Friday, August 29, 2008
Sorkin's Facebook screenplay is based on forthcoming book
More reason why this movie is going to fail. If an anonymous source is correct, Sorkin's movie will be based on a forthcoming book about Facebook. But some sources say the book is total BS, so...
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Google Toying With The Idea Of Letting Users Mess With Searc
This one is sort of a head-scratcher. According to a report, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is working on a new function that would allow users to change the ranking of search results, comment on them, and possibly even delete them. Couldn't that negate their usefulness? Not if you believe Google.
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8th Annual Walk to Defeat ALS September 27
Continuing the success of past years, the ALS Association of Greater New York announces the date of Saturday, Sept. 27 as the next Walk to Defeat ALS on Long Island. One of the largest ALS Association Walks in the country, this year promises to be bigger than ever.
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'Bling Bandit' is ex-NYPD detective; allegedly knock
I know a guy who knows this cop! - The "Bling Bandit" who knocked off seven banks in Long Island and two in Queens is a hero ex-cop worshiped in the NYPD for 33 years of undercover and detective work, police sources said.
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Digg Dialogue Questions get answered by Nancy Pelosi on CNN!
Yeay DIGG: Digg CEO Jay Adelson asks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi questions sent by iReporters and selected by the Digg community. The questions you guys posed got answered, it seems like she did her best job to really answer them and take them as serious as any questions."
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Bloomberg Accidentally Publishes Steve Jobs Obituary
Does the mayor of New York City know something that we don't? From the huffingtonpost.com: "The Bloomberg financial newswire decided to update its 17-page Steve Jobs obituary today -- and inadvertently published it in the process."
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10 Important News Stories as Depicted by 5-Year-Olds
From Cracked.com: "With all of the wars, gas shortages, a looming depression and no more Olympics to pretend aren't boring, things are pretty bleak. We wondered if our world would look any less depressing if viewed through the eyes of a five-year-old."
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The Girl-Power Vampire Stories Waiting for Their Big Screen
Yes yes yes, Twilight is coming. We've heard. Author Stephanie Myers has taken that well-trod Anne Rice vampire path to literary stardom, and the first movie from one of her books hits theaters November 21. Did I say well-trod? Why, I did say that. Why? Because it's not like the tortured supernatural romance genre took a siesta...
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Incredible! - McCain's Prickly TIME Interview
"Unbelievably Arrogant, Angry and just plain RUDE !" What did they expect? Hello Kitty? He's pissed because he's going to loose an election in three months. Get off his case already. By the way, Lieberman is a fink. There, I said it. And I can't take it back.
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Facebook The Movie: Coming Soon
The West Wing creator says his grandmother has more Internet savvy than he does, and she's been dead for 33 years. Already I'm not feeling it about this movie. Shouldn't someone who knows a little bit about Facebook already and can make a decent movie be working on this project? Seems like there might be one or two around that fits the bill. I am not confident. Looks like a flop in the making and an embarrassment to the Facebook folks. Unless they get some really, really good consultants. Think the Facebook members out there will be kind or critical on the group he's starting on Facebook to learn this Internet thingy -- not a direct quote but it may as well be. From nymag.com: "Aaron Sorkin, a man whose discomfort with the Internet goes way, way back to the days he got angry at the Television Without Pity message boards, is writing a movie about the founding of Facebook."
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits
Now c'mon. This doesn't seem like a problem we can't solve. From the NYT: "The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not."
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Lack of infrastructure hampers hydrogen-powered car rally
I am looking forward to the day when I can drive a Hydrogen powered cr. I mean, the sun is Hydrogen powered at it kicks butt as an energy producer. Can't my dinky car run on Hydrogen too? C'mon scientists, get with it already. Skip electric and develop Hydrogen powered cars. I want to fuel up my car from my sprinkler hose. From arstechnica: "Car makers recently held the Hydrogen Road Tour 08 to publicize H2-powered road cars, but a lack of fueling stations meant long stretches on flatbeds. Is the world ready for the H2 car?"
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Chicago Tribune: Marriotti resigns from Sun-Times
Instead of waiting for his newspaper to cut him, Jay Mariotti decided to leave. Good thinking. Even though he was in no danger of loosing his job, this sportswriter saw the "writing on the wall" so to speak. Looks like we won't see the future of journalism is not in the funny papers but in the blogosphere. I call this a man bites dog story. Score one for the working man. From the article: "Sports columnist Jay Marriotti decides the future of journalism is on the internet and quits the Sun-Times."
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Scientists Learn How Nemo Finds His Way Home
Cool. Run, Nemo, Run. Wait! Wrong Movie. Sorry. Still DUGG because clownfish aren't funny but they're cute and my kids love them. BTW, Nemo is a great movie. Can Pixar do no wrong. Off topic, I know but, seriously, Pixar rules. From the story: "How does the orange clownfish — aka Nemo from the movie "Finding Nemo" — really find its way home? It turns out the colorful saltwater fish can sniff for leaves that fall into the sea from rainforests growing on the islands near their coral reef homes."
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Led Zepplin Back in the Studio
OMFG! My friend Tom is gonna freak. I'm in line already to buy the album, virtually. From telegraph.co.uk: "Led Zeppelin could be on the brink of a 10th studio album after musicians Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham said they had been working on new songs."
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Baseball to start using instant replay on Thursday.
Finally, baseball catches up. From the AP: "Major League Baseball has reversed its long-standing opposition to instant replay and will allow umpires to check video on home run calls in series that start Thursday, a person familiar with the announcement told The Associated Press."
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The crime that created Superman
Apparently, if you want to find Superman, don't look up in the sky, look down on the ground on the floor of a second-hand clothing store on the east side of Cleveland in the 1930s. That's where you'll find the origin of the Man of Steel. From USA Today: "On the night of June 2, 1932, the world's first superhero was born — not on the mythical planet of Krypton but from a little-known tragedy on the streets of Cleveland."
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Technology That Outthinks Us: A Partner or a Master?
Vernor Vinge's concept of the singularity in computers and intelligence gets another treatment in his new book, "Rainbow's End." Here the computers and the humans are hooked up to produce a sort of networked intelligence of all human knowledge - kinda like Wikipedia!
read more | digg story
Monday, August 25, 2008
Madonna Kicks Off World Tour
"Does this look like a woman who just turned 50?" - Actually, it does look like someone who just turned 50. I always hoped that Madonna would be a little more classy than this. I am a fan. Glad she's around and her music is just as good as it always was, but she needs to tone down the act a little before she becomes a parody of herself.
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The Montauk Monster's cousin?
From The North Shore Sun: "Is it a dead possum? A raccoon? A dog? Or could it possibly be a distant relative of the -- gulp -- Montauk Monster?"
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Gorgeous Image of Endeavour with Earth in the Backdrop
A rare image of NASA's shuttle Endeavour orbiting around our beautiful planet earth. Space Shuttle Endeavour is one of the three currently operational spacecraft in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, the space agency of the United States. The other two are Discovery and Atlantis. Endeavour was the fifth and final NASA space shuttle to be built.
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Unification in progress: dark energy, dark matter, inflation
Ladies and Getlemen. The moment we've all been waiting for. Unification of three theories: Dark Energy, Inflation and Dark Matter. It was bound to happen, wasn't it? Where's Brian Greene when you need him? From Ars Technica: "Researchers show that it might be possible to unite dark energy, dark matter, and inflation under single field."
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Empty quantum channels greater than the sum of their parts
I don't understand this article, yet at the same time it makes sense. So if I combine those two results then on average, I understand! I think?
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Amazon may enter college textbook market with new Kindle
I wish I had this when I was in college.
My backpack was filled with books professors made me buy and then used only sparingly throughout the year. This is a brilliant idea. Everyone knows that once you get the kids hooked on something they're hooked for life.
These college kids aren't going to just throw away the Kindle after they finish school. They will continue to use them for novels and business books and resume writing guides, Wall Street Journal subscriptions, and job listing subscriptions, blog subscriptions... The possibilities ate virtually endless.
Boy. Now I want one. Between this and the iPod, my three biggest addictions (books, movies, music) will be fulfilled electronically.
Oh wait. They still haven't gotten to a place where virtual sex is downloaded into my pants, have they? No. OK only three out of my four additions have been filled. Guess it's still bit torrent porn for me until VR porn becomes available and mainstream.
From Ars Technica: "With rumors swirling lately about a new-and-improved Kindle, one analyst says that Amazon sees an opportunity in the education market and plans to target students. We've got some tips for Amazon should it get serious about pursuing college students with the Kindle."
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Can GameFly Survive in a VGOD World?
While the music industry offers downloads, Netflix has already embraced the downloaded movie business, somewhat tentatively. I believe that you can now even download movies to your X-Box from your Netflix account, bypassing the need for one of those Roku devices. For gaming, this model just makes sense. X-Box has burst open online gaming with X-Box live. I believe Microsoft has already expressed interest in software that is subscription based. Naturally, gamers would be quicker to embrace such a concept by virtue of their technological advantage and acuity. Then again, I can't see developing GTAIV for the money it cost and then releasing it at the regular subscription price. There will be a premium for these big name releases. Otherwise we'll see quality gaming go down. While subscription based models may increase overall access to more games, without the windfall of a GTAIV-type release, no big box releases will ever come. But I think that with a little tweaking this download, subscription-based model can work for movies, music and especially gaming. (Even books if Amazon has its way with the Kindle!) From the blog post: "What happens when users can download video games directly? Can GameFly survive in a video game on demand (VGOD) world?"
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No Matter How NBC Spins It, Olympics Web Strategy Comes Up A Loser (?)
I dugg this because it seemed and interesting and very true take. NBC probably missed an advertising opportunity from a revenue standpoint but annecdotal evidence and from pure hours of streaming video standpoint I see this as a success. It seems that people generally liked seeing lesser broadcasted events and elimination events online (sans commentary) and that led to a cross polination of viewership back to television. From a marketing standpoint, it was a success and proves to be a model of what we can do in the future (or broadcasters can do.) Was Silverlight the right choice? Don't know. Could Flash have been better? Probably. Only because more people use that format and are used to it. (YouTube uses Flash video, correct?) Anyway, while this was a lost revenue opportunity, NBC proved it could handle the challenge of streaming hours of content from a live event and have people generally happy with it, while promoting it back to a television broadcast, leading to one of the most watched TV events in history--from China, no less. Like I said, it was not a failure by any means, except for the bottom line. From TechCrunch: "Despite its special Silverlight-powered Website and more than 2,000 hours of online video, it looks like NBC flubbed its opportunity to make its Olympics Web revenues more than a rounding error. NBCOlympics.com may have streamed 72 million videos and racked up 1.2 billion pageviews, but Yahoo Sports still edged it out with an average of 4.7 million visitors a day versus 4.3 million (source: Nieisen Online). And Yahoo didn’t even have video. NBC is spinning its numbers as a success to the New York Times today, in response an estimate eMarketer put out on Friday that NBC’s Olympics video ad revenues came to only $5.75 million. That compares to $23 million that CBS made from video ads when it streamed the NCAA basketball tournament live on its Website in March."
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Beijing Olympics most-watched event in TV history.
So despite all the controversy (or probably more like--because of it) the Olympics this year are set to go down in history as the most-watched television event of all time. We had Michael Phelps (A.K.A. Aqualad) and the Chinese accused of screwing around with time travel and somehow getting children who are too young to compete in gymnastics, aged appropriately before their years. Amazing, those Chinese and what they can accomplish when they put their minds to it, ain't it? Anyhow. In this year of broken records and human rights issues, it seems that Americans don't need all that sappiness and backstory to may hay out of the Olympics. All they need is a mutant and a little good old fashioned Communism. I suspect that the web aspect also fueled a cross viewership to the television. The hype was upheld. Now we know that 2008 Chinese can bang a drum in sync. Who would have thunk it? From the blog post: "Through 15 days of coverage, 208.7 million viewers have watched the Olympics on NBC Universal (including the NBC broadcast network and its cable channels), according to Nielsen Media Research."
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Sunday, August 24, 2008
Star Stryder » Blog Archive » Anecdotal Evidence versus Stat
"One of the running jokes in physics/astronomy departments is that astronomers consider 4 instances of anything as statistically significant. In fact, the story goes, two points is enough to define a trend, and 1 is enough to form a theory."Interesting thoughts about reaching your viewers, including one about how being dugg on digg...
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Superman: How To Make You Believe A Man Could Fly, Again
From ion9.com: "WB VP Jeff Robinov says that he wants the movie versions of all of DC's superheroes to "go dark to the extent that the characters allow it,". How can one man miss the point of one of the most famous fictional characters of the last hundred years so badly? We offer five simple steps to keep any movie reboot for the Man of Steel on track."
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Saturday, August 23, 2008
N Korea Develops Special Noodle To Delay Feelings of Hunger
Now people are going to say, "Sure. They can make a special noodle to delay feelings of hunger but we can't keep that new car smell!" From the BBC news website: "North Korean scientists have developed a new kind of noodle that delays feelings of hunger, a Japan-based pro-Pyongyang newspaper has reported. The noodles were made from corn and soybeans, the Choson Shinbo said. They left people feeling fuller longer and represented a technological breakthrough, the newspaper said."
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Is the Earth Quarantined???
From io9.com: "Why haven't we met aliens yet? And why aren't we sending rockets all over the solar system? There is only one plausible explanation. Earth is being quarantined! A combination of higher alien civilizations and our own Earth-based military forces are working together to keep the Earth contained and neutralized."
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Bush blames Democrats for high gas prices
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush on Saturday blamed the Democratic-led Congress for the high cost of gasoline and renewed his call for expanded offshore drilling to increase U.S. oil supplies.
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Waiting for Obama-Biden in Springfield
15,000 people have turned out in Springfield awaiting the Democratic ticket.
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RIAA Takes Down Muxtape, Will Future Solutions Arrive Soon?
Popular playlist sharing site Muxtape is down and says that it's because of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It might have been inevitable but the news will run chills down the spines of countless music sharers. It's a tragedy, really, and one we hope to see reversed quickly.
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Friday, August 22, 2008
Lo and Hum as Ho and Hum - TIME
A stage version of Lolita that failed on Broadway in 1981, after many problems getting to open. Playwright Edward Albee said of first-time Producer Jerry Sherlock, ex-fabric broker, now owner of the New York Film Academy: "One thing about Sherlock, he may not know anything about producing for the theater, but he certainly knows how to cut corners." Believe me, Albee is right. I used to work for Sherlock, I know.
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All your favorite Superheroes Simpsonized (Pics)
Another too good not to share link. From Gizmodo.com: "A cruel, very talented man named Dean T. Fraser has decided that our Simpsons, Batman, Iron Man, Spiderman, Halo, and miscellaneous superheroes, supervillain, and sci-fi fetishes weren't enough on their own, so he Simpsonized them all."
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David Perel: All the Scandalous News That's Fit to Print
In this story the writer explains why Main Stream Media is not wearing any clothes, when they choose to ignore the blaring evidence presented by the blogosphere and the National Enquirer of all sources. Well, ignore at your own peril. Personally, I think that MSM has a little life left in the old girl, if and only if, they can jump on the bandwagon ASAP. Nothing to prevent a multimillion dollar industry from reinventing itself online. It happens all the time. With some smarts and some savvy and a little well-spent money. Look at the success NBC had with the online aspect of its Olympics coverage.
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Diner's Journal: Sour Grapes
Wine Spectator gets scammed. Not sure how I feel about this one. If you check the link to Wine Spectator's website they make a compelling case for themselves but there is something very deceitful about giving out awards simply for cash, no physical visit from a critic required. Though they claim it's a transparent practice, it still takes this kind of scandal to "expose" the "transparency," so to speak. Read the story and decide for yourself. Personally, I would not have guess that their common awards are not visited even by a local stringer or someone else. A listing based on non-visit is fine but calling it an "award" doesn't seem right, somehow. Anyway, read and decide for yourself.
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A Response to Response to Literature
An explanation of one writer to his objections to response-to-literature essay assignments in school and why it stifles a love of reading.
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Thursday, August 21, 2008
Hubble Images Solve Galactic Filament Mystery
Astronomers have a new explanation for why filaments emanating from galaxy NGC 11275 can persist for millions of years.
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Jail the 'greedy' scam victims, says Nigerian diplomat
THE Nigerian high commissioner in Australia says people who are ripped off by so-called Nigerian scams are just as guilty as the fraudsters and should be jailed.
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Scammers defraud Aussies of $36m a year: police
Australians lose at least $36 million a year to so-called Nigerian scammers who continue to fleece naive internet users because victims fail to report incidents.
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Michael Phelps Returns To His Tank At Sea World
The Onion reveals Michael Phelps' rest of the summer plans: "Fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist and SeaWorld main attraction Michael Phelps returned to his seven-million-gallon water tank Wednesday to resume his normal schedule of performing in six shows a day for marine park crowds every day of the week."
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Worst Movie to Video Game Adaptation ever.
From Spout.com: "Most movies that become games will at least tend to lend themselves to the genre, like action and sci-fi films. But there has to be a crown jewel out there that'll make people scratch their heads and think, 'They made a video game out of that?!'"
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Stryde Hax: Hack the Olympics!
This story is heating up the web: "There's been some widely publicized controversy regarding the competition age of the Chinese women's gymnastics team recently. I have an Internet connection, that means I should be able to verify the age of the gymnasts in question with primary state-issued documents and find out for myself if someone's cheating, right? Right. Let's go to work."
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The Gaming Shame of Steven Spielberg
I lived through this... Still not over it! "Steven Spielberg's E.T. stands as a pillar of what NOT to do with a video game, and Zack Snyder is valiantly trying to steer Watchmen away from the same fate. Will the game based on the movie based on the graphic novel be any good? Start crossing your fingers now."
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Will Wright on the origins of 'Spore'
On September 7, Electronic Arts will release its long-awaited and much-anticipated Spore. For many, this will be the biggest video game event of the year, and possibly even the last several years.
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Stem Cells: Developing New Cures
NYSCF has helped create a video on stem cell research currently playing in the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
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Revenge of the Pet Sequels I'd Like to See
From Scott Sigler's blog at AMC... "There have to be some animal actors that have just had it up to here with being cute, cuddly and saving the day. How boooooring. Now there have been some world-class killer pets, from cyborg Rottweilers in Man's Best Friend to Satanic shepherds in Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell to Gizmo's little friends in Gremlins..."
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The Genesis Virus
I saw this on my Facebook friend Paul Levinson's posts and his blog. It's the first word about pilot for new science fiction television series ... "a thinking-person's time travel story ... as Battlestar Galactica is to space opera, The Genesis Virus is to all prior time travel on television...." We'll see. Looks interesting but there's not enough to go on yet. Paul promises future tidbits of information in the coming weeks and months.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I am so immature...
Why does the following sentence still make me giggle with sophomoric delight? "More research needs to be carried out to see if it was more likely that an Earth-sized rock impacted Uranus..."
See the entire context of the sentence here. But still, try not to chuckle at the idea of an Earth-sized rock impacting your anus and all of the scientific research it has propagated.
Ten Mysteries of the Solar System
From Universe Today by way of DIGG: We've all wondered at some point or another what mysteries our Solar System holds. After all, the eight planets (plus Pluto and all those other dwarf planets) orbit within a very small volume of the heliosphere (the volume of space dominated by the influence of the Sun), what's going on in the rest of the volume we call our home?
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Big Dumb Gingrich
Claims Tire Inflation Lines Big Oil's Pockets. Last night on Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) returned to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) recent suggestion that Americans inflate their tires properly in order to save energy costs. Seeming to outdo his previous false attacks on this issue, Gingrich claimed that Obama’s idea is actually encouraging Americans to “enrich Big Oil”
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If you aren't watching the Olympics, here's what you missed.
Screenshot of the most entertaining moment of the Olympics thus far. One DIGG commentor said that it's OK, they're European. I think so too!
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Christina Raia Walk To Defeat ALS Documentary
Video Documentary about Christina Raia, Team Captain of the Long Island Walk to Defeat ALS, "Team Raia." The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter.
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Friday, August 15, 2008
Why We're Failing in Math and Science
From Tim O'Reilly's blog. Understand why America is falling behind at math and science with a few simple stories.
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8th Annual Walk to Defeat ALS on Long Island
Continuing on the success of past years, The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter announces the date of Saturday, September 27, 2008 as the next Walk to Defeat ALS being held at Eisenhower Park on Long Island.
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10 Movies Sold on a Sex Scene
Everyone knows that sex sells. But -seriously- have you gone to see a movie just because of the buzz about the sex scene in the film?
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A Great Twitter Etiquette Article: 14 Ways to Use Twitter
"As it turns out, you are one fascinating SOB, and people need to know what you're doing. You can almost feel the yearning. What are you doing? The ache is palpable."
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A Latter-Day Gehrig Survives, and He Demands to Be Heard
An unusual 11-year survivor of A.L.S., Chris Pendergast has taken the lonely helm of an effort to call attention to the needs of those with the disease.
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A Free Press? Not This Time.
A young Russian journalist student claims that the coverage of the conflict between Russia and Georgia has been unprofessional, to say the least. She says that the media was quick to jump on big, bad Russia without looking at the facts and the chronology of the conflict.
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Thursday, August 14, 2008
The 7 Crappiest "Super Heroes" in Comic Book History
Too good not to share! What if instead of a radioactive spider, Peter Parker had been bitten by a radioactive butterfly? He'd be a freaking laughingstock, that's what.
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The First 50 Dilbert Cartoons
From Scott Adams' official website, these are the first 50 Dilbert cartoons that he drew to submit to cartoon syndicates in the 80s.
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Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Steady Cam Comes to the Consumer
Garrett Brown won the Academy Award for his invention and it was used in famous films like Rocky for the training sequences, Return of the Jedi, for the speeder chase, and in The Shinning, among many, many other famous shots that may never have happened without this great instrument. Now the steady cam comes to the consumer.
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Text the Vote
Barack Obama’s campaign is alerting anyone who signs up the choice of running mate by text message. On it's own, that's a cool story. First Twitter, now text messaging. What will the campaign think of next: Running for President? The article claims that this digital marketing scheme has "little to do with proclaiming the selection and everything to do with getting out the vote on Election Day."
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CNN: We’re Staffing Up; Call Goes Out For ‘All-Platform Journalists’
Now everyone's a journalist, according to CNN. The newspapers are cutting jobs but the cable and web industries are adding staff, just not exactly the kind of highly trained, J-school types we'd expect. As the trend continues, CNN is another large outfit that is seeking to employ low-paid, or non paid journalists, known colloquially as "citizen journalists." Oy Vey. We're doomed, I tell you. On the other hand, we can all go into PR or Communications. (That's what I did.)
read more | digg story
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Inside Story of the Telescope That Nearly Wasn’t Built
“The Universe in Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It” is a breezy behind-the-scenes account.
read more | digg story
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Hail to the Twitterer
Should the computing habits of a nominee have any bearing on his fitness to be commander in chief?
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