It does not happen very often, except perhaps with Police Drama’s: two TV shows manage to come up with virtually the same concept independently, and both execute it with a fair degree of innovation and quality. Continue Reading

What do you get for around a dollar?  A donut or some candies and change? Maybe a drink?  For around a dollar you won’t get much that lasts long.  Except maybe an iPhone app, and even that is not guaranteed to last very long or be useful.  Proto from Tobias Batton’s Game Studio costs around a dollar, and I think it is worth every cent.

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Alienware are having their annual back to school sale again.  There are about 4 days and a few hours left to get little Timmy the machine he will need to get A’s in Fragging Society.  That means about $200 to $300 off most of the range of desktops.  I thought the Area -51 m15x had a neat school friendly hot swappable hard drive/optical drive bay.  Just the thing for swapping some homework files at school with your peers.

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I have got to say this would be amazing, 2 whole terabytes on something that can get lost in your shoe!  These cards could be a world changer, your entire media life on a chip the size of your thumbnail.  Sony has released specifications for Memory Stick XC Duo and Memory Stick XC Micro for up to 32mb/s and Memory Stick XC-HG Duo and Memory Stick XC-HG Micro at 480mb/s.  Details are sparse, like are there actual units or are these just theoretical values.  What would they cost?  If 8Gb of current Memory Stick costs $27 then these would be worth approx. $6750.  Without some sort of official announcement and a working unit I wouldn’t hold my breath yet.   Apparently the equivalent standard for SDXC cards was announced in January, also up to 2TB of size in the exFAT file system (couldn’t they have just called it the Biggest Loser?).  It may be quite awhile before we see products close to this sort of size.

Via Sony Insider

Nikon has announced the release of the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj. This new compact 12.1mp camera has one new trick up its sleeve. It is a projector as well.

With the touch of a button, users can project images and videos as large as 40 inches, playback pictures with music, effects and creative transitions. Additional features of the S1000pj include: 12.1 megapixels; a 5x Wide Angle Zoom-NIKKOR Glass Lens; ISO from 64-6400***; a 2.7-inch Wide Angle LCD display; 5-way VR Image Stabilization System; Subject Tracking; Scene Auto Selector Mode; Nikon’s Smart Portrait System and movie mode.

The COOLPIX S1000pj will be available in Matte Black, in September 2009, for $429.95 MSRP.

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Stargate is back again as Stargate Universe or SGU.  A new trailer was released at Comic-Con and it actually looks OK.  Quite a bit of Battlestar Galactica seems to have rubbed off on it.  Due out this fall, the franchise is obviously now in what I like to call a ‘Star Trek Voyager’ phase.  This is not necessarily a bad thing; Captain Janeway had that strict sexy school ma’am thing down pat.  This time around, a new set of intrepid gate travellers are marooned on an Ancient ship lost on the other side of the Universe. Throw in some of that unreliable Ancient technology, some new bad guys, and it’s bound to have one close call after another.

Rodney is not in this one; from a survivability point of view I think we’d all agree that’s probably a wise move.  Don’t worry though, there is a new slide rule sheriff in town. David Blue plays Rodney’s alter ego, Eli Wallace, a mathematical genius who is also a total slacker – who knew the two went together?  The theme music has also had an update to the 21st Century – very Linkin Park.  All up, I feel very positive about this trailer.  Don’t get me wrong, I would watch the show anyway!  But it’s nice to know someone else might too.

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Recently released iPhone 3.0.1 firmware protects against receiving malicious SMS messages (no, not from your mother).  These messages can take over your iPhone, as demonstrated by security researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner at Black Hat.  There are no mentions of any other fixes or updates in the Release Notes.  Also this update will not affect your ability to Jailbreak your phone.  Having tested the new update extensively I can say that I have not received one malicious text since updating and only one slightly snippy one. Update your iPhone by connecting to iTunes and checking for updates.

Via Gizmodo