Entertainment

George Takei, the TV actor best known for his role as Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek series, has had an asteroid named after him.

In the latest example of real scientists paying homage to science fiction, the International Astronomical Union last week honored the actor and his character, by renaming an asteroid, formerly known as 1994 GT9. The new name will be 7307 Takei, according to a story by the Associated Press.

Others involved with Star Trek who have had asteroids named after them are Gene Roddenberry, the series creator, and Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Lt. … Read more

Growing up, my musician brother started out experimenting with music using a four-track tape recorder that he used to blend together guitars, keyboards, and vocals--something that normally requires an entire band, or some advanced audio-mixing equipment. Tjoon is an interesting new Web service, aimed mostly at musicians, that attempts to do the same thing using Webcams. It splits up a video workspace into four quadrants, and lets you, or others, come together to record four 30 second clips, all within the same shot. Instead of trying to do this simultaneously, like eJamming (coverage), Tjoon is completely asynchronous, meaning you can … Read more

WASHINGTON--The controversial U.S. law that generally bars people from tampering with copy-protection features drew accolades on Wednesday from the video game industry's chief executive.

Mike Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, applauded the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act as "vitally important" for video game and console makers seeking to stomp out unauthorized copies of their wares.

Thanks to digital-rights management mechanisms, Gallagher claimed unauthorized copies of popular video games like Halo 3 that users download from file-sharing networks won't play on XBox 360, ensuring "the full value of the product is received throughout … Read more

UPDATE: The Craigslist post in question has been flagged for removal.

A Craigslist ad for an available room in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan's pricey West Village claimed that the asking price was $1 per month--and a fresh batch of cookies every day. (As of Wednesday morning, the ad was flagged for removal and is no longer available on Craigslist.)

Yeah, it's tongue-in-cheek. As Gotham gossip blog Jossip put it, "There's no way someone would really rent out a room in the West Village for $1 a month and daily fresh baked cookies. In the West … Read more

Now here's an innovation: "music on demand," in the truest sense of the meaning. Radiohead, the juggernauts of intelligentsia rock, announced that they will give away their new album "In Rainbows" as a download for whatever price consumers are willing to pay. The band is free to sell the new album directly from the official website because it is no longer tied to a record label. So far, the album is only available to pre-order, but it can be downloaded when released on October 10.

It's not the first time that an artist or … Read more

While at Starbucks this morning, I noticed some signs on the tables announcing that the "Now Playing" feature was live. This lets you log onto the iTunes music store from your laptop, iPod touch or iPhone and instantly see what song is playing in-store, plus browse and buy music on iTunes.

After adding two Sugar in the Raws and some half-and-half to my Grande drip, I decided to put that iPhone in my pocket to good use. I fired up the iTunes Wi-Fi music store by clicking the little logo and voila!

If only it was that easy...… Read more

It's sure to be the next Facebook. It'll dwarf MySpace.com.

I bring you: The Ask a Ninja social network.

For anyone who's been using typewriters and watching over-the-air television the last couple of years, Ask a Ninja is the hit video blog in which a ninja answers questions about the lifestyle of sneaking undetected into locked buildings and opening victims up with katanas. And things like that.

Well, the audience has gotten so big that the creators have decided to do something that almost no one else has thought of: launch a site on which the … Read more

CHIBA, Japan--Dolby, the sound company, is getting into TVs.

The company is at Ceatec, the large Japanese trade show taking place here this week, to promote Dolby Contrast and Dolby Vision, two technologies (one currently real, one on the drawing board) to extend its reach into digital TV and cinema.

Both Dolby Contrast and Dolby Vision are essentially ways to apply the dimmer switch concept to light emitting diodes. LEDs are being increasingly used as the backlight in flat panel LCD TVs. Dolby Contrast allows the TV to dynamically adjust. One LED could go completely black while its neighbor could … Read more

WASHINGTON--Content creators and their digital distributors must unite against piracy by installing more "safeguards," Viacom's CEO said Tuesday.

Through more widespread adoption of copy-protection features and filtering tools like watermarking, "we will usher in an unprecedented period of creative output across the globe," Philippe Dauman told a few hundred attendees at the first day of an antipiracy summit hosted here by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-business lobbying group.

Dauman lamented that "all manner of intellectual property" can now be reproduced more easily than ever "at the click of the … Read more