Disney joins rush to embrace Apple's iPad

When Walt Disney chief Bob Iger attended Apple Inc.'s unveiling of the new iPad two weeks ago in San Francisco, it seemed only a matter of time before content deals were announced.

Iger told Wall Street investors during Disney's earnings call Tuesday that the Burbank entertainment conglomerate plans to develop casual games and other forms of entertainment for the portable device, including digital books and a new and improved version of ESPN's ScoreCenter app on the iPhone, which provides real-time sores for more than 500 sports leagues around the world. 

"We find that the iPad has a lot of potential," Iger said. "We think it's a really compelling device. We think it could be a game-changer in terms of enabling us to create essentially new forms of content."

The iPad is a tablet-style computer that can display movies and television shows and Web videos, playing video games as well as books and newspapers. Iger said the quality of the 10-inch screen and its wireless Internet access open the door to a different kind of content than would be found on a computer or Internet-connected TV. Its speedier processor make it a more technically robust development platform than even the iPhone, he said.

Fans of an ABC program like "Lost" would be able to do more than merely watch the show on the iPad, Iger noted, and a new digital books initiative from Disney's Publishing Group could incorporate features such as singalong songs or simple animations.

"ESPN ScoreCenter, which is a great app on the iPhone and provides relatively rudimentary information scores basically," Iger said. "Suddenly we have an opportunity with a platform where you can make the scores come to life. We’re thinking about it in those terms."

Disney was the first of the major studios to sell television shows through Apple's iTunes store.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Apple Inc. CEO and Disney shareholder Steve Jobs announces the new iPad as he speaks during an Apple Special Event on Jan. 27 in San Francisco. (Credit: Ryan Anson / AFP/Getty Images)

Tiger Woods Web game and 3-D reenactment illustrate a high-tech media circus [Updated]

Among all of the buzzwords about "light-speed DNS" and "real time," there have been few events that really drive home the point of just how fast technology and its users are. The Tiger Woods affair was a hole-in-one for the Internet's quick turnaround time.

A good example of that is Break Media's Tiger Hunting online game. The fairly simple distraction has players guide a cartoon Tiger Woods in his Escalade, with a supposed mistress seated beside him, down a street. Meanwhile, a character portraying his crazed wife chases them on foot, golf club in hand. Players must swerve to avoid various obstacles, including trees, trophies and babies.

Concept art and planning were drawn up over the Weekend of Tiger (Nov. 27- 29) as news media buzzed and shot at every angle, be it police statements or gossip.

On Monday, Nov. 30, Break's director of games Chris Pasley began programming the game in Flash. By Tuesday night, Tiger Hunting was online and being promoted on Holy Taco, a Break-owned men's humor blog.

A four-day turnaround, and even then, Break was taking its time.

"If we had a sense of urgency, if we wanted to, we could have put it up quicker," said Nick Wilson, Break's chief technology officer, in a phone interview Tuesday.

Break employees and friends spent a day testing the game and discussing whether they had gone too far. "Should he run over the baby, yes or no?" Wilson said, reminiscing about internal discussions. He's referring to a cartoon tot, one of the road obstacles. "Sure, why not?"

TechCrunch50: SeatGeek advises you when to buy tickets to the big game

It's the ticket-scalping conundrum: Will it be cheaper to buy seats in advance of the event or will prices drop as it gets closer to game time and the sellers want to unload their wares?

SeatGeek, a new company that showed its stuff at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco, aims to take the guesswork out of that decision.

"We have an algorithm that can forecast ticket prices," said Jack Groetzinger, co-founder of the company. He compared it to Bing's FareCast, which does something similar with airline tickets.

SeatGeek aggregates tickets on sale from most of the major re-sellers, like StubHub, RazorGator, TicketsNow and others.

Say you're interested in getting tickets to Oct. 4's showdown between the Dodgers and the Colorado Rockies. (See the screen grab at right.)  SeatGeek searches available seats, and says you can get cheap seats for below face value, but you should wait -- the price will probably go even lower. But if you want the medium or expensive seats, buy them now, as those prices will probably rise. (Perhaps the conclusion is that if Dodger fans can't get close to the action, they'd rather stay home.)

Groetzinger, 25, and co-founder Russ D'Souza, 24, sold their earlier company, Scribnia (which D'Souza called "Yelp for authors and bloggers") four months ago, and immediately started SeatGeek. They were living in Boston at the time, where Red Sox tickets are hard to come by and only available on the secondary market.

"We see this as a huge opportunity for a change-the-world type of business," D'Souza said.

-- Dan Fost

Yahoo launches Flickr iPhone app and others

The iPhone has been having some trouble hanging onto that top spot on Flickr's list of most popular cameras.

But iPhone users now have a much-overdue tool to add to their photography arsenal -- a Flickr iPhone application.

The phone-based app pretties up the already snappy mobile Web interface and adds a few features for what has long been the most-used camera phone on the photo-sharing website.

Users can snap, upload, tag and package location data to a photo. There's also a list of previously added photos, friends pictures and the ability to search the site's library of user-generated content.

IPhone 3GS owners also get the ability to shoot and upload video. Unlike the "send to YouTube" feature that came with iPhone OS 3.0, however, users must open the Flickr app separately from the video editor in order to get it onto the Yahoo-owned photo site.

Yahoo also launched apps for its popular fantasy football service as well as one for Yahoo Finance. Yahoo already powers the stocks app that comes pre-loaded on every iPhone, but the new financial app is a more powerful version.

Earlier this summer, Yahoo launched a much-improved mobile interface for its home page.

-- Mark Milian

Image credit: quartzacoalt via Flickr

ESPYS gag uses Twitter to poke fun at star athletes

ESPYS host Samuel L. Jackson introduces a fake tweet for tennis star Serena Williams. Credit: Mark Milian / Los Angeles Times

A running gag during tonight's sports-centric ESPY Awards revolves around everyone's favorite social network, Twitter.

And by "everyone," we mean athletes, celebrities and news media -- not necessarily young people, as evidenced by a vocal Morgan Stanley intern.

Actor Samuel L. Jackson was the host of ESPN's awards show, which took place at the Nokia Theatre on Wednesday and airs tonight at 6 p.m. Jackson landed well-timed jokes about Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps "smoking" the competition and about "how to treat a lady," referring to Dodgers power-hitter Manny Ramirez's consumption of fertility drugs.

But an ongoing joke that seemed to fall flat among audience members showed bogus Twitter messages from star athletes in the audience (although Times writer Diane Pucin called it "the night's best running gag").

Jackson himself supposedly Twittered throughout the show on his Blackberry, saying how bored he was. In reality, Jackson has many impersonators on the social network -- none of the accounts appear to be his own.

It has been well documented that athletes have taken to Twitter like a dime cover defense on a slow football receiver (meaning, quite substantially). ESPN pushes its own Twitter account regularly during news broadcasts.

So, it was a natural target for topical humor that allowed Jackson to poke fun at athletes, like controversial Buffalo Bills NFL receiver Terrell Owens, without ...

Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa sues Twitter for impostor account

St. Louis Manager Tony La Russa after the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers in the 2006 World Series. Credit: Jamie Squire / Getty Images

The sports world may have welcomed Twitter with open arms, as athletes, team owners and sports news giant ESPN post tweets with practically every game detail.

But Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, isn't on Twitter, despite appearances. In fact, he's suing the social networking company for hosting an impostor account.

The lawsuit, filed last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco (where Twitter Inc. is based), seeks unspecified damages, the Associated Press reports:

La Russa's lawsuit said the page bearing his name was hurtful to the 64-year-old manager, who has led the Cardinals since 1996 and also managed the Chicago White Sox and Oakland A's during a 30-year managerial career.

The lawsuit includes a screenshot of tweets with the heading "Hey there! Tony La Russa is using Twitter," with a picture of the manager. Among other things, the lawsuit claims the page includes distasteful references to two Cardinals pitchers who have died in recent years.

The fake account has since been deactivated. Another user called NotTonyLaRussa, with a scant seven followers, still appears in a Twitter person search for the Cardinals manager, but the page cannot be accessed.

The bio listed on NotTonyLaRussa, as well as the one highlighted in the suit, reads, "Parodies are fun for everyone." The real La Russa is apparently excluded from that party.

-- Mark Milian [follow]

Twitter trouble: Mark Cuban fined, Courtney Love sued -- over tweets

Mark Cuban at South by Southwest. Credit: gorriti via Flickr

Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is apparently just as frank on Twitter as he is courtside at basketball games. The NBA fined Cuban $25,000 on Sunday for a complaint that he tweeted about the refereeing of his team's 103-101 loss to Denver.

Cuban complained that refs didn't call a technical foul on Nuggets guard J.R. Smith for taunting Antoine Wright after a missed shot. Cuban's 100-character protest, broadcast to his more than 13,000 followers on the short-blogging service, translated to $250 per character. That's one pricey tweet.

After telling the world about his slap on the wrist, Cuban quipped on his Twitter page, "can't say no one makes money from twitter now. the nba does."

He isn't the only celebrity getting in trouble for a loose tongue -- make that loose fingers. Rock musician and party girl Courtney Love is being sued for defamation because of messages on Twitter. She complained on her Twitter page (sorry, no link due to excessive swearing) about conflicts with clothing designer Dawn Simorangkir, which spurred the lawsuit that was filed in an L.A. court.

Defamation is a sensitive issue among journalists. We weigh the concerns of what may be defamatory in everything we publish. But it has rarely been cause for concern among celebrities — mainly because they used to have to go through the news media to get their statements out to the mainstream.

Now that everyone has a direct line to the public, the courts will either have to redefine the legal definition, or we're all just going to have to play nicer.

-- Mark Milian