Entertainment

Earlier this year, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke explained to the AP that the band was going to take concrete steps to minimize its contribution to global warming, including traveling by airplane only when necessary and using solar-powered generators. But the biggest contributor, by far, to the band's global carbon footprint are its fans, who drive by the millions to its shows every time Radiohead tours. Hence, Yorke said that the band would play only "in places that have municipal transport systems in place or that we can persuade promoters to put on transport."

Apparently this dictate doesn'… Read more

I just returned from a trip to Shanghai, and in case you didn't know anyway, here's my No. 1 insight: China scales.

Let's take QQ.com as an example, the leading Chinese online social network. The site is reported to have more than 300 million active accounts. That is eight times the member base of Facebook--and it's the same size as the U.S. population.

What's also remarkable (and different from the Western social networks) is QQ's monetization. Facebook posted revenue of $150 million for 2007 (and according to Plus8star a loss of $50 million); … Read more

Watch out, Hollywood. Here comes Microsoft.

At an event it called Digital Showcase, held Thursday in New York, the software giant told a group of ad execs that it is getting into the business of producing original Web shows for its wide range of Web platforms.

According to MediaWeek, Microsoft told the ad execs that the shows it is funding will be naturals for supporting online advertising.

The shows are slated to run on portals like MSN, Xbox Live, and MSNBC.com. Among the initial series are: 50 Greatest, which MediaWeek said is "a spoof of the multiple pop … Read more

We just posted the lastest edition of the Indie To Go playlists on Download Music! This iPod-friendly sampler of MP3s features topnotch indie newcomers and chart-toppers such as Tokyo Police Club, Colin Meloy (The Decemberists), The Raveonettes, The Explorers Club and more. Stream now (while you work), then visit the artist pages to download the songs to go. And if you want to hear more playlists like this one, check out Indie To Go Volumes 1 through 10.

It seems as if the hype over Iron Man has been going on forever, so we're surprised that it's taken this long for someone to release a phone dedicated to the movie. (Side note: Are we the only ones who think Robert Downey Jr. is totally miscast?)

Like other promotional movie phones, including Homer Simpson's cellie, this customized LG Shine will bear the colors of its hero and include exclusive footage from the film. The main difference is that this handset is finished in 18k gold (not iron) and will be given away in an online drawing, … Read more

Update (3:52 pm): This story got the name of the R.E.M. video wrong. It's fixed in the text below. Additionally, there's new comments from Improv Everywhere founder Charlie Todd below.

After reading Tuesday night on Laughing Squid that a new R.E.M. video had been posted by the band's publicity firm on YouTube that seemed to blatantly rip off Improv Everywhere's now-famous "freezes," I wrote to the culture jamming collective's founder to get his take.

"I did not know they were making this video and was not involved … Read more

If you're an aficionado of Twitter or the short-form blogging platform, Tumblr, over the last couple of weeks, you've no doubt become aware of the make-your-own-mix tape service, Muxtape.

A seemingly home-spun operation with no obvious profit motive, Muxtape allows anyone to upload a series of songs to its servers to create, and then distribute online, a digital "mix tape" along the lines of the ones you made for your unrequited paramours back in college.

And even as Muxtape has caught fire in the Twittersphere, another service, Mixwit, has come along, also giving users the ability to create a custom digital mix tape, but this time without uploading your own songs. Instead, you choose available songs from two existing music search services, SeeqPod and Skreemr, albeit on a much more polished site that seems primed for seeking to bring in revenue.

As my colleagues Rafe Needleman and Josh Lowensohn have noted, Muxtape appears to be a legal time bomb, merely awaiting the wrath of the Recording Industry Association of America, while Mixwit seems to exist on firmer legal footing.

But are those impressions accurate? I decided to check in with some legal scholars to find out.

… Read more

What would you do if you won the lottery? Would you continue to slog away at your job assembling cars, bagging groceries, or writing code? If you joined Google before it went public or even in the aftermath, it was like winning the lottery. Douglas Merrill is leaving to join EMI Digital as president after more than four years at Google, prior to the August 19, 2004, public offering.

As vice president of all internal engineering and worldwide support, Merrill will walk away with a fortune. What do you do after more than four years of incredibly intense and rewarding … Read more

If you're a fan of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the gospel of Pastafarianism, then you have to love what's going on in Crossville, Tenn.

There, as I discovered today on Laughing Squid, some members of the local chapter of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have gotten city approval to erect a statue of "His Noodly Appendage" outside the local courthouse.

I talked briefly by phone Monday with Ariel Safdie, one of the local chapter members involved with building and installing the statue, and she said that for her and her fellow members, the … Read more