BitTorrent, a name commonly known synonymously with video piracy, today has relaunched their service to provide legal downloads of feature length movies with the support of major studios.

BitTorrent plans on offering “the most comprehensive library of downloadable digital entertainment ever amassed on the Web,” according to a statement by the company. Agreements that BitTorrent has made with 20th Century Fox, Viacom, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer makes it seems as if this statement may just be accurate. The digital entertainment company plans to start out with over 5,000 “downloadable” media items, including movies, TV shows, PC games and music.

Aside from offering digital entertainment downloads from the studios, they will also offer a video sharing service to allow customers to share their home made video for free, similar to YouTube. “The BitTorrent Entertainment Network is created by and for the BitTorrent …

LucasFilm, the company that “Star Wars” creator George Lucas owns, has filed a trademark infringement suit against the owners of Digg.com, the popular social networking website. The complaint alleges that Digg infringes on the copyright of a 1995 LucasArts adventure video game titled “The Dig”, and that Digg.com is treading on their valuable IP turf.

“THE DIGG mark is confusingly similar in sound, meaning, and appearance to the Opposer’s THE DIG mark,” reads the LucasFilm Notice of Opposition document filed last month in San Francisco. “The Applicant’s registration and use of the DIGG Mark would likely create confusion, mistake, or deception in the minds of prospective purchasers as to the origin or source of the Opposer’s Goods associated with THE DIG Mark.” In short, LucasFilm is saying that there are still people out there that want …

As people that put on frequent air mileage know, making and taking international calls on your cell phone can be a chore at the best of times and impossible at the worst of times. The people at National Geographic certainly have first-hand experience with this frustration, with their video teams traveling to the furthest regions of the globe, so who better to try and solve this dilemma than them?

National Geograhic and Playa del Rey-based Cellular Abroad have come up with a solution with the National Georgraphic Talk Abroad Travel Phone, a quad band GSM cell phone that is designed specifically for people traveling globally who need dependable and affordable talk access. In addition to providing coverage in over 100 countries, you don’t need to sign a contract to own one of these units and you can pay as you go …

TiVo and Amazon.com have announced a new service that will allow TiVo Subscribers to watch Movies and TV Shows downloaded from Amazon Unbox on Their TVs.

With “Amazon Unbox on TiVo”, subscribers will have the ability to rent and purchase movies and television shows. Television shows will cost $1.99 per episode and most movies will range between $9.99 and $14.99 for purchase with movie rentals starting at $1.99. The current list of supported major studios includes CBS, Fox Entertainment Group, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros.

Once live, subscribers will be able to activate the service on Amazon.com to establish a link between their TiVo Series2 or Series3 box. Once the service has been activated, eligible movies and television shows can be downloaded directly to the TiVo box. Downloaded content will automatically appear in the “Now Playing” list …

MUX is a any-to-any video conversion service that allows you to convert video files to different formats. The service allows you to convert to and from Quicktime (mov), MPEG-4 (mp4), Flash Video (flv), Windows Media (wmv), MPEG-1/2 (mpg), Windows AVI (avi), and Mobile 3gp (3gp).

In order to MUX a video, you provide a link to the video file and select the format you would like the video converted to. MUX will then give you a converted video in the size, bitrate, and frames per second that you specified. The conversion takes a couple minutes and the service will notify you when it is finished at the email address you entered. The email you receive contains a URL to your converted video.

I was able to convert a video on YouTube to a Quicktime file pretty easily. I selected the Rolling Rock Thong Ad …

Verizon Wireless has unveiled a new Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) Rev. A upgrade to their high speed broadband service. This upgrade will allow wireless customers to enjoy faster broadband speeds which they can access through the USB720 EV-DO USB wireless modem adapter which was also recently launched by Verizon. The USB modem provides wireless broadband internet access to notebooks desktops and hand held devices with a USB interface.

This upgrade is a strategic answer to the same service offered by Sprint and launched last year. EV-DO Rev A. is the fastest wireless network available to consumers in the US, which allows not only fast download speeds but has impressive upload speeds as well. Users of the new broadband service will have typical speeds of 450-800 kbps down, and 300-400 kbps up.

The USB720 measures 3.52 x 1.49 x .69 inches and is compatible …

TeleFlip is a service that allows all mobile phones to receive e-mail, calendar alerts, and online content feeds. The service is free and consumers will be able to receive up to 5,000 e-mails from any e-mail account to any mobile phone regardless of their wireless carrier or mobile handset.

What makes TeleFlip unique is that it doesn’t require any special hardware to configure or software to install. To use the service, you add your mobile phone number and e-mail address at the TeleFlip Web site. The TeleFlip system then delivers your emails to your phone thereby eliminating the complexities associated with receiving e-mails through a carrier’s network.

Some of the specifics of TeleFlip include:

The service is free. Users can “TeleFlip” up to 5,000 messages monthly.
No hardware, software, or specialized service needed.
TeleFlip is compatible with all existing mobile handsets and every wireless …

Palm has recently announced the availability of Microsoft’s Direct Push technology with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for the Palm Treo 680 and Treo 700p running the Palm OS.

The Palm Treo’s have been able to sync up email information through the Palm VeraMail client, but this offering allows the Palm OS on the Treo’s to take advantage of the Direct Push technology from Microsoft which allows automatic wireless updates of emails, calendar items and contacts.

“Extending Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology to the Palm OS based line of Treo smartphones gives business customers a powerful new choice for wireless email, security and manageability,” said Joe Fabris, director of wireless solutions, at Palm, Inc. “This combination delivers the benefits of business-class email without the cost of additional infrastructure required by other middleware-based solutions, ensuring a fast return on …

Google is partaking in a multi-year project in conjunction with University of Texas at Austin to digitize more than one million books from the universities libraries. This extends on a deal they had made starting in 2004 with five other libraries – the universities of Oxford, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library. This is a massive, massive job that Google is undertaking, but Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe stated an important fact at an invite-only event called ‘Unbound’ held recently at the New York public library, ‘The majority of information lies outside the Internet.’

Redmer went on to describe the project Google is undertaking, “We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online.” This project has been under some scrutiny …

iCache is a new gadget on the market trying to gain some adoption with the intention of consolidating your credit card data and adding a little security as well.

The iCache device is able to house the data from all your credit cards, debit cards and basically anything with a magnetic stripe. Once the information is saved it’s secured by a biometric fingerprint scanner on the front. Whenever a credit card is needed for a purchase, users can select the appropriate card from the menu on the iCache gadget and the magnetic stripe on the iCache credit card will be temporarily encoded with the appropriate swipe data. The iCache device can also display bar codes and communicate information with Contactless terminals.

This all seems pretty slick, especially for those with a number of credit cards. If you lose this device the bar code …

Yahoo introduced its “Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0″ mobile tools collection at the CES yesterday. A key component to Yahoo’s mobile strategy is search and Yahoo hopes to gain ground in the crucial search market with its OneSearch product.

The product is still in beta, it is available for download. The Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 is an application that consists of a series of “widgets” that are built for easy usage on a mobile device. Besides search, users can access other Yahoo services like Flickr, e-mail, maps, weather and finance each have a dedicated widget.

Although less than 5% of mobile users surf the web from their phones, many companies are trying to position themselves for the anticipated rapid growth in the mobile applications market. Some experts believe growth of mobile …

Placeblogger.com is a recently launched searchable index of localized blogs. Searching or browsing Placeblogger will help you discover and subscribe to blogs that cover news and events for a particular neighborhood, city, town, or region.

Placeblogger consists of sites known as Placeblogs. Placeblogs are websites that pay “sustained attention to a particular place over time.” Placeblogs are also known as “hyperlocal sites”, because they focus on news, events, and information for a particular geographical area.

The current top 10 Placeblogs include:

1. Baristanet, Montclair, NJ
2. Edhat, Santa Barbara, CA
3. Fresno Famous, Fresno, CA
4. Westport Now, Westport, CT
5. ChiTown Daily News, Chicago, IL
6. New Haven Independent, New Haven, CT
7. Gotham Gazette, New York, NY
8. Philly Future, Philadelphia, PA
9. …

After some misinterpreted data on falling iTunes sales earlier this month, recent reports from CNN.com are saying that this iTunes sales continue to do quite the opposite.

According to reports, over the holiday season the iTunes store was receiving so much traffic that users were experiencing delays and at times where even unable to download music from the iTunes website. According to Hitwise, iTunes had received four times the amount of traffic during Christmas than it did at the same time the previous year.

“What you’re seeing is the tremendous success of the iPod,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director with JupiterResearch. “No doubt it was a very, very popular gift, and no matter how well you plan on the server side of the equation, there are always times when you get caught short.”

Although many people had reported having trouble …

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is teaming up with Amazon.com to create a new search engine that is planned to rival the likes of Google and Yahoo according to reports from the Times Online.

Wales states that his search engine would be of value and provide more accurate search results by having the power of human reviewers to rank web sites. Google uses an completely automated algorithm which rates the value of a web site by the number of links pointing to it, among a number of other things. Even though Google does a good job of producing accurate results most of the time it can still be tricked and spammers take advantage of this from time to time. Wales stated he feels it will be easier for the human reviews to quickly and more accurately evaluate good web …

Obopay has announced that its mobile payment service is now available to Helio members. Helio’s hip, young, and connected members will now have the power to easily get, send and spend money directly from their mobile phone.

Obopay’s mobile payment service provides mobile customers with a real-time, secure, mobile peer-to-peer payment service, which is linked to an Obopay Prepaid MasterCard account. The prepaid MasterCard cards are accepted at 24 million merchant locations and over 1.1 million ATMS around the world.

With the service, Helio members are able to manage their Obopay accounts from a mobile application residing on their phone. They can check balances, view payment histories, and add funds – all remotely. Users will also have access to advanced mobile device personalization features such as contact list integration and specialized ring tones.

This is a significant announcement for the mobile payment domain. With Obopay on Helio, …