By Katherine McClosky :: 7:25 PM
Tonight is the next-to-the-last episode in Season 3 of the popular PBS hit Downton Abbey.
If you missed catching it when it aired on TV, don’t fear – Amazon’s got your back. In an announcement made just a little over a week ago, Amazon is becoming the exclusive provider for all Downton Abbey episodes beginning June, and has all of Season 1
Amazon’s TV Pass for streaming video will give you access to all Season 3 episodes
With the pick-up of Downton by Amazon, it means that other providers, like Hulu and Netfix, will lose rights to stream episodes soon.
If you want an even better deal, spring for Amazon’s Prime
By Gilbert Falso :: 3:04 PM
Now this news comes out of the fast-spinning rumor mill, fueled by Apple fans and chatter overheard at CES last month, so take it all with a grain of salt, but it appears that Apple may be working on a smart wristwatch, and that its design will be something totally new in the marketplace as it will make use of curved glass.
The New York Times today has also said that it believes Apple’s research and development labs are testing out applications for curved glass that include watch-like devices and wearable technology. Two unnamed sources close to the project told NYT tech writer Nick Bilton that the the new watch would run Apple’s iOS, and would benefit from the company’s understanding of how glass can be manufactured to curve around the human body.
If Apple is successful in its efforts, it will be the first curved smart watch to hit the market, and the first true watch for Apple. Many iPod NANO fans use their device as a watch with the help of bands to fasten it around their wrists, and while Apple certainly makes the NANO easy to use for that purpose, it wasn’t designed from the ground up to be a watch, as this new device seems to be.
These recent reports, especially by the NYT, give credibility to the reports from a Chinese blog back in December that claimed that Apple was partnering with Intel to develop a wristwatch that would be Bluetooth-enabled.
No dates have been given for any part of this project yet, so it is merely a guess as to when we’ll see an iWatch on our wrists.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 2:16 PM
Home improvement mega-store chain Home Depot has moved away from BlackBerry handsets for its managers, and instead will be outfitting nearly 10,000 employees with Apple iPhones.
The company, which is the fifth-largest retailer in the world, will move 10,000 of its managers at the store, district and corporate level to iPhones.
Home Depot’s departure from from BlackBerry for enterprise mobile support is the latest in a series of similar moves, including those recently made by the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency
An interesting move for the retailer, it is timed poorly for BlackBerry, which just announced its next generation BB10 platform at the end of January. BlackBerry hardware was once the standard in corporate and enterprise settings, and this visible move by Home Depot underscores how much market share BlackBerry has given up over the years.
By Paul Thomson :: 12:27 AM
Executives in the toy and game business gathered in New York City on Saturday evening to honor the year’s top toys and industry icons at the 13th annual Toy of the Year (TOTY) Awards ceremony.
Often called the “Oscars” of the toy industry, the event took place at the Plaza Hotel, kicking off the 110th American International Toy Fair.
One of the categories for the awards was an app-cessory – a physical toy that interacts with a smartphone, tablet or gaming device, and the top prize for e-Connected Toy of the Year was presented to Skylanders Giants
The Skylanders toy can come to life on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. With a Bluetooth portal paired with a mobile device, children can interact with their Skylanders character on the portal and use their favorite characters to battle against new and different creatures as they explore the world of Skylands.
By Paul Thomson :: 11:04 PM
Pop superstar Justin Bieber is not only the musical guest on tonight’s Saturday Night Live (SNL), he also the show’s host. Yesterday, in the run up to his performance, Bieber met with SNL producer and creator  Lorne Michaels, and posted a snapshot from the encounter on his Instagram feed.
So far, so good, right? Not so much, because Bieber misspelled Michaels’ first name as “Lauren” in his caption on the photo.
“Watch me on snl tomorrow night thank u Lauren ur the man,” reads the caption, which has received over 528,000 likes and nearly 13,000 comments on the photo sharing social network.
This typo is only one in a string of slip-ups by the young star lately. Within the span of just a few months, Bieber has also posted a picture of himself mooning the camera to Instagram, as well as dressed inappropriately when he met the Prime Minister of Canada.
Though the misspelling of such a television great might mean something serious in certain circles, it didn’t seem to phase the teen heartthrob’s multitude of fans, who posted comments like “OH GOD I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUU” in response to his Instagram post.
Some in the entertainment industry are skeptical of how well tonight’s SNL performance will go over for Bieber. Entertainment Weekly wrote that Bieber’s “charm may not translate to the small screen,” and that he looked” vaguely uncomfortable in his SNL promos with Kenan Thompson, and certainly like he hadn’t quite gotten the knack of reading cue cards.”
Bieber will make his SNL appearance tonight at 11:30 on NBC.