ThePowerGeeks.com

We are LIVE on Ustream!!! Tonight we break out the zombies, Lightning Rock’n’Roll, high tech garbage, and stalking gets easy, all this and more!

(JP) With gratitude and much respect, best birthday wishes to Mr. Declan MacManus aka Elvis Costello.

Items of Interest

• You’ve seen Steampunk…helloo MarvelPunk (udg)
• • 19 yo Zachariah Perry Cruse, a sculpture student of Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Indiana has created an Xbox 360 mod Tony Stark would be proud of.
  • It started as a rusty, fat Falcon HDMI Xbox 360.
  • It has its own Arc Reactor that glows in cool white when the console is turned on, in addition to a ring of light around the Arc Reactor that looks like the console’s power button.
  • Available on ebay, the sexy beast comes with matching red controller and a 120g hard drive with “Stark Industries” label.
  • Looking to bid on this? Good luck- current top bid is $3,200.
    • I think Microswerve should hire this kid immediately… his consoles beat any of the custom faceplate models on the market to date (JP)

• Walking Dead Official Trailer (SM)
  • (SM)I am officially in love with this series and its not even out yet
  • We saw pieces of this from SDCC
  • That they would keep Kirkman around speaks volumes towards how they want to get this right
  • Watch all the other stuff at that site… Zombie school? Count me in
    • (JP) So Glad Darabont is attached to this. He has done the best adaptations of Stephen King novels… He has a great way of handling horror/suspence subject matter. This should be amazing! now I have a new reason to look forward to Halloween!
• Age of Empires Getting a new treatment for online linked to Xbox360 and Windows Games Live (JP)
  • Sign up for the Beta at the link in the show notes…
  • Under an NDA for now, but as soon as  I can talk about it… I will
  • I can say I have always love AoE games and am excited about this…

Gold Sponsors:

UberDorkCafe

• Will be THE place for Geeks to hang out
• What is UberDorkCafe? It is the brain child and DREAM of Natali, aka @UberDorkGirlie from twitter, and it blends art + science = geek
• Place to hang, eat, have awesome kid parties (if thats your thing), or to get your gaming on
• Woookie Coookies – a piece of UDC before there is even a physical cafe
• UberDorkCafe – Auction Sept. 11th – DC,Tampa Bay,Online
• first Piece revealed and accompanying t-shirt

• Golden Pic and Golden Pic Lite for Android devices
  • Both are available in the Android Market for Android devices running 1.5 or later
  • Lite is a free version (ad supported) with slightly limited functionality
  • Full version is only $1.99 USD
  • Go Buy it! or try it, then buy it!

Deals of the Week / New Releases

• Tactical Bacon - ‘Nuff said
  • Delicious bacon, canned, so it has a 10+ year shelf life.
  • Approx. 18 servings per can (1 serving = 3 slices of bacon).
  • Net Wt.: 9oz
  • a must have for every Zombipocalypse survival kit!

Call of Duty Black Ops:Retailer Extends $20 Promo to Prestige and Hardened Edition (udg)

• Activision announced the availability of the Call of Duty: Black Ops Prestige Edition and Hardened Edition for pre-order on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
• Both versions are available for pre-order at Amazon and the retailer has extended their $20 video game credit promo to both the Prestige Edition and Hardened Edition.
• Black Ops Hardened Edition Features:
  • Limited edition Black Ops Collector’s Medal w/display case
  • 4 extra playable co-op maps not in the standard edition
  • Exclusive Black Ops Xbox® Live® avatar outfit
  • Premium, special-edition SteelBook™ case
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops full game
  • Black Ops Prestige Edition Features:
    • Includes the full Call of Duty: Black Ops Hardened Edition w/ Collector’s Medal and 4 extra playable co-cop maps not in standard edition
    • RC-XD Video Surveillance Vehicle – Fully custom RC vehicle modeled after in-game RC-XD Killstreak Reward
    • Fully custom RC vehicle modeled after in-game RC-XD Killstreak Reward
    • Video camera to send wireless video to Transmitter
    • Microphone to send wireless audio to Transmitter
    • Digital proportional steering and throttle
    • Independent suspension
    • Display stand
    • RC-XD Transmitter – 2″ backlit TFT 220 x176 color screen to receive video from car
    • 2″ backlit TFT 220 x176 color screen to receive video from car
    • Integrated speaker to receive audio from car
    • Custom pistol grip style RC controller
    • High and low speed settings
    • Up to 200ft control range
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops is set to ship on November 9, 2010 on Xbox 360 and PS3.
  • Reg Edition = $59.99 + free $20 Credit
  • Hardened Edition= $74.99 + free $20 Credit
  • Prestige Edition= $149.99 + free $20 Credit

• Stay Puft Caffinated Marshmallows (JP)
  • Licensed Ghostbusters collectable… and edible!
  • only 20 bucks for a box from Thinkgeek.com

Geek Speak

• 7 Ways to Destroy Zombies
  • Natural Predators
  • No Heat
  • Cant handle the cold
  • Biting is a terrible way to spread disease
  • They cant heal
  • Landscape Zombie Proof
  • Lots of weapons

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• HDMI Cable Scam (SM)
  • Cable companies claiming 240/480 hz refresh rates through their cables.
  • No such thing! Thats all determined by the device
  • Only “High Speed” and regular def rated cables (need high speed for 1080p)
  • Companies are just trying to get consumers to spend more on cables

• Rock Goes Lightening-Proof (udg)
  • Arc Attack’s MIDI guitar means just cuz it’s stormin doesn’t mean the rock needs to stop.
  • The fret board is 72 optically isolated switches. The fret board, instead of frets has 6 brass contacts per fret. When the string is pushed down to the contact, it makes a connection.
  • From there the signal is optically isolated, to protect from EMF and sent to a micro controller thats only job is to priority encode the fretboard, and keep tabs on which string is pushed down to each fret.
  • And that all means what? if you are playing the 6th string on the 12th fret, then the computer ignores if say the 11th and 10th frets are pressed on that string also, since the 12th fret needs to take priority – just like a real guitar.
  • To truly appreciate the awesomeness of this check out the video in the link in the show notes.

• Apple News (JP)
  • IOS 4 fix for 3gs coming “soon”
    • Some are claiming slow-downs with 4 on 3gs and below
    • (SM – I personally have seen this on a guys phone)
    • “I’ve waited patiently through 4.0.1 and 4.0.2, looking for a fix that will make my phone work again. I’ve read the forums that advise me to jailbreak my phone or use some other method so I can downgrade back to a version of iPhone 3, however I’m not prepared to use a method that is not supported by Apple.”
    • Jobs reply: Software update coming soon (sent from my iphone)
  • Patent for limiting “jailbreaks”
    • describes measures to identify “particular activities that may indicate suspicious behavior,” so that “safety measures” can be taken to restrict the device’s functions. Those activities include the “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card”
    • Systems that includes: activation of camera that could cap and geotag devices surroundings or users , recordings of voice, heartbeat monitor, and compare those against photo of real user
    • Big Brother anyone????? (JP – I was actually thinking this sounds more like HAL… I’m sorry Dave, I can’t allow you to do that)
    • SM- Hmm, we know that the remote activation of camera functionality is already there…
  • ITunes Hack or Phishing Scam?
    • Limited amt of users waking up to a bevy of charges to paypal from ITunes (one person $4600)
    • Apple spinning it as Phishing scam and gullible users
    • Paypal claiming that their system was not breached
    • Apple advice: change your password and cancel ur credit card. not our fault
      • (JP) My advice. Secure passwords you change semi regularly and use itunes gift cards, don’t link multiple accounts together.. IE iTunes and Paypal. Keep all online accounts separate, so if one is compromised you limit your liability

• Green Police going Hi-Tech, Trashcans with RFID’s? (SM)
  • Cleveland Bins get RFID, if you don’t bring it out after a couple of weeks, they rifle through your garbage
  • more than 10% recyclable, then its $100 fine
  • Is it really wanting to save the earth? Nope, its all about economics
  • Cleveland pays $30 a ton for garbage dump, gets $26 a ton for recyclables
  • Have goal of 4000 tickets, paying 2.5 million for 25,000 tech bins, plans to roll to all 150,000

• Be your own sell out? (udg)
  • Don’t care about privacy? Think your info is gonna be found and sold anyway so you may as well pocket the $ for it? Then Statz is for you.
  • According to their site “”Statz was founded on the simple premise that everyone should own, control, and benefit from their personal data. To enable that premise, the Statz web site is the first marketplace for consumers to securely and anonymously own, control, and sell all their personal and activity data. Every time a consumer’s data is sold, Statz will pay the consumer. That’s you — and it’s that simple.” “
  • You “own” all the data you upload, and choose what you’d like to “sell”. You can remove your data at any time, and it is gone from their servers for good–of course, if you “sold” it to a vendor already, that’s not coming back to you. Everything from cell-phone calling/texting history, eBay selling reports, to Skype usage is all available to be sold. No personally identifiable information is sent, and you can control specifically what is sold and given out.
  • So- are you willing to put your data up for grabs in exchange for a profit? Well, if you sign up for Statz and follow their instructions they’ll pay you 3x the prevailing rate for 1 year after we launch the Statz Marketplace on all sales of data uploaded during the alpha.

• Icanstalku.com (SM)
  • Did you know that you could be stalked by your photos???
  • Some cameras and smart phones have geocoding enabled by default and they put this info where you can’t see it.
  • So, upload to public place like Twitpic and ppl can look at that information very easily and find out where you are at (or were at)
  • This website starkly shows that problem… it tells ppl where others are at based upon their pictures they uploaded
  • Disable it on your device if you don’t want this functionality or use a utility such as “GeoSetter”
  • Coca-Cola Village Joined W/ FB for a stalker’s wet dream

• Halo Reach Leaked to the internet already (JP)
  • Word got round that Halo Reach was in the wild on Saturday after hackers managed to circumvent a block on Xbox.com, which was supposed to provide code for the full game to reviewers only.
  • Reach was Reach on two P2P sites monday morning. One uploader says:
    • ‘Game extracted from the leaked .xcp files then converted from god file to iso. Not sure if it will work on flashed consoles but its an iso so it should..confirmed to work on jtags too.’
  • Microsoft made it clear that it was dealing with and “aggressively investigating” the leak.
  • Halo: Reach is due for release on September 14, when you’ll be able to play it nice and legally.
  • Viral Marketing for Reach = Remote Control Robotic arm

• Google Makes Chrome Developers Dig Into Their Pockets (udg)
  • Google announced last Thursday the new, one-time $5 registration for new Chrome developers.
  • This comes after proposed one-time registration fee for Android App developers.
  • Gregor Hochmuth, product manager, stated in a recent blog post “(The sign up fee) is intended to create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts.”
  • Will peeps looking to scam millions really care about a lousy $5? They will if whatever they use to pay that fee can be traced to them in a prosecutable way should they intend to scam away.
  • Payment must be made using Google Check out, which links payments to a credit card, which starts the paper trail to the developer.
  • The company also launched a preview of its Chrome Web Store to give developers a chance to experiment w the online mart before it goes public later this year.
  • Developers can use the store to give away or sell their browser extensions, themes and web apps.
  • Google has set the minimum price for an add-on, theme or Web app at $1.99 — though developers can continue to give away their work if they want — and it will take a 5% cut of the purchase price, along with a 30-cent transaction fee for each download and payment. So a developer who charges the minimum $1.99 for an extension would receive $1.59 per download.

• Google Brings Google Voice to Gmail (SM)
  • If you are a Gmail user in the U.S., you can now make free Web-based phone calls to any phone in the U.S. and Canada right from the Gmail interface.
  • International calls start at 2 cents a minute
  • To use this new feature, you will have to install the Google Talk plugin, which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
  • They are rolling this out over the next few days so it may be a bit before you see it pop up.
  • Not currently available for Google Apps accounts
  • If you are a Google voice user, your Google Voice number will appear as the outbound called ID number on calls made from Gmail. You can also opt to receive inbound Google Voice calls from inside the GMail interface.
  • Google is clearly trying to position Gmail as more than just an email client. With the launch of a better contacts manager earlier this month and the addition of these new telephony features, Gmail is now becoming more of a full-blown communications suite than just a place to manage email.

• MMO for Neverwinter Nights announced (JP)
  • Atari and Cryptic Studios are teaming up to make a new DnD based RPG called Neverwinter Nights.
  • It’s planned to release Q4 2011
  • Gameplay will center on five-person groups that can include other players and/or AI allies, and there will be an extensive content generation system.
  • Action points have been changed to “boons” which allow you to use special boosts in certain situatons, healing surges (gain your HP back) are present, spells and abilities will closely match 4e, if you’ve played 4th edition before, you’ll be comfortable with the mechanics in the MMO
  • (udg- just wanna toss out there that my keen detective work called this in my GenCon recap)

• Original Kermit Donated to Smithsonian (SM)
  • Trivia: What year did Sesame Street Start? (1969)
  • Trivia: How many years did “The Muppet Show” run? (4 – 1976 – 1980)
  • (JP) Jan 30th 1974 The Muppet Show Valentine’s special ran… some consider this to be the first pilot for The Muppet Show
  • Trivia: What show did Kermit the Frog originally appear?
  • Kermit was actually from Sam and Friends, a puppet show on Washington TV that ran from 1955-1961
  • Others on the cast? Pierre the French Rat, a voracious purple skull named Yorick, and a yellow monster called Mushmellon

Intarweb Goldmine

• North Korea wants YOU for a friend (JP)
  • This “Friendly” dictatorship is looking for you as a buddy.
  • First twitter and Youtube, now Facebook
  • Mostly propaganda about how great North Korea is
  • Definition of Irony? Internet access is blocked for everybody but the elite of the 24 million citizens in that country

• Minneapolis pays $165,000 to zombies! (SM)
  • Yes, you heard it right, Zombies like blondes are more interested in your money than your brains, well these 7 at least
  • in 2006, 7 protested mindless consumerism by milling around in an intersection dressed like zombies, w/ amplified Ipod
  • Police arrested them and charged them with carrying eq that “simulated” a weapon of mass destruction
  • Now the courts are awarding these ppl for the wrongful arrests by making the city pay them money for their undead troubles.
  • Thats one way to get rid of zombies…  wonder if it works for them all?

• SWAT Team Requested for Posse of Violent Midgets (udg)

• • (Legit link here)
  • Tuesday Aug 3rd around 12:30 pm police in West Nevada County, CA received a frantic call.
  • The 911 caller’s son was allegedly beaten by a group of bodybuildfers from Reno and was feared to be left for dead she told police.
  • Things then took another odd turn after a pack of “midgets” followed and tried to POISON the caller.
  • Undaunted, a bodybuilder and the “lead female midget,” who was described as “really violent,” formed a cooperative and have been driving the caller’s own truck.
  • Caller then requested a SWAT team be sent after the “midgets”
  • Word of advice for caller- they prefer little people.
  • It is not clear if the Sheriff’s department followed up on this call or not.

Extra Links

• Must Have Android Apps
• Text 911
• Scott Adams “tries” to build a green home
• Alice in Wonderland style furniture

Contact Info

• On Twitter: Steven is @DarthMolen and I am @JPuent Natali is @UberDorkGirlie
• email us: darthmolen@thepowergeeks.com and jpuent@thepowergeeks.com and uberdorkgirlie@thepowergeeks.com (yay!)
• And Become a Fan

Sponsors

Prof. Mordarm’s “The Wandering Geek Con Journal”

• Kickstarter Project by Lorenzo R.(aka @Prof_Mordarm), create a useful medium to inform people of Geeky Cons across the U.S., both big and small.
• Series of physical journals that will be written in and by the geeks, the panelists, the cosplayers, the vendors, & the fans. Everyone & anyone at a Con can write in this journal Allowing good, bad, and geeky experiences to liv on
• When enough content is gathered, these experiences will be published into easy to read (online, PDF, & hardcopy) editions each year. It will be the Geek’s version of the Farmer’s Almanac, but for Geeky Cons!
• To help get your own TWGCJ and/or support or if you have questions, check out the Kickstarter @ http://kck.st/cNUADw & also follow the project creator on Twitter for updates.

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