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(Live on UStream) We’re coming up on a year of “The Power Geeks”. This week we talk steampunk, user questions, Steven’s soapbox, and a lot of news!!! Download Episode 51 Here

Happy Birthday Prof_Mordarm from all of us at TPG!!!! (that means no singing steven!!)

This weeks Steampunk Fix a double dose of Steamy Goodness… starting with

Dr. Who Dalek as done Steampunk:

LuxuryLaneSoap.com

of @KyleeLane fame

• POWERGEEKS for 20% off in her store!
• Her Han Solo soap is going global!!!
• Sci Fi Wire, WSJ Digital Network, Geekologie
• Even got invited on TV!
• Awesome creative soaps Check her out

Deals of the Week / New Releases

• Official Twitter App for iPhone released (formerly Tweetie) for free (JP)
• 1950′s style 3D The Empire Strikes Back!!!! (JP)
  • Free on YouTube… these guys have also done a Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters…
  • Which is your fav??? They all Rock!!!
• New DVD’s this week include Valentine’s Day a romantic flick starring literally half of Hollywood, Invictus starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandella and Matt Damon telling the story of how a rugby player (and the 1995 Championship) changed South Africa and finally the Messenger a story about an Iraq war veteran who narrowly avoided dying struggles with his new post at the Casualty Notification Office.

Geek Speak

• New Game with Jeremy – Mad Lib style for the modern day….

great questions from The Professor:

• Choose 1 – Cyberpunk, steampunk, urban fantasy/horror, or sword and sorcery?
  • SM – Sword and Sorcery-hands down (bookcase story)
  • JP – Toss up… a dead heat between Cyberpunk and Steampunk I love both!
  • iKDR – steampunk ftw! . i get to ? the victorian style garg and still get to use technology.

• Each of you are now a video game (old or new): so which one and why?
  • SM – Zelda. My life is all about the journey, there’s no order to it, but its large and def. an adventure
  • too tough… can’t honestly figure out how to answer this one right now!
  • iKDR – Ratchet & Clank. i would love visiting new worlds, kicking ass and getting gigantic and outrageuos weapons, like the BFG and the one that turns bad guys into fullfy sheeps

• What are TPG looking forward to see (or want) coming out tech-wise this year? Next year? 10 years from now?
  • JP – This year iPhone 4, next year – iPad next gen (with camera for skype dang it!) in 10 years… VR Rooms (IE Star Trek Holodeck!)
  • SM – I’m more of an in-the-moment guy. now: Android is my “now”. I like it and want to see it better. 10 yrs? Wearable nano-clothing
  • iKDR – i just at&t to stop jerking me around and turn on the 3-effing-g service in my-effing-area of the us!

From Listener Chuck out on the West Coast (Oregon) (JP)
“I want to hear you guy’s take on the whole ebook battle between Amazon, Apple & Google — Barnes & Noble + Borders want to get in on the fight, but they’re bantam weight for this battle.  Will consumers win or loose? Are people really reading ebooks on those tiny little smartphone screens?  Will the iPad and upcoming gPad take the place of Kindle-like devices? You asked. That’s what I’d like to hear about.”

• JP – I had a discussion today with a client about it… I got my hands on an iPad this past weekend and I am dying to get one now… even though I said I wanted to wait for the net gen. the client swears by his Sony ebook reader… I held it, nice but I want an all in one device. I saw tons of kindles and nooks, and sony ereaders on the plane and at the airport last week as well as on the train…
• I think overall the answer is that people use these devices, I have read a couple of things on my iPhone, but overall the screen is too small for too much use… however the others are great… eventually I believe this will cause the prices to come down just like have for music, thus eventually the consumer should win out.
• SM – my sister just bought a nook and I tried it out… and it was a more positive experience than i thought…
• I can see the xp being diff for the eReader and the IPad… for now. Ipad is really unweildy for casual reading, whereas the Readers are more lightweight and easier on the eyes
• I’ve read ebooks on my phones for as long as I had Microsoft eReader… and will continue to do so
• iKDR – i still buys books or download audiobooks (i know i know) but i still think there’s room for more than one device on the market, same as laptops, same as smart phones and the more the manufactures battle it out, i think the moire the public will benefit becuase they will be the opnes taking advatage of the next great thing being offered by each competing company

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• Roku, UFC team up to deliver LIVE fights
  • UFC 114 will the the start of partnership (May 29)
  • Roku will have the rights to stream the PPV broadcasts on their device for $49.99
  • + they will have a UFC Vault Channel ($59.99 for 6 months)
  • Very similar to their MLB offering, where live games are streamed for a fee
  • (JP) I have been debating getting a Roku or holding out for a popcorn box or a boxee box… now I’m even more torn than ever!

• Apples Damages “HUGE” over IPhone Leak
  • Apple officials told investigators that the iphone prototype was “immensely damaging” and “huge losses”
  • Affidavit cited lack of sales because ppl would know that a new phone was coming out (duh)
  • Also, Apple knew the identify o the man who sold the prototype
  • No arrests have been made yet of the person who committed “industrial espionage”
  • thoughts?
  • The computers haven’t been touched yet as they are still battling it out
    • Apple has had some very serious breaches lately for a company that usually has this stuff locked down so tightly (JP)
      • Macbook revamp leaked early and was accurate with all but one piece of data (Vietnam)
      • Vietnam also picked up a full IPhone4….
      • Rumors are that Apple is on the rampage trying to find out where the leak is… they believe it is from one of the Chinese manufacturing facilities since it is close to the Vietnam border

• Nintendo Wii, Good for the Heart (iKDR)
  • the AHA and Nintendo have teamed up to promote healthy hearts
  • How to do it? AHA showed 30 minutes “active play” a day, demoed for the media on a Wii Fit Plus
  • There was a bit of speculation that said some mysterious “vitality sensor” was going to be announced but nada!
  • Sheer marketing or do they have a point? can the Wii woo kids and adults to be more “active”?
    • (Is this really the Wii that’s good for your heart?? I think it’s not sitting on your @$$ that’s good for the heart!!!) – JP

• Google Wave opened to the Public to much fanfare and fuss…. oh wait… no one cared… nevermind (JP)
  • If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a noise?
  • here’s a funny sidenote… I was in a training session and someone there was asking about a free realtime collaberation tool, and I couldn’t think of one off the top of my head… Guess now that I give it some thought Wave would do all the things he was asking for…. how bad is that for Google… This tool never even occurred to me because while I tried to find a way to use it… I couldn’t. I wonder if this is like Twitter… I was so against it at first… because  I didn’t see a use for it, then after I was asked by a friend to just try it for a week… I became addicted. Wondering if this would be the same thing now… if I tried to use it for a solid week… would I fall in love with it?

• Zynga and Facebook enter 5 yr partnership (SM)
  • Zynga is the big boy on facebook who brings in a loooot of money, farmville, mafia wars, yoville, etc!
  • They’ve been trying for a bit to make themselves an independent player, even announcing a “Z Live”
  • Also there’s been rumors that Zynga doesn’t like Facebook’s 30% slice of the “facebook credit” pie that all developers are going to have to use
  • So, despite all that? Nothing, they sign a 5 yr deal that will keep Zynga games on the giant social site

• ZOMG: ‘Cube’ director wants to make a video game adaptation

  (iKDR)

  • Synopsis of movies: A group of strangers must find their way out of a multi-roomed, cube-shaped prison, which is filled with gruesome, deadly traps.
  • The director of the original Cube, Vincenzo Natali, recently told MTV

    that he’d love to make a video game adaptation of the film.

  • And he used the MTV interview to broadcast, “if there are any game designers out there, give me a call.”
  • You heard the man. Pick up a phone book, and let’s get this thing done.

• Criminals using Google against itself (SM)
  • Criminals are using analytics and good common sense to seed search engines w/ bad sites that attack your computer
  • They’re gaming the top search words to make their bad sites pop up as popular links
  • Haiti, Ipad, toyota recall have all been targeted
  • Click their site and get all sorts of malware instead of the news
  • Other forms of attack? USB drives, it uses the autorun feature to launch the bad stuff and they load it at the manufacturer so you don’t know until you hook it up
  • Facebook scams: “Sexiest Video Ever” Shows someone boobs and “encourages” them to update their video player, but its not a video player….
  • Spam back on the rise: Jan – Mar 2010 (guess the number 139 billion piece of spam email sent) 89% of email traffic on internet
  • Yeah, all the more reasons to be careful w/ your pristine computer

• In Largest Science Experiment Ever, Three Spacecraft Will Swap Laser Fire Across 3 Million Miles (iKDR)
  • The NASA/ESA LISA project aims to measure gravitational waves with giant lasers and free-falling cubes of gold CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is currently the biggest science experiment in operation, but it may have to pass that mantle on soon enough.
  • A collaboration between NASA and the ESA plans to launch three spacecraft into orbit around the sun 3 million miles apart, then have them shoot lasers at each other, all in the name of proving the existence of gravitational waves, the last piece of Einstein’s relativity theory that is as yet unproved.
  • The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, aims to do just that.
  • If gravitational waves do exist, they should slightly alter the distance between the cubes, making them detectable for the first time, a feat ground-based instruments have been unable to accomplish.
  • Work is already underway on LISA’s instruments, and British-based Astrium EADS is already preparing a precursor mission called LISA Pathfinder due for launch next year. As for LISA, don’t hold your breath. The largest scientific instrument in the universe isn’t slated for launch until 2020.

• Are You Kidding Me?: Man wins $1M playing baseball video game (JP)
  • Wade McGilberry just won a million dollars playing a video game.
  • The 23-year-old from Mobile, Ala., accomplished the feat in just an hour and a half, becoming the first to pitch a perfect game in Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s “Major League Baseball

    2K10.”

  • MSNBC report that He and his wife, Katy, plan to… know, what, i dont give a f—.

• The Grand-Theft-Auto-I-Dare-You-To-Top-That-Challenge has just been answered (iDKR)
  • Red Dead Redemption, Like any sandbox-style game, it’s full of wide-open space where players can spontaneously live out their whims of heroism or villainy
  • ..including hogtie other playings and murdering nuns
  • When players successfully kill another character in this way, it unlocks the “Dastardly” achievement for plus five gamerscore.

• Speaking of Lasers… (iKDR)
  • Advances in the technology have made it possible for military testers to shoot down incoming mortar rounds with land-based lasers, and military commanders are on the verge of being able to fire laser blasts from the air that could be aimed at tanks or mines.
  • “We literally are the invisible death ray, let me tell you,” says Mike Rinn of Boeing’s Airborne Laser Program in Seattle, a missile- defense effort.
  • Laser stands for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.”
  • Invented five decades ago, lasers are as widely used as they are little-understood. But they are everywhere around you, inside your laptop’s DVD player, sending your phone calls down fiber optics and ringing up your groceries at the store

• Geeky Note regarding a bug I found in iTunes for iPhone users (JP)
  • Cool new setting to convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps on the fly, leaving your original on your PC or MAC alone thus saving mucho space on your iPhone (I saved almost 4 GB)
  • Version 9.1.1.11 has a bug that causes it to wipe and redo the process each time you sync (it’s only supposed to do this for anything new on subsequent sync operations…. however, with a little digging I found that there were two versions floating around out there
  • Version 9.1.1.12 (available at apple.com/downloads for both PC and MAC now) corrects this bug… so if you’ve run into this bug or were thinking about trying the conversion… Grab this first!

• This fall programming is all about the geeks (iKDR)
  • The Event, starring Jason Ritter (NBC)
    • Everyman investigates the mysterious disappearance of his fiancee, Leila (Sarah Roemer, Disturbia), and unwittingly begins to expose the biggest cover-up in U.S. history.
  • Undercovers, starring Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (NBC)
    • Outwardly, Steven Bloom (Kodjoe) and his wife, Samantha (Mbatha-Raw), are a typical married couple…Secretly, the duo were two of the CIA’s best spies until they fell in love on the job five years ago and retired. When fellow spy and friend Nash (Carter MacIntyre) goes missing while on the trail of a Russian arms dealer, the Blooms are reinstated and thrust back into the world of espionage as they follow leads that span the globe.
  • Terra Nova starring as yet unknown (Fox)
    • A large group of settlers are preparing to leave the apocalyptic world they live in to time travel back millions of years via a massive, high-tech contraption. Their goal is to see trees, enjoy a blue sky, eat real food – basically, to start over in this so-called Eden. But what they find is unlike anything they were expecting.
  • The Cape, starring Dave Lyons (NBC)
    • Lyons [plays] Vince Faraday, an honest cop on a corrupt police force, who finds himself framed for a series of murders and presumed dead. He is forced into hiding, leaving behind his wife, Dana (Jennifer Ferrin, “Life on Mars”) and son, Trip (Ryan Wynott, “Flash Forward”). Fueled by a desire to reunite with his family and to battle the criminal forces that have overtaken Palm City, Faraday becomes “The Cape” his son’s favorite comic book superhero — and takes the law into his own hands.
  • No Ordinary Family, starring Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz (ABC)
    • The Powell’s plane crashes into a swampy river; they manage to escape, but, their pilot, unfortunately, isn’t so lucky. As the Powells gratefully return to their old lives, they are shocked to discover that they have suddenly developed some rather extraordinary abilities.

• Ghostbusters invade NYC Public library (iKDR)
  • Public scene-maker Improv Everywhere

    recently staged an inspired stunt in the historic location: a reimagining of the opening scene of Ghostbusters

    .

  • The NYPL is currently dealing with some serious budget cuts, so they approached Improv Everywhere (of Pantless Subway Ride

    fame) to draw attention to the building’s plight.

• Veggie induced Coma??? (JP)
  • While eating your veggies is good for you… too much of anything is not good for you….
    • an 88 yr old Chinese ate enough raw bok choy to send herself into a life-threatening, thyroid-induced coma
    • How much does it take you might be wondering…. She ate 2 – 3 lbs of the raw veggie every day for months
    • Why??? you might ask?? (I did) she was trying to get her diabetes under control????!?!?!? WTF????
• Testicle blasting ray funded by Gates
  • Ray Gun, Family Jewels, no more little swimmers, men sad
  • Its being billed as a non-permanent contraception possibility
  • but really? a ray gun shining at my manhood? what if the operator sneezes? #justsayin

• Doctors see rise in Google-itis
  • Doctors are seeing more ppl coming in with mis-diagnosis on their mind
  • Cause? ppl take symptoms and “google” them finding weird, non diseases that they might have

• Facebook Uprising 101
• Tracking without cookies
• Computer identifies sarcastic tweets

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