nbc

What it takes to bring the Olympics to the PC

Stage 8H is best known as the place where Saturday Night Live is filmed. This week, though, it's been turned into an ad-hoc data center as part of NBC's efforts to stream thousands of hours of live Olympic coverage over the Internet.

Instead of the usual crop of comedians, NBC will have dozens of people watching every hour of the games, looking for highlights that it can chop up and make available on-demand. It's just one piece of an elaborate arrangement that shuttles the events in Beijing back to the U.S.

From each of the dozens … Read more

Red Lasso closes video search after being sued

RedLasso has suspended access to its video search-and-clipping site two days after NBC Universal and Fox filed a copyright suit against the company.

File this one under inevitable.

RedLasso, which announced the closure in a statement on Friday, recorded TV shows and then indexed clips so users could find, pull, and embed them on other Web sites. They did so without permission. The company had suggested that it was in talks to obtain licenses. RedLasso will keep operating its Radio To Web service, which allows radio stations to search and upload their content to their own Web site.

In May, … Read more

Sun, Intel to provide server technology for NBC Olympics

Sun Microsystems made the Olympic cut. Sun will provide server technology using Intel quad-core processors for NBC's Olympic coverage.

The technology platform will enable live events to be streamed online to NBCOlympics.com during the Beijing Olympics, which take place from August 8-24, Sun and NBC said Monday.

Intel quad-core Xeon processors will power a total of 160 Sun Fire servers that will drive NBC's Web site, according to an Intel statement. Sun Fire X4150 and X4450 servers will be deployed, according to Sun.

The X4150 servers are offered with quad-core Xeon processors such as the Xeon E5440 (… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 770: What's cooler than being cool? The Large Hadron Collider.

Go ahead, tailor that song with awesomely geeky lyrics vis-a-vis the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs Boson. Tom did. Actually, Tom won't stop. Let's move on. In other news of the day, Kevin Mitnick signed a book deal, so prepare to have your mind rocked by his awesome adventures; Ubisoft DRM reminds us that DRM sucks; and NBC decides to let Jimmy Fallon try out his late-night skills online before he does the real thing. Good idea. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 770

Podcast 770

In settlement, Icahn to join Yahoo board http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-9995440-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 … Read more

Web still taking backseat to TV at Olympics

The Olympic Games are supposed to be about international brotherhood and friendly competition, but NBC apparently doesn't want its competition to get too chummy.

NBC, which has the exclusive rights to televise events from the games in Beijing, has made great strides over the years in bringing more content to viewers. For the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, the network set up NBCOlympics.com, but alas it offered little more than photos and schedules intended to drive Web surfers to their TVs.

In 2004, the network discovered high definition, which was nice--unless you weren't too keen on … Read more

Two steps forward, one step back: NBC's online Olympic coverage

Ever since NBC announced their very ambitious plans for online coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I have been very excited to see how well they execute it. Promising 3,500 hours of online video, with 2,200 hours of live streams, full event replays, and highlights, for free, how could they go wrong? It has recently come to light that the online coverage may not be as complete as we were hoping.

NBC will not be offering live online feeds of any events that will be broadcast on TV. The ones broadcast on TV will, of course, include the … Read more

MySpace partners with NBC, MSNBC for political convention contest

MySpace's political initiatives didn't end with the primaries: the News Corp.-owned social network has unveiled a contest in conjunction with NBC News and MSNBC.com in anticipation of the major parties' campaign conventions.

Part of the Decision '08 initiative between MySpace and NBC News, it's a competition to choose MySpace's "citizen journalist" correspondents at the major parties' national conventions later this summer.

Entrants, who must be MySpace members who are 18 years or older, must answer one of the following questions via a video submission: "Why do you vote?" "Why … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 752: This episode is not called 'BOLympics'

There's no way we'd bait the International Olympic Committee like that, knowing how notoriously aggressive they are about controlling their content. They hardly want anyone to see it. That's why all the digital content is Vista only this year. Rimshot! In other news of the day, Nokia bought Symbian, leading analysts to predict everything from global market takeover to complete and utter destruction.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 752

Nokia buys Symbian, turns software over to Symbian Foundation http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/24/nokia-buys-symbian/ http://news.cnet.com/Symbians-new-role-in-mobile-apps-drama/2009-1039_3-6242423.html http://mashable.com/2008/06/24/nokia-acquires-symbian/… Read more

Surprise! Stewart and Colbert have come to Hulu

This post was updated at 11:01 AM PT on Tuesday to clarify wording: television content from Viacom is almost exclusively handled by MTV Networks.

In an unexpected move, video site Hulu will be getting some political loudmouths just in time for the 2008 presidential election: Comedy Central's late-night personalities Jon Stewart of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report.

We had to check and make sure the press release wasn't a joke, but there are indeed full episodes from both programs available. It comes as somewhat of a surprise, considering Comedy … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 735: Ind_na Jo__es

Paramount is dropping sounds out of your movies; Canadian customs guards might be rifling through your laptop for ripped CDs; and aliens are real. See, now, it sounds like today's show is all made-up stories, but the first two things are true, and the last one is...well, I don't know, I guess it might be true. There's a guy in Denver who says he's got a video. YouTube it!

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 735

Comcast hijackers say they warned the company first http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/comcast-hijacke.html http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007034.html… Read more