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Best weekend ever: tons of free TV shows

College football is back, and so is fall television. If you're looking to pick up some free TV shows (legally), the Internet is your friend and is a great place to go for digital versions of TV shows, sans a TV or the need for a VCR or DVR to watch shows when you want to. Note that several of these sites are walking a fine line of what's legal and what's not, which was outlined in yesterday's post about legal suicide for start-ups. We don't condone piracy or encourage it; this guide is for entertainment purposes only.

Free (and paid-for) downloads:

iTunes. iTunes is worth mentioning here because you can often get the first and last episode of any show for free. You can then put it on your iPod, iPhone, or watch it full-screen on your computer. While the iTunes Store is now lacking shows like The Office, because of NBC pulling out of its renewal deal, you can still find shows from ABC, CBS, and Fox--which incidentally is offering free pilots of all of their series, which you can find here (link opens up in iTunes).

Editor's Pick: Kitchen Nightmares--it's like Dinner Impossible, but with more volatility and endive.

Amazon Unbox. While we may not have had the best experience using this service in the past, if you're looking for legal digital copies of NBC's newest shows, you're stuck with Unbox until Hulu launches next month. Like the iTunes Store, you'll find all the big players here, although keep in mind that you can't watch these shows on any portable media players, which makes the $1.99 price tag a little harder to swallow.

Use the Web to keep two PCs in sync

Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Synchronizing two computers. If you want to know how to keep yourself sane if you regularly use more than one PC, tune into this show for a rundown of my tips on how to keep files, bookmarks, and e-mail synchronized over the Web.

Products mentioned:

FolderShare LogMeIn SimplifyMedia Orb FoxMarks Del.icio.us Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.

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Blu-ray camp fires back at latest HD DVD announcements

Ah, the emails and voice mails were flying fast and furious yesterday after Paramount and DreamWorks made their little announcement about going HD DVD exclusive. At just after 4 p.m. in New York, Fox and MGM put out a press release saying they were unveiling "an aggressive global Blu-ray Disc release strategy, including 29 new release and 'must-have' catalog titles that runs through the end of the 2007 calendar year."

The release went on to say that Fox intends to put out "at least one state-of-the-art title per month featuring numerous BD 'firsts'" and highlighted the fact that "Blu-ray was out-performing HD DVD 2-to-1 at retail in 2007." Among the 29 new releases, my eye was drawn to Master & Commander, Ronin, Cast Away, Independence Day, A Bridge Too Far, 28 Days Later, The Day After Tomorrow, and the Die Hard trilogy.

After the email went out, the phone started ringing: All the CNET the home-theater editors were contacted, so the PR folks at GCI Group in LA were working overtime, trying to do a little damage control. The basic message was, they may have this, but we have a whole more of that. And, did you hear that the Paramount deal doesn't include any of Spielberg's movies and that the deal only ran for 18 months? Tit for tat. Tat for tit. The war was raging.

Then, thanks to a New York Times article, word got out this morning that indeed (as I suspected), someone was getting paid off. The article noted that, "Paramount and DreamWorks Animation together will receive about $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD DVD, according to two Viacom executives with knowledge of the deal but who asked not to be identified." Microsoft denied paying anything, but wouldn't rule it out as a tactic in the future. There was no word on who might be paying Universal for its exclusive HD DVD agreement, but you gotta think there's a pretty sweet deal in place there, too.

Fox News, NYT personnel cleaning up Wikipedia entries?

Update: One of the biggest gotchas in the Web 2.0 world is getting caught editing Wikipedia entries that you have some relationship with. It seems it happens nearly every day, but it's still news when big names are discovered doing so.

That's why analysis suggesting people at Fox News and The New York Times are guilty of making such changes could be embarrassing to both organizations.

According to the political blog DailyKos, someone at Fox News--as identified by usage of a Fox News IP Address--has "scrubbed" a series of entries having to do with several … Read more

In the trenches with...Brent Fox of Red Hat

At the core of any successful open source business is support. However much technology companies (open source or proprietary) may want to escape the need to actually support the products they ship, they can't. Customers love you until something goes wrong. Whether they love you afterwards depends on the quality of a vendor's support.

In Red Hat's case, support plays a central role in the company's business model and in its high ranking with customers. Brent Fox plays a central role in Red Hat's organization, helping to ensure the continued happiness of some of Red Hat's biggest customers. It's one of those jobs that doesn't get the attention it deserves...until something goes wrong.

The Open Road caught up with Brent to discover how support at Red Hat supports its customers, and how its model differs from that of other vendors.

Name, company, title, and what you actually do

Brent Fox, manager, Global Support Services, Red Hat. I am the manager for the customer Technical Account Management (TAM) team for North America, which is responsible for the technical relationship between Red Hat and some of our largest customers. TAMs act as the advocate inside Red Hat for the accounts with which they work. Prior to that, I was a programmer on the operating system development team from 2000-2004.… Read more

'The Simpsons' avatar creator: A marketing site done right

Up until this weekend I hadn't really been too excited about seeing the upcoming Simpsons feature-length movie. That was until I laid my eyes on the film's Web site.

Like most other movie marketing sites out there, it's full of a lot of Flash with bouncy navigation and a nearly unbearable amount of sound effects. There are the usual mini-games (both of which I might add are quite enjoyable), and links to the movie's MySpace profile (it is Fox, after all). The real gem however, is the Simpsons avatar builder--a piece-by-piece character maker that lets people … Read more

Fox teams up with Brightcove

Brightcove, an internet video company, issued a press release yesterday, detailing a new relationship with Fox to serve up their web video. Brightcove's video publishing service allows content providers to insert their own ads into video streams in exchange for a fee, paid to Brightcove. The full details on the capabilities of Brightcove's platform can be found here.

Fox plans to distribute their content on both their own website and also on some of their affiliates' sites. This will help Fox to keep a consistent experience on their own website, while also allowing them to easily push their … Read more

Alien abduction lamp, for those who want to believe

Admit it--you know you loved the conspiracy-theory kitsch of Men In Black. (Can you believe it's been 10 years since that movie came out?) And you know you love this Abduction Lamp, too. Designed by Lasse Klein and licensed under the Creative Commons standard, this is probably one of the most clever light fixtures we've ever written up on Crave; and for the record, we see a lot of them.

Here's how it works. There's a light bulb inside the supremely awesome metal UFO on top, which illuminates the windows and the mysterious aliens inside. Because … Read more

Photobucket CEO sounds off on Fox acquisition

Earlier today it was made official, after much speculation, that Photobucket had been acquired by Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corp. CNET News.com spoke with Photobucket CEO and co-founder Alex Welch on Wednesday morning to hash out some of the rumors and talk about what's in store for the popular image-sharing site.

According to Welch, the company put itself up for sale in order to accelerate growth beyond its current membership base of approximately 42 million. "When we look at Fox, it was really a natural choice for Photobucket because we really want to grow … Read more

Fox unit confirms Photobucket, Flektor buys

It's official: MySpace.com parent company Fox Interactive Media has formally announced its agreements to acquire image-sharing site Photobucket and slide show mashup creator Flektor. Financial terms of the purchases were not disclosed by Fox Interactive Media, which is a division of media giant News Corp.

Both acquisitions had been rumored for some time. The Photobucket deal, originally reported earlier this month, is inarguably the more significant of the two: Photobucket, after all, is the 34th most visited site on the Web, with over 42 million users and 17 million monthly visitors. Its history with Fox Interactive Media hasn'… Read more