We are LIVE on Ustream. Tonight we talk E3, The new Wii Controller, Some Apple Stuffs, New movie releases, and even the surprise average age of gamers…

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• Instructables (udg)
  • It occurred to me today that I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned one of my absolute favorite sites on here. I have mentioned Etsy and it’s crack-like ability to suck me in for hours. Well, Instructables is it’s counter-part. It is THE site for anyone that’s ever wanted how to make…. well anything. I’m not kidding! From a PC Case out of a mannequin to cupcakes and every possible thing in between, there’s an instructables for that.

• Bring Me the Head of Green Lantern (btm)
  • Made by Schell Sculpture Studio
  • They design concept art for TV and Movies
  • Creating a Hal Jordan bust based on the DC Comics character

Open Source Flashlight (SM)

• Started by
• 500 Lumen bulb (high end) 350 lumen at the low end
• Fully Open source (you can change how bright, blink, modes, from your computer)
• top end is USB chargeable (about time, most tac lights take expensive batteries)
• On a kickstarter but already exceeded their goal by more than double
• I totally bought the ultra bright one

• The World of Mistrunner (udg)
  • With 28 days to go, I really wanted to mention this awesome kickstarter from our loyal chat room member and friend Naked Hobo again.
  • What is Mistrunner? In the creator’s words it’s a RPG set in world of high fantasy, steampunk and a bit of post apocalyptic action thrown in as well. What I see is an amazing game, ney world, he has crafted out of obvious love. One of the things that makes me most proud to be a gnork is the support that we all give each other. Bound together by the very things that set us apart. Please help us support this project. Times are tough and that’s understandable. If you can give $1, that’s awesome and it will get you listed in the book as a Patron. If you can’t, that’s okay too. What you can do it blog about it, tweet about it, FB it, carrier pigeon it, get it out to everyone you know and help make this dream a reality.

• Wanna iPad laptop? (btm)
  • Nifty device from Crux
  • The Crux Loaded features a clamshell keyboard case, Bluetooth trackpad and external battery to turn your iPad into a more laptop-like device.
  • Available this fall.

• Star Wars Rubber Duckies (udg)
  • Rubber duckies are kind of awesome. Now you can haz Star Wars themed rubber duckies complete with 45 battery life LED lights in them. A rubber ducky you can be proud to bring in the tub or pool this summer.

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 Releases

• Subway Goes All Out for Green Lantern (udg)
  • Subway has launched a new promo that could have you unlocking awards like free Green Lantern movie tickets and other stuff.  Want in?
    • Download the SCVNGR app for your iPhone or droid.
    • Complete easy challenges
    • Win prizes and rewards.
  • Pretty simple. Oh and grand prize? Tickets to the Green Lantern Premiere in LA.

• New Movie Releases for 1st Week June
  • (SM) Epic Westerns Alert:
    • The Outlaw Jose Waley (clint eastwood) – I <3 The Good, The Bad, The Ugly hardcore, I gotta see this. Characterized as the “Best Mythic Western Ever”
    • the Long Riders – James and the Gang – Best Western Period
    • True Grit – Remake by Coen
  • Superman: The Anthology (1978 – 2006) – Holy Crap…
    • everything you could want including
    • 2 versions of Superman and Superman 2
    • All the 1950’s Superman cartoons
    • Outtakes from the Brian Singer Superman Returns
    • 8 full Blu-Ray Discs – Much Much more… all for under $100
  • The Man Who Would Be King – Sean Connery, Michael Caine, when men were men
  • Burial Ground – Italian Zombies
  • The Stuntman – Real Men, Doing Real Stunts, On real movies back in the day

Entertainment Geekly (new feature) (SM- Awesome Title Natali!)

• Eliza to Star in Torchwood Spinoff (udg)
  • Eliza Dushku has officially signed on to star in a new Torchwood animated spinoff web-series. It’s an animated motion comics series called Torchwood: Web of Lies, and it’s based on Starz upcoming series Torchwood: Miracle Day. The animated series will also include voice appearances by Torchwood stars John Barrowman as Capt. Jack Harkness and Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper.
  • The new series is being written by Jane Espenson, who worked with Dushku on Dollhouse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She’s also worked on Battlestar Galactica and Torchwood. Ryan Scott is also a co-writer on the series.
  • The series will consist of 10 three-minute videos, and will be released before the Torchwood premiere on July 8th. The plan is to release a new episode online after each new Miracle Day episode.Miracle Day episode.

• Penny Arcade Strip Inspires a Movie (udg)
  • It started as a comic but Penny Arcade has expanded into video games, a charity, merchandise, conventions and now…. the film.
  • According to the Hollywood Reporter, Paramount is producing an animated movie based on Penny Arcade’s “The New Kid” comic strip. The comic was published this past October and focuses on a young boy who is constantly switching schools because his father’s job takes him to different planets.
  • Gary Whitta, the former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer magazine and writer of The Book of Eli and a number of games (including Gears of War), will write the movie’s script.
  • (SM) when are they going to do “Automata” already?
  • (SM) FYI, they’re doing a boardgame based upon “The Lookouts” – Think Boy Scouts meets D&D

• There Will Be a Full Season 7 for Doctor Who (btm)
  • Kasterborous site reported over the weekend that BBC Wales (producers of the popular Doctor Who series) was planning a truncated 7th season consisting of only 4 or 5 “specials”.
  • BBC officials were upset as this would leave gaping holes in their programming.
  • After watching fans react over the weekend BBC and Doctor Who producers calmed everyone’s nerves by announcing Tuesday that the 7th season would be a full, 13 episode season and current Doctor Matt Smith would be appearing in them.
  • Showrunner Steven Moffat tweeted:
    • “14 eps + Matt DEFINITELY. I’ve got a plan and I’m NOT TELLING YOU WHAT IT IS. Now hush or River shoots you with her Spoiler Gun.”
  • Nerds throughout the Commonwealth sighed in audible relief.

Geek Speak

PSA: CEA trying to sell off free over-the-air HDTV Bandwidth (SM)

• They want to let the “free market” soak up all the bandwidth you could be using for free
• Cite low number who actually use the service.
• (SM) HANDS OUT OF MY COOKIE JAR

• E3 Coverage
  • New XBox Kinect?
    • Youtube coming to xbox live
    • hulu plus
    • Powered by Bing?
    • Minecraft for Kinect
    • Halo 4
    • live streaming TV to boot for international customers

• • Sony Vita Unveiled
    • The world goes meh
    • Plenty of content announced:
    • Mother of all trailers for the new games
    • Fully portable and cloud-ready
    • Specs:

• dual analog controller,
• front and rear camera,
• OLED touch screen type,
• touchpad on the back.

• V4-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and a
• 200 MHz SGX543MP4+ GPU.

• • Playstation 3D TV
    • Non-split screen mode where both can play on the full screen
    • 24” 3D TV
    • Good glasses for $4.99

• • New Nintendo Console
    • Wii U, Wii U (btm.. like an amblance)
    • 480i to 1080p, HDMI output
    • Flash based memory + sd card slot + usb for external storage
    • Awesome controller that is
      • touch capable
      • a cross between a ds and a dreamcast controller
      • (think mini-tablet w/ 6 inch screen and motion controls)
      • can play games independent of Wii
      • Interact with games on the screen
      • (SM) I actually want one of these
      • This has SUCH amazing potential it’s unbelievable. I’m seeing people either geeked to get theirs or declaring it the beginning of the end of Nintendo. I am definitely leaning much more toward the geeked side. (udg)

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• EA’s Origin Takes on Steam and Games for Windows (udg)
  • Electronic Arts announced some pretty big news with the launch of the Origin game store and social network, a direct-download game marketplace and social service for gamers who play EA titles. It is available now and came out the gate with over 150 EA titles. In the future they will be publishing all their new games, including Battlefield 3, FIFA 12, and games from partner studios in the Origin store.
  • Sound a bit familiar? Add to that an application on your system that will manage installations, licensing, updates, and new purchases for you electronically and keep track of your achievements, let you connect with other people who play the same games, and share what you’re playing with friends. Yeah, I’m guessing right about now Steam and Games for Windows are popping in your head.
  • Back when Steam first launched, the took a huge chance. It was untested and both gamers and publishers were clueless as to whether digital distribution would even really work. Steam is a HUGE success, Microsoft can’t really claim that with their Games for Windows.
  • There is one area Origin is taking gamers that Steam and Games isn’t and that is onto mobile devices. EA plans to give gamers a way to connect with Origin, find their friends, and play multiplayer games with them. They even tipped there’ll be a mobile version of Battlefield 3 that will be playable using Origin. They’re also plannig exclusive content, game releases, downloads, and easy purchasing through the Origin store.
  • The big question that goes unanswered with all of this news however is whether or not EA will pull its game library from other digital download stores because they’re launching their own. Many gamers already have both Steam and Games for Windows on their systems, and Mac users have adopted Steam wholeheartedly. We’ll have to see if EA moves to force people who want their games to install Origin to buy and download them.

• Poor Sony, Still free game (sm)
  • Sony Music Brazil, Russia, and their Internal network were all hacked
  • a subversion repository was released on the Internet
  • a group called “lulzec” has essentially declared war against Sony
  • “We\’ve recently bought a copy of this great new game called \”Hackers vs Sony\”, but we\’re unable to play it online due to PSN being obliterated. So we decided to play offline mode for a while and got quite a few trophies. Our latest goal is \”Hack Sony 5 Times\”, so please find enclosed our 5th Sony hack. Enjoy this 54MB collection of SVN Sony Developer source code. That\’s hackers 16, Sony 0. Your move!”
  • Still no idea what Sony did to become such a target for hackers….
  • Their stock has fallen like 29%

• Steve Jobs Wants to Build Giant Spaceship-Shaped Headquarters (btm)
  • Jobs presented his plans for the new 150 acre property at the televised Cupertino City Council meeting on Tuesday.
  • Currently Apple employees are scattered throughout the city in rented buildings and office space
  • The new campus would place 12,000 or 13,000 employees into one giant 4 story oval shaped complex.
  • Moving parking underground allows for 80% of the campus to be landscaped and filled with 6,000 trees.
  • Company plans to build its own “energy center” to power the complex
  • Jobs reminded the Council that Apple pays more taxes than any other company in the city, and while they would love to remain in Cupertino, it would be a shame if they had to move somewhere else like Mountain View in order to build their complex.
  • Is it just me or is this starting to sound like a Bond Villain’s lair?

• Apple Paying Up to $150 Mil to Music Labels for iCloud (udg)
  • With Universal Music now along for the ride, Apple has officially signed the last of 4 deals with 4 major music labels and will now be able to launch its iCloud streaming and storage service. And they’ve ponied up a healthy sum in return for permission to access their content in the cloud.
  • According to the NY Post, Apple is paying between $100- $150 million UPFRONT to the labels. Business Insider stated “Apple has $66 billion in cash and long-term and short-term securities.” So, basically, spending up to $150 million to avoid any future lawsuits from these music labels is really not a big deal for Apple.” When you phrase it that way, yeah it’s really not.
  • Both Amazon and Google, however, launched their own cloud music services without any sort of contract from any of the labels. Amazon claimed it didn’t need any licenses to store music since its service works pretty much like an external hard drive. A user has to upload each song one by one to be able to access their content in the cloud.
  • Apple defines the iCloud as “iCloud is so much more than a hard drive in the sky. It’s the effortless way to access just about everything on all your devices. iCloud stores your content so it’s always accessible from your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC. It gives you instant access to your music, apps, latest photos, and more. And it keeps your email, contacts, and calendars up to date across all your devices. No syncing required. No management required. In fact, no anything required. iCloud does it all for you.”
  • Pricing seems to be up in the air a bit. We know that the first 5gb is free. We know that they’ve talked about a $25 yearly fee. What we don’t know exactly how much storage that $25 will get you.
  • According to Apple’s site, Free Gets You A Lot. When you sign up for iCloud, you automatically get 5GB of free storage. And that’s plenty of room, because of the way iCloud stores your content. Your purchased music, apps, and books, as well as your Photo Stream, don’t count against your free storage. That leaves your mail, documents, Camera Roll, account information, settings, and other app data. And since those things don’t use as much space, you’ll find that 5GB goes a long way.
  • Apple is said to be taking 30 percent of iCloud revenue, whereas the labels will be getting 58 percent. The New York Post said Apple has finalized deals with the necessary music publishers, who will be getting 12 percent of the revenue.
  • Now, I’ve been pretty open about my skepticism about the almighty cloud and I can hear Steven ITCHING to blurt out some “worship at the alter of Apple” comment. But, I’m on the fence. On the one hand, if anyone is going to protect my stuff, it’s gonna be Apple. On the other hand, this is a hacker’s wet dream. In the end, I honestly trust that if this bad boy wasn’t a zillion per cent locked down and safe, it wouldn’t be launched this Fall. Bottom line? I’ll do what I do when it comes to EVERY Apple item- I never jump aboard right out the gate. With this I’ll give it a few weeks for the kinks to get worked out and the hackers to give it their best. When all has died down, then I’ll give it a go.

• MacOS X “Lion” Unveiled at WWDC (btm)
  • Scheduled for a July release.
  • It will be a Mac App Store exclusive download for $29
  • Begins to incorporate some of the better elements of iOS to MacOS
    • Multi-touch gestures
    • Full screen applications
    • Mission Control
    • Auto-Save and versioning
    • Redesigned Apple Mail
    • Better Search features
  • 4GB download

• China Warns Google (udg)
  • Dear Google, I heart you. So, according to an official Beijing newspaper Monday, Google has become a “political tool” vilifying the Chinese Government. In fact they flat out warned that the Internet giant’s statements about hacking attacks traced to China could hurt its business. Of course this all appeared in the leading newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party.
  • Why exactly does China have it’s cha in a bunch? (btw thank you google translate) Last week Google came forward with news it had broken up yet another effort to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including Chinese human rights advocates and journalists and oh US GOVT OFFICIALS. And that these attacks seemed to come from China.
  • Of course the Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected those accusations, and then whipped out the warning to Google about  playing a risky political game. On the front page no less. According to the paper, by saying that Chinese human rights activists were among the targets of the hacking, Google was “deliberately pandering to negative Western perceptions of China, and strongly hinting that the hacking attacks were the work of the Chinese government.”
  • “Google’s accusations aimed at China are spurious, have ulterior motives, and bear malign intentions,” said the commentary, written by an editor at the paper.
  • “Google should not become overly embroiled in international political struggle, playing the role of a tool for political contention,” the paper added. For when the international winds shift direction, it may become sacrificed to politics and will be spurned by the marketplace,” it said, without specifying how Google’s business could be hurt.
  • A Google spokeswoman said the U.S. firm had no comment on the remarks. If I were that spokeswoman, you know I’d have had some comments.
  • Why is China REALLY upset? Google said last week that the hacking attacks appeared to come from Jinan, the capital of China’s eastern Shandong province and home to an intelligence unit of the People’s Liberation Army.
  • U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates over the weekend warned that Washington was prepared to use force against cyber-attacks it considered acts of war.  Hacking a major US company to obtain passwords to US Govt Official’s passwords could very well fall under that category. And to think I joked about hacking Google probably not being considered and act of war. Thank you China for proving me wrong. And eff you if you think your silly threats will actually have a negative effect on Google.

• France Bans “Facebook” and “Twitter From the Media (btm)
  • Ban goes back to a 1992 French law that prohibits mentioning the services due to it being a form of advertising and preferential treatment.
  • Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (organization responsible for regulating French electronic media) says,
  • “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?”
  • To get around the rules French broadcasters will start saying “Find us on social networking sites” or hope they will find links to their Facebook and Twitter pages via their web site links.

• Average Gamer Age Surprising!! (SM)
  • Guess the Age (SM- I know, I know!!)
  • Average Game Buyer? 41 yrs old
  • FTC Undercover Shopper program:
  • only 17% of ppl over 17 were able to buy M-rated games
  • contract: 38% under 18 were allowed to buy R-Rated movies
  • All published by the ESA (they regulate the ratings on games)
  • 25 billion dollars spent on games in the last yr / 5 billion online

• Droid 3 Videos Leaked (udg)
  • In case you haven’t heard, a trio of training videos complete with some basic how-to instructions for the upcoming Motorola Droid 3 were posted to YouTube this weekend by “Phonepads.” Not surprisingly, Motorola has had them yanked. Of course, it’s the intarwebs so a number of other YouTube and Vimeo users have re-posted them.
  • So what can we learn from them? Well they give us a a pretty decent tour of the yet-unreleased Droid 3 complete with where all the buttons and ports will all be. Just like the original Droid and #2, the keypad will slide-out but it’s going to have a 5th row of # keys up top so you so’t have to hit Alt and then the combo letter/number key anymore.
  • While the video makes it pretty clear that what you see may not be the final product, it looks like it’s going to come with Gingerbread pre-installed, sport an 8 megapixel cam with LED flash on the back of 1080p video and probably sport a dual-core processor.
  • Some other notable stuffs- they added an HDMI port on the side, the power button is on the center top of the phone now and the screen looks bigger, but they don’t say how large it is.
  • No leak is thorough it seems so there are still some unanswered questions out there. I think one of the biggest is whether this will be a 4G LTE phone or not. Others maybe storage or processor speed.
  • I’m on the side of those that feel Motorola pulled the “controlled leak” card with this (especially with it being on the heels of the big Apple’s big annual WW Developers Conference) so expect to hear more soon.

• DC Comics Resets to #1 (once again) and Announces Day & Date Delivery (btm)
  • Last week’s big news in the comic world was thought to be the renumbering of DC Comics to #1 and a total restructuring and sometimes redesign of characters in the DC Universe.
  • The “real” big news was the announcement of Day & Date Digital Delivery
  • JLA #1 will be released in print and digital formats the same day and this is the first of many.
  • Many are concerned this will hurt comic book retailers as comic readers will now be able to get their fix digitally instead of driving to the stores.
  • Expect Marvel to follow suit later in the summer.

Intarweb Goldmine

• Friendly PSA For Our FL Listeners (udg)
  • On May 21, 2011, a bronze statue of three dolphins was taken in at Allied Recycling located 3770 Veronica Shoemaker Boulevard Fort Myers, Florida. Allied Recycling contacted Law Enforcement believing the statue was connected to Lee County Sheriff’s Office burglary investigation from North Fort Myers, Florida. Unfortunately this did not belong to that particular victim.
  • Local Law Enforcement believes that this statue belongs to a victim who may not have reported it stolen. If you or someone you know had a 300lbs bronze dolphin statue stolen, please call the Cape Coral Police Department at 239-574-3223.
  • Okay, seriously who the HELL steals a 300lb statue!?!? Of dolphins.

• “Thanks For Taking My Money, A–hole!” (btm)
  • Austin area movie theater has a strict “no talking, no texting policy”
  • Recently they ask a theater patron to leave
  • The upset patron called the theater’s customer service line and left an empassioned, expletive laced message expressing her displeasure at being asked to leave.
  • Theater now plays the uncut message as their “Don’t Talk or Text” PSA before R-rated movies.

• Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (udg)
  • Now, there’s nothing wrong with driving with the top down. Driving with YOUR top down, a whole other story. Especially when you’re drunk and carrying marijuana in your purse.
  • Florida police pulled Keila De Oliveria Leite over for driving erratically, on the wrong side of the road, 20 miles below the speed limit and oh passing a Martin County deputy who tried to stop her.
  • When they did finally get her to stop, Keila was naked from the waist up and had weed sticking out of her purse. A search of her car found a pot pipe too. To top it all off, this classy chick got all kinds of feisty about putting her shirt back on. They did manage to get one on her for her mug shot. Yeah, she failed several sobriety tests and has been charged with  driving under the influence and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Guess they must have been feeling kind, or appreciative, because no indecent exposure charges were made.

• 51 yr old Lady Charged with Pushing Garbage Full of Body Parts (SM)
  • Police in California strolled up on an older lady pushing garbage
  • Guess what was inside? A fully dismembered decomposing Human
  • Yeah, they’re not sure where he came from
  • Either homicide or disenterment are the two theories
  • The lady ain’t commenting on who her victim in the 30 gallon garbage is
  • (sm) My thoughts? Not only Zombies love brainzzzz

• These Ain’t No Crop Circles (udg)
  • One of the sheer joys of Google Maps is the photos it manages to catch. Some are downright hilarious, well unless you’re the folks at Fairfield College in the North Island town of Hamilton.  Seems while looking for a home in the area, Kiwi David McQuoid spotted a photo from the campus featuring several cartoon-like phalluses in various sizes- some several meters across.
  • The school’s acting principal said it was hard enough to deal with it when it happened back in 2009.
  • It happened over a weekend but it wasn’t until the grass died off bit by bit that phallic symbols started to pop up around the school grounds. Every week another crude image revealed itself, much to the dismay of staff. “There’s not really much we could do about it,” he told a newspaper. “The caretaker took some more weedkiller and tried to camouflage it a bit.”
  • The culprits were never caught and the prank probably would have passed into schoolboy folklore had it not been captured by Google Maps.
  • The red-faced principal said he would be contacting Google to plead for the image’s removal but an internet privacy specialist said it was difficult to get such satellite photographs changed or blurred.
  • Kiwis however, thought the prank was hilarious, with 70 adding mostly encouraging comments to the online story, like “Freakin brilliant!!! Love it!!! Classic piece of adolescent artwork.”
  • One gave the artists an A+, top marks for cunning, planning, chemistry and geometry, while another said their anatomy detailing left a lot to be desired.
  • “I totally reckon it was actually girls,” they wrote. See, if they were made THAT big, yeah it wasn’t girls.
  • Then came a confession: “HAHAHA!!! we did this as our 7th form prank, now it lives on! how awesome!”

Extra Links

• 12 Geekiest Wedding Proposals (udg)

• Apple Releases iOS5 Beta to Developers Monday, Jailbroken by Tuesday. (btm)
  • iOS5 Set For Public Release in the Fall.

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 celebrate our 100th episode Where we bring you Star Wars Propoganda, CosPlay from a former host, Every host we’ve ever had and much more!!!

Intro Kristin… Get interrupted by Steven.

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• The World of Mistrunner: An Awesome Kickstarter by Chat Room Regular NakedHobo (udg)
  • The world can always use new amazing games and Mistrunner looks awesome. It’s an RPG set in a world of high fantasy, steam punk and a bit of post apocalyptic action as well. Check it out, contribute if you can and pretty, pretty please help get the word out.

• Nerd News Reigns Supreme

• SkySurvey.org
  • 60,000 travel miles, 5000 megapixels, 37,000 photos
  • Most comprehensive photo survey ever taken of night sky

• Star Wars Propaganda Posters (btm)

• Epic Skadoosh
  • Very short video of Jack Black practicing “Skadoosh”
  • Video ends with “Click for Epicness”
  • When you click the link you’re taken to a 4th wall breaking epic ad for the upcoming Kung-Fu Panda 2 that must be seen to believe.
  • Great use of the YouTube interface.
  • Skadoosh

• Cole’s Current Costumes:

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

Contests

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

• Bin Laden’s Hideout recreated in CS
• Angry Bird in PC Chrome Store
• Murloc Mugs for half off in GCD store

Movie Minute (new feature)

• **** on hold for this week due to extended Geek Speak****

Geek Speak

• Current / Ex-Host Roundtable

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• Marines See the Sun and Go Green (btm)
  • US Marine Corps is one of best trained and best equipped fighting forces on the planet.
  • As Marine equipment becomes more advanced so does it’s power needs.
  • But now Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment are the first to be equipped with new portable solar gear developed by Navy R&D.
  • Currently batteries make up about 20% of the 100 pounds of gear a typical infantry Marine carries into the field.
  • A Marine of today will use about 4 times as much fuel as a Marine from the early 1990’s did due in part to electronic gear that require electricity from portable generators.
  • 30% of the fuel going into Afghanistan is used to power these generators
  • Scientist from the Office of Naval Research developed solar-and-battery gear that is small enough to be transported on Humvees, large enough to power gear at command outposts and ruggidized for field use.
  • Smaller solar panels were also developed for individual Marines.
  • They can be unfolded and used to charge equipment at base or on the march.
  • For some platoons at remote outposts, solar power is all that’s available.
  • Plans are underway to field bigger equipment to meet the power needs of larger formations on the battalion level and could be in place as early as this summer.
  • Ties in with plans to reduce per-Marine fuel use by 50% by 2025

• Star Wars Novels coming to EReaders (SM)
  • Did you know there are 106 titles in the EU
  • Lucasfilm and Random House are releasing all of them to eFormat
  • June 28th is the big day
  • This can solve the problem of the X-Wing Series being dropped
  • (SM)These novels were like comforting popcorn balls to me, I have like the first 60
  • Never bought into the New Jedi Order and haven’t even tried Legacy

• Man Tweets From Mt. Everest (udg)
  • Kenton Cool, a British mountaineer claims to be the first man to have tweeted from Mt Everest. Although his name is slick, we hate to break it to him, he’s not the first.
  • He was a giant product placement on May 6th when he tweeted “1st tweet from the top of the world thanks to a weak 3G signal & the awesome Samsung Galaxy S2 handset!” while wearing his fully exposed Galaxy II T shirt despite nippy conditions. Samsung sponsored Cool’s ascent and gave him a free Android handset to tweet from. Which he of course pulled out of a box  from a pre-cut hole in the ice.
  • Tweeting from Everest is a pretty impressive achievement. But  unfortunately for Samsung and its PR team, Cool’s tweet isn’t the first.
  • American polar-explorer Eric Larsen beat the Brit by about six months. His tweet simply read, “Everest summit!” and a description of the gadget used to tweet from 29,029 ft above sea level.
  • It was the DeLormeGPS Earthmate PN-60w, a handheld device that can send short text messages from anywhere in the world, by relaying them through a satellite.
  • Larsen is no stranger to extreme-tweeting: in April 2010 he tweeted from the North Pole. “Standing on top of the world,” he wrote. “Getting to the North Pole is the same as stopping Global Warming. Begin with one step.”
  • So Cool might have missed out on a cool record, but he’s still got one achievement under his belt (besides his nine climbs up the planet’s highest mountain, of course). The veteran mountaineer called his wife from the summit, marking the world’s first 3G phone call from Everest. If you thought the largest mountain on Earth would be a good place to get away from the connected world, think again.

• Microsoft closes in on buying Skype (btm)
  • 8.5 Billion dollars later…
  • Expect more ads in the free version
  • Hopefully this big acquisition goes better than some of there previous ones

• Congress Bans Nasa From Collaborating With China (udg)
  • Frank Wolf is my new hero. According to the 2011 spending bill approved mid April by Congress: Two majorly federally funded space programs, NASA & the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy are prohibited from using federal funds to collaborate with China. Now, this only applies to the 2011 federal budget. But, my new buddy, Congressman Frank Wolf, who inserted the clause in there is planning on making it permanent.
  • Here’s what the bill says: NASA and the OSTP cannot use federal funds “to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company.” THANK YOU FOR THAT LAST PART FRANKIE!!!
  • Here’s Wolf, mincing no words in an interview with Science Insider:
  • “China is spying against us, and every U.S. government agency has been hit by cyber attacks,” says Wolf in explaining why he opposes any collaboration with the Chinese government. “They are stealing technology from every major U.S. company. They have taken technology from NASA, and they have hit the NSF computers. … You name the company, and the Chinese are trying to get its secrets.”
  • Of course the Obama administration has found a possible loophole. Grrr. They assert that NASA and the OSTP can still collaborate with Chinese agencies provided that that collaboration falls under the umbrella of “the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy.” In 1979, the U.S. and China signed a landmark pact called the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, which established relationships between the two nations’ scientific communities that have persisted for the past three decades. Arguably, backpedaling from that agreement could jeopardize Sino-American relations, so Obama’s ability to sidestep the GOP restrictions on NASA and the OSTP could still be great.
  • But one Republican Congressman from Texas warned that if NASA still collaborated with China using this loophole, the consequences could be dire: John Culberson said that per the terms of the federal funding bill as written, NASA and the OSTP would be “endangering [their] funding” if they worked with any Chinese agencies this fiscal year using federal funds.

• Biggest Piracy Case in US History (btm)
  • At least 23,000 File Sharers will soon be notified they are being sued
  • Users who downloaded “The Expendables” have been tracked
  • Federal Judge has agreed to allow U.S. Copyright Group to subpoena ISPs to find the identity of everyone who illegally downloaded the Sylvester Stallone movie.
  • Subpoenas are expected to be issued this week
  • The United States Copyright Act allows damages up to $150,000 per infringement and they are demanding the maximum
  • Some groups have found it to be more lucrative to settle for around $3,000 per infringement in the past.
  • Film companies pay people to monitor BitTorrent sites and capture the IP addresses of downloaders and uploaders.
  • So far 23,322 IP addresses have been obtained and more are expected to be added to the list. There were only 6,500 when papers were originally filed in February.
  • See if your IP address is listed by using the applet.
  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together a list of suggestions of what to do if you’re targeted

• YouTube Adding 3000 Movies to Rent (sm)
  • YouTube has been streaming hundreds of movies for free since 2009 via it’s movie page
  • Now they are partnering with NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, and Warner Brothers to offer these studios libraries and new releases for rental.
  • Rental fees will be at “industry standards” with most library features at $2.99 and new releases at $3.99
  • Many movies will also include free extras and behind the scenes footage
  • Rotten Tomatoes reviews will be integrated into the movie’s page
  • The addition of these 3000 movies to YouTube’s existing catalog brings their total available movies to over 6000.
  • Once you rent a movie you will have 30 days to start watching the movie and in most cases once you start you will then have 24 hours to finish watching the movie.
  • Currently this will only be available to YouTube users in the United States
  • You need a YouTube account to access the movies
  • They will be available via the browser on Google TV.
  • watch out Netflix?

• Smithsonian Announces Art of Games Line Up (udg)
  • If you’ve been listening to us for awhile, you may remember me geeking out the the “Art of Video Games” exhibit the Smithsonian is going to be holding March 16- Sept 30 of 2012. And I scooted you off to their site to vote for what titles should be included. Well, voting ended April 17th and the results have been announced!
  • The exhibit will also have five playable games – “Pac-Man,” “Super Mario Bros,” “The Secret of Monkey Island,” “Myst,” and “World of Warcraft” – as well as video interviews with notable game developers, large prints of select game screenshots, and antique consoles. Apparently over 3.7 million votes were cast in the poll to select the entrants, spanning over 175 countries.
  • It will include such classics as Space Invaders, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Earthworm Jim, Super Mario World, Goldeneye 007, Diablo II, Shenmue,Halo 2, Portal, Boom Blox, Shadow of the Colossus,  Brütal Legend and Minecraft. The full list is available as a PDF
  • Can’t make it to DC? The site does mention the exhibit will be available for traveling shows after its closing.

• WoW loses 600K Subscribers Since Cataclysm release (btm)
  • During this week’s earnings call, Blizzard revealed WoW subscriber base had dipped to pre-Cataclysm expansion levels with subscriptions only numbering 11.4 million at the end of March.
  • Last year, just before the expansion launched, the number of subscribers was 12 million
  • Blizzard execs point out that their subscription numbers fluctuate regularly but this drop has been faster than previous declines after expansion releases.
  • Other factors may include the launch of RIFT at the beginning of March
  • Often times the launch of a competing game will temporarily pull subscribers away as they check things out.
    • But generally they come back. Every time we think we’re out, they just keep pulling us back in.

• Game Developer Creates a USB Stick PC for $25 (udg)
  • You know who is pretty freakin’ awesome? David Braben.  He’s best known as a game developer that runs Frontier Developments in the UK and the co-developer of Elite.
  • When he wasn’t busy bringing us games like the Lost Winds and Kinectimals, he was working on a little side project- getting programming and general learning of how computers work back into schools.
  • Braben argues that education teaches useful skills such as writing documents in a word processor program, how to create presentations and basic computer skills, but more computer science-like skills such as basic programming and understanding the actual architecture and hardware contained in a computer are just as beneficial.
  • His solution? To manufacture a very low cost PC that can be given to kids for free and courses built around it’s use. And by low cost, holy crap! He’s developed a tiny USB stick PC that has a HDMI port in one end and a USB port on the other. Plug it into a HDMI socked, connect a keyboard to the USB and you’ve got a fully functioning machine running a version of Linux. The cost? $25.
  • And for that insanely low cost, you’d be surprised at the hardware.  It uses a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM and runs OpenGL ES 2.0 allowing for decent graphics performance with 1080p output confirmed. Storage is catered for by an SD card slot. It also looks as though modules can be attached such as a 12MP camera seen in an image in the article.
  • It will handle web browsing, run office applications, and give the user a fully functional computer to play with as soon as it’s plugged in. All that and it can be carried in your pocket or on a key chain.
  • This tiny, cheap PC is going to be distributed through a new charitable foundation called the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It will also promote computer science studies in schools.
  • As for when the Raspberry Pi device will become available, Braben says he hopes to be distributing it within the next 12 months.

• Miller / Jansen Batman sketch sells for $448K+ (SM)
  • Reported by Jill Pantozi
  • A sketch page from Batman: Dark Knight went for $448,125
  • Which Page? The iconic Batman and new robin jump scene (first female fulltime robin, Carrie Kelley)
  • Page ten of the story “Hunt the Dark Knight”
  • Other Pages? Page 2 of issue #4: 41k, Page 2 from Issue #3: 13K
  • Too Much?? Not enough??
  • (SM)Favorite.Graphic.Novel.Ever!

• Google I/O Developers Conference Opens With Big News (btm)
  • 51 minute keynote address was backed with announcements
  • Google Music Service (Beta) is here
    • Google’s cloud music storage solution.
    • Allows users to upload 20,000 songs.
    • Desktop interface allows users to organize music
    • Using Google’s Music Player 3.0 users can stream music to their devices
  • Android 3.1 Honeycomb begins roll-out to Motorola Xoom users on Verizon this week.
    • new features allow users to resize widgets
    • USB support allows Xoom owners to use keyboards, game controllers & mice
  • Android 3.4 Ice Cream Sandwich will roll-out to users late this year
    • will be adaptable to Android tablets or smartphones
    • new UI, retooled camera interface and face recognition software
  • Google Movies service for Android (which, oddly, is the same 3000 movies Google owned YouTube will be renting) allowing access via Android Marketplace.
    • Available now for Xoom owners with 3.1 and in the next few weeks for handset owners with 2.2 or better.
  • Android @Home platform will allow developers to create apps that control your home via accessories that are compatible with Android software.
  • Google is partnering with most major carriers to ensure Android users are getting the latest updates in a timely manner.
    • The guidelines call for the carriers and OEMs to get the latest version of Android out to their devices within 18 months if the hardware can handle the software.
  • Also, all 5000 attendees got Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1’s (the rest of us have to wait until June 8th)

Intarweb Goldmine

• Star Trek Team VI Kills Bin Laden (SM)
  • Apparently it was a terrorist on terrorist action
  • A german station mistook a Star Trek Terrorist patch for Seal Team 6’s logo
  • Then they went and blew it up on the big screen
  • They forgot to notice the Klingon skull and the phaser held by the eagle #oops
  • Of course, Trekkies everywhere figured it out and had a good laugh
  • The name? Maquis Special Operations Seals Team VI
  • Google FML!

• Man Dressed as Batman Charged With Trespassing (udg)
  • Holy trespassing, Batman!
  • A 31-year-old man dressed as the comic book Caped Crusader was arrested today in Petoskey after he was seen hanging from the top wall of a downtown business.
  • The Petoskey News-Review reports officers went up on the roof about 12:40 a.m. and pulled the 31-year-old man back onto the building.
  • Public Safety Director John Calabrese says he believes the man “enjoys doing this.”
  • Officers confiscated a baton-like weapon, a can of chemical irritant spray and lead-lined gloves.
  • The Harbor Springs man is awaiting arraignment on charges of trespassing and possession of a dangerous weapon. He’s being held in the Emmet County jail.

• Full Moon Stops Train (btm)
  • Man narrowly avoided being hit by train near Madisonville, OH
  • He jumped on the tracks and refused to move
  • Train was able to make an emergency stop just five feet from the man
  • at which point he dropped his pants and mooned the train and the conductors
  • Police say he’s been arrested more than 3 dozen times in the past.

• Makeout App for IPhone (SM)
  • Yes, there’s even an app for that
  • Puts a pair of pucker on your screen and when you kiss it, it kisses the other person
  • Marketing emplores you: “Make out with your facebook friends”
  • Q: Is it really kissing if you’re just tonguing an app that happens to be connected to another persons app?

• On Another Batman Note (udg)
  • New Zealand war veteran John Bray, who calls himself a modern-day Batman, is on the lookout for a sidekick – after being banned from going out and fighting crime alone at night.
  • The 91-year-old served in a raiding unit in World War 2 and therefore considered himself more qualified to deal with the criminals in the North Island town of Waipawa, enlisting himself as a member of the local community patrol.
  • This organization cruises the streets at night and reports on any suspicious activity to the police Just like Batman, Mr Bray started out with a Robin-like partner, but decided to ditch him after he kept falling asleep on duty.

• Dust-up for Ipad 2 in China (SM)
  • Apparently there were fistacuffs at a bunch of different release lines across china
  • One even resulted in the crowd going hostile and wrecking the store
  • Who knew that Jobs could have such a powerful mind control drug on his hands?
  • Next up, 2 chicks wrestling in mud for an IPad 2, as a way to skip the line of course
  • Mr Bray has now been told by the head of the community patrol organization he’s gotta find a new partner if he wants back on rotation. ‘I want to keep going so now I have to find a new partner,’ Mr Bray said.
  • He also described his crime-fighting role – in which he drives through the streets at night armed only with a spotlight and mobile phone – as a success.
  • Get down with your bad self Batman Bray.

Extra Links

• NY Times Awesomely Geeky Sport Section Correction (udg)
• The First Paper Smart Phone (udg)
• Too Much Brain for Easily Distracted (SM)
• House Renewed for 8th (and possibly last) season (btm)
• You can now ‘tag’ Fan Pages in Facebook Photos (btm)
• Starbuck and Starbuck at Starbucks (btm… just because)
• Can one crazy dungeon master defeat the forces of neo-nerd hipster douchery? (btm)

• This Is Not a Test, It’s an Emergency Text Message (btm)
  • Remember those annoying “This is a test, this is only a test” messages on TV and Radio?
  • New system is being put into place that will give officials a means to send emergency alerts to smartphones on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint networks.
  • Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) becomes active in NYC and DC later this year.
  • Local, State and Federal officials will be send alerts in response to disasters and other public safety threats, presidential announcements and Amber Alerts.
  • Only for actual emergencies.
  • Plans are to have the system nationwide in 2012

• Pomplamoose covers Angry Birds theme (btm)

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://www.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 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 Natali
Intro Kristin

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

• Welcome to Wookiee Week!!!

• Meet Pica Pic: One of the Coolest Sites Ever (udg)
  • Remember when every game had a handheld version too? They may be long gone but Pica Pic is bringing them back on your computer screen.
  • The folks at Hipopotam have recreated the look of the devices and emulate the games for you to play.
  • Each game maps the controls on the device to your keyboard and gives clear key mapping hints. Then you play the game as normal and have your highscore logged.
  • At the moment there are 17 playable games (some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t) but it looks like the site is set to expand with 3 other titles, including Zelda, listed as coming soon.
• GranataPet Billboard (udg)
  • Why on earth would a billboard for a German dog food company be an item of the week? Well, because it’s brilliant.
  • The best way to get people, or in this case our lil canine buddies, to buy a product is to give them a lil taste for free. GranataPet, whose foods are made around the use of pomegranates, are no strangers to thinking outside the box.
  • Their  newest campaign is a billboard that, when you check into it on Foursquare, shoots out a free sample of dog food into a bowl for your best friend to try. There’s a little black box that controls the food dispenser. It checks with the server once roughly every second to see if someone has checked in. When it the server returns a “yes” then the dispenser is triggered to release the sample. The technology is simple, the cost is minimal, the concept is genius.

• Happy 80th B-Day Leonard Nimoy!!!
  • Leonard Nimoy, the man who played Spock the space elf, turned 80 this week. 80!!!!
  • (SM)Despite being an avid Star Wars lover, ST and TNG were near to my heart
  • and also happy almost birthday to KatieDoyle!! (kdr)

• Can I talk Spiderman Turn off the WTF (musical) (kdr)
  • Most of us have seen Spiderman the movie, some have read the comics, and an unfortunate few have had to bear witness to the musical abomination that is Turn off the Dark.
  • Before I explain what this show is about, I thought long and hard about how this script must have been developed. And I can only imagine that a few writers and whatnots got together drank and smoked, watched bits and pieces of the movies, took a nap, drank some more and then wrote out a script on some bar napkins.
  • Okay here’s the breakdown…and i am so not making ANY of this up:
    • Peter Parker is a nerd and gets beat up in school, hearts mary jane, gets bit by a spider…blah blah blah
    • and while all this is going on…Arachne, the great mortal weaver from Greek mythology learns about Peter Parker and decides to become his guardian, and also want to jump his bones…and this is made REALLY REALLY apparent
    • then Peter decides he doesnt want to Spiderman anymore and Arachne is furious and plans to get him back into the red and blue by calling all her spider minors to create a city wide black out so they could steal all the shoes.
    • not.even.kidding.
    • then Arachne makes it to earth and delivers the most unforgettable line ever “I have descended from the astral planes with the help of humans shoes” I cant even facepalm hard enough
    • it gets kinda like someone put something in my drink after this scene, some fights, puppets and flying over the crowds, and then i guess everyone made it out okay. honestly, my head was so spinning from the redonkulous storyline, boring and drawn out dialogues and forgettable songs that i may have just blocked most of it 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

Deals of the Week / New Release

• Amazon Cloud Drive
  • 5GB Free / Up to a 1000 GB paid
  • Allows you to stream music to any PC or android device from the files you store on their server
  • Good news? If you buy from Amazon, it doesn’t count against your quota

• Kindle subscription to the New York Times will net you free web access as well (kdr)
  • a subscription to the NYT will also grant users access to the paywall-protected NYTimes.com online portal. No complex rules or conditions, you’ll just be one of the insiders who get unfettered access to all the fine old school journalism practiced at Times towers.

• Dont Blink Tee (kdr) for fans of the doctor and one of the most memorable episodes, this tee is ready to be can has for only $25

• DVD Releases
  • SECRET OF NIMH!!! B/R
  • Sherlock Holmes: Complete Blu-Ray Collection – Old b/w, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce
  • Black Swan – Natali Portman, Dancing, ‘nuff Said
  • Tangled Blu-Ray (3/d,DVD,Digital D/L)
  • Soylent Green (charleston Heston at his finest)
  • Imax: Hubble
  • Scream 1,2,3 on Blu-Ray
  • Teen Wolf Blu-Ray!

Geek Speak

• All your remakes are belong to Hollywood
  • Tired of Hollywood’s moral bankruptcy and them stealing your childhood? So are we
  • (Talk Point) Name 1 already done remake that has and has not worked
    • karate kid – i didnt even see it, thats how bad it was (kdr)
  • (Talk Point) Name the remakes that you’ve heard are coming:
    • (SM) Heman, The Never Ending Story, Mortal Kombat, The Last Starfighter
    • (UDG) – Smurfs coming this summer, was scared but NPH is in it and yeah, I <3 NPH, WOLVERINES!! Red Dawn- My one complaint- FU for swapping the Chinese out for North Koreans cuz China pitched a fit. But after meeting Chris Hemsworth I’m less worried cuz I’d watch him in anything it also stars the new “wonder woman” hmm….. , Child’s Play- nope not a 4th movie, it’s a remake of original, Adventures in Babysitting and Jonah Hill is now playing Shue’s part WTF!?!?, Teen Wolf- now a shitacular MTV series, Fright Night starring Colin Farrell,Total Recall starring, yup, Colin Farrell. One I am excited about- A NEW Muppets movie done by Jason Segal slated to hit theaters Nov 23, 2011.
    • (KDR)Here’s the maddening list of remakes actually in the works:

• • • • • ARTHUR – now starring Russell Brand. fucking russell brand. i hate that guy
        • DROP DEAD FRED – my favorite movie of all time, starring russell fucking brand
        • PLAN 9 FROM OUTERSPACE – one of the best/worst scifi movies is being “re-imagined” and going straight to DVD
        • Live action AKIRA – The Hughes Brothers are negotiating with WB…somebody stop them  (Testuo is now Travis- WTF? Shooting is scheduled to start in August. Actors sent scripts for Tetsuo- Andrew Garfield, James McAvoy, and Robert Pattinson. Those sent scripts for Kaneda are Michael Fassbender, Garrett Hedlund, Joaquin Phoenix, Chris Pine, and Justin Timberlake.- udg)

• • • • • SHORT CIRCUIT – rumor: Dimension Films has signed Steve Carr to direct “Short Circuit,” the remake. Carr is coming off the Kevin James hit “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” (LEAVE MY NUMBER JOHNNY FIVE ALONE!!!! UDG)
        • I’d like to take this moment to quote Patton Oswald in saying “Leave the stuff i love alone!“

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• Ubisoft Looking to Hire a Fan to Help Write Assassin’s Creed Encyclopedia (udg)
  • Everyone’s second favorite Ubisoft franchise, Assasin’s creed is going to get an official encyclopedia. Yup, not a wiki, but an actual encyclopedia.
  • A posting on UbiWorkshop states that they are making an official job offer and “not some petty human crowdsourcing trick.” Beginner’s need not fear and can apply to the job as well, as Ubisoft says they “wouldn’t want to miss out on someone passionate and talented just because he or she doesn’t have a five-year experience,” further endearing them to fans across the world.
  • To apply, head on over to the UbiWorkshop posting, check out the job recommendations and duties, take the writing test they provide, and send your information to the email provided in the post. You probably shouldn’t mention if you have real-world assassination experience.

• It’s a video card throwdown, Put or Shut Up! (SM)
  • (I personally prefer Nut up or shut up! Zombieland FTW~ udg)
  • (Yeah yeah, you would know all about that )
  • For years, we have heard from AMD and NVidia that they each are the best and fastest
  • Usually, the impartial review sites actually have to do the competition
  • Now AMD is challenging NVidia directly, through a blog post no less by senior public relations manager Dave Erskine
  • He wants to pit the HD 6990 against the GTX 590 from NVidia
  • Both are lightning fast and can magically appear in my computer anytime…

• • • • iPhone 5 Delay Rumors: Will Apple Hold Out Until After WWDC? (kdr)
        • WWDC 2011 conference in June will be all about the future of iOS and Mac, and with the rumor mill in full swing, speculation suggests that the iPhone 5 is more likely to arrive some time this fall, or even in 2012 ??
        • Apple said the focus will be on software at WWDC, including the iOS5
        • But if Apple does not release or announce a new iPhone at WWDC (or shortly after), does that mean the iPhone 5 is delayed until fall, to arrive with iOS 5 preinstalled?
        • Somebody get me some answers!!!

• Amy Adams to play Lois Lane in New Superman (udg)
  • Well, the Daily Planet now has its ace reporter and Clark Kent his love interest. Zack Snyder has official cast Amy Adams as Lois Lane in his upcoming Superman reboot.
  • While he wouldn’t comment on the plot over the weekend, Snyder did imply that Lane would be important in the story:
  • “What’s important to us is making [Superman] relevant and real and making him empathetic to today’s audience so that we understand the decisions he makes. That applies to Lois as well. She has to be in the same universe as him [in tone and substance],” Snyder said.
  • Adams joins a cast that includes Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/Superman, Diane Lane as Martha Kent and Kevin Costner as Pa Kent.  The Superman reboot will be produced by “Inception” and “Dark Knight” mastermind Christopher Nolan
  • Due out December of 2012 (you now if the world doesn’t end before that)

• Paramount in Netflix Canada (SM)

• • Well over 350 films are now on the service from that Studio
  • Includes “exclusive subscription television rights for first run films”. That’s before HBO, Showtime, etc.
  • U.S. has some of these through the EPIX deal, but not all of them
  • It’s messed up but movie rights are divided per region and have to be negotiated separately
  • They might lose some stuff too. Showtime is thinking on pulling Dexter after the deal expires in the Summer

• Showtime adapting the ultra-weird, super-gross comic book Chew for TV? (kdr)
  • Thank you showtime for always delivering bloods and guts
  • John Layman and Rob Guillory’s comic Chew is getting its own TV series.
  • “federal agent Tony Chu, a “cibopath” able to get psychic impression from the things he eats who is assigned to the most usual and bizarre crimes.”
  • Stephen Hopkins (24 and Californication’s) to direct the pilot episode

• Canadian ISP Rogers Throttling WoW (udg)
  • Canadian ISP Rogers Communications last week admitted that it is throttling activity on Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft” gaming platform due to a “problem” with its traffic management.
  • When are they planning on fixing that problem? Well not until June. I the mean time, they suggest turning off all peer-to-peer connections while WoWing.
  • Rogers said it made a change to its software to fix the problem, but a recent change to the game “created new problems” and a second software modification is necessary. That, Rogers said, “will not be ready until June.”
  • The admission from Rogers came after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission wrote the company in late Feb about complaints it’d received from WoW users.
  • Canada has open Internet regulations that prohibit ISPs from blocking specific applications. An ISP could slow down all of its traffic during peak times, for example, but could not discriminate against specific services or apps like World of Warcraft.
  • In one complaint received by the CRTC, customer Teresa Murphy said she had experienced slow downs since at least November, and was not connected to a P2P network while gaming.
  • “I’ve been affected by this (along with MANY other Rogers users) because Rogers’ filters are picking up several very low bandwidth-intensive games incorrectly as P2P activity,” Murphy wrote. “I don’t use P2P at ALL, and yet I’m still affected by this issue because Rogers sees my gaming traffic incorrectly as P2P.”
  • Blizzard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Java Founder Joins Google (SM)
  • James Gosling, a notable programmer who founded Java, has jumped ship to Google
  • His home at Sun Microsystems became untenable after Oracle purchased the company
  • Called CEO Larry Ellison, “Larry, Prince of Darkness”
  • Notable switch because the android OS basically on Dalvik, which is similar to Java
  • Yet again, Google getting some good mindshare

• STEVEN – please let me do the intro for this
• I dont care if it’s in the dictionary, if you say “LOL” outloud, I’m gonna punch you in the mouth (kdr)
  • The Oxford English Dictionary has announced the latest batch of words and phrases called initialisms including LOL and OMG and “heart”
  • I feel they should also add, WTF and #Facepalm at this point
  • “They help to say more in media where there is a limit to a number of characters one may use in a single message,” says principal editor Graeme Diamond on the dictionary’s website.
  • And this KILLS me, here’s Diamond’s eloquent reasoning: ““The intention is usually to signal an informal, gossipy mode of expression, and perhaps parody the level of unreflective enthusiasm or overstatement that can sometimes appear in online discourse, while at the same time marking oneself as an ‘insider’ au fait with the forms of expression associated with the latest technology.”

• Cheezburger Network Buys Know Your Meme (udg)
  • There’s money in hazzing cheezburgers and for buying other Internet meme sites it would seem.
  • The Cheezburger Network, home to hit sites like I can has Cheezburger, the Fail Blog, the Daily What, and many others, has bought Know Your Meme. The deal closed last Monday, Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh told CNET.
  • The deal was first reported by Tubefilter, which said that Know Your Meme, which was a spin-off from Rocketboom, is getting a low seven-figure payday.
  • Know Your Meme has become famous as a place where people can go to learn about the origins of some of the Internet’s most beloved time-wasters. And that’s exactly why Cheezburger bought it. “Right now, we’re an entertainment destination,” Huh said of the network’s many sites. “A lot of the stuff we show doesn’t have a lot of content…People require context, history, and origins [which] helps them understand why this is funny or why this isn’t funny. And Know Your Meme was probably doing the best job of that out there.”
  • The Cheezburger Network has grown rapidly in the last couple of years, and scored a $30 million round of funding in January that Huh said is intended to be used to “figure out how to grow the business.” And while he doesn’t know yet precisely what that means, it’s actually the point. “A lot of it is going to be wasted on failures,” he said, but “that’s what’s fun and great about this company, is that we can test” ideas.
  • Know Your Meme brings four employees to the Cheezburger stable, all of whom are in New York. That means, Huh said, that Cheezburger now has Cheezburger West–Seattle, where the company is based–and Cheezburger East. He also said that he intends to use some of the recent funding money to staff up the larger company in New York.

• Sprint Vows to Fight T-Mobile / AT&T acquisition (SM)
  • 3rd smallest company is dead set against the new acquisition possibility
  • claims it will “alter the structure of the communications industry (duh) and affect innovation”
  • The gauntlet was thrown down during a roundtable discussion at CTIA 2011, a wireless trade show, where the heads of verizon, t-mobile and AT&T were present
  • The deal would make AT&T the largest carrier at 130 million subscribers
  • Verizon, not so much concerned but they’re the other big player in the market
  • The two of them would own 80% of the market

• Wonder Woman Costume Update (udg)
  • So, it seems Kelley was bright enough to listen to how much his choice of costume for the new WW was hated. He’s made some changes. Pants are a darker matte blue and sans camel toe, the boots are now red and have a more “sensible” heel and the hookah make up is gone.  Guess what? I still can’t stand it. And her right nipple is seriously almost popping out while she’s running. Double Sided Duct Tape FTW I guess.

I actually like her Stunt Double, Shauna Duggins, more!

Intarweb Goldmine

• Pole Dancing for Jesus (udg)
  • In Old Town Spring, Texas there’s a group of pole dancers blurring the line between strippers and Scripture.
  • On the second Sunday of every month, former exotic dancer Crystal Deans leads a pole dancing course for church-goers dubbed “Pole Fitness for Jesus.” The class empowers women and helps them get in shape — all to the sounds of “upbeat contemporary Christian music,” Deans told Fox 26.
  • The instructor says she knew exotic dancing wasn’t for her, but realized she could use her experience performing to help other women connect with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
  • There’s no nudity, but there are high heels — shoes that Deans insists help tone the legs.
  • There’s a place here called Miss Pole I so want to take a class at, you know for the fitness and all, so I can totally hang with the concept. But, saying it’s for Jesus, heck even I know that’ll get ya cussed out.
• Sign Up for Dish, Get a Free Gun. Thanks Radio Shack (SM)
  • (SM) where do I sign up???
  • Montana Radioshack, Owner puts up a sign – “Protect yourself with dish network sign up now get free gun”
  • basically owner wanted to generate foot traffic and the offer of a gun is real
  • Ppl who sign up for dish have the choice between a 380 pistol and a 20 gauge shotgun
  • Those that don’t qualify for the gift certificate / get a $50 pizza hut gift card
  • Literally tripled his business, Next month it will be DirecTV

• Old Tattooed Biker Dude Makes Quilt Out of Ladies Panties (udg)
  • Picture a creepy old biker guy all tattooed up, long hair, wife beater bent over a quilt covered in woman’s underwear and that would be Louis Garret of Louisiana, Missouri.
  • Louis  told the Hannibal Courier-Post about his bizarre hobby, explaining that he only started quilting with unmentionables after he began dressing his mannequin collection in lingerie. Which of course makes perfect sense, right?
  • But don’t get the wrong idea about Garrett, whose nickname is “Shovelhead.” He’s a panty quilter with standards. He told the paper exactly what kind of underwear he’s looking for: “No polyester. I don’t want those cheap, dollar-store, not-sexy, farm-girl panties. I want classy — silk or nylon. You know, sexy. Victoria’s Secret.”
  • He added that he will never sell his kinky quilt because he has personal relationships with most of the women who give him their underwear. “That’s kind of a weird sentimental value right there.” Yeah, it sure is.
• Give the woman her Cupcake geeeez (kdr)
  • A woman in South Wales ravaged a bakery upon learning they were out of her favourite cupcakes
  • The woman reportedly ran around the counter, grabbed the owner by the hair, and proceeded to smash all the glass display units, causing more than in $600 damage
• Dont nom on the train (kdr)
  • Cant a woman just her her spaghetti on the subway in peace?
  • Apparently not – another woman on the train was so annoyed that she couldnt help her mouth diarrhea and spouted out fightin words like “What kind of animals eat on the train like that?”
  • The two women continued to share words, then eventunally knuckle sammiches, while the entire event was caught on tape.
  • And did our anonymous cameraman become the good samaritan and break up the fight? NOPE. he put that shit on youtube as soon as he got home!

Extra Links

• What Bill Gates Could Learn From Chris Rock (udg)
• How to Make $30 Pair of Headphones get $300+ Quality (udg)
• Marvel vs 30 Rock “Feud” (udg)
• 5 Important People That Were Screwed Out of History Books (udg)
• Nook Color approaching 3 million sales
• Disturbing Chinese KeyChains
• Homeless Man Builds Car Out of Scrap

• 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

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 . New movie formats, possible? maybe, Next Gen consoles, Wonder Woman Update, and the death of the shuttle program…

Intro Jeremy
Intro Natali

Items of Interest

• “SUPER” – coming to theatres April 1 – (trailer here)
• Nerdy Bedtime Stories FTW (udg)
  • After seeing an article for Five Sci-Fi Children’s Books on College Humor, Julia Yu decided to do a more fleshed out version of Goodnight Dune. While she thought the original parody art was amazing, she chose to stick closer to the Original Goodnight Moon and incorporated some stylistic elements from the David Lynch movie version of Dune.
• Backflip Studios releaseing Army of Darkness Game for iOS this summer! (JP)
  • Yup— you heard me right… all you Evil Dead fans! coming to your iPhone, iPad, iTouch device soon! Screenshot at the link in the show notes… check it out…
• Craigslist Scam (udg)
  • I had the joy of my TV breaking on Friday and decided to go through Craigslist to find a new one. I was surprised to find a fairly well-thought out scam. The TV was reasonably priced, photo from a home not stock, wording seemed legitimate. Responded. Got back an email that was, again, well written, didn’t seem autobot and ended with “Please visit: CL Phone Safe which will certify you wtih CL. I’ll call you as soon as done and give you my address to pick  it up.” Seemed reasonable. Go to the site, at first glance looks legit. But, I’m me. Googled the gmail addy it was sent from and yeah COMPLETE SCAM! So, remember- be careful when dealing on CL. Do NOT enter your number in on a site like that, mo matter how it looks, without first researching.

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 3/9/2007 2007
300 directed by Zack Snyder is released starring Gerard Butler and telling the tale of the battle of Thermopylae

Deals of the Week / New Release

• Dragon Age II released
• New DVD Releases
  • The Walking Dead Season 1
  • EXCALIBUR!!!!
  • Nausicaa – Myazaki – Both Dub and Japanese, Subtitle
  • The Man from Nowhere – John Woo and Ringo Lam. ‘nuff said

Geek Speak

• Movie Industry Backing new Video Cloud Standard (SM)
  • There’s a new video format in town “Ultra-Violet”
  • Cloud-Friendly – download on all your devices through the cloud by storing it on 3rd party servers
  • One big roadblock was HBO and Time Warner, which blocks certain programs when they go on their networks
  • Talks are progressing to relax that for the cloud based media
• Facebook To Take On Netflix? (udg)
  • ($3 for 48 hr rental??)
  • Meet your new media company: Facebook. Warner Bros just announced it will begin distributing movies for sale and rent via Facebook, beginning with “The Dark Night.” It will be available for rental for $3 or 30 Facebook credits. Hmm… I love the movie, so much so that I happily sprung the $1.99 to buy it at Target when it was on sale. I gotta say I’m not too impressed with the first selection or the price initially attached to it.
  • “The Dark Knight” isn’t a new release (2008), and Facebook appears to be getting the same terms as iTunes, which rents the film for $2.99 and sells it for $9.99. One thing Facebook (and Netflix) have that Apple doesn’t is a beachhead as an app on most internet-connected TVs.
  • Another way they’re similar: Facebook takes a 30% cut of credits transactions, just like iTunes. Still, if Facebook allows studios to sell their wares directly and set their terms, there’s no reason its catalog won’t expand quickly. Netflix shares opened nearly 3% lower on the Nasdaq the morning this deal was announced.
• Netflix kinda scares them
  • Insiders are saying that the movie industry is angry and scared of Netflix
  • Who wouldn’t be? More content, all you can eat. Fixed price. No more $20 to watch a movie once
• Are we still movie collectors or has that gone the way of the Dodo?

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• “Tweetviewer” virus spreading like wildfire (SM)
  • You see a tweet link from a friend – “I just viewed my TOP20 Profile STALKERS. I can’t believe my EX is still checking me every day –<<bit.ly Link Here>>”
  • You click, get the oauth, but instead of delivering an app, the hackers now have your un/pw
  • Its amazing how curious ppl are to see who is looking at their profiles
  • Hackers know this, targeting these ppl with the above phishing scheme
  • If you got targeted: Settings > Connections > Revoke Access.
  • ahhh, the dangers of short links

• Xbox 720 Here We Come (udg)
  • Back in 2006 when Sony unveiled the PS3 and stated they expected to be around for over a decade, it seemed absurd. And, 5 years later, it’s certainly showing no signs of being at the end of it’s lifespan. Heck, even the 11 year old PS2 is still outselling The PSP on occasion. The same longevity goes to the Xbox 360, which outages the PS3.
  • So, it seems Sony was right, this generation of consoles is looking at a decade long run. We can expect the same for the next generations as well. It just takes at least that long for game developers to figure out how to optimally leverage the technology of a console and get the most out of it.  When it starts to see like the console is starting to stagnate a bit, in comes some new life like the Kinect of Move.
  • Having said all that, don’t get too excited but Microsoft has just posted a slew of job openings that pretty much indicate they’re ramping up for a third generation Xbox.  Namely to join a team responsible for “defining and delivering next generation architectures.”  We probably won’t see the Xbox 720 until 2015 still it is encouraging to know they are looking for a design verificaion engineer, a graphics hardware architect and an audio/video hardware architect this far out. If it takes 10 years for developers to really get a current gen console to reach it’s full potential, five years to design the next generation seems about right.

• Best Buy Announces New Geek Squad Service (JP)
  • Best Buy hot off the heels of it’s new Buy Back program announcement is announcing more new ideas…
    • This time it’s unlimited Geek Squad Tech Support, that will allow computer and tablet purchasers to pay a flat fee for service from the Geeks, not just on the computer they purchased at Best Buy but on all computers that customer owns.
    • details about what is or is not included are sketchy at best at this point, but the tipster tells us it will cost around $200 for one year of GSTS coverage.
    • Are you willing to pay 200 bucks a year for support?

• Facebook Bans Adsense from Apps (SM)
  • Ad Providers for FB apps were finalized other day
  • Unsurprisingly, adsense (owned by google), was left off the list
  • FB is stating that any missing network has not met the TOS
  • Devs now have to severe relationships with “non-compliant” advertisers
  • The community manager has directed the devs to talk w/ their providers
  • Should be handling that directly with adsense

• Wonder Woman Update? As You Wish (udg)
  • The cast of NBC’s Wonder Woman pilot is starting to shape up with a couple of big announcements this week.
  • Cary Elwes, best known as Wesley from The Princess Bride, has been signed up to play Henry Detmer, the acting CEO of Themyscira Industries. Henry is thought to be “devoted” to Diana and could be a love interest for her later in the series.
  • Liz Hurley has confirmed that she has also joined the cast as Wonder Woman’s nemesis, adding: “I’ll be playing the evil villain. Can’t wait.”
  • The role of Diana’s personal assistant Etta has gone to Tracie Thoms, formerly on Cold Case and Pedro Pascal will play a police liaison who is a loyal ally of Wonder Woman’s alter ego Diana.
  • Caprica director Jeffrey Reiner is expected to helm the Wonder Woman pilot, which is under consideration for NBC’s 2011-12 television season.
  • Adrianne Palicki showed up at the premiere of her new movie Elektra Luxx with new, darker hair. I’m not sure I’m feeling the bangs and I don’t expect the big hair of our original gal, but a little bit of bounce wouldn’t hurt. Is it just me, or does she look like Xena? I know, I know, I’m trying not to be nit picky, really I am!

• • 
  • (jp – when I see Lucy Lawless nowadays I think of Spartacus on Showtime, not Xena)

• Shuttle Undocks for the last time from the ISS (SM)
  • The last official shuttle visit has left the ISS building on March 17th
  • This was the 13th visit to the space station for the retiring platform
  • The station disengaged at 7 AM to the sounds of the original “Star Trek”
  • Good ol’ William Shatner himself voiced a slightly different intro
  • “Space…the final frontier,” Shatner said as the music played. “These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before.”
  • Upon undocking, the Shuttle did a 360 fly-around that lasted for a good hour
  • (sm)I will admit, I cried when reading this article
  • Oh well, who really cares about scientific endea

• Google Doodle Celebrates 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day (udg)
  • Yesterday Google’s homepage greeted visitors with a new Google doodle celebrating the 100th year of International Women’s Day. It didn’t just highlight women’s achievements over this last century, clicking on it too you to a page that explains more about IWD and its corresponding events that Google has a big part in.
  • They invited both men and women to take part in the “Join me on the Bridge” campaign, which encouraged supporters to gather on almost 300 bridges in 50 countries yesterday to celebrate women’s achievements, and to shine a spotlight on issues that effect women in developing countries and around the world.
  • According to Google,
    • We invite you to join tens of thousands of people coming together on bridges all over the world — from the Millennium Bridge in London, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the Grand Barriere Bridge joining Rwanda and Congo — to show your support for women’s causes and celebrate women’s achievements.
  • Couldn’t make it to a participating bridge? You could also show support by “checking in virtually” using Street View. The Google Map showed events hosted by Google, by the Women for Women International organization, by hosted supporters, and by hosted online supporters.
  • Not only did Google change its logo for International Women’s Day, the “Pegman” icon found on Google Maps was also changed to a female version.
  • Below the map of events, they listed ways to support women’s causes. Each section listed places to donate, and information about each cause. Under the “empowerment” tab we learn that 75 percent of all women cannot get bank loans because they have unpaid or insecure jobs and lack property ownership rights. We see in the “economic security” section that women perform two-thirds of the world’s work and produce half the world’s food, but earn just 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property. And in the “health section,” we learn that 99 percent of maternal deaths are preventable, but every minute a woman dies from pregnancy-related causes.
  • International Women’s Day also brought out the celebrities, including Geena Davis – whose gender-and–media institute was one of the affiliated causes—and Annie Lennox, who will help lead the London event.

• del Toro’s Lovecraft Adaptation Nixed (JP)
  • Guillermo Del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth fame… who ‘left’ (or was fired depending on who’s story you believe) The Hobbit was set to make a $150 million live-action film of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness.”
  • has been canned by the studio… This is very disappointing to myself and anyone else was looking forward to a well done telling of a Lovecraft story….
    • Lots have been done… none have been done justice…

• Hitting the Road to SXSW With Geek Entrepreneurs (udg)
  • So a couple dozen coders and geek entrepreneurs step off a shiny, high-tech bus at a barbecue joint in Texas.
  • Nope, it’s not a joke.  It’s the Startup Bus, which is, yes, a group of a couple dozen coders and geek entrepreneurs riding a shiny, high-tech bus through the Lone Star State from their hometowns to the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, part of the broader SXSW music and film festival.
  • This is not your standard road trip though, it’s a high-paced competition. Yesterday they boarded the bus, were broken up into small teams and have 48 hours to come up with the best, most viable, tech start-up.  And we’re not talking just one bus. 150 “busrepreneur” loaded their laptops and red bull in cities from New York, to Miami, Cleveland and Chicago to San Fran. In two sleepless days they will have to build a start-up from the ground up and the best team will take home the glory and possible future funding when everyone hits Austin.
  • This is the brainchild of Australian entrepreneur Elias Bizannes who created the Startup Bus and took his first group of buspreneurs to Austin last year.
  • “It’s about developing the people in a contained environment that mimics a real start-up situation with constraints,” Bizannes said, “to get people to focus on what’s important…For Startup Bus, we’re trying to develop the entrepreneurial potential of people by helping them develop their experience, network, skills, and confidence. What we are really trying to do is build a community where the Startup Bus experience is simply the initiation rite into that community…a closed community where job and partnership opportunities can be shared, co-founders can be met, and ideas can be shared–in an environment where everyone can be vetted, trusted, and accessible.”
  • Once the buses hit the pavement, a Startup Bus stock market game will begin. According to Bizannes “It’s a game where all the start-ups are listed on a stock market and their share price increases through a combination of milestones that the teams achieve and actions that players–i.e. people not on the bus–perform.
  • The  Startup Bus organizers have arranged to ensure that just about everything that happens onboard is posted online–be it a blog post by a team member, a tweet, a video, or a photo–and geotagged so that the viewing public can follow along more or less in real time.
  • I want to know that Bizannes is a scout for the Angel List and I think this is an awesome idea, but take issue with his whole “initiation rite” into a “closed community”

• Meth Dealer in Danger of losing 18,753 Comic Books
  • Guy gets caught for manufacturing meth
  • Gov’t claims that he was laundering money by buying rare comics
  • Personally, THIS IS GENIUS!!!, although I don’t support illegal drug habits
  • Whats to say the guy just didn’t love the medium? Maybe he just wanted an awesome collection?
  • Guy is still going to get his day in court.

• Spiderman Postpones Opening (udg)
  • For those of you on the edges of your seats for the March 15th opening of “Spider-Man: Turn of the Dark” on Broadway, you may want to sit back and relax a bit. It seems the producers are planning a huge overhaul of the $65 million musical.
  • As of late Tuesday, the new opening night is also not clear. An official start in June wold mark the 6th delay to the opening of “Spider-Man” in the show’s long and troubled history which began in 2002 when Marvel first reached out to Broadway producer Tony Adams with the idea. It has since survived Mr. Adam’s death in 2005, almost bankrupted in 2009 and faced technical issues regarding its arial stunts this past Fall and Winter which lead to the injuries of 4 performers and numerous state and federal safety code violations. Not to mention it just completed its 99th preview performance on Tuesday night, more than any other show in history and it’s also twice as expensive as the next big-budget Broadway show, “Shrek the Musical.”
  • Bottom line-  fiercely negative reviews from most of the nation’s theater critics last month have led the producers to feel the show needs fresh eyes and have asked Julie Taymor, who is its director, one of its script writers, its mask designer and far and away its chief creative force to work with new collaborators or face another resolution, possibly even leaving.

Intarweb Goldmine

• Klepto Kitty (udg)
  • Dusty, a Siamese cat in Redwood City CA has redefined Cat Burglar. His owner, Jean Chu, recently displayed hundreds of items on tables in front of their home hoping the owners would come by and claim the goods.
  • The items included balls, towels, car wash mitts, gloves, shirts, bathing suits and other miscellaneous clothing. Chu estimates that Dusty — who has been dubbed “Klepto Kitty” — has stolen more than 500 items over the years.
  • Chu said Dusty leaves at night through a pet door that is left open for the family dogs. He retrieves items left on neighboring porches and in backyards — a favorite being bathing suits in the summer.
  • Neighbors claimed the clothing, but most of the towels remained. Chu is thinking of donating those to the Peninsula Humane Society, which rescued Dusty as a kitten.

• Everyone’s Gotta Have a Goal- World’s Youngest Grandma (SM)

• Girl Scout Cookie Crime At It Again (udg)
  • First there was a brawl over thin mints, now that’s not powdered sugar in that box of Girl Scout cookies.  A New Port Richey man was arrested after police found cocaine in a Girl Scout cookie box inside his car. Police say they pulled Stevenson Papin over because one headlight was out.
  • During the traffic stop, the officer noticed an empty box of Girl Scout cookies with a small plastic baggie inside. The box was next to Papin’s leg.
  • Police say the baggie had a white rock-like substance inside. A field test on the substance was positive for cocaine.
  • According to police, Papin said “I ain’t going to say it’s mine, but I ain’t gonna make your jobs harder. Take me to jail.”
  • Papin’s request was granted. He was taken to jail and charged with possession of cocaine.
    • (JP – now we know why those thin mints are so damn addictive!!!) (STEVEN… Hands off my joke!!!)
• Residents Evacuated to Dunkin Donuts, After it Was Just Robbed
• Intruder and Home Owner Call the Police on Each Other (JP) (If I may steal this one…)
  • Oregon police say both an intruder and a Portland homeowner phoned 911 to report the same thing: a strange man in a home.
  • Lt. Kelli Sheffer says the intruder told police he had just broken into a home Monday evening when the owner arrived — and the caller was worried the homeowner might have a gun.
  • Accompanied by his two German Shepherds, the homeowner found the intruder and asked what he was doing in the house. That’s when the stranger locked himself in a bathroom and phoned police.
  • The homeowner called police with his account.
  • Sheffer says 24-year-old Timothy James Chapek, of Portland, was booked into jail for investigation of first-degree criminal trespass.
  • Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/03/07/national/a220103S00.DTL#ixzz1GA59wsla

Extra Links

• XBox and PS3 Sell More than Wii in Feb

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!)