You might think the future of surround audio lies in sophisticated DSP-driven single-box soundbars or even crazy wireless headphones, but Audyssey Labs knows the truth: what you really need is more speakers. Up to 11 of ‘em, to be exact, as part of the company’s new Dynamic Surround Expansion system. Like the 9.1 channel Dolby Pro Logic IIz, DSX focuses more on the audio in front of you, since that’s what your ears are tuned to differentiate the best — in addition to the left, right, and center channels, DSX includes two speakers mounted up high at a 45-degree angle, and two speakers placed farther out to each side to create width. Add in the two surround back channels from a traditional 7.1 rig and presto — you’re up to 11. Yep, that’s a lot of speakers, especially if your loved ones already think a standard 5.1 system is an eyesore. On the other hand — 11 freaking speakers. DSX-enabled receivers are expected to arrive by summer, just in time to close the shades and spend all day indoors watching movies.
[Via Sound and Vision; thanks Will] Read the rest of this entry »
The domain Ad.com sold for $1.4 million yesterday at domain name registration company Moniker’s TRAFFIC conference in Silicon Valley. The winning bidder was Divyank Turakhia of Directi.com and CEO of Skenzo, a domain parking company.
Moniker made more than $2 million in domain names at the TRAFFIC auction, with Ad.com taking the highest bid. Bottledwater.com took the no. 2 spot at $45,000 and Athletic.com received the third highest amount, selling for $40,000.
$1.4 million may sound like a lot to spend on a domain, especially given the current state of the economy. But Ad.com is a two-letter domain that is easily pronouncable and actually means something, so it’s definitely valuable in the domain market. And a recession doesn’t seem to be stopping companies from spending the big bucks for desirable domain names so Turakhia may be able to flip Ad.com for a profit. Travelzoo bought Fly.com for $1.8 million in January. Vibrators.com was sold for $1 million a back in November and A&T’s YellowPages.com paid $3.85 million for YP.com in December.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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This afternoon Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary is sitting down for a one on one interview with Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla whose other credentials include cofounding SpaceX and PayPal. The interview promises to be an interesting one – Musk hasn’t been known to pull any punches. Michael, who is attending the event, is streaming it live using Qik.
“X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” with its ungainly, geeky title and its relatively trim running time, helps explain just what makes this guy so intriguing and unusual.
BuddyPress, the side project of blogging powerhouse WordPress, has just hit version 1.0 and has officially launched. It’s basically a social layer that you can lay on top of your WordPress account or blog to give it some of the social network features that you’re already familiar with from larger social networking sites.
Here’s what version 1.0 features: Extended profile, private messaging, friends, groups, “the wire,” activity stream, blog tracking and forums. Yes, that’s a lot of stuff in a first version. All of these features should be relatively straightforward from their names, except “the wire,” which is basically like your Wall on Facebook. People can come here and leave messages.
And slated for release in 2009 are yet more features, including: Status updates and photo albums. Sound familiar?
[Via Technabob]
NEW YORK — CBS News is finding increased online video views with effective use of social media tools, Dan Farber, CBSNews.com Editor-in-Chief, told me this afternoon.
We met in a busy newsroom which was preparing for a special webcast hosted Katie Couric with Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, The Atlantic’s Political Editor Marc Ambinder, Politico.com’s Chief Political Correspondent Mike Allen, CBS News Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield, and CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Chip Reid.
Unconventional News Gathering for CBS News
Dan told me that news gathering will be expanding beyond the traditional camera crews, with reporters and producers using Skype Video and other tools.
Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
Not much is known about the the upcoming movie of Wall Street 2 other than it will once again team up actor Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko and director Oliver Stone. When 1938 Media’s Loren Feldman heard the news this morning, he decided to come up with his own script—on Twitter. Over the course of more than twenty Tweets, starting with this one, he roughed out the basic plot lines of the movie. Well, it could be the plot of the movie if Oliver Stone decides to make it about the Web 2.0 crowd. Something tells me that Owen Van Natta, Jason Calacanis, and Henry Blodget aren’t going to make the final cut. Well, Blodget might.
Below is a (slightly edited) version of Feldman’s Twitter script for Wall Street 2. I think Feldman should make a puppet version of the movie. What do you think? (Script note: “Bud,” you’ll remember was the character played by Charlie Sheen in the original movie):
It’s Claude Shannon’s birthday. He’s the guy who figured out that the binary nature of Boolean logic is analogous to the ones and zeros used by digital circuits, and thus became the father of modern info theory. Plus, he was an interesting dude in other respects.
:
The first hint that something was up came in a letter stamped "Lost Post." It was addressed to the family of six who had recently moved into the sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment—and was apparently written by a former occupant who had died decades earlier. Inside the envelope was a poem full of riddles, the solutions to which were all around them: The home was filled with puzzles that had been covertly installed during an extensive renovation.
The letter led the family down a rabbit hole of hidden keys, secret compartments, and glowing boxes. Today, more than three years after they settled into their magic kingdom, they still haven't solved everything—even with the book of clues that architectural designer Eric Clough planted in a wall to guide them.
The elaborate project started with a casual aside. “Can we do something for the kids?” Clough asked his client, the CEO of a private equity firm, when he began work on the $1 million-plus job. Nothing complicated at first, just a few hidden lines of verse. But soon the carpenters were carving ciphers into radiator covers and adding secret compartments to the credenza. “I kept sneaking back into the apartment and hiding a few more clues,” Clough says.
