LOS ANGELES — For decades, the Walt Disney Company has largely kept Mickey Mouse frozen under glass, fearful that even the tiniest tinkering might tarnish the brand and upend his $5 billion or so in annual merchandise sales. One false move and Disney could have New Coke on its hands.
Now, however, concerned that Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people, Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining him for the future.
The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a forbidding wasteland.
And at the same time, in a parallel but separate effort, Disney has quietly embarked on an even larger project to rethink the character’s personality, from the way Mickey walks and talks to the way he appears on the Disney Channel and how children interact with him on the Web — even what his house looks like at Disney World.
Best Buy sells a lot of DVDs, but it is taking another step to get ready for the day when that business shifts online.
The giant electronics retailer on Tuesday is announcing a partnership with Sonic Solutions‘ Roxio CinemaNow service to deliver first-run DVDs streamed online directly to consumers.
The idea, said Chris Homeister, senior vice president for entertainment at Best Buy, is to let consumers pay once for a DVD and then eventually be able to play it on any device: television, Blu-ray disc player, personal computer, handheld media player or smartphone.
The new service will be a Best Buy-branded offering, available starting early next year.
The 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray and DVD of Say Anything came out yesterday, and to mark the occasion, numerous men with lots of free time dressed up in trench coats and hoisted boomboxes above their heads and marched throughout New York City serenading people with the strains of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” and a cover version of the same song by The Lloyd Dobler Effect. Check them out in the gallery below.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Nov. 2 /Christian Newswire/ — After posting an article in support of Rush Limbaugh, James L. Paris was suspended from Twitter two weeks ago. Although his account was reinstated after eight days, Paris decided to start his own Christian version of Twitter called Christian Chirp www.christianchirp.com. The site was launched this past Thursday.
So, what is Gospelr all about you say? Is it just another Twitter service? The answer is no. It’s not just another one in the mix, but rather it’s microblogging-as-ministry: Ministry Microblogging perhaps! Sure, you can tweet from Gospelr but you can also look at Gospelr as an online social bible study as well. Share your dreams, wishes, and prayers with other like-minded Christians.
The purpose is to provide an effective communication medium for sharing thoughts, ideas, words of encouragement, prayer requests, daily scripture readings/devotionals, and more to friends, staff, ministries, family, and others. But our hope is that it becomes so much more than just a Christian-Twitter: Our desire is that it is actually effectual in regards to sharing the Gospel with those who have already heard the Good News (because we all could use a good reminder… daily!) and those that have not. That’s why it’s integrated with Twitter.
Wikipedias are places where people work together to write encyclopedias in different languages. We use simple English words and grammar here. The Simple English Wikipedia is for everyone! That includes children and adults who are learning English.
We’ve seen bizarre Wii remote accessories before (this bowling ball encasement certainly comes to mind), but everyone else can quit now — 505 Games has won. Because as Aussie-Nintendo reports (via Kotaku), their latest Wii exclusive title Baby and Me encases your Wii inside a baby.
No, really. The special edition of this child-rearing game aimed at little girls comes with a baby doll with a slot in its back for the Wii remote, which allows the doll to react “by giggling, gurgling or crying through the Wii remote [speaker].”
That video reminds me of a time when I ate with one of my Aggie friends who never knew the proper way to eat a Freebirds burrito. After I told him he looked around the restaurant in amazement how many people ate their Freebird like I did.
The U.S. Postal Service has started selling Hallmark greeting cards at some post offices, a one-year experiment that may lead the nation’s 34,000 postal outlets to eventually sell other goods and services, including banking, insurance and cellphones.
Unlike the mail, greeting cards remain a popular and profitable line of business, with 7 billion sold annually for more than $7.5 billion in sales, according to the Greeting Card Association. People receive more than 20 greeting cards each year, one-third of them for birthdays.
Of those 7 billion cards, roughly 4 billion are sent through the mail, accounting for about 2 percent of total mail volume, said Robert F. Bernstock, president of mailing and shipping services for the Postal Service.
A church made famous by Washington Irving’s short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” has rejected a couple’s request to hold a Halloween-themed wedding.
Lisa Panensky and Jim Nieves signed a contract 13 months ago to get married on Halloween at the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.
Church officials balked at the couple’s plans to wear costumes and include theme music from The Addams Family and The Munsters.
The Rev. Jeff Gargano said he only recently learned of the Halloween theme. He offered instead to marry them in the cemetery of the 17th-century church, but the couple declined.
Four Utah County teenagers are upset after their trip to an American Fork McDonald’s, where they tried to rap out their order through the drive-thru. They didn’t leave with a Happy Meal; rather they were given a citation by police for disorderly conduct.
I remember during junior high school taking a trip to San Antonio and stopping at a Mcdonald’s in Waco where my friend Jimi sang this song as he ordered.
The ladie behind the register gave him one heck of a go to hell look.
A seventh-grader and her 80-year-old grandfather are allegedly the first people to discover that President Barack Obama is related to all other U.S. presidents except one.
BridgeAnne d’Avignon, who attends Monte Vista Christian School in Watsonville, traced that Obama, and all other U.S. presidents except Martin Van Buren, are related to John “Lackland” Plantagenet, a king of England and signer of the Magna Carta.
The Name Engine® provides the correct name pronunciations of athletes, entertainers, politicians, newsmakers, and more. Even well-known names are often pronounced in different ways, leaving you to wonder what the correct pronunciation is. You’ll find the right answer here. Better yet, you’ll actually hear the right answer.
For instance:
You know, this would have came in really handy for Jerry Jones. Just listen to Jerry try to pronounce the name Bono, as in Bono of U2. It gets worst every time he tries to say it.
So, what is Gospelr all about you say? Is it just another Twitter service? The answer is no. It’s not just another one in the mix, but rather it’s microblogging-as-ministry: Ministry Microblogging perhaps! Sure, you can tweet from Gospelr but you can also look at Gospelr as an online social bible study as well. Share your dreams, wishes, and prayers with other like-minded Christians.
We’ve seen bizarre Wii remote accessories before (this bowling ball encasement certainly comes to mind), but everyone else can quit now — 505 Games has won. Because as Aussie-Nintendo reports (via Kotaku), their latest Wii exclusive title Baby and Me encases your Wii inside a baby.
