Today must be my lucky day ... I won Led Zeppelin's remastered The Song Remains the Same from Local Vertical. I think it's because I finished all of my Christmas shopping this morning, and picked up a lot of nice things for friends and family. Earl would call that karma.
Having already ventured into the world of content delivery through their Unbox movie and tv show downloads, Amazon is now moving into the world of MP3 Downloads. Their average cost is lower than iTunes for a track (89¢ vs. 99¢) or an album ($8.89 vs. $9.99), plus they aren't embedding any Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the tracks.
Not to be outdone by NBC's free offerings, CBS is also offering the pilot episode of a new show: Big Bang Theory. The premise: four socially-inept geeks meet their new neighbor, a hot blonde. I didn't think it was funny at all, but if you want to give it a try, it's free.
Apple and NBC recently had a falling out over a pricing dispute, so the network's shows are moving from iTunes to Amazon Unbox. Unbox lets you download the shows directly to your computer or, even better, your TiVo. To promote the new medium and drum up some interest in their new line-up, they're offering free downloads of some of their new series:
"Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) is a computer geek that gets catapulted into a new career as the government's most vital secret agent. When Chuck opens an e-mail subliminally encoded with government secrets, he unwittingly downloads an entire server of sensitive data into his brain."
"Released after being falsely imprisoned, Detective Charlie Crews is back on the force-- After spending twelve years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Charlie Crews rejoins the force with a shiny new Detective badge."
"When a devastating car accident leaves Jaime Sommers at death's door, her only hope of survival is a cutting-edge, top-secret technology performed by her boyfriend, Dr. Will Anthros, and with her new bionics come a covert life that she is not sure she is ready to lead."
"From the executive producers of The West Wing comes Journeyman, a romantic mystery-drama about Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, Rome) a San Francisco newspaper reporter and family man who inexplicably begins to travel through time and change the course of people's lives. Along the way, he must also deal with the difficulties and strife at work and home brought on by his sudden disappearances. His freewheeling travels through the decades reunite him with his long-lost fiancee Livia (Moon Bloodgood, Day Break) -- which complicates his blissful, present-day life with his vivacious wife Katie (Gretchen Egolf, Martial Law) and son (Charles Henry Wyson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)."
I downloaded all four ... now I just have to find time to watch them. If you see any of them, leave a comment and let me know what you think.
| Here's some movie news that I'm a bit psyched about. Warner Brothers Studios has purchased the rights to adapt my favorite fantasy series: Shannara. They are reportedly planning to start with The Elfstones of Shannara, the second book released (though no longer the second chronologically in the series, due to prequels). It's understandable that they would skip The Sword of Shannara, since its plot is very similar to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I re-read Elfstones last year, and I think it'd make a great movie. Hopefully they'll actually move forward with this. I'd love to see what Weta could do with the climactic battle scenes from the book. Source (among others): SciFi Wire |  |
Well, it's the Fourth of July, so I suppose that means it's time for my annual independence evaluation.
0% independent romantically
This is the most dramatic change from last year, as I now have a wonderful girlfriend.
That's one of the reasons, I suppose, that I haven't been writing here as often; I'm a lot busier with date nights and such. It's not like I don't have any free time, though, so I guess I can't really use that as an excuse. I've just been neglecting my blog.
100% independent cellularly
I'm locked in with a new Verizon plan, so I really can't justify the cost of breaking the contract in order to be able to switch to AT&T for the iPhone. Plus, the phone's $600. They are pretty cool, though; I had the chance to play with one at an Apple store this week. Hopefully they'll stick the touchscreen on a hard-drive-based iPod and sell that without the phone.
Everything else is pretty much the same:
In honor of its one-year anniversary (and as a promotion for their latest tour), The Format have decided to make their Dog Problems album available for download ... for free. All you have to do is give them an email address and you'll have access to the download page. This was one of my favorite albums of 2006, and it's still in heavy rotation in my car; I actually listened to it today during my morning commute. It's a good driving album, with some fun, catchy songs (especially tracks 1, 2, 6, and 11). If you don't have it yet, give it a try; you have nothing to lose (except maybe the amount of time it will take you to download a 93mb zip file).
Complete transcript of the voicemail message I received on my home phone from an unknown caller:
"Oh, Lord. Here we go again."
Or, "Opera and Blogger Clash Again."
Blogger launched a new auto-save feature. That's good.
It broke the ability to save drafts when using Opera. That's bad.
The "Save Now" button doesn't do anything [Update June 27, 2007: This appears to have been fixed.], and the Ctrl-S keyboard shortcut launches Opera's save dialogue. That's annoying.
On the bright side, the "Save as Draft" button for already-published posts does work, so I can downgrade items.
