Crave

This is the last time we let Wilson choose the show title. Good news--The 404 Wikipedia page is BACK! Edit away, but please don't redirect the page. Today we talk about a fake bus stop in Germany, a "green" iPhone app, the iPhone 4G prototype, the "World of Warcraft" movie, and Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia.

The Iron Chef of Persia.

(Credit: Kotaku)

That's right folks, our Wikipedia page is back up, and we're praying it's permanent this time! Big ups to our buddy Darth Paxton for helping us out, so go ahead and edit it all you like (we can't edit it ourselves) with inside jokes, characters, guests, etc., but please don't edit the redirections, those need to stay in place. Whoo! We're notable!!!

Also, do not attempt to adjust your monitor, the photo to the left is indeed our first look at Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia. With those two swords in his hands and that red sash around his waist, he looks more like a chef at a Chinese restaurant than the video game hero.

Speaking of bad video game movies, we're afraid to see what Sam Raimi has in store for the "World of Warcraft" movie adaptation, although it'd be pretty funny to just have a half an hour of peons mining and chopping wood.

A quick disclaimer: there are two stories in today's rundown that some might deem offensive, but although they're both a little dark, the beauty of The 404 is being able to find a lighthearted (and sometimes tasteless) joke in everything! For example, here's a funny story about a fake bus stop in a clinic that's designed to keep its Alzheimer's patients from escaping. Sounds awful, right? I agree--maybe all the money they spent on building this "net" could have been used to pay more nurses and doctors to determine the reason why the patients are trying desperately to escape in the first place!

Anyway, that's the first story. You'll have to listen to the full episode, which also includes news about an eBay auction for an original Sony PlayStation signed by Michael Jackson and a very "green friendly" iPhone app

EPISODE 387

Maybe we should have used "So bad, but so good" as our show motto instead of "High Tech, Low Brow!" Today's show is a good example of that, and we kick it off with Wilson's brief and spoiler-free review of Bruno. We also talk about the rise of the Twitterns, Apple breaking the Pre-iTunes lovefest, and Jeff meeting Tony Hawk!

Tony Hawk plays his new game, Ride.

(Credit: Jeff Bakalar/The 404)

Check it out! Jeff was invited to an Activision event last night to preview Tony Hawk's new game, but he was pretty surprised when Tony Hawk himself showed up to show him around! As you can see, the game comes with an actual "skateboard" controller to jump, ride, and pop up to do tricks within the game. Jeff tells us that the game is very realistic, but popping up the board feels more like a snowboard than skating. Check it out for yourself when it comes out on October 13 for $120.

In other news, The 404 has decided to hire a young Twittern to update our Twitter. Social media, whether it's in short or long form, is super time-consuming...anyone out there want to be our Twittern? We're only half-joking...

In more important news, Apple has finally broken up the love affair between iTunes and the Palm Pre: the smartphone no longer works with the popular desktop software. Jeff owns a Pre and figures that the only thing to do now is to refrain from upgrading to the latest software, lest some savvy developer use the latest SDK to somehow crack Apple's padlock.

Also, start getting amped for tomorrow's episode where I, Justin Yu, will debut yet another band in a segment we like to call...deep breath..."The 404 Semi-Weekly Audio Draft Sponsored by Beck's Beer in conjunction with Last.FM, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive and CNET News and Reviews." Jeez.

(Credit: Ubisoft)

We got a chance to sit down with the new Prince of Persia game from Ubisoft Montreal last night at the company's New York showcase. And now we have a much better idea of what we can expect this time around, including the story of the game and the role our new female companion Elika will play.

First off, you can forget most of what you already know about the Prince of Persia series. It was made very clear to us that this new Prince game is a huge departure from what we're used to. Most apparent is the brand new art style in the game. We don't want to call it cel-shaded, but it definitely borrows a few components from that technique. Up close, the details on the Prince and Elika are astonishing, as are those in the enormous environments you'll be playing inside. ... Read more

The 'Prince of Persia' series found much success in the previous generation of video games. Now Ubisoft is back with a new 'Prince of Persia'--complete with a unique art style and a brand-new fighting mechanic. You'll also be joined by a Elika, a female character who helps you fight enemies and solve puzzles. 'Prince of Persia' is set to release by year's end for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Death Cab For Cutie's new album Narrow Stairs drops May 13th.

This week, tens of thousands of alt-music junkies are fleeing to the desert to take part in the hottest event around: the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. And when we say "hottest" we mean both temperature hot and, yes, sexy hot, as well. We're impressed with the headliners, such as Portishead , Death Cab For Cutie, Jack Johnson, but we're even more down with the bands in the small print, too, such as Little Brother, Jens Lekman, and Modeselektor.

We're not actually going to Coachella (bummer), but we will be celebrating virtually via the playlist below, which features Download Music's favorite artists on this year's bill. Join us by clicking the green button to launch the free playlist.

U2

(Credit: U2.com)

Looks like it's U2's turn to take a pounding from the bloggerati.

A speech on Monday by Paul McGuinness, manager of the band U2, was a call to arms against piracy. He wants to fight file sharing by forcing Internet service providers to ban people who pirate music. He suggested that Apple and other makers of digital music players were wrongly profiting from their "burglary kits."

McGuinness told a gathering of music insiders at the Midem music conference in Cannes, France, that music is making lots of people lots of money. Unfortunately, that money isn't finding its way to artists. He placed much of the blame on tech companies, but also pointed a finger at record labels that "through lack of foresight and planning allowed a range of industries to arise that let people steal music."

Not surprisingly, U2, one of the world's most beloved bands for more than two decades, is under attack in the blogosphere.

"U2's manager tells us why we are bad," "U2's crazy manager wants to go after tech firms," and "U2 McGu's ISP rant" are just a few of the headlines coming from outraged bloggers.

The band has not commented one way or the other on McGuinness' speech, but one would have to think they were apprised before he said it. A copy of the speech is posted on U2's Web site. Either way, like Prince, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and (the granddaddy of all musicians who spoke out against file sharing) Metallica's Lars Ulrich before them, Bono & Co. are getting worked over.

Here's some of the wittier and more brutal comments...

"McGuiness is whining about this at the same time that U2 is pulling in incredible profits, making $355 million on its last tour," wrote Mike Masnick at the blog Techdirt.

Wired.com's Ryan Singel offered this: "Threat Level agrees that ISPs shouldn't get away consequence-free for transporting evil bits. But we counter-propose that ISPs use any nascent filtering technology they have developed to blackhole U2 and its frontman who goes by the ludicrous moniker Bono."

Privacy advocate Lauren Weinstein takes the manager to task for his comment about the tech sector's "hippy values."

"Paul has homed in on well-known hippie freaks like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates," Weinstein quipped. "You do remember when Steve and Bill used to hang out with Timothy Leary, right? No? You don't recall Switch On, Log In, and Buzz?"

The struggle for economic control of music is looking more and more like war between corporations and consumers. On one side, the record industry has an army of lawyers ready to sue. On the other, consumers have an army of bloggers ready to ridicule.

Choose the wrong side, and prepare to take a public whipping. At this point, no musician who takes up the pro-copyright banner should be shocked when he or she is branded a traitor and longtime fans swear they'll never buy their music again.

But if file-sharing really is hitting these musicians in their wallets, maybe they don't care.

The music industry is preoccupied with giveaways these days.

The latest example will come on Sunday, when New York Daily News subscribers will find an access code in their paper that they can use to retrieve three free songs from EMI Music.

Subscribers punch the code into the newspaper's Web site, Nydailynews.com and the music is theirs. They have over 120,000 tracks to choose from.

Among the songs available is an unreleased track, "It's Love" by Ringo Starr. The promotion will also run on the following Sunday, the day of the Grammy awards.

Combining music with newspapers (two industries being pummeled by the Internet) was a powerful mixture for rocker Prince last year. The rocker made news last July by giving away copies of one of his CDs to readers of a London tabloid.

Lenny Kravitz is launching a similar giveaway in Great Britain on Feb 3.

Radiohead redefined music giveaways with its "pay-what-you-want" offer in October.

There's plenty of people in the music industry that fret that giveaways devalue music.

While it must be noted that the Daily News is compensating EMI for the songs, it's still important to point out that to the public, these days the word "music" trails the word "free" like a caboose.

Should troubled file-sharing site Qtrax, eventually strike licensing deals with the major music companies, it still may face a significant hurdle.

Web Sheriff, a company representing music acts such as Prince, Van Morrison, and The Black Crowes, has notified Qtrax that it shouldn't think about offering their music, photographs, or other intellectual property until it has secured the artists' OK.

"Whilst Qtrax is an interesting model, many major label and indie artists will not be happy about their music being given away free (to consumers) in return for a currently opaque return from advertising revenues," said John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff's president, in an e-mail.

A British firm that protects digital content from piracy, Web Sheriff has informed Qtrax that in some instances artists must give permission--in addition to the music labels--before their songs can be legally distributed, Giacobbi said.

While Qtrax doesn't appear to have begun offering music downloads, there are photos posted to the site of artists such as the Foo Fighters, Daft Punk, and Wyclef Jean.

Daft Punk is on the EMI label while Jean and the Foo Fighters are represented by Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Representatives from Qtrax and the labels could not be reached for comment late Monday evening. It's unclear whether Qtrax has permission to use the photos.

"Any unauthorized use of copyright photos and/or copyright artwork is in violation of (the law)," Giacobbi said.

Qtrax wants to harness the popularity of illegal file sharing by offering a free, legal peer-to-peer service. The company said that it had deals in place that called for it to share ad revenue with music companies.

But Qtrax has been awash in controversy since Sunday, when questions were raised about whether the company possessed the rights to offer music from the four largest record companies.

For weeks, Qtrax managers had led reporters to believe that it had locked up licensing deals with the top record companies. Just hours before the site's scheduled Monday-morning launch, the labels began denying that the deals existed. Qtrax executives responded by holding up the unveiling of the music service.

Since then, sources close to the company said that Qtrax executives have waged an all-out campaign to tie up the loose ends. They have held numerous meetings with the labels during the Midem music conference in Cannes, France.

If nothing else, Qtrax's troubles show how hard it is to secure the many varied rights and releases needed to legally distribute music.

Giacobbi said he informed Qtrax's leaders that before offering music online, the start-up would first have to obtain master recording copyrights, musical composition copyrights, artwork copyrights, trademarks, performers' rights, moral rights, and publicity rights.

Prince is close to making up with three fan sites that spent the past week trading nasty publicity releases with the purple music king.

Prince Fans United (PFU), a group formed by three fan sites dedicated to Prince; Housequake.com, Prince.org, and Princefams.com, was trying to hammer out an agreement with the artist's representatives on Wednesday, according to Gavin McLaughlin, a spokesman for the group.

PFU was formed after Prince allegedly demanded that the sites remove all "photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything linked to Prince's likeness," the site operators claimed.

"We're in the process of agreeing to terms with Prince and hope to have a statement out by (Thursday) morning," McLaughlin said in an e-mail.

Last week, the fan sites said that Prince's demands were unlawful and maintained they had the right to post images of him under the law. Much of the media slammed Prince for appearing to sue his fans, but his representatives denied that this was his intent.

In what was apparently a peace offering, Prince gave permission to the fan sites to post a new song of his called "PFUnk." The song is available on PrinceFansUnited.com.

The cease-and-desist letters sent to the fan sites are believed to be part of a a two-month old campaign Prince launched to protect his copyright on the Web.