Science and Technology

Sony’s blue-laser video recorder goes on sale in Japan next month: The BDZ-S77 will go on sale in Japan next month. It is based on the Blu-ray optical disc format announced just over a year ago. The nine consumer electronics companies behind it are promoting it as a system for …

The NY Times takes note of a convergence of the legal digital music services around the price of $10 per month and 99 cents per download: Has the music industry found the 99-cent solution to its file-sharing woes? “Solution” is far too final a term for this business still very …

Pay by mobile phone in Europe: Four of Europe’s leading mobile phone operators have announced the formation of a mobile payment services association which will provide their customers with a multi-network, commonly branded solution for making payments using their phones. Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone, along with Spain’s Telefonica Moviles, announced …

Sony had a successful year in 2002 and are now discussing ambitious plans for the future: SONY seems to have learnt one basic lesson of corporate public relations: messages are better received when you are making money. Little more than a year ago, when the company reported losses of ¥43.3 …

As we have been reporting, the RIAA’s website is one of the most targeted sites on the Internet, the RIAA having made many a hacker friend with its policies toward P2P. So you would think that the RIAA would have a phlanx of security experts running its website – um …

Both from the indispensable Brad Hill.

Finally after an outlandishly long time we are back to being Blogcritics.org. We are also Blogcritics.com but I don’t want to confuse anyone. What happened was that we changed hosts a couple of months ago through the good graces of the lovely, charming and talented Stacy Tabb. We were happy …

Music video channel encouraging real interactivity between TV screen, computer, and viewers: For most music fans, deciding whether to buy Mariah Carey or Ashanti is a matter of musical taste. But for fans of “IMX,” the “interactive music exchange” on the digital cable channel MuchMusic USA, choosing between Ms. Carey …

Cringely says it’s WiFi – no kidding: Disruptive technologies are those that change not just business but society. Personal computers threw the mainframe-computer business for a loop. Airlines replaced passenger trains. HMOs became an alternative to the family doctor. In all these cases, the computer, transportation, and health-care moguls of …

The DMCA is stifling the growth of our entire economy: Krause put together a compelling panel of executives and venture capitalists to tell their stories of how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has put a chill – or, worse, a stop – to their business plans. Perhaps most memorable …