Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• LEGO Gun Shoots LEGO Bricks (udg)
  • What’s cooler than building a gun out of LEGOs? Why building one that actually shoots LEGO bricks of course!!! Check it out! Yeah, I’m keeping this one away from the monkeys. We’ve seen A Christmas Story a million times, one would still shoot an eye out.
• Lego Technic Super-8 Projector (SM)
• Modern Warfare 3 (CustomPcMax brought this to my attention)
• Roll a D6

Geek Speak

• Special Guest Barrett Brown talks Anonymous & Project PM
  • Barrett Brown. Ex public face of Anonymous, Reporter, Author, and contributor to Vanity fair, The Guardian & Al Jezeera
  • Campaign to encourage ppl to participate in small online groups for activism reason
  • Crowd Sourcing
  • into Intelligence contracting industry

Gold Sponsors:

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• Both have been out on the Android Marketplace for awhile now
• After a long vetting period, Today in Movie History is now available on iTunes!!!
• Go check out both apps, TIGH  and TIMH, now available on both Android and iPhone
• Now As Seen on Wired.com!!

Natali’s Etsy!!!

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

Deals of the Week / New Releases

• New Movie Releases (SM)
  • The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin) GENIUS!!!
  • Platoon!
  • Tigerland (Joel Schumacher & Colin Farrell)
  • Papillon & Le Mans (Steve McQueen FTW)

• Barnes and Noble has Unveiled it’s New Touchsreen e-reader
  • The Simple Touch Reader is a replacement for the old black and white 1st Generation Nook
  • Has a 6 inch Pearl E Ink display and is 35% lighter than the original Nook
  • Sells for $139
  • Simple design utilizes touchscreen to make the device much more tablet-like than its predecessor.
  • Promises 2 months of battery life, but this is using the default industry standard of 1 hour of use per day.

• 2nd Release of Blizzcon 2011 tickets (SM)
  • Wednesday at 7 PM Pacific… get them before they sell out in seconds!
  • (more than likely, if you aren’t live then you missed this)

• Duke Nukem Forever Gone Gold? (SM)
  • anonymous reports are the game is finally on the CD cut phase
  • 15 years after they started development of course

Movie Minute (new feature)

• Stephen Fry joins the cast of The Hobbit.(btm)
  • Peter Jackson has announced via Facebook
  • Veteran Actor, Writer, and British National Treasure
  • Will Play “The Master of Laketown
• Are you getting stiffed at the theater? (SM)
  • 3D lenses on the new digital projectors make everything dark in 2D films
  • Probably around a 40% drop in light
  • Look up and if there’s 2 beams of light and your in a 2D film.. they probably have the wrong lens on.
  • Reason? Hard to change lenses between film types.Teenage minimum wage workers. nuff said

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• NASA to Send Astronauts into Deep Space (btm)
  • NASA announced that it plans to build new spacecraft that will fly astronauts to nearby asteroids or Mars.
  • The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is based on the design of the cancelled Orion vehicle, originally designed to take astronauts back to the moon.
  • New vehicle is to be built by Lockheed-Martin and will carry a crew of 4 astronauts on 21 day missions.
  • Design is said to be 10 times safer than current shuttles
  • Will have 316 cubic feet of habitable space and be able to land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
  • Lockheed Martin is said to be making a version of the Orion vehicle for use as a “lifeboat” for the International Space Station. Once the shuttle fleet is permanently retired this will be a vital means of evacuating astronauts from the ISS in an emergency.

• CDC Finally Recognizes Zombies (udg)
  • After years in healthcare and a monkey in elementary school, I can tell you the Center for Disease Controls doesn’t mess around. Which is why I find great joy in them not only acknowledging Ali Kahn’s Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse but embracing it to market to the masses the importance of being prepared for emergencies. Whether you are over the zombie craze, still lovin’ the zombie or convinced the apocalypse could never happen, it can’t hurt to prepare for it. Like the CDC says, if you are ready for a zombie apocalypse, you’re ready for any emergency. Well, except maybe that whole giant earthquake rapture thing.
  • I’m going to skip past her intro to zombies. I think everyone listening knows what a zombie is. They nom on brains. Preferably yours. They get you, you nom on brains too or just get ripped to complete shreds. Either one is gonna ruin your weekend.
  • The most important part, and the one that the CDC is really passing on is what you’re going to want in your emergency kit.  (for a full list visit the CDC Emergency page) Here are some of the basics:

• Water (1 gallon per person per day)
• Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
• Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
• Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
• Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
• Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
• Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
• First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)
  • Now that you’ve got your kit made- I(’m thinking rolling suitcase is gonna be needed at least. Remember- ziploc bags are your friends too. And DO NOT FORGET A CAN OPENER) you’re gonna wanna sit down with your fam and come up with an emergency plan. I’m not ashamed to say- I already know the ideal place to hunker down in the event zombies do attack. We definitely have a plan. For more info on how you can create a plan- CDC Site

• • Don’t fear says the CDC, they have a plan too! If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. They would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated. Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas.
  • So there ya have it. My best advice? Memorize Zombieland and do not forget the double tap.

• Draft Horses used to lay fiber optics in West Virginia (SM)
  • You would think this would be Intarwebz
  • How do you get huge spools of Fiber over and to remote locations such as mountains???
  • Wheeled vehicles can’t do it
  • Enter Desmarais and his 1200 lb draft horse “Fred”
  • West Virginia has promised broadband to every last mile by 2013 but how do you get vehicles and crews into unpassable dirt roads and swamps???
  • Fred, solves the problem by pulling the cables off the spools and not leaving a mark (unlike four wheelers)
  • He’s been working the job for 5 years now
  • On a good day? He string around 8,000 feet of cable and works a 70 hr work week

• Micro$oft Giving College Students Free X-Box with New Computers (btm)
  • For a limited time Microsoft is giving students a special offer
  • Buy a Windows 7 PC for over $699 and get a free Xbox 360
  • If you have a .edu email address you can make purchase online
  • otherwise you’ll need to bring proof of studentship to local participating retailer and make purchase there.
  • Deal only good through Sept. 9th or while supplies last.

• Zuckerberg Wants to Get Rid of Age Restrictions on FB (udg)
  • It’s not going to shock anyone I’m sure that there are many FB users under the required age of 13. But, it seems CEO Mark Zuckerberg is okay with that. He voiced his desire to allow younger users to use the world’s largest social networking platform at the California New Schools Summit. “That will be a fight we take on at some point,” Zuckerberg said. “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age. Because of the restrictions we haven’t even begun this learning process. If they’re lifted then we’d start to learn what works. We’d take a lot of precautions to make sure that they (younger kids) are safe.”
  • The minimum age of 13 is actually set by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection act, which is a federal law that was passed in 1998.  With many news stories highlighting online bullying, some ending very tragically, this makes for a very bold statement. Add in the fact FB continues to face some huge backlash over their handling of personal information and it’s very easy to dismiss Zuckerberg’s dream as simply an attempt to grow its user base.  Then again, he could be walking the line of a change in opinion. According to Fox News reports, the % of parents that feel comfortable with their child using social media has doubled over the past year. But, that’s only 17% of those polled.
  • WIth 7.5 million Facebook users under 13, and 5 million of those under 10, it would seem if kids can’t be stopped from using the service, then perhaps Zuckerberg is right and Facebook should be adapted to better suit them That is going to mean providing stronger content filters and parental notifications for starters. But, first Zuckerberg will have to head up a campaign to change the law, and deal with the angry mob of parents that want to keep their kids off FB and other users that agree with them. It’s going to be a hell of a ride I’m sure and one definitely worth a watch. I’ll bring the popcorn.

• Hacker War on Sony Continues
  • Sony Music Greece Falls to Hackers (SM)
    • Sony BMG greece website hacked and username/emails posted to the webz
    • Passwords are bogus however in the post, does not guarantee that a someone doesn’t have them
    • Defeated by SQL Injection attack
  • Sony Hack Cost Company $170 Million (SM)
    • So the financial report states that the company lost 170 million to the attack
    • that was for this last fiscal year alone
    • That on top of a 3.2 Billion dollar loss from earthquake
  • Needless to say, somebody has an axe to grind with Sony

• Blast Rips Through Chinese Apple Plant (btm)
  • (SM)wow, 500,000 iPads revealed with a bang!
  • Blast in Chengdu factory killed 3 and injured 15 employees
  • Caused by combustible dust in workshop that polishes iPads
  • Explosion isn’t expected to cause delays unless safety inspections exceed 2 or 3 weeks
  • Many are saying this is an example of the dangers of concentrating product production in one or two areas. One disaster has potential of causing major shortages.

• Automotive Black Boxes (udg)
  • Later this year, the National Highway Safety Administration is talking about proposing a requirement that all new vehicles contain a black box pretty much like the ones on aircrafts that will record vehicle inputs and provide a snapshot of the final moments before a crash.
  • Who would have access to it? Law enforcement, insurance companies, automakers and I’m guessing anyone that figures out how to hack it. You won’t be able to turn it off and i’m sure all you’ll know about it is the little legal disclosure in your owner’s manual. Sound way too big brother? Guess what- if you’re driving a car with airbags, odds are there’s already one of these devices under your hood.
  • Turns out Automakers have long installed electronic data recorders in their automobiles and ever since late 2006 the NHTSA has required them to tell consumers about the devices.  That federal rule also outlines what information is recorded and stipulates that it be used to increase vehicle safety.
  • This proposal would “Expand the availability and future utility of the EDR data” – so, in other words, all automobiles have the devices. The proposal is expected sometime this year and I’m guessing there is going to be A LOT of opposition to it.

• How fast is your Internet? (btm)
  • Researchers have set a new record sending data at 26 terabits per second
  • Equivalent of sending the contents of 1,000 HD DVDs in a second
  • Uses “fast Fourier transform” to unpick separate colors of light in laser beam, each encoded with its own data.

• Brain Cells Grown in a Lab (udg)
  • When it comes to brain cells, most people think of neurons. Well, the most common ones are actually astrocytes. They are small, star-shaped cells that actually act like little body guards for neurons. Because of that, they play an important role in diseases of the central nervous system like dementia. And now, we can grow them in a lab.
  • “Not a lot of attention has been paid to these cells because human astrocytes have been hard to get,”  said study researcher Su-Chun Zhang from UW-Madison. “But we can make billions or trillions of them from a single stem cell. Without the astrocyte, neurons can’t function,” Zhang went on to say “Astrocytes wrap around nerve cells to protect them and keep them healthy. They participate in virtually every function or disorder of the brain.”
  • These little bad boys also perform basic housekeeping functions, like regulating blood flow, cleaning up excess neurotransmitters and help control the blood-brain barrier, which keeps toxic substances out of the brain.
  • Zhang created the cells from both embryonic and adult stem cells by treating them with special proteins to get them to grow into astrocytes. These cells could also be useful as a transplant, to treat diseases like Lou Gehrig’s disease, in which the neurons are overworked. Transplanting healthy astrocytes could rescue the injured neurons. This really is a HUGE breakthrough.

• PSP Games Coming to PS3 (SM)
  • Plans to bridge between its handheld and its cadillac
  • PSP Remaster = most popular psp games ported to PS3
  • Given 3D support for good measure
  • Most games can be played on either the PSP or PS3 w/ saves transitioning through cloud
  • Only game announced? Monster Hunter Portable 3D HD
  • NGP already announced with 5” oled screen and dual thumb sticks
  • Already in turmoil, probably another attention grab to try and add sales
  • (SM) Will I have to buy the game twice???

• Netflix Ups Viacom Content (btm)
  • Over the weekend many folks online were concerned that Netflix was losing all Viacom content as it was all set to expire on May 22
  • Actually this was because new contracts between Netflix and Viacom were going into effect to provide even more Viacom content.
  • New content will include:
    • More episodes of “Jersey Shore” (god knows we need that)
    • More of “The Hills”
    • New shows from BET including “American Gangster”
    • Comedy Central shows like “The Sarah Silverman Program”
    • More episodes from Nickeloden of “Sponge Bob”
    • More unspecified content from VH1, Logo and Spike

Intarweb Goldmine

• Marriage Proposal via Movie Trailer (btm)
  • OMG this made me all kinds of tear up. The bastards. (udg)
  • An Atlanta man has made one of the coolest marriage proposals ever.
  • He worked with a wedding videographer to make a fake movie trailer that features him asking his girlfriend’s father’s blessing to marry her.
  • He then arranged for the trailer to be shown at their local theater prior to a showing of “Fast Five”
  • Made excuse that he “had to work” and sent her to theater with her brother.
  • Secretly filled the audience with family and loved ones.
  • After the trailer he enters the theater and proposes to her.

• So Wrong in So Many Ways (udg)
  • Justin Lawther staged a 1 man topless protest outside the RSPCA office in Burwood East and claims he’s going to return every day and is considering a hunger strike until he gets his Angus back in his arms.  Who is Angus? Oh the parrot he had seized from him after he filmed it clinging to a windshield wiper as he drove down the Eastern Freeway. Yup.
  • “I would die for him. He is my life,” he said. “I don’t tag him with ownership or call him my pet, because he’s my best mate.”
  • In March, Mr Lawther posted a video on YouTube of Angus’s ride, and another where the bird was thrown around by wipers.
  • Angry animal lovers set up a Save Angus the Eclectus Parrot page on Facebook.
  • On Friday, after a seven-week search and police intervention, the parrot was taken into custody.
  • Mr Lawther claims the bird was removed from his care without due process. “They didn’t even ask if he is on treatment or an exercise regimen, which he is,” he said. “It has been a rollercoaster and I’m not doing very well. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
  • The RSPCA plans to file a court application to stop Angus being returned to Mr Lawther.

• Chinese Exploding Watermelons (btm)
  • 115 acres of melons have been ruined after bursting open
  • contributing factors may be from the chemical forchlorfenuron a fruit growth enhancer
  • Chinese health officials are saying heavy rains after a recent draught caused the melons to burst, but director of the US National Watermelon Association says that rainfall alone doesn’t cause melons to burst like this, only mildew and shallow surface cracking.

• Speaking of Watermelons- Don’t Toss This Guy’s Into the Ocean (udg)
  • It seems 68 year old Karl Ludwig Eichner takes his watermelon very seriously. Perhaps too seriously. In fact police arrested the Florida man at Lowdermilk Park after he harassed a woman with a pool noodle before punching her in the face.
  • According to the police report, the women noticed a watermelon that was carved into the shape of a head resting in the sand. The seemingly abandoned melon was attracting insects, so the woman picked it up and, thinking the melon would eventually disintegrate, disposed of it in the ocean.
  • Eichner, however, retrieved the watermelon and returned it to the beach, only to have the woman once again dispose of it in the ocean.
  • And that’s when Eichner stopped using his noodle, according to investigators.
  • “Eichner approached the woman with his swim noodle full of water and dumped the water on her as she was sitting on her towel,” according to the police report. “He then punched her in the cheek.”
  • Personally I make it a point to never mess with anyone that carves a watermelon into the shape of a head.
• Depression Era America, in Color (btm)
  • We’ve all seen the old black and white pictures from the Great Depression and World War II
  • Library of Congress has recently released about 1,700 new photos from the early 1940s and they’re in color.
  • These beautifully shot pictures show everyday life in America as the Great Depression grew close to an end and World War II was on the horizon.
• There Can Be Only One (udg)
  • A Louisville woman faces first-degree disorderly conduct and menacing charges after police said she took out a sword during an argument at a Pizza Hut.
  • According to an arrest report, Wynika Mason was causing trouble at the Pizza Hut on Seventh Street Road and police were called.
  • When police arrived, she began yelling at them, the report said.
  • Customers and employees were in the restaurant, and employees said they felt threatened by Mason’s behavior.
  • An employee told police Mason had a sword with her and began yelling and pulling it out of the scabbard, according to the police report. The report also stated Mason’s brother said he took the sword from her and put it in the car.
  • Officers were given consent to search the vehicle and found the sword on the driver’s seat.

• Only the Most Shocking Thing You’ll See Online This Week (btm)
  • Attendees of this year’s Maker Faire got a surprise treat
  • After guest speaker Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) gave his scheduled talk he entered a Faraday cage and danced while ArcAttack performed the Doctor Who Theme using custom built “Singing Tesla Coils” and a lot of electricity

Extra Links

• Interview with Michael Scott, Apple’s First CEO (btm)
• Download CDC Zombie Badges (udg)

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

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Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

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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

• 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
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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:

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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

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• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

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• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
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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

We are LIVE on Ustream . This week we talk content ownership, lots of new releases, plenty of apple news, and then a very special Chinese Conspiracy theory hour

Intro Natali
Intro Ben

Items of Interest

• Ultimate Mashup: Angry Rebels & Imperial Pigs (udg)
  • A long time ago, on an app far, far away… The Imperial Pigs have stolen the Rebellion’s eggs, so the Rebellion struck back by stealing the plans for the Death Pig. Check out bite.ca for more of this great mashup. T shirts are even available.

• Rebecca Black Star Wars Parody (udg)
  • You’ve all seen the train wreck that is Friday. Most have seen the gazillion parodies running rampant. But, no matter how sick you are of it all, you have to watch this one last one. The words have all been changed and it is sheer awesomeness.

• World’s Biggest Pacman Game (udg)
  • Pac-man fan? Meet your new best friends Soap Creative. They’ve created The World’s Biggest Pac-Man game.  When I say World’s biggest- we’re talking it could take YEARS for one person to complete it. You see, it never stops growing. Users can create their own rooms for free and add them to the board.
  • Originally created to showcase the capabilities of Microsoft’s IE 9, you can choose to start in any room you want and hop over to other rooms even if you haven’t completed the room you are in. And the rooms so far range from simple to damnear impossible. Welcome to user-generated content.
  • Tallies are kept on a personal, regional and global level based on pellets and ghosts eaten and rooms cleared.

• For many April 19th marked the release of the much anticipated game, Portal 2, but for those of us who were fans of the canceled Sarah Conner Chronicles series we know it’s also the date that Skynet was brought online, meaning that April 21st will be Judgement Day. (btm)
  • Many gamer forums have already been asking if game developers chose the release date for this reason.
  • If you’re planning a Judgement Day party on Wednesday to celebrate the Skynet destruction of mankind, just remember, “The cake is a lie.”
    • (our local mall has a cell phone store called “Skynet” maybe I should make signs and protest our destruction?) (btm)
  • If you’re listening to the recorded version of this podcast after the 21st, find John Conner, he’s your only hope.

• Time Lapse Milky Way plus more!
  • Gorgeous video of the Milky way and the clouds over a large span of time
  • I’m such a space nut… the music is nice too

• Top 10 Zombie Music Videos
  • Nothing says loving like zombies, guts, blood, and good music
  • Grouper “Alien Observer” (lesbian zombies ‘nuff said), Kanye West “Monster” (hot zombies), Peaches and Iggy Pop “Kick it”, Aesop Rock “Coffee”

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

• How to Get in On Gears of War 3 Beta (udg)
  • Last week the Epic Game’s latest chapter Gears of War saga, Gears of War 3 beta went live. The early access beta started this weekend and will run through April 24 when the full public beta opens and runs to May 15.
  • The web is rampant with official and unofficial ways to get access to the beta. We’re going to give you the real (and safest) way to get in on it. Most people playing the beta right now are players who got their beta codes with their purchase of Bulletstorm: Epic Edition, which will still get you a code if you can find a copy on the shelves.
  • You can also follow developer and Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) and Epic Games Vice President and Co-Founder Mark Rein (@MarkRein) on Twitter: they both have been giving out codes to their followers all weekend, and show no signs of stopping. If you don’t get in on the beta before the 24th though, don’t worry: if you pre-order Gears of War 3, you’ll get a beta code that you can redeem on the 25th to join the fun.
  • So far, reviews on the beta has been impressive and it’s being considered a great update to an already well polished and established series.

• Celebrate Earth Day with Geeky Style. Several companies offering Solar Powered backpacks that charge your hand-held devices (btm)
  • 4 Watts of Solar Power from 1 hour in the sun = 3 hours of talk time,
  • 4-5 hours in the sun will fully charge a typical phone
  • Battery that offers up to 19 hours talk time or 48 hours music playback
  • Prices range from mid-$200 to well over $300

• Win a Copy of The Avengers: The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Vol. 1 & 2 (udg)
  • Our friends over at Big Shiny Robot are giving away The Avengers: The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Vol 1 & 2 on DVD.  The contest runs through Friday April 29th with winners being announced on Monday, May 2nd.
  • To enter, just shoot them an email over at editor at bigshinyrobot.com. Make sure you put “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!” in the subject line.
  • Want some extra chances? Head over to their facebook page and invite all of your friends to like ‘em. Or you can ask your followers on twitter to follow us @BigShinyRobot. Just be sure to mention when you  email them that you’ve done it.

• Beastie Boys New Album: Hot Sauce Committee Part 2
  • May 3rd release date, so pumped
  • Digital pre-sales will be delivered the “day-of”

• Read Eisner nominee for Best Humor Publication, Aphrodisiac, for Free (udg)
  • The folks over at AdHouse were super excited to hear Aphrodisiac was nominated for an Eisner. Unfortunately, they are in between printing. They wanted to make sure that all voters had a chance to read it, so they put it online for free!

• New Movie Releases
  • IP MAN 2!!!!! – Watch this back-to-back with Ip Man #awesomekungfu
  • Goemon – Robin Hood with Ninjas and Kung Fu
  • Mortal Kombat BR
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers (Season 1)
  • Tokyo Gore Police – Yoshihiro Nishimura and “unbridled horror insanity + fetishism” (You can check it out on Netflix streaming now. udg)

• Irredeemable for $0.99 an Issue! (udg)
  • Now through tomorrow night at 11pm E, ComiXology has their critically acclaimed series Irredeemable for just $0.99 an issue.
  • Like to actually hold the paper? Their physical copy of Irredeemable: Vol 1 (issues 1-4) is on sale for $4.
  • Never heard of Irredeemable? It’s by Mark Waid & Peter Krause and basically about a Superman-like hero that spends a lifetime protecting earth. Until the day he snaps, decides humanity needs a good wake-up slap and begins taking out his former teammates who are the biggest.

Movie Minute (new feature)

• We Were All Wrong- New Dark Knight Rises Roles Revealed (udg)
  • We’ve known for a while now that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotilliard were signed on to The Dark Knight Rises. Knowing that, we made our own lil assumptions about who they’d be playing. We figured Marion would be playing Talia al Ghul (daughter of Ra’s al GHul and Bruce Wayne love interest) and JGL would be Alberto Falcone AKA “The Holiday Killer.” Guess what happens when we assume? Yeah, we’re not so cleaver it seems.
  • After MONTHS and months of us assuming away, Warner Bros & Christopher Nolan have officially announced Joseph and Marion have joined that cast. They’ve also told us who they will be playing. Marion will be playing Miranda Tate, “a Wayne Enterprises board member eager to help a still-grieving Bruce Wayne resume his father’s philanthropic endeavors for Gotham” and Joseph Gordon-Levitt will play John Blake, “a Gotham City beat cop assigned to special duty under the command of Commissioner Gordon”.

• Pride, Prejudiced & Zombies Gets a Director (udg)
  • If for some odd reason you haven’t heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it’s a novel set in the same world as the classic Jane Austen novel, but the main characters Ms. Bennet and good ole Mr. Darcy are fighting off a Zombie infestation.
  • And it looks like it may finally be coming to a theater sometime soonish. Seems third time may be a charm, as Craig Gillespie (known for the new Fright Night) has been officially set in stone to direct the film.
  • “We are so excited to have Craig Gillespie on board this film. His sensibility spans from genre bending horror to elegant character driven comedy, which is perfect for this movie.” glows  Alli Shearmur, Lionsgate’s president of production
  • Hopefully he’s still excited after Criag let it slip in an EW interview that the script he’ll be using came from David O. Russell, that guy who just got a ton of acclaim for a little picture called The Fighter.
    • No, we have a really great script that we’re just going to do a polish on and then get going, really…. David Russell wrote the script off the book, and it has such a great mix of humor and horror.
  • It isn’t clear when production will begin on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, although with a director finally locked in, it seems they are ramping up to start filming soon.
• Full body shot of new Green Lantern CGI costume (btm)
  • This just confirms my fears about the CGI costume.
  • Put on some freaking boots!
    • (does anyone really need to see Ryan Reynolds toes?)
• Game of Thrones renewed already
  • Series adaptation of popular books by George R.R. Martin “A song of Ice and Fire”
  • First episode got strong critical acclaim
  • 4.2 million viewers on a PPV channel is WAAAY Strong
  • Already committed to a second season

Geek Speak

• The End of Content Ownership
  • the cloud is becoming more prominent as of late
  • Netflix, Zune, Amazon, everyone wants to push the “rent” model for content
  • New services, such as 24 symbols, will offer “streaming” books
  • Is the lack of ownership of for monetary outlay alarming or just par for the course?
  • (SM) Zune and Netflix ownership
  • (btm) What do we really “own” any more? A lot of software you buy seems to write their EULAs in a way that says you’re actually leasing the software vice owning it. Even if you buy the disk and have everything local on your machine it’s not really yours.
    • Blizzard recently banned players for cheating in Single Player Campaign mode in StarCraft II and disabled their CD keys.
      • (I’m totally behind banning cheaters online in Battle.net, but what gives you the right to do anything pertaining to what I do offline?)
    • Two years ago Amazon deleted copies of 1984 from Kindles
      • Big Brother much?
      • Kindle TOS says you’re entitled to keep a permanent digital copy of any digital content you purchase (section 3, paragraph 2)
        • (I guess it’s permanent until they change their minds)
    • What happens when you don’t or can’t pay your monthly cloud access fee?
      • Who controls access? Google and most other cloud providers will turn over your information upon receiving a warrant from the government. Don’t fall for the “If you’re not doing anything wrong you don’t have to worry” myth.

Tech, Gaming, and Geek News

• Rep Jesse Jackson Jr Blames iPad for US Job Loses(udg)
  • Illinois Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr went on an insane anti-technology rant on the floor of Congress on Friday. You see, he thinks “technology gadgets like the iPad” are the reason this country is losing jobs.
  • His rant:
    • “A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having purchased an iPad and said that I happened to believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device, which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs. Now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad, download your book, download your newspaper, download your magazine.”
      • Okay. Let’s stop right there for a moment. Dear Jessie- Yes, that iPad can download your books, newspapers, magazines, etc. But, do you REALLY think the $500 iPad is to blame? What about the oh $100 Kindle? Or B&N’s own Nook? Or the publishers that even format for mobile devices?  Just a thought. Let’s hear what else you got, oh wise one…

• “Chicago State University, in my congressional district, in freshman class, they are not being given textbooks any longer. They are all being given iPads as they enter school. President Wayne Watson hopes to have a textbook-less campus in four years, where at this state university they will no longer have textbooks.”
  • Oh Jessie. When is the last time you went to college? If I could carry one device that stored all of my textbooks in it, in a format I could highlight, copy and paste notes out of, etc., yeah, that would be the way I would go.  I’ll spare you the more economically and environmentally sound dance because you’re clearly not in the mindset to even remotely grasp that right now. And you’ll probably just add out of work lumberjacks to your next rant.
    • “Well, what becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs?”
      • Umm, Jessie, people still need to write, edit, format and distribute the books.

• • • “And what becomes of bookstores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper?”
      • Okay, I’ll give you a 1/2 a point there. I do fear the loss of libraries in this country. But, it’s not the iPad’s fault. The problem does not solely lie on the manufacturers of any of the devices.
    • “Well, in the not too distant future, such jobs simply will not exist. Steve Jobs is doing pretty well. He’s created the iPad. Certainly, it has made life more efficient for Americans, but the iPad is produced in China. It is not produced here in the United States. So, the Chinese get to take advantage of our First Amendment value — that is to provide freedom of speech through the iPad to the American people. But there is no protection for jobs here in America to ensure that the American people are being put to work.”
      • Jinkies. Look Jessie, 10 minutes with me and I’ll break it down to you how the Chinese are going to take over the entire world via the use of technology. But that craziness is too out there for even me.  Before you get your lil knickers in a bunch and decide to have a case of diarrhea of the mouth/constipation of the brain regarding technology and the Chinese, gimme a call. We’re neighbors. I’ll meet you for coffee and give ya a lil education. Don’t worry, I’ll leave my evil MacBook at home. Well, maybe.

• Adobe Relents, Adopts Apple Video Protocol (SM)
  • Remember how adobe moaned about using Apples video standard?
  • Flash currently uses RTSP (a proprietary format for file transmission)
  • Apple uses HTTP live streaming along with H.264 as its video format
  • It was at least submitted to standards body
  • M$ immediately added it to it’s venerable IIS platform so that when requesting video from iPad, they get that format
  • Adobe now has added it to their Flash media server in a “commitment to develop technologies that simplify broadcast workflows to make it simpler to reach a fragmented lineup of devices”.
  • I.E. They’re tired of trying to convince Apple to include Flash on their platform

• Apple suing Samsung for Patent Infringements (btm)
  • Filed suit last Friday
    • (reminds me of the Apple vs. Windows “look and feel” lawsuit WRT Windows 3 and the Macintosh OS.)
  • Claims Samsung’s Galaxy tablet and S phone are too similar to iPad and iPhone
    • “Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smartphone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products.”
  • If this law suit is successful, what does it mean for other smart phone and tablet makers?

• China’s Silent Cyber Takeover (udg)
  • The Chinese have this game galled Go. One of it’s proverbs is “Play on the Point of Symmetry.” Which means, when right and left have the same shape, there’s play in the center. And it looks like that’s a pretty good metaphor for how China and Russia (*cough Red Dawn *cough*) are leveraging US multinational corporations to accomplish strategic goals that are looking like they include covert technology transfer of intellectual property, access to source code for use in malware creation and backdoor access to critical infrastructure.
  • Let’s take a look at Chinese entity Huawei Symantec. Now Huawei has been reportedly blocked by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) in its attempt to acquire 3Leaf and AT&T was said to be officially discouraged from purchasing any equipment from them by the National Security Agency. Both of these events are based on security concerns. Huawei successfully formed a joint venture with Symantec in 2007 called Huawei Symantec Technologies Co. Ltd. (HS). Huawei is the majority partner with 51 percent ownership, with the entity being headquartered in Chengdu, China.
  • If you aren’t familiar with Symantec thereby not so sure what Huawei is, they’re the leading provider of network security and storage appliance solutions to enterprise customers worldwide. Yup, worldwide.
  • Add to this a 2008 corporate briefing of theirs that describes the history, capabilities, and business goals of HS, one of which is to ‘build China’s first laboratory of attack and defense for networks and applications.’
  • This equation pretty much means that Symantec, a major US information security company, is ‘assisting’ China’s cyber security research in computer network attack and defense — research that has high potential for abuse by state and non-state actors in China.
  • The plot thickens. In the last few months, HS has formed two new joint ventures with US companies — SYNNEX and Force10 Networks. Why? With SYNNEX, the goal is apparently to ‘distribute Huawei Symantec’s storage and security products to its resellers throughout North America.’
  • For Force10 Networks, Huawei Symantec said the firm ‘is pleased to establish this strategic partnership with Force10 Networks, and expects the relationship to further drive strong results for our existing North American customer base as well as tap into new business opportunities.’
  • The kicker- both SYNNEX and Force10 Networks currently sell to the US government.
  • Force10 Networks’ website says that they sell their products to ‘defense, intelligence and civilian agencies to advance the bandwidth needs and reliability demands of government IT infrastructure while ensuring the economics and performance of mission critical networks.’
  • Since Huawei’s growth strategy includes financial support from Chinese banks that enable it to offer very low cost bids on key contracts, and since many governments (including India and the United States) have legal provisions that require them to go with the lowest bidder, these partnerships provide an apparently winning strategy for SYNNEX and Force10 Networks to secure government sales thanks to Huawei Symantec’s low manufacturing costs – all without HS’s name likely ever having to appear on the contract.
  • So, even though Huawei is publicly blocked by US lawmakers from selling directly to the US government, they have played on the ‘point of symmetry’ and quietly secured access to US Defense Department and intelligence community customers through collaborative partnerships that no one has so far contested. With their boast of a 30% increase in profit over this last year, Huawai’s business has been really good.
  • It’s not just China that seems to be placing itself in an advantageous strategic position.
  • I highly encourage you to check out the link in the shownotes and read more on the Russians, Intel, a laboratory and how they eliminated the need for espionage.

• Armenia makes Chess mandadory in school (SM)
  • Little Tiny Armenia is making themselves into a Chess power house
  • How? They’re requiring the game as part of their school curriculum
  • Theory: “Fosters schoolchildren’s intellectual development and teaches to think flexibly and wisely”
  • Most chess players are treatest like super stars in the country
  • Already a powerhouse: They won gold in 2006 and 2008 in International competition
  • Levon Aronian is currently ranked number 3 in the world in the WCF

• President says White House Tech is “30 Years out of date” (btm)
  • We’ve all seen the super high-tech equipment the President uses in movies and on TV but apparently that’s all TV magic and special effects.
  • “You know the Oval Office always thought I was going to have like real cool phones and stuff,” Obama said last night, “You know, we can’t get our phones to work!  I’m like ‘come on guys, I’m the president of the United States.’  Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff, and the big screen comes up? It doesn’t happen.”
  • “I mean our IT and purchasing is horrible,” he added, “And this is true across the board. This is true at the Pentagon,  it’s true in the agencies, it’s true in the Department of Homeland security.”
  • (No fancy Jack Bauer phones I guess.)

• Match.Com Now to Check Users Against Sex Offender Database (udg)
  • Following a lawsuit filed against them last week, dating giant Match.com has decided that in the next 3 months, they will begin checking users against sex offender databases.
  • The suit was filed by a California woman that states she was attacked by a man she met on the site. According to her, the first date went fine and the man seemed charming. Second date, not so much. She alleges he forced her to have sex with him. The man has been convicted of sexual battery.
  • Mark Webb, the attorney for the woman, identified in the lawsuit only as “Jane Doe” stated that a check like the one Match.com will be implementing could have prevented his client’s attack.
  • Mandy Ginsberg, president of Match.com told The Associated Press in an email that the company had considered such screenings for years, but “their historical unreliability has always led us to conclude against it.”
  • Ginsberg said after talking to providers and advisers the last few days, company officials decided to make a change. He further warned
  • “We want to stress that while these checks may help in certain instances, they remain highly flawed, and it is critical that this effort does not provide a false sense of security to our members,” she said, adding that members should always plan for a first-meeting to be in public and should tell a friend where they’ll be.
  • I applaud Match.com for taking such an effort. In all honesty, I think that the woman’s case would fail to hold up in court. The fact the site chose to make the huge change rather than fight it is to be respected.

• Portal 2 Early Release Program, Genius or Crass? (SM)
  • Anybody remember the Humble Bundle 1 and 2 (pay as much or little)
  • Kickstarter for games: Creavures (game rewards for donating)
  • Pay $40 for an Indy Bundle (13 games), win a possibility to get early release of P2?
  • Buy and it adds to the processing for a faster reboot of GLaDOS, the original evil computer in the old game
  • Whats the point? Is that a worthy goal to spend double for a game that will come out anyways?
  • (btw, the promotion was a failure,

• Samsung developing a 2GHz, Dual Core Smartphone (btm)
  • “This product will have the data processing capabilities of a regular PC”
  • Considering separate sales of the CPU units to other companies (btm.. I’m guessing not Apple).

• Square Credit Card Reader Now Available Via Apple (udg)
  • Jack Dorsey is a busy guy. Not only has the Twitter co-founder returned to Twitter as its CEO, he still remains CEO of Square, his mobile payment company.
  • Square, in simplest terms, allows anyone with an Android or iPhone to process credit card transactions. No fees, no monthly contracts. Square keeps it simple with a 2.75% charge per transaction. It works through a free downloadable app and a small device, shaped like- you guessed it a square, that plugs into a smartphone’s audio jack and reads the credit cards. To put their fee in perspective, Paypal charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction up to $3,000 in month and then goes down from there.
  • As you can imagine, VeriFone, a company that offers businesses traditional credit card terminals, was none too thrilled with this. It accused Square of offering a free credit card reader that could easily be used by hackers to steal credit card info. Square responded by pointing out that the vulnerability was no different than someone simply writing down your credit card information on a piece of paper. Yet, even with that bit of bad press courtesy of VeriFone, Dorsey’s company got a huge boost recently thanks to a new partnership with Apple.
  • Apple is now offering Square’s credit card reader through its online and brick-and-mortar stores. Customers will pay $9.95 for the credit card reader which includes $10 of Square credit. While the credit card reader is available for free through Square’s website, the immediate availability of it through Apple retail stores and the notable placement of the reader on Apple’s online store is sure to spur adoption. Apple’s endorsement of Square also minimizes the security concerns VeriFone attempted to raise last month in its attempt to derail adoption of the service since it greatly threatens VeriFone’s current business model.
  • I can wait. So, I went to the site and ordered mine for free. And, it did require giving them quite a bit of hefty personal information to obtain. I’ve got the app downloaded and ready to go. The site said 2-5 weeks so as soon as I get it, I’ll make sure to review it.

• Next Mars Rover to use Rocket Crane to land (btm)
  • Mars Rover “Curiosity” lands via being lowered from flying platform
  • Set to launch late this year for arrival on Mars in August 2012
  • Equiped with laser for examining rock samples found on Mars.
  • (btm…once it lands it looks like it has a lot of interesting new tools, but getting it to land scares the crap out of me. There are so many possible points of failure that it seems to me that NASA has forgotten the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid)

Intarweb Goldmine

• Man Bursts Into Flames at Porn Store (udg)
  • For seven years, Roger Huang, a pastor who runs a rescue mission in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, has been trying to shut down the sex shops there. This week he may have seen a sign that his efforts are working
  • On Wednesday, a man burst into flames while inside one of those porn shops, police said.
  • Could this bizarre incident be attributed to a higher power?
  • “I believe so. I definitely believe so,” Huang told AOL News, adding that he hopes the unidentified man is recovering from the burns.
  • The police aren’t ruling anything out.
  • “We don’t know what caused it,” Lt. Troy Dangerfield of the San Francisco Police Department told AOL News. “It’s still under investigation.”
  • Witnesses reportedly saw the burning man running out of the Golden Gate Adult Superstore in the city’s South of Market neighborhood at about 6:20 p.m. Wednesday. The man ran past stunned onlookers and collapsed at the corner of Mission and Sixth streets, police said. A private ambulance crew happened  be driving by and extinguished the flames.
  • The man, whose name has not been released, was taken to the burn center at St. Francis Memorial Hospital, where he is being treated for first-, second- and third-degree burns that reportedly cover 90 percent of his body.
  • According to KTVU, an employee said the man had been watching a film in the back of the store when he suddenly ran out screaming and on fire.
  • San Francisco Fire Department spokeswoman Mindy  Talmadge said a fire investigator is still looking into the case. Oddly, she said authorities have found “no damage to the inside of the building at all.”

• Social Security website releases new series of ‘spacey’ PSA messages (btm)
  • Series stars Patty Duke and George Takei
  • Intended to raise awareness and help aging Boomers feel more at ease when using socialsecurity.gov to file for claims & benefits
    • (I love that the website actually says, “These Social Security public service announcements (PSAs) are pre-recorded video messages that can be viewed online” sometimes it’s easy to forget that not everyone is as tech savvy as we are.) (btm)

• Not the Brightest Car Thief (SM)
  • Guy comes in for a free gas voucher from the police
  • Presents his paperwork for the car
  • Police run it and find out the car is stolen
  • This isn’t the only one, criminals are constantly nabbed for winning sweepstakes

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology needs your help (btm)
  • In its 110 years, NIST has made many innovations in the way we measure things, from basic quantities like the volt and nanometer to specialized questions like the purity of sugar.
  • Website shows images of many devices in their care
  • Many look almost SteamPunk in nature
  • For many, their original uses have been lost to the ages. Do you know what they were? (btm… my favorite is “wooden box with multiple terminals and dials”

• Put Your Hands in the Air and Back Away From the Potatoes (udg)
  • In Jacksonville, Fla., don’t try breaking into someone’s home with potatoes on the stove.
  • Eighty-one-year-old Bobby Smith said his caretaker came out of his home and informed him an intruder had broken into the home.
  • Smith said he entered his home and found a man with a gun in one hand and items he intended to steal in the other. The intruder than shoved Smith to the ground and took his wallet.
  • Not a good idea. Smith then got up and hit the man on the head with frying pan full of potatoes, The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union reported.
  • “I grabbed the frying pan and hit him upside the head,” the feisty octogenarian said. “I knocked his teeth out … and he went to the floor.” Then, for a bit of emphasis, “There was a pitchfork about 6 feet away … [and] I stuck him.”
  • Get down with your bad self Bobby Smith. And don’t ever, ever try to steal that man’s taters.

• YouTube Copyright School (btm)
  • Provides “Happy Tree Friends” video to educate users on copyright rules
  • Copyright violators required to watch video much like the old driving school videos for traffic violators.
  • Hopes that requiring copyright violators to watch video will help them to understand what they did was wrong and prevent future violations.

• Dammit! Swearing found to help increase pain tolerance (btm)
  • Keele University study shows swearing can produce painkilling effect
  • Volunteers placed hands in bucket of ice water while swearing repeatedly
  • Repeated the test but this time used non-swearing phrase to repeat
  • Volunteers were able to keep hands in ice water longer when swearing.
  • Study found that volunteers who normally didn’t swear were four times as likely to feel painkilling effect.
  • May be a reason why swearing developed and continues to today.

Extra Links

• Lucas’ New Sandcrawler Office (udg)
• Droid X WoW

How To Reach Us on the IntarWebs

• On Twitter: Steven is @DarthMolen, Ben is @realityamuck , Natali is @UberDorkGirlie
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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:

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• Need your noms????
• @UberDorkGirlie’s etsy is the way to go
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• 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
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• And Become a Fan

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• 10% off power rings
• Who: @aDigitalAngel & fellow nerds at ShinyLines.com

Get Shinylines in Gold Sponsors

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  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
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Intro Natali
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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

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Intro Jeremy
Intro Natali

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

• Star Wars Home Theatre
  • Working R2 and C3PO units at the front
  • Blue accent lighting out the wazoo (almost looks tronish)
  • Working Star Ceiling
  • 120” projector
  • Working blast windows

• Star Wars School
  • It would appear that the monkeys and I need to move to Chlie. Why? Well, they’ve opened a Star Wars School where pint-sized Padawans can now attend an actual Jedi Temple.
  • Lucky geeklings between the ages of 6 and 12 years old can learn yoga and Taekwondo, combined with the teachings of Jedi values like wisdom and nobility. The lucky apprentices even get their own light sabers, because the school’s creator, William Berrueta, believes in crafting a fully immersive environment that is educational and entertaining.
  • Berrueta was inspired to offer the unique classes after ‘Star Wars: The Exhibition’ made its way to Chile in 2009. It was apparently the first time the country was able to check out the props from the film series in person. Over 200 items from the Lucasfilm archives were on display, including life-size starships and Darth Vader’s costume.
  • May the force be with you, lil ones, and may you not lose an eye during the light saber drills.
• custom arcade cabinets with over 250 preloaded games… think Mame, but polished (JP)
• Check out this Pepsi Display

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• 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 3/23/1910
Legendary Japanese Filmmaker (Seven Samurai) Akira Kurosawa is born in Tokyo, Japan

Deals of the Week / New Release

• Zombie Chuck Comic (JP – Steven to discuss)
  • fyffo.com for all things Zombie Chuck…
  • In my opinion… Lil is someone I would pick for my zombie defense league… Did you see her shoe throwing arm?? Straight to the skull! (JP)
  • (SM) I thought the style was kind of interesting but there wasn’t much meat there
  • (SM)The big zombie boss was really cool

Geek Speak

• C2E2 Panels and Hijinx
  • Thor Panel
    • (SM) Chris Hemsworth totally won me over with his charm. I was on the borderline for the movie, but now I’m going to make it a point to see it
  • The Walking Dead
    • (SM)Jon Bernthal (Shane) is the absolutely most hilarious guy IRL
    • (SM)Laurie Holden (Andrea) plays a really good straight person
    • (SM)Best.unplanned.Monologue.evar!
  • Battlefield 3
    • Jeremy and I actually argued whether the demo video was cut scenes or actual gameplay footage
    • Confirmed by EA that the video was PC gameplay
      • Jeremy happily admits he was wrong on this one… this is what we’ve been wanting from Companies for a looooong time, and was ecstatic that this was not cut scenes!
  • Boy Wonder?
    • (SM) I personally thought it was a powerful movie… definitely evoked conversations
    • Very Dark, Action Drama, About a kid trying to figure things out about his past
    • Are we talking about this one ? I was hoping we would… we’ll just have to be careful not to blow anyhting about it

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• Netflix woes, and gains (SM)
  • Netflix went down hardcore Tuesday
  • “We are sorry, the Netflix website and the ability to instantly watch movies are both temporarily unavailable.
  • Our engineers are working hard to bring the site and ability to watch instantly back up as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and, again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
  • Service has been restored as of Today
  • Big Bombshell: there will be an original TV series airing on Netflix by Kevin Spacey
  • Billed as a Political  drama “House of Cards” (Based on book and BBC series)
  • Will probably preclude from seeing the stuffs from Showtime and HBO on the streaming service in any kind of a timely manner

• Microsoft sues B&N over Nook Color (JP)
  • M$ is going after Barnes and Nobles for using certain techs without paying a licensing fee
  • Range of functions cited that deal with the user experience
  • M$ is also heading in after the makers of the pared down Android Tablet
  • Microsoft says it’s tried to no avail to reach licensing agreements with Barnes & Noble and its hardware partners. “Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market,”
  • While I am not a big supporter of suing…. nor of  M$ I do support the right to protect your IP… so if they own it… license it!

• “Wife said no.” Apple monitors iPad 2 returns (udg)
  • With over 1/2 million units sold the first day, 70% of those to new customers, the launch of the iPad2 was a total success. Apple being Apple, they monitor any returns to find out how many are coming back and, most importantly, why they are. If there was a major issue, they want to take action right away.
  • I’m sure Apple has seen faulty units come back repeatedly. Though one return specifically caught the attention of the staff and upper management. One fully-functional iPad 2 was returned by a man with a Post-It note attached to the display that simply read “Wife said no.”
  • Well, two Apple VPs learned of the return, found it amusing and decided to do something about it.  The man got his iPad 2 back with a new note attached to the screen. It said, “Apple said yes.”
  • Now, I’m guessing this is pretty much a one time shot. But, it’s an awesome story and I’m willing to be the wife is now an Apple fan now too.

• Quick Game hits (SM)
  • EA Sports goes green, eliminates manuals
    • Fight night champion is the last game with a manual
    • Plan to include the instructions in the game itself
  • Black Ops First Strike coming to PC (finally)
    • Should be called 3rd strike (PS3 and XB360 were first)
    • New maps and a zombie mode
  • The Old Republic Delayed, Blizzard rooting for competition
    • Probably until the second half of 2011
    • Blizzard co-founder “Frank Pearce” wants it to succeed as a successful Sci-Fi entity to help expand the user base
    • There are plenty of sci-fi MMO’s out there already so kinda funny
    • (SM)I just think he’s pissed that SW Galaxies sucked so bad

• Duke Nukem FINALLY.  And now with bonus smack a woman feature. (udg)
  • The await for Duke Nukem Forever has been a long one and as all the details of the game breed excitement, one of the latest ones has caused more than a little eyebrow raising.
  • Now, I know Duke Nukem games have always treated women as objects to lust over, and the most interaction you had with women in prior games consisted of paying them to strip for you. We get it. That’s just how he is. But this new feature seems just a bit too far.
  • A new mulitplayer mode will play like Capture the Flag. Only this time, the flags are women. Okay, so far, par for the course. Well, the mode will also allow you to slap captured “babe” if she “freaks out.” Yeah.
  • Official Xbox Magazine were first to unveil the mode in their April issue and also detailed four multiplayer modes which will support up to eight players each: Dukematch, Team Dukematch, Capture the Babe and Hail to the King.
  • Since this story has broken, Gearbox CEO, Randy Ptichford, has clarified it jus a bit. His tweet “Get it right, folks! In the DNF MP game “Capture the Babe”, Duke can give the girl a love smack on the booty – not face!” Oh well if that’s it…  Yes, booty over face is less offensive. My question is this- what’s the point?
  • We’ve discussed this point before on the show- games being geared toward men and ignoring the huge numbers of us girls that game. We expect big boobs, we expect the occasional stripper or hooker, we expect you to shoot a female zombie in the face if she’s coming at you. Hitting a button to “gently give” one a “reassuring slap” is pointless and crossing the line in my opinion.
  • Duke Nukem Forever is due for release May 3, 2011.

• AT&T to buy T-Mobile (JP)
  • Deutsche Telecom has officially sold T-Mobile USA to AT&T
  • 39 Beeellion dollars in cash and stocks was the going price
  • Experts predict a full year before the acquisition is final
  • If deal doesn’t go through, AT&T still on hook for 3 billion
  • This leaves 3 major carriers in US: Sprint, Verizon, AT&T
  • T-mobile to AT&T (funny press release after banging on AT&T’s network as a marketing ploy) – “Just Kidding, we love your network…”

• Sprint Integrates Fully with Google Voice (SM)
  • First major carrier to fully integrate service across its handset line-up
  • Available on smartphones AND its standard headset
  • Will natively use the google voice # for outgoing calls and text msgs
  • Free calls, text messages, call routing, voicemail management
  • Feature to be gradually rolled out to its customers

• Amazon Launches Android App Store (udg)
  • One day after being sued by Apple for their App Store trademark, Amazon has moved ahead and launched their impressive Amazon Appstore for Android anyway.
  • Why so impressive? For starters, it blew the Widows Phone 7 app market out of the water with launching 3,800 apps out of the gate, including (for the first day only) a free download of Angry Birds. But that’s hardly all. The best part? Free trials. That’s right- you don’t have to pay a thing to try out any app you like. Amazon has developed a way to embed an Android emulator into the browser so you can play around with the app for 30 min. If you like it, one click will buy it.
  • What gives them an even bigger edge over Google’s own Android Market is their personal recommendation. They are not getting into censorship, but they are maknig sure that they have a tight rein on quality control. So, if you download an Android app from them, you can be sure it’s not going to be a waste of $10 or blow up your phone.
  • When Amazon first announced their Appstore, most just rolled their eyes. It looks like they may be a major player now for Android apps and Google, embarrassingly enough, is going to have to step it up.
  • I should mention, AT&T Droid owners should refrain from getting to excited here. As of right now, they do not have access to the Amazon Appstore. According to Amazon, the company is working on enabling purchases from the Amazon Appstore in the near future though.

• Venture Brothers Fans Can Celebrate! (udg)
  • This past Christmas Venture Bros fans got a lil present- the announcement of a season five. What could be better than that? Well Season Six! Accourding to Jackson Publick’s blog, the real live Team Venture has signed a new contract with Adult Swim for not only 2 more seasons of the show, but some extra goodies as well. There will be a long-form (60-90 min) Venture Brothers special (platform of which whether TV or direct-to-DVD not yet determined) along with an 11 minute special they’ll be animating and producing entirely in-house.
  • Will 21 finally embrace his good guy destiny? Is Molotov really gone? Will Hank and Dean embrace their seemingly mapped-out fate in which they grow up to be the new Brock and Rusty? Will we all still miss 24? How many more times will they say “sphinx?” Thankfully, we’ll have at least two more years and a couple of specials to find out.

• “The Hobbit” finally starts shooting (SM)
  • production has finally begun after a long struggle
  • (change of director from del toro to peter jackson, strikes, contract disputes, legal actions,  etc)
  • Looks like production is still in NZ
  • The cast will star Martin Freeman (Bilbo) and Ian McKellan will reprise gandalf, Cate Blanchett was galadriel, Andy Serkis as Gollum, and Elijah wood as Frodo
  • Shot natively in digital 3D
  • 2 movies instead of 1
    • And there was GREAT rejoicing from within the G33K community!
    • ( I Loved the pics from set of Jackson sitting in what appears to be Bilbo’s house!) (JP)

• Well, Here’s the New Wonder Woman Costume. Begin Rant (udg)
  • It’s official. A take on the new Jim Lee designed costume used in Wonder Woman #600 will be the outfit of choice for the TV series. They dropped the lame spurs, horrible updated bracelets and her dumbass little jacket in this image, but that’s about it. And guess what? It looks just as ridiculous personified.
  • I’m staying away from the crazy heels,  tammy faye make-up job and dear lord those boobs. As an amply bosomed gal, yeah, one of those puppies is popping out. Last I checked my Wonder Woman didn’t need a wardrobe malfunction to distract a bad guy so she could catch him.
  • Kelley has been stating that it will not be a campy reboot. He wants something to showcase how complex she is. Really? And making her look like a spandex coated hooker/bad cos player is going to accomplish this how? Newsflash- when guys are complaining about a hot chick in spandex, you know you’re going something wrong. Click here to check out the Bleeding Cool post with some artist’s/fan’s responses to the new train wreck and their suggestions for changes.
  • P.S. The monkeys are mortified and eldest wrote a complaint letter stating “I know Wonder Woman. She is awesome. This cheap Walmart knock off is not.”

Intarweb Goldmine

• Billy Dee Williams Keeps Ewok Head in Box (SM)
  • Guy recognizes where his bread is buttered and is always glad to meet his cosplayers
  • One of the weirdest things given to him? An Ewok head in a box (creepy)

• Man Charged With Polygamy After He Defriends First Wife on Facebook (JP – ‘ll take this one)
  • This is one of those headlines I had to …. well… re read… a couple of times!
  • This guy 34 yrs old… married a woman he met online from Rhode Island… then got taken back to Michigan and imprisoned for outstanding warrants…
  • This is a story of judgement in my humble opinion… about how you should know who you’re marrying…
  • or at least monitor their internet activity more closely!! hahhahaa
• Yeah, Don’t Steal Computers from Peoples That Know How to Use Them (udg)
  • First off, if you don’t follow 18 year old entrepreneur Mark Bao on Twitter yet, you really need too. We’ve been following each other for awhile now and just when I thought he couldn’t get more awesome he proved me wrong.
  • So, Mark’s MacBook Air was stolen from a college dorm lounge a few weeks back. Did he just sit back and whine about it? Nope. He hunted down who did it and publicly shamed the guy who tole it by posting a video up on YouTube of the thief thinking he was all slick dancing to Rubber Man.
  • How’d he do it. Well, Mark had installed an online cloud back-up program on his laptop called BackBlaze. He logged into the service this weekend for the first time in a few months and realized that his stolen computer was still being backed up.
  • “I looked around the files and found that the thief a) didn’t remove the backup service and b) created his own user account on the system,” says Bao.
  • So, he could see the dumbass’s Safari browsing history. He’d visited a webmail site that contained his email address in the site’s url, which revealed his name. When Bao looked the name up on Facebook, he discovered they had mutual friends at Bentley U. Mark reported the friend-of-a-friend to the police, but also decided to have a little fun. He was able to get access to the photos and videos on the computer, including a video of the thief breaking out some completely lame moves and posted that to YouTube with the title, ““Don’t steal computers belonging to people who know how to use computers.” It was soon picked up at Reddit and racked up over 20,000 views. Within hours of the Reddit posting, the outed thief had returned the laptop to campus police and sent Mark a Facebook message with an apology and a plea that he take down the YouTube video. Yeah. The video remains up. You really need to go watch it, it’s hilarious.
  • Mark plans to sell the returned Apple and donate the proceeds to the Red Cross Japan fund. The new owner would be wise to wipe BackBlaze from the system.

Extra Links

• 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

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• 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

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• ShinyLines Power Geek Rings!!!
  • I’m almost giggly with anticipation!!
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Intro Jeremy
Intro Natali

Items of Interest

• Movie Bar Code (udg)
  • Consider yourself a film geek? Then this Tumblr site is just for you. It takes every frame in a movie and compresses it into an image that looks a bar code. I would so frame and hang some of these.

• • (Kill Bill Vol 1)

• In Honor of Dr. Seuss’ Bday- What if Dr. Seuss Had Written Star Wars? (udg)
  • From the creative mastermind Adam Watson. Def worth checking out!

• NESBox.com
  • NES Emulator
  • hundreds of old 8-bit NES roms all over the intarwebz

• Modmen on Youtube!!!
  • How to mod your PC…. well done.

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

• Complete works of HP Lovecraft FREE for Nook and Kindle
• DVD Releases for 1wk March
  • Bambi on Blu-Ray! – Less dialogue, more atmosphere, STORYTELLING!
  • Burlesque – Showgirls w/out the T&A?
  • Faster – Dwayne Johnson, Bad Ass extraordinaire. ‘Nuff said
  • The Cable Guy

Geek Speak

• Hello IPad 2
  • Dual Core A5 Processor
  • 9x graphics processing
  • Still the same 10 hr life promised
  • Dual Cameras (HD on back)
  • Facetime integration
  • On sale March 11
  • Same price point, plus more space if you want (64GB – $829)
  • IMovie for IPad (looking to mirror android)
  • Hello sexy and smart as hell smart covers!!!
    • The Smart Cover and iPad 2 were made for each other. Literally. Built-in magnets draw the Smart Cover to iPad for a perfect fit. It’s slim, but sturdy and protects your iPad screen without covering up its durable aluminum back. So your iPad still looks and feels like an iPad — just with a little extra protection. Even better, the Smart Cover doubles as the perfect movie-watching, game-playing, web-surfing, do-it-all companion. It folds in all the right places so you can quickly create a stand that holds iPad upright. Or one that lets you tilt iPad into a comfortable typing position. If you prefer to hold iPad, the Smart Cover flips back and out of the way like a page in a magazine. And if you want to shoot some HD video on the fly, the Smart Cover folds in half to expose the back-facing camera. Now that’s something to smile about.
    • Wake on open. Sleep on close Open the Smart Cover, and iPad magically wakes up. Close it, and iPad automatically goes to sleep.
    • Starting at $39. I REALLY want the red leather one! Oh wait, I need an iPad first
  • Discounts on original IPad up to $350

Tech,Gaming, and Geek News

• Anonymous Issues a Bitch-Slap (udg)
  • You may recall fairly recently internet vigilante group Anonymous launched DDoS attacks on companies that were anti-WikiLeaks. Well, security firm HBGary began collecting information on the group shortly thereafter and had begun working with the FBI to unmask members of Anonymous. In fact, the firm’s CEO Aaron Barr was prepared to release its findings this month at a security conference in San Francisco.
  • Anonymous’ response? Well, it didn’t come via DDoS attack this time. Instead, they hacked the company’s website, gained access to the documents HBGary had collected on their members and published over 60,000 of HBGary’s e-mails to BitTorrent. They took it a step further and “vandalized” Barr’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts with his personal data- soc #, home address, etc.
  • “We’ve seen your internal documents, all of them, and do you know what we did? We laughed. Most of the information you’ve ‘extracted’ is publicly available via our IRC networks,” Anonymous wrote in a statement posted to HBGary’s site on Sunday. “So why can’t you sell this information to the FBI like you intended? Because we’re going to give it to them for free.”
  • HBGary cofounder and security researcher Greg Hoglund confirmed on Sunday evening “They broke into one of HBGary’s servers that was used for tech support, and they got e-mails through compromising an insecure Web server at HBGary Federal,” Hoglund told KrebsonSecurity. “They used that to get the credentials for Aaron, who happened to be an administrator on our e-mail system, which is how they got into everything else. So it’s a case where the hackers break in on a non-important system, which is very common in hacking situations, and leveraged lateral movement to get onto systems of interest over time.”
  • As for the 60,000 e-mails that are now available to anyone with a torrent client, Hoglund argued that their publication was irresponsible and would cost HBGary millions of dollars in losses due to the exposure of proprietary information. Several of the company’s e-mails indicated that Barr was looking for ways to spin its info about Anonymous as a pro-HBGary PR move, which Anonymous took special issue with. The group warned HBGary that it had “charged into the Anonymous hive” and now the company is “being stung.”
  • “It would appear that security experts are not expertly secured,” Anonymous wrote.
  • As a result of this incident, Barr has resigned.

• Comcast NBC Deal Accidentally Protects Internet (SM)
  • DOJ was able to procure an agreement that will protect customers using Comcast
  • It was a measure to get a quick deal done in the NBC-Comcast merger
  • One huge concession: Netflix and other competitors can’t be blocked on the comcast ISP (although there was no concession on throttling)
  • A third of the businesses out there use cable for their ISPs
  • Top 2 concerns, “availability of competition” and “fear of services blocked”
  • so the DOJ singlehandedly did more than the FCC has done #whodathunk

• Making Millions Through Kindle By Selling the App Store Way (udg)
  • Most writers, twenty somethings or otherwise, keep their writing to their blogs. Some of the lucky ones manage to land a publishing contract and make a few grand. The smart ones, though? Well, they publish through Amazon and make MILLIONS.
  • Like Amanda Hocking, who might just be one of the wealthiest young novelists writing today. But, she has no traditional publishing deals. Instead, Amanda is the best selling indie writer on the Kindle e-book store and estimates of her sales hover around $2M.
  • You see, traditional novelists only see a tiny lil fee from royalties on their book if it’s not a best seller. Authors, like Hocking, get 70% of all the money from their book sales. Since last April she’s sold over 900,000 copies of over nine different books.  Yeah, that adds up!
  • How is she selling so many? It’s the Steam and App store principal in full effect. She has three full length novels priced at $0.99 in ebook form, a novella also at $0.99 and five other books priced at $2.99.  If you’re flipping through elibraries, with most published books costing around $10.00 and up, what’s $0.99 to check it out?
  • I gotta say, I’m completely loving this and honestly plan on taking full advantage of it. I know, I know, I have enough on my plate as it is. But, years ago I started writing a book and I made a promise to myself that I would finish it one day.  Only, I’ll pull a Jay-Z with mine, I’ll tie it into an iPhone app to reach an even bigger market. >;-)

• DirectTV Joins Others in Going Mobile (SM)
  • There is now a DirecTV app for the IPad
  • The new app allows you to change channels, control playback, look at secondary content, and record programs remotely
  • However, there’s a couple glaring issues, 1) remote control can only be done on wi-fi 2) only certain receivers us it 3) where’s the ability to play content remotely?
  • Dish Network and Comcast both already have this built in, including on-demand programming
  • Comcast = x-Finity and Dish uses the Sling appliance ($99)
  • All of the apps are free but can only be used by customers of the service

• Steam Coming to TV’s- HELLS YEAH!! (udg)
  • Already a major digital game distribution on PC, Mac and PS3, what is next for Steam? Well, if a recent blog post is a hint, it looks like it might be Steam for HDTV’s.
  • According to the post, Valve is working on what they are calling a new “big picture” mode of Steam which will offer controller support and navigation specifically designed for television interaction. This, they say, will “enable gamers to enjoy Steam and their library of Steam games on more screens throughout the house.”
  • They plan on unveiling the details of the plan at this week’s GDC in San Francisco, California, but let’s speculate here. If they’re overhauling their interface to support 50 inch plasmas, it’s a pretty solid indicator that people will soon be playing Steam gaes on their TVs.
  • The question is how? It could be a fuller featured version of Steam is coming to consoles like PS3 and 360, but what if, just what if they are planing on making the leap into client gaming? What if they are about to launch their own $99 streaming console box? I would so love to see that. And some time this week we should have the answer.

• EU Sony Imports Stopped Over Lawsuit (SM)
  • LG recently filed and won a preliminary injunction against Sony
  • All new PS3’s entering into EU have to be siezed for the next 10 days
  • Tens of Thousands of units were siezed across the union
  • No word on if the injunction will be extended
  • The fight is over LG alleging that Sony infringed on their Blu-ray patent
  • It gets juicier, this is just the latest in a 7 patent dispute
  • Sony is already looking to block all LG phones being shipped to U.S.
  • If things spiral out of control, they could run out of consoles in 2-3 wks

• A Scam Actually Aimed at the Chinese?? (udg)
  • Forget worrying about plagiarism from its students, Reed College in Oregon is worried about their entire website being copied for a scam. A member of Reed’s faculty discovered the site while searching for themselves online. The “University of Redwood” site uses Reeds faculty directory, history of how it was named and photographs of their college. In fact, it uses the first three layers of Reed’s site and simply changes the name to Redwood.
  • The scam is simple- collect application fees, wait a couple of weeks, then send out a rejection letter. The student would ever know. Reed officials suspect it is targeted toward prospective students from Hong Kong and Asia. Martin Ringle, Chief Technology Officer at Reed said he had found serious mention of the University of Redwood on Asian higher-education blogs. The number of Chinese studying in the U.S. has exploded in recent years.
  • After Reed officials complained, Go Daddy, a web-hosting company that houses the University of Redwood site, briefly shut it down. But a Go Daddy representative said the site was re-enabled once Go Daddy ascertained that the “allegedly infringing material was removed.” Reed continues to battle to get the site completely taken down.
  • The Redwood website gives an address in Torrance, Calif., that belongs to a mail-forwarding company. Ironically, the college says it believes the website’s domain is owned by somebody in China.

• House Starting to Overturn FCC Net Neutrality Ruling (SM)
  • FCC’s new controversial ruling could vanish into thin air
  • Already a House sub-comittee is voting on whether to rescind the resolution
  • If this passes in House, will go to the Senate where it only needs 51 votes to pass
  • The resolution then “shall have no force or effect”
  • Of course, House Speaker, John Boehner (R- Ohio, what a name huh?), “Our new majority in the Houst is committed to using every tool at our disposal to fight a government takeover of the Internet”. Wha-Huh??
  • Wonder if anybody told him about the Internet Kill Switch bill currently being bandied about
  • (SM) First off, most of these regulations protect consumers, their voter base yet their voting it down because either a) The local lobbyist greased their palms or b) they aren’t thinking and since it doesn’t come from them, it can’t be good

• Bank of America Online Banking Goes Down Hard

Intarweb Goldmine

• Taking Redneck to a Higher Level (udg)
  • Early Sunday morning, 20 year old Texan Joshua Lee Joehlin was arrested in Florida on a felon charge of “engaging in a lewd and lascivious act with a minor.”
  • When police were booking him,  Joehlin declared that he is a member of the “Redneck” faith. And under religion, they typed Redneck. Our young Jeff Foxworthy disciple is sitting at the Manatee County jail in lie of a $10,000 bond. If he asks to speak with a pastor, I wonder who they’re gonna send in.
• We’re Gonna Go See God, Just Let Me Get a Map (SM)
• I Now Pronounce You Cat & Cat (UDG)
  • Ollie’s Place, a cat adoption center operated by Mighty Mutts in New York City, recently found a unique way to celebrate a special bond between two adoptable cats: It held the world’s first same-sex cat wedding.
  • The “tail-joining” ceremony united Solomon and Bruno, two adult males who depend on each other and are looking for a forever home they can go to together
• Bling: It Could Save Your Life (SM)
• Bummed About Friend’s DUI? Just Blaze One While Cops Write the Ticket (udg)
  • Vermont State Troopers pulled 30 year old Scott Petterson over 12:27am Sunday morning when they witnessed him driving erratically.  His 0.187 led to an arrest. They placed Patterson in their cruiser and returned to his car to update the passengers of the vehicle with what was going on.
  • And what did they find? Seems while the troopers were dealing with the driver, 2 of the 3 passengers of the vehicle thought it’d be a good idea to oh smoke some pot.
  • Two drunk passengers in a car stopped by police were caught smoking pot — less than 20 ft. from Vermont State Troopers — while waiting for a sober driver to pick them up, Vermont State Police said.
  • One of those passengers, Kris Richards, 30, of St. Albans, told Troopers that it was probably a “dumb idea” to be smoking marijuana while at a DUI traffic stop. Umm you think??

Extra Links

• Backdoor Trojan Ported to Mac OSX
• New Sins of a Solar Empire Expansion Announced
• How to back up your gmail account
• Herd of Goats Slow Morning Freeway Commute

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

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• 10% off power rings
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• Can I say any more superlatives? You will love her products.
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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

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