Oprah and Bono teamed up this week to promote a partnership between Apple and Bono's Product Red charity campaign. Apple will release a limited edition red iPod Nano as well as a red iTunes gift card, and contribute a portion of the sale of both to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The iPod was unveiled on the Oprah show today. Said Bono: "It's incredible to get these gigantic corporations to get involved…. We're not going to let 6,000 Africans die every day of a preventable, treatable disease. We're not going to do it. It's not American. It's not Irish. It's not English. It's not acceptable."
Ah, the rumors were true. Google purchased YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars, making the three 20-something founders very, very wealthy after launching the start-up only a little over a year ago. All parties involved insist that nothing will change, and that YouTube will remain the youthful, underground rebel of amateur video. But already there are questions of copyright infringement, advertising, and integration with Google Video, now that the site is owned by the corporate giant. The startup, however, remains hopeful: "While there are still a lot of things to be hashed out over the coming months, many of the obstacles that used to stand in the way of us delivering you the best possible product have now been removed. And for all of you who have complained about our sucky search, well you can bet that will change. :)"
This week Palm unveiled its Treo 680, an updated version of the popular Treo smart phone with new multimedia capabilities, a lower price tag, and fun colors. For all things Palm, check out PalmAddicts, a blog run by Towleroad reader Sammy McLoughlin, which offers news updates and podcasts. The Towleroad T-shirt recently made an appearance in Sammy's latest podcast. Thanks Sammy!
Stepping up airport security: a new concept is being test for integrating RFID technology with airport surveillance security. Every passenger could be tagged with a radio-frequency transmitter upon checking in, so that they could be monitored anywhere in the airport. "The tags could aid security by allowing airports to track the movement patterns of passengers deemed to be suspicious and prevent them from entering restricted areas." And yet once you're deemed to be a non-threat, they still lose your luggage.
With video games more popular than ever, a new game lets users map their own face onto the character they are controlling.
The XBox war game Rainbow Six Vegas uses a web cam to take two photos
of the user's face and then maps them onto the automatic-weapon wielding
soldier. Cool concept in general; creepy for a war game, if you ask me.
Daniel Williford is our TowleTech correspondent.
You can visit him at his blog, Until Today…
