The Smidgen

Fo'shizzle

Apparently, Snoop Dogg hates him some Cyber Crime.  Understandable, who doesn’t really (except dirty cyber criminals) but given this knowledge I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have speculated that he’d team up with Symantec’s Norton antivirus products and declare “Hack is Wack”. (I’m serious)

That’s right my nizzle, Hack is Wack and you, yeah you, can do something about it by submitting your up-to-two minute long anti-cybercrime rap video for dee oh double to judge.  (Yes, seriously)  Prizes for the “winner” include:

• Two (2) tickets to see Snoop Dog in concert
• Opportunity to meet with Snoop’s management or agent
• A $1,000 travel stipend, awarded in the form of airline vouchers
• Hotel accommodations for two days and one night
• A Toshiba laptop

The site wants you to “Have fun fo’shizzle” (really, there’s no such thing as September Fool’s day, I’m seriously) but make sure you keep your rap and video clean, bitches! … whoops.   Anyway, the contest officially started today and ends at 11:59pm ET on September 30th which should be more than enough time for you to make an ass of yourself on video and be sure that Snoop Dogg will watch it.

Could be that it’s all part of his plan to get the whitest people on the planet to rap about the worst possible topic for a rap song I have ever heard of (and if so Snoop is a flipping genius) or this “partnership” will become the greatest ally the “your brain on drugs” campaign ever had, only time will tell …

Side note to Norton and Mr. Dogg, whack is spelled with an ‘H’ in it.  I, and my spellchecker, are disappointed … dawg.

For those of you that have played Bioware’s Mass Effect games, you already know what we’re looking at here.  For those that haven’t, that’s the M8 Avenger rifle used by Commander Shepard and his (or her) crew to clean up the galaxy, by shooting it.  This particular M8, however, is made of wood.  Lovingly crafted as a personal project by prop replicator extraordinaire Harrison Krix

If you want the full breakdown (and I mean full, lots of pics and details) about the building of this masterpiece check our Krix’s blog.  In the meantime I’m going to go back to daydreaming about a Mass Effect movie produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Ridley Scott, also I wrote it, what the hell.

Neptune as seen by Voyager 2. Credit: NASA/JPL

Though it may be hard to believe, Neptune, once again the farthest planet from the Sun (in our solar system) thanks to Pluto’s demotion, completes it’s first orbit around the Sun in two day’s time.  What that means is that on August 20th, Neptune will have traveled fully around the Sun for the first time since it’s discovery on September 23rd, 1846.

For those counting that’s about a 60,189 day orbit or 164.8 years (Earth years of course).  Although this is the first time Neptune will make the journey as a planet, it’s not actually the first time it has orbited since being seen by humans.  Everyone’s favorite astronomer and Queen reference, Galileo Galilei actually saw Neptune twice, first on December 28th, 1612 and then again on January 27th, 1613 but mistook the planet for a star thanks to a woefully underpowered telescope and happening to observe the planet during it’s “stationary” period (where the relative motion of the Earth and a planet cause the planet to appear stationary in the sky).

More fun facts about Neptune?  OK.  Neptune’s day is only 16.11 hours.  Neptune’s orbit has an eccentricity of 0.01 meaning that it is nearly circular, especially compared to Pluto’s highly elliptical orbit.  When Pluto was still a planet (poor Pluto, I pine for you) these orbital patterns would make it so Neptune was actually the 9th planet from the Sun for about 20 years of every 248 year orbit of Pluto.  That last happened from 1977 to 1999 (I said about 20!).

Side note, since Pluto was discovered in 1930 and has a 248 year orbit, I’ll be long dead before that happens so I’ll have to schedule a post for 2178 and hope that my well wishes to our Plutonian Robot Overlords are received, and then they clone me or something.  I’ll attach a DNA sample to the post …

Anyway, Happy New Year Neptune!  I’m going to go do the Fandango.

Cellphone GPS navigation is nothing new but it is admittedly awesome.  Carry around a pocket-sized device that makes calls, checks the internet and emails and tell you to make a left on James A. Musto bypass?  Nerdy, cool, but can it be moreso?  Hell yeah, so long as you don’t need certain things like the actual turn-by-turn part, a map and other visuals.  All you need are two words, STAR WARS.

Flash developer Christopher Caleb feels the same way so he used Adobe Air for Android to create the X-Wing targeting computer GPS app you see here.  As mentioned (and can be seen in the video included after the break) this particular GPS “navigation” app kinda needs you to sort of already know how to get where you’re going … BUT, when you’re going there you can watch the targeting lines converge and see your distance count down in your approach vector.  While driving you’ll hear Rebel Alliance chatter as Rogue Squadron checks in and counts the number of turbo laser towers, just be sure to keep an eye on your six for Vader.

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Japan, you make me smile =).  I’m not sure why I have an affinity for unusual Japanese products that I would never buy, but I do, and so I present to you the Kaoiro.  It’s literal translation is ‘face expression’ meaning that it’s a kaomoji (emoticon) stamp.  This bad boy is capable of stamping out over 2000 different kaomoji combos on all your overdue books and anime legal documents.  Of course, since they are Japanese emoticons, I have no idea what any of them actually represent.  So where the hell is my laminated kaomoji cheat-sheet already?

First of all Dean Kamen, sorry, but seriously the Segway is retarded.  Moving on, the “Luke” arm created by Kamen for DARPA is amazing, and not just because he’s nerdy enough to name the thing after our favorite fictional amputee and I think Stephen Colbert would agree.

The robotic arm has been in development for some time but the April 5th episode of the Colbert Report was the first time I got to see the thing in action.  I could ramble on about all the details but instead I highly recommend you follow past the break and check out the embedded video.  Or, if you feel like watching the full episode you can click the image above. continue reading…

Image Credit: Edge Online

Martin De Ronde, not a name that you might be immediately familiar with, was co-founder of the games studio Guerrilla Games before it was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2005 and now best known for their Killzone titles.  He’s also the man behind the OneBigGame mini-publishing platform that aims to be the Band Aid of the games industry.

What the hell does that all mean?  It’s a charity, or rather, a non-profit organization with the goal of getting well-known game developers to create titles to be sold under the OneBigGame label having the proceeds go to charity, much like Band Aid.  And it’s working.  The first title Chime has already been released on Xbox Live Arcade.

Edge Online has a very nice, three-page article detailing the history of the OneBigGame project that you can check out in the source link but I’ll just summarize the whole deal here.  OBG (as I’m going to call it because I’m lazy) gets developers to donate their time and creativity to making games to sell with the proceeds going to charity, rather than asking companies to just fork over cash directly.

Why would developers want to spend their precious time creating a game instead?  Well first of all, the license with OGB only ranges from 4 to 12 months (flash games near the latter, XBLA games the former) after which the developer will receive the revenue.  Additionally, the developer retains the IP, it’s fully theirs and after the OBG exclusive period they are free to create a new title or an enhanced version of the first.  They can use OBG as a proving ground of sorts for new and radical ideas.

The way De Ronde has it worked out right now some larger and well known game studios are working with indie studios on projects.  In this way the big name guys act as creative consultant taking less of their time while the indie studio builds relationships, experience and a portfolio based off what the larger studio’s creative team came up with.  This concept actually allows big name houses to come up with some more creative and risky titles and in the end, the charities win with a quarterly check from the revenue.  Other games are coming from academia where students can use the game as a class project and then in the end, actually have something to release into the world.  Lot’s of wins all around.

At the moment OBG’s charity partners are Save the Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation.  De Ronde hopes the one day give them more than just money too such as a game that’s tailored to give Starlight help to their children with problems.  While that will have to wait for later, here’s wishing De Ronde and OBG lots of success.  Now that the games industry is on par with movies, music and television, it’s nice to see a desire to give back in some way.

Source: Edge Online

Despite the fact that I have yet to really find a good reason to use Twitter (yes I use TweetMeme, no I don’t think it’s cool) the cover letter on their latest TPS report (that’s tweets per second, didn’t you get the memo?) is showing around 600 microblog babbles per second.  That comes in at over 51 million per day which is no small feat.

For comparison’s sake so 50 million has some meaning, in 2007 Twitter averaged about 5,000 per day, jumping to 300,000 per day in 2008 and then up again to 2.5 million in 2009 with about 35 million a day by the end of the year.  That’s some impressive numbers there especially considering that they supposedly do not include tweets from accounts labeled as spam.

Well, good onya Twitter, now please go away as I prefer complete sentences.

Original Post: AppScout

I’ll be honest, when Microsoft revealed Bing I was glad to see something that might finally give Google a little competition to keep things interesting but I really didn’t expect too much.  I use Bing now but of course I still use Google as well, moreso in fact, and iGoogle is still my homepage.  When Bing Maps unveiled some cool new tech a while back using Photosynth for a Streetview like display I took some more interest but it still wasn’t quite a “game changer” or anything to steal the thunder from the Googs.

Well with yet another TED conference to unleash the cool involved with Silverlight, Dragon and Photosynth here, Bing Maps has just really blown my mind.  Augmented Reality photos from Flickr, live video that is photo-stitched into the streetview image and the full night’s sky viewable from wherever you are in the street level view courtesy of WorldWide Telescope.  Watch the presentation video after the break, you shan’t be disappointed. continue reading…

For anyone who somewhat actively follows the mobile phone world (especially of the smart phone variety) it should come as no surprise that Microsoft has finally officially announced and revealed it’s new smart phone OS, Windows Phone 7 Series, at the MWC (Mobile World Conference) in Barcelona today.  There are hundreds, if not thousands of different portals on the interwebs where you can read the details of what 7 Series has to offer, read the liveblog of Microsoft’s announcement at MWC or check out a 22 minute long demonstration of the new OS, so I’m just going to summarize here and give you what you really want, my take.

The Quick (Details and such)

So what’s new, short and sweet?  I know it sounds trite but seriously, what isn’t new?  Hell even the OS’s name has changed from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7 Series (not exactly roll-off-the-tongue good but, hey).  Now if you take a quick look you’ll see that it looks nothing like WinMo 6.5.3 or any other previous MS Mobile OS, however, you will think right away (if you’re me or an equally techie webnerd) that it does look strikingly similar to the Zune HD.  Coincidence?  Not even remotely.  The interface theme is called Metro and it actually started with the refresh to Windows Media Player a while back, moved on to the Zune and has now found a new home in the 7 Series.  Large, bold text and lacking the ‘chrome’ or flashy graphics from other systems.  Simple, clean, wholly un-MS like from the start … except now it’s part of one of their main OSes, which is some sort of paradox I don’t want to think about right now.  If you stop to think about it (and you are actually interested in that sort of thing), it’s pretty impressive that MS, as big and unwieldy as it seems, was able to shed the WinMo skin so completely, though of course they desperately needed to. continue reading…