Brandon Dimmel

Movies are making their way to some odd mediums lately. Recently, we reported on Apple's interest in releasing movies through its iTunes service, and AOL's similar but less impressive online films. Now, Sprint is trying to develop their own unique ... way of watching movies with the recent announcement of a pay-per-view service for its mobile phones. Called "Sprint Movies", the service will offer recent releases and "classic" titles for between $4 and $6 USD. Customers will be able to watch the movies in segments, or all at once. It might be that "on the go" way of watching movies that Sprint is ... (view more)

If only my old man had this kind of opportunity: thirty years too late for my Dad to become a world-famous drummer, MySpace is giving garage bands around the world the chance to sell their music through its services. The move allows millions of ... MySpace users the ability to become (relatively speaking) legitimate music retailers, something that should have both the music industry and media outlets like Best Buy pretty disgruntled. As if avoiding labels and everyday retailers wasn't controversial enough, the MySpace music download system will also offer files in a format without the usual ... (view more)

Google has been more than just a search engine for a long time now. Just look at the recent roster of fabulous services and software housed under its banner: Gmail, the Google Pack , free Internet , the Gdrive , Google Toolbar , book downloads , a ... search engine for the blind , spreadsheets , free web hosting , and more. And that's only a small sampling of the many pies Google has gotten a slice of. Now the House of G is adding something new to its proverbial plate, thousands upon thousands of newspapers, magazines, and publications are now at your fingertips with the company's latest addition ... (view more)

Although cynics have been speculating for over a year now that the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) console would fail to make its desired November 2006 launch, recent events have cemented those suspicions. The powerful system is facing a host of problems ... just two months before it is set to launch in North America and Japan, including a reported shortage of units. Perhaps most revealing of Sony's woes is the recent announcement that the PS3 will officially miss its European launch period, and will not ship there until March, 2007. The Sony Playstation 3 is the most anticipated tech product this fall ... (view more)

Some things just work out perfect. Although many of Sony's early Blu-Ray players will creep out of stores for a rather heavy $1,000 price tag, insiders are today reporting that the devices you'll be playing movies on -- LCD HD televisions -- are set ... to see their prices plummet in the coming year. At a recent electronics conference in Berlin, television makers LG and Sharp both announced that they fully expect their flat LCD HDTVs to drop in 2007. The companies cited percentages in the 20-30% range, attributing such measures to overproduction and dropping manufacturing costs. (Source: betanews ... (view more)

Here's one for the "Did You Know" (or care) file: Canadians pay extra for their rewritable CDs with the understanding that the end use will be justified. This means that for every CD-R sold, a small levy of twenty-one cents is forwarded to the ... Canadian music industry. According to source, a recent survey of Canadians showed that my countrymen (and women) on average support the tax and the silent understanding of what the end result might be. But, not everyone does. Many voices within the Canadian music industry see the tax as a sort-of license to "ill" (thank you, Beastie Boys...who are not ... (view more)

Besides the popular (and increasingly defunct) peer-to-peer music downloading programs like Kazaa and Napster, perhaps now the most widely-known file transfer system is BitTorrent. The distribution protocol originally designed by Bram Cohen was ... created for the purpose of providing huge amounts of data without incurring ridiculous costs to local bandwidth. Want clarity on that? Check out wikiPedia.org for the whole sha-bang on BitTorrent and why it's primarily used for illegal downloading. (Source: wikipedia.org ) With all of that said, new measures are becoming available for Internet Service ... (view more)

It seems I'm not the only tech writer interested in the phenomenal (and annual) success of Electronic Arts' (EA) Madden series. The National Football League-based franchise of games, released every August to armchair quarterbacks around the world ... (but predominantly North America) routinely dominates the yearly video game sales charts, and is now being compared by some to Hollywood's biggest blockbusters. When I wrote about Madden 07 a few weeks ago , I was particularly interested in the game because it so quietly seems to go about shaping the video game industry. Make no mistake, Madden is ... (view more)

Although Canadians were briefly flashed a cost list last week, Microsoft has officially made public its pricing for the highly anticipated Vista, its operating system (OS) set to ship in late January, 2007. The announced prices coincide with the new ... availability of Release Candidate 1 (RC1), which is Microsoft's most recent Vista beta and the very closest to the much-hyped final product. While those living north of the 49th parallel might want to check out our archives for the recent mishap involving the early release of Canadian Vista prices, the exact American numbers have been in demand ... (view more)

Not long ago, America Online (AOL) announced that it will offer a slew of movies for download. At the time, the system wasn't much to look at, the movies were very hit and miss, and AOL had no system in place to offer users the ability to make ... copies of the flicks they acquired. Well, now Apple is trying to up the ante by offering movies on its popular iTunes website, and the potential of the company's crusade is raising eyebrows at Wal-Mart HQ (amongst others). According to sources, Apple intends to start offering movies for download from iTunes within days. Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs had ... (view more)