Results tagged “sony”

Coming as a surprise to no one, Sony plans on shutting down the PlayStation Store and SonyStyle Store at the Metreon complex. As near to the heart to PlayStation fans as the Apple store is to Mac sect members, the Metreon saw lines circling the block when they released the PlayStation 3 in 2006. But now, due to the recession (not to mention the Metreon's jarring feng shui), both Sony stores will close later this year. According to The New York Times, "the PlayStation store’s decline is an emblem of bigger problems with Sony, which has seen its fortunes turn from first place in the console business to third place." All of this boils down to one question: Should one get a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS?

OMG we're so excited! Muni's giving away free computers, and all you have to do is sign up for their mailing list! Oh, and also sign up for some credit cards. And join Netflix. And a CD club. And a matchmaking service. And buy a satellite dish. This is such an awesome deal!!!!!!!!!!

The hilarious Eugene Mirman and Jon Benjamin are hosting SF Sketchfest's "Fresh Faces of Comedy" show on Sunday night at Mezzanine that we can't wait to check out. There will also be a short film contest with Jon Lehr of TBS's 10 Items or Less (he was also Geico's Caveman, whom he looks nothing like, BTW), which had us chuckling aloud the other night. "Five finalists will have their grocery-store themed films showcased and the winner, as determined by the SF Sketchfest founders and Sony Television executives, will receive a cash prize."

OMG! It's the Nicole Ritchie of laptops! (Ritchie before she got fat and pregnant, that is.)

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on SFist.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on SFist.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on SFist.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on SFist.

On the twenty-ninth of October two thousand and seven in Cowansville, Quebec, Canada's third same-sex wedding ceremony in a federal jail will take place. David Bedard, 22, serving a 10-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter and his partner Sony Martin, 26, serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, will join in holy matrimony. (Oh, my God, you guys. We're so gonna start crying!)

What do Broken Social Scene and Peaches both have in common? Leslie Feist! The Canadian singer-songwriter performs at the Fillmore tonight with Grizzly Bear. 1805 Geary St., SF.

Yeah, yeah, everyone's talking about it -- hardcore gamers are camping out at the Metreon to buy a $600 Playstation, which goes on sale tonight at midnight. The first people showed up around 8 a.m., and as of noon today, there were 500-1000 people in line. The line is going down Fourth Street and turning down Minna.

We in the labs like to make fun of San Francisco, but if there's one good thing about SF, it's that it's not LA. The videogame trade show E3 is going on this week down in the City of Miserable Angels, and we're very happy to be skipping this year and not having to deal with the smog and money and sweat and desperation.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is so close you can almost taste the LA smog and the tangy sweat of desperation. In honor of that, this week's round-up is all videogame-related news.

The fallout from Apple's Boot Camp continues, and we in the labs are struggling to keep up.

There's a lot going on in this picture, snapped last night in the Castro Muni station (click it for a larger version), so let's begin our reading with the original author's intent. Those irritating PSP ads (as opined about on Gothamist, discussed by a commenter, and complained about by lots of local bloggers) have finally been put in their place -- a billboard. Rather than being slapped up on peoples' walls in their neighborhoods, Sony's finally figured out that advertisements go, duh, in advertising space.

Steady on, San Francisco! The city, if not the entire blogosphere, is still reeling from the lack of a SFist Tech Roundup post last week. But we have a very good excuse. All right, actually we don't have a good excuse at all. It's an incredibly dull excuse that involves southern California, spotty Internet connections, no outgoing e-mail access, and no good way to synch bookmarks between a desktop PC and a laptop.

So you've gone through the wonderful experience of wearing hideous clothes, you set up your nursery full of cute things, and birthed your child. After a number of weeks of serious sleep deprivation and general insanity (piss off, Tom Cruise) you might want to start getting out of the house. But where does one go with a baby? We've come up with a list based on our own experiences.

Once, a long time ago, we worked at a film production office in New York City. The crappy part was labelling tapes, getting coffee for people and waking up at 5am to assist on shoots. The cool part was getting a chance to meet some pretty cool artists and to see reels from commercial directors around the world. Sure, they're shilling products, but at least they're getting paid to do their art, and sometimes it can be beautiful.

What's that? Did you say something, Apple? Sorry, we weren't paying attention; we were too busy watching full-length movies on our Sony PSP's 4.3-inch widescreen.

Well, if you're trying to create the next generation of digital content distribution, put down that laptop. Maybe you're an industrial designer working on a piece of hardware that would make it easy for you and a friend to swap a favorite record while riding the bus? "Freeze, it's the RIAA! Put down that bluetooth-enabled iPod!"

Arguments begin tomorrow in the MGM v. Grokster case being heard by the Supremes. BoingBoing is all over the story -- pointing out that even the relatively conservative Economist has come down on the side of P2P apps, links to another piece which flays the music industry for misrepresenting the actual costs of swapping songs, and notes that Mark Cuban has even stepped in to fund Grokster's defense. The EFF's Fred van Lohmann will be presenting Grokster's case tomorrow -- check out the EFF for analysis and relevant documents.

Filmmakers Nyla Bialek Adams and Laurie Trombley use interview and concert footage of Jeff intermixed with interviews with his mother, friends and other artists inspired by him to weave a portrait of a man who was invested in his music and his world in a deep, meaningful way but who then left it too soon and in a manner that lent additional mystery to him. This is a personal film - obviously personal to the filmmakers but also in that it is less about his music and his story and more about his art and the choices he made in regard to it.

We should confess that, before seeing the Sundance award-winning documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston this Sunday for the second weekend of IndieFest, we didn't know very much about the eponymous singer-songwriter -- liked that charmingly-naive Speeding Motorcycle song, remembered vaguely that Kurt Cobain had worn a Johnston shirt at the MTV Video Music Awards one year, and oh yeah, wasn't he also mentally ill, but not the guy who did that "Alanis Morrisette" song? Forty-four year old Daniel Johnston's life is sort of an outsider artist indie rock legend -- he drifted into Austin, Texas in the mid-80s, after dropping out of the circus (no, really!). He wandered around town, giving out copies of his album Hi How Are You, which he had recorded himself on a Sony boom box. People found the songs compelling, and when MTV swung into town for their show The Cutting Edge, they thought Johnston's crazy antics would make for good TV. Unfortunately, the crazy antics were probably also a sign that Johnston was becoming increasingly bipolar. The Devil and Daniel Johnston documents Johnston's life, music, and his mental illness, through interviews with family members, friends, and Johnston's own archives. Johnston, a profilic artist, had been making biographical films and cassettes since he was a child and sending tape-recorded letters to his friends, and granted the filmmakers access to the material. It's really an amazing and thought-provoking film. Art by Daniel Johnston