Mashable Giveaway: Win a Sony bloggie MP4 Camera

Coming to the MashBash party in Austin next month? Every week until the event, Mashable will be giving away 2 Sony bloggie MP4 Cameras to attendees.


Winners will receive their cameras upon arrival in Austin, and you’re invited to capture video clips of your time there — your videos will be shown on the big screen during the MashBash party.


What’s more, you’ll receive VIP access to the MashBash!


To win one of 4 Sony bloggie MP4 Cameras, enter the contest on the Mashable Facebook page.

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About MashBash 2010

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More than 5,000 people have RSVPed for MashBash 2010 in Austin, taking place on Sunday, March 14, at Buffalo Billiards in Austin, Texas.


Join Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Adam Ostrow, Josh Catone, Barb Dybwad, Jennifer Van Grove, Brett Petersel and myself, along with our sponsors Cliqset and Sony Electronics and 1,600+ attendees for a night of networking and music from DJ Chicken George. In addition, there will be a two-hour open bar, strong Wi-Fi, a game room and plenty of surprises!

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MashBash RSVP Details

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Date: Sunday, March 14, 2010
Time: 10:00 p.m. – 2:00 a.m
Location: Buffalo Billiards, 201 6th Street, Austin, TX
Admission: Open to SXSWi attendees
RSVP for Chance to Win VIP Access to MashBash 2010: sxswi.eventbrite.com
Socialize: Facebook

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Mashable Sponsors:

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“Sony Electronics has created high-quality, innovative and stylish products for over 40 years. Thanks to Mashable, Sony’s new MP4 bloggie™ camera will make its SXSWi debut. Capturing everyday moments in 1080p HD MP4 video and 5-megapixel photos, the compact device has advanced features like Face Detection and SteadyShot™, a large LCD screen, a built-in USB for uploading and charging, integrated software for easy Web sharing, and allows for expandable storage with Memory Stick PRO Duo™ or SD media cards. The bloggie camera is one of many products just launched under Sony’s new global brand message – make.believe. Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real. For more information go to www.sony.com/bloggie.”



“Cliqset makes it easy for people to share, discover, and discuss content from everywhere on the Web. Cliqset helps you filter through the activity, like status updates, reviews, blog posts, videos, articles, music and pretty much everything that’s online, and consume the social stream the way you want to. To connect with Cliqset, visit us at www.cliqset.com.”

Apple, in the words of Sean Carter, "On To The Next One!"

AT&T's iPhone contract expires in 2010, so will Apple switch carriers?


The iPhone has been good to AT&T. It helped attract over 4.3 million subscribers toward the end of '08, with 40% of them new to the telecom giant. That's why AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is currently in talks with Apple to extend the iPhone's exclusivity with his company into 2011. AT&T has been trying to shake off the cobwebs it's gathered from a landline-centric strategy, and breakaway mobile devices such as the iPhone helps it rebuild its brand.

"We have 77 million wireless customers and 30 million consumer phone lines," Stephenson told the Wall Street Journal. "Which customer base would you rather work from? We tend to come at this backwards."

So is there hope? Apple won't say either way. While AT&T's exclusive deal saddened those who didn't want to switch carriers but still wanted an iPhone, apparently Verizon was originally offered the gadget and declined. Hopefully in 2010 Verizon and others will rectify that mistake, and we'll have some choices.


WSJ, via SlashGear http://dvice.com/archives/2009/04/atts-iphone-con.php

This Week's Free Downloads (2/15/10)

Everyone loves free stuff. Check out these amazing free goodies that we know you'll be sure to love! NOTE: These free offers don't last forever. Get them while they last!

Single of the Week
Easton Corbin: A Little More Country

 

Easton Corbin is a native of Trenton, Florida. He lived on his grandparents' farm following his parents' divorce, and was introduced to country music-themed television programs such as Hee Haw. After taking guitar lessons from session musician Pee Wee Melton at age fifteen, Corbin joined a band, which won an opening slot at a music festival, followed by opening slots for Janie Fricke and Mel McDaniel.

Corbin later attended University of Florida and earned a business degree, before marrying his wife, Briann, in 2006. He and Briann then moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 2006, where he worked at an Ace Hardware store and performed at writer's nights. A distant cousin, who is a professor of music management, recommended Corbin to contacts in Nashville, Tennessee. Joe Fisher, senior director of A&R at Universal Music Group Nashville, signed Corbin to the Mercury Nashville label in 2009. He released his debut single, "A Little More Country Than That", in July of that same year. Rory Lee Feek of Joey + Rory wrote the song with Don Poythress and Wynn Varble. The label released a four-song digital extended play entitled A Little More Country Than That on August 18, 2009, shortly before the single entered Top 40 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. Corbin's self-titled debut album will be released in March 2010, under the production of Carson Chamberlain.

Discovery Download
Jets Overhead: Heading for Nowhere

Jets Overhead provide their debut self-titled EP and their first album, Bridges, for free download on their website as it is their view that in the current day and age, with pirating and illegal peer to peer (P2P) networks for downloading music free of charge, it is easier to provide the music in a free form themselves (though the option is given to buy the album at the regular price or make a voluntary donation). They appear to be one of the first bands to have addressed the difficulties of modern day music and what they call the "digital revolution", employing the voluntary purchase and download model a year and a half before the British rock group Radiohead more famously did it in October 2007 with their album In Rainbows.

After discovering that their most recent album, No Nations, had leaked onto certain file-sharing websites, lead singer Adam Kittredge responded in a positive way, saying, “We aren’t that concerned about it, because at our level, it’s kind of actually flattering to think that people think it’s worthwhile to so-called ‘steal’ our record before it’s released. It really doesn’t matter to us at this level of the game and maybe it won’t ever – maybe it shouldn’t.”

The band has not repeated its original voluntary purchase model for the 2009 release of No Nations. However elements of the album have been made available through the band's website under a Creative Commons license.

Music Video of the Week
Mariah Carey: Up Out My Face (ft. Nicki Minaj)

Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and actress. She made her recording debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and became the first recording artist to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following her marriage to Mottola in 1993, a series of hit records established her position as Columbia's highest-selling act. According to Billboard magazine, she was the most successful artist of the 1990s in the United States. 

Following her separation from Mottola in 1997, Carey introduced elements of hip hop into her album work, to much initial success, but her popularity was in decline when she left Columbia in 2001. She signed to Virgin Records but was dropped from the label and bought out of her contract the following year after a highly publicized physical and emotional breakdown, as well as the poor reception given to Glitter, her film and soundtrack project. In 2002, Carey signed with Island Records, and after a relatively unsuccessful period, she returned to the top of pop music in 2005.

Carey has sold more than 175 million albums, singles and videos worldwide. She was named the best-selling female pop artist of the millennium at the 2000 World Music Awards. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, she is the third best-selling female artist and sixteenth overall recording artist with shipments of over 62.5 million albums in the US. She is also ranked as the best-selling female artist of the U.S. Nielsen SoundScan era (third best-selling artist overall). She has the most number-one singles for a solo artist in the United States (eighteen; second artist overall behind The Beatles). In 2008, Billboard Magazine ranked her at number six on "The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists", making Carey as the second most successful female artist, in the history of Billboard Hot 100 chart. In addition to her commercial accomplishments, Carey has earned five Grammy Awards, and is well-known for her five-octave vocal range, power, melismatic style, and use of the whistle register.

Not feeling the romance? Fuck V-Day, watch an Action Movie!

 

If there's been a zombie apocalypse and you're road-tripping alone through the wasteland, you could do worse than run into Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a bourbon-swilling bad-boy butt-kicker with a really cool car. This is where the careful hero of Zombieland, a kid nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), finds himself early in the film, and you can hardly blame him for hitching a ride with this swaggering Alpha Male. Still, they have their hands full not only with gibbering zombies but also with two sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) who will stop at nothing to reach a Disneyland-like amusement park in L.A. Although Zombieland gets off to a rocky start with Columbus's overly-cute narration (he's got a list of rules for surviving in the zombie world), it settles into an amusing comedy, regularly interrupted by bouts of blood-letting. The road-trip stuff is enough fun that when the movie does arrive at its version of Disneyland, the air goes out of it a little; sure, there's a giant zombie blowout, with entrails flying, but it's not quite the same. Director Ruben Fleischer keeps the gags coming, although the movie is often funnier in its odd little asides (both Eisenberg and Harrelson are expert at this) than in its official jokes. Comic high point: an interlude at the home of a very famous movie star, who plays himself--and we'll leave the spoiler unspoiled, in case anybody hasn't heard about this funny extended cameo.

Crank 2: High Voltage

The critics have not been very kind to Crank: High Voltage. But what do they know? Here’s what this movie has going for it: gratuitous nudity, mindless violence, constant profanity, and a ridiculous storyline. Add to that stereotypes galore (gay, Asian, Latino, the neuropsychiatrically disabled, you name it), strippers with guns, a strike by porn actors (with a cameo appearance by Ron Jeremy), and a guy who refers to his heart as a "strawberry tart," and one can only wonder what’s not to like. In fact, writer-director-producers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s sequel to 2006’s CrankCrank: High Voltage ain’t exactly Masterpiece Theater, but this is without a doubt one of 2009’s most entertaining films. is an absolute hoot, a non-stop assault of crazy sights and sounds that will leave you breathless and laughing. As the action starts, Jason Statham’s Chev Chelios has not only survived the fall from a helicopter that ended the earlier film, but is now on the operating table, awake and watching as some Chinese villains harvest his "tart" in order to implant it in their aging leader (a wacky turn by David Carradine). Chev quickly dispatches the bad guys, but the fun’s just starting; the mechanical ticker they’ve put inside him needs constant recharging, so as Chev pursues the real organ, he must use whatever’s available (jumper cables, a police taser, a car cigarette lighter, high voltage power lines) to keep the fake one going. Storywise, that’s about it. But it’s plenty, as the filmmakers’ ultra-kinetic style--with its manic edits, cartoony subtitles, and other envelope-stretching effects--and amusing performances by Amy Smart (as Chev’s girlfriend), Dwight Yoakam (as a "doctor" who helps him figure out what’s happening), and others keep things going. No,

The Hurt Locker

The making of honest action movies has become so rare that Kathryn Bigelow's magnificent The Hurt Locker was shown mostly in art cinemas rather than multiplexes. That's fine; the picture is a work of art. But it also delivers more kinetic excitement, more breath-bating suspense, more putting-you-right-there in the danger zone than all the brain-dead, visually incoherent wrecking derbies hogging mall screens. Partly it's a matter of subject. The movie focuses on an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, the guys whose more or less daily job is to disarm the homemade bombs that have accounted for most U.S. casualties in Iraq. But even more, the film's extraordinary tension derives from the precision and intelligence of Bigelow's direction. She gets every sweaty detail and tactical nuance in the close-up confrontation of man and bomb, while keeping us alert to the volatile wraparound reality of an ineluctably foreign environment--hot streets and blank-walled buildings full of onlookers, some merely curious and some hostile, perhaps thumbing a cellphone that could become a trigger. This is exemplary moviemaking. You don't need CGI, just a human eye, and the imagination to realize that, say, the sight of dust and scale popped off a derelict car by an explosion half a block away delivers more shock value than a pixelated fireball.


Inglorious Bastards

Although Quentin Tarantino has cherished Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 "macaroni" war flick The Inglorious Bastards for most of his film-geek life, his own Inglourious Basterds is no remake. Instead, as hinted by the Tarantino-esque misspelling, this is a lunatic fantasia of WWII, a brazen re-imagining of both history and the behind-enemy-lines war film subgenre. There's a Dirty Not-Quite-Dozen of mostly Jewish commandos, led by a Tennessee good ol' boy named Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who reckons each warrior owes him one hundred Nazi scalps--and he means that literally. Even as Raine's band strikes terror into the Nazi occupiers of France, a diabolically smart and self-assured German officer named Landa (Christoph Waltz) is busy validating his own legend as "The Jew Hunter." Along the way, he wipes out the rural family of a grave young girl (Melanie Laurent) who will reappear years later in Paris, dreaming of vengeance on an epic scale.


Paranormal Activity

Like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity is an impressive and harrowing indie chiller that derives much of its terror--and there is quite a bit of that in its brief running time--by playing on the most basic of human fears: that which cannot be seen. Though one might assume that the point-of-view aesthetic had been worn out thanks to Cloverfield and Quarantine (and, lest one forgets, Blair Witch), Paranormal makes excellent use of the single-camera technique, which helps to not only preserve the film's central conceit--a new-minted couple records the increasingly threatening supernatural phenomena that have invaded their home on a camcorder--but underscore the realism needed to drive home the low-fi (if completely persuasive) special effects. The approach is also crucial to the film's suspense, which unfolds in long, largely broken takes to nerve-rattling effect. Not every horror fan--or moviegoer--will fall for the film's spook-show approach. Those that found Blair Witch's less-is-more approach aggravating will feel the same way about Paranormal, but the sleight of hand exhibited by first-time director Oren Peli, and assisted by his two leads, relative newcomers Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, should provide adventurous viewers with fresher and stronger scares than anything from Hollywood in recent years.