SEATTLE, March 10, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ ----FremantleMedia Enterprises (FME: undefined, undefined, undefined%) and Zumobi, today introduced the first-ever official American Idol(R: 21.62, 0, 0%) application for Apple's revolutionary iPhone and iPod touch. "American Idol Season 8 Exclusive" follows this season's American Idol Top 13 finalists in their quest to be named the next American Idol and brings fans exclusive multimedia content and news updates.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090310/LA81261)
Only days after the Top 13 finalists were announced live on FOX, the "American Idol Season 8 Exclusive" application provides fans with in-depth contestant bios, pictures, news and exclusive video from behind-the-scenes of the on-air show. In total, 78 original videos of the remaining contestants will be released weekly between now and the Finale, giving fans the opportunity to get know their favorite contestants better.
"We are excited to partner with 19 Entertainment and FOX to create a truly unique American Idol experience in the palm of your hand," said David Luner, senior vice president, Interactive & Consumer Products, FremantleMedia Enterprises, North America. "The new application puts iPhone and iPod touch users in the driver's seat and allows them to engage with the show anytime they want."
"American Idol Season 8 Exclusive" also features daily news updates on the Top 13 contestants in the "Buzz" and "Bio" sections, and the "My Rankings" feature allows users to test their talent-picking power by predicting, customizing, and tracking the order of who stays and who gets voted off each week. As users track their favorite contestants' progress, they are also one click away from the American Idol iTunes page where they can download music from recent performances.
"American Idol is one of the premiere entertainment brands around the world, with a television franchise that is unrivaled," said Ken Willner, CEO of Zumobi. "Zumobi is thrilled to partner with FremantleMedia Enterprises, 19 Entertainment and FOX on the development of this exclusive app for iPhone and iPod touch and we're proud to make it available to millions of Idol fans through The Zumobi Network."
"American Idol Season 8 Exclusive" is available for $1.99 from Apple's App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=306532181&mt=8. The Zumobi Network is a leader in designing, developing, distributing, and marketing sponsorable and full-branded applications for iPhones and iPod touch.
American Idol airs Tuesdays (8:00 - 10:00 PM ET live/PT tape-delayed) and Wednesdays (9:00 -10:00 PM ET live/PT tape-delayed) on FOX. For more information about the application, please visit the American Idol web site, www.americanidol.com
ABOUT AMERICAN IDOL
AMERICAN IDOL is created and executive-produced by Simon Fuller, founder and CEO of 19 Entertainment; and executive-produced by Cecile Frot-Coutaz, CEO, FremantleMedia North America, Inc.; and Ken Warwick, Executive Producer, FremantleMedia North America, Inc.
ABOUT 19 ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Simon Fuller's 19 Entertainment Ltd. is recognized as a lead creator, provider and promoter of globally successful entertainment and music brands of today. The company has attracted a unique team of exceptionally creative executives, who work together to integrate and leverage activity across television, sports, film, touring, merchandising, music publishing, recording and artist management.
19 Founder/CEO Simon Fuller has developed and managed some of the biggest entertainment properties of our time, with credits that include the creation of TV phenomenon AMERICAN IDOL and SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE, and the HBO series "Little Britain USA." 19's unique talent includes legendary musical icon Annie Lennox, country music sensation Carrie Underwood, the pop group sensation Spice Girls, and IDOL alumni Chris Daughtry, David Cook, supermodel Claudia Schiffer and soccer icon David Beckham.
ABOUT CKX, INC.
CKX, Inc. is engaged in the ownership, development and commercial utilization of entertainment content. To date, the Company has focused on acquiring globally recognized entertainment content and related assets, including the rights to the name, image and likeness of Elvis Presley, the operations of Graceland, the rights to the name, image and likeness of Muhammad Ali and proprietary rights to the IDOLS television brand, including the American Idol series in the United States and local adaptations of the IDOLS television show format which, collectively, air in over 100 countries around the world. On June 1, 2007 CKX entered into a merger agreement with 19X, Inc., a private company owned and controlled by Mr. Sillerman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CKX, and Simon R. Fuller, a director of CKX and the Chief Executive Officer of 19 Entertainment Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CKX, that will result in the sale of CKX to 19X. For more information about CKX, Inc., visit its corporate website at www.ckx.com.
ABOUT FOX BROADCASTING COMPANY
Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX: undefined, undefined, undefined%) is a unit of News Corporation. FOX finished the 2007-2008 season as the No. 1 network for the fourth consecutive year among Adult 18-49 viewers, while continuing to dominate all network competition in the more targeted Adults 18-34 and Teen demographics. Additionally, FOX won the seasonal crown among all viewers for the first time in the network's 21-year history. FOX airs 15 hours of primetime programming a week as well as late-night entertainment programming, major sports and Sunday morning news.
ABOUT FOX DIGITAL MEDIA
A division of the Fox Entertainment Group, Fox Digital Media (FDM: 9.99, 0, 0%) manages digital media strategy for all Fox content. In the past year, the group negotiated the groundbreaking digital revenue sharing agreement with Fox affiliates and also led the FOX on Demand effort, which brought prime time series to the Internet on an ad supported basis through MySpace.com and the MyFoxLocal web sites. Additionally, the group developed VOD and Electronic sell-through deals for film and television product, including deals with iTunes, Amazon, Bittorrent, AOL, MSN, MovieLink and CinemaNow.
ABOUT FREMANTLEMEDIA ENTERPRISES & FREMANTLEMEDIA
FremantleMedia Enterprises is the brand extension arm of FremantleMedia, offering a one-stop-shop for all Licensing, Distribution and Home Entertainment. It is a division of FremantleMedia, one of the largest international creators and producers of entertainment brands in the world with leading prime time drama, serial drama, entertainment and factual entertainment programming in over 40 countries worldwide. FremantleMedia is a subsidiary of RTL Group, Europe's largest television and radio broadcast company, which is 90% owned by Bertelsmann AG, an integrated media and entertainment company that commands leading positions in the world's media markets. For further information, visit http://www.fremantlemedia.com.
ABOUT FREMANTLEMEDIA NORTH AMERICA
FremantleMedia North America (FMNA: undefined, undefined, undefined%) is the U.S. production division of global media giant FremantleMedia. Based in Burbank, California, FMNA produces entertaining and innovative television programs for network, cable and syndicated platforms, including the Emmy-nominated musical/reality phenomenon AMERICAN IDOL (FOX: undefined, undefined, undefined%), American Idol Rewind (syndicated), America's Got Talent (NBC: undefined, undefined, undefined%), OSBOURNES: RELOADED (FOX: undefined, undefined, undefined%), Celebrity Family Feud (NBC: undefined, undefined, undefined%), HOLE IN THE WALL (FOX: undefined, undefined, undefined%), Farmer Wants A Wife (The CW), The Phone (MTV: undefined, undefined, undefined%), Rock The Cradle (MTV: undefined, undefined, undefined%), Can You Duet (CMT: 1.1899, 0, 0%), The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency (Oxygen), Match Game (TBS: undefined, undefined, undefined%), Family Feud (syndicated), Million Dollar Password (CBS: 3.57, 0, 0%), and the longest-running game show in television history, The Price Is Right (CBS: 3.57, 0, 0%).
ABOUT ZUMOBI
Zumobi is a leading mobile media company which designs, develops, and distributes branded applications for next generation smartphones. Zumobi's portfolio of mobile applications comprises The Zumobi Network, which provides innovative and comprehensive solutions for brands, media properties, and consumers to connect and engage. For more information, please visit www.Zumobi.com.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/american-idolr-finalists-coming-apple-app-store/
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Move Your Data to a Safer, Separate Partition, Part 2: Vista
Restoring Windows to its brand-new condition (an occasionally necessary job) generally involves losing everything on the hard drive system partition. That includes your documents, photos, and everything else we collectively call data. Moving your data to a separate partition therefore adds an extra layer of security and convenience.
Last week I explained how to do this surprisingly difficult task in XP. Now I'll tackle it in Vista.
Before you begin, make an image backup of your drive, just to be safe.
Now let's shrink the existing partition and create a new one. Select Start, type , and press . In the resulting Disk Management program, right-click the box for your hard drive partition and select Shrink Volume. Fill in the resulting dialog box. When the volume has shrunk, right-click the Unallocated box and select New Simple Volume and follow the wizard. The default settings will probably be fine.
Once you've got the two partitions set up, make sure that your PC shows hidden files and folders: In Windows Explorer, select Organize, then Folder and Search Options. Click the View tab, select Show hidden files and folders, and click OK. You can change this back when you're done, if you wish.
Then, just to be safe, back up your registry.
For convenience sake, I'm going to refer to the new partition, which is probably D: or E:, as X:. I'll also refer to your logon name as logon, as in C:\Users\logon\Documents.
Navigate in Windows Explorer to the data partition you just created (the one I'm calling X:) and create a new folder named with your logon name (which I'm calling logon). Then select Start and lick your logon name at the top of the Start menu to launch another Windows Explorer window, this one show your old C:\Users\logon folder.
Let's start by moving the Documents folder: Right-click Documents and select Properties. Click the Location tab. Enter X:logon as the new path. (By now you know what I mean by X: and logon, right?) Answer affirmatively to all of Windows' questions.
You may notice when Windows is finished that Documents is still visible in the C:\Users folder. Have no fear. That's just a pointer. The files are actually now on X:\. If you don't believe me, open up the Documents folder and click in the address bar, like this:
2
Last week I explained how to do this surprisingly difficult task in XP. Now I'll tackle it in Vista.
Before you begin, make an image backup of your drive, just to be safe.
Now let's shrink the existing partition and create a new one. Select Start, type , and press . In the resulting Disk Management program, right-click the box for your hard drive partition and select Shrink Volume. Fill in the resulting dialog box. When the volume has shrunk, right-click the Unallocated box and select New Simple Volume and follow the wizard. The default settings will probably be fine.
Once you've got the two partitions set up, make sure that your PC shows hidden files and folders: In Windows Explorer, select Organize, then Folder and Search Options. Click the View tab, select Show hidden files and folders, and click OK. You can change this back when you're done, if you wish.
Then, just to be safe, back up your registry.
For convenience sake, I'm going to refer to the new partition, which is probably D: or E:, as X:. I'll also refer to your logon name as logon, as in C:\Users\logon\Documents.
Navigate in Windows Explorer to the data partition you just created (the one I'm calling X:) and create a new folder named with your logon name (which I'm calling logon). Then select Start and lick your logon name at the top of the Start menu to launch another Windows Explorer window, this one show your old C:\Users\logon folder.
Let's start by moving the Documents folder: Right-click Documents and select Properties. Click the Location tab. Enter X:logon as the new path. (By now you know what I mean by X: and logon, right?) Answer affirmatively to all of Windows' questions.
You may notice when Windows is finished that Documents is still visible in the C:\Users folder. Have no fear. That's just a pointer. The files are actually now on X:\. If you don't believe me, open up the Documents folder and click in the address bar, like this:
2
A Rocky Start for Obama's Broadband Push
On Mar. 10, Dan Spatz joined hundreds of other people who crammed into a 500-seat auditorium at the Commerce Dept. building in Washington, D.C. The crowd of executives, entrepreneurs, and local officials had gathered for the first public hearing about how the federal government plans to distribute $7.2 billion in grants and loans to improve broadband Internet access in the U.S.
Spatz, a city official from The Dalles, Ore., took the microphone to ask a relatively simple question: How would the government determine which regions in the country are "unserved," a critical definition because those areas without broadband service are supposed to take priority under the legislation passed by Congress.
"The short answer is we've not made a decision," said Mark Seifert, a senior adviser at the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), one of two government agencies responsible for doling out the broadband money. "We have reached out and asked you and folks like yourself… to tell us how we should. We're waiting for you to help us get to those definitions."
No Hard Answers
And so it went again and again. At the first public discussion of the Obama Administration's much heralded broadband plan, government officials offered virtually no hard answers to the hundreds of people who gathered in person and the 2,500 more who participated via live Web video. For almost every substantive question about how the billions will be allocated, officials said they're looking for guidance from the public. Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, NTIA associate administrator, said the government is seeking input on "nearly every facet of the program."
The lack of answers proved frustrating for some participants. Charlie Mattingly, chief executive of a small Internet service provider in Texas called Broadband Rural, was taken aback that the meeting wasn't more productive. "I had no idea how full of themselves they are in Washington," he said. "If we had half the money that the government spent to put on this meeting today and half of the money that people spent to attend it, we could have put 1,000 people online," he said.
One reason for the frustration is that time is short. When Congress passed its massive stimulus bill, it mandated that the NTIA cut the first round of checks for broadband buildouts between April and June. With no clear criteria for how the money will be allocated, companies from Broadband Rural to AT&T (T) and Verizon Communications (VZ) are all struggling with whether to apply for the grants and, if so, how best to make their applications. The NTIA will distribute $4.7 billion of the broadband money, in three different rounds, while the U.S. Agriculture Dept.'s Rural Utility Service will hand out another $2.5 billion.
U.S. Ranked 17th in Broadband Access
Officials who led the meeting agree that the need for better technology is urgent. "Too few consumers and small businesses in this country have the high-speed broadband they need if they're going to succeed," said Michael Copps, acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. "We pay too much for service that is too slow. It's holding us back as individuals, it has cost our economy billions, and things are only going to get worse if we don't do something about it."
The latest indicator of how the U.S. compares to other countries in terms of broadband availability came Mar. 2 from the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union. The group ranked the U.S. 17th out of 154 countries surveyed, in part because of low rates of access to broadband.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_752736_page_2.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_752736_page_2.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_752736_page_2.htm
Spatz, a city official from The Dalles, Ore., took the microphone to ask a relatively simple question: How would the government determine which regions in the country are "unserved," a critical definition because those areas without broadband service are supposed to take priority under the legislation passed by Congress.
"The short answer is we've not made a decision," said Mark Seifert, a senior adviser at the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), one of two government agencies responsible for doling out the broadband money. "We have reached out and asked you and folks like yourself… to tell us how we should. We're waiting for you to help us get to those definitions."
No Hard Answers
And so it went again and again. At the first public discussion of the Obama Administration's much heralded broadband plan, government officials offered virtually no hard answers to the hundreds of people who gathered in person and the 2,500 more who participated via live Web video. For almost every substantive question about how the billions will be allocated, officials said they're looking for guidance from the public. Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, NTIA associate administrator, said the government is seeking input on "nearly every facet of the program."
The lack of answers proved frustrating for some participants. Charlie Mattingly, chief executive of a small Internet service provider in Texas called Broadband Rural, was taken aback that the meeting wasn't more productive. "I had no idea how full of themselves they are in Washington," he said. "If we had half the money that the government spent to put on this meeting today and half of the money that people spent to attend it, we could have put 1,000 people online," he said.
One reason for the frustration is that time is short. When Congress passed its massive stimulus bill, it mandated that the NTIA cut the first round of checks for broadband buildouts between April and June. With no clear criteria for how the money will be allocated, companies from Broadband Rural to AT&T (T) and Verizon Communications (VZ) are all struggling with whether to apply for the grants and, if so, how best to make their applications. The NTIA will distribute $4.7 billion of the broadband money, in three different rounds, while the U.S. Agriculture Dept.'s Rural Utility Service will hand out another $2.5 billion.
U.S. Ranked 17th in Broadband Access
Officials who led the meeting agree that the need for better technology is urgent. "Too few consumers and small businesses in this country have the high-speed broadband they need if they're going to succeed," said Michael Copps, acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. "We pay too much for service that is too slow. It's holding us back as individuals, it has cost our economy billions, and things are only going to get worse if we don't do something about it."
The latest indicator of how the U.S. compares to other countries in terms of broadband availability came Mar. 2 from the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union. The group ranked the U.S. 17th out of 154 countries surveyed, in part because of low rates of access to broadband.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_752736_page_2.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_752736_page_2.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_752736_page_2.htm
Apple orders 10-inch touchscreens for third quarter: source
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Apple will take third-quarter delivery of newly developed 10-inch touchscreens from Taiwan, a source said on Wednesday, amid talk the U.S. firm is developing a touchscreen PC.
Taiwan touchscreen specialist Wintek already makes small screens for Apple iPhones, and has received orders for the larger ones that are roughly the same size as those used in mini PCs, said the source close to the Taiwan firm. He asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
He added that he did not know what the final product would be, or who would make it.
Wintek spokesman James Chen confirmed Apple was a major client of his company, but declined to comment on any new product development.
Taiwan media reported this week that Apple, which has brought touchscreens to the forefront with the success of its iPhones, is currently developing a touchscreen PC, as lines begin to blur between sophisticated smartphones and traditional PCs.
Some of those reports have said that Taiwan's Quanta Computer, the world's top contract laptop PC maker, would manufacture the actual PCs for Apple.
Apple's Hong Kong spokeswoman, Jill Tan, said the company did not comment on market speculation, while a Quanta spokeswoman also declined to comment.
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE52A0RH20090311
Taiwan touchscreen specialist Wintek already makes small screens for Apple iPhones, and has received orders for the larger ones that are roughly the same size as those used in mini PCs, said the source close to the Taiwan firm. He asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
He added that he did not know what the final product would be, or who would make it.
Wintek spokesman James Chen confirmed Apple was a major client of his company, but declined to comment on any new product development.
Taiwan media reported this week that Apple, which has brought touchscreens to the forefront with the success of its iPhones, is currently developing a touchscreen PC, as lines begin to blur between sophisticated smartphones and traditional PCs.
Some of those reports have said that Taiwan's Quanta Computer, the world's top contract laptop PC maker, would manufacture the actual PCs for Apple.
Apple's Hong Kong spokeswoman, Jill Tan, said the company did not comment on market speculation, while a Quanta spokeswoman also declined to comment.
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE52A0RH20090311
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