Category: Entertainment

We don’t do many software reviews here on Street Tech, but I’ve really been enjoying a little app I downloaded a few weeks ago called pearLyrics. Available as a Widget for Tiger or a stand-alone app for Panther (yes, unfortunately, it’s Mac-only), pearLyrics runs in tandem with iTunes (5.0 or higher). As you play a track, it looks up the lyrics using a number of lyrics databases. It presents the lyrics in the pearl app (or Widget), and you can also tell it to automatically paste them into the new Lyrics tab in iTunes. Nifty. Of course, you’re still at the mercy of the many misheard lyrics found on these sites, but it’s a start, anyway.

Talk about your cool band merch: The White Stripes are allegedly selling a 3″ phonograph record player at their gigs, along with exclusive 3″ vinyl to play on the wee wheel. Called the “Triple Inchophone,” the player and disks are apparently only available at Stripes’ shows.

[Via Fader]

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, a four-location chain of record stores in New Jersey, Scotti’s, in an effort to keep up with the times, is allowing customers to buy CDs, burn ’em, then return ’em, for 70% store credit. You go, Scotti! Hang onto those bricks and that mortar as long as possible. And ignore all those “Cease and Desist” letters from the RIAA.

In case you missed it, on Salon or the postings on Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow’s novella, Themepunks, is being serialized on Salon. The second installment in now available.

[Salon subscription or ad subjection required.]

Trailer/website for the new David Cronenberg film, A History of Violence, based on the Vertgo graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. Looks like a departure for Cronenberg, and a potentially good flim.

Sorta kinda funny phone call pranks to Best Buy’s “Geek Squad”

Watching Peter Chung’s animated series for MTV, Aeon Flux, was the closest I’ve gotten to hallucinating since I, well, stopped ingesting things that do the heavy lifting for you. So, I’ve been keenly interested in the live action film, starring the very talented and painfully hot Chalize Theron.

After watching the trailer, I gotta say: P.U.! This thing looks ALL wrong. It has none of the inexplicable, tripped-out, lizard-brain insanity that made the cartoon so effective. They didn’t even get Aeon’s look right. A possible tip off to the fact that it might be crap is the rumor that Paramount had originally slated it for September. That’s usually where poorly-tested films go to die. It currently has a Dec. 2 release date.

Oh. My. Gopod. This might be the coolest, funniest thing ever! Okay, at least this week. It’s a talk show, an extremely well done, professional-looking talk show, called This Spartan Life, filmed live in the world of Halo. It’s freakin’ hysterical. If I were a forward-looking TV studio, I would sign these guys, stat! This is so much better than any of the faux game world/virtual character shows that TechTV, MTV, or anyone else has attempted. Auspiciously enough, the first guest on the first episode is Bob Stein, founder of Voyager, the ground-breaking CD-ROM content company. Voyager was a huge influence on Peter Sugarman and myself while we were developing Beyond Cyberpunk. The guest may be auspicious, his entrance? Not so much. Really funny stuff.

[Via Boing Boing]

Joe Nickell, former Street Tech contributor, our house bartender, and devout opera fan (that’s right, opera), has a piece in today’s NYTimes on the resurfacing of an opera about the Blackfeet tribe of Montana. The perfomance was 95 years in the making.

Congrats, Joe! Now mix us up a round of Mojitos and crank up the Caruso!

At a TiVo Community meet-up in Vegas recently, a series of TiVo beta products were demo’d. One of them, seen here in this presentation pic, appears to be a movie-on-demand type downloading service. Something was also shown called the TiVo Personal Entertainment Network, which appears to allow users to upload home videos to their TiVos.

[Via PVRblog]