ThePowerGeeks.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hey guy I just wanted to tell you a little story. I work night shift and work every other WED 7pm to 7am. I wanted to point out my dedication to this show and how much I enjoy it. One night It was -18 degrees out side with the wind chill, and my work does not offer WiFi. So I wanted to hear the show, so bad I went outside to search for a open WiFi connection from my Ipod touch.  In the freezing cold, I found one about a block  from my work and stole internet to get TPG podcast via Itunes. Thanks to you Steven, Jeremy and Kristin with your busy lives, still having time for us the listeners.

P.s I continue to Steal internet at work to download this awesome show. Keep up the great work.

Deals of the Week / New Releases

• Freeware Game: Desktop Dungeon
  • Free game, looks very 8 bit, just added a new dungeon and you can import from the old version
• TA coming to Impulse
  • this was the game that made me give up Starcraft
  • You’re a commander and you can either build or fight
  • One of my seminal games
• FREE Kindle for iPhone app from Amazon (iKDR)
  • If you have a kindle or not you can purchase and read books here along with free ebooks that are available
  • it will also sync with your kindle for your position in the book (from what I have been told)

• ThinkGeek resurrects the T-Shirt Grab Bag (iKDR)
  • When you order a grab bag shirt, you’ll get a single, genuine ThinkGeek-made shirt that, for one reason or another, we didn’t sell in the normal course of events.
  • While Supplies Last!
  • Can specify size

• New Releases: (JP)
  • The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (just in time for St.Patty’s Day) (got mine last night… I seemed to be one of many tattooed Irish guys in line at Best buy…hmmm)
  • Up in the Air
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  • Also Quick Mention MW2 DLC coming (new maps) March 30th!!  (PS3 and PC later no date yet for them)
    • Named the Stimulus Package
• New Comics:
  • Amazing Spider-Man #624 (Pasqual Ferry ‘You’re Fired’ Variant Cover)
  • Marvel’s Girl Comics #1

Geek Speak

• I definitely get my news ‘online’ almost never reading the newspaper (by the time it’s printed and delivered it’s old news)
• I have a few sites I visit daily. a couple different RSS readers I use
• ( although I have yet to find a perfect aggregator so I could just go to one place…)
• iKDR – internet for last year or so, paper is boring, internet news is fast, easy, and customizable, i can tell it what kinds of news i am interested in
• I thought of one thing I would miss though… when I was kid I put Silly Putty on the comics (we called them the funnies back then)
• can’t do that with digital news and comics…

Toys that look like real weapons and the consequences….

in the story above… this week a 3 yr old mistook a real handgun left laying on a table for Wii remote, dying after accidentally shooting herself.
The news is full of stories like this… cops shooting kids in alleys because they saw a handgun that didn’t have the orange tip… etc..
I believe toys need to look like toys.. bright crazy colors… not that close to real weapons.
I in no way blame the video games, or the toys… I think in the story above the parents should be put in jail for leaving a gun lying on a table. loaded. in front of children.
that being said… Look at the similarity in the toy and the real weapon:

WTF!!! SRSLY WTF!!!

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• “No” to Iphone tethering for IPad (SM)
  • Sux for ppl who already own an Iphone, already pay a hefty fee to AT&T, and now will need to pay a second if they want 3g on their IPad
  • They should just allow it to bluetooth tether to the iPhone… send docs, etc.. (JP)
  • just one more reason the iPad is the suck – iKDR

• Teabagging confirmed for Halo Reach (JP)
  • in one of the funniest stories I’ve read in a while… here’s a bug report from a QA tester for Halo:Reach
    • Here’s the exchange:

      Title: Teabagging / humiliation moves impossible
      Type: Bug
      Opened: 3/4/2010 8:53:13 AM
      
      “The respawn camera flies back to the spawn location immediately after dying, so your opponents can’t teabag / shoot / melee your body and have a possibility of you seeing it.”
      
      Shishka’s Note:
      
      There’s a bug in the Alpha regarding how brief the “death cam” focuses on the player’s body that is being resolved for Beta/Delta. As with previous Halos, players should have a couple seconds to look around and locate where they were shot from. The fringe benefit of this is that the enemy that killed you (or the nearest passerby) can ravish your helpless corpse as you bear witness from beyond the veil

• Japanese Ringtone Promises to Clear Your Sinuses (iKDR)
  • Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory has created the “Hana Sukkiri Melody” ringtone, which claims to be able to clear out your sinuses whenever anybody calls you
  • “the ringtone will make a nose has resonant frequency with pollens adherent inside your nasal cavity, so eventually pollens fall down”
  • woot – good-bye kleenex
  • JRTL future ringtones include “sleep-promoting ringtone,” “ringtone makes your date,” “crow scarer ringtone,” “ringtone makes your skin beautiful,”
  • how about a ringtone thats makes ATM machines spew money at me as i walk by, or heres-a-new-job ringtone, or shut-up-that-screaming-baby ringtone…. or the “brown note” ringtone!

• HP Offering Tablet WITH Flash Support (SM)
  • Got a great flame-mail this week from John stating that I was “Flash-Hater”
  • Windows 7 / all the bells and whistles
  • Some experts on the Internet are predicting 500 Tablet clones to compete with the IPad (Dell Mini 5)
  • and I (JP) still say Flash is a dying app sorry bro just reading the writing on the wall

• Mac Gaming News (JP)
  • (quick hit) BFBC2 Coming to Mac Steam…
  • L4D1 and 2 to Feature cross-platform play between Macs and PC’s
  • Full Source Engine Support across both Platforms

• Court Upholds Ban Against DVD Backup Software (SM)
  • (SM: Watch out, this is my pet peeve) and how! (JP)
    
  • RealMedia created this very hamstrung software to allow 1 backup of your dvd
  • You can back up your computer, which has all sorts of proprietary stuff, but you can’t back up a purchased DVD, THAT would be illegal
    • iKDR – but when you back up your computers, you’re not making a secondary “copy” of the OS or software, etc. only user created info. so, in this senario, its not the same thing
  • Anyways, RealMedia was pushing the Fair Use angle, Courts and the movie industry slapped the DMCA down hard
  • So now ya gotta pay $20 for that Disney DVD if your kids scratch the heck out of it, like that ever really happens…
  • iKDR – i back up all my used, super scratched CDs into MP3 and download into iTunes or mix CDs…
  • also, many DVDs now come with one free digital download (which should be another argument for the fair use case of dvd copying-JP)

• Cisco Says New Router to “Forever Change the Internet” (JP)

  • 322 Terrabytes per second

    Cisco today announced a new version of its key routing system – has a dozen times the traffic capacity of competitors and three times as much as the company’s previous version.

  • CRS-3 Carrier Routing System is aimed at the huge growth in video on the Internet

  • It enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

  • When will consumers be able to take advantage of this new high speed internet?

    • Note: This is for Carriers (backbone of Internet) not end users… you can’t buy one of these for your house, they require special clearance to purchase (and they start at 90 Grand – for just the chasis) JP

• Courts Fines Lifelock $12 million for Running a Con (SM)
  • Todd Davis, famous for painting his SS on a truck, and trumpeting it to the world. – $10 to protect your identity – $1 million guarantee
  • Guess what? claims were bogus and has been prosecuted for operating a scam and con operation.
  • Failed to secure sensitive information, was only placing fraud alerts on their cc with three different credit check companies
  • Did not stop ppl from opening up acct’s or loans with their info
  • Kicker: Todd Davis was the victim of identity theft in 2007, where a guy spited him, took that ss off TV and went and got a $500 loan (Hilarious – I had not heard that before… Laughed out loud… I always thought that was a bold challenge)

• Chopra’s graphic novel adaptation goes “BEYOND” (iKDR)
  • Author/lecturer/physician Deepak Chopra is known as an expert on the spiritual, but now he has ventured into the supernatural for a graphic-novel project that’s also being turned into a movie.
  • “BEYOND is a story about reality being multidimensional and how we can take journeys to realms we never dreamed of by separating the veils that partition our minds.”
  • so i guess anyone can make a graphic novel now, huh?
  • i swear i wrote a movie script like this one time

• (JP & KDR) Review Layers for iPhone
  • JP – has a lot of promise and abilities… I have not gotten to dive into it as deeply as I want… bit of a learning curve, and I have fat fingers (which doesn’t help)
  • But I am having fun with it.
  • Like the layers tool in photoshop this allows you to create images of art, or edit photos in layers… adding or subtracting elements
  • drawing on them with your fingers, importing images, or taking them with the camera… lots of fun to be had. ($4.99 in iTunes) little steep IMHO I would think 2.99 or 1.99 a more fair price… but I may change that tune after spending some more time with it
    • KDR – this is really neat and super fun mobile photoshop-esque app
    • features:
      • 320×480 or 512×512 canvas
      • 1 finger to draw, use 2 fingers to pan around (this was very clumsy tho)
      • can choose brush style, weight and opacity
      • can select color from palet or eye dropper tool
      • eraser and blur
      • can add, subtract, duplicate and merge layers
      • layers can be drawings or photos from library
      • undo/redo
    • havent tried to import any pictures from iphone yet
    • and i do not have fat fingers, but was having a hard time with lines and erasing certain sections from a library photo

• FBI impersonator picked on Police Chief’s House (iKDR)
• Hustler Magazine requesting crime scene photos of dead college student – State denies request (JP)
  • Good for the State of Georgia… and shame on Hustler ( words you never thought you would hear from me, right?)

• • Their mission is simple: To aggravate and humiliate scammers worldwide
  • they find internet scammers – and force them to make ridiculous commercials, promising  money or technology equipment, and then mail them garbage and make them pay for the shipping & tax upon recpt.
  • this video shows a Nigerian man making a “commercial” for AnusLaptop.com
    • “Your Anus will be free and clear of viruses.” “Your Anus will perform like an Anus should.”
  • Then ScamBaiters mailed him a tree stump as payment
theScamBaiter.com (iKDR – Thanks Pops!)

• The New Tron Trailer
• How To: Run Windows in OS X, the Right Way
• Top 10 Geekiest Decorations for Your Home or Office
• 10 Popular Firefox Add-ons for Web Developers

Contact Info