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The Power Geeks #100

by DarthMolen on May.15, 2011, under The Latest Shows

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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

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

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  • 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

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.
  • 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

  • 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

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