Matrix RSS

Matrix RSS News Feeds automatically captures content from other websites. RSS or XML is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired News, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news.Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS.

For more examples on Matrix RSS, click on "Read more..." below.

• eMarketer lops $1.3B off 2008 online ad estimate

  Online ad spending is expected to increase in 2008, but not as much. Display ads are hit harder than search ads.

• Death and taxes in virtual worlds

  Featured links from the CNET Blog Network

  Death and taxes in virtual worlds--The taxman is coming to your virtual world. Hide your real wallet.

  Intel rethinks Netbooks: 'Fine for an hour' but--The smallish designs may not be the next big thing after all. Intel, whose Atom chip powers most Netbooks, says it now foresees mostly incremental gains.

  Morocco issues biometric ID cards--The country's national security service says the contactless smart cards, required for all citizens over 18, will be used to fight terrorism. Artists are issued an additional professional card.

  Get your customized Twitter background with TwitBacks--TwitBacks provides users with customized Twitter backgrounds.

  
  

• Huffington Post closes $25 million round

  Liberal news outlet has pulled in significantly more funding than previous reports suggested in its round from Oak Venture Partners.

• What you need to know about the digital TV switch

  The transition to digital TV is fast approaching, with the February 17 deadline just a couple of months away. So what's it all really mean for consumers?

• The other digital-TV transition

  As the cable industry ramps up its migration to digital TV, confusion mounts with some cable customers seeing basic cable channels disappear from their analog packages.

• '60 Minutes' report: How online gamblers unmasked cheaters

  A joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post questions the honesty and security gambling sites.

• Facebook Connect appears set for expansion

  Service launched last spring that lets members log on to other Web sites using their Facebook profile looks to be preparing for a new phase.

• ComScore: Black Friday e-commerce hits $534 million

  The Thanksgiving weekend was all right, according to ComScore and the National Retail Federation. Predictions for the entire holiday shopping season aren't so rosy.

• Wii leads the way on healthy Black Friday

  Retailers had reason to smile on the popular shopping day, as consumers went in search of bargains--especially on electronics shelves.

• Carl Icahn increases stake in Yahoo

  Activist investor--and member of company's board--has bought up 7 million shares of Yahoo over the course of three days this week.

• Europe Yahoo chief joins exodus

  Toby Coppel is expected to announce he is stepping down from his position as executive vice president and managing director of Europe and Canada.

• Thanksgiving parade gets a live 'Rickroll'

  Pop singer Rick Astley surprises parade watchers with a performance of "Never Gonna Give You Up," one of the most popular Internet memes.

• Some Sony films return to Netflix-Xbox service

  Apparently Sony and Netflix have solved some of their licensing issues. There's no word yet on when all of Sony's films will return to Xbox.

• Sundance opening night pick spotlights animation tech

  The digital world meets one of the oldest film forms in the clay animation film Mary and Max, chosen to kick off Robert Redford's annual film festival in January.

• Twitter: No more outbound texts for Canada

  Skyrocketing costs mean that Twitter users in Canada can no longer receive text-message updates, but they can still use the number to send "tweets."

• Report: Mom in MySpace hoax found guilty on lesser charges

  A court finds Lori Drew, accused of using MySpace to harass one of her daughter's classmates to the point of suicide, guilty--but not on counts as severe as the ones she was up for.

• Yahoo, Microsoft make gains in search

  U.S. search grew 7 percent sequentially in October, but Yahoo and Microsoft posted even larger gains, according to a ComScore report.

• Cinema snobs rejoice: Criterion Collection goes Web 2.0

  Rent a Criterion film for $5, and then the company will deduct the $5 from a DVD purchase of the same movie. Also: social networking!

• Amazon assembles Justice League of loyalists for holiday PR

  Six hardcore Amazon product reviewers are contributing their tips, tricks, and picks for holiday shopping.

• The White House reboots

  As the president-elect gets ready to take office, he offers a fresh take on technology, with plans to hire a CTO, give weekly YouTube addresses, promote green tech, and more.

• Tech-Savvy Secrets to Getting the Best Black Friday Deals

  There's more to getting a good deal on the day after Thanksgiving than standing in line at Best Buy -- if you don't want to get suckered, you need these tips for savvy online and in-person shopping.
  
  

  
  
  

• Scott Brown on the Looming Deluge of Eco-Disaster Flicks

  I love the movies. I love the environment. I love movies about the environment, especially ecological-disaster flicks—oh, the hilarity! From the atomic-paranoia-fueled Pandora's boxes of the '50s (Them!, Godzilla) and the hapless "nature's revenge" flicks of the Love Canal era (The Swarm, Piranha) to the budget-busting disaster epic (2004's The Day After Tomorrow, best remembered for a scene in which Climate Change implacably pursues Jake Gyllenhaal), commercial attempts to put a high-minded, hortatory gloss on schlocky genre cinema are always good for a guffaw. My favorite would have to be Frogs, the 1972 "thriller" whose trailer intoned, "Suppose nature gave a war ... and everybody came?" (That's good, but it should've read, "Suppose Hollywood covered aging Oscar-winner Ray Milland in confused, nonunion amphibians ... and everybody laughed?")

  The dopiness of so-called ecotainment—environmentally virtuous entertainment—rises in direct proportion to its message-mongering. In this way, it's no different from the Christian inspirational flick. To be sure, many classics prey upon our ecological anxieties—The Birds, Jaws, and Jurassic Park come to mind. But these highlight the indomitable and inscrutable brutality of nature, not the need for better stewardship of a beleaguered planet. They're the children of Moby-Dick, not Silent Spring. Even in these jittery, post-Inconvenient Truth days of rising seas, killer storms, and T. Boone Pickens TV spots, blockbuster-scale ecotainment is still the poseur spawn of Towering Inferno-style disaster matinee and Silkwood-esque docudrama. The subject matter simply resists Hollywood idiocy: Environmental problems are complex and holistic, whereas mainstream movies thrive on conspicuous good/evil dichotomies that flatter our binary human minds. To oversimplify: Nature is Gore-ville; blockbusters are Bush country.

  That said, explicit, heart-on-sleeve ecothemes are leaking into mainstream movies. Let us avert our eyes from the Superfund site that was M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening (the crazed Claritin commercial Hitchcock never made) to consider the Seuss-meets-Kubrick trashscapes of Wall-E, the pissed-off pagan nature-spirits of Hellboy II, and the water-hoarding, greenwashing Bond villain in Quantum of Solace. And there are more...

• E-Books Have a Future in iTunes

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company plans on amping up its e-book efforts in the iTunes store with DRM-protected best-sellers.
  
  

  
  
  

• Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode

  The keynote speaker at this past summer's TechReady conference—a gathering of 6,000 or so Microsoft engineers from around the world—was the company's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie. This was not a routine appearance. Ozzie arrived at Microsoft in 2005, and the following year he inherited the title of CSA directly from Bill Gates. He was now the microprocessor of the Microsoft machine. But he had never addressed the semiannual conclave. His explanation? He wanted to wait until he had something big to show the troops.

  But there's something else: Ozzie hates speaking in public. His idea of paradise is pitching his vision around a table near a whiteboard, where he can proceed conversationally and draw on his marketplace savvy, quiet confidence, and ability to scrawl out XML code on the fly. Auditoriums are something else. "I have high anxiety—massive, huge, tremendous anxiety," he says. "It's not a natural act for me." The infrequency of his public appearances has triggered murmurs that the guy in Gates' chair is afraid to face his public, like some sort of software Greta Garbo. "Where's Ray?" Microsoft observers have been asking, as Google grabs more headlines and Apple relentlessly mocks the company's shortcomings. Two-plus years into the job, there is still a bit of mystery to Ray Ozzie.

  It is about time that one of the most significant figures in the personal computer age, the writer of Symphony and creator of Lotus Notes, emerges from the shadows. Time to reveal what he has been working on. And, most important, time to explain how the world's mightiest software company is going to remain relevant.

  Not an easy job. Yes, Microsoft still rakes in the dollars from Windows and Office. But the stock has been flat for years. Microsoft used to be regarded with fear and respect—Lord Voldemort with market share. Now people downgrade their computers to avoid Vista, tech luminaries...

• Blip.tv Brings Video Embeds to the iPhone

  Viewing video on the iPhone is a source of consternation for users, as Adobe's flash player is not yet available (and probably never will be) and YouTube remains the only video provider compatible with the device. But video hub blip.tv is changing with a new "magic" iPhone video embed.
  
  

  
  
  

• Random House to Digitize Thousands of Books

  Random House is making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series. The publisher already has more than 8,000 books in the electronic format and will have a digital library of nearly 15,000.
  
  

  
  
  

• Poll: Internet, Fox News Are Most Trusted News Sources

  A new IFC Zogby poll shows that the internet is today's most trusted news source, but that Americans overwhelmingly distrust the news media.
  
  

  
  
  

• YouTube Tests Out High Quality, Stereo Surround Videos

  YouTube has quietly started testing out real HD quality videos on a smattering of its content, a development that is getting attention from viewers in message boards and blog forums. The new format could be a big move for YouTube, as the video quality is over 80MB, which means that they are probably the same H.264 encoded mp4 files available in the iTunes store.
  
  

  
  
  

• Linux Guru Reiser Seeks New Murder Trial

  Hans Reiser, the 44-year-old Linux guru who was convicted in April of killing his wife, is seeking a new trial. But Reiser, who killed wife Nina Reiser, waived his right to appeal in exchange for his sentence to be reduced from 25-to-life to 15-to-life. The deal included leading authorities to the hills in Oakland, Calif., where he buried his 31-year-old wife who was divorcing him.
  
  

  
  
  

• TypePad Offers Blog Bailout to Laid-off Journalists

  To help journalists who are losing their jobs, Six Apart offers them a pro account on TypePad. It's a $150 start.