Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• Great Costumes from SDCC 2011 (btm)
  • Careful, some are a little saucy.

• Batman: The Last Laugh
  • Fan Film Done Right

Gold Sponsors:

Jeb Apps – Today in Geek History, Today in Movie History

• Want to wow all your friends with off-the-wall Movie Trivia?
• Want to know more about Geek History and share them with your friends?
• Today in Geek History and Today in Movie History are for you
• Both have been out on the Android Marketplace for awhile now
• After a long vetting period, Today in Movie History is now available on iTunes!!!
• Go check out both apps, TIGH  and TIMH, now available on both Android and iPhone
• Now As Seen on Wired.com!!

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Happy Pandas, or Unicorn Treats, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Deals of the Week / New Release

• New DVD Movie Releases
  • Rio, Rio 3-D BR
  • Conan the Barbarian (International Cut) – Conan the Destroyer, BR
  • Braveheart / Gladiator BR
  • Eastbound & Down S1 + 2 (think KSwiss)

Entertainment Geekly (new feature)

• Die Hard 5 Rumors
  • Yipee – Kai –  Why???
  • possibly directed by  Noam Murro (300 prequel, Xerxes)
  • Set largely in Russia w/ his Son, blah blah blah

• Cowboys & Aliens
  • Released and achieved #1 in the US (barely beat out the Smurfs)
  • What have yall heard and do yall plan to see?
  • Harrison Ford is looking rough

Geek Speak

• SDCC Talk (Kristin, etc)
  • New Movies (Spiderman, Ghostrider, etc)
  • Costumes
  • After-parties

• Video Graphics x 100,000, Real or Fantasy (sm)
  • A company claims to have moved from Polygons to pixel/atoms
  • “Improves the quality of computer graphics infinitely”
  • In todays technology, times a 100,000
  • explain polygons
  • Changing from polygons to atoms

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• Apple Antics
  • Apple has more money than America? (btm)
    • Latest news from the US Treasury is that the United States has an operating balance of $73.7 Billion
    • Apple’s most recent financial reports shows it’s reserves at $76.4 Billion
    • The US is spending approximately $200 Billion more than it takes in every month.
    • Apple, meanwhile, is raking in cash with it’s latest quarter showing 125% more income than this time last year.
    • What’s Apple planning to do with this extra cash?
      • Industry watchers think they are building a war chest to be used for later acquisitions for other businesses and technology patents.
      • Barnes and Noble bookstores and Netflix have both been identified as possible targets.
    • There’s also this really cool house on Pennsylvania Avenue they might be interested in. it’s white and we all know how much Apple likes white products.
  • Skype gets posted for iPad then promptly pulled
    • for a long time, no approved Skype app optimized for IPad
    • Presto, inadvertent publish and then a prompt pull by Skype itself
    • Hopefully means it will be released shortly
  • Apple blocks Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia
    • Claims 10 patent infringement including slide tab to unlock
    • Australia actually honored the injunction, Korean company has to respond
    • This after newest Galaxy Tab compares favorably with IPad 2

• Nintendo President Takes 50% Pay Cut to Reduce 3DS Price (btm)
  • The slow selling 3DS is cutting it’s price from $249 to $169
  • This means Nintendo will be losing money on each sale.
  • To help with the loss company president Satoru Iwata told shareholders that he and other executives will be taking a significant paycut.
  • He will be taking a 50% cut while directors close to the project are giving up 30% and other executives will be losing 20%

• Internet Enabled TVs Interfaces just got better (SM)
  • Ever get frustrated with your TV’s interface?
  • Most TV’s are internet connected nowadays but are a pain to setup and maneuver
  • Heck, if you own cable, you have plenty of on-demand but GL getting to it
  • Poor Interface design makes users not want to use your products
  • Insignia (owned by BB) recently has gone to the TiVo interface to solve that problem
  • Still no DVR included out of the box or over-the-air program guide
  • Wait-and-see but its a step in the right direction

• Blizzard Makes Diablo III Require An Internet Connection (udg)
  • Remember how Ubisoft has managed to upset just about every gamer on the planet by requiring an always-connected machine to play its PC games? Well, Blizzard is doing the exact same thing with Diablo III. That’s right Diablo fans, if you want to play you need a solid internet connection. Offline play is just not an option.
  • If you want a reason as to why this decision has been made, Blizzard is happy to provide you with two. The first is of course piracy, which they believe an always-connected game will limit. The second is down to providing a fair game on Battle.net.
  • Blizzard is not allowing any mods in Diablo III and doesn’t want any cheats being used either. The developer states the only way to control this is with a game they can guarantee isn’t running any such additional software. Keeping you online during play apparently solves that problem and means whatever level your character is, is a true representation of the time you have spent in the game, not some mod or cheat working overtime in the background.
  • The final bit of news that has appeared about the game is that buying it might not be the end of your spending. The auction house included in the game will accept real money for buying items as well as allowing you to sell them. Blizzard’s reason for including this is for those gamers who have, “more money than time.”
  • Has Blizzard just made three huge mistakes, or is this what needs to happen for PC gaming to survive? I can imagine a few pre-orders have been cancelled already, and have to question the logic behind what Blizzard is doing here.
  • Diablo has a massive following, yet removing mods, requiring a connection, and introducing cash to the game to get ahead all seem like steps that will turn fans off rather than building excitement for the release.

• Et tu Adobe? (udg)
  • So, along with everyone else ::cough Apple cough:: Adobe is abandoning Flash as well. Their new tool, Edge, still encourages all the “flashy” loveliness, except that if Edge does it- it’ll be CSS, Javascript or HTML5. NOT Flash.
  • Don’t start calling it the “Flash-killer,” Edge is not intended to put Flash out of its misery or even to encourage developers to switch over to HTML5, but rather open up a new development path while Flash development presumably hits a wall.
  • As of right now, Flash can do some things better than HTML5. So it’s still an important part of the web and not going to up and disappear any time soon. . Still, Adobe seems to be well aware that developers will eventually abandon Flash for HTML5 and while they don’t intend to expedite that process, they are doing what they can to grab a piece of the new pie.
  • At the moment, Edge is available, for free, to anyone who wants to see what it can do. The 1.0 version proper will probably launch sometime next year. While Edge is obviously still a very new tool, it holds promise for developers who are looking to move beyond the messy, messy world of Flash and users who are getting tired of not being able to view .swfs on their mobile devices because no one wants to deal with the messy, messy world of Flash. Even though Adobe is allowing Flash to continue kicking around, it’s good to see them with a horse in the HTML5 race. Here’s to hoping Edge can “cut” it, and Flash can slowly saunter off to pasture where it probably belongs.

• Japan Brings Us One Step Closer to Cylons (as usual) (btm)
  • Japanese researchers are working on a robot that reacts to situations by making educated guesses based on past experiences
  • Robot was built on a learning mechanism called Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network (SOINN) which processes information and lets the robot estimate future patterns and networks.
  • Future applications are both endless and a little scary as SOINN allows robots to learn from the Internet and other robots.

• Paypal Strikes Back at Anonymous (udg)
  • I’m sure we all remember Anonymous’ attack on Paypal last year after they bloced the Wikileaks accounts transactions. Well, now they’ve come up with enough evidence to strike back at Anonymous with a lil help from the FBI. In fact they’ve got a list of over 1,000 IP addresses left behind when Anon attacked. (Remember my DOS lecture before?? Yup!)
  • These IP Addresses were left behind from the DDoS attacks which were targeted at PayPal. Those IP Addresses could prove both useful or useless to the FBI as they start their investigation. The DDoS attacks are usually performed on computers that have been infected with viruses so the owner of the machine might not even know they are playing part in the attack. However the FBI may be able to perform forensics on those computers to find out where the infection originated from.
  • I am sure this story will heat up as time progresses, stay tuned for more details.

Intarweb Goldmine

• Castles Made Out Of Human Hair (udg)

• • What goes well with the cultured human hair necklace? A castle made entirely out of human hair, of course! Artist Augustina Woodgate created 3,000 bricks of human hair and built two castle sculptures as part of a series called “I Want To Be A Princess.” One of the two sculptures, called Tower, reaches about four and a half feet off of the ground, and the different colored bricks are simply different colors of hair — the yellowish window framing is made of bricks of blonde hair.
  • Woodgate’s second sculpture, Sandcastle, sports molded tops — similar to how one molds parts of a sandcastle with buckets — that sit atop a chaotic pile of hair, simulating a crumbling base. Woodgate’s hair castles will be debuting at Spinello Gallery in Miami.

• Lithuanian Mayor Says Tanks for Illegally Parking (btm)
  • Arturas Zuoukas, mayor of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius is fed up with illegal parkers.
  • Decided to send a message by driving a Russian tank over illegally parked cars
  • Saying, “People with big and expensive cars can’t park wherever they feel like and ignore the rights of pedestrians and bike riders”
  • The shocked owner of the first Mercedes was photographed exiting a shop to find his car crushed by the smartly dressed civic leader.
  • The car was later re-crushed at a local junk yard.

• A Hallow Leg of a Different Kind (udg)
  • A South Carolina trooper says he found a kilogram of cocaine in a suspect’s prosthetic leg, after he pulled over a vehicle for driving slow in the fast lane.
  • The Anderson Independent-Mail reports trooper Brad Davis testified at a preliminary hearing Friday that he felt an odd bulge when he patted down Glodualdo Moreno Lojan. Davis says a plastic bag was stuffed between Lojan’s leg and his prosthesis.
  • Lojan and two others in the car face cocaine trafficking charges.
  • Davis says he pulled over the car with Texas plates in July for traveling 50 mph in the left lane on Interstate 85.
  • Lojan’s attorney, Kurt Tavernier, says the car should not have been stopped, since 50 mph is over the minimum highway speed.
  • The three remain in jail without bond.

• Computer Conducts Wedding
  • Guy in Houston couldn’t find a friend to officiate his wedding so he writes a program to do it for him
  • Called it Rev. Bit
  • he programmed Rev. Bit to declare at that most poignant moment during the ceremony when last objections may be raised: “If anyone here has anything to say that might change their minds or has any objections, they do not want to hear it and I will not recognize your objections since Miguel has programmed me to only recognize his commands.”
  • Get this, met his wife on “Sweet on Geeks”

Extra Links

• Square handling 4 million in payments daily

How To Reach Us on the IntarWebs

• On Twitter: Steven is @DarthMolen, Ben is @realityamuck , Natali is @UberDorkGirlie
• email us: darthmolen@thepowergeeks.com, uberdorkgirlie@thepowergeeks.com (yay!) and tovias@racomics.com
• And Become a Fan

Items of Interest

It’s a trap! (Furious Fanboys)

• Where’s The Tardis? Contest (udg)
  • The contest, designed to challenge Doctor Who fans to a DIY, TARDIS-building challenge, will earn the winner of the contest a private screening of Doctor Who with 50 guests of their choice, courtesy of BBC America. The contest is over now and there’s nothing left to do but judge the winners, but the entries are remarkable: there are birthday cakes, hand-carved TARDIS models, huge TARDIS replicas, and more –like this TARDIS Murphy Bed.

• Amazing Shuttle Launch Photos

• Star Tours Re-Opening in Disneyland
• Hyde N Geek Kids Need To Read Tweetathon (udg)
  • Awesome people raising money for kids to get books? HELLS YEAH! The awesomeness that is Hyde n Geek raised $2000 in 36 hours last year for Kids Need to Read and the 2011 event kicks off tomorrow!! Follow the link in the show notes for the dets and help support this kick ass cause!!!

Gold Sponsors:

Jeb Apps – Today in Geek History, Today in Movie History

• Want to wow all your friends with off-the-wall Movie Trivia?
• Want to know more about Geek History and share them with your friends?
• Today in Geek History and Today in Movie History are for you
• Both have been out on the Android Marketplace for awhile now
• After a long vetting period, Today in Movie History is now available on iTunes!!!
• Go check out both apps, TIGH  and TIMH, now available on both Android and iPhone
• Now As Seen on Wired.com!!

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Contests- Winners??

Giving away 2 decks of Dabong! to whomever hears the cowbell (before the intarweb goldmine) and comment on our Facebook page on the time and why they love card games

• 2 – 5 players take turns laying down cards in a central pile. Instead of the basic suits found in a standard deck of cards, dabong! uses Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire.

• lays down a card is by matching the suit
• Also match the number of the card in the pile to a card in the player’s hand.
• additional options to play the players can play cards of the same suit that add up to the number in the middle. For example, if a 10 of Fire is in the central pile, a player could play a 2, a 3, and a 5 of Water all at the same time.
• A player wins when he/she has used all of his/her cards, or through a dabong! A dabong occurs when a players cards add up to the central card, regardless of suit.

Deals of the Week / New Releases

• Nintendo and Best Buy team up (btm)
  • Starting in June Best Buy will offer free wireless Internet to 3DS users in stores
  • When connected to Best Buy network they can access movie trailers, gaming extras and exclusive content
  • Nintendo is hoping this will help increase the appeal of having a 3DS because while many people replying to polls say they want one, they also say now isn’t the time to buy it.

• Movie Releases
  • 5 Deadly Venoms (BR) – Chop Sockey, action, and puzzle oriented.
  • The Mechanic – Jason Statham. ‘nuff said
  • The Bionic Woman – Season 2 (BR) – Lindsay Wagner, Slo Mo, if that’s your thing
  • BEVERLY HILLS COP (BR) – Classic!!! Definite pick up!
  • Hanna Barbara – Chuck Norris “Karate Kommandos” – buahahahah! (insert jokes here ben )

• Steam Deals -
  • Worms Reloaded for 9.99 (until thursday)

Movie Minute (new feature)

• Say Goodbye To Wonder Woman Mr. Kelley (udg)
  • The train wreck that is David E Kelley’s  ”Wonder Woman”  has officially  been shelved by bosses at NBC.
  • Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt has spoken about his decision not to greenlight the series after watching Kelley’s pilot. He told EW.com, “They made a really fine pilot and Adrianne Palicki did a fantastic job. You look at what you have, what you need, and it just didn’t seem to fit in with what we were doing. We did what was best for the schedule.”
  • Now, I know there are some people out there taking the “shame on everyone that raised such a fuss over this and got it cancelled” stance.
  • Bite me.  It was clearly going to completely crap all over my childhood idol and I have every right to rant, rave and fuss my lil heart out over it.
  • Don’t believe me- listen to old Greenblatt himself  ”I was surprised there was such an uproar (about the promotional shots of Palicki in costume), but that didn’t have anything to do with whether the show got picked up. I love that it got so much attention. All that engagement from people, whether it was positive or negative, was good. And she did ultimately have these little hot pants.”
  • Those little hot pants. *le sigh* Thank you Greenboob for at least having the sense to slam the breaks on this before it aired. Somethings just can’t be unseen.

• Look Out Bedrock, Here Comes Seth MacFarlane (udg)
  • After years of super complicated negotiations between 20th Century Fox TV and Warner Bros. Television it looks like Seth MacFarlane is going to be able to realize one of his life’s ambitions after all- to reboot The Flinstones.
  • According to Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly, production on the animated series will begin production in Fall 2011 for a 2013 premiere on the Fox schedule. In a cross-studio collaboration, The Flintstones will be produced jointly by 20th Century Fox Television and Warner Bros Television. Dan Palladino (Gilmore Girls) and Kara Vallow (Family Guy) will serve as executive producers with Seth MacFarlane who says the very first cartoon character he drew at age 2 was Fred Flintstone. “So it’s appropriate that events have come full circle, allowing me to produce the newest incarnation of this great franchise. Plus, I think America is finally ready for an animated sitcom about a fat stupid guy with a wife who’s too good for him.”
  • In a video shown at the upfronts, MacFarlane shed some light on his plans for the remake: The characters will look the same but he’ll introduce new technology, like “What is the animal version of an iPad?” No doubt the rightholders are a lil bit concerned about how MacFarlane is going to interpret the classic series. It certainly can’t be worse than the horrible films they let Universal put out.
  • I’m interested to see what Seth comes up with.

Geek Speak

• Is a personalized web a bad thing? -
• We’ve lived with a lot of stuff being tailored for our wants on the Internet
• Cross-sell in shopping carts, Likes in Facebook influencing your news stream,  certain articles showing up based upon your interests in the past, Sidebar ads, etc
• now search engines take some of this other information and filters searches based upon what they perceive as your preferences (Dec. 4, 2009 – google opted in)
• Real time bidding in place for placed ads
• Finger printing of your computer (even when you opt out of cookies and tracking)
  • Some of the things that pop on on the Google ads while I’m reading my email make me giggle. I think it’s insane that any company thinks it can anticipate my needs, wants, desires based on previous anything. (udg)
  • (SM) I personally think its dangerous and allows a company too much power to influence the weak minded. Not like Obi-Wan, more like Vader. What will they do with that power? They’re corporate America
  • (SM) Do y’all think it stifles discovery and exploration?? How do you know you will like something until you actually see it?

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• Network shows on Hulu safe for a few more years (btm)
  • Good news fellow hulu users, NBC, Fox and ABC are close to extend licensing agreements to continue providing programming
  • the site will continue to offer free, ad-supported programming along with its Hulu Premium subscription package.
  • Likely to change, however, is the window of time between when shows are on TV and when they are made available on hulu.
    • Networks want to increase this time so as to encourage viewers to watch shows when they air.
  • Networks may also negotiate a non-exclusive deal allowing them to stream programming on Amazon and Netflix.

• Facebook under attack from Spammers (SM)
  • Seen an uptake of “see who is browsing your profile” or “see xxx do yyy in this stupid video” lately? So have we
  • Facebook has noticed it too and beefed bp their antispam defense
  • Despite the work, the spammers are finding ways around it
  • It’s an arm race now to see who can trump whom.
  • Word to the wise folks… don’t click on things you don’t know about or are too good to be true, don’t paste thing into your location bar

• Dropbox Lies About Data Security (udg)
  • Online file storage service Dropbox has made my life easier and I’ve been a huge fan of it. Well, now I’m raising a little bit of an eyebrow. Last month it seems it changed its privacy policy to note that upon request, law enforcement agencies would be given access to a user’s Dropbox files. Then they came under fire again when it was uncovered that Dropbox employees had access to user directories. Over this last month Dropbox has quietly been making changes to its privacy agreement and terms of service to both respond and silently acknowledge that some of the privacy concerns uncovered by security researchers last month.
  • Hmmm…Not that I have anything to hide from the law in my box, but I certainly never got a notice that there was any sort of an update.  Seems I’m not the only one.
  • Shortly after some of the changes had been made, researcher and Ph.D candidate Christopher Soghoian (the same Soghoian who broke the story to the media that Facebook had hired a PR firm to smear Google) noticed that what Dropbox was saying in public versus what it’s employees have access to and what they don’t are very different things. He outlined his concerns in a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and accuses Dropbox of making deliberately misleading and deceiving its customers into thinking their data is more private than it is.
  • For example, Dropbox’s security policy once said that files stored on Dropbox servers were encrypted and were inaccessible without an account password. That statement was amended to say only that the files were encrypted, which quietly put Dropbox on the hook for having a way to access user files without the user’s password.
  • And their terms of service said that Dropbox employees “aren’t able to access user files.” Now it has been changed to “are prohibited from viewing the content of files.” This subtle change means that Dropbox employees shouldn’t access user files as a matter of policy, not that they’re unable to.
  • All the while, Soghoian says, Dropbox has been telling its customers that their data is safe and secure from prying eyes. Dropbox, for its part, says there’s nothing to the complaint, and that they’ve always been up front with their privacy policies. They say the changes in their policies have been a result of clarifying their policy  and that they’ve been very open with who has access to user files and under what circumstances.
  • The complaint demands that Dropbox clarify its terms of service and its website so exactly who can access user files and how is completely clear. It also demands that Dropbox notify its 25 million users to let them know their data is being stored in the clear and that employees are essentially on the honor system when it comes to not looking at it, and offer refunds to Pro users who may have subscribed under false pretenses of security and anonymity. Dropbox says there’s no merit to the claim, that it raises old issues they’ve already clarified, and will respond formally to the FTC.
  • Really Dropbox? Cuz I still haven’t seen any notice from you that changes have been made. Yup, this is me giving you the stinkeye.

• U.S. Navy launching online gaming (btm)
  • The Navy is adding a new weapon to its arsenal, Internet Gamers
  • The Office of Naval Research is rolling out the military’s first online war game open to the public.
  • Project: MMOWGLI (Massively Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet) is aiming to replicate traditional military strategy sessions.
  • Using virtual simulation and social media tools players will work together to respond to made-up geopolitical situations due to private ships being hijacked off the Somali coast.
  • 7000 people have already signed for the $450,000 pilot project.
  • Lacking high-tech graphics, the game provides video clips and storyboards and users are are prompted to envision scenarios.
  • Critics say sifting through the massive amount of junk data may prove to make the system unfeasible but ONR sources say they are aware of possible pitfalls and will be monitoring the game around the clock.

• PSN Network is back! (SM)
  • They did a rolling regional restart where you could check their website for your region
  • (SM) I saw my friends update, it wasn’t that long, prompted for a password reset
  • Japan isn’t too hot about it – they hadn’t “approved” the changes and weren’t sure that Sony went far enough to protect its user data.
  • PSN Outage Deals (NA)
  • Trying to entice users back. -
    • 30 days free access to Music unlimited (30 mr for already subscribed)
    • 30 days free access to PSN Plus (60 for current)
    • 100 items on playstation home
    • Free identity monitoring
    • Selection of videos to rent “on them” over a free weekend
    • 2 free Game downloads / PSP games: LBP, infamous, Wipeout HD, Super Stardust HD, Dead Nation || LBP, ModNation Racers, Pursuit Force, Killzone Liberation
  • Oops, spoke too soon, Password reset page hacked

• Got an Android? Make Sure You’re Running 2.3.4 (udg)
  • If you’re  an Android user with one of the 99% of Android phones running software version 2.3.3 or below, a new study shows you are vulnerable to a security attack that allows hackers to access your Google accounts- including your Contacts, Calendar and Picasa.
  • The way the attack works is that an evildoer would take advantage of a device which is connected to an unsecured Wi-Fi network and snatch up its authTokens — basically secret digital codes used to securely identify you and your device and tell a service that you have permission to access it.
  • Hackers are able to do this because authTokens are not only being stored on devices for up to two weeks, but also sent over unencrypted connections.
  • So what can someone do with your authTokens? He or she can pretend to be you — at least in the eyes of a service such as Twitter, Facebook, or Google — and access your accounts easily.
  • Scary, yes. But, don’t panic.  While nothing is fool-proof, there are steps you can take to protect yourself a little bit. The most important one of those steps: Avoid unprotected, shady, or unknown Wi-Fi networks.
  • One more time for EVERYONE-  avoid unprotected, shady, or unknown Wi-Fi networks.  If you absolutely must use one, at least “switch off automatic synchronization in the settings menu” of your device. Doing so won’t exactly keep you safe, but at least it’ll make a tiny difference.
  • You should also keep an eye out for Android 2.3.4 updates for your devices as those appear to patch up this particular vulnerability.

• Your Stream May Soon be a Felony (btm)
  • Under current law reproducing and distributing copyrighted works is a felony and covers Peer-2-Peer transfers and web downloading.
  • Streaming has been treated as “public performances”
  • New Senate Bill (S. 978) would add streaming to the list of felonies when:
    • They show 10 or more “public performances” by electronic means in any 180-day period and
    • The total retail value of those performances tops $2,000 or the cost of licensing of such performances is greater than $5,000.
  • Offenders could face five years in prison and a $25,000 fine
  • Some critics of the bill are pointing out that having copyrighted material playing in the background during a UStream or Justin.tv broadcast could lead to felony charges against the net caster.

• Yet more content for Netflix, Miramax (SM)
  • The juggernaut keeps rolling
  • look for new content end of the month from Miramax!
  • several hundred in fact “Pulp Fiction”, “Shakespeare in Love”, “Good Will Hunting” some of the titles mentioned
  • There’s even a hint of Amazon and other services but still Netflix beat them all to the punch

• First Skype, now Nokia? (udg)
  • Microsoft has been on a buying spree lately, but this one would blow all the other ones clear outta the water.  According to a post on Twitter by Eldar Murtazin, the Russian technology blogger who’s managed to scoop the media before with his insider sources at Nokia, Microsoft is planning a bid for Nokia’s mobile division. The total cost: $30 billion.
  • Eldar isn’t just some blogger with wild ideas. His sources have been right in the past, and he was the first to break the story that Nokia was going to side with Microsoft over Google for Windows Phone 7 instead of Android. He was also the man who shocked the tech world with the assertion that only 674,000 Windows Phones were sold during the first quarter they were available, calling it a “total failure.”
  • If he is correct, Nokia would leave the mobile phone business entirely, and Microsoft would pick up its mobile unit and start manufacturing Windows Phones using Nokia hardware and technology. If you’re shocked or simply don’t believe it, you have good reason to be skeptical.
  • After all, Microsoft just shelled out $8.5 billion – the most it has for any single acquisition in its history – to buy Skype. They already have a partnership with Nokia worth over $1 billion to provide Windows Phone 7 to Nokia’s next generation of smartphones, when they’re announced. Even so, some people point to Microsoft’s failed bid for Yahoo! last year for $40 billion as proof they’re willing to shell out big bucks if the opportunity is right.
  • Additionally, new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is largely seen by Nokia fans as a Microsoft “plant” of sorts, softening up the company and giving Microsoft more influence from the inside. Elop did indeed work for Microsoft at one point, but whether or not his loyalties are to his current or former employer are probably less important than the question of how well such a large deal would work in the long run.
  • Naturally, Microsoft and Nokia both refuse to comment on the matter at all.

• They Have the Technology, They Can Rebuild Him (btm)
  • 26 year-old Austrian man has voluntarily had his hand amputated so he can be fitted with a bionic limb.
  • He lost the use of his right hand after a serious motorcycle accident in 2001
  • He regained the use of his arm but not his hand.
  • After operations failed to restore use of his hand he was asked if he wanted to participate in this elective amputation
  • A previous patient who lost he use of his left hand after being electrocuted at work had a similar operation last year and is now able to open bottles and tie his own shoes.

• Anonymous Loses Its Public Face (udg)
  • It would seem the public feud that has broken out between different hacker factions within the infamous Anonymous has proven too much for Barrett Brown, the reporter that had become a media-friendly spokesperson for them.
  • Not only is Brown saying deuces, he told Threatpost that he and around two dozen Anonymous members are forming a splinter group to focus on efforts to root out what Brown has described as “criminality and corruption” within the U.S. Government, U.S. military, corporations and the media.
  • Brown, a journalist and author, has been the public face and chief apologist from the anarchic and leaderless group during recent controversies, including the hack of security firm HBGary. He said recent feuds between different Anonymous factions, culminating in the recent takeover of two IRC chat servers used by the group convinced him that the group had lost its way.
  • “I’m tired of the drama,” Brown told Threatpost in a phone interview  ”You’ve got kids fighting for control of an IRC channel. I’m a researcher. I’m into revolutionary stuff. But there are other people for whom its about exerting power,” he said.
  • Brown told Threatpost he is defecting with what he claims are around two dozen Anonymous members. He said he planned to focus on Project PM – an effort to create an umbrella group that will support other organizations that want to expose pro-government and pro-corporate bias in the media.
  • The parting of ways between Brown and the allegedly “leaderless” group comes at a perilous time. Recent months have seen defectors from the group publish potentially damaging information that could be used to identify active members. Anonymous observers, who asked to remain anonymous themselves, said there’s reason to believe that Brown is being cut off by core Anonymous members worried about having their identities exposed, or wary of Brown’s focus on government wrongdoing. Sources say that ongoing criminal investigations of Anonymous’s previous actions may soon produce indictments and that more than one longtime member has “gone dark” in recent weeks, especially after the group was mentioned as a possible source of the PlayStation Network breach.
  • I was incredibly intrigued by Brown’s new project. It reminds me a bit of Hackers for Charity, and you know that all kinds of screams Natali. So, I emailed him asking for more information and if he’d like to come on the show to discuss it. Guess what? He said yes! So, stay tuned for special guess Barrett Brown on an upcoming show!

Intarweb Goldmine

• Blame It On The Cheese (udg)
  • When Antonio Hernandez was pulled over, I’m guessing he wasn’t expecting to do 4 days in an Asheville jail. The Buncombe County deputy that pulled him over was stoked, thinking he had made a 91 pound cocaine bust when his portable kit changed colors indicating the mixture Hernandez was carrying was illegal drugs.
  • Yeah, it turns out that an enzyme found in cheese triggered false drug test results. Yup, cheese. Those 91 pounds of suspected coke was actually 91 pounds mix of cheese, shrimp and tortilla and tamale dough.  How the Hell that could be mistaken for nose candy is beyond me.
  • Sheriff Van Duncan told The Asheville Citizen-Times he didn’t know until this case that some foods, like cheese, can give false positives on field drug tests. He plans to have deputies talk to the company that makes the tests. I’d like to hear what he plans on doing to make up for the 4 days in jail Antonio spent.

• What Happens to Your Pets after the Rapture? (btm)
  • With the coming return of Christ scheduled for this Saturday a group is offering to take care of your pets once you have been called to God.
  • Dedicated group of animal lovers and confirmed athiests
  • Currently active in 26 states, employing 40 pet rescuers
  • For $135 they guarantee if the rapture occurs within 10 years of your payment one pet per residence will be rescued. ($20 for each additional pet)
  • Service limited to “dogs, cats, birds, rabbits and small caged mammals” at this time
  • Rescue for “horses, camels, llamas and donkeys in NH, VT, ID and MT”

• German Census Asks The Important Stuff (udg)
  • Seems a fake census form going around Germany has some Lederhosen in a bunch. The forms look like Germany’s current 2011 census forms — which just went out this week — and has questions like “Which drugs do you take?” with boxes marked with options like LSD or marijuana. Another question asks if the respondent has a breast or penis enlargement procedure. And how big your penis is.
  • The forms may look real, but those questions, intriguing as they may be, aren’t officially part of the census.
  • “These questions were all entirely fictitious, we wouldn’t ask anything like that,” said Klaus Voy, Census Project Manager at the Brandenburg-Berlin Office of Statistics.
  • Although the fake census looks identical to the real thing, unlike the real one, the forms are mysteriously delivered to mailboxes without an envelope.
  • Since the real German census has come under fire from privacy advocacy groups because some questions, such as immigration background and religion, are beyond EU requirements, officials fear the questions on the fake census might, at first glance, seem legit.

• SHIELD causes terror alert (btm)
  • Police in Ann Arbor, Michigan evacuated a bus terminal after a suspicious package was found across the street.
  • Michigan State Police Bomb Squad was called to the scene.
  • Turns out it was a promotional tie-in item from Acura advertising the new Thor movie. (in theatres now)

• Sleeping Bandit Strikes Bowling Green (udg)
  • When Bowling Green police caught up to an alleged sleeping bandit Saturday, in addition to drugs, they found all kinds of goodies in the man’s pockets  like several disposable razors, a bottle of Drakkar Noir cologne, a bottle of Adidas cologne, skin cleanser and two pickled sausages.
  • A man called police when he found an unknown, “extremely drunk” man in bed with his mother. The sleeping bandit was wearing blue jeans, a gray shirt and a brown hat. He was bloodied and left blood on the back door and on the woman’s bed sheets.
  • The resident and his mother escorted the man out of their home while he was claiming several times that he was inside “Woody’s house.” The resident called police.
  • Officers were unable to find the man until about two hours later, when he struck again about a block down the road. This time, cupcakes were involved.
  • BGPD officers responded to a home where they found Benjamin Williams, 37, asleep on a couch inside the home. Williams matched the description of the man seen at the other Kenton Street home.
  • Williams was wearing muddy pants that were wet in the front where he appeared to have urinated on himself. He also had black smears on his face and hands. Police determined that Williams had eaten the ashes out of a hooka pipe inside the residence. Police photographed Williams while he slept.
  • The resident showed police where a window screen had been broken. It also appeared that once Williams came inside the home, he helped himself to several cupcakes – valued at $3 – and ransacked the man’s refrigerator.
  • Williams is lodged in the Warren County Regional Jail with a $5,000 cash bond, according to court records. He is charged with second-degree burglary, possession of marijuana, drug paraphernalia-buy/possess and possession of a controlled substance.
  • Pickled sausage, cupcakes, snorting hookah ashes, this guy has more of a wild night out sleeping than I do awake!

• Apple Gives You a Religious Experience (btm)
  • Team of UK neuroscientists scanned the brain of an Apple fan and found that Apple products stimulated the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith.
  • They chose to investigate after passing a new Apple store and being reminded of “an evangelical prayer meeting.”
  • The research also discusses the popularity of Facebook, mobile phones and social networks.
  • “Like Apple, mobile phones and social networks offer an opportunity for us to express our basic human need to communicate.”

• Planking gone wrong (sm)
  • Internet weirdness, bunch of pictures of ppl lying on their stomachs flat surface all over the internet
  • Weird position, everywhere from top of fast food counters to top of a grille
  • Well, 20 yr old in Australia took it too far
  • Tried to lay flat on his stomach on the balcony rail and ended up falling and dying
  • When your friend jumps off that bridge, Don’t you do it too! See, your mom was right when you were younger

• “Go the F#$@ to Sleep” Tops Charts (btm)
  • New bedtime book for parents has already topped the Amazon bestseller charts a month before its release.
  • Written by novelest Adam Mansbach after his own daughter refused to go to sleep one night.
  • Book combines cute rhymes with expletive-ridden pleas.
  • Originally scheduled for release in October the release date was moved up to June after a pirated PDF of the book went viral.
  • Film rights have already been snatched up by Fox 2000
  • “It’s definitely not a book to read to your child”, said the publisher, “but it will resonate with anyone who has ever spent, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, four hours reading ‘just one more bedtime story’.”
    • “The cubs and lions are snoring.
      Wrapped in a big snuggly heap.
      How come you can do all this other great s****
      But you can’t lie the f*** down and sleep?”

Extra Links

• Bing adding Facebook likes to searches
• Gingerbread upgrade for Galaxy S
• Buy a car on ebay mobile
• Woman is Allergic to Electricity (btm)
• Only in Vegas – Batman Gets a Beatdown (btm)

• Pirates delay Sony(btm)
  • Earlier this week Vodaphone New Zealand reported that an entire shipment of Sony Ericsson Xperia Play devices was stolen saying via Twitter, “a major security breach” had occured and the launch of Xperia Play would be delayed.
  • Later Vodaphone released “security footage” that looked very questionable
  • Turns out the whole thing was fake
  • Possibly an attempt at viral marketing gone very, very wrong.
• Digital New York (btm)
  • Mayor Bloomberg released a new outline of plans for NYC to form partnerships with social media companies
  • Through partnerships with Twitter, Facebook and New York based Foursquare and Tumblr NYC wants to be the top digital city in America
  • Plans are to offer wireless Internet access in parks
  • Vast reserves of data available to programmers
  • Live chats with 311 agents
  • City will register the .nyc domain
  • @nycgov will be used to provide immediate updates on city news
  • How will the city afford all this? Mayor Bloomberg says “We are going to try to encourage people to make it available”
  • The mayor doesn’t personally update his existing Facebook page, “I’m very old-fashioned. I use email.”

• How to urn a tree (btm)

How To Reach Us on the IntarWebs

• On Twitter: Steven is @DarthMolen, Ben is @realityamuck , Natali is @UberDorkGirlie
• email us: darthmolen@thepowergeeks.com, uberdorkgirlie@thepowergeeks.com (yay!) and tovias@racomics.com
• And Become a Fan

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

We are LIVE on Ustream . This week we talk Bin Laden (who hasn’t), Star Wars Day, Plenty of gaming news, and even a Dr. Horrible sequel, this and much more!

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• Super Mario All Stars (udg)
  • It’s the 26th anniversary of Mario and what better way to celebrate than with shoes? Not just ANY shoes though- Chuck Taylor Converse All-stars. And holy adorable. There’s lil Marios all over them, the Super Mario Bros’ logo on the tongue and Starman has replaced their usual star logo. These will be hitting the stores in July and I’m guessing only for a limited time, so grab a pair when you can.

• Han Shot First Petition (udg)
  • One thing I think we can all agree about when it comes to the 3D redo and release of the Star Wars movies is this- George has the opportunity to right the wrong. Han shot first damnit! And this guy agrees! Check out his video petition to Lucas.

• May the Fourth be with You (btm)
  • Happy Star Wars Day!
  • Official site had had a countdown timer for weeks promising, “All will be revealed” and counting down to 9AM EDT Star Wars Day.
  • And the revelation was? The Complete Saga on Blu-Ray
  • Interesting marketing ploy, when you visit the site a video begins showing you behind the scenes shots and production art, but only for a few seconds, want to see more? Then you have to share the link via your Twitter or Facebook
  • So now you get to see more? Nope. Now you sit and wait for more people to share the link and when some imaginary threshold is met, more of the video will be revealed.
  • Honestly I’m finished buying the movies. I have two sets of VHS tapes, a set of DVDs and I’m done. But if you want the Complete Saga on Blu Ray, it will be available September of this year. And don’t forget the upcoming re-releases in 3D starting next year. I’m sure there will be yet another release at that time.

• THE POWER GEEK’S 100TH EPISODE (we really need to start hyping this up and nailing out an exact plan for next week)
  • I was told there would be punch and pie. If not, I won’t be appearing. (btm)

• Cheers Ben (SM)
  • Well, if I’m nothing else, I’m a man of my word. I guess I’ll be there (btm)

• Don’t forget Cinco de Mayo is this week & don’t forget the Pepto for the day after (btm)
  • Continuing it’s massive marketing overhaul Pepto Bismol has released a series of Piñata smashing videos on its YouTube channel to celebrate the day.
  • Recently Peto Bismol shifting it’s marketing focus from traditional media to digital media making use of a Facebook page, YouTube videos, and a Twitter feed.

Gold Sponsors:

Jeb Apps – Today in Geek History, Today in Movie History

• Want to wow all your friends with off-the-wall Movie Trivia?
• Want to know more about Geek History and share them with your friends?
• Today in Geek History and Today in Movie History are for you
• Both have been out on the Android Marketplace for awhile now
• After a long vetting period, Today in Movie History is now available on iTunes!!!
• Go check out both apps, TIGH  and TIMH, now available on both Android and iPhone

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Deals of the Week / New Releases

• New Movie Releases
  • GREEN HORNET!
  • What Dreams May Come
  • TAPS
  • Hannah Barbara’s – Valley of the Dinosaurs

• Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday May 7 (btm)
  • Comic Book Shops across the country will be sponsoring events and giving away free or discounted comics.
  • Comic companies will be providing “sampler” issues of many of their titles
  • Be sure to drop by your favorite comic shop and wear a costume. Many have bonuses for that as well.
    • The girls are soooooo psyched!!! (udg)
    • I’m putting together my Power Girl outfit right now (btm)

• Sweet XB360 Amazon Deal
  • $50 Amazon Gift Card
  • 1600 Microsoft points ($20)
  • 4 GB and 250 GB Bundles (also same size Kinect Bundles)

• Black Ops “Escalation” DLC
  • 5 new maps
  • Call of the Dead – Features Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), Danny Trejo (Machete), and Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead)

• New Fantastic Four Table for Console Pinball Machines
  • Features lots of ramps and goodies, looks really fun
  • For Pinball FX 2 (XB 360) and Marvel Pinball (PSN)
  • This game engine will be the reason I eventually get XB360
  • May 17 – $3

• EA Week on Steam
  • Check back each day for a different deal
  • (SM) I missed the Dragon Age deals

Movie Minute (new feature)

• Thor set to open this week (May 6) in the US (btm)
  • Already pulled in $93 million from international audiences.
  • Rated 95% Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes reviews.
  • As with all the recent Marvel Movies, be sure to stay till after the credits.

• Dr. Horrible Sequel!! (udg)
  • With the upcoming Avengers movie and staying all kinds of involved with the Buffy and Angel comics at Dark Horse, Joss Whedon is a busy, busy guy. Thankfully not too busy to sit down with the NY Times “Art Beat” column and let it slip that a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is coming.
  • “We’ve got several songs near completion and we’ve got a very specific structure.” Whedon said. Doing a continuation of his cult webseries is definitely something he “has his heart into,” but it’s all a matter of having enough time:  ”We’ve just all got jobs. And it’s not like Neil, Nathan and Felicia ain’t busy either. We get together at Christmas and family occasions, and then play each other our partial songs and go, “Yup, that’s still exactly as it was the last time we played it. We’re great.” It’s bad.”
  • He  also joked that the title of the Dr. Horrible sequel would be called “Dr. Horrible and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” silly silly Joss.

Geek Speak

• The Internet’s New Alternate Reality: It’s Positive and Negative affect on historical events.
  • We are quickly approaching our 100th episode. In that time, we’ve talked a great deal about the affect that the Internet and sites such as Twitter and Facebook have had as an impact on our lives. We’ve talked about how technology has allowed events that would have taken hours to make it’s way around the world now does it in seconds. How with one click of a cell phone camera, the contents of that click attached and tweeted- worlds can be witnessed like never before.
  • Tonight we talk about the impact that the Internet has had and will have on history.
  • Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was — for all intents and purposes — dropped. Today, the growth of the Internet has drained the noun “news” of its former authority. If you don’t like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose “facts” accord with your beliefs.

• • • “There are no more arbiters of truth,” former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told the Politico website. “So whatever you can prove factually, somebody else can find something else and point to it with enough ferocity to get people to believe it. We’ve crossed some Rubicon into the unknown.

• The main point of topic: The internet’s Positive and Negative affect on historical events. The ease at which a rumor that appears to be completely true (i.e. the now clearly photoshopped photo of a supposed dead Osama believed to be released by the Persian Media that major news organizations ran with as truth) and quite the opposite- 9/11- google it, search it on YouTube and there are thousands of conspiracy sites and videos everywhere that actually appear legit enough to make people think.  The very documents leaked by WikiLeaks last week are being speculated as lighting the match that made the decisions made by President Obama have to occur this past weekend. The saying “don’t like the answer? Keep googling” is so true. How will all of this affect world history for our future generations? What will the definitive source be now? Our high schoolers can now quote Wikipedia – a user edited site and Twitter in papers.

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• The Science Behind “That’s What She Said” (udg)
  • We’ve all probably said it once or twice. Steven loves to whip it out whenever he can. I personally kinda suck at it, despite my best efforts. So, ever wonder what exactly makes a good “That’s What She Said”? Well, thanks to research done by Chloé Kiddon and Yuriy Brun of the University of Washington, it turns out it’s all about noun sexiness.
  • Kiddon and Brun, who cite television show The Office as the prime cause behind the repopularization of TWSS, are actually serious, bona fide computer science researchers. Their paper, which will be presented in June at a computer linguistics conference, details their work at improving the parsing and understanding of TWSS jokes, which are a specific subset of the more maturely named double entendre. Mmmm I do love a good double entendre.
  • The intellectually stimulating duo dubbed their method at parsing humor: the DEviaNT approach. They took 1.5 mil sentences from textfiles.com/sex/EROTICA corpus, and 57 thousand non-erotic sentences from the Brown corpus — and then measures how closely-related “a noun, an adjective, and a verb phrase are to the erotica domain.” The end result, if we’re being entirely scientific about it, is a bunch of nouns, verbs, and adjectives with a “sexiness rating.”
  • Because DEviaNT is a learning algorithm, the researchers had to feed it some data so that it could actually learn what a TWSS looks like, and more importantly what a TWSS doesn’t look like. Their choice was positive examples from twssstories.com, and false examples from textsfromlastnight.com, fmylife.com, and wikiquote.org. Then, with sexiness ratings and an accurate linguistic model of what makes up a TWSS, the researchers started feeding sentences into DEviaNT to see whether it could detect TWSSes.
  • The end result, rather surprisingly, was the accurate detection of That’s What She Said double entendres 71% of the time. Qualitatively, DEviaNT was most capable at identifying noun euphemisms like “don’t you think these buns are a little too big for this meat?” and weaker with ambiguous phrases like “yes give me all the cream and he’s gone.”
  • You know this whole article mixes grammar, scientific algorithms and wraps it with a bow of humor on top. It doesn’t get much more perfect than that for me. Hmm…that may account for why DEviaNT is far more successful at kicking out a better That’s What She Said than I am.

• Twitter knew about Osama Raid Before We Did (sm)
  • Obama wasn’t the only person to announce the happenings in Pakistan
  • Twitter user, Sohaib Athar, unwittingly micro-blogged the event on the social network site
  • He tweeted about helicopters noises, explosions, plus crashes
  • even his worries of “something worse going down” and faulty “spy copters”
  • All before Obama’s speech came on.

• Cybercriminals using bin Laden death to spread malware (btm)
  • As with most major news stories criminals are ready with malware
  • Links show up in Twitter and Facebook that lead to malicious sites where you are asked to install a codec to watch a video at which point malware is installed on your computer.

• Osama’s last attack? Your social news networks (SM)
  • CNN Mobile New site crashed because of the load
  • Most news sites were taking 6x as long to process requests
  • Tweets reached 4,000 p/ second
  • Keith Urbahn, “Former Secretary of Defense Chief of Staff”,  tweeted before Obama’s speech “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot Damn”
  • Facebook had 200,000 likes of one fan page “Osama Bin Laden is DEAD”
  • How are YOU getting your news nowadays?? The landscape is changing

• AT&T Broadband Usage Caps Go Into Effect (udg)
  • We’ve covered cell data usage caps on here before. Now it’s coming to your home. If you use AT&T as your ISP beware- the data use cap has begun.
  • America’s largest ISP has now become the 2nd broadband carrier after Comcast to start limiting broadband usage to its customers.
  • DSL users will be capped at 150 GB per month. U-verse users will be capped at 250 per month.  Those that go over the limit more than 3 times in 3 separate months will have to fork over $10 for each 50 GB over the limit.
  • AT&T estimates that, with the average customer ringing in at about 18 GB per month in use, only around 2% of their high-speed Internet customers will be affected. However, rising cloud technologies that sync files with remote servers in the background, customers could face data usage issues under such a plan.
  • Some advocates see the move as a potential hindrance to the growth of the Internet and online innovation. Representative Ed Markey criticized AT&T for undermining national broadband goals and making it more difficult for new adopters to access high-speed Internet.

• Square sets new record $2 Million processed in one day (btm)
  • One week after making deal to sell readers in Apple stores, lands “strategic” deal with Visa
  • The Visa deal has led to a redesign of the reader to meet “best practices” standards.
    • Visa wants the readers to encrypt user data
    • There’s no real security hole, redesign is to make Visa happy.
  • (Remember I was told 2-5 weeks to get it when I ordered it free on the Square site? Ordered it on a Monday, got it the same week on Thurs. -udg)

• Superman renounces US citizenship (btm)
  • MSM (esp. Fox News) reacted all weekend
  • Commenters on Fox News site goes bat#%&! crazy
  • Several think this “globalization” is to increase overseas sales for upcoming movies
  • (SM)Next thing you know, Thor is going to renounce his citizenship of Asgard because, well, Norse legends are out of style nowadays anyways

• The App That Turns Your iPhone Into a 3D Scanner (udg)
  • With over 350,000 apps out there, it would seem that every possible idea for the iPhone 4 has been thought up. Georgia Tech researcher Grant Schnidler has proven otherwise. He uses it to create 3D models and now you can too.
  • Schindler’s app, called Trimensional, works by shining light on a person’s face from four directions, and recording the results. These are compiled into a single image that (if you’re using the advanced version of the software) you can export to a 3D printer and create a model of your face, or whatever you’ve scanned. Cleverly, Trimensional does not require any additional equipment to perform the scan, such as a light kit. Instead, it uses the iPhone’s screen as a light source, and records the images with the front-facing camera.
  • Schindler describes the scanning process as answering a series of questions. From the Georgia Tech Digital Lounge:
    • “If I take a scan of my face, the app asks ‘what does the image look like if I shine the light from the left side, what does it look like from the right side,’ and so on. There’s one three-dimensional answer per pixel, and combining all those answers results in the full 3-D model.”
  • I see a wide variety of uses for this app and encourage you to check out the link in the show notes to watch a video of it in action.

• Artists and writers start anti-bullying Kickstarter drive for comic (btm)
  • Original comic produced at a 24 Hour Comic Day event by Charles “Zan” Christensen and Mark Brill.
  • Inspired by last year’s rash of gay teen suicides
  • Art being reworked and cleaned up for a more polished look and to include new bonus pages by Dan Parent, Gail Simone, Phil Jimenez, Carla Speed McNeil, Andy Mangels and Donna Barr.

• Home Gaming Consoles in Apple’s Future ? (udg)
  • For years rumors have flown about an Apple Gaming Console. And for years we all pretty much laughed at them. But, a good look at the A5 processor that the new iPad 2 is sporting may have us at least stop laughing for a bit.
  • Most have dismissed the revised hardware on the iPad 2 as accomplished, but fairly underwhelming. However, underneath the hood of that A5 shows an unprecedented leap in mobile games-playing power.
  • The article I stumbled upon for this item goes into some pretty incredible detail on the iPad 2 as an actual soft core gaming device and is a pretty good read. It gets into the details of things such as fill rates and frames per second.
  • It’s clear this is a hardware design that is about so much more than just a revised form factor and a bunch of cameras. Add to it that Apple also recently added Nintendo’s ex-head of communications Rob Saunders and Activision’s UK PR director, Nick Grange to their UK operations and they could possibly be laying the groundwork for the future of its gaming business.
  • What is that future? Do I personally see Apple coming out with a Gaming Console? While they plead a good case in the article, I don’t see it. What I do see is Apple doing what Apple does. Seeing a way to get in on the booming mobile gaming industry, while integrating it into their already useful products. In short- they see the future potential, it already fits into their product line, now they’re going to bump it up a notch.

• More PSN Fallout (sm)
  • Still! Services are down on the Sony network
  • Where oh Where did my 70 million CC’s go?
  • Sony Denies those were CC’s Stolen
  • Hackage has spread to other aspects of Sony (btm)
    • SOE shutdown their Facebook and MMO games
      • (glad I dropped my Everquest II account 6 yrs ago-btm)
    • (24.6 million SOE accounts have been  breached!!-udg)

• Microsoft Bing now the default engine for search and maps on RIM products (btm)
  • Blackberry phones and tablets will now ship with Bing set as default.
  • Carriers are still free to change the default to anything they want.
  • Microsoft trying hard to get Bing a bigger chunk of the market.

Intarweb Goldmine

• Jersey Town Limits Conjugal Visits (udg)
  • A New Jersey town is cock blocking both literally and figuratively. Hopewell Township has adopted an ordinance that regulates when chickens and roosters can hook up in backyard henhouses.
  • Roosters must show they’re disease-free and they better not crow about their conquests.
  • Hopewell Township residents can have up to a half-dozen hens on half-acre lots. Roosters would be allowed only 10 days a year for fertilization purposes.
  • Mature roosters are not allowed because they’re too noisy. Any roosters that crow too long can be banned from the property for two years.
  • Mayor Jim Burd told The Times of Trenton the ordinance is a compromise between today’s lifestyle and the township’s agricultural history.

• Washington Man Shaves Beard (btm)
  • Has had beard since the 9/11 attacks
  • Vowed not to shave until bin Laden was captured or proven to be dead
  • Middle School teacher in East Wenatchee, WA. used the beard to tell students about the attacks
  • Once story was confirmed he says he wasted no time getting rid of the beard
    • Both he and his wife had wanted rid of it for years, but “a vow is a vow”.
  • His three daughters were in Middle School when he started growing the beard. They are now college age.

• Cow Caper Nets 26 Gallons of Milk (SM)
  • man dons a cow suit and then crawled into a walmart store
  • Goes to the dairy aisle and steals 26 gallons of milk

• Words Every Bride Dreams Of- “Would You Like Fries With That?” (udg)
  • It may not be a royal wedding, but a typical Hong Kong marriage ceremony is epic in scope.
  • It involves a team of handlers, photo sessions, multiple banquets, ancestor worship, more photo sessions, countless costume changes, red packets of money, numerology and a suckling pig.
  • McDonald’s, of all places, has a better offer — and, yes, it comes with fries.
  • Beginning in January, the U.S. fast food chain’s Hong Kong operation responded to what it called strong customer demand and began offering wedding party packages at three of its 225 locations. The “Warm and Sweet Wedding Package” pares the wedding process down to the bare essentials.
  • For less than $1,300, a couple gets a venue and decorations, invitation cards, audio equipment, McDonaldland figurines for each guest, an emcee and $385 worth of McDonald’s food.
  • In addition, the bride and groom can choose among wedding gifts that include a crystal McDonald’s house and a pair of balloon wedding rings inscribed with the iconic golden arches.
  • The themed wedding far from a new concept in Hong Kong but McDonald’s is the first fast food restaurant to enter the arena.

• Robotic French Kiss Peripheral (SM)
  • Guy builds a “mouth communication” device to “mimic” french kissing
  • Records how you move a metal tube on one peripheral and it replicates it to another peripheral.. even over the Internet
  • According to inventor, “It could be a good way for celebrities to interact with their fans” (more like gain stalkers)
  • Not very sophisticated now but plans to also mimic breathing taste, and saliva in the future…

• Sword Wielding + Skateboard Riding is Bound to = Tasering (udg)
  • Poor Deandre Irby! Dude was just trying to enjoy the day like any young person would—hanging out at the outdoor mall, skating around with his backpack on, maybe think about getting a pretzel and oh, swinging his ‘fantasy sword’ with a 26-inch blade around. What the hell?
  • That’s how the police describe the sword Irby was carrying around. They said that when arrived on scene, Irby tried to flee and hide his sword in the dumpster but couldn’t do it in time. When caught, he refused to cooperate with them and “attempted to grab his sword”, which resulted it him getting tased. Ouch. Unfortunately, Irby didn’t have a concealed weapons permit to carry his sword (which begs the question, who the hell has a concealed weapons permit for a sword?) so he’s been charged with that. Next time, you may wanna leave the sword at home hon.

Extra Links

• Sistine Chapel Recreated With Rubik’s Cubes (udg)
• Air Force looks for commercial spacecraft

• Smart Kids Grow up to be Heavy Drinkers? (btm)
  • Two long term studies (1 British, 1 American) have shown that children with higher than average intelligence grow up to consume alcohol more heavily and more frequently.
  • Theories as to why range from evolution to making up for boring childhoods or my favorite, drinking may be the only way to deal with morons.

How To Reach Us on the IntarWebs

• On Twitter: Steven is @DarthMolen, Ben is @realityamuck , Natali is @UberDorkGirlie
• email us: darthmolen@thepowergeeks.com and uberdorkgirlie@thepowergeeks.com (yay!)
• And Become a Fan
• http://racomics.com

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

We are LIVE on Ustream . This week we talk social responsibility in a digital age, the intarwebz got broke, big brother is watching you… everywhere

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• The iCade Now A Reality (udg)
  • I mentioned during my April Fool’s Day rundown is that the glory of ThinkGeek’s “pranks” is that they often turn into real items. Well, their iCADE from last year is now up for presale. If you didn’t quite catch it from the name- it turns your iPad into an old-school arcade cabinet. You just slide your iPad in and it uses Bluetooth to connect so no cables to hook up.
  • ThinkGeek teamed up with Atari to bring back classics like Asteroids to the market for iCADE support. And to go with your iCADE comes the “Atari Greatest Hits” app with over 100 classic Atari games. You get pong for free right off the bat. The others are available in-app where you can get 3 for $1.00 or all 100 for $14.99.
  • The iCADE uses a unique API, which it will be opening up to developers so that they can add iCADE support to their games. ThinkGeek also teamed up with ION to develop the tabletop cabinet that features full button and joystick control.
  • Available for iPad and iPad 2, the iCADE is on presale now for just under $100 and is expected to start shipping on May 20, 2011. The first shipment that went on sale sold out in a day.

• Lil Thor: Marvel Releases Lil Thor Version of Our Beloved Lil Vader VW Commercial (udg)
  • Note the car’s plate is ASG4RD *giggle*

• Unique Marketing for Samsung Galaxy S2 (SM)
  • Bloggers put to the extreme unveiling and talking about the product
  • Toyota Raps

Gold Sponsors:

Jeb Apps – Today in Geek History, Today in Movie History

• Want to wow all your friends with off-the-wall Movie Trivia?
• Want to know more about Geek History and share them with your friends?
• Today in Geek History and Today in Movie History are for you
• Both have been out on the Android Marketplace for awhile now
• After a long vetting period, Today in Movie History is now available on iTunes!!!
• (BTM) Happy BIrthday George Takei- I found this out from my newly downloaded Geek History app.
• Go check out both apps, TIGH  and TIMH, now available on both Android and IPhone

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Deals of the Week / New Releases

• With Kinnect Sports Food Fight has a whole new meaning (btm)
  • New DLC for Kinnect sports available April 29
  • 320 Micro$oft points

• Hugo Nominees You Can Read Right Now… For Free! (udg)
  • The Hugo Awards recognize excellence in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. And because you know you don’t have enough to read, and I’m all about helping you find new stuff to add, I’ve stumbled upon a list of the nominees that are available for free online. Yup, free. And I’m not talking one or two. I’m talking 11 of the nominated Short Stories, Novellas, Novelettes and one movie. So, hope on over to our friends at TheMarySue.com and starting finding out how they earned their rank amongst the Hugo Award Nominees.

• WoW Patch 4.1 hit servers this week
  • trolls are definitely back… (Zul’Gurub, Zul’Aman, etc)
  • Guilder finder (like dungeon finder)
  • Guild Challenges

• Speaking of the Hugos, catch up on the Hugo award winning series Doctor Who (btm)
  • now 61% off on Amazon
  • Series 1 thru 4 featuring Hugo winning episodes:
    • “The Empty Child” & “The Doctor Dances” (are you my mommy?)
    • “The Girl in the Fireplace”
    • “Blink” (Weeping Angels are the single scariest thing to me)

• Dexter Ultimate Prop Giveaway (udg)
  • I hugely heart me some Dexter. And Showtime is handing out the ultimate props. 5 lucky winner will score 2nd place prize packs including one pack of Dexter Collectibles, one Baby Harrison Pack, a Debra Morgan Pack, a Trinity Killer Pack and a Dexter & Rita Wedding Pack.
  • One person will snag the Grand Prize which includes a “Bowl Till You Bleed” Bowling shirt, “Thank You for the Blood” Card, Dexter’s Kill Bag and Blood Spatter Pictures. It’s pretty damn awesome. So, head on over to the link in the show notes and… no don’t I want to win it!!

• New Movies for 4th Week of April
  • Blow out -John Travolta at his best
  • Marvel “The Avengers”: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Vol 1 and 2 – Disney + Marvel = goodness!
  • The Girl Who Leapt through Time (Anime) – multiple genres, supposedly good
  • Dinoshark- (btm)(take Jurassic Park mix with Jaws and you get Dinoshark, just with a much lower budget and not as great acting but 1000% more cheese)

Movie Minute (new feature)

• Hobbit Updates
  • Ian Holms back on set for Bilbo
• WW Script Rewrite- AKA Your WW Train Wreck of the Week (udg)
  • It’s a REALLY good thing I missed the leaked pilot script for this because it included  scenes of Diana having a sleepover, and eating ice cream (“It’s been a three-scoop day!”), and teaming up with her press secretary Myndi to “scream like schoolgirls” over a Katy Perry video, and maybe even crying herself to sleep over her old flame Steve Trevor.  WHAT. THE. TRUCK. Seriously?!?!?
  • Even though they didn’t listen to us over the costume I guess the outrage over turning our beloved WW into Allie McFreakinBeal must have sunk in because, according to i09, it’s been rewritten.
  • The new script has  her lifting bad guys by the throat, gouging their eyes with her thumbs, kicking them into their air with those go-go boots and making obscene gestures at them. In a flashback, we see her pulling Steve out of a burning airplane, despite being told that doing so will be way too dangerous. Even her cat seems braver: In one scene, we discover it’s bitten her neighbor William Marston (named after the “Wonder Woman” creator), who tells Diana he thinks Wonder Woman is a fascist. And apparently, Diana’s glad the cat bit him.
  • Yup. Do you really need me to say what I think of the rewrite?

Geek Speak

• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Social Responsibility in a Highly Digital Age
  • Sadly there have been story after story in this country of people being beaten, raped, even stabbed to death in broad daylight with many onlookers witnessing the horrendous acts. Fear of getting involved has been the biggest reason that people use when stating why they did not do anything to help. When there is a madman with a gun, it’s understandable why you wouldn’t want to.  When you are outnumbered and the situation is violent and ugly, trying to break it up may get you killed. But, with the technological advances we carry with us on a day to day basis I would hope that more would be done to aid in crisis situations. And when I say more being done, I sure as Hell don’t mean put that shit up on YouTube.
  • By now I’m sure you have either heard of or seen the video of the brutal beating
  • of Chrissy Lee Polis. Chrissy is a trans woman that stopped in a Rosedale, MD to use the bathroom and was told by a male employee there that she needed to buy something first. Without warning, she is attacked by two women, one claiming that Chrissy was “talking to her man”- her man being the oh so friendly guy behind the counter that made her buy something first.
  • Employees of the restaurant not only stood around and watched as the two pummeled her, one of them also stood there video taping the incident. He was also kind enough to stop laughing long enough to warn the girls “Y’all better get the fuck up outta here before the cops come” while he’s zooming in on the poor victim who is now mid-seizure from getting dragged across the restaurant by only her hair and beaten.  Then bitches about the fact she’s having a seizure on “his” floor.
  • If you were there, what would you have done?
  • One of my twitter followers posed “Are they trained to break up fights? What about liability issues?”  My thoughts on that- there comes a time where that simply doesn’t fuckin matter. An older woman (Vicky Thom) didn’t give a crap about that and she tried but got hit. If the person video taping it plus the at least 3 employees seen standing there watching all jumped in to contain the situation, it would have ended.
  • Cyber Bullying Statistics

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• The Intarwebs Got Broke (udg)
  • So, remember last week when we talked Cloud? Well, the sky fell last week when Amazon’s cloud network crashed, taking with it  a host of web 2.0 companies – including Reddit, Foursquare, Hootsuite  and thousands of others.  Oddly, two of Amazon’s biggest Web Services’ biggest customers- Netflix and Zynga were not affected by Crash 2.0.
  • Amazon EC2 was believed to be impossible to crash, after hacktivist group Anonymous failed to take it down in December. So what happened?
  • The company said that an early-morning “networking event” caused a cascade of problems that started with a glitch at its East Coast facility. The glitch made its servers automatically create back-ups of themselves which eventually led to crashes in that zone. After roughly 3 days, Amazon had everything under control, with one exception- about 0.07 percent of the data storage in its restored eastern cloud service isn’t fully recoverable. Needless to say this is going to shake the faith that many have in the all mighty cloud.
  • As if this weren’t enough, this rare phenomenon came on the same day as the massive PlayStation network went offline after a then unexplained outage that left 77 million users frustrated to say the least.
  • After going down several times at the end of February and outages throughout March, this is just the latest in a string of problems for the network. And it’s still down as they struggle to completely rebuild it
  • The outage wasn’t the most frustrating thing for PSN users, believe it or not. Instead it was the lack of communication from Sony. To make matters worse, after nearly a week, they finally announced to the public yesterday via the US PlayStation blog that this was indeed due to a massive breach. They stated the “illegal and unauthorized person” obtained people’s names, addresses, email address, birth dates, usernames, passwords, logins, security questions and more. With 77 million users and an estimated $500 mill in annual revenues just from this service,  this makes it one of the largest-ever Internet security break-ins.
  • Sony immediately shut down the network as soon as they learned the information had been stolen. The company said user account information for the PlayStation Network and its Qriocity service users was compromised between April 17 and April 19. Going undetected for several days is a huge red flag and probably accounts for the entire rebuild.
  • While they saw no evidence credit card numbers were stolen, Sony warned users it could not rule out the possibility.
  • “Out of an abundance of caution, we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained,” they said.
  • Sony said it has hired an “outside recognized security firm” to investigate. Of course I’m hoping that firm has no links to China.
  • The timing is also rather unfortunate for them. Monday night Sony unveiled its first two tablets. Like most Sony products they use access to its media networks as a selling point. In the case of these tablets, Qriocity, which was also highly compromised and is part of this ongoing outage.
  • The incidents involving Amazon and Sony are believed to be unrelated and Anonymous is claiming they nothing to do with it.

• Apple secretly tracking your Location (SM)
  • Lets not get hysterical now, It’s pretty muddy data
    • precision is lacking, aggregates by week, no personal info really
  • Why you should care that Apple tracks you
    • Its not that they are tracking, its that there’s a unencrypted history on your handset
    • I.E. a beacon for hackers
  • Guess What? Android is a Much Bigger Offender (udg)
    • Haters always gotta be hatin’. According to industry expert Christopher Soghoian, the iPhone reports your location data to Apple twice a day, but Android reports your location data back to Google several times per hour.
  • App to dump your android location information (SM)
  • Yep, they all do it … and that’s the big dirty secret
  • Most apps cache data and then re-use to help speed things up
  • When you connect to their backend db, guaranteed there is logging
  • Not something to declare armegeddon on but why the huge history on the local phone?
  • Don’t forget the file is also located unencrypted on whichever computer you back up your iPhone. Of course you could put a password on your phone and your computer, but that’s kinda complicated to do, right?(btm)

• AT&T Admits it can’t handle the iPhone (btm)
  • (SM)Thats like the pope admitting he’s Catholic… everyone already knew
  • Explains they need to buy T-Mobile to expand their network
  • iPhone produces 24 times the mobile network traffic than a conventional phone
  • Between 2007 (iPhone introduction) and 2010 mobile network volume jumped 8000%
  • They expect the first 5-7 weeks of 2015 will see more traffic than all of 2010
  • (btm) I wonder if putting iPhones on multiple carriers will help reduce the load or will all carriers see this kind of increase as people who avoided AT&T sign up?

• Valve Probably Done With Single Player Games (udg)
  • According to journalist Geoff Keighley’s Final Hours of Portal 2 iTunes app, Valve may be leaving its single player days behind.
  • “Portal 2 will probably be Valve’s last game with an isolated single-player experience. What this all means is something Newell is still trying to figure out,” wrote Keighly, relating a comment made by Valve founder Gabe Newell.
  • Valve’s Portal 2 introduced multiplayer to the Portal games through a two-player co-op mode. Most of their major games now feature some form of multiplayer mode. In fact, the company’s primary single-player-only experience Half-Life hasn’t seen anything new since 2007.
  • Even outside of Valve, single-player-only modes seem to be on their way out. Even Super Mario now includes second-player support. Series like Uncharted or BioShock that launched as solo-only have added multiplayer modes in their second installments. Capcom has been slowly but surely pushing it’s once single-player only series, Resident Evil into a vehicle for multiplayer.
  • The comment from Valve is striking, though, in that it doesn’t sound like Newell and Johnson said they’d probably never ship a game that didn’t have a multiplayer mode somewhere in it. Rather, they told Keighley they “probably” wouldn’t make a game “with an isolated single-player experience.” That would mean no more modes that couldn’t connect in some fashion to other people.

• Samsung / Apple Rivalry Heating Up (SM)
  • Apple slapped a lawsuit on Samsung for their Galaxy S and copyright violations
  • Funny thing, Samsung (South Korean) manufactures a lot of the IPhone parts
  • (SM) I own one and it DOES look like an IPhone plus the interface is pretty slick
  • Lets say they win… and have to pay a “licensing” fee, what does that mean for the rest of the industry?
  • Samsung has since fired back their own set of lawsuits on copyright infringement
  • Can their partnership last through all this litigation?

• Latest update makes Color Nook more tablet like than ever (btm)
  • Android 2.2 support
  • Flash
  • App Store
    • Angry Birds (SM) – this is a must… #srslyaddicted
  • built in email
  • Ability for authors to sign books?

• WikiLeaks at it Again (udg)
  • WikiLeaks has done another dump of confidential government and military documents. This time they focused on the Prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. In all 779 classified dossiers on current and former detainees were released.
  • New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and a number of other media outlets have published, either in whole or in part, these classified files. So, will the government pursue them for espionage charges like they are pursuing WikiLeaks?
  • The Obama administration condemned the leaks in a statement: “These documents contain classified information about current and former GTMO detainees, and we strongly condemn the leaking of this sensitive information.”
  • In addition to shedding light on the actions of Al-Qaeda’s leadership before and after the 9/11 attacks, the documents pertain to the treatment of the detainees: While the Times reports that the documents “are largely silent about the use of the harsh interrogation tactics at Guantánamo — including sleep deprivation, shackling in stress positions and prolonged exposure to cold temperatures — that drew global condemnation,” it also notes that many prisoners appear to have been held for long periods without cause.

• Old Republic Expected to turn a profit, But will it? (SM)
  • Old Republic is a Star Wars MMO done by the Bioware folks
  • These were the same folks who did BG and KOTOR
  • EA expects to draw 500,000 subs in the first year and make a profit
  • Investment firms expect a million from the company
  • Puts 12 million (wow) into perspective, right?
  • One big hitch… Free to play MMO’s are here (LOTRO,  DDO, etc)
  • Can a new sub without current user base survive?

• Look Out Groupon, Here Comes FaceBook (udg)
  • When FB launched “places,” first thought was they were trying to compete with 4sqr.
  • Now they’ve launched Deals. And, again, first glance may seem like 4sqr. But, FB’s Deals are actually like Groupon.  See, with 4sqr, checking in to a place may get you a free app or 10% off. With Deals, like Groupon, FB users will be able to buy a certificate for some goods or services at an extremely discounted rate (typically 50% off) for future use. And you’ll be able to use FB credits to buy them.
  • Facebook is starting with 5 cities- SF, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta and San Diego. Any FB user can sign up for Deals notifications and the users in these 5 test cities will be able to see and use Deals now.
  • We suspected Facebook had plans to bring Credits to the real world since around the time of f8, the company’s developer conference, when Facebook announced its ambitious Open Graph. Looks like this is the start.

• Open home Wi-Fi leads to FBI raid on wrong houses(btm)
  • FBI raided homes of those suspected of downloading child porn
  • After its investigation, FBI finds that neighbors using open Wi-Fi were the actual culprit
  • Wi-Fi Alliance says router security is like seat belts, it only works if you use it
  • Set a password on your router, seriously.

• Xbox to Have Streaming TV Service (udg)
  • Streaming TV may not seem like a new concept for the 360. Microsoft already allows it via AT&T’s U-verse service. But, it looks like they are in talks with major TV networks and could be branching out.  Right now they are reportedly working with Australian TV Network, Foxtel, in bringing a wallet-friendly cable package to the 360.
  • Reports also indicate there is quite a heated battle internally at Microsoft over this with many employees believing that the Xbox franchise should remain as a strictly gaming platform. Others argue it already does video streaming and should evolve into more than just games.
  • In a recent interview Ross Honey, head of content acquisition for Xbox, stated “Microsoft Xbox is very interested in delivering great entertainment to consumers, entertainment in the broadest sense. From our perspective, gaming and TV are going to coexist.”
  • Just recently, Microsoft brought Kinect support to the 360 for the Netflix app now allowing for voice or gesture control of the Netflix interface to select any content.
  • Perhaps the days of a console being used simply for gaming will be over. I think we started to see that already before this announcement came.

Intarweb Goldmine

• Tweeting election results in Canada will get you fined (btm)
  • 73 year old Canadian law makes it illegal to announce or send messages about election results until all polls are closed.
  • Carries a $25,000 fine and up to 5 years in jail.
  • Election officials won’t be actively monitoring the Twitter but if there are complaints they will investigate
  • Law originally intended to prevent radio stations from announcing East Coast results and potentially affecting West Coast elections where the polls were still open.

• Kid Not Guilty til he opens mouth on Facebook (SM)
  • Guy stops up sink in library at closing
  • Ppl don’t find the stopped sink until the next day
  • 200,000 dollars of damage later…
  • Kid gets on Facebook and brags about it and subsequently gets caught

• And the Stupid Tattoo of the Week Goes to… (udg)
  • L.A. County Sheriff homicide investigator Kevin Lloyd was flipping through tattooed gang members when he notice Anthony Garcia. Why? Well his tattoo depicted, in great detail, a 2004 liquor store murder scene.

• • Yup, every key detail was there: the Christmas lights that lined the roof of the liquor store where 23 yo John Juarez was gunned down, the direction his body fell, the bowed street lamp across the way and the street sign- all under a huge banner that said “RIVERA KILLS.” Yeah, as in the gang Rivera-13.
  • It even gets creative with some screaming symbolism-  the helicopter shooting down what seems to be Mr. Peanut is a reference to the gang member’s alias, “Chopper,” while the lovable peanut mascot symbolizes a rival gang member, as the term “peanut” is a gang slang term for a rival gang member.
  • Apparently, the tattooed mural on the chest of Chopper–real name Anthony Garcia–evolved over time, with pictures of him taken at various points since the liquor store murder having new additions inked onto the scene. I’m guessing Chopper is now probably regretting his cockiness just a bit.

• Rules of Golfing During A German Bombing (udg)

• Computer opens grocery store, without employees (btm)
  • Grocery store was closed for Good Friday but computerized security system opened the doors on time at 8AM
  • 3 minutes later customers began shopping
  • Many honest customers used the self check-out lanes to pay.
  • Some realized there was no staff and left without paying
  • Owner is asking those that didn’t pay to fess up and pay. All money received will be donated to the Christchurch recovery effort.
  • Owner isn’t pressing charges yet, even though CCTV cameras recorded it all.

• Christ is Coming, get Tweeting (udg)
  • Could Facebook and Twitter be the salvation of man?
  • Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Christian evangelist Billy Graham thinks so according to the “prophecy” he gave ABC’s “This Week” host Christiane Amanpour.
  • “The Bible says that every eye is going to see [the Second Coming of Jesus],” Graham told Ammanpour. “How is the whole world going to see [him] all at one time? I don’t know, unless all of a sudden everybody’s taking pictures and it’s on the media worldwide. I don’t know. Social media could have a big part in that.”
  • The 58-year-old cited a verse that says Jesus will be coming on “a cloud and the whole world will moan.”
  • Graham was quick to point out that he is not saying Jesus will come back on Facebook or Twitter himself but instead he could make his announcement on the Silicon Valley social networks, or his arrival could quickly become a trending topic of the likes that no one has seen.

Extra Links

• Your IP address can be tracked to a half a mile
• Good reviews for latest version of MK
• The Little Guy Schools MTV
• Fukushima Reactor Battle Plan

• The original flying car for sale (btm)

• Last flight of the Endeavour (btm)
• Tesla CEO, Elon Musk will put a man on Mars in 10 years(btm)
• Who are you really talking to online? (btm)
  • Los Angeles woman met a Firefighter from Colorado in a message board for fans of HBO’s Deadwood
  • Began exchanging emails, letters, postcards, photos and talking everyday on the phone
  • Woman left her unhappy marriage but as she was preparing to move to Colorado was told that the Firefighter had died from Liver Cancer.
  • 7 months later her friends discovered the truth, the Firefighter, his son and 20 other family members were all characters created by a woman from the Chicago suburbs.
  • Chicago woman allegedly used a voice-altering device to disguise her voice and plotted out entire coordinating shorelines for her characters interacting with the LA woman.
  • Chicago woman had posed as a friend of the firefighter and introduced him to the LA woman becoming her friend
  • LA woman learned the truth while watching TV with the Chicago woman, who was visiting.
  • LA woman is now suing the Chicago woman.

• Hotel linens may have more bugs than you think (btm)
  • Hotels are now using specially designed RFID tags to prevent theft
  • tags can be sewn directly into towels, linens and bathrobes
  • Hotel in Hawaii has already saved $15,000 using the system
  • So far only the Hawaiian hotel and 2 others are using system
    • The hotels are remaining anonymous for security reasons

• Jersey Shore gone Wilde (btm)
  • Takes Jersey Shore transcripts adds Broadway actors and gives us re-enactments in the style of Oscar Wilde
  • Series of videos produced by Playbill.com
  • More entertaining than actual Jersey Shore

How To Reach Us on the IntarWebs

• On Twitter: Steven is @DarthMolen, Ben is @realityamuck , Natali is @UberDorkGirlie
• email us: darthmolen@thepowergeeks.com and uberdorkgirlie@thepowergeeks.com (yay!)
• And Become a Fan
• http://racomics.com

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• If you have an item that is epicly awesome that should be featured in this section, contact the show at darthmolen@thepowergeeks.com and we’ll see about getting it on the air
• I AM A GAMER Documentary (udg)
• The New & Improved But Retro-Gorgeous Commodore 64 (udg)

• Zombies are People too! (SM)
  • Page up in arms about the inhumane treatment of Zombies
  • They only keep their zombies in the safest of cages
  • Fed only a daily brain substitute made from textured soy protein and placed in a mannequin
  • They don’t beat their zombies
  • And they extract the zombie blood with as little mangling as possible for you to drink
  • Due to several incidents, tours are no longer given of their zombie lab or related research facilities. On a related note, we recently acquired more zombies to bleed.
  • Their motto? if a zombie bites you, its bad, if you bite a zombie, its delicious

• Kill Shakespeare #10 out.. and I dig this series
  • Graphic Novels from IDW
  • Take all Shakespeare’s constructs and put them in a world
  • Reswizzle, add some snazzy illustrations, and a great storyline
  • You get Kill Shakespeare…
  • I LOVE this series!

• Garden Jawa FTW!!!

Gold Sponsors:

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Deals of the Week / New Release

• The Incredibles released on Blu Ray April 12
  • Other movies
  • Battle Beyond The Stars – Low budget sci-fi version of Seven Samurai
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (SM) Haven’t seen this yet
  • Cars Blu-Ray
  • H.R. Pufnstuff the complete series
  • Damnation Alley

• Can’t afford Photoshop? Adobe has released an upgrade for Creative Suite, ver. 5.5 that supposedly works better with touch-based tablets and smart phones, butnow you can rent individual programs for a monthly or yearly fee. Photoshop starts at $35/month, the entire Master Collection will be $129/month.  You can still buy Photoshop for $699 or Creative Suite Master Collection for $2599 up front. (btm I wonder if other software companies will join in on the “rental software” idea?)

• Mortal Kombat Remake otherwise known as 9
  • released April 19th

Movie Minute (new feature)

• KNEEL BEFORE ZOD Michael Shannon cast as General Zod in Zach Snyder’s Superman franchise reboot which has now been officially titled “Man of Steel”. Shannon will be joining the already cast Henry Cavill (Superman/Kent), Kevin Costner (Pa Kent) and Diane Lane (Ma Kent). Shannon known for his Academy Award® nominated role in “Revolutionary Road”. (btm)
  • Also gets official name “Man of Steel” (udg)
    • Like I said  (btm)
    • I’m tarded and didn’t see that  :)

• Dear WW Fans, Ne We Didn’t REALLY Listen to You(udg)
  • 3 costumes that will all be used. First trainwreck, second car accident and finally “shorty shorts” which they claim are like the ones in the original WW. Really? Shorty shorts????
  • (SM) Wow, just wow… how wrong can you go with a production that could have garnered some real attention and love from fans??
  • (btm) To be fair, what Lynda Carter wore in the original was short shorts over flesh-toned satin tights (just like it says in the song). 1970’s TV Censors wouldn’t let them by with less.

• Producer of “I, Robot” and “Predator” taking on “Martian Chronicles” (udg)
  • All the 50s Sci-Fi fans, THROW YA HANDS UP!
  • It might be time for Sci-Fi legend Ray Bradbury to get the big budget cinema treatment he deserves.
  • The Hollywood Reporter said Tuesday that Paramount Pictures has picked up the rights to Bradbury’s 1950s collection of loosely-linked short stories, The Martian Chronicles,  and they want John Davis to produce the adaptation.
  • Davis has a lot of Sci-Fi street cred, to be sure. Despite a few missteps in his filmography (like Paycheck…ouch), Davis’ credits also include every film in the Predator franchise (including the AVP flicks), I, Robot and Waterworld, which by now we all have to admit is so bad that it’s good (Come on…Costner drinks his own pee in that movie! His own pee!).
  • The book is a collection of stories written by Bradbury in the 1940s, all focusing on the colonization of Mars by a group of humans fleeing a deteriorating Earth, only to find that the native Martians aren’t too happy to have them there. The story has already produced a TV miniseries released on NBC in 1980, but despite the presence of the late, great Rock Hudson, Bradbury himself dismissed the final product as boring. Mr. Blockbuster himself, Steven Spielberg, optioned the book in the late 90s and hired several writers to work on it, but nothing ever got off the ground, and now it’s in Paramount’s hands.
  • Ray Bradbury is 90 now. Maybe we can get a good movie out of this before he dies. Get your asses in gear, Paramount.

• Rise of the Planet of the Apes is opening August 5th this year but during a LiveStream event on Facebook with WETA Digital, the people who did the SFX for Avatar and LOTR, it was announced that the first official trailer would be exclusively released on iTunes Movie Trailers starting Thursday April 14th. Currently there’s a 5 second clip on the Rise of the Planet of the Apes Facebook page. Andy Serkis, who provided the motion capture for Gollum and King Kong will be featured as the lead chimp, Caesar. (btm…segue to Hobbit? )

• Hobbit Update (be sure to visit peter jackson’s fan page and like it)
  • They’re shooting at double the frame rate (48 frames per second) – allows smoothness, less jitters, and helps in the 3-D department
  • Did you know that they’ve been shooting films at 24 fps for 9 decades now?
  • Star Tours used 60 fps process
  • (SM) Very much akin to when Star Wars Ep. 1 came out. Sure ppl can argue the plot sucks but nobody argues how it looked (shot in full digital)

Craig Charles, who played Dave Lister, has announced on the official Red Dwarf blog that the British sci-fi cult classic has been picked up for 10th series (season). The show will begin shooting this year for a yet to be announced 2012 air date. (btm)

Geek Speak

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• 2011 Eisner Award Nominations for Best in Comics & Graphic Novels Announced (udg)
  • The Eisner Awards celebrate the best in Comic Books & Graphic Novels and the 2011 Nominations have been announced. We will find out the award winners at this years SDCC on July 22nd and this year’s really represents a wide range of from heartfelt autobiographical works to books aimed at kids and teens to deluxe hardcover archival editions. In fact, unlike in past years, superheroes are very much in the minority in this year’s selections.
  • This is the 23rd year for the Eisners, which is pretty much described as the Oscar’s of the comic industry.  So here are the biggies for this year.
  • Nabbing 5 nominations, including Best Publication for Teens, Best Graphic Novel-New, Best Writer, Best Artist and Best Publication Design- Jim McCann & Janet Lee’s Return of the Dapper Men is definitely leading all the nominees.
  • Just behind Dapper men,  four nominations were Two Comic of Doom Favorites- Morning Glories (Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma) and Locke & Key (Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez).
  • Also receiving multiple nominations was Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys,Chew from Image Comics, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and Daniel Clowes‘ Wilson.
  • Among this year’s nontraditional “discoveries” by the judges are Seymour Chwast’s adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Bloomsbury), the “mocumentary” Finding Frank and His Friends by “Clarence ‘Otis’ Dooley” (Curio & Co.), the Native American anthology Trickster (Fulcrum), Lucidity Press’s The Anthology Project, and cartoonist Dave Kellett’s Literature: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953.  (btm.. the link I sent you guys for the review copy has now been posted on his public blog)
  • To check out the full list of nominees, check out Comic-Con’s official webpage here. The Eisner nomination list is always a good way to be exposed to great comics that you may not have heard of before. Tie it in with the “Expand your Comic Mind” contests that the awesome peeps over at Geek Girls Network, Guerrilla Geek and Nerds in Babeland are having to encourage everyone to expand your Comic Minds!
  • (Dapper Men Intro has me sold- “To anyone who ever fell down a rabbit hole, walked to the sidewalk’s end, danced a wild rumpus or followed the second star to the right, may you find adventure, wonder and a little something from which dreams are made in these pages.”-udg)

• Boy Scouts get a “Robotics” Merit Badge (SM)
  • Finally, after everyone has been asking for years, the BSA is updating their curriculum
  • Robotics is a new merit badge, 1 of 31 STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) badges
  • Badge will teach how to handle actuators, sensors, programming, and a myriad of other requirements
  • more requirements: design, build, program, and test a robot; demonstrate the bot and share their engineering notes; attend a robotics competition or do research on robotics contests; and explain how robots are used today.
  • (SM) This is HUGE! the BSA curriculum has needed and update in FOREVER!

• Warner Bros Denied Access to Superman Estates’ Documents (udg)
  • The clock is ticking for Warner Bros. and the rights to Superman. In 2013, if things go as planned, they will lose certain rights to the character to the estates of both Siegel and Shuster (the co-creators of Superman).
  • And it’s not looking so good for WB. Recently they were denied access to  a secret document. One that breaks down how the  estates of Joel Shuster and Jerry Siegel will handle the rights to Superman, including not doing deals with Warner Bros. studio. In fact, it also covers how they will split the proceeds on Superman once WB loses the rights.
  • So, on one side  you have DC and Warner Bros. creating new Superman stories for everyone to enjoy and reaping the benefits. On the other, the creators, Joel Shuster and Jerry Siegel, have been trying to sue DC for Superman for their fair share and have been living a poverty-stricken life. Joanne Siegel, wife of Jerry Siegel who inspired the character Lois Lane, died in her deathbed during a time when Warner Bros. execs continued to harass her. “We were just stubborn. It was a dream of Jerry’s, and we just took up the task.”
  • Superman fans will have to continue to watch as the fate of Superman’s future truly is yet to be determined.

• Navy successfully tests LASER from ship (SM)
  • no this wasn’t one of those non-lethal weapons this was an actual destructive laser
  • Solid State High-energy Laser (HEL) was fired from  ship and disabled a small target vessel.
  • It was on the USS Paul Foster, powered from the ship, guided by radar, and defeated a target at range  (btm… target was a mile away in rough seas)
  • Still a long ways from completion and will never replace kinetic weapons in near future (btm… I had to call a few people to confirm, but I have to tread lightly on this subject as I am still under an NDA from when I did R&D work in Dahlgren with some of their weapon systems)

• Free Software Makes Using a Mouse Easier for Those W Disabilities (udg)
  • Our entire world revolves around computers. When you have a motor disability, using a mouse can be incredibly frustrating. Well a University of Washington team has invented two mouse cursors that make clicking targets a whole lot easier. And neither requires additional computer hardware – just some free, downloadable software. The researchers hope that in exchange for the software, users offer feedback.
  • The Pointing Magnifier combines an area cursor with visual and motor magnification, reducing need for fine, precise pointing. The UW’s AIM Research Group, which invented the Pointing Magnifier, learned that users can much more easily acquire targets, even small ones, 23 percent faster with the Pointing Magnifier.
  • The magnifier runs on Windows-based computer systems. Software for the Pointing Magnifier includes a control panel that allows the user to adjust color, transparency level, magnification factor, and area cursor size. User preferences are saved when the application is closed. Keyboard shortcuts quickly enable or disable the Pointing Magnifier. The UW team is also making shortcuts customizable.
  • Another AIM technology, the Angle Mouse, similarly helps people with disabilities. Like the Pointing Magnifier, it may be downloaded, and two videos, one for general audiences and another for academic ones, are available as well.
  • When the Angle Mouse cursor initially blasts towards a target, the spread of movement angles, even for people with motor impairments, tends to be narrow, so the Angle Mouse keeps the cursor moving fast. However, when the cursor nears its target and the user tries to land, the angles formed by movements diverge sharply, so the Angle Mouse slows the cursor, enlarges motor space and makes the target easier to get into. The more trouble a user has, the larger the target will be made in motor space. (The target’s visual appearance will not change.)
  • Wobbrock compares the Angle Mouse to a race car. “On a straightaway, when the path is open, the car whips along, but in a tight corner, the car slows and makes a series of precise corrections, ensuring its accuracy.”
  • “Pointing is an essential part of using a computer, but it can be quite difficult and time consuming if dexterity is a problem,” Wobbrock said. “Even shaving one second off each time a person points may save hours over the course of a year.”
  • Wobbrock suggests that users try both the Pointing Magnifier and the Angle Mouse before deciding which they prefer.
  • “Our cursors make ubiquitous mice, touchpads, and trackballs more effective for people with motor impairments without requiring new, custom hardware,” Wobbrock said. “We’re achieving accessibility by improving devices that computer users already have. Making computers friendlier for everyone is the whole point of our work.”

• Robotics Deployed in Japan Nuclear Disaster, Ranked with Chernobyl (SM)
  • A piece of sad news: The Fukishima disaster has been upgraded to Chernobyl status.
  • So while the country is expanding the evacuation zone to 12 miles
  • still trying to contain the disaster.
  • 900 workers are currently deployed to work the site
  • remote operated loaders and excavators are helping do the work around reactor 3
  • ROBOTS IN UNTENABLE GLOW IN THE DARK SITUATIONS! GENIUS!
  • More of these units are being evaluated that were shipped from US
  • Also using unmanned aerial units to provide monitoring and inspection

• Apple Patents Hybrid E-Paper Displays for Phones & Tablets (udg)
  • One of the biggest iPad complaints by people who are loyal to their Kindles (or other e-readers) is that high contrast e-paper displays can be read in any light, even outdoors, without the glare and eyestrain of an LCD. They also brag about their battery life being longer than that of the LCD-based tablets.
  • Well, Apple has heard your complaints and a recently uncovered patent filing looks like a way to build a hybrid e-paper/LCD combo display. This could revolutionize mobile devices and tablets as we know it if it works well. The patent is named “Systems and Methods for Switching Between an Electronic Paper Display and a Video Display,” and behind the lingo is technology that could one day allow segments of, or an entire device’s screen to toggle between e-paper mode and LCD mode.
  • The system would work by putting a thin, nearly see-through electronic paper screen on top of the LCD display, but underneath the capacitive touch-sensitive panel. When the user wants to toggle the e-paper mode, the backlighting for the LCD, which is on the bottom, simply turns down or off, and the only thing on-screen that the users sees is the e-paper display. When the user wants to play a video or bring the screen back to color, toggling the LCD mode will stop current to the e-paper layer and bring up the LCD backlighting.
  • Putting the two displays into layers like this would likely mean slightly thicker devices, but not by much –compared to the battery, the displays themselves make up little of the depth of most mobile devices. What may be an issue however is battery life: even though e-paper displays use less power than traditional LCDs, the act of powering up and dimming the backlight for the LCD may impact the battery life of such devices.
  • Apple reportedly filed for the patent way back in 2009 and is just now making the filing public. That doesn’t mean there’s a new product ready to roll out. It just means Apple is letting us and its competitors know it’s working on the possibility. If this does become real, the iPad will definitely be harder to compete with.

• Sony Lawsuit against GeoHotz Dropped (SM)
  • GeoHotz cracks the hardware key that makes PS3 Secure
  • Sony sues him immediately

• Facebook Says Screw You China, We’re Coming Anyway, Or Are We? (udg)
  • So, earlier this week Chinese press reported that FB had reached a deal with Chinese search engine Baidy to build a joint social network in China. Yet FB is indirectly denying it to US press.
  • Yeah, which one is it folks?
  • Here’s what we know:
    • Three different sources say it’s a go. Two at  Chinese regulators that say they are reviewing the necessary joint venture application and one at Baidu.
    • FB isn’t exactly denying it on record. Their only comment is “Facebook is currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers.”
    • Baidu isn’t commenting at all
  • So what the heck is going on? Well it’s possible that FB hasn’t signed off on all the legals yet, so it’s not set in stone. Chinese regulators would still be aware of the deal even if it was not completely signed yet. The two parties may be keeping it hush in the event the regulators decide to veto the whole thing to avoid either party being embarrassed.
  • On the other hand, we’re talking China here. As soon as the report made it to the US, Baidu’s stock jumped. This could have been planted to the Chinese press by traders to move the stock. Don’t look at me like that. Stuff like that happens in China all the time.
  • It’ll be interesting to see what the true story is. All I know is if anyone’s getting a social network into China, my money is on Zuckerberg. And Zynga.

No more Google Street View in Germany. Google has halted Street View photography in Germany for no apparent reason. Google received a court order that declared street photography to be legal in Germany so this decision has left many baffled. They will continue to use the Google Cars to collect data like street names and road signs to maintain their maps but no new photographs will be taken. (btm)

• Kiip- Rewarding You for Your Angry Birds Addiction (udg)
  • I love the moments when I see something new and think “jinkies, that’s actually awesome.” Rarely does it happen when advertising or marketing are involved. And then I met Kiip.
  • Kiip, a mobile ads startup, has been around for 7 months but they finally came out of stealth mode to unveil an entirely new entirely new model for in-game advertising. You’ve all seen the “free” versions of apps that force you to tolerate lame ads. Now, you are about to experience one that actually offers you value.
  • The folks at Kiip know their gamers. They know when people reach an in-game achievement (you know upping a level, etc) we get happy. We pay attention to the app. They call that “the most user engagement”
  • Does Kiip go “Sweet! Good job! Here’s an ad?” Nope. They go “Sweet! Good Job! Here’s free stuffs!” Kiip has partnered up with big brands like Sephora, popchips, Homerun.com, Sony Dash, Vitamin Water, 1-800-Flowers, Dr Pepper, GNC, Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s to offer players actual in-game rewards like a voucher for six bags of popchips, a lipstick sample or a complimentary smoothie when they complete gaming milestones. Kiips is my kind of peeps.
  • “Achievements are the universal currency for accomplishment and every game in the world has achievements,”  says 19-year-old Kiip co-founder Brian Wong explaining what he calls the “Achievement Moment.” “The achievement itself isn’t the cool thing, it’s the moment. We realized that the moment was worth something. The natural evolution is to put something there that actually matches the achievement.”
  • Kiip Rewards Network will be rolling out rewards in over 15 games, reaching 12 million monthly active users. I was not able to find a specific list, but their intro video shows Angry Birds. Brands will pay up when a user signs up for a reward, from 25 cents to $3 per cost per engagement.
  • Wong says the team has got a lot more up its sleeve. I’m looking forward to see what that is.

• Jerry Lawsen, inventor of the video game cartridge, passed away Saturday of unknown causes. He was among the earliest video game engineers. Developed the first video game cartridge (for the Fairchild Channel F system). Prior to this home game systems only played games that were built into the system. (btm… if you’ve every blown on a video game this man is why)

Intarweb Goldmine

• What happens if you get sucked out of a plane
  • Brought to mind by the hole that was ripped in the ceiling of the SW airline
  • Everybody was fine on that flight but what happens at 30,000 feet?
  • Many Factors: Cut in half by hole, lack of oxygen, cold (-70 F), 500 mile winds
  • You’re dead way before you hit the ground
  • This has been your friendly neighborhood PSA announcement
• Nude web coders wanted!
  • “Sex does not play a part in naturism – yes one is aware of differences in sex and size and shape and age of everyone, but the concern is on sales and technical ability, not availability”
• 7 Year Old Missing? He may just be a hardcore gamer. (udg)
  • A mom in Rochester called police after her 7 year old son said he was going outside to ride bike around 2pm and was nowhere to be found an hour later.
  • Where was he? Well he was found around in the video game area at Walmart around 6pm. He told police he was there earlier in the day and wanted a video game.

• Disco is Officially Dead. Meet the Man That Killed It. (udg)
  • California man who used a shotgun to blast the speaker on his son’s stereo will not be facing criminal charges, according to prosecutors. The man told cops that he destroyed the speaker because his 24-year-old son–an aspiring DJ–“was playing his ‘disco’ too loud.”

• • Stanislaw Jarmolowicz, 53, was arrested last week on suspicion of shooting at or into a building. Jarmolowicz spent about two days in the Yuba County jail before posting bail Wednesday.
  • After a review of the case, prosecutors opted not to prosecute Jarmolowicz, chiefly because criminal negligence could not be established since he did not intend to injure his son Anthony. The younger Jarmolowicz uses the handle “Baas” in connection with his DJ pursuits.

• 25 abandoned Soviet Era Monuments that look like they’re from the future (btm)
  • Spomenik literally means monument.
  • commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place.
  • After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

Extra Links

• Geek Girls Network & Nerds in Babeland interview Dapper Men’s Janet Lee (udg)
• Interactive Table Top Restaurant Menu- soooo cool!! (udg)
• Google Acquires “PushLife”
• Phone on Phone programming from M$
• Rob Granito gets a smackdown (comic fraud)

• The End of Content Ownership

How To Reach Us on the IntarWebs

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

Sponsors

Big Exciting News… We are very close (depending on Apple) to being able to test and release our first iPhone app!!! (@JebsApps) it’ll be Movie History… with lots of new features (that we can’t make androids do… yet) but both will be getting a huge update to the Database!!! and right on the heels of that will be Geek History with a bigger update to the Database!!! So… More Geekiness… = More GeekyGoodness!!
Get yours today if you have an Android for only $0.99 to keep up with facts like:
Today in MovieHistory 2/16/1957
LeVar Burton, Star Trek: TNG’s Geordie LaForge, is born.

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

Intro Natali
Intro Matt Kramer

Items of Interest

• If you have an item that is epicly awesome that should be featured in this section, contact the show at darthmolen@thepowergeeks.com and we’ll see about getting it on the air
• April Fool’s Day Items From Across The IntarWebs (udg)
  • April Fool’s Day is a favorite day for many. For me it marks the day I actually found out I was prego with lilest and yes the ex thought it was a prank. I pretty much completely missed it this year and if you did too, here are a couple of great things the IntarWebs had to offer this year.
  • ThinkGeek was at it again this year with Playmobil Apple Store Playset, Angry Birds Pork Rinds and Minecraft USB Desktop Nether Portal.

• • • Google always shows up to the April Fools Party and this year included Google China claiming to have invented teleportation and Gmail unveiling Gmail Motion- where you can email using body gestures. That one may be kind of fun. >;-) And Chromercise- an exercise regimen for your hands and fingers you know so they can keep up with Google’s “Lightening Fast” browser.
    • YouTube showcased the top viral pictures of 1911
    • World of Warcraft showed up too- Blizzard has announced the advent of a Dungeon Helper, affectionately called “Crabby,” who will give you tips when you’re stuck and encouragement no matter what.

• • • Toshiba announced the Toshiba Spectacle, the world’s first and only 3D monocle. “Ready to take movies and games to the next level? Imagine being right in the middle of an action movie scene, or right on the basketball court during the playoffs! With the Spectacle, you’ll experience one-eyed 3D so real, you’d think you were using both eyes!”

• Jar Jar Gets a woopin’ (yeah, it’s fake) The awesome folks at Improv Everywhere staged a very real looking video where Jar Jar gets his ass wooped on a subway. People cheered all over for that one.

• Thundercats HO!
  • Saw the new trailer and its an interesting blend of old and new…
  • (who you callin’ a ho? -udg)

• First 14 minutes of “Game of Thrones”

• Stephen Colbert & the Roots covering Rebecca Black’s “Friday”.(MK)

Gold Sponsors:

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Deals of the Week / New Release

• Acoustic North Concert Live on UStream
  • Includes Marian Call and other Alaskan musicians
  • Friday, April 8, 2011
  • Sign up on Facebook for a reminder

• Blu-Ray / Movie New Releases
  • Tron Legacy / Tron Classic / Tron 3D / 3D + BR + Classic + Digital
  • Little Fockers
  • Fiddler on the Roof (BR)
  • A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) BR – Huge tear jerker
  • Kung Fu Panda (BR/DVD)
  • Favorite Peter Pan (BR – 2003) (Jeremy Sumpter, Jason Isaacs, Olivia Williams)

Movie Minute (new feature)

• New Superman Movie Updates- WTF?!? (udg)
  • So, we covered the confirmed casting of Amy Adams as Lois Lane for the new Superman movie last week. Well, there seems to have been some more activity this week. Howard Stern, you know the “King of All Media” has said that Lex Luthor and Miss Teschmacher will have roles in the movie.
  • And it seems the pretty much unknown Adam Harris is confirmed as having auditioned several times for the part of Lex Luthor and will be reading again with Lindsay Lohan. Wait? What the ??
  • Yup, frakkin Lindsay Lohan has been rumored to be reading for a role, quite possibly that of Miss Teschmacher. Course that means she’s gotta stay out of jail long enough to show up to the start of shooting in Vancouver in August.
  • Despite all of this, everything should still be considered a rumor until the story comes from Warner Bros themselves. There’s a chance that Luthor may still not appear in the film, and if he does, he may not be the main villain. Stay tuned. And yeah start praying this doesn’t turn into a total trainwreck.

• The Hobbit Casting – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/
• Wonder Woman Live Action Shots

Geek Speak

Hacker vs. Cracker-

• • Modern day Hackers have managed to rack up a rep for piracy, sabotage and leaking sensitive secrets, but an authoritative Vatican publication appears to rehabilitate them and traces parallels between hacker philosophy and the teachings of Christianity.
  • The surprisingly charitable view of hackers was expressed by the Jesuit priest Father Antonio Spadaro in an article for the fortnightly magazine Civilta Cattolica, the text of which is gets a once over from the Vatican Secretariat of State prior to publication.
  • “Hackers should not be confused with crackers”, Spadaro wrote, citing a definition penned by tech writer Eric S. Raymond: “Hackers build things, crackers break them.”
  • Hacker philosophy is playful but committed, encourages creativity and sharing, and opposes models of control, competition and private property, Spadaro observed approvingly.
  • The Jesuit priest, a literary critic and technology expert, also cited Tom Pittman, a member of California’s Homebrew Computer Club, as an example of someone seeking a creative fusion of Christianity and technology.
  • “I as a Christian thought I could feel something of the satisfaction that God must have felt when He created the world,” Pittman wrote of his work. Christian hackers, Spadaro said, viewed their work as “a form of participation in the ‘work’ of God in creation.”
  • Hacker mentality implies a joyful application of intelligence to problem solving, rejecting the concept of work as repetitive, burdensome and stupid, Spadaro wrote. Hacker ethics rejected a capitalistic, profit-oriented approach to work, eschewing idleness but favoring a flexible, creative approach that was respectful of the human dimension and natural rhythms, he said.
  • “Under fire are control, competition, property. It’s a vision that is … of a clear theological origin,” Spadaro observed.
  • He went on to emphasize hackers’ ingrained distrust of authority and praise the collaborative knowledge-sharing model of Wikipedia.
  • The debate reflects a growing attention within the Catholic Church to the evolution of modern communications technologies, which Pope Benedict XVI has encouraged his followers to harness for the dissemination of the Catholic faith
  • It’s a really interesting article that I highly encourage you to read through.

Digital eBooks vs. Real Books

• Michael Stackpole’s X-Wing Series out of Print
  • Surprising reveal that a good chunk of change comesfrom his digital novels (In Hero Years… I’m Dead)
  • Considers the electronic vs. Paper war already over with and done
• When is the time that the scales will tip? (nook, kindle, sony ereader, ipad,etc,etc)
• Nook Color eBook reader the most sold tablet
• California Library doing away with books

Tech, Gaming, and Geek New

• Set Phasers to Stun!!! For Realz! (SM)
  • Researchers have now come up with a system that stuns by using only light
  • The device is a 75 watt lamp focused and sent at a certain frequency into the retina
  • Researchers claim that the stun can last seconds or even minutes
  • Tasers work at 12-15 feet, this can work up to 150 ft away
  • (guess they never heard of sunglasses or turning away)
  • One step closer to Star Trek…

• Epsilon Hacked- Yup, It Probably Affects You (udg)
  • Hackers struck gold late last week when they tapped into the customer database for marketing services giant Epsilon.  Why should you care? Well odds are it affects you.
  • So- who is Epsilon? In short, they are the peeps that send out more than 40 billion emails annually for their clients. Clients like Target, Capitol One, Kroger’s, JP Morgan Chase, Best Buy, TiVo, an array of major hotel reward programs, Walgreen’s and MANY more. They are, in fact, the world’s largest “Permissions-Based” email marketing company. And now millions of email addresses and names have been stolen from their company’s 2500 client customer data base.
  • How do you know if you’ve been affected? Well laws like the California Database Breach Act require that customers have to be informed if their data is compromised. I’ve already received word from Best Buy’s Rewards Program and Target. Chances are you’ve already received one of your own from one of the clients. If not, it may still be coming.  Epsilon also won’t reveal how many of its customers were affected; only that it is 2 percent of its clients.
  • What does this all mean? The Hacker(s) have names, e-mail addresses, points balances in certain cases and now knows who all of Epsilon’s clients are. You may be thinking “eh it’s just my email address, so what?”  Well, it’s kind of a big deal. Give me 10 minutes and I can snag the official logos of every major company they serve. I can set up a anonymous gmail account to sign up for all the company’s programs and receive official emails from them. Then, go into photoshop or hell even Word and construct an email that looks exactly like the official email and before you know it, people are clicking on them thinking they are from the legitimate source and I’m snagging passwords, addresses, maybe even bank account information. This is the start of a potentially huge phishing operation. ESPECIALLY when banks and credit cards are involved.
  • I encourage everyone to pay VERY close attention to the emails they receive over the next year from anyone associated with Epsilon. MAKE SURE  THEY ARE LEGIT OR DON’T CLICK.

• IPod Production Troubled Halt Over Earthquake Interruptions (SM)
  • We’re all device jun
  • Lithium Ion batteries use a  key ingredient, Polymer (PVDF), to bind the different elements together
  • Used to bind the different elements together. It’s a small percentage but vital
  • Kureha Corp., based near the epicenter in Japan, owns 70% of the market
  • Its not as easy as changing manufacturers either or a different polymer, chemistry is weird that way
  • The WSJ is claiming only IPod manufacturing is affected… but a lot more stuff than that is Li-Ion.
  • Yet another way the earthquake has affected our lives
  • (It also has led to production disruptions for the PSP2- udg)

• What’s Up With Sony? (MK)
  • Sony Closing 3 Game Studios & Cutting 205 Jobs
    • Earlier rumor that Sony Online Entertainment was about to make some big cuts has turned out to be true. 205 jobs total will be lost and the Denver, Seattle and Tuscon studios all closed down. Sony has also decided to cancel the online game The Agency that has been in development for several years now.
    • All existing titles will remain live so you may continue to play them as normal. As for future game development, two MMOs will now be the focus. The first is based on the PlanetSide IP, and the second on the always-popular Everquest IP.
    • Fewer projects mean less people required and ultimately fewer studios have work, hence the closures. As far as an impact on gamers is concerned, the only noticeable difference is that The Agency will no longer be appearing on store shelves.
  • Meanwhile they manage to piss off Anonymous
    • If you’ve been following the saga between Sony and George “GeoHot” Hotz, you know that Sony is kinda ticked with him for cracking the long uncracked PS2 and has been publicly targeting him with legal action. Then they turned around and offered a job to another prominent hacker who turned them down based on their treatment of Hotz.
    • Well, all of this has now gotten the attention of the infamous hacker group Anonymous and not in a good way. They’ve now officially declared war on Sony:
      • “Congratulations, Sony. You now have now received the undivided attention of Anonymous. Your recent legal action against our follow hackers, Geohot and Graf_Chokolo, has not only alarmed us, it has been deemed wholly unforgivable. You have now abused the judicial system in an attempt to censor information on how your products work. You have victimised your own customers merely for possessing and sharing information, and continue to target every person who seeks this information. In doing so you have violated the privacy of thousands. This is the information they were willing to teach the world for free. The very same information you wish to suppress for sake of corporate greed and complete control of the users. Now you will experience the wrath of Anonymous. You saw a hornets nest, and stuck your penises in it. You must face the consequences of your actions, Anonymous style. Knowledge is Free. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not Forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”
  • Playstation Relief Efforts Raise 1.3M for Japan
    • Sony has announced that donation efforts for the Japan tsunami and earthquake from PlayStation Network have raised over $1 million.
    • Over ¥109.6 million (approximately $1.3 million) has been raised from the effort, which has allowed PlayStation Network users to donate through the PlayStation Store.
    • All of the money raised from the drive, which has been in effect in over 40 countries, will go to the American Red Cross’s Japanese relief fund, the British Red Cross in Europe, and the Central Community Chest of Japan.

• Algebra II Closer to Being Mandatory (SM)
  • Studies are showing that out of all the classes in High School, Algebra II is the leading indicator on success later in a career
  • Indicators: 84% of ppl in top-tier jobs took Algebra II, 50% in bottom tier took it
  • Whether this is just purely “more education” or actual math skills that translate, ppl are still debating
  • (SM) My thoughts: Math stimulates thinking, your mind grows as you do it, only good things can come from exercising your brain
  • Thoughts?

• Woah! Adobe Demos PhotoShop for iPad (udg)
  • Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly want the iPad 2 any more than I already do…
  • Adobe and Apple may have had issues in the past over Apple refusing to allow the iPad to run Flash, but that hasn’t halted their relationship. In fact Adobe has been hard at work developing a pretty kick ass version of Photoshop for the iPad. They currently offer an app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad called Photoshop Express. But, this new app is so much more.
  • Check out the video taken at Photoshop World 2011 and you’ll see Adobe didn’t just try to port over the features of the desktop version, but that it knows and behaves like it’s a touchscreen app. And it’s not some dinky toy either. No word on when this will be released or what they are planning on calling it. And I’m sure that there are hardcore graphic designers that will scoff at it. But, it will definitely make it hard for the naysayers to continue to state that the iPad is devise for consumption, not creation.

• Gamestop buys Impulse (SM)
  • Impulse was owned by Stardock and is a little brother to Steam
  • Originally created to distribute their games but was opened to other 3 years ago
  • Why is this important? Gamestop has already said their future hinges on digital distribution
  • last month, Digital downloads accounted for 40% of the revenue in the gaming industry
  • Gamestop did 300 million last year alone, 1.5 billion 4 years from now is estimate
  • Impulse gives them ready-made technology to effec that plan and challenge Valve in that arena
  • Gamestop also aquired Spawn Labs, a peer-to-peer gaming service

• GM Cows produce Human-like milk (SM)
  • The chinese have created genetically modified cows that produce “human-like” milk
  • Human milk has a nutrient and protein mix that is very unique for infant consumption
  • These cows, are created through cloning processes where human genes are injected into the embryo before being re-planted into the mothers
  • The Chinese have made 300 of these bovine and are physically identical to regular cattle
  • Scientists insist that genetically modified food poses no threats but there are tons of debates on the matter
  • Bladerunner anyone???
  • (Seriously freakin’ creepy & I have a tiny rant. I’ll keep it relatively bleep free for ya though – udg) (and its by the chinese )

• PopCap Launches 4th & Base (udg)
  • If you’ve ever played Bejeweled or Plans vs Zombies, than you get why PopCap has a reputation for releasing polished games.  The formulas behinds these games may seem simple, but the development cycle is incredibly time consuming. Which is why we haven’t seen Plants vs Zombies 2 yet.
  • Guess what though- PopCap has announced an initiative to get us games quicker- welcome 4th and Battery, a self-proclaimed indie label within the company dedicated to rapidly prototyping and releasing smaller, less full-featured games.
  • “4th & Battery is a pressure valve intended to keep our heads from exploding,” explained Ed Allard, executive vice president of studios at PopCap.  4th & Battery gives us a way to quickly try really strange or marginal ideas, and to give our designers a safe area to hone their chops.”
  • PopCap’s describing these games as being like short films, or B-sides, and they are launching with a game called Unpleasant Horse, in which players become a horse with wings that, as you probably guessed, kills birds. Maybe not full-game material, but it should be available free of charge on the iOS App Store later this month.

• Playstation Tablet in the Works (Matt, you can have this one)

What major electronics company doesn’t have a tablet?  You guessed it, Sony!  There have been rumors of one since 2010 when Apple announced the iPad, but there was nothing confirmed until mid-February.

While skeptical over their software capabilites, Engadget been assured that Sony’s work is cutting edge stuff created by a talented engineering team spanning Sony’s VAIO, Reader, PlayStation, and Sony Ericsson product groups.

The team is lead by the VAIO organization but will probably launch as a Sony product without VAIO branding, according to one source. The tablet itself, we’re told, is 100 percent focused on Qriocity, Sony’s music, games, ebooks, and videos on demand service that’s just been launched in Europe. It comes preloaded with Sony PS One games, a Bravia Media Remote, and yes, PlayStation integration

The tablet’s “wrap” design is meant to remind the owner of something personal in the way that it mimics an open paperback stuffed into the back pocket, or a magazine folded backward upon itself such that only a single page is visible to read. Even though the S1 is about the same size and weight as Apple’s iPad, we’re told that it feels lighter since most of the weight is shifted directly into the user’s hand and over the wrist.

It features a 1,280 x 800 pixel resolution.  It also features both front- and rear-facing cameras as well as a USB-A port that plays host to USB thumb drives or media devices. The only physical buttons — volume and on / off — are located on the edge of each indented side.  There’s an IR port built-in allowing you to control devices other than your Bravia TV.

Price and ship date?  The target for the WiFi-only version was meant to match the iPad, but the price has been bumped to $599 with a September ship date.

• Bike to the Future (udg)
  • If you’re listening to this, odds are when you go to buy a new gadget- it’s gotta be the best, most advanced one out there. You know- fastest PC, skinniest highest res TV, deadliest robot butler (you know they bring you your slippers AND the heads of your enemies!)
  • Well, I’ve got the next bike for you. We’re talking hybrid electric from M55. Their first mechanized monster is so badass, it’s named The Beast AND it lives up to it. Exercise isn’t your thing? Not a problem- The Beast takes the “work” out of working out. Its motor doesn’t throttle on like a motorcross dirt bike. It churns into action as soon as you start pedaling, giving your feeble legs a bionic  boost.
  • The motor on this badboy is so bad, you can tear up hills without having to stand while pedaling. In fact, the drive system is powerful enough that if you’re really jamming on a straight-away, you can travel at almost 50 mph. Yeah, I said it: 50 mph. On a bicycle!
  • If you decide to grab an M55, do us all a favor and remember that sometimes life sucks and so do uneven paved surfaces. Wear a helmet. If  my calculations are correct, when these babies hit 50 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit.

Intarweb Goldmine

• Man Takes Down Armed Robber With Fake Leg (udg)
  • A Massachusetts man who used his prosthetic leg to take down a robber says he didn’t have time to think, he just reacted.
  • Stephen Cornell peered through the window of his neighborhood convenience store in Middleton on Wednesday and saw a man pointing a gun at the owner.
  • He tells The Salem News he intended to tackle the thief when he left JC Grill & Pizza, but instead stuck out his artificial leg and tripped him.
  • Only thing that would have made this more awesome is if he would have actually beat him with the leg.

• Lucky Mother Trucker
  • Trucker eating an apple on buy Penn. freeway
  • Everything’s calm, he starts to choke
  • Passes out and crashes through center divider
  • When woken up, found that apple had been dislodged by steering wheel
  • Guy used up all his 9 lives

• 75 Year Old Lady Cuts Entire Country Off From the IntarWebs (udg)
  • Elderly people and the Internet are the root of many jokes and headaches. A 75-year-old lady from the Republic of Georgia scored a point for the geriatrics when she cut off the entire country of Armenia from the net last month.
  • According to the AFP, the woman was scavenging for scrap metal around the village of Ksanai on March 28. She came across a fiber-optic cable linking Armenia to Georgia and she cut it up to sell the copper. Unfortunately, that cable provided the majority of Armenia’s internet service, and the poor Armenians were cut off from the Internet for “hours” that evening. Now she faces up to three years in prison.
  • Hey, Armenia, maybe you shouldn’t rely on a single, fragile cable to connect your entire country to the Internet? Just a thought

Extra Links

• Google Product Boss Leaves, Co-Founder Returns
• TI to buy National Semi-Conductor
• the new Commodore 64 >> Pics
• Curing Hair Loss by Accident
• Gamestop sees digitial game sales exploding
• Water-Cooled, Wall-Mounted Wii Mod (udg)
  • I don’t care who you are, even if you hate Wii, this is sexxeh.

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

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

Intro Jeremy
Intro Natali
Tweet up Friday night 3/18/2011 at Dave N Busters Addison, IL starting at 8pm CST

1155 N Swift Road Addison, IL Items of Interest

• Geeks With Heart Japan Response (udg)
  • If you are listening to this podcast, odds are something that has come out of Japan has touched or even changed your life at some point. Technology, games, movies, anime, ramen, the list of things that have become a part of our daily lives that started there is huge.
  • And right now they need a whole lot of love sent back to them. That’s why my item of the week is the Geeks With Heart Japan Response. Geek Girls Network has once again teamed up with the good people at Mercy Corp to help us send some of that love on over. Mercy Corps, with their longstanding partner, Peace Winds will use the donations to meet the immediate and longer-term needs of the survivors of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that has leveled and paralyzed this county.
  • I know times are tough her for a lot of people. Every little bit helps. Skip that Starbuck’s for a day and send it their way. Rent a movie instead of going out. Skip ordering pizza and have ramen. One little change for one week could make a difference. If you can, please click the link and show you’re a geek with heart.
• Batman Sex Cave (SM)
  • Eden Erotic motel in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan
  • $50 for 3 hours and the Decor is spankin’
• What if Chewie were a sexy chick??? (JP)
  • The sexiest SciFi costumes you’ll see…

Gold Sponsors:

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

• Convention Schedule
  • C2E2 – March 18-20

Big Exciting News… We are very close (depending on Apple) to being able to test and release our first iPhone app!!! (@JebsApps) it’ll be Movie History… with lots of new features (that we can’t make androids do… yet) but both will be getting a huge update to the Database!!! and right on the heels of that will be Geek History with a bigger update to the Database!!! So… More Geekiness… = More GeekyGoodness!!
Get yours today if you have an Android for only $0.99 to keep up with facts like:
Today in MovieHistory 3/16/1971
Alan Tudyk is born in El Paso, Texas, and went on to play Wash in Serenity  & Alpha on Dollhouse

Deals of the Week / New Release

• Walking Dead Plushies Giveaway! (udg)
  • No one knows how to dangle freebies for us geeks like the folks at Geek Chic Daily. This week’s, as usual, is the awesome!  They are teaming up with their friends at Robert Kirkmans’ Skybound Entertainment that just opened up a brand spankin’ new store spreading zombie gore all over the world. What better way to do that than by giving away 13 Walking Dead Zombie Plushies.
  • Don’t miss your chance to win a zombie of your very own you can hug and squeeze and hell even call George.  Oh and don’t worry if his head pops off, it’s meant to do that. So, head on over to their site and then snag a bonus entry on their Facebook page.

• • (list of new games released this week)
  • (list of new dvd’s released this week)

• The Fighter – Christian Bale
• Gamera vs. Zigra!!!

• Paul Opens In Theaters This Week (udg)
  • If you don’t know who Simon Pegg & Nick Frost are, you really need to learn. Trust me on this. They are brilliant. In fact, you have an assignment from me- go rent Shaun of the Dead. Now. T
  • They have given us so many epic moments whether its their own movies or Robot Chicken or even the voice of Reepicheep in Narnia. And now they are about to give us so very many more.
  • This week, their newest film, Paul hits the theaters. The dynamic duo play British buddies who decide to end their first voyage to SDCC with a road trip through the southwest. Being the hardcore sci-fi fanboys that they are- they are on a pilgrimage to see the likes of Area 51 and Roswell. All good movies have a one dark night. Well on this one, the two of them stumble onto a real life alien, Paul, who is voiced by Seth Rogen. Paul’s been stranded on Earth for decades after crashing his spaceship back in 1947 and now he wants out. He’s engineered an escape but he needs these two to help him pull it off.
  • Paul is being declared “a movie about nerds, written by nerds, made for nerds, in which the word “nerd” appears in the dialogue at least a dozen times.” And this is one nerd who can’t wait to see it!
  • Oh!!! I should probably mention- leave the nerdlings at home for this one, it’s rated R.

Geek Speak

With C2E2 kicking off the major Con season for this year, we thought it was important to give you our How To for Con Surival.  Hello,  my name is Natali and I’ll be your Fairy Con Mother

• #1- SURVIVAL FIRST! You will need a COMFORTABLE bag of choice (backpack, messenger) A. for the haul of freebies, B. for the stuff you’re gonna buy there 3. for your survival kit.
• Survival Kit:
  • 1. WATER (plastic bottles only) You need to stay hydrated peeps
  • 2. Energy boosts!  The fun doesn’t end when the doors close and that doesn’t usually happen until at least 9pm. With parties, tweet ups, you name it-  sleep is for the weak during the epic 4 day weekend. Whether it’s energy shots, craisins, Steven’s cases of NOS, you’re gonna wanna have a stash in your bag to keep you going.
  • 3. Camera- Don’t be proud. Yes you have an iPhone. That iPhone has a battery life peeps.
  • 4. Chargers!!!! – Be it battery for cams, phone, laptop, you need it! Do yourself

a favor, match up all your chargers to your toys and pack them together.

• • 5. Tiny Power Strip- For realz, you snag an open outlet, you best charge all your stuffs. I’ve seen hair pulled and blood shed people, it’s not pretty. Recommend: Monster
  • 6. Sketch Pad & Pens- if you’re hoping of any autograph, artist’s work, jot notes, snag a booth  babe’s number- you’re gonna need this.
  • 7. For Summer Cons- Sunscreen- Seriously. The lines for some of the halls run outside. W/ no shade.
  • 8. COMFORTABLE SHOES This is not the time to try to sport some new kicks. If you’re cos playing, again don’t be proud, giant blisters and limping is not sexy. Sport the shoes that go with your outfit for a bit, but make sure you’ve got back up comfies in your bag.
  • 9. Meds, Inhaler, etc. Passing out in front of Eliza Dushku doesn’t mean she’ll  give you mo 2 mo. Don’t be proud, whip out the inhaler if you need it. (There goes my super plan for next year… I’m out! JP) (if I see yvonne S. from Chuck… I may still try this trick…)
  • 10. ANTIBACTERIAL GEL!! CON CRUD EXISTS AND IT IS EVIL!! I’ve been there people- load up. I’ve got a bottle and a purse spray of it already in my backpack after the curse of Anime Milwaukee. USE IT LIBERALLY AND OFTEN. You’ll hug me for this later when your friend is couched up and praying for death for a good 3-5 days because they were a nonbeliever.

• #2 A Plan

• • Plot out the panels you really want to see. Rule out seeing a panel right before it if it’s not in the same hall. For the biggies a 3 hour line wait is not unheard of. All of the big Cons have an app now, dl it to your phone, it may be a BIG help.
  • If you’re staying at a hotel-don’t forget your shuttle or schedule or the number to a cab service!! Schedules for events change daily! Make sure you pick up the flyer they have all over w/ changes on them
  • How are you getting your loot home?? Make sure you have a plan in advance whether it is extra luggage or plotting out the closest shipping center to the con. Some cons, like SDCC, actually have shipping services located within them.

• #3 Hygiene Even if you’re not facing summer heat, 140,000 people + cos players that wear the same outfit the whole 4 days can = O M Stinky G (x it by hangovers from partying the night before = yeah…. ) SHOWER & be kind, toss a stick of travel size deodorant in your survival kit! And Febreeze, Axe and all kinds of girly sprays all come in tiny lil travel sizes #justsayin. And I know I mentioned it before- but ANTIBACTERIAL GEL!! Please note, it is NOT a substitute for a shower.

• #4 The Sign The day you check into your hotel, on the back of the door- “HEY DUMBASS DO NOT FORGET YOUR BADGE” Trust me, this isn’t just for n00bs. I’ve seen many a veteran con goer get all the way to the convention center and have to turn their self around and go back and get their badge.

• #5 The Realization There are three major things you need to realize before you start this adventure to mecca:

• • • 1. There will be an INSANE amount of people (if you’re crowd phobic) and you need to stand in line for hours w/ them.
    • 2. You will NOT, I repeat NOT see everything on your list. It’s impossible.
    • 3. Your main mission: Snag the fun badge. That’s it.

(JP ) come up with a treasure hunt list of things for you and your friends… IE Pic with Felicia Day, Pic with Wil Weaton, Photo with @GEEKGIRL at her Panel, etc… be creative

• #6 The Moment My assignment to you- I don’t care if you have to set a reminder on your phone to accomplish it, whatever works. But, take one moment to stop, take a deep breath, look around and realize the sheer awesomeness that you are surrounded by. You made it, it is awesome. YOU are awesome. Now go back to having fun.

• Talk about C2E2
  • Presentation to celebrate the life of Jim Henson
  • New Graphic novel, “A Tale of Sand” – Lost Screenplay by the master himself
  • Boy Wonder Preview

• Super Debuts at SXSW – The Review
  • everybody put their expectations here
  • (SM) everybody is saying that the movie delivers but fails in the ending… maybe thats the point? Still looking forward to this movie

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• Play Katamari Damacy on Any Web Page (UDG)
  • If you have ever owned a PS2, odds are you’ve played or own one of the Katamari. Never heard of Katamari? For shame! It’s a puzzled-action game Namco put out that sees the player rolling an adhesive ball all around a landscape picking up as many objects as possible. The goal is to get it large enough to become a star.
  • Katamari and its sequels were super popular on Sony’s hardware and all you need now is a web browser to play a version of it.  Alex Leone, David Nufer and David Troung created what they call Katamari Hack which allows any web page to become a play area for the game. Obviously it doesn’t look as good as the Namco games, but the mechanics are the same.
  • Using a bookmarklet for activation, a JavaScript file is loaded into your page of choice and splits all the text and image into separate blocks. A ball is then added to the page which is controlled via the mouse and by holding down the right mouse button. When this is done the ball rolls towards your mouse pointer collecting and text and images as it goes.
  • The end result is a highly playable game of Katamari. There’s also options such as whether to play background music or not, controlling the maximum number of objects that can attach to the ball, and the speed of the ball growth. You can even toggle realistic pickups on or off. We also found you can click the bookmarklet multiple times to get more Katamari balls active at once.
  • To give it a go yourself just visit the Katamari Hack website and drag the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks/Bookmarks Toolbar. Then load a page of your choice and click the bookmarklet. This will bring up the options box and allow you to start playing.
  • (SM) How about URL Hunter? a game that is played on the location bar

• Happy 40th anniversary Computer Virus (SM)
  • This year marks the 40th anniversary of “Creeper”
  • Name some of the most prominent viruses out there
    • Creeper (1971) – ARPANET based, hopped from comp to comp and displayed image “Catch me if you can”
    • Elk Cloner (1982) – Apple II computer, spread by floppy, 15 yr old writer, displayed a poem as an ode to the virus
    • Jerusalem (1987) – Every year on Friday the 13th, deleted every file on the computer
    • Melissa – One of the first HUGE email viruses, propogated via infected Word docs mailed through outlook. 20 mths in jail $5000 fine, named after a stripper
    • 2000 – I Love You, attached virus w/ I love you in subject, then emailed all your contact list
    • 2001 – Code Red – 400,000 IIS web server, Hacked by the Chinese
    • Stuxnet –  Gov’t created virus that exploited windows and eventually destroyed a targetted system (probably a nuclear power plant in Iran)
    • CIH, also known as Chernobyl It is one of the most damaging viruses, overwriting critical information on infected system drives, and more importantly, in some cases corrupting the system BIOS. (JP) I actually got hit with this by Yamaha… I had a CDR400 and the firmware update shipped with it infected… Thanks Yamaha!!!
  • Mind Blowing statistics:
    • 1,300 in 1990
    • 50,000 in 2000
    • over 200 million in 2010
  • From geeky prank to malicious nuisance to business savvy criminalsk, These pieces of code are our bane, Happy B-day the Virus

• Valve Teaches Kid a Lesson When He Tries to Sell His Steam Account (JP)
  • Kid tries to sell his acct that has over $1700 worth of games on it
  • Posts on Reddit, apparently somebody at Valve read the post (pun intended)
  • Its a violation of TOS to sell your acct or lease your acct to others
  • Ban hammer comes out, no more playing games for the kid
  • Kiddo has since been re-instated

• Blizzard Teases Diablo III For Consoles Yet Again (udg)
  • Could one of the biggest fanboy PC games of all time could be coming to major video game consoles by the end of 2011? Blizzard Entertainment, producer of Diablo III, recently posted an online job listing for ‘Senior Producer, Console’. This can only mean one thing, right? The Diablo franchise is finally set on making the transition to next-gen consoles. Right?
  • Yeah, not so fast.
  • “We are looking for a couple of console developers, yes,” Blizzard CEO and first-rate tease Mike Morhaime told video game trade journal MCV. “At this stage though, it’s basically an investigation to see if it makes sense for Diablo to be a console game as well as a PC game. “We haven’t made any decisions yet, but a lot us feel that if ever there was a Blizzard franchise that could play well as a console game, then that’s probably it.”
  • Mike, I’m gonna bust out a phrase my grandma used to love to use “Honey, you need to shit or get off the pot.”

• Court OK’s Posting pics w/out Permission on Facebook (SM)
  • Mother lost custody due to a facebook pic showing her drinking
  • Appeals saying that the prosecution improperly used the photo
  • Court  promptly rejects assertion that Facebook is inadmissible
  • Published from the court “[t]here is nothing within the law that requires [one's] permission when someone takes a picture and posts it on a Facebook page. There is nothing that requires [one's] permission when she [is] “tagged” or identified as a person in those pictures.”
  • Before everybody gets panties in a wad: there might be issues with ppl who use tagging to harrass
  • You do something stupid in your personal life and post it in public, you can get in trouble and it just might stick

• Facebook Rolls Out Anti-Bullying Tools (udg)
  • Faceebook has announced two new safety features in conjunction with a White House summit on bullying.
  • A new reporting will now allow all users to privately report troubling content, not just to the site itself but to parents, teachers and others in their support system.
  • Facebook said the “social reporting” feature is intended to get reports of bullying to the people with the best chance of stopping it.
  • Under the new system, a user could identify a photo, status update or other item as bullying them, then privately send a message to someone in their friend network about it.
  • “Safety and child psychology experts tell us that online issues are frequently a reflection of what is happening offline,” Facebook wrote. “By encouraging people to seek help from friends, we hope that many of these situations can be resolved face to face.”
  • The second feature is an improved Safety Center, due out in the next few weeks. It will provide educational videos, articles and other content created by bullying experts to help adults address the problem and will constantly be updated with new information and tools.

• • • Bonus link to what happens to when a bully has enough

• Microsoft Launches IE9 at SXSW (JP)

• From SXSW: How to Raise Digital Native Children (SM)
  • Has your kids been bugging you for a facebook account? Twitter? The Latest Iphone? starting at age 8?
  • Dan Sinker and John Bracken led  discussion at SXSW about this very thing
  • We’re all plugged in and our kids are even MORE plugged in
  • Some issues brought up at the discussion include:
    • When do you start registering online identities
    • Monitor Internet usage
    • Let your kids on Facebook / Twitter / etc
    • Teach them programming languages
  • One person mentioned that they teach 2 languages in the home, English and C++
  • Example: Bracken won’t let his daughter watch TV but will let her watch Netflix, etc.
  • Where do we draw the line on what content is allowed into the home

• Etsy Reveals Users Real Name and Purchases (udg)
  • I firmly stand by my statement that Etsy is like crack. Okay, so I’ve never done crack, but holy addictive batman. And I know there are other addicts out there. So, if you have an Etsy account and have ever ordered anything with it, you may want to listen up because what you bought may be showing up now in Google search results for your real name.
  • People Search, Etsy’s newest feature rolled out last week. It seems to be an attempt to add more of a social network feel to it by allowing users to connect to each other and create “Circles”, which then allow users to see which products their friends have favorited or purchase on Etsy. To accomplish that, it now allows people to search but real name in addition to username and links both of those to purchase history.
  • Unfortunately, Etsy didn’t announce this chance to any one except sellers and they took a page out of Facebook’s play book by automatically opting all of its current users into the program. Once all that wonderful search able info was available, it starting popping up all over Google search results. Think that doesn’t sound all that bad?
    • Etsy sells ALL KINDS of things. A privacy concerned poster in a forum was looking up research for a reporter. There on the first page of the person she was looking for, right under her resume, was her Etsy purchase. Let’s just say that person now knows the color and curvature choice of a very personal item.
    • Another forum goer found it was possible to start with an item, see who was interested in it, and eventually make your way to their Facebook page.
  • So, if you do have an Etsy account, here’s, thanks to Etsy Bitch,  how to opt out of People Search:
    • Log in to Etsy (you’ll have to do this for each store you have)
    • Click “Settings” on the left top sidebar
    • Choose the “Privacy” tab
    • You have three decisions to make (who can see your favorites, who can see your purchases, and can people search for your email). Be sure to click the update button on the bottom.
    • To change your ‘real name’ on file, click “Profile” in the left sidebar while logged in to your account.

• Before and Afters of the Japanese Earthquake (SM)
  • Web 2.0 at work
  • The pictures here are mind blowing
  • Before and after shots using google earth/ with a manual wipe bar
  • Dare you to try it and not feel your jaw drop

• Apple Comes to the Aid of Japan(udg)
  • I know you mock my love of Apple, Steven, but this is one of the many reasons I will always be loyal.
  • The world watched last week as Japan was devastated by a giant earthquake and Tsunami that followed. With that power cuts and communication links are going down. My friend in Japan that was close enough to have been shaken but safe enough to be okay continues to talk of scheduled power outages there.
  • We have seen people and companies band together over there and Apple is no exception, in fact it may be setting the example for everyone else to follow.
  • Kevin Rose, founder of Digg and a tech angel investor, has posted on his blog detailing how Apple Stores and their staff in Japan have come to the aid of those caught up in the disaster currently being experienced in the country.
  • He has a friend in Japan who works at an Apple Store. When the earthquake hit all the staff led customers to safety outside his store. As it is a more modern building, it withstood the shaking and remained structurally sound. That’s when the store and other Apple locations like it took on a different purpose.
  • With the backup power still on, and the hardware and networks still operational, people flooded in with their mobile devices to get a signal and check on friends and family. Others huddled around the MacBooks on display to catch up on the news using UStream, Twitter, Facebook, news sites, and through e-mails.
  • As well as offering a way to find out what’s happening, the staff also brought out adapters and power cables so people could charge their devices, they even left the wireless connection active after closing at night to allow anyone passing by outside the chance to get a usable signal.
  • For Apple employees the company went even further. As transport links were down it was agreed that any Apple staff, be it retail or corporate, should use the Apple stores nearest to them to sleep, and family members were welcome too. Senior managers also went and got food and drink supplies to ensure everyone had access to them at the stores. Anyone wanting to try and journey home was told that all their food, drink, and transport costs would be reimbursed. Employees attempting this and getting stuck were also having their hotel costs reimbursed as well.
  • This aid is set to continue for as long as Japan remains in a state of emergency. Apple’s quick decision to forget about everything except the welfare of its employees and people in general has seen it turn into a much needed port in the storm, and the company should be commended for deciding to take on that role. It has surely made all the difference to a lot of people desperate to get in touch with loved ones and who have nowhere else to go right now.

• Mortal Kombat Demo Out on PSN (JP)

Intarweb Goldmine

• What’s Almost as Awesome as Ninja Monkeys? Pirate Monkeys! (udg)
  • Louisiana wildlife officials confiscated four monkeys in pirate costumes from an autistic woman visiting New Orleans for Carnival.
  • Joan Newberger, 66, and her caretaker, James Poole, said they and the four monkeys were dressed as pirates on Bourbon Street when police and wildlife agents approached them and seized the small primates, WWLT-TV, New Orleans, reported.
  • Newberger said the seizure was illegal because the primates are registered as her “service monkeys” with a group in Texas. However, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said the monkeys do not meet the Americans with Disabilities Act’s definition of service animals.
  • Possession of primates has been illegal in Louisiana since 2006.
  • Newberger is scheduled to appear in the Orleans Parish Municipal Court in July to attempt to get her monkeys back.
  • “This isn’t some wild animal that we snatched out of the swamp in New Orleans and we’re running around making money on it,” Poole said.
  • Seriously? Giver Joan her monkeys back dbags!!!
• He REALLY likes Julia Roberts (JP)
  • Most movie fans would settle for an autograph, but when it comes to celebrity ink, Miljenko Bukovic draws his own lines.
  • He’s a Mexican-born newspaper vendor who has spent roughly $4,000 over the past 10 years tattooing his body with sketches of his favorite American actress, Julia Roberts, according to The Sun.
  • Why? you might ask. “Because she’s beautiful,” he says.
  • All of Bukovic’s tattoos draw on scenes from Roberts’ 2000 classic “Erin Brockovich,” which he readily admits is his favorite movie. And with 82 tats and counting, he plans to continue building the body art collection as long as there’s still space on his skin and cash in his pocket.
  • Don’t bother searching his torso for scenes from “Pretty Woman,” though. Bukovic says he doesn’t approve of his Hollywood heartthrob playing a prostitute.

• Best Employee Termination EVER (udg)
  • In honor of Pi Day and thanks to Tim Hunt!

• • If you can remember Pi to the 46th digit, hallucinogens or not, you are way too overqualified to work at Domino’s.

• Car Crash Victim Sues Paramedic That Stole His Foot (JP)
  • She stole his foot — and now she might have to foot the bill.
  • A former Florida paramedic who snatched a man’s severed foot from the scene of a car crash is being sued by the victim.
  • Cynthia Economou — a former St.Lucie County Fire District firefighter and paramedic — admitted that she took Karl Lambert’s mangled foot in hopes of using the limb to help train her cadaver-sniffing dog after a wreck on I-95 on Sept. 19, 2008.
  • She pleaded no contest to petty theft charges and was sentenced to six months’ probation. But now Lambert is taking her to court in a civil case, seeking unspecified damages, according to TCPalm.com.
  • During sentencing in 2009, Economou said she only took the mangled appendage for her dog because she didn’t think it could be reattached to the victim.
  • “It was an unrecognizable mass of flesh,” she said. “It wasn’t a clean cut. You couldn’t even recognize it as a foot. … If I had thought it was somehow reattachable and usable, I would have gone to my commander.”

Extra Links

• One in Five Brits Believe Light Sabers Exist
• Unique IPad Cover Breakdown
• From SXSW: Guide to Geek Sex

Contact Info

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

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

Luxury Lane Soaps

http://luxurylanesoap.com, @KyleeLane, GORGEOUS, IMAGINATIVE, HANDCRAFT ED, GEEKY Soap

• Can I say any more superlatives? You will love her products.
• (We Do! They’re Geekalicious! but don’t eat them… they are SOAP!)

We are LIVE on Ustream . This week we discuss the Mobile World Conference, Wonder Woman on NBC, Lots of gaming news, and even some SNAFU’s from the US government

Intro Jeremy
Intro Natali

Items of Interest

• Kid saves Family using moves he learned from WoW (JP)
  • One of my CoWorkers sent this to me to share on the show… so special thanks to Mike for this one…
  • Hans Jørgen Olsen, a 12-year-old Norwegian boy, saved himself and his sister from a moose attack
  • Skills used??? Taunting to draw the Moose away from his sister and after running in the opposite direction he then he feigned death the other skill he learned from the game till the moose lost interest. Then he ran home to tell his tale.
• Left 4 Dead Valentines
• Be my Portal Valentine?
• SuperHarmony (udg)
  • Are you lonely? Looking for someone special? Are you also okay with tights-wearing crime fighters or perhaps amoral megalomaniacs bent on world domination and/or life of crime?  Well dearies, than SuperHarmony is the dating site for you. Superheroes and villains need love too. Now SuperHarmony is bringing real happiness to some really super people. Why? Cuz love is super!

• MoSerious (udg)
  • Okay, so Michael Bolton from Office Space got nothin’ on me. I’ll blast my stuff and not roll up the window like a lil punk. Well today I had friend send me a clip of Mo Serious. Mo is awesome. He calls himself The SEO Rapper layin down rhymes that actually prove he knows his stuff. From design coding to page ranking, you definitely need to check him out!

Gold Sponsors:

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

• Convention Schedule
  • Milwaukee Anime Con – Feb. 18-20
  • C2E2 – March 18-20

Big Exciting News… We are very close (depending on Apple) to being able to test and release our first iPhone app!!! (@JebsApps) it’ll be Movie History… with lots of new features (that we can’t make androids do… yet) but both will be getting a huge update to the Database!!! and right on the heels of that will be Geek History with a bigger update to the Database!!! So… More Geekiness… = More GeekyGoodness!!
Get yours today if you have an Android for only $0.99 to keep up with facts like:
Today in MovieHistory 2/16/1957
LeVar Burton, Star Trek: TNG’s Geordie LaForge, is born.

Deals of the Week / New Release

• Cowboys & Aliens Comic Giveaway (udg)
  • Geekosystem is all about sharing the love and right now that love comes in the form of 5 copies of the Cowboys & Aliens comic book that inspired the movie. Want one of these awesome hardbacks? You’re going to have to fight for it, but the fighting is fun.
  • Here’s the dealio- head on over to their Facebook Page and tell them what improbable but awesome match up you want to see made into a movie. The possibilities are infinite: Zombie Nuns vs Vampire Samurai, Mega Shark and Giant Octopus vs Sharktopus, Teen Wolf vs Team Edward- you name it!
  • Give them your unnatural (or surprisingly natural) pairing and you could take home a copy of Cowboys and Aliens.
• Marvel vs Capcom 3 (udg)
  • It’s been more than a decade since Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes debuted in arcades, yup I said arcades. Yesterday the long awaited Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds arrived for Xbox and PS3. So, what can you expect?
  • First of all, I haz a HUGE sad I don’t have a 360 so it’ll be awhile before I can actually try this game out for myself. While it’s only been out for a day, all the reviews I found agree on two things- it’s fun and the graphics are awesome. What more could ya want?

• This week on Blu-Ray
  • Dr. Who, a christmas carol
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • Dungeons and Dragons 2 Movie Pack – (2000 original w/ jeremy irons and the direct to video Wrath of the Dragon God
  • Unstoppable (Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson – train out of control, blah blah blah)

Geek Speak

• Mobile World Congress
  • Nokia, Microsoft joining forces
    • Microsoft offers Billions to a deep partnership (vs. google)
    • Plan is to make a 3rd ecosystem (behind android and Iphone)
    • Will still support Symbian developers (all 3 of them)
    • Some aren’t too hip to the movement (9 investors speak out – Next up, 9 Apple investors want Jobs to stop wearing turtlenecks)
    • Verizon not too hip about relationship (they were burned by kin – now have Iphone – why need more)
    • Is it a good move? Where do they go but to M$? (RIM, Palm OS, everything else)
  • Rumor: IPhone to get smaller version
    • This now spans 3 publishers (U.K. Daily Mail, WSJ, Bloomberg)
    • $200 (without subsidy) is the rumored price point
    • ? the size of the current IPhone
    • Obviously a software rev would be needed (yet more fragmentation)
  • Next gen Galaxy Tab and Galaxy SII hit
    • Tab = honeycomb, faster 1ghz dual core (bringing it up to spec), 1.23 lbs, dual cameras (8/2),  no USB or HDMI
    • Galaxy S II =  2.3 gingerbread, 8.5 mm thick 4.3”” SAMOLED, NFC Support, etc, etc.
  • XPeria Play Phone Specs and Hands on (exclusively on Verizon)
    • Vroom! Pretty much a standard Android phone but w/ the Playstation suite
    • You will have to re-buy your PSN content on the Android Marketplace
    • Both digital and analog inputs
  • Using Cell Phone as wallet coming 2012
    • Huge push for the “NFC” chip, w/ T-mobile adopting 2012
    • It’s a chip that sends wirelessly over very short distances, “4-inches”
    • Wave it over a terminal and it makes a payment
    • Apples name was dropped
  • Google unveils video editor for Honeycomb
    • Trying to catch up w/ some of the Apple staples
    • Will be able to edit video, sound track, etc to make your videos more “social friendly”

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• 150million PS2’s sold (SM)
  • and 1.5 BILLION units of software sold over its liftetime
  • Whopping 10k+ library of games
  • First launched in 2000 to Japan (that short ago?)
  • Perspective: 2 per minute = 285 years to complete sales

• Batman: Arkham City No Can Haz Multiplayer (udg)
  • If you’re like me and heart Arkham Asylum, you’ve probably been looking forward to its upcoming sequel to it, Arkham City.  If you were hoping to play Robin the Boy Wonder alongside your friend’s Batman, you’re gonna haz a sad though cuz Rockstar has confirmed that it will NOT have multiplayer or coop play, contrary to the rumors that have been flying around.
  • Why? According to an interview with IGN their “Thought process behind this was fairly simple: when we investigated adding multiplayer we asked, ‘If we use all of the energy that is required to create multiplayer and instead focus this on the single player, would that deliver a better overall game?
  • “With the game now coming to the final stages, I can honestly say it would not have been possible to deliver Arkham City the way we wanted to if we’d have added multiplayer
  • “So it might not be the fashionable choice, it might not get us an extra tick on the box, but we are convinced, and we hope that gamers will agree when they get to play the finished game, that we have made the right decision.”
  • Which, I gotta say, sounds fair enough. I’m still gonna hope to see multiplayer brought in the mix with Arkham Asylum 3.

• Activision Bails Out of Guitar Hero, Cancels Games (JP)
  • Following in the footsteps of MTV Games, Activision Blizzard has closed its music-game division
  • Hundreds of employees are being laid off, all 2011 games are cancelled
  • Latest Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock only sold 86,000 units
  • Decline of Genre, soaring cost of licensing and producing games, cited for closure
  • True Crime: Hong Kong also hit
  • 500 employees (7% of the total are slated to be axed)
  • Plans to ramp back up around a secret MMO from Blizzard will put them back above 7000 employees near the end of the year

• Zynga worth $7-9 billion (SM)
  • This up from the 5.5 billion in October
  • Perspective: EA is worth around 6 billion dollars
  • The debil is trying to rais some chump change (250 million dollars)
  • Despite not needing it, ppl are jumping at chance, public trade is rumor
  • Beotch slap: Facebook is valued at around $50 billion

• Pokemon Goes Online (udg)
  • Since the creation of Pokemon, you’ve been able to play it via handheld Nintendo devices, the trading card games with friends, you’ve been able to watch the TV series or films as a kid. But, you’ve never been able to play it online… until now.
  • Enter Pokemon Trainer Challenge. It basically takes the Pokemon trading cards and makes them digital so you can play against friends from your computer. It’s set for a live launch in April and will initially offer 3 preconstructed trading card decks and 14 virtual players to challenge. Nintendo is smart though so there will be a set of physical trading cards coming out the support the game. The Pokemon Black and Pokemon White decks can be used to unlock the virtual deck versions in Trainer Challenge and will be out April 6.
  • The game will be available to play at PokemonCG.com.

• Apple offers deal to wary publishers (JP)
  • The promise of “magazines” and subscription content has been there since release
  • Nothing has really materialized as the publishers and Apple has squabbled over rights and percentages
  • Finally, Apple has made a decision. Any subs you bring to the table, you keep everything, any subs that Apple brings to the table through its services, they keep 30%
  • Here’s what some content producers aren’t digging,
    • No details about Apple customers get automatically sent to them (apple manages and keeps all that data)
    • Price has to stay the same between ITunes and their website
    • Google is giving more generous terms on their platform
  • Rhapsody already threatening legal and drop-out over 30% tax
  • Netflix, Hulu Plus, Time magazine, etc still havent’ brought what they think of the new deal to the table, only time will tell

• Civ IV Theme Wins a Grammy in Music (SM)
  • Won a grammy for “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist”
  • First Video Game music to win such an award
  • Basically, its the opening theme song for Civ IV
  • Included in an album “Calling all Dawns” by Christopher Tin
  • Beautiful sweeping music accompanied by a Swahili vocal… gorgeous

• Don’t Mess With The Bieber (udg)
  • In case you missed the Grammys this weekend, Esperanza Spalding took home the win for best new artist. Which seems to have left some Bieber fans just a little bit pissed. One of them so much so that they decided to hack her Wikipedia page by adding “Quesadilla” to her name and then busting out the all caps for “JUSTIN BIEBER DESERVED IT GO DIE IN A HOLE. WHO THE HECK ARE YOU ANYWAY?” Okay, first of all Sunshine, punctuation is your friend and b. I know scrolling down is tough, but you are on Wikipedia so you could have actually read the answer to the question you seemed so interested in finding out.
  • Many of you listening probably have not heard of Esperanza. She’s now the first jazz musician to take home this award, is highly talented and rightfully earned the win.  So, pull your panties out of a wad Bieberites and expand your musical horizons just a bit, it’ll do ya good and for the love of all that is holy and sacred, stay away from Wikipedia unless you’re going to actually read and learn from it.

• Oops! US Gov Accidentally Shuts Down 84,000 Web Sites (JP)
  • In a HUGE effort to corral child pornography  ICE’s cybercrime center seized various domain that were purportedly involved in child pornography
  • They did manage to find a district judge to sign off on the warrant
  • However, they made a slight clerical error, mooo.com (from Freedns.com) was seized and it contained 84,000 sub domains of personal websites and small businesses
  • These were admittedly, not a planned part of the seizure
  • For 6 days these sites were redirected to a very scary page stating in legalese that these ppl were being investigated for child pornography
  • Eventually fixed
  • Recent homeland security press release mentions nothing of the error and there is no formal apology out there for the “inconvenience” of smirching their good names
    • Who smells a law suit or two thousand coming??

• Cool Tech: Hydrogen Powered Phone Recharger (SM)
  • Uses a disposable water fuel cell to produce Hydrogen energy
  • Being marketed as a hikers dream
  • Basically takes water and splits the hydrogen then runs it through fuel cell to make an electric current to charge a USB device or its own battery
  • Also see Hydrofill (shown at CES)

• Casting Sheet for WW Revealed (udg)
  • The casting sheet for the new Wonder Woman TV series is out and here are some key points:

• Wonder Woman is being cast older as Kelley has her in the script “late 20s to 30s.” No race is specified but there is a reference to black hair and blue eyes. She’s “a real woman who yearns to live a normal life.”
• Open ethnicity casting for Etta, Myndi and Steve Trevor
• Ed Indelicato, the cop from Boston (and he is still from Boston in the pilot) could possible have some romantic tension with Diana/Wonder Woman.
• Filming starts March 15 in LA

• [WONDER WOMAN / DIANA THEMYSCIRA / DIANA PRINCE] Female, late 20s to 30s. A kick-ass Superhero / Powerful C.E.O. / A vulnerable woman. Long flowing black hair, blue eyes. Amazon-like, muscular, an Olympian. The charismatic stage presence of a rock star. A crime fighter. Also, a real woman who yearns to live a normal life. She is accessible and appealing to all people, men and women alike…SERIES LEAD. ASP.
• [MYNDI MAYER] Female, open ethnicity, 30s. Publicist, Press Secretary and Wonder Woman’s confidant and nurturing best friend. Worldy and edgy. Sexy and persuasive, her appearance is part of her strength. She is beautiful and put together – dressed expensively in the latest fashions, plus she’s got a bit of bite, clever wit and sass. She’s the prodder of Diana’s social life…SERIES REGULAR. ASP.
• I like the fact that kick-ass is in there. The “rock star” part worries me just a  bit. The yearning to live a normal life part also sits a little off with me.
• WW = Princess Diana = Adrianne Palicki
  • Friday Night Lights star Adrianne Palicki has been chosen to embody Princess Diana in David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman pilot on NBC.

• • Twenty-seven year old Palicki, who also starred in Supernatural and the filmLegion, stands a lofty 5?11? tall. The news came just late this evening courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter.

• • Oddly enough, Palicki had a brush with DC Comics before. She was in an episode of Smallville but was also cast as Siren in the Aquaman television pilot that was never picked up.
  • In high school, the actress played basketball and played track so it’s likely she’ll be able to keep up with the physicality of the role. Palicki can be seen next in the remake of Red Dawn with Thor star Chris Hemsworth

• Felicia Day Writing & Starring in Dragon Age Web Series (JP)
  • One of the fan-favorite geek girls out there is set to take on a new role
  • Felicia will be writing and starring in a 6 ep. web series based around a popular RPG “Dragon Age”, made by Bioware
  • Show has been dubbed Dragon Age: Redemption
  • another popular RPG out there (made by Bioware)
  • Previous credits include:
    • “The Guild” (wrote and starred – based on WoW)
    • Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (Co-star)
    • And frequent guest star for Joss Whedon

• Huge Rumor: AMD up for Sale, Dell might be interested (SM)
  • We reported back in january about CEO Dirk Meyer leaving
  • COO left last week (Robert Rivet)
  • There’s no management team really left
  • Current interim Thomas Seifert doesn’t want job
  • buzz is that company is up for sale, Dell is interested
  • This is the #2 chip maker IN THE WORLD!
  • Bigger than when AMD bought ATI (video chip maker)

Intarweb Goldmine

• Football and Porn – Kind of a No No (JP)
  • Imagine this: Biggest game of the year, you gather your family around the ol’ boob toob, chips, family, their kids, everyone watching the game
  • BLAM! Hardcore porn cuts in the middle and plays for 37 seconds
  • What do you do? A) Hoot and holler and make bets on who wins? B) run around screaming and telling your 3 year old that it was a nature clip of animals in the wild? B) Vote for it as better than 99% of the other commercials out there?
  • Well, one man Frank Gonzales, from Tuscon Arizona, made people choose, 80,000 of them to be exact, by slicing into the main feed and putting that stuff into the stream
  • Time Warner was so horrified, it gave each subscriber $10
  • Man, thats some expensive porn
• Alien Tumor Found in California Man (udg)
  • Like part of the storyline from the 1979 sci-fi classic “Alien,” a California man discovered he had a large,  alien-type tumor growing inside him complete with tenacles.
  • After Josh Abken, 36,  complained of back pains last year.  He thought he’d pulled a muscle, but the X-ray revealed something both frightening and bizarre. It was a soccer-ball-sized tumor that sprouted tentacles and had apparently been quietly growing inside him for almost a decade.
  • The tumor, dubbed “Gill,” began to apply pressure on Abken’s heart, moving his lungs out of normal position and causing his stomach to push downward. And it was partially calcified, or hard like a rock.
  • It took several hours of surgery, but thoracic surgeon Costanzo Di Perna successfully remove the cancerous tumor, giving Abken a new lease on life.
• The Fast and the Fantastically Stupid (SM)
  • Guy pegs out his car at 118 MPH, Tapes it for Youtube, Cop pulls him over
  • Claims to only have been doing 90-100 but this genius got real smart
  • He showed the cops the footage of the dashboard camera
  • Duh, it showed his speedometer needle pegged out
  • Guy gets charged with reckless driving and charged almost a $1000 for the incident
  • And they let geniuses like this drive every day
• Woman Calls 911 for Police Harassing Her At Her Door
• Grapes of Wrath (udg)
  • Sebastiano Russo, 75, seems to have just a lil bit of an anger issue. He and his ex-wife, Claire Russo, 71, live together as “a family unit” even though they divorced in 2003.
  • According to a witness Sebastiano arrived home drunk Tuesday around 11 p.m. and began an argument about bringing his new girlfriend to their mutual home, according to the Orlando Sentinel. He then threw a grape at his ex-wife’s face, then threatened to kill her and burn down the house reports the Orlando Sentinel.
  • Those “sour grape” actions landed the Orange City man a cot in the Volusia County Jail. He’s charged with aggravated battery on a person age 65 or older and a misdemeanor assault charge, according to Volusia County Sheriff’s Office records.
• In Honor of Tax Season: Silly Tax Hikes
  • own a vacation home in NY? Pay 1 million in taxes for being a year-round resident even though you don’t live there year round
  • 2.9 % sales tax on candy, soda, software, drect mail food items, and agricultural compounds like bull semen, and online sales
  • online
• Optimus Prime Gets a Parking Ticket
• Freed Chilean Miners Talk Drugs, Porn, Sex Dolls.. Wait, What? (udg)
  • The 33 men rescued from a Chilean mine were smuggled drugs and pornography during their time underground, but their request for inflatable sex dolls went unmet due to a shortage.
  • A new book disclosed that the men’s request for sex dolls was denied because their doctor was afraid jealousy could spread after only 10, rather than 33, dolls were found.
  • The bizarre details of the men’s lives down in the mine will be contained in a new book by journalist Jonathan Franklin, extracts of which were published in The (London) Sunday Times.

Extra Links

• 5 Amazing Things Invented By Donald Duck. Seriously.
• How to design MK Fatalities
• Zune Rebranding Rumored
• Google Street View Photography wins award

Contact Info

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

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

Luxury Lane Soaps

http://luxurylanesoap.com, @KyleeLane, GORGEOUS, IMAGINATIVE, HANDCRAFT ED, GEEKY Soap

• Can I say any more superlatives? You will love her products.
• (We Do! They’re Geekalicious! but don’t eat them… they are SOAP!)

We are LIVE on Ustream . Tonight we talk all things IPhone, Government oversight issues, new DVDS, and idiots in the intarweb goldmine

Intro Jeremy
Natali is out due to technical difficulties

Items of Interest

• DIY Star Wars Valentines
• Star Wars Job Chart
• Awesome PC Mods

Gold Sponsors:

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

• Convention Schedule
  • Milwaukee Anime Con – Feb. 18-20
  • C2E2 – March 18-20

Big Exciting News… We are very close (depending on Apple) to being able to test and release our first iPhone app!!! (@JebsApps) it’ll be Movie History… with lots of new features (that we can’t make androids do… yet) but both will be getting a huge update to the Database!!! and right on the heels of that will be Geek History with a bigger update to the Database!!! So… More Geekiness… = More GeekyGoodness!!
Get yours today if you have an Android for only $0.99 to keep up with facts like:
Today in MovieHistory 2/9/2001
Saving Silverman starring Jason Biggs, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, Neil Diamond and Amanda Peet is released  (I love that movie! Hilarious!!)

Deals of the Week / New Release

• Choose Your Own Doom (JP by way of UDG)
  • This is a new take on the Choose your own adventure books we loved as kids… and I for one, am super stoked…
  • This is a Choose your own adventure Zombie Apocalypse story!!!
• DVDs
  • Paranormal Activity 2 - Supposedly creepier than the original but I have yet to see the movie
  • Uncle Buck (blu-ray) – CLASSIC!!! Instant buy if you love John Candy or comedies in general
  • Thelma and Louise (Blu-ray) – One of Scott Ridleys most compelling stories. Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis are PERFECT together. 20th anniversary and I plan to see this again soon

  • I Spit on Your Grave DVD

  • This is a remake of one of favorite classic horror flicks… Interested in seeing this one

• Doctor Who: The Movie DVD

• I haven’t seen this one yet… but it’s Dr. Who… so it’s a must pick up!
• and one last I had to mention…

• Alice in Murderland

  • It’s a direct to DVD horror flick… but it does come with the tag line… through the looking glass and straight to hell!!!
• so it actually made my list!

Geek Speak

• Should Gov’ts be given veto power over top level domain names? (Please Read)

  • Gov’t wants capability to set up international power that allows countries to veto any new top level domains
  • 1 vote against would deep six the name
  • some upcoming suffixes? .car, .health, .nyc, .movie, .web
  • ICANN, a U.S. based company currently oversees the process
  • Trade Commission statement: “has merit as it diminishes the potential for blocking of top level domain strings considered objectionable by governments. This type of blocking harms the architecture of the DNS and undermines the goal of universal resolvability (i.e., a single global Internet that facilitates the free flow of goods and services and freedom of expression).”
  • Also a possible block to other international countries protesting that its a US based company that is overseeing the procedures
  • Discuss

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• Look Into Our Eyes and We’ll Tell You What You Want to Eat
  • Riddle me this: A device at the supermarket scans your face and tells you what you might like to eat tonight. Now or Future? (closer than you think)
  • Kraft is planning such a device to be installed at the store
  • Scans your face and determines, gender, age, race, etc and then selects a probably recipe that you might like
  • Obviously face recognition can’t tell food allergies, special needs, etc
  • Combine that with online Kraft iFood Assistant account and favorites from KraftRecipes.com and you can start to see an actual product
  • The whole thing is powered by two Intel Apps that enable face recognition
  • No identifying information stored, all done real time

• HTC invests 40 million in OnLive (JP)
  • On its Web site, HTC said that it had invested into Saffron Digital, a London-based video delivery service that has optimized its services for mobile devices. The company will remain in its London headquarters and the management team will be unchanged, it said.
    • So why do we care? They also do OnLive the streaming video game service… and this could mean…
    • A potential HTC investment could imply that OnLive gaming is headed for tablets.

• AOL Buys Huffington Post
  • Online Newspaper that uses old school reporting in a new medium
  • Purchased by the AOL conglomerate for $300 million in cash and $15 million in stock
  • (SM) Smart ppl to ask for all cash from a shrinking company
  • Arriana Huffington, co-founder of news site, is the new president editor-in-chief of all AOL online content
  • Obviously with purchases of TechCrunch, Endgadget, Mapquest, and now Huffington, AOL is trying to position themselves as an online media provider
  • Claim to reach 250 million ppl worldwide with their content

• Charity Trying to buy Used Satellite (JP)
  • We take Internet access for granted here in the U.S. and in other places
  • 3rd world countries still don’t have a large penetration due to lack of infrastructure and technology
  • AHumanRight.org is trying to raise funds to purchase satellites and make a free network that spans the globe
  • First plans to station satellites over 3rd world countries as a first step in placing infrastructure to enable free Internet access
  • Needs $150k to start all the legal and lay the groundwork
  • Targeting Terrestar-1 which was owned by said company before they filed for bankruptcy
  • Another similar satellite sold for $23 million (5 billion to build and launch)
  • “Re-inventing the wheel isn’t something we would wish upon anyone, but William Kamkwamba’s story provides an example of the information disparity slowing down progress for the brightest minds,” said Grammatis. “William couldn’t afford the US$80 per year it cost to attend school so he spent his time at the library instead … over the span of four years he re-invented the windmill to provide himself with electricity. He shared his first Google experience with journalists: ‘He said, Do you know Google? and I said, What animal is a Google? And when I Googled windmill I found there was millions of applications! I said, Where was this Google all this time?!’”

• Verizon breaks record with IPhone pre-sales
  • Sold out in the first day, most coming in first 2 hours
  • Largest and fastest sale in company history
  • These were all sales to current customers
  • Sales to new customers start Feb. 10
  • Walmart Set to sell Verizon IPhone
    • Feb. 10, same as anyone else
    • 600 stores initially
  • Wanna switch? Ebay willing to pay for your IPhone
    • Next 2 weeks paying cash for used smartphones (feb 22)
    • $200 for IPhone 3GS, Droid X, Galaxy S, HTC Evo 4G
    • $500 for pristine IPhone 4
  • Devils in the Details for the Verizon IPhone
    • Verizon is installing a network throttling service on their whole network (called optimization by them)
    • Means, they could slow down everyone’s connection if too much data is being shoved through (Jp – and according to side by side tests… it’s already slower than and AT&T iPhone 4)
    • New data usage agreement: any extraordinary use of data will see a slow down in their data-transfer speed for remainder of month AND next billing cycle
    • So are these really “unlimited”??? Advertise what you sell folks
    • Termination fee from Verizon was raised to $350 from $175 ($325 by AT&T)
    • No more “stay loyal” discount
  • Verizon IPhone found with Universal Chip
    • recent breakdown of Verizon IPhone shows new silicone
    • Same chip as Droid Pro, allows both GSM (t-mobile,etc) and CDMA
    • Lacks the crucial SIM card slot however to differentiate between carriers
    • Still, its a building block towards a singular IPhone model
      • (also still lacking dual antennaes needed to use both sides of the chip in question) but just like a camera in the ipad… I bet it’s coming in the next version (JP)

• Hackers hack NASDAQ (JP)
  • Hackers have repeatedly penetrated the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market during the past year, and federal investigators are trying to identify the perpetrators and their purpose, according to people familiar with the matter.
  • The exchange’s trading platform—the part of the system that executes trades—wasn’t compromised, these people said. However, it couldn’t be determined which other parts of Nasdaq’s computer network were accessed.
  • Anyone who understands the affect the markets have on the economy should be worried at least a little… remember the small crash a couple years ago and the recession it sent us into…
    • just imagine that on a much larger scale… They need to get this locked down better and quickly.

• IPad 2 in Production??? (SM)
  • WSJ is reporting that the new IPad is in production
  • Faster Processor, front-facing camera for video conferencing
  • Thinner and lighter, same resolution
  • Only available through Verizon and AT&T at first
  • Since debut last april, sold 14.8 million units
  • Experts plan for Apple to sell 28 million of device
  • Already their market share has decreased, further reductions to only 50% predicted by 2013

• RockBand sold, MTV Games out of business (JP)
  • MTV games has ceased publishing operations according to sources…
    • Label behind Rock Band officially out of the publishing game, but “has not been completely dissolved,” according to reps.
    • The cessation of publishing effectively marks the end of MTV Games’ four-and-a-half-year experiment with the gaming industry. It began in September 2006, when MTV parent Viacom bought Harmonix for $175 million dollars plus a generous bonus structure. However, initial success gave way to unprofitability by 2009.
    • No mention was made of the MTV Games “incubation” substudio created in collaboration with prolific film producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean).

• Play Music, Smack your Friends (SM)
  • You no longer need 15 bikini models to make a human orchestra (done with conductive paint on models dancing around and closing circuits by “touching”)
  • Takara Tomy plans to release a toy that when you and your friend touch, if you touch each other, sounds will commence
  • (SM) You can see where this is going right? Slap party = instant orchestra!
  • Basically when touching someone, you close a circuit triggering a note
  • Only bummer? notes don’t get louder the harder you hit

(JP – imagine this same story if he shot the vids with 15 of his geeky dorky guy friends instead… think anyone would have picked it up and ran with the story… he’s a good marketer if nothing else… )

Intarweb Goldmine

• Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned… and knows google
  • Guy breaks up with girl, girl gets back at him
  • Girl gets mad and posts Meme’s all over google search
  • When you searched his name, a pic w/ captions would come up
  • Like a Virgin, Every man’s Prison Dream, Mulan, To be or not to be, loljk I can’t read
  • They’ve been trying for weeks to get them out of the search, to no avail
  • Lesson? Don’t piss a geek girl off that knows how to manipulate google

• Only 39% admit they curse out their computers
  • In a recent survey by Avira security, 61% of computer users out there have deluded themselves into thinking they don’t cuss at their troubling pc
  • 39% of them were honest and said that they did…
  • I want to know how many of our listeners would lie and say they don’t cuss out their computers…

• Rocket Found, Turned into Police Station
  • Imagine this, you’re strolling along in the park and you see a metal cylinder on the ground, curious you stroll up to it, only to find out it looks very similar to the MW2 RPG round head…
  • Here’s your options: Do you back away slowly, calliing 911 and get a bomb disposal unit, B) do you pick it up, sling it in the back of your truck bed, and then bring it to the pow-lice station to show them
  • Yeah, the genius in Lake City, FLA did just that, turning it into a police station after finding it in a park
  • Prior military police officer identified it as a live, high-explosive military round (M427 rocket w/ 2.3 lbs of composition B, a mixture of TNT and semtex)
  • U.S. Navy bomb disposal had to come pick it up after closing off main street for proper disposal

• Lady dies after Butt Implant
  • Lady flies all the way from the UK after finding a killer deal on Butt implants
  • This is where you inject silicone directly into you to enlarge the gluteous maximus region
  • Strolls into a hotel room for the procedure and then later dies after being transported to the hospital
  • First off, A HOTEL ROOM SHOULD BE YOUR FIRST INDICATOR OF TROUBLE
  • second off, PLASTIC SURGERY IS NEVER CHEAP
  • third off, IF YOU HAVE A HOOKER IN THE NEXT ROOM TURNING TRICKS, YOU PROBABLY WANT TO TURN AROUND AND GO BACK
  • It was a killer deal all right :s

Extra Links

• Costumes based on Anime Figures
• Superman Classic

Contact Info

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

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

Luxury Lane Soaps

http://luxurylanesoap.com, @KyleeLane, GORGEOUS, IMAGINATIVE, HANDCRAFT ED, GEEKY Soap

• Can I say any more superlatives? You will love her products.
• (We Do! They’re Geekalicious! but don’t eat them… they are SOAP!)

Intro Jeremy
Intro Natali

Items of Interest

• High End Frames!!
  • 1,416 Star Wars  moments, handpicked high quality film frames
  • Each moment 11” x 22”, each film bound in leather
  • Yours for only $3000, only 1,138 of these were made
  • Comes with a BEAUTIFUL wood case though and signed by Lucas himself

• DIY, Turn a handcrank light into a USB Charger
  • Ever seen those emergency lights that you can hand crank???
  • Ever been without juice on your phone?
  • I personally live in a hurricane zone and have been
  • Guy just made a DIY film on how to attach a USB port to one of these suckers so you can recharge your phone just by cranking.
  • Perfect for the environmentalist in your life
• THE MOST EPIC ACTION SCENE EVER (udg)
  • (SM) I agree MULTIPLE helicopters bit it in this scene

Gold Sponsors:

Natali’s Etsy!!!

• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
• Whether it’s Woookie Cookies, Bark Maul, or Hothballs, every sweet tooth needs to try them out
• Need a present and don’t want to bake? then Natali’s Etsy store is the way to go

Shiny Lines!!

• Shiny Lines is giving out 2 prizes this week just for listeners of “The Power Geeks”
• Listen for the secret phrase later in the show and go post on their site 1) Why you love Shiny Lines 2) The time we said the secret phrase (put your time zone)
• They will pick 2 ppl at random out of the first 10 to post
• Here are the options if you win: An awesome red power ring, a choice from their nightplay line, or a cool code monkey tote!!!
• So go show your love for Shiny Lines!!! shop.shinylines.com

• Convention Schedule
  • Milwaukee Anime Con – Feb. 18-20
  • C2E2 – March 18-20

Deals of the Week / New Release

• DVD New Releases
  • Dead Space: Aftermath -
    • Animate pre-quel to the new game coming out Deadspace 2
    • Previous animated prequel was Dead Space:Downfall
    • You won’t be wooed by the animation, some comparing it to first run clone wars (ick)
    • If you like the game, you’ll like this movie
  • She-Ra the complete series!!!
  • Color Purple (blu-ray)
  • Flash: The complete series (John Wesley Shipp – 1990’s)
• The Infestation Begins! (udg)
• Awesome MacBook Vinyl Decals buy 2 get 1 free (udg)

Geek Speak

• America Losing its Edge in Innovation
  • OpEd (Norm Augustine) who writes for Forbes, claims that America is losing their edge on Innovation…
  • Here is his hypothesis: every country he’s visited most ppl believe that science and engineering are the paths to success
  • Here in the U.S., they are seen as geeks and misfits.
  • Younger generation gets turned off, and turns to other things, losing that scientific edge
  • In China alone, 8 out of 9 top political leaders are engineers
  • In the U.S.??? Good luck.
  • So is Spurned geek culture really a problem and will it really stymy innovation?

• Geek Girls Represented Poorly in Geeky Mediums
  • Are geeks “Closet Chauvinists”?
  • Movies, comics, perceptions on how geek girls should act and behave are all wildly skewed…
  • Quick, name 5 heroines off the top of your head from comics
  • Now how many of those don’t use sex as a weapon?
  • Name one feature super hero movie where the main character was female that didn’t suck

• Today in Geek History
  • JebsApps (owned by our own Jeremy Puent) released their latest app, Today in Geek History
  • Gives you factoids based upon date, spanning all sorts of geekiness
  • For example, did you know on 1/26/1962  The space probe Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. It will later miss the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).
  • This app is available for Android in a Lite version for free or a paid version, all on the Marketplace
  • Check out the lite version, but the paid version for .99
  • Or check out their new app Movie History

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• First Images for Thundercats released (SM)
  • a fuzzy image shows up after London Toy Fair
  • Total attention in the geek community. TC is one of those happy moments
  • So does Warner Bro. slap a cease and desist? Nope, they release actual art footage to capitalize on the buzz! WIN WIN!
  • Here are some of the producers on the new series (which give me hope): Sam Register (“Teen Titans,” “Ben 10,” “Batman: The Brave and the Bold”). Michael Jelenic (“Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” “Wonder Woman”) and Ethan Spaulding (“Avatar: The Last Airbender”)
  • Press Release:
  • The new “ThunderCats” will appeal to viewers who have loved the characters all their lives as well as young newcomers to the franchise. A sweeping tale combining swords and science and boasting ferocious battles with the highest of stakes, the grand origin story of Prince Lion-O’s ascension to the throne – and of those who would thwart his destiny at any cost – takes on epic dimensions in this sharp new telling. As the forces of good and evil battle each other in the quest for the fabled Stones of Power, Lion-O and his champions learn valuable lessons of loyalty, honor and mortality in every episode.

• Marvel Uses Captain America to Aid in Suicide Awareness & Prevention (udg)
  • Comic books often face real life and try to offer “a little help” within their pages. Often creatives in the industry team with organizations to craft stories specifically directed at certain issues in the hope of getting readers to pay attention. Captain America: A Little Help is an all-new story free to all fans via the Marvel Comics App and Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited that attempts to help raise awareness of suicide prevention.
  • From Marvel:
    • Written by Dr. Tim Ursiny, PH.D., CBC, RCC and illustrated by Nick Dragotta, this powerful story shows what happens when one man on the verge of suicide is drawn into a chance encounter with Captain America—and he may be the Avenger’s only hope!
    • “Super heroes fight a lot of battles, but there are few more important than combating suicide,” said Tom Brevoort, Senior Vice-President of Publishing. “That’s why we’re making Captain America: A Little Help available for free via our digital comics outlets. If even one person calls this number instead of doing something very tragic, we know that means we succeeded.”

• • The story is also available in good ol’ fashion print in I Am An Avenger #5 on newsstands and in comic books shops now.
  • To contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, please call 1-800-273-TALK or visit www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

• Wizard, 20 yr old magazine, now toast (JP)
  • Anybody remember the heyday of comic book collecting in the 90’s?
  • Wizard magazine with the king of kings for publications back then
  • Then the comic bust hit in the mid 90’s and the publication has backslid ever since (some claiming they really didn’t even cover comics anymore, just b-style movie flicks)
  • It has now been confirmed that you can no longer buy copies, with rumors on the Internet that the whole staff was fired
  • Long live the comic heydays It’s always sad to see a geeky print outlet bite the dust

• 60% of AOL’s profit comes from misinformed (SM)
  • Here’s the “deal” according to Huffington Post: 80% of their profits comes from  subscribers
  • 75% of those are dial up that don’t really need dial up (according to an un-named AOL exec)
  • Mostly from elderly who already have Internet access elsewhere and don’t know that they don’t have to pay an AOL dial-up fee to access their AOL email
  • It’s not criminal to not tell someone they don’t need a service, I personally do think it’s neglectful though
  • Business Insider posted a nice screen grab article for the less tech savvy on how to unsubscribe

• Iran Announces Release of New “Cyber-Police” (udg)
  • According to Iran’s state TV, they’ve launched their first cyber police unit in attempt to gain an edge in the digital world.
  • Since the disputed results of the presidential election in 2009, the Internet has been a very important outlet for Iran’s political opposition. They’ve also been trying to boos their web defenses since the Stuxnet worm made its way into computers that are involved with their nuclear program.
  • Gen Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, Iran’s top police chief, was quoted as saying that the Net has provided opportunities to “others” for spying as well as misuse of both public and private information. Umm… only for the last 2 decades dear.
  • The first cyber cops patrolling the web are in Tehran. Gen. Moghaddam says they will be in all police stations in the country by early 2012.

• Zuckerberg’s FB Page Gets Hacked (JP)
  • An anonymous person hacked the CEO of facebook’s page and posted:
  • “Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ’social business’ the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? [LINK] What do you think? #hackercup2011“
  • 800 ppl actually “liked” the message before it was taken down
  • Ironically this happened 1 day before new security measures were announced that included continuous HTTPS connections and social captchas (these ask you to identify pics of friends rather than fuzzy words)
  • ^^ (SM) Good luck with that! I’m horrible with names :s

• Microsoft Rewards Hackers of Win 7 Phone (SM)
  • Screw with an Apple device? Get a cease and desist, Hack Sony, get a law suit on your doorstep,
  • Hack a Windows Phone 7 and be the first to do it? You just might get a free t-shirt.
  • Instead of throwing good money after bad, Microsoft contacted the jailbreakers of their latest mobile phone and offered them T-shirts and congratulations
  • A Rep for Microsoft went even further: “Microsoft is interested in further understanding the “Home Brew” developer community’s perspectives on Windows Phone and invited a few members to our Redmond campus last week for an exchange of ideas”
  • Whether this is hyperbole or not, who knows? But it is a step in the right direction IMHO
  • It is something to point out that Sony PS3 and the IPhone are both wildly more popular than Win Phone 7 so they have to make hay somehow…
  • Before we get all happy happy joy joy about this, M$ is planning to break the jailbreak in their next release of the OS
    • (JP) to me, this represents 2 things… a desperate grab for attention, and the last act of a dying device

• Scientists Invent Food Replicator (udg)
  • Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
  • Move over Picard, the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan now has a 3D food printer and in 5 years, you could have one too.
  • A group of Cornell University scientists and students built a 3D printer and began testing it with food. It attaches to a computer, which works as the “brain” behind the technology.
  • It looks more like an industrial fabrication machine than a normal printer. Users load up the printer’s syringes with raw food- anything, like soft chocolate, that has a liquid consistency. It will then “print” icing on a cupcake or anything for that matter.
  • “You hand [the computer] three bits of info: a shape that you want, a description of how that shape can be made, and a description of how that material that you want to print with works,” says Jeff Lipton, a Cornell grad student working on the project. Lipton is pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.
  • The project came out of Cornell’s Fab@Home venture, headed up by associate professor Hod Lipson. Started in 2005, the project aims to create do-it-yourself versions of machines that can manufacture custom objects on-demand. The group started experimenting with food fabrication in 2007.
  • David Arnold, director of culinary technology at the French Culinary Institute, has been testing out the technology since October 2009. He loves the experimentation it makes possible and thinks a 3D food printer will have mass appeal.
  • Because it’s an academic project, the 3D food printer isn’t commercially available — yet. The Fab@Home project has the blueprints for free online, and dedicated hobbyists can use them to build their own. One retailer,nextfabstore.com, offers an assembled version for sale — starting at a mere $3,300.
  • Entrepreneur Jamil Yosefzai plans to be on the forefront of commercializing the technology. His New York City-based startup, Essential Dynamics, is working on a version that can be sold to the first wave potential customers: pastry chefs and tech early adopters.
  • Yosefzai thinks his version of the printer will kinetically retail for around $1,000, but he expects that price tag to eventually fall to $700 or so. And he predicts that the technology could become a household staple within a decade.
    • (JP – The Catch is… Everything tastes like chicken)

• Portal 2 User-Generated Content Will Be Available for Consoles (JP)
  • Portal 2, the followup to one of the best puzzlers of all times, is coming later this year, and are you ready for the mind-bending fun?
  • For those that don’t know, features you putting 2 “windows” randomly around the room where you go in one side and emerge out the other
  • It WILL be available on Steamplay which means PS3, XB360, and Mac
  • Although you won’t be able to create levels on the consoles, you’ll still get to benefit from the level generator on the PC, as those custom levels will be available to you
  • Obviously each platform has their own delivery mechanism but they’ll be available

• D&D Illegal in Prison (SM)
  • Kevin Singer and 2 friends were having a campaign in jail, w/ Kevin as the DM
  • Anonymous tipster calls the guards and says that the group was forming a D&D gang and the guard confiscated the material…
  • Ok, first off, they are using their imaginations to do imaginary things vs. using their imaginations to figure out how to shank someone… (guess that T-shirt with the ninja throwing the D20 is serious)
  • Kevin takes it to court saying its a 1st amendment right and he gets ruled against
  • It is now illegal to play D&D in jail… srsly. They can all go back to beating the living crap out of their cellmates now

• Apple’s 10 Billionth App Contest Winner Hangs Up (udg)
  • Gail Davis is used to politely hanging up on telemarketers. Yeah, well when Apple called to congratulation on winning the $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading their App Store’s 10 billionth app early Saturday morning, she thought it was a prank call and hung up. “Thank you very much, I’m not interested” were her words.
  • The kicker? Gail doesn’t even own an iPod that can run apps, but her daughters own iPod touches. Luckily for her, those two came flying down the stairs to tell her it wasn’t a prank and she’d better call back!
  • As luck would have it, the girls had downloaded a few apps that morning. The winner? A free app called Paper Glider where you can see “how far can you flick and fly your paper airplane.” While it’s one of the top five free App Store Apps, it is flooded with user reviews like “truly crap” “boring” and “lame.” And now it has the distinction of being the 10 billionth app. Gail has a $10,000 iTunes gift card to prove it. And I’m sure she’ll think twice before she hangs up the next time.

• Oregon Trail Coming to Facebook! (JP)  (40 years ago this year it was released for MAC)
  • Not only that but “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego” is also slated
  • Brought to us by the same company who wrote Zoo Kingdom
  • Can’t wait to die of diphtheria on Facebook! I wonder if that’s a wall achievement??
  • The trailer is showing some social stuff added like forming wagon trains with your friends
  • Carmen Sandiego looks even more interactive the ability to form posses and hunt down global criminals
  • Not first time that nostalgia and “social media” has bene combined, already an Oregon Trail on the IPhone  as well as an upcoming release of the old Mike Tyson’s Punchout

• Android yanks Kongregate App (SM)
  • (always dinging IPhone, well here’s one against google)
  • Kongregate puts an app up that gives you access to over 400 games on their site, mostly flash games
  • There’s even a utility that allows you to play them offline
  • Android doesn’t like deliverly channels outside their own (just like Apple)
  • So the app gets yanked from the store
  • Here’s the kicker though, unlike apple,  if you go to m.kongregate.com and you’ve allowed for non-signed apps to run, it’ll install on your phone still
  • note: you need at least 2.2 to run the app
  • What a fun site. If you’re bored with the same ol’ on FB, go check out Kongregate
  • The only sad part about this article? I only have 1.7

• Wonder Woman Now A Go. Yay? (udg)
  • If you tuned in for last week, I covered the final passing of David E Kelley’s Wonder Woman TV show on every network.
  • Well, enter a regime change at NBC and enter the show to the list of pilots that are being picked up by them.
  • I’d be lying if I didn’t say this scares me. Give a listen to last week’s rant for more details.
  • So Pro: Robert Greenblatt is in charge over at NBC now. He’s the one that brought Dexter and Weeds to Showtime.
  • Con: He also ordered a drama pilot from the Sex in the City guy called “Mann’s World about a celebrity hair stylist in LA.  (Which bears some slight irony)
  • Pro: Greenblatt doesn’t mind spending money. One of the reasons the show was speculated to have been passed up on was the very high cost of it. Take out the huge licensing fee alone,   Kelley’s take incorporates the superhero’s signature lasso, cuffs, and plane in the script. That makes me happy because he’s bucking the August of 2010 reboot of her character and outfit.
  • Con: It’s David E Kelley. Not Joss Whedon. It baffles my mind that a Joss Whedon script for this show would be shot down before, but now David E Kelley is given a go. On NBC.
  • The Plot: Will revolve around Diana Prince and her life in L.A. as vigilante crime fighter Wonder Woman. Kelley says his Wonder Woman is a “real complex woman and not just a superhero.” It will NOT have the campiness the original one did.
  • Many speculate that this is hoping to draw in the Smallville crowd with this being the show’s final season.
  • All I know is I’m nervous, very, very nervous. I’m trying to remain positive, but I will being mass baking extra Woookiee Cookies to be used for a bake sale to raise my bail should they mess this up and a junkpunching spree is necessary.
  • I just hope this doesn’t turn out to be a “be careful what you wish for.”

Intarweb Goldmine

• Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon Gets Face Lift (udg)
  • For 35 years, Dr. Richard Ellenbogen has been a cutting-edge cosmetic surgeon. Now, he’ll finally see what it’s like to actually go under the knife.
  • Today, the Beverly Hills doctor is getting his first facelift.
  • Ellenbogen is known as the field as “The Father of Fat Grafting” because he pioneered many of the techniques used by plastic surgeons all over the world. He specializes in repairing bad plastic surgery and facelifts, but says good genes are what kept him from slicing and dicing his own mug until the ripe old age of 66.
  • So why now?
  • “I recently appeared on TV and after watching the segment, I realized I was starting to look like William Shatner and decided, ‘My time has come,’” he said.
  • Representatives for Shatner told AOL News that he was unavailable for comment.
• Genghis Khan, Greenest Conquerer
• No Apps for This: Croc Swallows Phone, Starts Ringing
  • the only way this story could be better was if JAWs was the ringtone!!!!!
    • The crocodile in “Peter Pan” happily went “tick-tock” after swallowing an alarm clock but a crocodile in Ukraine has been a little less fortunate.
  • Gena, a 14-year-old crocodile at an aquarium in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk, has been refusing food and acting listless after eating a cell phone dropped by a woman as she tried to photograph him.
  • Aquarium workers initially didn’t believe Rimma Golovko, a new mother in her 20s, when she complained that the crocodile had swallowed her phone.
• Zombie Game Show Host?
  • Famous italian game show hosts body gets taken from a grave
  • Yeah, now we’ll have a already dead game show host on live at 5
• Yeah, Not EVERYTHING is better with Bacon. Really (udg)
  • Remember the gum that did in Violet Beuregarde? Well now you can drink it.
  • Yup, that’s right, New Yorker Till Krautkraemer, founder of Meat Water is cranking out “hearty, and obviously meaty” meal supplement drinks in yeah, really bizarre flavors like cheeseburger, bbq chicken wings and italian sausage.
  • To ring in the new year and toast to a healthier lifestyle, Krautkraemer has just released four new offbeat offerings that are vegan-friendly and devoid of animal byproducts.
  • The new flavors in his MeatWaterVOID line include — which supposedly tastes like a piece of salmon over lettuce, asparagus and mustard seeds — and grilled chicken salad, a green-colored beverage said to taste like grilled chicken, spinach and onions, complete with a balsamic vinegar dressing.
  • Then there’s grilled Thai beef salad, a dark reddish, “mildly spicy but SUPER beefy” flavor that supposedly tastes like flank steak, red leaf lettuce, cucumber and garlic.
  • And, finally, there’s Krautkraemer’s favorite: Caribbean shrimp salad, a light-pink concoction designed to taste like grilled shrimp, mixed greens and raspberries.
  • Yum. Thirsty yet?
  • Yeah, me either.

Extra Links

• Facebook credits mandatory for games
• Nook 3G being phased out?
• 30 billion in unused gift cards in America
• New memory type invented

Contact Info

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

Sponsors

Shiny Lines

• What: Shiny Geek Jewelry, clothing and other bits & bytes, made by Geeks for Geeks.
• Why: Geeks, Nerds & Gamers alike deserve to shine at their very best, on and offline.
• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
  • Check out shop.shinylines.com for more product -OR-
  • Send darthmolen@gmail.com an email saying you want this ring. If there’s enough interest, we are going to make this available to the public

Luxury Lane Soaps

http://luxurylanesoap.com, @KyleeLane, GORGEOUS, IMAGINATIVE, HANDCRAFT ED, GEEKY Soap

• Can I say any more superlatives? You will love her products.
• (We Do! They’re Geekalicious! but don’t eat them… they are SOAP!)