Category: Entertainment

ABC World News showed a clip tonight of Maria Bartiromo of CNBC interviewing the Pres. At one point, she asks him if he uses the Internet, if he Googles things. He said what he likes to use on “The Google” is the maps. He likes to look at the satellite pictures of his ranch in Crawford, cause it “reminds me where I want to be sometimes” (like on one of his next regularly- scheduled vacation?). He said that he also doesn’t do email because he doesn’t, basically, want the electronic papertrail of such communications (oh, kind of like with the Diebold voting machines?).

Back in August we provided some enthusiastic links to Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager. The creators of the series had two episodes in the can (on the removable media? In the RAID array?).

Well, if you haven’t been following along in your news feeder, Blame Society Productions now has two other episodes available. The BSP website also has some additional material, like behind the scenes photos, interviews with the creators, and even some fan music videos (fan films of a fan film: who’d a thunk it?). BSP is also looking for donations to pay their substantial bandwidth charges. They have Chad Vader Cafe Press merch to help the cause. Perhaps a Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager thong for Mrs. Vader?

Oh, and by the way, it’s Chad Vader: NIGHT Shift Manager now, and Chad is NOT happy about it, or the fact that the checkout girl, Clarissa, may be going out with his arch nemesis, Clint, now DAY Shift Manager.

Here’s the link to Episode 3.
Here’s the link to Episode 4.

There’s a new online episodic comic, called The Basic Virus, which I think looks promising. With its plot of robot uprising, it reminds me of the sadly aborted Blue Lily from the early ’90s, or even our own neoWobblies, BCP’s shadowy “creators,” a group of disgruntled data anarchists and cyborganic rabble rising up against the 21st century Man.

The Basic Virus is an outgrowth of a series of agitprop posters creator Joe Alterio did in 2004. There are two episodes online so far. You can also download them to your iPod, which is kind of cool. It’s even mostly readable on a Nano (I had a hard time with a few balloons), and it looks gorgeous. I’ll definitely be subscribing to the feed and getting future episodes.

This item came to us by way of the new bot blog, Suicide Bots, which is awesome. s1m0n3 has posted some really cool stuff. I hope she keeps it up.

GameTrailers has a new trailer up for Bioshock, a next-gen FPS that’s shaping up to be both a very innovative and controversial title. The underwater city that Irrational Games has created is amazing looking, sort of Bladerunner meets Jules Verne. They have a guy who works full-time on programming water effects.

iLounge has reviews of the first releases of iPod games. I’ve been curious to see if these games are any good or not. I’m not a big computer gamer. Don’t get me wrong, I love games. Too much, in fact. Once I start, I don’t want to stop. They can (and have in the past) become a huge time suck. So I try to limit my exposure. The one time that I feel okay about gaming is when I’m waiting for trains, planes, and buses, or otherwise, sitting around, away from work, and twiddling my thumbs, so phone and iPod games are a perfect match for me.

From these reviews, it doesn’t look like Apple and company have done half bad in the first batch of releases. The only one they didn’t really like was Pac-Man, which is too bad. I’m curious to see where they’ll take iPod gaming in the future.

It’s WAY too early to be starting in with the “would make a great stocking stuffer” line. We’ll be sick of that one long before we’re sick on Halloween candy corn, but check these out, for… oh hell, I might even buy one of these and I’m not much a gamer. For US$15, you get a keychain-sized Atari joystick or paddle wheel that actually works. The joystick model either contains Asteroid and Millipede or Centipede and Yar’s Revenge. The paddle controller has Pong, Breakout and Warlords. The controller comes with 6′ RCA cables so you can plug your keychain into any available TV, Now that’s going to leave an unsightly bulge in your pocket.

[Via Gear Factor]

Universal Music Group (UMG) has just announced a partnership with SpiralFrog, a New York-based startup, that’s developed a music downloading service where consumers “pay” for the music by watching “non-intrusive, contextually-relevant, targeted advertising.” From the SpiralFrog press release it sounds like they’ll offer free music video downloads as well. Amazingly, they’ll still be crapping everything up with DRM. The press release says:

“Piracy continues to be one of the biggest issues facing the music industry… Digital rights protection will help us combat piracy and provide peace of mind for the record labels and the artists.”

Um…you’re going to be giving the music away. With the state of DRM tech today, even giving it away in this manner is not likely to deal a killing blow to piracy.

Here’s the SpiralFrog PR.

Update: TechCrunch has something of a scoop. They talked to someone who does PR for SpiralFrog. He claimed that downloads will only be listenable on one PC and two mobile devices (no iPods!), and that, you’ll have to log onto SpiralFrog at least once a month to view ads or all your music will go bye-bye. Charming. Untenable. A digital dodo in the making.

Thanks, Alberto!

Street Tech hero Rudy Rucker has launched a web-based lit zine called Flurb. The first issue has pieces by Rudy and Paul DiFilippo, Richard Kadrey, and Marc Laidlaw, all fellow alums of print bOING bOING. The “Freestyle/Ribofunk” crowd — nice to see them all together again under one virtual roof.

[When I was a young stoner (been there/off that), “flurble durble” was a way that you could say: “I’m too many tokes over the line to rub actual thoughts together anymore. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.” Somehow, having this association connect up to Rudy seems so apropos.]

As Rebecca of selectparks puts it, Paul Robertson’s “Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006” is “a kind of machinima recursion, where animations inspired by games have inspired animations.” Rebecca also calls it a masterpiece, which is a bit of an overstatement, but it is an interesting approach to animation inspired by the aesthetics of handheld gaming.

Not since Bart Simpson duped Mo for the umteenth time have prank pages been this obvious, or this embarrassing. Members of an Australian satire program on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) purchased two kiosk tickets (that did not require any proof of identity). When the two made-up passengers didn’t show, their names, “Al Kyder ” and Mr. “Terry Wrist,” were repeatedly paged over the PA. Some passengers in the terminal were alarmed, as they thought it might be a coded security message about an “unfolding incident.” As you might imagine, airport security was not amused.

You can see a video of Al Kyder being paged here.

Thanks, Jay!