Star Wars Fans Get the Ultimate Phone

Star Wars fans get the ultimate phone

For $200 (or considerably lower) you can buy the Motorola Droid 2. And for $249 you can buy the Motorola Droid R2-D2.

In one of the all-time great examples of taking a pun to its logical conclusion, Verizon is releasing a special Star Wars-themed edition of its next major smartphone release. The theming covers both hardware and software.

From a hardware perspective, the back of the handset includes etches related to the R2-D2 character, while the phone ships in a carbonite-style case (think Han Solo between The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi if you don’t immediately get the reference.) There’s also a custom-made dock, though beyond being white and plastic-looking, the connection isn’t so clear there.

From a software perspective, there’s a barrage of Star Wars material, ranging from ringtones and wallpapers, to a special start-up sequence. There’s also a special app that turns the phone into binoculars. Sadly this isn’t literally the case, but rather the phone offers a special 360 degree view of the Battle of Hoth.

There’ll be an unspecified “limited number” of the R2-D2 handsets available at launch this Thursday.


Why You Should ALWAYS Shield The Numeric Keypad When Using an ATM

I’ve recently started being paranoid about shielding the numeric keypads of all ATMs I use. I guess it stands to reason since I got my debit card cloned 2 times in the past 6 months. Fortunately, banks usually reimburse the money stolen from your account because of a cloned card, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful. Here’s a short video showing what’s going on at an ATM when someone covers or does not cover the keypad when entering their pin.

[Via Gawker]

Raytheon’s Awesome New XOS Exoskeleton

If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ll remember us posting about Raytheon’s original XOS Exoskeleton back in 2007, and now, the company has released the Mark II version of the suit, which apparently consumes 50% less power than the original. Check it out:

Raytheon’s second-generation exoskeleton (XOS 2), essentially a wearable robotics suit, was unveiled for the first time recently during an event at the company’s Salt Lake City research facility. XOS 2 is lighter, stronger and faster than its predecessor, yet it uses 50 percent less power, and its new design makes it more resistant to the environment.

[Via]

Daughter of Convention: The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Con

It’s a rarely disputed fact among the geek contingent that conventions, by and large, are a kind of rite of passage. (If you haven’t gotten the convention achievement, you really should get on that, by the way.) And what’s not to love? There are as many conventions these days as there are fandoms, all across the United States and Europe and beyond, of all sizes and flavors. Like gaming? There’s PAX and GenCon. Prefer literature? Try WorldCon or World Fantasy Con. Want to go the fandom route? There’s always Comic-Con (in various incarnations) and Dragon*Con, just to name a few.

For the uninitiated, though, especially those outside the geek world, conventions can be altogether overwhelming and even a little frightening. Heck, they frighten me sometimes. But if by approaching any convention with an open mind and, probably most importantly an open schedule, I’m of a mind that nearly anyone can have a good time. The bigger the convention the less likely you’re going to get everything done as you’d like, so a certain amount of flexibility goes a very long way. Chances are, if you don’t see your favorite author there’s something else going on.

Still, there’s room for criticism and for change. Exhausting and overwhelming as conventions can be, I’m still a big fan. But at the same time I’ve become aware that many of the things I truly love about conventions I also can’t stand. So I’m in a bit of a paradoxical situation here. Let me show you what I mean:

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Is the Media Obsessed with Apple?

Apple receives a level of media coverage that could be argued as disproportionate according a new report. (And yes, we at GeeksAreSexy are aware of the irony involved in covering this report and giving the company even more publicity!)

The Pew Research Center looked through 437 tech stories across 11 newspapers, three cable news channels, three TV network news shows, 12 mainstream news websites and 10 radio programs to draw its conclusions. That’s something of a problem in itself: that breakdown may be somewhat close to the relative influence of each form of media (though TV should probably be higher), but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the diversity within each form. For example, even the output of just six channels is far more representative of all TV news than 12 websites is of the entire web.

The five tech companies with the most coverage were Apple (15.1% of all tech stories), Google (11.4%), Twitter (7.1%), Facebook (4.8%) and Microsoft (3.0%). It should be noted that even though the research covered a 13-month period (June 2009-July 2010), the Twitter figure appears to have been notably distorted by coverage of its role in protests over the Iranian election last year.

So why the disparity between Apple and Microsoft? Part of it seems to have been that Apple’s business is based more around events: during the study period it had the launch of two different iPhone models plus the iPad. Indeed, these stories plus the App store and Steve Jobs’ health made up almost the entire Apple coverage.

Microsoft had its own high-profile release of course with Windows 7. That raises the possibility that the Apple coverage stems from its products being eyecatching gadgets that lend themselves more to both broadcasting and multimedia websites, whereas arguably the main selling point of Windows 7 is that it doesn’t crash or throw up error messages as often, something that hardly makes for an exciting demonstration. That theory is somewhat born out by the fact that the Apple gadget coverage made up a considerably lower proportion among newspaper articles, where writers can go into more depth.

It’s also possible the Apple coverage becomes somewhat self-perpetuating. For example, once the iPhone 4’s release got so much attention, it made follow-up stories about the handset’s reception problems a more obvious topic to cover.

The study also noted that when it came to individual stories, matters of politics and procedure such as the FTC’s broadband regulation and net neutrality received comparatively little coverage. The only real exception was the ongoing debate about texting while driving, and related laws, which was the most-covered individual story, making up 8.5% of all coverage. That one makes sense: although net neutrality arguably affects almost as many people (if not more), the consequences of dangerous driving are clearly much easier to illustrate, particularly aided by the reader/viewer’s imagination.