Winamp Media Player Shutting Down After 15 Years

Posted on November 21, 2013 by admin

After 15 years on the Internet, the once-ubiquitous digital audio player Winamp will soon be just a memory.

According to a brief note on the Winamp website, the formerly uber-popular media player will no longer be available for download after Dec. 20, 2013. This includes Winamp.com and associated Web services.

You probably remember Winamp from the late 90s and early 2000’s when it was one of the most widely used Internet services for listening to music and radio streams. Winamp eventually lost popularity as services like iTunes and Windows Media Player hit the Web, but it’ll always hold a special place in the hearts of many.

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How video games are transforming the film industry

Posted on November 18, 2013 by admin

Posted by Steve Boxer

At one time it was the game industry that wanted to emulate films. But now the movie industry is adopting the technology of video games

Amid the debate about television stealing the film industry’s thunder, another entertainment form has crept up unnoticed, further threatening Hollywood’s creative hegemony: video games. With a new, much more powerful generation of games consoles poised to arrive – Microsoft’s Xbox One goes on sale on Friday, with Sony’s PlayStation 4 due a week later – the games companies reckon they finally have the ammunition to shake off the perception that their digital epics are inferior to movies.

I’m in a place that could not reinforce that impression more emphatically: the historic Ealing studios, where classics such as The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers were filmed. But I’m here to experience the process of making a video game called Ryse: Son of Rome, an epic tale charting the Roman conquest of Britain, which will be a launch title for the Xbox One. And the studio is nowadays home to The Imaginarium, an outfit co-founded by Andy Serkis, who – as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings – is perhaps the world’s leading exponent of performance-capture, in which every nuance of an actor’s performance (specifically movement, voice and facial expressions) is recorded and mapped on to a video game character.

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Hot Trailer of the Week: Noah

Posted on November 15, 2013 by admin

By: Armando

The trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s highly anticipated biblical tale Noah has finally arrived. The film stars Russell Crowe, last seen in this summer’s blockbuster Man of Steel, in the titular role of Noah. Also in the film are Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Jennifer Connelly who won an Academy Award for her supporting role as Alicia Nash in Ron Howard’s 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind which also starred Crowe.

The movie has a reported budget of $130m, a departure for Aronofsky who is best known for more intimate, modestly budgeted tales of tragic figures.

NOAH opens on March 28, 2014 in the US.

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Jennifer Connelly
Release: 28 March 2014 (USA)

Snapchat’s Teen Appeal Is Also Its Achilles Heel

Posted on November 14, 2013 by admin

By Robert Hof

You can argue until you’re blue in the face whether or not Snapchat is worth the $3 billion Facebook FB +4.52% apparently offered to buy it. But there’s little argument over why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was willing to pay that much for the disappearing-photo-sharing service: It’s attracting the teens that Facebook is losing.

At least, that’s the conventional wisdom. But here’s the problem: If there’s anything more ephemeral than Snapchat snaps, it’s teen attention spans. Today, Snapchat looks unbeatable, at least for what still seems like a rather narrow slice of social activity. But there’s no reason to think that teens will stick with most any app or service for long–all the less so when it seems that there’s a new hot social networking app every month or so these days.

So I’m betting Zuckerberg is a little smarter than that. What he really wants more than just a surge of new teen blood–as he also showed with his $1 billion purchase of Instagram–is to make sure that Facebook owns the most popular and compelling kinds of social networking as they develop. Snapchat clearly appeals to those who want to exchange bits of themselves in a more ephemeral way than they do on Facebook.

The New Batsuit In The ‘Batman Vs. Superman’ Movie Will Be Different From Anything We’ve Ever Seen Before

Posted on November 13, 2013 by admin

By Kirsten Acuna

Comic book lord Kevin Smith says the new Batsuit blew his mind.

Well, this is good news Batfans.

For anyone who has been against the casting of Ben Affleck as the Caped Crusader, you can be assured that one thing is awesome so far: Batman’s new suit.

Comic book lord and filmmaker Kevin Smith spilled during his latest Hollywood Babble-On podcast that he has seen a picture of Affleck in the new costume straight from director Zack Snyder and its awesome.

Over the weekend, Smith hosted a fan Q&A event with Snyder and stars Henry Cavill and Amy Adams in anticipation of the Blu-ray release of “Man of Steel” Tuesday where he says the director showed him a photo backstage.

Here’s a look at the cover of the comic:

‘Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ Tracking for Massive $185M Box-Office Opening

Posted on October 31, 2013 by admin

By Todd Cunningham

“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” is tracking for an opening weekend that could go as high as $185 million when it debuts on Nov. 22, based on box-office marketing data released Thursday.

The higher pre-release tracking goes, the less reliable it becomes, and we’re still three weeks away from the opening. But the Jennifer Lawrence sci-fi sequel looks like it will be a box-office monster for distributor Lionsgate Entertainment.

If it does hit that mark, “Catching Fire” would be the year’s biggest opening, ahead of the $174 million May debut of “Iron Man 3.” And it’s within striking distance of the all-time record for a weekend debut of $207 million, established by “The Avengers” in May of 2012. The record for a November opening, the $142 million rung up by “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” in 2009, is well within reach.

TheWrap >>

Warners Exec Talks Wonder Woman Speculation

Posted on October 23, 2013 by admin

By Garth Franklin

The rumors have been swirling for a while now that Diana of Themyscira (aka. Wonder Woman) might make an appearance in Zack Snyder’s upcoming “Batman vs. Superman” film at Warner Bros. Pictures.

Appearing at the Variety Entertainment and Tech Summit, Warners’ president of creative development and worldwide production Greg Silverman was asked about the possibility of this scenario actually taking place.

The surprise is that Silverman doesn’t offer an outright denial, wording his answer in a carefully non-committal way:

“We have been doing a lot of thinking for years about how to best use all those characters and we love them. Wonder Woman is an amazing character. I think it’s a great opportunity both for box office success, but also to have an amazingly powerful female superhero.

Dark Horizons >>

Nintendo Wii production has officially ended

Posted on October 22, 2013 by admin

John Callaham

Today marked the end of one of the most successful game consoles in Nintendo’s history. The Wii, which launched in the fall of 2006 with the funny name and the Wii Remote controller, is no longer being made by the company as it tries to made the transition to the more recent Wii U.

Nintendo’s Japanese website has confirmed it has shut down producing new Wii hardware. Nintendo has shipped just over 100 million units of the Wii since its launch, beating the shipment numbers of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. However, both of those consoles are still in production and in theory they could finally overtake the Wii if sales last long enough.

Nintendo had an early success with the Wii; stores all over the world could not keep up with the demand for the first several months after its launch. This was due in part to its low price (just $249 in the U.S) and the fact that the console, at least in some parts of the world, included Wii Sports as a freebie. The game, which also served as a tutorial on how to use the motion-based Wii Remote, became a critically acclaimed title on its own.

Microsoft Phone: Nokia Purchase May Save Phone

Posted on September 22, 2013 by admin

By Lacy Langley

Steve Ballmer is resigning as CEO of Microsoft. He readily admits his company reacted too slowly to developments in the mobile and smartphone markets. He also stated that Microsoft phone sales were disappointing. He was addressing a group of Wall Street investors and analysts, and told them that, with hindsight, he realized that the company had placed too much emphasis on its operating system and missed out on mobile phone opportunities.

Ballmer said, “I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren’t able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone… That is the thing I regret the most. It would have been better for Windows and our success in other foreign factors.”

However, Inquisitr reports that trying to view the situation from a “glass half full” stance, Mr. Ballmer said that for Microsoft mobile the only way to go is up and went on to say that the company has significant opportunities in the market now, due to its recent acquisition of the mobile phone unit of Nokia. He thinks this will allow Microsoft to speed up development on its Windows Phone platform.

Grand Theft Auto V Blows All Other GTAs Away

Posted on September 18, 2013 by admin

By Chris Kohler

Grand Theft Auto V skips all of the preliminaries and gets right to the insanity.

Want to hijack a plane in midair? Smoke some dubious weed and go on a very bad trip? Blow up a meth lab? Stop dreaming and start doing. Grand Theft Auto V, to be released Tuesday for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (reviewed), ramps up fast and doesn’t slow down for anyone.

If you don’t like those early hours of other Grand Theft Auto games, where you have to run dinky fetch quests for low-level gangsters for 10 hours before things get interesting, you won’t have a chance to feel that way about GTA V because it’ll have you robbing banks and jumping trains on a dirt bike faster than you can say “not eligible for parole.” I couldn’t really get into previous games in the series, but I can’t stop playing the fifth.