRM (Digital Rights Management), Microsoft is dumber than dumb. An excellent case in point is its transformation of Playsforsure into Certified for Windows [...]

[Read more →]

One advantage of the Apple TV is that if your DVDs are stored on a server you can watch any or all of them without ever bothering to put a DVD in your player again. The trick was, of course, how to get your DVD into your computer in the first place. Well, actually, that’s [...]

[Read more →]

As everyone who gives darn about music and technology knows, Napster offered the music industry a billion bucks over the next five years if they would, pretty please with sugar on top, not sue them out of existence. The music business, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) replied, “Hell no!” Well, actually [...]

[Read more →]