Media

Bill would force you to give police phone after accident

You may feel that everyone wants to peek inside your cell phone just at the moment.

Please, therefore, allow me to make you a little more insecure.

State legislators in New Jersey would very much like to make it easier for the police to go through your cell phone, should you be in any way involved in an accident.

The wording of their proposal -- Bill S 2783 (PDF) -- is quite precise in its breadth:

Whenever an operator of a motor vehicle has been involved in an accident resulting in death, bodily injury or property damage, a police officer … Read more

Horrors! B-movie king Roger Corman brings films to YouTube

Roger Corman, one of the all-time great makers of B-movies, is bringing his collection to YouTube.

Corman, maker of 400 films that span horror; sci-fi; action and adventure; comedy; and other genres, is launching "Corman's Drive-In," a new subscription channel where fans can watch films like "The Crybaby Killer" and "Little Shop of Horrors," two of Jack Nicholson's first movies. The channel launches on June 13.

Subscriptions to "Corman's Drive-In" will cost $4 a month, and come with unlimited access to 30 films at a time. Other films from … Read more

Pandora to buy radio station to piggyback onto cheaper costs

The leading online radio service took its first step offline Tuesday, but don't expect Pandora to make many more steps in the direction of traditional airwaves.

The company agreed to purchase KXMZ-FM, a Rapid City, S.D., terrestrial radio station. Its first foray into traditional radio broadcasting, the move has little to do with strategic shift and everything to do with royalty costs.

Pandora pays two royalty streams, one for actual sound recordings and another to composers for publishing rights. The sound recording fees make up the lion's share of its content costs. But by buying a terrestrial … Read more

Twitter's flattery of ad creatives has bottom-line agenda

The Vine is pretty clever. It shows, in six rapid seconds, how to quickly and easily put up a simple bookshelf.

Done in the stop-motion technique that has been the hallmark of most of the best Vines to surface so far, the video is an ad for Lowe's home improvement stores, and is part of a series called, appropriately, #lowesfixinsix.

Published more than three weeks ago, the video got a fresh life today when Twitter featured it as the inaugural poster child for its new #CreativeFavorites program, an initiative that aims to celebrate the best work being done on … Read more

Is Marissa Mayer worth more than Tim Cook?

You can never underestimate the competitiveness of your average CEO.

You can also never underestimate the business sense of charities who know when they're on to an easy earner.

Tuesday brings news of Marissa Mayer trying to see whether lunch with her might be more valuable than coffee with Tim Cook.

Recently, someone who clearly values power over food paid $610,000 to have coffee with the Apple CEO. This was all organized by auction site CharityBuzz, which guilts people into doing exciting things and paying for them hugely.

Now, similar forward-thinkers are being asked how much it's … Read more

Sony: We're setting the standard for used games policy

LOS ANGELES -- Sony wasn't originally going to talk about its game sharing policy at E3.

But the company saw the ill will Microsoft engendered with its guidelines, and stuck it in the script, according to Scott Rhode, head of software product development for Sony Worldwide Studios America.

Sony had never thought about imposing restrictions or fees on used games, and wouldn't have addressed the controversy had it not cropped up over the last few weeks, Rhode said in an interview with CNET on Tuesday.

"This was always part of our plan," he said. "We … Read more

Google buys Waze in bid to improve mapping services

Google has agreed to acquire Waze, the Israel-based company behind the mapping app Facebook was also reportedly vying for, according to blog posts from both Google and Waze.

The deal, for which terms weren't disclosed, follows months of speculation about who would land the startup. Reports later in the day pegged the price at a little more than $1 billion. In recent days, Google was said to be close to a $1.3 billion deal and that Facebook talks had fallen apart.

The acquisition could help Google improve its own mapping services and put a bigger moat around them … Read more

Banker sleeps on keyboard, mistakenly transfers $293M

They work them hard in German banks.

They make the eat, breathe, and sleep their jobs. Especially that last one.

At least that's the impression that must be gleaned from the tale of a German bank employee who fell asleep on his computer keyboard.

Oh, we've all done it. We've all woken up hours later to read that we just wrote: "CHHCHCHCHCHCCHCHCHCHCCCO."

And yet this bank employee seems to have fallen asleep during a transfer of funds.

As Agence France-Presse tells it, a court in Hessen heard that he was supposed to send 62.40 … Read more

Apple's latest ad: Not enough crazy?

Here's to the warm and cuddly ones.

It doesn't quite make one's smaller hairs salute, does it?

In recent years, Apple has tried various advertising routes, yet its default is still the tender, the human and the ever so slightly safe.

On Monday, in conjunction with its WWDC 2013 stage extravaganza, the company released an ad that echoed a huge amount of warmth and yet somehow offered a chilling relief to what used to be.

I was watching a presentation given recently by Apple's most experienced advertising creative director, Lee Clow.

In it, Clow explained how, … Read more