Bust! screens in Austria

I have some exciting news! Bust!, a docu-fiction film that I recently edited, will screen as a work in progress today in Linz, Austria. It is gearing up for the festival circuit and is sure to grab people's attention and stimulate some good conversation and self reflection. It is a movie about women's relationships with their breasts. It explores society's sexualization of breasts and presents perspectives from several woman who reveal what their breasts mean to them. Bust! is directed and produced by Jenny L. Hanson from Sprouted Wolf Productions in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hopefully it will soon be at a film festival near you!

Disney Scores One for Blu-Ray

"Disney just announced a new incentive with some of its Blu-ray titles, and it just might be enticing enough to some parents out there. On September 19, the studio will release its first discs in the format, and two of them, Dinosaur and Eight Below, will feature exclusive short films shot in HD specifically for inclusion on the discs. One month later, three more of their titles, Glory Road, Gone in Sixty Seconds and The Haunted Mansion, will also come with their own shorts." [Source: Cinematical]

A Wireless Minneapolis

Want to learn more about community-wide WiFi in Minneapolis? Go see what Peter Fleck has to say about it. He's been going to the Digital Inclusion Coalition meetings in Minneapolis and publishes his meeting notes on his blog.

The Rise of the Socially-Integrated Media Empire

"With his acquisition of MySpace, Murdoch has gone down a new path… a new dimension of strategic corporate development that I like to call “social integration”. Just as the name implies, social integration targets the ownership of critical assets in the social media supply chain (e.g. social networks like MySpace or People Aggregator, socially-programmed video services like YouTube or VideoEgg, social photo services like Photobucket or Flickr, socially-curated news sites like Digg or Newsvine, etc.). But in a radical departure from the old vertical and horizontal integration strategies of traditional media, social integration recognizes the fact that social media, by definition, shifts much of the media supply functions directly into the hands of the audience itself. In other words, with social media, the consumers are in control of production, programming, and distribution..." [Source: GigaOm]

SageTV Brings PlaceShifting To Linux

"SageTV, an Oakbrook Terrace , IL-based personal entertainment software company will announce SageTV Media Center for Linux V5 with place shifting features and Media Extender support later this week, sources say... Place shifting allows users to take their current television feed and view it over an Internet connection in remote locations, such as hotel rooms. Place shifting was first introduced to the market by Sling Media of San Mateo, California..." [Source: Om Malik]

To Google or Not to Google

It's official: Google really is a verb now. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which bills itself as "The definitive record of the English language," added the company name as a verb in the latest round of updates, placing Google in such august company as FedEx, TiVo, and Xerox... (read more...)

Saint Paul Fireworks

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The Saint Paul Minnesota July 3rd Fireworks seen from outside the Science Museum.

Cell phone talkers as bad as drunk drivers

People who talk on cell phones while driving, even using "hands-free" devices, are as impaired as drunk drivers, researchers said Thursday. [MSNBC: Reuters]