Fusion: Play ball; Find the Luddites
5/8/2004PLAY BALL
Baseball addicts will be able to squint at video highlights on their cell phones under a deal MobiTV has struck with Major League Baseball. MobiTV, which broadcasts to Sprint mobile customers, is launching baseball packages for $9.99 a month One package provides live audio of every game played, with choice of home or visiting team announcer.
SMILE FOR THE OFFICER
Celebrity legal run-ins now frequently result in the posting of unflattering mug shots on the Smoking Gun. There are choice shots of Patty Hearst, Eminem, Kobe Bryant, and this year s installment of James Brown.
www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots
FIND THE LUDDITES
Jack Valenti says the idea that Hollywood is full of Luddites is “foolish.” In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America said, “There are many terrifically smart people in the movie business who have vision and know where the industry is going.” One place is the Internet, he said. The California Institute of Technology has FAST (netlab.caltech), “where a movie can be downloaded in five seconds,” Valenti said. “That s the stuff that will be in the marketplace in 18 months to two years.”
LIGHT SCULPTURE
The Giganta Ray from EverGlide has six blue LEDs arranged in the shape of an asterisk to illuminate the mouse pad from the inside out. The Ray ($39.95), available at www.gamerzstuff.com, can shine only when it is connected to a computer, since it draws power from a USB port.
PRISON LOG
Joe Ryan, a U.S. military contractor working in Iraq, has stopped writing a Web log about his experiences at the Abu Ghrab prison outside Baghdad where Iraqi prisoners were tortured. “We got an e-mail from him last Thursday saying that the military had asked that he stop letting his diary be posted,” said Joe O Brien, program director at KSTP-AM in St. Paul, Minnesota, on whose Web site it was posted. Reportedly an interrogator working for CACI International, an archive of his recent postings at Google shows the Twin Cities resident writing about prisoners, hitting golf balls over the walls of the compound and passing along intelligence reports to Marines.
TOLEDOBLADE.COM
Web editor Kevin Cesarz (Wednesday) and country music writer Brian Dugger (Friday) will produce columns this week only on toledoblade.com.
FROM THE BLADE S WIRE SERVICES AND STAFF.
CONTACT FUSION AT KCESARZ@THEBLADE.COM