’30 Days of Coldplay’ to Launch July 15 on XM

GRAMMY Award-winning band Coldplay will have a dedicated channel on XM Radio, it was announced today. Beginning July 15, the month-long channel, “30 Days of Coldplay” (XM 51), will provide fans with music from the Coldplay catalog, including import-only released tracks and other hard-to-find recordings and tracks from their new album, an uncut, exclusive concert broadcast from the Viva La Vida North American Tour, plus other live performances, interviews and more. Viva La Vida, the band’s fifth full-length album was released in the U.S. last week and holds the record for the biggest number of pre-sales on iTunes. Their Viva La Vida North American Tour kicks off in Los Angeles on June 29.

“Coldplay is one of the most successful bands of the last decade, winning over fans across the musical spectrum with their unique sound and superb musicianship,” said Eric Logan, executive vice president of programming, XM. “With broadcasts of live performances, interviews and the band’s musical catalog, “30 Days of Coldplay” will offer an unparalleled Coldplay experience for both die-hard fans and those who are curious to hear what everyone is talking about.”

Since the band’s formation in London 10 years ago, Coldplay has risen to become one of most popular music acts of the decade, selling more than 30 million albums and winning five GRAMMY Awards. After surfacing in 2000 with the breakthrough single “Yellow,” Coldplay quickly became one of the biggest bands of the new millennium. Parachutes went multi-platinum and earned the band their first Grammy. In 2002, Coldplay released sophomore album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, winning Grammy Awards for “Clocks” and “In My Place.” Coldplay’s third album, X&Y was released in 2005, followed by their latest album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends.

“30 Days of Coldplay” (XM 51) will be available on XM from July 15 through August 15. Programming information will be available online soon at http://www.xmradio.com/coldplay.

Genius announces new touch speaker system for $99

Genius, a division of KYE Systems Corp., announced today a new speaker system that has a touch panel screen to control function, volume, bass or treble all with the touch of a finger. Combing fun with great sound, everything is controlled right from the front of the speaker. The adjustable light for the slide bar illuminates when adjustments are made to the SP-T1200, creating a high-tech look and feel. The compact size, mixed with 30-watt sound, make these speakers the perfect companion for laptops and notebooks of all kinds.

Priced at $99.00 MSRP, the 2.0 Touch Speaker System comes in black-onyx for a contemporary look and feel. Perfect for gaming or listening to music in-between class or while on the road, these new speakers are easy and fun to use. The touch panel speaker also features a jack for headphones, audio cable and an accessible “mute” button to turn off the sound when needed. The SP-T1200 are currently available at New Egg.com, Amazon.com, Mac Mall, Tiger Direct, Buy.com or other retailers and distributors listed at http://www.geniusnetusa.com/buy.php.

Splashcast HotSpot

No this isn’t a new T-Mobile technology, it’s Splashcast silly! Splashcast is a company with its eyes set on building an interactive widget based multimedia service. It has been a while since they’ve released a new feature, but today is literally marks a new slate for Splashcast.

Not only did they introduce a new feature, they’ve completely redesigned their intuitive console. The console is where users create Channels, Shows, and upload their items. The new console layout makes Splashcast even easier to use. It is by far one of the most simple control schemes for any media service out there!

Splashcast’s new feature, HotSpots allows users to add a box within their media that can pop up an image or SWF file. On top of that the file can be linked to a third-party URL.

Video producers will be able to provide a new way for users to interact with their video. Additionally, advertisers will definitely get a kick out of the possibility for mega-product placement. In this world were no one has a definite answer to making BIG BUCKS in the online video realm, it’ll be very interesting to see how this affects Splashcast.

Currently Splashcast does not have an advertiser network of any kind for its video producers. So will it have to be up to video producers to find the advertisers and try to get them to place ads in their videos? How would that model exactly benefit Splashcast?

I’m still messing around with this HotSpot technology. Currently pictures from Facebook are not being recognized. Hopefully Splashcast will be able to fix this bug soon!

StuffWeLike uses Splashcast for its social network widgets: Facebook and MySpace. Click here for our previous coverage of Splashcast. You can see HotSpot in action below:

MGS Retrospective complete – Gametrailers.com

For those who have been keeping an eye on the backstory for Metal Gear Solid GameTrailers.com has updated their retrospective series. It includes now not only the older console titles but also the handheld titles and finally a total game summary including the stories from all the previous titles in one single retrospective part. While the download size is not small at 100mb each part one cannot pass up watching this video series if interested in Metal Gear.
Continue reading “MGS Retrospective complete – Gametrailers.com”

Youtube Uploads 1024 megabytes!!!

Youtube has increased the maximum upload capacity for videos from 100 megabytes to 1024 megabytes! This increase will allow for some major high resolution videos to be viewed on the mega-video site. Additionally video producers can upload multiple videos at once using an extra downloadable software pack.

Videos still have the 10 minute cap.

In other related news Youtube launched a new feature called Youtube Annotations.

[Update]

I’ve uploaded a 800 megabyte file onto YouTube:

Looks like crap. Click on the video and read its description for more information. I guess higher resolution videos won’t come from higher storage upload.