Farewell Steve. So long Macworld…

Steve Jobs Skipping Final Macworld Apple Keynote

Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld

CUPERTINO, Calif., Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple(R) today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.
Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its
award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

(C) 2008 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Tags: Apple, Depressing, Sad, Widoze SUCKS ASS

Kodak ZI6

I’m a few months away until my first-born child gets here so instead of spending time getting the baby’s room ready, I’ve been busy buying every gadget I can think of to catalog her life. I have no shame stating that I will be the dude in the front row with a video camera on a tripod, all the while taking enough still pictures to fill up a card. A few months ago I purchase the Nikon D40, and it turned out to be a wonderful purchase for still pictures.

Lately I had been looking into a new video camera, specifically one that would record in HD. I already have a pretty decent Canon video camera that will do in most planned situations, but what I really wanted was a super small camera that I could carry around in my pocket and would start up fast enough to capture just the right moment. I was led to the Flip Mino HD on a gadget blog, but after researching it for a few days it seemed like another camera would be just the ticket. The next day I went to Best Buy and picked up the Kodak ZI6 for $125.

It’s about the size of a cellphone and a little thicker. There are no flip out screens and no moving parts, so it is perfect to keep in your pocket. The main advantages over the Mino HD is that the Kodak can record on SD cards and also uses AA batteries. If you use regular Duracell batteries, be prepared to only get about 10 minutes of footage in small spurts. Using the Kodak rechargeable batteries included in the package can net around 45 minutes and replacement packages can be picked up for around $15 for a pack of 4. At most online electronic sites you can pick up a high capacity SD card for super cheap. I recently bought an 8GB SDHC card on Amazon for $12. An 8gb card will store about 2 hours of footage.

So far I’ve shot about an hour of short clips; mainly of my dogs and the walls and ceiling of my work bathroom while taking a dump. There are four modes of shooting: Still (5mp), VGA, HD, and HD60 which is 720p resolution at 60 frames a second. 4-D you say? Yep. There is even a macro setting for close ups. You can play back the video on the unit in a few short clicks or hook it up to a TV with the supplied component cables. The quality with a direct connection is wonderful. To play it back on a PC you can either remove the SD card or hit the mirrored button by the lens which ejects a USB connection from the side of the unit. One of the nice small features of the camera is that Kodak’s software is pre-installed on the camera and can be setup on any PC in seconds. The ArcSoft package will play back the videos or upload them directly to your YouTube account.

As with any gadget, there are several downsides that become apparent pretty quick. The main problem I’ve had so far is that the only mode worth a shit is HD60, and make sure that its broad daylight or a very well lit room. When the camera tries to focus on a dark subject you lose quite a bit of frames. The regular HD mode suffers from frame loss even when in a bright area. Just think about the clips of Oblivion running on a PS3 and you’ll know what I mean. The other problem that I’ve found is that most computers will have a hard time playing the video back smoothly unless you have a great graphics card and plenty of RAM. The files are created in H.264 MOV files so the native apps like QuickTime and VLC both have trouble playing the videos. The best option is the supplied software from ArcSoft but it isn’t very convienent since you have to start the program to use the player. I haven’t been able to find way to load the player only as the default program. Don’t even think about trying to edit them in Vegas or Premier unless you can run Crysis at full settings.

All in all, it does exactly what I need and the downsides aren’t that big of deal if you have a primary video camera that can handle low light and prolonged shoots. If you are looking for a second video camera that is under $200 and shoots in HD, its the best of the lot.

Search for it on YouTube for some other reviews and sample clips.

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Tags: gadgets, home made porn, Reviews

Space, the final frontier…

So back in 1993, I bought my first Hallmark Star Trek ornament and that continued for the next 8-9 years. What started out as an innocent geeky obsession turned into a dangerous fantasy. You see, I don’t just hang these ornaments on the tree and be done with them. I connect them to a string of holiday lights to light them up. I lie back on the couch and pretend I am Picard or Kirk fighting Romulans on some imaginary epic space battle and then I tried to stick them up my ass. It was hard at first but year after year, it became easier. I am now comfortable with a string of lighted Star Trek ships up my ass that I can move around as far as the string of lights will let me without getting unplugged from the socket. Sadly, I had to give it up. Lets just say the inside of my anus is a burnt out husk from a short circuit in Enterprise NCC 1701-D.

Here is my collection:

Read more…

Tags: Gerbil, Hallmark Ornaments, Star Trek

This week’s gaming and movie releases, plus the most Pirated games of 2008

Only 3 more weeks left in the year and the gaming releases are slowing down to a trickle. For the 3 major consoles we only have two titles being let loose into retail this week. They are:

 

Playstaion 3

12/10/2008

Sonic Unleashed

 

 

 

Nintendo Wii

12/10/2008

Neopets Puzzle Adventure

 

and for the Xbox 360 -

Nothing….

Moving onto handhelds we have the PSP’s last release of 2008,  and 5 new titles for the DS.

PSP

12/10/2008

Dungeon Maker 2

 

 

Nintendo DS

12/10/2008

Slingo Quest, Cate West: The Vanishing Files, Drivers Ed Portable, Build a Lot, and Left Brain Right Brain 2.

    

 

 

 

 

This week’s Blu-Ray releases are probably the biggest news in the land of geekdom. Actually one release in particular….

 

Blu-Ray

12/09/2008

The Dark Knight

 OMGZ Christian Bale is sooo hot!

Lost Season 4

Horton Hears a Who

and for the rest of this week’s Blu-Ray releases you can check the full list here - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=br_nf_2_more?ie=UTF8&field-releasedate=1y-7y&node=16295751&rank=salesrank&pf_rd_p=325297301&pf_rd_s=center-11&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=193640011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1HRG6XJRDPV1QX2HB1VN

In other tech related news Microsoft has released two new colors for the 120 gig Zune just in time for Christmas.

  I have a Zune. I love it!  www.zune.net

Now for the list I’m sure alot of you came here to read, The Most Pirated Games of 2008. It really should read the most pirated PC games of 2008 but whatever. This list was compiled by Torrentfreak.com and in no way are these official numbers but they more then likely give a pretty good look into what went on in the GameZ Scene this year.

                           PC Game Downloads on BitTorrent in 2008 

 

 

 

 

 

as of December 4, 2008

		downloads	released
1	Spore	(1,700,000)	(Sept. 2008)
2	The Sims 2	(1,150,000)	(Sept. 2004)
3	Assassins Creed	(1,070,000)	(Nov. 2007)
4	Crysis	(940,000)	(Nov. 2007)
5	Command & Conquer 3	(860,000)	(Mar. 2007)
6	Call of Duty 4	(830,000)	(Nov. 2007)
7	GTA San Andreas	(740,000)	(Jun. 2005)
8	Fallout 3	(645,000)	(Oct. 2008)
9	Far Cry 2	(585,000)	(Oct. 2008)
10	Pro Evolution Soccer 2009	(470,000)	(Oct. 2008)

Link to their story - http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204/

 

No wonder why Crytek wants to shift focus onto the console side of development.

 In case anyone forgot Crytek’s president Cevat Yerli had this to say back in April of this year ” I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy,” “It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.”

Way to go PC gamers! Keep on destroying your hobbie and don’t come on here commenting about how successful pc gaming is doing because of Blizzard and WOW, they are the anomaly of the PC gaming industry.

 

I don’t even know why I’m writing about this, pc gaming dead.

 

PS:

 

Only 17 shopping days left until Christmas!

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