digital media

Online games, social-networking Web sites, and chat rooms are empowering and motivating for teens and help with their development, according to a study released Thursday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting. The study covered three years and 5,000 hours of observing teens online.

The report is part of a $50 million initiative to investigate how digital media affect the way teenagers learn and socialize. Twenty-eight researchers conducted the study.

Online games, social-networking Web sites, and chat rooms are empowering and motivating for teens and help with their development, according to a study released Thursday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting. The study covered three years and 5,000 hours of observing teens online.

The report is part of a $50 million initiative to investigate how digital media affect the way teenagers learn and socialize. Twenty-eight researchers conducted the study.

Wasting Time?

Asian pirates are producing counterfeit copies of copyrighted Blu-ray Disc videos. A recent raid on counterfeiters in southern China has prompted the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to warn consumers about counterfeit movies.

Pirates are using software to create imitation Blu-ray disks with a format called AVCHD, which allows both high-definition and standard-definition recording. The format is used in tapeless camcorders that record onto DVD and Blu-ray disks. For high definition, all major variations are supported, including 720p, 1080i and 1080p.

I spent the morning and part of the afternoon at an interesting gathering in Washington DC of folks who are trying to learn about digital media and the evolution of interaction online. Unlike other events where they separate content into tracks to allow people to optimize their time, everything is in one big session. As a result, half the after lunch crowd looks suitably confused by listening to a presentation about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) - and the other half looked extremely confused this morning by the earlier presentations about design.

Will a small microSD card save the album/CD music format? That's the provocative question raised by SanDisk, which announced Monday that it has struck deals with music-industry leaders to release DRM-free MP3 music on slotMusic cards.

Will a small microSD card save the album/CD music format? That's the provocative question raised by SanDisk, which announced Monday that it has struck deals with music-industry leaders to release DRM-free MP3 music on slotMusic cards.

A new deal between Microsoft and Cray may speak to major changes in the supercomputing market in the years ahead.

The companies on Tuesday introduced the Cray CX1 supercomputer. It comes preinstalled with Windows HPC Server 2008, and the various models carry price tags that range from $25,000 to more than $60,000.

The digital-content landscape could look very different in the months ahead if a group of more than 20 companies has its way.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), a consortium that includes seemingly all the major players except Apple, officially announced Monday plans to define and build a new digital-media framework using industry standards. The goal is to allow consumers to acquire and play content across a wide range of services and devices.

Given that he was ousted from the top job at a struggling AOL, Jonathan F. Miller might not seem a natural candidate to advise its Internet rival Yahoo Inc. But Miller was instrumental in transforming AOL into an advertising company, giving him expertise in a field Yahoo must master.

In his four-plus years as chairman and chief executive of Time Warner Inc.'s AOL LLC, Miller made key acquisitions, including Advertising.com for $435 million in 2004, along with a crucial decision to shed AOL's roots in dial-up Internet access and give away content once reserved for paying subscribers.

Google Inc. said Wednesday that it will partner with filmmaker Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. to share revenue from ads that Google places on YouTube clips from the studio's movies.

The deal will put advertising on clips uploaded by users and by the studio itself from Lions Gate movies such as the "Saw" horror series and "Dirty Dancing."

The deal would make Lions Gate the second major moviemaker to try to profit from the popularity of online movie clips.