LIVEdigitally

Tuesday Congress passed a law citing up to 3 y ears of prison and up to $250,000.00 in fines for those movie pirates who make prerelease movies available for download.

Is it April first still? 3 years in prison?
After 10 seconds with our internet search crutch, Google, (searching: “three years in prison”), I found many cases a bit more worthy of three years in the big house. A football coach who molested his 10 year old player, a custodian who attached a teacher, and a hacker who accessed top secret documents from Swedish Telcom Co. Ericson.

The punishment must suit the crime. I fear that soon I’ll be reading about P2P sharers getting there left click finger chopped off for stripping the DMR off their audio files.

Navtech has a new technology. Well, it’s not exactly new. The mapmakers for search engines have incorporated property listings with their maps. Associated with Google and Craigslist, you can search all over America for housing in your hood. With colored tear drops that locate where current listings are available, it gives the user an easy view of properties in relation to where they are located within their cities.

Posting both for rent and for sale, it is a useful tool to see where your future home could be. Data can be sorted by location, price, rent / buy and listing date. When you click the link, it gives a little more info in the dialogue box that pops up and previews any pictures that are related to the property as well as links you with the current Craigslist listing.

One problem upon first experience was some of the listings were out of date. I clicked on multiple listings with one search and I ended up with a pretty poor ratio of actual listings that were still valid and or not canceled in Craigslist.
It’s a great start, and when it comes to property searching, pictures definitely paint a thousand words.

I love watching a good commercial. The hot in the sun Pepsi commercials with Cindy Crawford are an all time favorite of mine. Superbowl Sunday is often referred to Commercial Bowl Sunday round my neck of the woods. However, I’ve swallowed commercials with a grain of salt. I pay approximately $50.00 per month for cable TV and to no surprise not one channel omits the commercials. Movie theatres are now showing commercials before features. Don’t get me started on internet advertising… Spam, Pop-Ups, Adaware, Spyware!

Sprint has been offering mobile TV and game services to customers who pay the necessary fee. “Why not slip some commercials in between shows or games”, Sprint has asked themselves? This will hopefully reduce the fee that Sprint charges their current mobile media subscribers.

Personally I’d pay an extra $2.00 for the absence of commercials. Maybe Sprint will start sending audio commercials that users must listen to before accepting or placing a call.

In this writer’s opinion, advertising should be done when the media is not paid for. Charging me a fee, and then shoving commercials in my face will result in a pissed off fee paying commercial viewing customer.

In a strange move Bush wants to let you edit DVD’s. Congress passed a law that will allow you to edit sex scenes in a DVD in case you are offended by such material (aka: don’t want your kids to see it), and Bush is expected to give it the green light. Seems like a bit of a double standard, since I’m not allowed to make copies of said DVD, but I can erase scenes if I’m afraid a guest I invite over might be offended by the uncut version of Debbie Does Dallas.

The news comes right on the heels of a Pew survey that says, shockingly enough, a majority of Republicans are concerned with elicit entertainment, while a majority of Democrats are worried about government censorship. Go figure.

Hollywood will probably try and fight back. Good luck to them. I’d hate the inconvenience of babysitting for a friend and having the racy scenes of a Disney movie I’m watching with them taken out.

Cell phones can do more than just call people. Soon, you might be able to do smart shopping by using your phone to price check your groceries. Lavasphere is a mobile ticketing and barcode reader system, which essentially turns a camera phone into a bar code reader.

I know some people who like to know where their food is coming from. Take a picture of the barcode, check it on the web and find out for sure.
As for me, I ain’t no hippie vegan, so I could care less. But, price checking through the barcode system, now that’s something I can dig.

Peace and Love