GravyPlaya TechBlog

As many of you know by now, Disney bought Pixar today. for $7.4Bil (yes thats BILLION)

This is a great move for both companies. Steve Jobs, John Lasseter, and Ed Catmull -- the folks who run Pixar -- will now be running all of Disney Animation, as well as the development of the Disney Theme Parks, and that means that there is a golden chance here to revitalize and restore the Disney legacy -- which most agree was lost over the last 10 years under the poor leadership of Michael Eisner.

At the same time, Pixar secures permanent distribution and marketing, reclaims ownership of all its films (and the possibility to make sequels), and frees itself up to focus increasingly on making movies (rather than marketing, distribution, legal, etc.) Steve, Bob Iger, Ed, and John all clearly believe very strongly in the great potential of the merger. Truth be told, this is probably the best thing to happen to animation since the release of Toy Story 10 years ago.

In terms of the daily world of Pixar, little is expected to change.

The deal was negotiated in such a way that Pixar will be exporting its culture to Disney, rather than the other way around, so the world of scooters and foosball and movie screenings will continue as normal.

Pixar shareholders will receive 2.3 Disney shares for every Pixar share they own, a move that will make Jobs the largest individual shareholder of Disney.

Pixar production slate will also remain as-is for the next couple years, after which, anything is possible, however you can probably assume that they'll be making Toy Story 3.

All further questions should be directed at the Pixar publicity office, 1-800-FIND-NEMO.

FYI: Steve jobs bought Pixar for $10mil then sells it to Disney for $7.4Bil.. Must be nice..

http://flickr.com/photos/gravyplaya/sets/1833682/

I took this camera back to the store and exchanged it twice before I gave up.. I bought this camera for the specs and the price.. I loved using it when it was able to tell there was battery power.. After taking no more than 5 pics with the flash the camera would shut off complaining of low battery. then it would have to be off for a few minites before it would come on again.. When I tried to record a video I got no more than 3 seconds before low battery shut down.. The differences between the cameras that I exhanged was only the time I got before shutdown. I tried this with several sets of fresh batteries in each camera.. Obviously this makes using the camera impossible. SO DONT GET IT.

I give this camera a 2 out of 10. 1 for the price, and 2 for the features and ease of use(when it works).

UPDATE: What they fail to tell you is that you cant use Alkaline batteries and to use rechargeables.. YES IT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.. now the camera works like a charm..

Well what can I say about this years CES? CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY.. There was so much to do and it took so long to do shit because traffic was gridlocked up and down the strip. Its crazy that they do CES and AVN(Porn Convention) on the same weekend the energy in those couple miles of Las Vegas Blvd. is quite intense.. After walking around on Thursday and Friday and the subsequent nighttime partying. Saturday was mainly used for rest.. Sunday I returned to CES to follow up and go to the places I had missed..

As far as the real-time reporting from CES that did not go down for 2 important reasons.. 1) My camera phone was just in no way capable of taking the pictures I wanted and
2) Sending those pictures to the blog failed due to the size of the pics..
3) The quality of the pics weren’t good at all

This just proves to me that I need to go out and buy a REAL camera. I knew I should have bought one before I left but I assumed I could go to the Fry’s in Vegas and get one.. BUT in regular Fry’s item fashion I had to take the one I wanted back because it was defective.. I was hoping to buy a Samsung A55W, but after trying all 3 that Fry’s had in stock they all had the same problem. After taking a few pics with the flash the camera shuts off complaining of low battery, even after 3 fresh sets of batteries I still got the same error and the camera would shut down completely after snapping only 4 or 5 pics.. And when I tried the movie function the camera would shut of after only a few seconds of recording.. My advice: Don’t get a Samsung camera no matter if the specs blow away the rest of the cameras they have on stock. It just don’t work.. I thought that maybe that would happen with any camera that still uses the AA batteries, then I thought that cant be true because then why else would the rest of the cameras work. –movin on

There weren’t that many fresh and new things to see this time.. Most of the things I saw were mostly products or services that can enhance other products or services.. There weren’t any new developments like the iPod/PS3 or anything.. Everyone and they gramma is tryin to ride the Skype boat. I even saw a wifi phone ironically called “Skypy phone” hmmm how original.. There were a few products that I just couldn’t understand.. I saw a WiFi Bluetooth stuffed puppy story teller set. I don’t know how it works I couldn’t stop laughing.. Peep the pic to see for yourself. One thing that was kool was the waterproof iPod, ya know for all those people who listen to music while they are underwater swimming..


There were more speakers there than anything.. I guess they aren’t done putting technology into the speakers you use to listen to music.. The only thing I could see different about the speakers this year is that they just get bigger.. Bigger and more powerful.. For when you want to play that Miami bass song and use the force of the bass to launch a satellite into space, lol

One of the other main reasons I was there was to pass out flyers to HypeTunes and let people know about our launch. We also met with the company that will provide us with the wifi internet radio streamer that we will be using to complement our software. The people we told about hypetunes were all excited to see it work.. they knew what it was just by reading the flyer before I even said anything. When something like that happens then you know that you are onto something. Next year if it all happens the right way perhaps We will have our own booth at CES then I can expense the whole thing.. yeay!! Enough for now im hungry and gonna go get something to eat..

After talking to a very reliable source at Netgear. Seems like the Skype/Netgear announcement that everyone is waiting for will happen, but apparently someone missed a deadline and there will be no live demo at the booth.. AWWWWW.. So whos gettin fired?

http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_ces.html

Launching at CES 2006