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Homeland Security: The reality show

Queue the music: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is about to get its own reality show.

On Thursday, ABC announced a mid-season replacement show called "Homeland Security USA." From Arnold Shapiro, the Emmy-winning producer of such documentaries as Scared Straight," the network said the series will give viewers an unprecedented look at the work of the men and women at the DHS "while they use the newest technology to safeguard our country and enforce our law."

The 13 hour-long episodes were shot entirely on location throughout the United States.

ABC says the producers … Read more

Kyte gets Google AdSense, fresh new mobile sites

On Monday night video-broadcasting platform Kyte is launching several new ways to make money with its service. Included are two new ad servers from AdTech Helios IQ and Lightningcast, as well as a new option to pick up Google AdSense (for video) which includes pre-roll, graphic display ads, and endcap text ads. These join Kyte's internal ad manager, and help fill out any ad inventory depending on how popular your shows are.

It's worth noting all of this is still only for pre-recorded content, and as such can't be used for monetizing live streaming shows. I'm … Read more

Broadcom gets a discount on AMD's TV unit

Broadcom on Tuesday said that it completed the acquisition of Advanced Micro Devices' digital TV chip business--at a discount to the original price.

On August 25, the two companies announced a price for the unit of $192.8 million. But Broadcom now expects that AMD's digital TV business will have fourth-quarter revenue of between $15 million and $20 million, lower than previously expected, the Irvine, Calif.-based company said.

Accordingly, the price has been slashed to $141.5 million, about a 27 percent reduction from the original price.

Broadcom had said in August that AMD's DTV unit would … Read more

'Democracy Challenge' comes to YouTube

To mark the United Nations' first-ever International Day of Democracy, the U.S. State Department launched a YouTube-based video contest on Monday.

Called the Democracy Video Challenge, the contest encourages the submission of three-minute videos that define the concept of democracy.

"The Democracy Video Challenge asks budding filmmakers, democracy advocates, and the general public to create video shorts that complete the phrase, 'Democracy is...'," the contest's official Web site explains. While they don't require entrants to be professional filmmakers, it's pretty clear that they're looking for something more high-end than sitting in front of … Read more

U.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.

The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 807: Hey! Price cuts work!

In the midst of the debate over the rising cost of text messages, Microsoft finds that you actually sell more stuff if you lower the price. Then again, we're consuming more text messages than ever, so...we argue about capitalism. Also, the best of DemoFall and TechCrunch50, because dangit, we cover them both.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 807

Best of Shows: Top 10 from DemoFall, TechCrunch50 http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10038846-2.html http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/10/yammer-takes-techcrunch50s-top-prize/

U.S. text usage hits record despite price increases http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-10038634-51.html

Xbox … Read more

Google News snafu leads to airline stock plunge

What was the unlikely culprit behind a 75 percent drop in United Airlines' stock on Monday? An erroneous Google News search, that's what.

The problem was that an investor news service, the South Florida-based Income Securities Advisors, found a Chicago Tribune article from 2002 via Google News and consequently included it in that day's news digest--which wound up on Bloomberg's news wire. The content of the story wasn't the sort you want to be publishing if it isn't true: that United Airlines had filed for bankruptcy. Considering the state of the airline industry today, it … Read more

Nvidia conference is all about the other processor

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Nvidia is making a case for the graphics processing unit, the other chip inside the PC, at the Nvision conference that opened on Monday.

In his inaugural keynote--this is first Nvision conference--Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang reminded the audience that the graphics processing unit (GPU) has come a long way. In short, the GPU has evolved from the simple fixed-function graphics accelerator (e.g., the IBM 8514 that debuted in 1987) to the modern graphics chip, a computing engine capable of almost one teraflop of processing power. (A teraflop is equal to one trillion floating point operations per … Read more

Contracts even with unlocked phones: Or, why I bought an iPhone

All year, I've been using an HTC Touch as my telephone. But now, having just moved back to the United States, I found it so hard to get a reasonable deal for service with this unlocked GSM smartphone that I decided there was little reason not to get an iPhone.

This was not an easy decision. I'm about to begin life as a graduate student, so money will be tight. I already had a pretty decent smartphone, which I'd bought in China because it was Windows Mobile and could run Pleco, the undisputed master of mobile Chinese-English … Read more