art

Auctions could fetch big bucks for cloned dogs

When Lou Hawthorne met Mira, the clone of his dog Missy, he couldn't have been happier. The puppy was just like Missy--and in some ways better because she mirrored Missy in her younger, more playful days.

So BioArts International, Hawthorne's biotech start-up that focuses on animal and human genomics, decided to spread the love.

Starting July 5, the highest bidders in five separate online auctions will win the opportunity to clone their own dogs.

Hawthorne, the company's CEO, said the event is the first step in making his Mill Valley, Calif.-based company's technology available to … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 747: Get Firefox (if you can)

It's Firefox Download Day! In bummer news, Mozilla's site was down by at least 10:12 a.m. (about the time we started our show). So, that's a bad start, then. In other news, AT&T customers using phones other than iPhone will, indeed, have to pay full price for a new iPhone. That's just how the cell phone world works. And the blogosphere takes a legitimately outrageous situation and wildly exaggerates the outrageousness by repeating old information over and over. Sigh. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 747

Firefox Download Day To Start … Read more

Electronic Arts extends Take-Two Interactive tender offer deadline

Electronic Arts announced Tuesday it was extending its tender offer for rival game developer Take-Two Interactive Software to July 18, marking its third extension since launching its hostile bid in March.

EA, which is currently offering Take-Two investors $25.74 a share, said nearly 6.14 million shares have been tendered in, representing approximately 8 percent of Take-Two's shares.

In early morning trading, Take-Two's stock hovered at $26.35 per share.

EA's previous deadline for its tender offer was June 16, which came roughly a week after Take-Two reported better than expected quarterly earnings, thanks to its … Read more

'Spore' set to mold the future of Web 2.0-enabled gaming

Next week game publisher Electronic Arts will unleash a cleverly packaged marketing device upon masses of hungry gamers awaiting the release of one of this holiday's biggest titles--Spore. The software is a "creature creator" letting players put together 3D characters with an interface nearly as simple to use as Nintendo's Mii maker seen on the Wii. The 300MB download will be available next Tuesday, though some diehard fans and "influencers" got their hands on it last night.

The upcoming game focuses on creating a species and taking it from the microbial stage of … Read more

Home theater for the art lover

You can now give your home theater an art gallery-quality treatment with VisionArt's canvas and framing solutions. Imagine the wow factor of winding down an exquisite masterpiece in front of your guests to unveil a flat-panel TV and mulitchannel speaker array at the touch of a button. Even better, the latter is no sub-standard component. It's manufactured by established U.S. company Triad.

According to Electronic House, there are also options to customize the system with additional subwoofer and surround-sound speakers to reproduce full 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS sound. Same goes for the canvas dimension right … Read more

Take-Two earnings soar on 'Grand Theft Auto' sales

Video game maker Take-Two Interactive Software announced better-than-expected earnings on Thursday thanks to recording-setting sales of Grand Theft Auto IV.

For the second quarter ended April 30, net profit was $98.2 million, or $1.29 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $51.3 million, or 71 cents per share, in the second quarter of fiscal 2007. Sales were up more than 160 percent to $539.8 million for the period, blowing away analyst estimates of $499.1 million.

The company also raised its forecast for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Take-Two said it expects to … Read more

'Playing the Building': A musical interactive exhibit created by David Byrne

The public-art organization Creative Time unveiled an interactive exhibit called "Playing the Building"--a 9,000-square-foot, site-specific installation by renowned artist David Byrne (lead/founder of retro-pop group Talking Heads).

What once served as a soaring waiting room for passengers to board ferries bound for South Brooklyn until 1938, the Battery Maritime Building in lower Manhattan was transformed into a massive sound sculpture for which all visitors are invited to sit and "play." The project consists of a retro-fitted antique organ in which the innards are replaced with relays, wires, and light-blue air hoses, and placed … Read more

Make gorgeous experimental mouse art with Bomomo

Bomomo is a wonderful Flash-based art application that runs in your Firefox or Safari browser. Instead of giving you some simple MS Paint-like tools like a paintbrush, bucket, and eraser, everything in Bomomo is dynamic and moving, leading to some kaleidoscopic creations that you can either e-mail to friends or squirrel away to your hard drive. I spent about 15 minutes layering effects on top of one another, and while the results aren't nearly as professional looking as SXSW Interactive winner Viscosity (review), if you know what you're doing you can create some really gorgeous abstract creations.

What … Read more

Has EA extended its deadline on Take-Two merger today? Yes, it has

I was joking with an editor of mine this afternoon that CNET News.com should put a little permanent widget on our front page that says something along the lines of, "Has Electronic Arts announced a timeline extension of its offer to buy Take-Two Interactive today? Yes or no." And then it would have a little check-box for each choice.

Now, in all fairness, most days, the "No" box would be checked. But let's be honest here: On an awful lot of days, we'd have to toggle it to "Yes."

Today would … Read more