entertainment

If you haven't managed to snag one of the free beta tokens from another Joost user, today is your lucky day, because the service has launched version 1.0, and is free and open to anyone who wants to use it. The once-invite-only video content program is one of the few services we've seen since Google's Gmail to successfully use beta access to both intentionally control the scale of its user base and build up hype. It also doesn't hurt when it's created by the same duo that made Skype and Kazaa.

If you've … Read more

Blog network Sugar Publishing, which operates a popular array of pastel-hued women's lifestyle and entertainment titles, has agreed to acquire social shopping start-up ShopStyle.com for an undisclosed amount.

ShopStyle, which competes with sites like ThisNext and StyleHive, aims to make it easier to search multiple retail sites at once and lets members create personal "look books" and network with other digital shopaholics.

In addition, the San Francisco-based blog network has officially changed its name from Sugar Publishing to Sugar Inc. "to better reflect its growing reach and expansion over the past year." Presumably, that'… Read more

Nobody was expecting billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban to be a runaway surprise on the ABC reality show Dancing with the Stars, but he naturally managed to raise a few eyebrows on his Tuesday night dancing debut. For one, the opening credits featured the Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet guru shouting "I am a lean, mean dancing machine!" And paired with scantily-clad Australian dancer Kym Johnson, the 49-year-old entrepreneur wiggled his hips, snapped his fingers, lip-synched, and (naturally) let his tongue hang out.

Cuban did indeed "churn the butter" as he'd promised his blog readers. He … Read more

Earlier this month, 25-year-old Star magazine editor-at-large and dating columnist Julia Allison posted a blog entry about the swift end to her short relationship with Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick. The word count? 1,195, not counting the e-mail exchange between the two of them that Allison had copy-pasted.

Lodwick, 26, posted only 164 words in return on his blog. But considering Lodwick's blog is dedicated less to the profusion of words and more to a series of daily photographic self-portraits, that's understandable.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my generation. Allison and Lodwick are my contemporaries, both in age … Read more

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one-time pop darling Britney Spears' performance at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month was a total and utter trainwreck.

But, as viral video fans soon learned, some crazy guy with a YouTube account didn't agree. He promptly put up a clip of questionable sanity in which he lay in bed, sobbing, begging us haters to "Leave Britney Alone." The video has racked up nearly 8 million views on YouTube, reaching a degree of overkill that's made many of us hope the buzz will fade away quickly or … Read more

Polk Audio has taken the wraps off the I-Sonic Entertainment System 2, the follow-up to the company's impressive 2006 tabletop AV system. The new ES2 model gets the iPod dock that was missing from the original I-Sonic, but it loses the Swiss-Army-knife luster of that all-in-one model: gone are CD/DVD player and XM satellite radio support (though an auxiliary line-in port lets you connect any external device of your choosing). Video output (for the increasingly burgeoning number of video-capable iPods) remains, as does the dual alarm clock and HD Radio tuner. And it's the interaction between the HD Radio and the iPod where the new I-Sonic debuts a first-of-its-kind feature called iTunes Tagging. … Read more

Pretty much everything about Usher Audio's BE-10 screams "audiophile speaker." It's big, it's beautiful, and it sounds so good you don't even have to be an audiophile to appreciate it. Maybe the "audiophile" tag sounds a tad elitist, but anyone who occasionally gives their undivided attention to the sound of music--meaning they don't read, talk, or otherwise multitask as they listen--could be considered an audiophile. In any case, the BE-10 sounds too good to be ignored, and if that makes it an audiophile speaker, so be it.

Audiophiles with a hankering … Read more

This post has been corrected to provide the correct URL for Red Line Films.

If you thought Kid Nation was pushing the envelope, wait till you hear about this one. Production company Redline Films has just announced that you can now audition for its latest creative masterpiece, Office Fight. It's exactly what you think it is: it'll take co-workers who don't like each other and make them go face-to-face in a boxing ring.

Do you find this as supremely awesome as I do? Of course! To make it even awesomer, getting involved with Office Fight is easy … Read more

Trust me--I know procrastination. But this one really takes the cake.

JibJab, as you probably know already, made a name for itself by creating corny (yet socially relevant) musical skits that superimposed the heads of politicians and celebrities onto cartoon bodies. Now that user-generated content is nothing new, it almost seems overdue that JibJab would introduce a "make your own" feature. But now, at long last, here it is: "JibJab Starring You!"

The concept, at least according to the creators, is to JibJab yourself by uploading a photo, easily crop it with the Flash-based tools … Read more