Maybe it was Verizon’s most recent in-court request to stop serving up costly airwaves for which it couldn’t pay, maybe it was the cold reality that it’ll allegedly have a mere $9,000 in the bank as of next Monday — but at any rate, Amp’d Mobile appears ready to throw in the towel. The Verizon-serviced MVNO today filed with a bankruptcy judge to sell substantially all of its assets at auction after discovering that it was unable to line up debtor-in-possession financing, likely setting the stage for a full shutdown in the next few days. After launching less than two years ago to considerable fanfare and burning through a healthy $360 million, it’s pretty shocking to see it all go down with such a whimper — but hey, if you’re looking to pick up a Q on the cheap — that may or may not work on any other network, that is — this may just be your chance.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Share This

The HD DVD Promotional Group recently claimed that 74% of the market share for European high-definition DVD players is held by HD DVD, but the Blu-ray Disc Association points out that they conveniently “forgot” to include PS3s and PC drives in their count. Including those puts Blu-ray in the lead instead, with almost 95% of hardware sales. HD DVD lobbyists contend that most who buy game consoles don’t even use them for watching high-def movies, while everyone who bought an HD DVD player will do exactly that. The fact that the PS3 is still basically cheaper than many of the standalone high-def players (Blu-ray or HD DVD) means it’s not exactly honest to discount them completely either. All we know is that the format war continues, but as long as prices continue to fall, it’s tough for the average consumer to complain about that.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

It’s not much, but for the desperate throngs waiting to TiVo in high def without having to fork over nearly a grand for the Series3, the brief appearance of the $300 TiVo HD on TiVo’s site earlier this afternoon was a little bit of glory… until the listing got pulled. We don’t know who you are, anonymous-and-possibly-reprimanded TiVo web guy, but rest assured you just caused a million anxious DVR-loving hearts to skip a beat.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Although it’s still not clear if Stephen Colbert was forced to actually shell out some hard-earned cash in order to procure his very own iPhone, one thing is certain: he finally owns one. The comedic talking head announced (and shamelessly boasted about) his new toy in a clip dubbed “March to Enslavement,” where he made the not-so-wild prediction that one day we’d all bow to the robots we eagerly create. ‘Course, that may be somewhat of a stretch, but the potentially forthcoming Apple iEye contraption may be closer to reality than we humans would like to believe. Frightened? Wait ’til you take a peek of it after the break…

[Thanks, Dylan]

Continue reading Stephen Colbert gets an iPhone, warns of impending iEye release

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Share This

When working on a WordPress blog, posts often take center stage. However, the comments are often just as important - they create valuable discussion. And yet the default WordPress comment box is simplistic and uninspiring - here are Mashable’s favorite comment-focused WordPress plugins that can eliminate spam, improve the appearance of comments, and add more value to your posts.

Fight Spam

Akismet - Antispam plugin from the creators of Wordpress that uses a central database of spam comments to flag spam. Requires a free API key from Wordpress.com

Spam Karma - Analyzes comments for spam based on a karma system.

Bad Behavior - Prevents spambots from even accessing your site by analyzing their HTTP requests.

Did You Pass Math? - Asks commenters a simple math question before their comments are posted.

Comment Timeout - Closes comments on old posts.

Encourage Commenting

BlogFollow - Shows a snippet of the commenter’s blog at the bottom of the comment.

DoFollow - Removes “nofollow” attributes from links in comments so search engines can follow them.

DoFollow Trackbacks - Removes “nofollow” attributes from trackbacks

Show Top Commentators - Lists the most frequent commentators on your blog, along with links to their blogs, in your sidebar.

Improve appearance

Nicer Trackbacks - Improves the appearance of trackbacks from other blogs.

WP-NoSh*t - Filters bad words from comments.

Numbered Comments Adds numbers to comments.

AuthorHighlight - Highlights comments by the blog’s author.

Comment Highlighter - Styles comments based on the author’s name, email, or URL.

wp-chunk - Truncates long URLs in comments to prevent them from stretching the page.

Enable rich comments

Custom Smileys - Adds clickable smiley emoticons to comments.

TinyMCEComments - Turns the comment box into a full-featured rich text editor.

Live Comment Preview - Allows readers to preview their comment before posting.

Edit Comments XT - Lets commentators edit their own comments.

Enable avatars

Gravatar - Displays user-selected avatars from a central database next to comments.

Favatars - Pulls the favicon from a commenter’s blog or website, and uses that for their avatar.

MBLA - Adds user images from MyBlogLog to comments.

OpenID Comments - Lets readers comment with their OpenID identity.

Show off comments

WP-Most Commented Posts - Displays posts with the most comments in the sidebar.

Latest Comments with Avatars Reloaded - Shows the latest comments, along with the MyBlogLog avatars of the commenters.

Allow better conversation

Simple CoComments - Tracks the conversation across blogs.

Comment Karma - Digg-style voting on comments.

Quoter - Allows users to quote a previous comment in their comment.

Whisper - Lets users “whisper” comments that are only visible to one person.

Moderate comments effectively

Comment Twitter SMS Notification - Notifies you of new comments through Twitter SMS.

Bannage - Adds the ability to ban users from commenting by name, email, or IP.

CommentCentral - Allows batch opening and closing of comments on multiple posts.

(more…)

CinemaNow, fine purveyor of downloadable film and TV content, has recently updated its Media Manager support for Vista, allowing you to use its Burn-to-DVD service, and enabling your Xbox 360 to act as a bridge from your PC to your TV — adding an interesting new option to the media center sphere. So starting right now, you can download and watch your favorite movies and television shows without ever having to let go of the Xbox controller, which could be detrimental to your relationships, but really good for catching up on any episodes of 24 you might have missed.

[Thanks, James B]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Share This

A website that should likely be dubbed “Hollywood in Blu-ray” rather than “Hollywood in Hi-Def” has recently emerged, and while it claims to be a more reputable site than those “other promotional portals,” we aren’t buying it. The site — which is purportedly backed by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment — includes the latest happenings in the BD universe as well as plenty of fluff to get you drooling over its silky smooth image quality. Notably, the site tends to address the desires of both early adopters and those just now taking interest in the format, and the running list of upcoming Blu-ray titles is indeed a nice extra. So go on, tag the read link to see what it’s all about, but don’t say we didn’t warn you when you’re overcome with Blu.

[Via VideoBusiness]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Here’s an interesting one. While just about every citizen in Europe twiddles their thumbs and awaits an iPhone announcement for their side of the pond, more than a few impatient souls have been looking for ways to utilize the device in their homeland right away. Most recently, however, is an intriguing report that a US-sourced iPhone is functioning fine (save for the lack of visual voicemail) on Vodafone after a user swapped an AT&T SIM card into an O2 XDA, had the carrier add it to his current contract, and then stuffed the now-Vodafone-compliant AT&T SIM back into the iPhone. Interestingly, hordes of IRC participants are balking at the story, suggesting that SIM numbers are network specific and that Vodafone should not have been able to pull off the aforementioned feat of magic. Hmm, we wonder if Vodafone’s bubbling excitement to get ahold of Apple’s handset could have anything to do with it?

Read - US iPhone works with Vodafone
Read - Vodafone “looks forward” to 3G iPhone

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Share This

These rumors just keep popping up from all over the interwebs, and with Apple, persistent rumors often lead to real product. As we’ve mentioned time and time and time again, all signs point to a new iPhone revision later this year, either in the US, Europe, or both. To add fuel to the fire, AppleInsider has posted that an extremely reputable source reports that the Apple roadmap for 2007 does indeed show two distinct handsets. Touted as a scaled back version of the iPod, the “nano” would focus on music and offer basic cellular features — so you can likely kiss web surfing and mail goodbye. All this makes sense if you look back on the iPod’s original launch: the 5 and 10 GB models were out within 4 months of each other, with a hardware refresh 4 months after that. If they stick to a comparable timeline, perhaps the 3G — if there will be a 3G — will land in early ‘08. We’re hoping that the nano name doesn’t stick, though; how about the Apple iBashful?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Share This

What we’re watching: HBO’s Sunday night lineup is the spot, with John from Cincinnati and Entourage in their usual places.

Our traditional high-def listings continue below.

Here are some other HDTV programs showing on selected networks today. All times are Eastern and reruns are in italics, premieres & finales in bold:

ABC (720p): Desperate Housewives (9 p.m.), Brothers and Sisters (10 p.m.)

CBS (1080i): Cold Case (9 p.m.), Shark (10 p.m.)

NBC (1080i): Law & Order (9 p.m.), Law & Order: SVU (10 p.m.)

Fox (720p): ’til Death (7 p.m.)

CW (1080i): Reba (7 p.m.), Supernatural (9 p.m.)

TNT-HD (1080i): The Bourne Supremacy (6 p.m.), Ocean’s Eleven (8 & 10:30 p.m.)

Discovery-HD (1080i):Sunrise Earth (7 p.m.), Koppel on Discovery (8 & 11 p.m.), Targeting Terror (9 p.m.), Battleground: Art of War (10 p.m.)

ESPN-HD (720p): SportsCenter (6 & 11 p.m.), Baseball Tonight (7 p.m.), MLB: Cardinals vs. Braves (8 p.m.),

ESPN2-HD (720p): NHRA Nationals (7 p.m.), 2007 World Series of Poker (10 & 11 p.m.),

Mojo HD(1080i): Korn: Live on the Other Side (7 p.m.), Three Sheets (9 p.m.), Beer Nutz (9:30 p.m.), Uncorked with Billy Merritt (10 p.m.), After Hours w/ Daniel (10:30 p.m.), London Live (11 & 11:30 p.m.)

HDNet (1080i): NASCAR Grand National Racing (8 p.m.), True Music w/ Katie Daryl (9:30 p.m.), Sound Off with Matt Pinfield (10 p.m.), Cross Canadian Ragweed - Back to Tulsa: Live and Loud at Cain’s Ballroom (10:30
p.m.)

HDNet Movies (1080i): Kelly’s Heroes (7:30 p.m.), The Eiger Sanction (10 p.m.)

Universal HD (1080i): Patch Adams (8 p.m.), Monk (10 p.m.), The Pianist (11 p.m.)

HBO-HD (1080i): Big Love (8 p.m.), John from Cincinnati (9 p.m.), Entourage (10 p.m.), My Super Ex-Girlfriend (11 p.m.)

Showtime-HD (1080i): In the Mix (7:15 p.m.), Dexter (9 p.m.), Meadowlands (10 & 11 p.m.)

MAX-HD (1080i): Superman Returns (7:15 p.m.), Miami Vice (10 p.m.)

STZ HD (1080i): RV (7:15 p.m.), Little Man (9 p.m.), The Guardian (10:45 p.m.)

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This