Media

Dell will be giving away 12 notebook computers each day from July 27 until August 31 .

The giveaway is part of Dell's skin-design contest and back-to-school campaign. Skins, personalized laptop covers, have become all the rage among many laptop owners. Capitalizing on the trend, Dell has begun to offer skins for purchase in lieu of owners making homemade laptop modifications.

To enter Dell's contest, people must register at the Dell contest Web site between July 27 and August 20, choose a notebook, and create a skin to go with it. No purchase of a laptop in necessary to … Read more

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences chosen TiVo Inc. as the recipient of an Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in interactive television. Brian Seth Hurst, who leads the Academy's Interactive Media Peer Group, cited that TiVo's early emergence and continued dominance in the digital video recorder market were what led to its triumph over the other three nominees--AOL Music on Demand, CNN Enhanced, and DirecTV Interactive Sports.

Last year's winner in the category was Cablevision in recognition of its iO Interactive Optimum Digital Cable Service.

The "interactive Emmys," which will be presented as part … Read more

Fans of the wonderful sci-fi thriller series "Babylon 5" have three new, albeit different, reasons to celebrate this week.

First, as part of its arrangement to put its TV content on Apple Computer's iTunes, Warner Bros. said it would include the first season of the epic J. Michael Straczynski production.

The show, according to Wikipedia, "is set in the 23rd century on a large space station named Babylon 5 (which) is built to be a gathering place for fostering peace (among planetary civilizations) through diplomacy, trade, and cooperation."

Fans can buy the episodes to their … Read more

Time Warner said on Wednesday it would present an update to its business strategy for AOL in a conference call on August 2 at 8 a.m. PT. It is expected that the company will announce that it is dropping the fees it charges to members for services like e-mail. Time Warner reports its second-quarter financial results that day.

Word of the plan surfaced three weeks ago, but the company has declined to comment. The move is expected to stem the tide of subscribers who have been abandoning the legacy AOL service in recent years. The company has lost nearly … Read more

Record companies tend to complain about downloads, particularly since most songs are still downloaded illegally. But when it comes to legal downloads, they get most of the cash.

Record companies keep about 72.5 cents on average for a 99 cent song, Dave Jaworski, CEO of PassAlong Networks, at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit. PassAlong sets up online music services for other web sites. It has a big store on Ebay too.

The credit card company then gets a small slice. The rest goes to the people who sold the song. In PassAlong's case, the company divides the remainder with … Read more

"Arrested Development," the quirky TV series that was cancelled after three seasons, now has a home online.

On Wednesday, the show's owner Fox Entertainment Group licensed its 53 episodes to Microsoft's MSN, which plans to stream the programs on-demand via MSN Video this fall. Viewers can watch for free.

The deal shows the Internet's rising sway as a market for promoting new and after-market TV shows, especially for niche programming like "Arrested Development." Despite its critical acclaim and devoted following, the show delivered lackluster audience ratings by network standards. But on MSN, which … Read more

Utherverse CEO Brian Shuster hopes the "adults only" label on his new, pornographic, online network will help the site avoid the presence of sexual predators and minors that give false ages, a problem that has baffled networking sites for some time now.

The Utherverse (pronounced "other-verse") home page looks exactly like a porn site (not that we'd know) complete with images of nude people and avatars, some of which are participating in??well you know...."adult" stuff.

Once inside the network, individuals can upload erotic photos, build a fantasy profile, and look for … Read more

Success equals scrutiny in Silicon Valley. If youthful YouTube CEO Chad Hurley hadn't understood that equation before now, he got a lesson on Wednesday.

Poor guy probably didn't realize when he accepted an invitation to join a panel discussion at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit that his company would be probed like a laboratory rat.

Tough questions and raw skepticism were hurled at Hurley during a discussion titled "How Far Will Consumer-Generated Media Go?" To start, panel moderator Kara Swisher, a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, asked Hurley whether his company--which went live in … Read more

GenerationMP3, a French-language blog devoted to les baladeurs MP3 (digital music players), has posted a YouTube video of what appears to be a teaser ad for the latest challenge to the iPod, Microsoft's Zune. The Zune is, of course, never mentioned by name. But it's logical to assume that it's an ad for the much-hyped iPod rival: that the teaser's tagline is "the future of entertainment," Microsoft's logo is shown at the end, and the ad hints at the upcoming release of some kind of handheld device.

There's no consensus as to … Read more