Articles by Paul Hartsock

Samsung, like a whole lot of other TV makers displaying their wares at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, is emphasizing the Web capabilities of its new TVs. Among those features is what Yahoo calls the "cinematic Internet," which allows television viewers to use the remote control, rather than something like a wireless mouse an...

Steve Ballmer's presentation Wednesday evening at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was free of the dancing, screaming, sweaty antics he's sometimes known for when he takes the stage at conferences and conventions. Instead, the Microsoft CEO's first CES opening keynote speech laid out his company's vision for the year ahead as Microsoft and its many hardware partners gird for a bleak consumer spending landscape.

Toshiba kicked off its CES press conference by reminding the audience of the ad space it bought right underneath the ball at last week's New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square. Perhaps the company liked the idea of kissing 2008 good-bye -- it was around this time a year ago that Warner Bros. decamped from Toshiba's HD-DVD format, and a month later HD-DVD crumbled completely. CES 2008 couldn't have been the happiest of times...

Wires will find few friends in Las Vegas this week. Companies showing off their wares at CES are committed to cutting the cord and going wireless, whether you're talking about home network connections or high-definition TV content Wireless HD was one highlight of LG's showcase here Wednesday morning. The company showed off technology that uses a 60...

As of a few nights ago, it was still possible to get a room at a decent place on the Las Vegas strip at a bargain rate. That was a good sign for travelers but a bad sign for the Consumer Electronics Show -- not to mention the city's hospitality industry. When everything falls into place, CES is supposed to fill hotels, casinos, restaurants, clubs and taxis to capacity.

Nintendo developers really had no choice but to make the Wii controllers wireless. Whipping around a Wiimote that's wired to the console, which is wired to the TV, which is wired to the wall -- it's just a recipe for domestic calamity So the Wiimote is very thankfully wireless (though you should still be careful of that cord that connects the nunch...

Odd couple Google and Yahoo late on Friday reportedly opted to delay their proposed partnership, under which Google would essentially devour part of Yahoo's advertising business and create an online ad behemoth that critics say no rival could possibly compete against On Thursday, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., the chairman of the U.S. Senate Antitrust Sub...

It looks like recording labels are willing to give music away for free if it means not having to deal with iTunes -- the No. 1 online music vendor and the No. 2 nemesis of music execs, due to its rigid pricing. While iTunes is clean and easy to use, it's also pretty sterile. If you know what you want, you'll probably find it there, and you can buy...

When it first came out, the main thing that drew me to the Nintendo Wii was its potential for first-person shooter (FPS) games. Finally, here was a console on which I could play a "Metroid Prime" game despite my infirmity By my infirmity, I mean my inability to play an FPS game with any degree of skill or finesse without the aid of some sort of mot...

At its E3 press event, Sony Computer Entertainment of America opened up a new platform for its PlayStation Store on the PlayStation Network -- a movie and TV show download service. It wasn't announced at the end of the event to create some big closer, and it wasn't accompanied by a bombastic demo like some of the upcoming games the company preview...

Microsoft added another capability to the Xbox 360's stable of entertainment functions Monday in a partnership with Netflix that will allow users to watch streaming movies and TV shows through the Internet-connected video game console The feature, which will launch this fall, will be available to Xbox Live Gold members who are also Netflix subscrib...

Beaumont, Texas, has become the testing ground for a new way to charge Internet users for access. It's meant to make heavy users pay more Time Warner will begin rolling out an experimental program that will meter users' Web usage and bill them extra if they download or upload more than a set amount of data....

It was Monday morning, and Haiyong Xie was running late. His flight to Los Angeles had been delayed, and then he had to face LA's beastly morning traffic. Xie, of Yale University, was on his way to the P2P Media Summit at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel to take part in a panel discussion about the P4P Working Group (P4PWG). The group's sponsor, the Digital Computing Industry Association (DCIA), was the host of the event...

The online delivery of movies and TV content is encumbered by a tangle of digital rights management, copyright and technological issues. The cell phone's proper place in the whole landscape is one of many difficult questions the industry's trying to sort out With its new offering, CinemaNow proposes that the cell phone work as a sort of portable bo...

Costco and Sam's Club arerationing rice. Friday's reported incident in the Persian Gulf probably has more than a few individuals of a paranoid persuasion stocking up on gasoline. And to top it all off, Microsoft's cutoff date for Windows XP is coming in two months, a decision that's left over 165,000 fans of the OS so upset that they were willing to devote a full three seconds of their lives to sign an online petition to save XP...

Fuel cell technology is often associated with cars, specifically the next generation of automobiles that won't run on gasoline, juice from a wall socket or any combination of the two. Instead, fuel cell cars will run on highly efficient hydrogen and put out next to nothing in the way of emissions Making that a reality won't be easy, though. Getting...

Last year, when Viacom visited YouTube andspotted shows from MTV, Comedy Central and other content producers it owns, it decided to act quickly -- and the only quick reaction a company of Viacom's size is capable of in that sort of situation is to sue Only after many months did other giant TV networks put the finishing touches onHulu, a site that d...

There's an "elephant on the stage," commented BusinessWeek columnist Steve Wildstrom as he kicked off theTech Policy Summit here in Hollywood, Calif Although several telecommunication companies have representatives in attendance, and although the FCC's 700 MHz spectrum auction concluded recently, the companies involved aren't yet permitted to divul...

Having your private information leaked is bad enough, but having it put on BitTorrent is really the final insult Ithappened before with MySpace photos. By most accounts, the private images made available earlier this year via peer-to-peer networks consisted largely of poorly snapped photos of people you didn't know getting drunk at parties you were...

My sympathies to those out there who used last month's announcements from T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon as an excuse to quickly jump ship from Sprint Nextel and sign a contract with someone else for an all-you-can-eat talk plan at US$100 a month. Sprint was the only major U.S. wireless carrier that day to not offer a similar deal Turns out it was bidi...