June 1, 2010 - Today's most interesting stories in technology, media and entertainment:
New Apple TV: Apple is getting ready to launch a new, cheaper version of AppleTV. It's completely redesigned, in fact, some sources are calling it an iPhone without a screen. They say the new AppleTV is going to be super small with a super small price, like 99 bucks. You didn't think Apple was going to let GoogleTV go unchallenged, did you?
Facebook Users Beware: a new clickjacking scam is spreading through the social network. The attack is based on the new 'likes' section and creates fake pages that lead to malicious sites. Since these fake 'likes' often show up in the news feed, it's best to simply delete any suspicious 'likes' before they accidentally spread through your network.
New Kindle Coming: Amazon will unveil a new Kindle this summer. According to reports, the new device, codenamed Shasta, will be slimmer, offer faster page turns and may be WiFi compatible. There's no word on color or touchscreen capability.
Today's Video -- Shelly Palmer Interviews Seth Haberman, Founder & CEO, VisibleWorld
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An executive producer IS NOT going to appreciate Google earning revenue by taking his program and using it for it's own personal advertising real estate. Because that pretty much sums up what Google TV is. Distributors will HATE this model even more for the exact same reasons.
And who could blame them? Subscriber fees and advertising revenue are the bread and butter of producers and distributors (cable, sat, network). Google TV would threaten their existence by setting up a privately run advertising platform in every living room. A platform that would hijack other people's content through it's video search and significantly reduce the value of their ad space for their programs.
If any of you think that TV and Hollywood are going to line up for this.............you're crazy.
Not to mention this begs a fundamental question. Who honestly needs Google to help them find television programming? The last time I checked, the guide provided by my service worked just fine.
I find this so very odd because Microsoft tried this exact same model and Tv and Hollywood soundly rejected it. Just because Google's name isn't Microsoft doesn't mean they're going to be cool with this idea now.
And Google doesn't need anymore of our information to sell. They have already quietly grown into a global information gathering/archiving monopoly.
Inching inevitably closer with this new tweak!
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipod/apple_tv
For under $200 bucks you can jailbreak this thing and have a very good OSX media center!
Once you install all the hacks (easy to do) you can add an external hard drive if you need extra capacity.