Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

There's probably nothing quite as embarrassing as being ambushed on national television by Chris Hansen for stealing a measly iPod. Of course, NBC's crack team of journalists are just trying to expose the growing trend of iPod theft in the world... or kick up their ratings. In a bizarre and somewhat convoluted "hidden camera" scheme, Dateline nabs thieves at their own game by allowing them to steal new iPods bundled with a "special" install disc which secretly hands over the user's information to the news program. The venus-fly-trap-like plot unfolds as the crew leaves "unattended" iPods in high traffic areas, and is then shocked to see people walking off with them. With all due respect, Dateline, you were pretty much asking for it. If you'd like to know how it all ends, hit the read link for the six page transcript.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

You may remember late last year that JASRAC, the group that represents various entertainment industry interests in Japan got very angry at YouTube and demanded the site prevent unauthorized videos from being uploaded. YouTube responded by trying to explain that it wasn't YouTube's fault, while also promising to put warnings about copyrights on the site in Japanese -- while also promising to travel to Japan and meet with entertainment industry officials there. This week a second round of those meetings happened and it appears that Japanese entertainment industry is still confused. They're not at all happy with YouTube, demanding that "all copyrighted material be removed immediately."

That was the statement from composer Hideki Matsutake, who apparently was the spokesmen for the coalition of entertainment industry interests that met with Google/YouTube execs. Of course, that doesn't make any sense. Thanks to current copyright laws, all new content automatically is copyrighted once created. In other words, nearly all content on YouTube is under someone's copyright. What the guy really means is that he wants all unauthorized content removed from YouTube and that's much more difficult -- because there's no easy way to know whether or not the content has been authorized. There are plenty of copyright holders who not only choose to put their content on sites like YouTube, but actually are thrilled when fans promote their content by uploading it to YouTube. Unfortunately, this Japanese group doesn't seem to understand that. Even more to the point, they apparently fail to understand that even if YouTube completely shut down today, all of that content would simply move to other sites -- and those sites are likely to care even less about what a coalition of Japanese entertainers and entertainment companies want them to do.

Suddenly wishes Viagra was harder to come by

Notorious spammer Christopher "Rizler" Smith was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a federal judge on Wednesday.

Watch out Teamsters

Adobe Systems has scrapped the "send to FedEx Kinkos" print button in iAdobe Reader and Acrobat Professional, in the face of overwhelming opposition from America's printing companies.

Or maybe just pump more ads

It’s official: There’s big money to be made selling virtual window dressing on the internet.

Blog: Robert Graham of Errata also demonstrates a way to steal Web 2.0 session cookies, and how to find 0days inside security applications.

Blog: The makers of Firefox want developers to break their browser to make it stronger.

More carrier disruption

Looks like Google is again trying pull US telcos round to its way of thinking, this time with plans underway for a handset optimized for its online services.

Filed under: Portable Audio

It's been quite awhile since we've heard from the Creative camp regarding its Zen V Plus PMP, which last got bumped to 8GB back in September of 2006, but it appears that the company has quietly rolled out a new 16GB version -- at least in some parts of the world. According to the Singaporean version of the Creative site, a 16GB model is available (but out of stock right now), and selling for $399.99 (SGD), which is around $263 at current exchange rates. Pretty much the exact same scenario played out during the last storage increase, so it's safe to assume we'll be seeing a new model around these parts sometime in the near future... right Creative?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

The KDE team is shipping its first beta for the next-generation KDE desktop. The 4.0 beta is the starting point for the integration process to start bringing new technologies in KDE 4 libraries to applications.

Blog: Acquiescing to demands of the printing industry, Adobe will remove a "Send to FedEx Kinko's" print-on-demand button from its PDF-handling software.