GenDigital

Site Watch: HBO Does It Again For Entourage

Just when I thought HBO pulled out all stops to promote the new season of Entourage (airing in two weeks), they surprised me again with this interactive mini-site. The mini-site allows users to complete a video-enhanced interview with Ari Gold played by Jeremy Piven, to become his new assistant. Clearly, as I've said before, HBO "gets it" when it comes to understanding how to engage to the typical 18 to 34 year old male, and the Ari mini-site yet again validates my previous statements. Check it out.

Disney To Begin Selling Movies on CinemaNow

Soon your child will be able to download Disney films like "Chicken Little" and "Glory Road" from Internet site CinemaNow for about $20. What is special about this deal is that the Disney movies, once downloaded to the PC can then be transferred to a portable device that runs Windows Media. In fact, users can watch the films on up to three devices and burn a DVD that can play on a PC. The other major movie downloading site, Movielink, does not have the capability to transfer films to portable devices, but the site hopes to offer the feature within a year. The Disney/CinemaNow deal could potentially end up eating into DVD sales since Disney plans to offer the downloads the same day the films hit store shelves, but that remains to be seen. 

Social Networks Lead by MySpace Shoot For Wireless Ground

Nice little analysis written up today by Business Week as social networking sites, lead by kingpin MySpace aim to extend their presence in the wireless world. I posted back in April about MySpace's current deal with Cingular Wireless that allows Cingular subscribers to receive text messages when new comments or messages are posted to the user's MySpace profile. More recently, MySpace announced a deal with Helio that calls for new Helio mobile phones pre-loaded with MySpace features. If the past is any indicator, other social networking sites like Facebook and Tagged, among others, will soon follow MySpace's path. The Business Week piece goes on to say MySpace expects to have distribution deals with all of the major carriers by early 2007, which in my opinion, would be a major coup, as the battle for brand superiority among the social networking sites increases everyday.

Can The Hills Keep The Laguna Beach Mojo Rolling?

By now you all know that "Laguna Beach, The Real Orange Country" was a breakout hit for MTV. One of the show's stars, Lauren Conrad will attempt to do what her Laguna Beach co-star Kristin Cavallari was not able to do: drawing eyeballs to additional projects. Cavallari starred on a UPN show for all of about 5 seconds, before it was canned, although she supposedly has a role in an upcoming feature film called "Fingerprints." When it comes to Lauren Conrad, however, I think she has a fighting chance to succeed. For starters, much of show is based on the fact she left Laguna Beach for Los Angeles and landed an internship with Teen Vogue, which as MTV luck would have it, is the hottest teen magazine in the hotly contested category (at least it is right now, talk to me again in the fall and see if they can keep their success going as well). Secondly, out of all of the stars from Laguna Beach, I would have to believe that Lauren was the most "normal" of the crew and certainly one of the most if not the most likable personalities. We'll see if Lauren has what it takes to keep MTV viewers happy tonight when her new show premieres tonight at 10:00pm eastern, 9:00pm pacific, and I imagine, re-running a lot after that.

Summer Style: The Shorter The Shorts The Better

You might not be so worried about your teen hanging out on Myspace or Facebook after hearing this. The latest fashion trend for young women this summer appears to be very short, shorts. Celebs like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton may have started the trend last summer, but this year, expect the masses to be following their lead. Parents can blame Kristen Johnson and her clothing company called Johnson on the latest fashion trend. The company's shorts are now carried in over 500 stores and are pretty pricey, ranging from $120 all they way up to $500.

Female Gamers Make Their Mark

The Associated Press had a story hit the wires on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend that caught my attention. The gaming category, long dominated by 12 to 34 year old men, finally might have some competition thanks to two sisters. Twin sisters Amy Brady and Amber Dalton created PMS, short for Pandora's Mighty Soldiers, in 2002 as a competitive female-only gaming league. PMS now boasts over 500 members ranging in age from 9 to 58. PMS even caught the attention of Microsoft recently. The software and gaming giant enlisted PMS to represent Xbox Live at last month's E3 Expo in Los Angeles which certainly gave the female gaming clan instant credibility. Members typically play games with each other like Microsoft's incredibly popular Halo 2 and Ghost Recon. Ironically, both games have male soldiers as the main characters. May be Hal0 3 will have the option for a female soldier?

Virgin Mobile Allows Teens To Talk 4 Free

Virgin Mobile is set to introduce a new mobile phone plan where customers can speak for free with a small catch. The program dubbed SugarMama (interesting choice of words) lets people earn one minute of talk time by watching 30-second commercials on a computer or receiving text messages on their phones and then actually answering some follow up questions to confirm they were "paying attention" to the spots. Virgin Mobile said customers can earn up to 75 minutes of free talk time per month, not exactly a lot of time considering the average teen mobile phone owner spends about four times that during a typical month. Pepsi, Microsoft's Xbox and the American Legacy Foundation have signed up as advertisers. There a couple of reasons why this initiative is doubtful to take off. First, attracting a market. Trying to get an audience segment excited about free talk time when the reality is that the majority of teen mobile phone bills are paid for by parents is challenging to say the least. Secondly, I believe the notion of forcing a teen to re-call an advertisement to earn the free talk minutes is also a relatively weak proposition. For the most part this audience does not like to be told what they need to do or have to do. And what happens if they answer the questions wrong, they don't earn the minutes? Although the concept of offering free talk time in exchange for paying attention to advertising may sound interesting to you and I, I don't think the concept will pull well with the intended target.

Borat Hits The Big Screen in Cannes

You would think since it is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I would post about X-Men 3 opening today or some other big budget film to complement the earlier post about "Cars." Not to be. The reviews I read this morning for X-Men 3 were so so at best, and I would rather draw attention to a film that Gen Y is much more likely to watch or download. The man behind the "Da Ali G Show," a long time cult favorite among college men is out with a new film that reportedly had Cannes attendees laughing uncontrollably. In the Fox produced-film, British comic Sacha Baron Cohen stars as Borat, the clueless and vulgar Kazakhstani TV reporter on a mission from New York to Los Angeles to bring us his latest series of escapades. Highlights from the film supposedly include an encounter with Pamela Anderson at a book signing in Orange County and the hero reporter soon being dragged out in handcuffs by police. As soon as the film ends up on YouTube, I can guarantee it will be on millions of Gen Y-owned computers.

Nintendo Releases Pricing Range for Wii

Although pricing has not been formally set, Nintendo plans to undercut Sony PlayStation3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 in a big way. Executives from Nintendo said at a press conference in Japan today that the new Wii gaming console system would cost between $200 and $250 in the U.S. when it hits the market later this year. The company expects to sell 6 million units of the Wii gaming system by March 2007. Coincidentally, Sony expects much of the same for PlayStation3, except the PlayStation3 will retail for more than $500.

Disney Going All Out For "Cars"

It has been more than two years since Pixar released a film. A lot has changed since. Pixar is now part of media giant Disney and the man that changed the way millions of teens and college kids listen to digital music is now on the Disney board, I am talking about Steve Jobs, of course. "Cars," will be the first Pixar movie to hits theaters under the Disney umbrella, and the mighty mouse is revving the marketing engine big time. Although "Cars" doesn't actually hit the big screen for a couple of weeks, you will see a large multimedia presence beginning today. Among the many  executions the filmmaker is tackling include a huge premiere at the site of this Sunday's Nascar race in Charlotte. And, let's not forget about merchandising. Shelves at Target and Wal-Mart will be stocked with "Cars" merchandise including a $160 TV/DVD player in the image of Lightning McQueen, the animated film's star. Expectations for a strong opening is high and merchandise sales are ultimately dependent on how well the animated film performs. This will be the ultimate litmus test for Disney, now that Pixar is officially part of the Magic Kingdom.