THURSDAY ROUNDUP:


MARS ATTACKS
Sixty-Five years ago today, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air scared the living daylights out of America with their live broadcast drama of HG Welles Epic Novel THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. Within an hour, a great portion of the country was in hysteria believing that the earth had been invaded by Martians at Grover's Mill, New Jersey.

The entire broadcast can be heard here or here (as well as some of the Mercury Theater's other compelling radio dramas).


GOIN' DVD
The DiVA 489 is a DVD-R recorder which records using Windows Media Player 9 compression. That means a maximum of 16 hours of programming on a single disc. Your mileage may vary.



PDA-GAMEBOY WAR
E-R is fond of saying that if GAMEBOY made a PDA, it could corner the market. But with Tapwave's Palm PDA called ZODIAC, it may be the other way around.

BY ANY OTHER NAME ...
Since it's name is now synonymous with SPYWARE, CNet reports that GATOR is changing it's name to "Claria." I would have thought "Evil and Annoying spyware" would have been a more accurate choice.

THE NEW ART
Plasma TV Screens can't be called a "boob tube" anymore as many technophiles are turning to them to display ART. And thanks to the Internet, owners have a worldwide gallery at their disposal.

BLOWBACK
Some music artists (like Chuck D, and DJ Moby) are beginning to see that the RIAA terror campaign is doing more harm than good.

One artist even went to far as to accuse the RIAA of protecting corporate profits while hiding behind the excuse of "protecting artists' rights."

"I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection."


THE GOOD, THE BAD, and THE KITTY
CNet reviews Napster 2.0. So far, users are evenly split over it, but CNet seems to think it's worth a look. The good: A Huge Catalog of music, unlimited burning onto CD, and widespread WMA file compatibility. The Not So Good: Tied only to one computer.


WHAT ARE YOU DOING, DAVE?
It's shades of the HAL9000. Logitech's new Orbit Quickcam Webcam uses software which "can actually follow your face as you move."

Is it me or does that give everyone the willies?

I WANT MY CELLPHONETV
Gizmodo has a story about Nokia going deeper down the hybrid cellphone rabbit hole by adding DIGITAL TV TUNERS to their future cellphone models.

Okay, I'm going to come right out and say it ... CAN WE PLEASE HAVE A CELLPHONE DESIGN WHICH DOESN'T DROP A DAMN CALL?!