Internet & Media

Glenn Beck is a performance artist of the highest order. Whenever I have happened upon a little clip of him online, I feel that he has studied just about every successful TV evangelist. He seems to mimic their hand gestures, their little eye rolls. And just like the finest TV evangelist, he also seems to succeed in making a lot of money.

But for how much longer can his act be lucrative? Tax-preparation software company TurboTax on Wednesday became the 120th company to take its ads away from Beck's variety show on Fox.

Companies such as Kraft, Mercedes, Geico, … Read more

The Zune HD is a strong music player. It's got a lot of features I wish Apple would add to its iPod and iPhone lineup, particularly wireless sync and queuing. But with the impending release of the Windows Phone 7 Series, which will include full Zune HD functionality in its "Music + Video" hub, I've begun to wonder if Microsoft will phase out the Zune as a standalone music player.

Here's one clue: Microsoft developer Michael Klucher on Tuesday put up a blog post about the upcoming XNA Game Studio 4.0. Thus far, XNA Game … Read more

Earlier this week, BoomTown visited MySpace headquarters in Beverly Hills, Calif., to interview its new co-presidents, Michael Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, and get a look-see at its evolving revival plans to stop the social-networking ship from sinking further.

Thus, I got a tour of a storyboard-like room at MySpace, where the team is trying to formulate the "discover and be discovered" motto it is now using, which is pretty much its old motto restated.

Can the old become new again?

In fact, a lot of the plan does sound a lot like shades of the past at MySpace, … Read more

When you hear the name "Lindsay," who (or what) comes into your mind?

I know that many who live in New York might immediately think of a former mayor. Some in the California might think of the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek. It seems, though, that sometime actress Lindsay Lohan believes that she is Lindsay and Lindsay is she.

Lohan appears to have taken offense at one of the babies in an E*Trade TV spot that made its debut during this year's Super Bowl. Specifically, she is offended by the alleged milkaholic who happens to … Read more

Online dating is, like a lack of privacy, merely the new social norm, right?

It seems to have been around almost as long as Rohypnol and cell phones. It's just a blind date with someone whom you don't know and neither do any of your friends. What could be the problem?

Which is why, perhaps, all those guidebooks you tend to see in bookstores might separate restaurant listings under sections like "romantic" or "first date," but I've never seen one have a separate section for "online dating."

San Francisco Bay Area … Read more

It's hard not to like Pink Floyd. The band's music always felt so important, even if the songs were called things like "See Emily Play" and the albums resonated with names like "Ummagumma."

Over the years, drama never lurked far from the band's core. The legend of the wonderfully strange, and now deceased, Syd Barrett makes for eerie and sad telling. And the falling out between David Gilmour and Roger Waters means that they actually tour separately.

Now there is another chapter. This one is called "Money," for the band has … Read more

We all have coming-of-age bullying stories.

Mine started in junior high, when I was called a "sailor's dream" by the same boys who ogled me after that glorious summer before 9th grade, when you-know-what finally sprung forth. Then a new kind of torment began, and when I rejected the hot football quarterback, the lesbian rumors flew.

That was the mid-'90s, when hardly anyone even had e-mail. So what's it like in the age of Facebook, sexting, and the ability to taunt and be taunted 24-7? And moreover, what's it like for the kids who … Read more

If you own a Kindle, you also own a mobile Web browser. But chances are you never use it. That's because it's a lousy experience and one Amazon does its best to keep away from users (hint: look in the gadget's "experimental" menu).

But maybe Amazon is ready to rethink the Web.

Michael Calore notes a job opening at Lab126, Amazon's consumer products unit that built the Kindle, for an engineer to help build "an innovative embedded Web browser."

It's possible that Amazon is thinking about something other than the Kindle … Read more

TiVo announced its fourth-generation DVR with much fanfare at a March 2 media event in Manhattan--at the top of Rockefeller Center, to be specific. Media invitations to the event included the teaser: "The DVR was just the beginning."

What TiVo delivered was...an incremental update of its existing product. If you look beyond the slick new enclosure, the biggest improvements were an improved interface (using, for the first time, Flash-enhanced HD graphics and the full range of the wide-screen real estate); an enhanced search system (it simultaneously searches TV listings and Web-based video sources); and the addition of Pandora's music service.

The backlash was swift: "It's a big pile of disappointment and missed opportunity," said Matt Burns at CrunchGear. "[G]iven TiVo's inaugural role and leadership in [the] space, not to mention the tens of millions spent annually on R&D, I have to say I'm somewhat underwhelmed," proclaimed tech blogger Dave Zatz.

"It may be too early to say TiVo's dead, but it's not [too] early to see it's bleeding from a self-inflicted foot shot," tweeted Gizmodo's Wilson Rothman (though the Gizmodo coverage was decidedly more upbeat). CNET's Molly Wood (see embedded video) says she'd like to buy one, but she cautions: "I don't know that this is going to save TiVo."

Is the TiVo Premiere really that bad? To be clear, we won't know for sure until we can conduct a hands-on review (the product ships in April). Even the live demos at the TiVo launch event weren't really enough to draw a conclusion: with a DVR, you need to live with it for a few weeks (minimum) to fully experience its ups and downs. Still, we can draw some early conclusions from which features TiVo chose to include--and which the company omitted.

Here's the primary grievance list against the new TiVo:… Read more