Trends with Benefits: Star Wars meets Columbia & Amazon’s Alexa hits Vegas

By Greg Nibler Published December 16, 2016

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Star Wars meets Columbia: The Star Wars franchise has become a master of marketing, and their newest cross-promotion involves Columbia Sportswear. Their new line of jackets replicates Rogue One costumes, in a perfect match. Which one would you choose?

Amazon Echo in the Wynn: The Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas has announced that every room will soon be equipped with an Amazon-enabled Echo speaker. It’s a step toward creating a “Smart” Hotel room, but is that what you would want in Las Vegas?

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Greg has worked as a Host, Producer, and Writer in radio and television since the early 2000s, working for such companies as…

Podcasts

TWB Podcast: SpaceX triumph, Spotify vs. Apple Music, Apple Watch health

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SpaceX has reinvigorated space exploration: There can be no doubt that putting a cherry red Tesla Roadster into space, as part of the Falcon Heavy X rocket launch on 2/ 5/18, captured the world's attention. It showcased what vision, ability, talent and a whole lot of money, can accomplish. The question now is what will Elon Musk do next? One would imagine that investors are clamoring to pour more money into future projects. This was also the world's greatest ad campaign for Tesla, for which there are some pretty bold plans in their own right. A letter was sent to shareholders stating that they are planning to send an autonomous Tesla car on a coast-to-coast trip in 2018.

Spotify vs. Apple: When it comes to overall users, there is no question that Spotify is the current leader in streaming music services. They have millions more subscribers (approximately 70 million total) than their closest rivals. However, Apple Music is now claiming to have 36 million of their own and according to the Wall Street Journal, is growing at nearly double the rate of Spotify. So, who do you use for streaming music and why?

Entertainment

Between the Streams: Venomless trailer, Game of Thrones Star Wars, ‘Solo’ time

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DT’s weekly entertainment show, Between the Streams, is your guide to all of the hottest, most important, and (of course) dumbest new developments in streaming and entertainment, providing a handy recap of the week that was and a preview for what's ahead. Follow us here at 2 p.m. PT every Friday, or add us via RSS, iTunes, or Stitcher at the links below to take BtS on the road!

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Forget selfies and sunsets, any ordinary iPhone can be used to take pictures of something far more intriguing: the spirit world.

Julie Rieger is the biggest of Hollywood bigwigs; she’s president, chief data strategist, and head of media at 20th Century Fox, where she’s worked on a few little films like Avatar, Deadpool, The Fault in Our Stars, and more. And in addition to being one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, she’s an avid ghost photographer -- in fact, she wrote the book on it.