michael

The winds of change continue to gust at Sony. The electronics and entertainment giant announced today that Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton will become CEO at Sony Corporation of America (SCA) on June 27.

Lynton's primary responsibilities will include overseeing Sony's vast entertainment empire, which includes Sony Pictures, Sony Music, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

"Michael is absolutely the right choice to succeed me as CEO of SCA," said Howard Stringer, who is leaving his posts as SCA chief and Sony Corp. chief. "He understands the vital importance of fulfilling Sony's … Read more

Talk radio is careening toward a technology revolution and tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson may be the man to lead it.

Six months after launching Dar.fm, billed as a TiVo for radio, Robertson's startup has expanded the number of stations it offers listeners access to from 100 to 5,000. The company enables subscribers to record, in a way similar to TV DVRs, from among more than 20,000 radio shows, including Rush Limbaugh, and NPR's Fresh Air and Car Talk. The service then streams or downloads the shows to PCs, mobile phones, or set-top boxes.

Robertson has … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--If you 're an entrepreneur looking for money today on the famous Silicon Valley venture capital row known as Sand Hill Road, yes, that is the sound of crickets you hear.

That's because today is Y Combinator Demo Day, and the lion's share of the biggest tech-oriented VCs in the Valley are packed into one auditorium here, listening to 65 early-stage companies pitch their wares.

The list is a veritable who's who of investors: Ron Conway, Tim Draper, Jeff Clavier, Mike Arrington, Stewart Alsop, and many, many others. And they've got their checkbooks … Read more

Steve Jobs wouldn't have cared much for the recent software redesign Apple rolled out to its Apple TV set-top box, according to a former engineer who once worked on the product.

Michael Margolis, listed on his LinkedIn profile as having worked as a "Professional Hobbyist, AppleTV" as well as a "Senior Software Engineer" at Apple, tweeted late Friday that the new interface designs for the box actually got "tossed out 5 years ago because [Steve Jobs] didn't like them."

Margolis also claimed that "now there is nobody to say 'no' to … Read more

Bridget Carey makes a full recovery from her trip to Austin, Texas, for SXSW 2012 and joins us on today's show to recap her first experience.

We'll also dive further into Michael Bay's plans for the next live-action reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and investigate the growing trend of companies asking potential employees for their Facebook usernames and passwords.… Read more

Mark Licea resurfaces today after a half-year absence from the show, but he can't miss out on our revolt against Michael Bay for tearing apart another memory from our childhood.

Over the weekend, the director announced that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in his upcoming reboot will come from space instead of a green canister of toxic ooze.… Read more

Sony's sad security song isn't finished yet.

Hackers have reportedly broken into the music label's servers and downloaded Michael Jackson's entire 50,000-track catalog, including many songs that have never been released, according to a report in Britain's Sunday Times (behind paywall). Sony purchased the catalog in 2010 from Jackson's estate for $250 million--billed as the biggest recording deal in history.

"Everything Sony purchased from the Michael Jackson estate was compromised," a source told the newspaper. "It caused them to check their systems and they found the breach. There was a … Read more

Microsoft made it clear today why Windows 8 on an Intel-based tablet will be different from competing tablets based on ARM chips.

After speaking in Barcelona for close to an hour today about how Windows 8 on Intel and Windows 8 on ARM (WOA) will be the same, two Microsoft executives addressed, albeit briefly, a much more sensitive topic: why they're also very different.

Windows 8 marks the first time that a mainstream Windows operating system will run on processors from ARM chip suppliers like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Nvidia in addition to those from Intel and AMD.

First, … Read more

UCLA film school undergrad Michael Barryte of the Belated Media YouTube channel suggests a hypothetical story alteration to "Star Wars: Episode 1" that seems much more engaging than the original.

"Initially I wanted to do something on Episode I because of the rerelease, but I didn't want to bash the movie, because everyone's done that," Barryte told Crave in an e-mail. "So I started doing a video highlighting all the things that were good about the film, and that evolved into me just going through and taking those key points and 'rewriting' the whole thing."

I don't think the prequel is a total dud, but even I have some difficulty keeping track of the many plot holes and twists and turns in the story. Then there's the matter of the outspoken Jar Jar Binks, which is not exactly the most popular character in the Star Wars universe. … Read more