Internet Radio Fairness? What it means, why it matters

Tim Westergren

Pandora listeners may have recently heard a call to support a bill called “The Internet Radio Fairness Act” in place of regularly scheduled advertising. Tim Westergren, the Pandora founder, also sent a message to Pandora members on Friday asking them to urge their Congressional representatives to support the bill. So what’s going on here?  The… Read More…

New Village Voice owner distances alt weeklies from Backpage.com

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Late yesterday a new holding group, Voice Media Group, announced it would purchase the media properties of Village Voice Media Holdings, owners of alt-weekiles such as the Village Voice, LA Weekly and Seattle Weekly, as well as the free classified service Backpage.com. While the new group will take all existing newspapers and their online counterparts, Backpage has… Read More…

Is that a PC inside your Atari 2600? Well, yes, it is

atari2600s

Building on the recent Internet Explorer/Atari link up, in which they built eight classic Atari games using HTML5, Hard Drives Northwest has created a limited number of Atari 2600 consoles retrofitted with modern PC internals. And just look at them—time warp!  Bellevue’s Hard Drives Northwest repurposed many of the original functions, so watch that “game reset” switch—now it’s hooked… Read More…

Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch aircraft passes initial review

stratolaunch

Paul Allen is one step closer to his childhood dreams of space. The FlightGlobal blog reports that Stratolaunch Systems has finished preliminary design review of its space-launch system. “The carrier aircraft conducted their preliminary design review on [August 27-28] in Mojave, California,” says the company, which notes that it’s now reviewing the data package and… Read More…

iPhone 5 in high demand as preorders sell quickly

iphone 5 press

Preorders for iPhone 5 began at 12:01 this morning, but just an hour later heavy demand forced Apple to push back the shipping window for the device. First promised with a delivery date of September 21, it’s now showing a ship time of two weeks or longer. Apparently, then, the device is much more highly anticipated… Read More…

Honest Buildings opens door on new cash, launches in Portland

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Honest Buildings, a 6-month-old real-estate startup with operations in Seattle and New York City just announced the completion of its first round of financing, led by RockPort Capital and Mohr Davidow Ventures. The amount of investment and the terms were not disclosed. The company also just launched in Portland, with information for more than 37,000 buildings in… Read More…

Eric Benhamou leaving RealNetworks board

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Eric Benhamou is stepping down from the board of RealNetworks, according to an SEC filing. Benhamou, who has served as a director since 2003, will continue to serve as lead independent director, chair of the audit committee, and a member of the compensation and strategic transactions committees of the board of directors (what a mouthful!) until… Read More…

Son develops visual-based, Kinect-powered email system for stroke-stricken mother

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The blog Dad Hoc brings us the story of a custom-developed Kinect-powered email system, which was built for a stroke victim who suffers from aphasia, a disorder caused by damage to the parts of the brain that process language, making it difficult to read, speak or write. My mom has lived with aphasia ever since she suffered… Read More…

Why does this iMac have an HP logo on it?

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At midnight last night Hewlett Packard released their new line of all-in-one PCs, including the flagship, called Spectre One — apparently because the designers were haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs. Upon viewing the photos now making the rounds on the internet, you’d be forgiven for thinking the desktop was a black-market iMac (or… Read More…