Geeks are Sexy Technology News » [GAS]

Job Offer: [GaS] is looking for a few good contributors

Geeks are Sexy — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:44:37 +0000

[Geeks Are Sexy] is currently looking for passionate IT people / geeks / writers who are up to the challenge of blogging a few days each week about geekdom, technology and other IT related topics. Here are some reasons you should consider writing for us:

Exposure
Write about your passion
Be part of a community
Get a salary out of something you’ve always been doing for free ($0.05 per word, max $50 per post / payable via Paypal at the end of each month)

The candidate must have creativity, very strong english writing skills, and some experience in the world of blogging/writing/journalism and technology. If you think you are up to the task, then we would love to hear more from you. Be sure to send us examples of your writings + links to sites where you’ve worked before.

Please note that only the chosen candidate(s) will be contacted.

50 Photos of Costumers from 1980 [Picture Gallery]

Meredith Placko — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:00:43 +0000

As long as nerds have had a convention to call home, costuming has been a part of our niche culture. Check out this treasure trove of photos from Westercon in 1980.

I also have to mention, for all the griping I see online about how women have been a minority in the con scene until recently, when the idea of flashing some skin in a skimpy costume will garner attention, the female force seems to dominate these photos. Not just that, they are looking pretty scandalous! Kudos to us chicks in costume, we’ve been rocking this since the Before Times.

[Via the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society]

Totally Amazing Mass Effect Cosplay [Picture Gallery]

Meredith Placko — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:00:37 +0000

Another round of astounding photos from BGZ Studios, this time featuring some very talented Mass Effect costumers!

[Photographer - BGZ Studios; Miranda - Lindze a la Mode; Commander Shepard - Steven Massey; Tali - Jennifer Barclay]

If Dr. Suess Wrote Batman [Pics]

Meredith Placko — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:00:08 +0000

[Va Joey Devilla]

A Happy and Geeky 2012 to Each and Everyone of You!

Geeks are Sexy — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:01:11 +0000

I’d just like to take a minute today to thank each and everyone of you for reading [GAS]. I’ve been working on this little place I call home on the net for a little more than 6 years now (my, my, time certainly flies when you’re having fun), and I really hope you all enjoy it.

Of course, a new year wouldn’t be much without a few resolutions. My resolutions for this year are:

Lose and extra 10 pounds
Hire a few extra writers for the site
Try to sleep at least 8 hours every night (This is kind of difficult to do with 3 young kids)
…and that’s enough for now!

Have you made your resolutions for 2012? Care to share them with us? Got any geeky projects planned for this year? Let us know in the comments section below!

[Picture Source: Jedi Mouseketeer]

Dear Sexy Geeks: Happy Holidays from All of Us!

Geeks are Sexy — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:00:22 +0000

Well, it looks like it’s Christmas tomorrow folks, so I’d like to take a minute to wish you all a very merry (and geeky!) Christmas, and happy holidays for all you non-Christmassy people too! If you can, try to get off your computer and spend a little time with your loved ones, and if you party a bit too much, please make sure to ask someone to drive you home after the celebrations. We wouldn’t want anyone to be missing some body parts in 2012, so think twice before doing anything stupid, ok?

I’d also like to thank all of our online friends who’ve been consistently sending link love to us throughout 2011:

Sean over at Fashionably Geek
Rob from Topless Robot
Alex and his team from Neatorama
Donna and Scott from Buzzfeed
cranberryzero @ IHeartChaos
Scott from Laughing Squid
Everyone @ TheMarySue and Geekosystem
Tal over at Walyou
Everyone @ Dorkly
Our friends from The Daily What
Nat from the Unreality Magazine
The whole team over @ The How-to Geek
Chris from environmentalgraffiti.com
…and to anyone else who I may have forgotten about.

We’ll be back posting new content on the 26th, but in the meantime, we’ve got a bunch of posts pre-scheduled for tomorrow, so be sure to visit us at least once or twice during the weekend!

[Picture Source: James Hance - This guy is awesome, be sure to check out his Facebook page!]

Faildesk.net: Horror Stories from the Back Alley of IT [New GAS Site]

Geeks are Sexy — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:05:33 +0000

Hey everyone!

Just a quick post to let you all know about this awesome new site we just launched: Faildesk.net

FailDesk is a humor site dedicated to all the IT professionals out there who work so tirelessly and diligently to make sure “the system stays up.” Sometimes the constant hours and little-to-no gratification can get someone down. Let FailDesk be the place to cheer you up!
This project was conceptualized by two IT guys and the editor over at Geeks Are Sexy (also an IT guy in his former life) in early 2011 and launched late 2011. We had some IT projects to finish. C’mon.

So basically, expect some pretty awesome stuff over there, especially if you’re the kind of geek who likes to read about horror stories from help desk people or system/network administrators. If you have stories of your own to tell, we’re also accepting submissions via the user submission section of the site.

[Faildesk.net: Website | Facebook | Twitter]

New Survey Says: Female Gamers “Get More Sex”

JLister — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:00:57 +0000

Most online gamers are female, while women who play online have more sex than those who don’t. Or at least that’s what a new survey claims.

Harris Interactive carried out a survey of 2,000 adults for GameHouse. (The survey was carried out online, though it’s not clear if the respondents were self selecting.) The headline finding was that 55% of those who said they were online gamers were female.

If this doesn’t match up with stereotypes, it may well be that the definition was “people who play online games on their computer, social networking sites, or mobile devices.” It seems inconceivable this isn’t intended to include games consoles (or that respondents wouldn’t have just interpreted the question that way.) However, the key is the mention of social networking sites: tending your crops in Farmville is classed as online gaming, which — based only on my personal experience — may affect the gender balance.

The survey also found that 57% of women who game online “have sex” (whatever frequency counts for that definition) compared with 52% of female non-gamers. Meanwhile 38% of female gamers have sex once a week, compared with 34% of female non-gamers. Of course, that level of difference has little if any statistical significance.

Similar points of comparison between female gamers and non-gamers found gamers are more likely to watch TV, but also more likely to play sports, and more likely to socialize regularly, though again the differences were relatively small. Female gamers were notably more likely to use social networks, though given the definition of online gaming used, that’s kind of a circular question.

The survey also found that gamers were more likely to have children aged under 18 (38% vs 28%). Meanwhile just under two-thirds lived with a husband or partner, most were happy with their relationship, and nearly two-thirds are aged 35 or older.

Of the female gamers, half said games made them feel smarter, while a majority said games were either a way to relieve stress, deal with boredom, or take a mental break. Only one in six said games were a way to connect with people.

Solved: Google Reader slowdown/freezes

JLister — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:38:12 +0000

If you’re a regular user of the Google Reader RSS tool, you may have noticed that the most recent revamp hasn’t just attracted the usual complaints when any user interface is changed but, for some people, has caused serious performance problems.

In my case I found that at one point (when I was scrolling through a list of 100+ articles, having been away for a couple of days) the tab with Google Reader open was eating up a staggering 1GB of RAM. Fortunately I have a multi-core processor which, along with Chrome’s sandboxing, avoided a complete meltdown, but even then I was still getting significant slowdowns and freezes on the Reader.

It turns out the most likely cause of the specific memory problems is related to Google adding a Google+ button for every article. There’s some sort of issue with the link, which is being multiplied by the number of articles in your message pane to create the slowdown.

One workaround for this, which seems to be working in my place, is to tweak any ad-blocking utilities you are running to block the button. You can do this by adding the following address to your list of blocked ad locations:

plusone.google.com/u/0/_/+1/fastbutton

Incidentally, if you are running blanket ad-blocking tools and enjoy reading Geeks Are Sexy, we’d very much appreciate it if you were able to add our site to your list of exceptions — doing so will help our bottom line and make it easier for us to keep bringing you sexy, geeky content. Believe it or not, this place costs the price of a medium-sized Sedan to run every year.

And if you think our ads are still too annoying, you can always help us by donating a small amount (or a big one!) to the blog or by “Flattering” us.

Halloween 2011: Reader Costume Picture Gallery

Geeks are Sexy — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:00:45 +0000

Yesterday, we asked you guys to send in pictures of your Halloween costumes, and you guys delivered… and more! Over 250 of you have sent in pictures! Unfortunately, we can’t post all of these here, but here’s a selection of our favorites for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks everyone!

REVIEW: Samsung Galaxy S II for T-Mobile

ACrezo — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:00:38 +0000

Tuesday, the T3 Gadget Awards 2011 named the Galaxy S II “Phone of the Year” — the first time in 3 years the award hasn’t gone to Apple or HTC. Today, T-Mobile is releasing their version of the GSII, which is already available on Sprint and AT&T.

The T-Mobile GSII is the final version to launch in the US, and though it’s similar in most ways to the two others mentioned above, there are several minor but interesting variations in this device from the others. The first and most-discussed is the processor switch-up; while Sprint and AT&T shipped their devices with 1.2Ghz dual-core Exynos hardware, the T-Mobile device is running a 1.5Ghz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S3. I’m going to take a shortcut here and direct you to Tim Stevens of Engadget, whose excellent breakdown of the differences between the three, hardware-wise, is as exhaustive as I’ve seen yet and certainly more than I’m able to do here without getting a hands-on with the other two phones.

Briefly, the T-Mobile GSII specs:

Height: 5.11 inches (129.8 mm)
Width: 2.71 inches (68.8 mm)
Depth: 0.37 inches (9.4 mm)
Weight: 4.77 ounces (135 grams)
Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ S3 Processor with 1.5 GHz dual-core CPUs
Android™ 2.3.5 Gingerbread
Rechargeable 1850 mAh lithium-ion battery
Internal phone storage: 16 GB
Micro SD Memory card slot (up to 32 GB)
RAM: 1 GB
4G: Up to 42 Mbps download speed
Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth® 3.0
1080p HD video capture and sharing
8 MP camera with flash
2 MP front-facing camera
4.52″ Super AMOLED Plus WVGA touch screen
800-by-480-pixel resolution

Awesome, right? What I really want to get into, because I’m by no means qualified to debate the finer points of cell phone technology, is how the phone has worked for me as an everyday device over the last few days. I’ll try to touch on all of the important potential-buyer points, since the phone is out now and some of you may be making decisions about this.

The first and most important factor when deciding to buy a phone (which you’ll have for at least a year, probably) is standard usability–text, camera, contacts and social media management, browser performance and perhaps even some phone calls. Coming in a very close second–though it’ll probably be the thing that sells the phone regardless–is the overall aesthetic and comfort of the device. So let’s do this.

The Samsung Galaxy S II for T-Mobile is gorgeous. The 4.5″ Super AMOLED display is an enormous glassy expanse that spans nearly the full length of my hand, though I’ll admit my hands are rather smallish. Contrast, clarity, color: Beautiful. There are no physical buttons on the screen, which frees up the full plane for display and four capacitive home keys.

It’s thin, light for its size, and the back is a textured soft-touch cover that should reduce the chances of dropping your gigantic new phone into the sink while you take your next Facebook profile pic with the ridiculously awesome 8-megapixel rear-facing camera. The front-facing 2-megapixel camera is more than adequate for video calls, which I tested using Skype and a willing guinea pig. The interesting item of note here: the color saturation of the video received is much, much higher than you’d expect. What I know to be a neutral-colored wall was rendered in springish grass green. Interesting, as I said, but not a real problem unless you’re doing interior design via video conference. The cameras do offer plenty of customization, though, with three full screens of settings to tweak and enable to your heart’s content.

Video plays smoothly and looks pretty great (this is a screenshot I took while watching the new Avengers trailer, which is also awesome) and the battery life is good enough to get you through a movie, a call from your mom, an hour of video call, 467 rounds of Words with Friends, approximately 500 texts and half as all the email ever. That’s a small exaggeration, but not much: I didn’t put the GSII down for a solid 5 hours, and when I plugged it in I still had around 25%. Not bad for a rugged hands-on and near-constant download, camera and browsing. Under normal use conditions (that is, once the new-phone freak-out subsides) I’d expect it to last much longer. Reports of 7.7 – 8.3 hours are floating about, and I’d venture to say that’s an accurate estimate of talk-and-play time.

Because the GSII is an Android device, you get the full suite of awesomeness you’ve come to know and love. Google accounts management keep your contacts and social media in line and available, which is lovely, and TouchWiz — after adjusting everything to fit your needs and preferences — is pretty awesome. Motion commands allow intuitive pan/zoom, widget and app arrangement and the new social and media hubs keep all of your favorite things grouped conveniently together.

T-Mobile’s claim that their 4G is faster than your typical home wi-fi checks out in my location, which was a bit of a surprise but not an unwelcome one. When a device runs as fast as this one does, it’s probably best not to slow it down with crappy connectivity. So, way to go, T-Mo.

Phone-to-TV streaming, voice to text, and lots of options for reading ebooks, sharing media and web browsing makes it hard to decide whether the GSII, as big as it is, is a phone or a small tablet with call capabilities. Granted, the AT&T edition is a tiny bit smaller, but when it comes down to it, the Galaxy S II will do anything you’d ask of a tablet, and do it quickly, and then it will call and order pizza or something. Here, have a few screenshots. (Commentary in the embiggen, so click to get the explanatory text.)

So that’s the good stuff. Lots, right? The best thing about this phone is that I have exactly two complaints, of which one is a personal quirk and the other is the result of a genetic lottery:

One–When using the social hub–which aggregates media feeds like Twitter and Facebook alongside your email, text and IM–there’s no way to disable notifications on your unmovable Messaging icon on the home page. This means that for texts, you get one message and two notifications. This bothers me, and I’ll continue looking for a way to resolve this without turning off the Media Hub notifications. (Anyone who figures this out gets my undying gratitude.)

Two–My hands are just barely big enough to operate the GSII comfortably. This can’t be helped and your mileage may vary. The first few hours were filled with moments of sheer terror as I fumbled to keep hold of the phone while testing out things like the cameras, landscape typing, motion controls and pretty much any activity that didn’t include putting the phone down. Two days in, I feel comfortable with it, and I think that most people will adapt a bit more quickly than I did. (For comparison: my previous phone was an HTC Aria, which is delightfully tiny. You see the learning curve I worked through, here.)

If you’re thinking of getting the GSII, I can’t think of any reason why I’d advise against it except if you have trouble swiping with one hand when you go to check it out. If you can’t pass the lockscreen with one hand, you can expect to use the device two-handed forever or until upgrade do you part.

So that’s about it. I love the phone, I love the functionality, and overall I find it consistently impressive. If you’ve got questions about it that I haven’t covered here or the answers to which you don’t find in the Engadget video, then drop them in the comments and I’ll pop in to answer them throughout the day. :)

Readers’ Ink: Sexy Geeks with Awesome Tattoos [Gallery]

ACrezo — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:00:32 +0000

We asked for pics of your geeky body art, and you delivered. Here are all the entries that made it in before the cut-off (for the rest of you: we’ll save yours for Round 2 sometime in the future). There’s a bit of everything here, which is encouraging because that means our geek-base is nice and diverse. We like that. From Trek to Who to Zim to LotR to– you get it. Lots of stuff.

Thanks, everyone! You are all awesome, and we less-than-three you, which you’ll find in tattoo form below. :) Check it out!

(Click on a thumbnail to enlarge.)

Get your cameras ready or snap some shots of your tattoos now. There will be a Round 2 of Readers’ Ink, and we don’t want to catch you unaware next time.