Blog: The Sly Oyster

Microsoft announced today via its blog that it will be selling its Mediaroom properties to Ericsson. Mediaroom operated as a quasi-separate entity from Microsoft, who is going all-in with an IPTV strategy based on the Xbox . At Ericsson, Mediaroom will continue to operate essentially as per usual, with that company investing in growing the business, while at Microsoft, the sale allows Microsoft to dedicate “all TV resources to Xbox in a continued mission to make it the premium entertainment service that delivers all the games and entertainment consumers want,” Microsoft said in [...]

Conan O’Brien took the time to learn proper Southern etiquette with Cindy Haygood of etiquette school Perfectly Polished . Man, Conan has a few good zingers in here. Definitely one of the better bits he's done in a long time.

Yes, Margaret Thatcher died this morning. Politics aside, this caught my eye: Margaret Thatcher helped invent soft-serve ice cream , so says The Atlantic's Megan Garber. Thatcher, you see, before she was a politician, was a research chemist. The future prime minister, then Margaret Roberts, received a degree in chemistry from Oxford in 1947. And she put it to use first in work at a glue factory, and then with a research job at food manufacturer J. Lyons and Company, a "foodstuff conglomerate" in Hammersmith. Thatcher's task in that role? [...]

Britain's first and only female prime minister, who served as leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990, died today. She was 87 . Really, what can you say about the Iron Lady? She was as towering a figure during 80s conservatism as Reagan was.

David Pogue explains : When you buy a cellphone — an iPhone or Android phone, let’s say — you pay $200. Now, the real price for that sophisticated piece of electronics is around $600. But Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are very thoughtful. They subsidize the phone. Your $200 is a down payment. You pay off the remaining $400 over the course of your two-year contract. It’s just like buying a house or a car: you put some cash down and pay the rest in installments. Right? Wrong. Here’s the difference: [...]

University of Detroit’s Doug Anderson won the College Slam Dunk Contest. Only his final dunk raised my eyebrows and got a "holy shit that was nasty, lemme watch that AGAIN!" response from me. Otherwise, it might be time to retire the dunk contest concept for awhile, no? [via ESPN ]

Adam Rayner stars as Simon Templar in a TV version of The Saint . It's unclear if this is even going to series, but the cast looks mighty fine for a show. Rayner killed it on the BBC production of 'Hunted' and Dushku is perfectly suited for this kind of show. They had my curiosity, but when Roger Moore showed up, they got my attention. Moore starred as Templar in the 1960s version of 'The Saint' and it appears that he's playing the father or patriarch of Templar family. Not only that, but Ian Ogilvy, who [...]

Man, I'm just getting around to watching this and if you haven't seen Funny or Die's latest video with Huey Lewis reenacting that scene in 'American Psycho' then set aside the time and do so. I'm waiting for the next iteration of this parody by Christopher Nolan and Leonardo DiCaprio that turns this into an 'American Psycho' parody-inception. Let's just go down that rabbit hole, shall we? [via dangerousminds ]

"Why on earth would someone pay hundreds of dollars to fly halfway across the country for the pleasure of being abducted by thugs, handcuffed in a basement for hours, and forced to pee into a Gatorade bottle? GQ made Drew Magary go find out. " After watching and being inspired by David Fincher's 'The Game', Adam Thick, an ex-convict, founded Extreme Kidnapping in Detroit. We also discussed the use of a safe word. Adam noted that some clients forgo a safe word so [...]

You're guess is as good as ours. I'm just impressed the guy at the top didn't smash his face against the concrete deck.  [via  @BobsBlitz ]

What is there really to say about this lion of a film critic. Perhaps more than most writers he had such a profound impact on me wanting to make a career out of writing/being a critic. But, it was his humanity in the face of such monumental health challenges towards the end of his life that had such a profound impact on me as a person. For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and [...]

Netflix announced that the 15 episodes of the new season of Arrested Development will be released , all at once, on May 26th. It took several weeks for 'House of Cards' to show up on BitTorrent sites, but now that the DRM has been cracked, I would imagine for those without Netflix accounts or those sharing an account login with family or friends, the episodes will show up almost immediately. One thing I'm wondering about is whether or not the show will continue to bleep out swears. I loved it as a recurring gag when the show [...]

Michael Giacchino, who has scored every single one of J.J. Abrams' films (as well as Lost, Alias, and several Pixar films, geeks out with his buddy over the orchestra bring to life his score for the next Star Trek film. I wish there was more behind-the-scenes type of stuff for Hollywood movies throughout the process of making them. Also, there's an Instagram-like app for videos? Sure, WHY NOT. [via buzzfeed ]

Written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, and starring Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Tom Burke. In theaters July 19th. I would be A-Okay if Winding Refn and Gosling, who previously turned in the sublime 'Drive' together, formed the cool-kid equivalent of the Scorcese/DiCaprio partnership for this decade. Winding Refn has a unique ability to turn grisly violence into a poem. [via BAD ]

"Startups are run by people who do what's necessary at the time it's needed. A lot of time that's unglamorous work. A lot of times that's not heroic work. Is that heroic? Is that standing on a stage in a black turtleneck, in front of 20,000 people talking about the future of phones? No. But that's how companies are built. That person who did that for the iPhone launch at Apple, we don't know who he is. All we know is that Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone. But he didn't ship it. The person who bought the donuts [...]

"The Exploding Hearts are the biggest “what if” in the history of Portland music."  So begins the Willamette Week's fascinating look back at the ill-fated power-pop-punk band that released one album, ' Guitar Romantic ', ten years ago this week. Sadly, on the way home from a series of concerts in San Francisco just fourth months later,  the band’s tour van flipped over on Interstate 5 just north of Eugene. Only one band member and the manager survived. But for Terry Six, the fact remains that, on that morning 10 years [...]

A long lost interview with Doors front man Jim Morrison has been animated as part of a newish series from PBS called Blank on Blank . Blank on Blank has my undivided attention with this rare 1969 interview between journalist Howard Smith and Morrison, in which Morrison confesses that his late-in-life fatness was desirable. It's funny and showcases Morrison's sly, playful nature. The series continues PBS Digital Studios' stellar efforts ( PBS Off Book , The Idea Channel , etc.) to deliver fresh and interesting content via [...]

"On January 26, 2008, a 30-year-old part-time entrepreneur named Mike Merrill decided to sell himself on the open market. He divided himself into 100,000 shares and set an initial public offering price of $1 a share . Each share would earn a potential return on profits he made outside of his day job as a customer service rep at a small Portland, Oregon, software company. Over the next 10 days, 12 of his friends and acquaintances bought 929 shares, and Merrill ended up with a handful of extra cash. He kept the remaining 99.1 percent of himself but promised [...]

Roger Ebert has been the film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times since April 3, 1967. Now, he's planning to scale back, slow down, and take a " leave of presence " due to cancer. What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers handpicked and greatly admired by me. What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies [...]

I'm not anti-sequel but Pixar seems way more interested in doing them lately and the one movie that deserves a sequel, 'The Incredibles', is nowhere to be found on the roster. Anyway, per Disney-Pixar's announcement , 'Finding Dory' is set to take place about a year after 'Finding Nemo', set along the California coastline, with a new set of potential toys characters being introduced, in addition to the return of old favorites Marlin, Nemo, and several of the dentist fish tank posse. The concept of Dory getting lost isn't terrible and [...]