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Oh Nine, Eff Nine…

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What is the secret code used by the technology and movie industries to prevernt piracy of high-definition movies? It’s a string of 32 digits and letters in a specialized counting system. Anyway, the story is that people are becoming more creative in posting this code.

Keith Burgon, a 24-year old musician from New York, has an improvised soulful melody that details the code.

“I thought it was a source of comedy that they were trying so futilely to quell the spread of this number,” Mr. Burgon said in an interview with The New York Times. It’s posted in YouTube and you can watch it here… Wait… if you want to sing along, here’s the lyrics: “09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0” [Read more…]

Originally posted on May 3, 2007 @ 9:40 am

Chicago Tribune gets local with Triblocal

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triblocal.jpgThe Chicago Tribune announced the introduction of Triblocal, a local community publishing service in two portions of Chicago’s western and southwestern suburbs. Beginning today on triblocal.com, community contributors have the ability to post stories, photos and events about their hometowns and comment on postings from other contributors.

Content and photos from the site will be used to develop a print publication that will debut later this year and be distributed with the Chicago Tribune in those communities. Triblocal editorial staff will provide enhanced coverage of these communities both online and in print.

“We’re constantly working to better serve the changing needs of our readers and their communities,” said Owen Youngman, senior vice president/strategy and development of Chicago Tribune Company. “Triblocal is designed to meet the needs of a growing population who want to share news and information that’s truly relevant to their lives, while also delivering a vital, engaged audience to advertisers.”

Originally posted on April 19, 2007 @ 9:14 am

Votigo launches online social video and photo contest community

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votigo.jpgVotigo, Inc., announced the official launch of its free, online community that allows any business, band, organization or individual to create and customize their own online video or photo contest. Votigo believes strongly in the benefits of online contests as an entertaining way to encourage customer loyalty and build community in a controlled environment.

“Contests provide marketers a great way to engage their customer base and safely participate in social media,” said Mike La Rotonda, CEO and co-founder of Votigo. “Votigo makes it easy for any company, large or small, to set up and customize their own contest in a matter of minutes. And for users creating their own contests, it’s an exciting and fun new way to showcase and share their photos and videos.”

In addition to user-generated contests, Votigo is currently running sponsored contests for several partners including Michael Eisner’s PromQueen, The Motley Fool, and Santa Cruz Snowboards.

Originally posted on April 19, 2007 @ 11:28 am

MySpace News goes after Digg and Netscape… and more

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MySpace today launched its beta version of MySpace News. The new service lets its users determine what items other members see, basically just like how things are done in Digg and Netscape.

Here’s the added feature: MySpace will also scan thousands of Web journals and news sites and group results by categories such as sports and politics. As part of the service, MySpace will pull and display headlines from the outside news sites, a practice that contributed to legal challenges against Google. The search engine leader recently reached a settlement with Agence France-Presse and earlier with The Associated Press.

The new feature uses technology developed by Newroo, which MySpace parent News Corp. bought last year.

Originally posted on April 19, 2007 @ 5:56 pm