A rather standard how-to YouTube clip is causing a stir in Russia after becoming the focus of a dispute between the government and the video site. The three-minute clip, which provides instructions for applying scary Halloween makeup, was banned at...
Read more »Why YouTube Is Fighting Russia Over a Halloween Video
Photograph by Graham Barclay/Bloomberg
Coming to a Screen Near You: Virtual Product Placement
Careful viewers of Indian soap opera “Pavitra Rishta” might think that husband and wife Manav and Archana are fans of Tilda, a brand of packaged rice. There it is, after all, on the shelf. Anyone watching the show being filmed,...
Read more »Europe’s Airwave Auctions Wrong, Says Deutsche Telekom Chief
When a government is buried in debt, making money from thin air sure sounds like a good idea. The U.K. and the Netherlands were among the latest European countries to sell wireless frequencies — the right to use certain airwaves...
Read more »Netflix Sees the Need for Speed in Becoming Next HBO
What took HBO decades to build, Netflix thinks it can achieve in a much shorter time. As the online streaming service tries to become the next HBO by focusing more heavily on original content, such as the critically acclaimed “House...
Read more »
Your Cable Bill’s Going Up Again, But Forget a la Carte Pricing
Time Warner Cable is raising rates on Los Angeles customers by 8.2 percent — and there are more increases on the way. This is no surprise — your bill goes up every year. After all, as Chief Executive Officer Glenn...
Read more »
Photograph by Cody Pickens
Spreecast's Jeff Fluhr expects to make money by providing audience data to producers.
Spreecast Gains an Audience With Easy, Free Webcasting
In his quarter century of broadcast journalism, Scott Baker said he has used virtually every expensive and hard-to-use piece of audio, video and webcasting equipment on the market. So last year when he tested Spreecast, a website that lets users broadcast...
Read more »
Wow! Meets Oops! as Sony Trips on Road to Recovery
(This post was updated throughout.) It was a slick presentation by Sony Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai. But it was an oops and a subtle mea culpa that highlighted the long road ahead for the Japanese company to rebuild its battered...
Read more »
Are Consumer Electronics Killing the Consumer Electronics Show?
You won’t find booths by Apple, Microsoft, Google or Amazon at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Nor will you see the CEOs at the largest U.S. cable operators, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, or media companies such as Disney and CBS. Nokia and...
Read more »
Tech Entrepreneur to Start a Club Where Tech Talk Is Frowned Upon
Michael Birch earned a fortune in the technology industry. He co-founded Bebo, a once-popular social network in the U.K., and sold it to AOL for $850 million in 2008. And his early investments in Pinterest are looking like a smart bet....
Read more »Fisherman Builds DeLorean-Like Hovercraft, Hopes for Job at Google
Matt Riese is looking for a job at a technology company. His resume includes crab fisherman and maker of a hovercraft that looks like the car from “Back to the Future.” His aquatic vehicle, designed to look like a DeLorean with its...
Read more »
