Voted as best short film at the New York Comedy Film Festival, The Astounding World of the Future takes a tongue-in-cheek look at some amazingly accurate mid-20th century predictions of the year 2000.
[Via Neatorama]
Twitter: the Choice for God, Guns and Grandmas
If you thought Twitter was exclusively home to tech-savvy college kids, think again. Reports show the micro-blogging service has some unusual uses among churchgoers and the military, while the site’s growth may in fact be driven by older users.
MSNBC reports on a church in San Antonio where the congregation are not only encouraged to use Twitter on smartphones during the Sunday sermon, but the resulting messages are displayed on a large screen. A survey, albeit of just 145 churches, found 10 per cent already had a presence on Twitter. And one church even had members play biblical roles and post updates to perform the Passion play on Twitter over Easter.
Meanwhile the United States force in Afghanistan has launched a Twitter account which includes updates of both US force deaths and killings and captures of enemy combatants. The force has designated three staff members to update the account, along with Facebook and YouTube pages. The latter is somewhat ironic given that the US Army has previously blocked soldiers from accessing YouTube for fears that it will clog up the military network, a major issue given the remote locations of some troops.
And a study by Pace University finds that while 99% of people aged 18 to 24 use some form of social networking site, just 22% use Twitter. Of course, it’s difficult to draw many conclusions without similar studies of users of other ages. But it does give some weight to the theory that Twitter’s success is not down to the most obvious demographic, but rather older users.
Davey Winder of DaniWeb has an interesting take: with the recent rise of mainstream reports about celebrity Twitter users, he suspects those aged 18-24 may have the least reverence for public figures and see their posts as a novelty rather than a reason to use the site.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Cinematic Trailer
Yesterday, BioWare and LucasArts unveiled the first cinematic trailer of their upcoming MMORPG: Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Star Wars: The Old Republic represents a new approach to online entertainment, featuring immersive storytelling, dynamic combat, and groundbreaking companion characters. The game takes place in the Star Wars™ galaxy approximately three hundred years after the events of Star Wars™: Knights of the Old Republic™.
The Lego Spam Police
If you’re the type of person who forwards email chain letters, you better watch your back, because you might be the next victim of… The Spam Police!
Microsoft Unveils Awesome New Wireless Controller: The Human Body
Yesterday, as part of Microsoft’s E3 presentation, the company unveiled Project Natal, the much rumored motion controller we’ve told you about a few weeks ago. If you think the Wii and its Wiimote were the next best thing since sliced bread, boy will you be in for a shock when you see how this thing works.
iPhone Survives Car
By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Most of the issues that I’ve had with the iPhone involved altercations with the carrier, AT&T, but my opinion of the device increased a little today when I discovered an unexpected perk: it’s more durable than I thought. The iPhone below survived being run over by my father’s Chevy Avalanche, which weighs around 7,000 pounds, and other than the cracked glass, came away unscathed. In fact, it still works perfectly. And though it was face-up during this unfortunate encounter, I’m sure that the case helped too, so it gets a plug: fifteen bucks, from Case-Mate.
Considering that I was pretty clumsy in college and managed to destroy not one but two Nokia cellphones just by dropping them, I’m impressed. Oh, and I should note that the running-over incident was not some sort of experiment, though how it actually got behind the rear tire of the Avalanche is still a mystery.
Have you ever been a victim of a similar situation? Did your iPhone (or any other gadget for that matter) survive the incident? Let us know in the comments section!
Some Very Bad News for IBM and Apple
First the good news.
It’s the new Commodore 128PC. A computer breakthrough with all the power of its competition at half the price. The commodore 128PC has the same memory as the IBM PCJr or the Apple IIc. It has 80 column color capability. The IBM PCjr doesn’t. It’s expandable to 512K of memory. The Apple IIc isn’t. It’s the first personal computer to have more than 6000 software programs written for it even before it was introduced. Because it’s compatible with our all purpose computer: the Commodore 64, the world’s best selling computer.
The bad news for IBM and Apple is that the stranglehold they’ve had on the lucrative $4 billion personal computer market has finally been broken. The good news for retailers is that you can finally tap into that personal computer market. And while this is our first entry into the personal computer market, it won’t be our last. Which is good news for everybody but IBM and Apple.
80 column color capability? expandable to 512k of memory? 6000 software programs already written for it? I’m upgrading my C64 right now! But the ultimate question remains… will this thing run Crysis?
PSP marketing staff hit ‘Go’ too soon
Sony has mistakenly unveiled the new edition of its handheld console, the PSP Go. The biggest change is that the UMD drive has gone, leaving a considerably smaller and lighter console.
The Go (pictured via Eurogamer.net) isn’t expected to get an official airing until tomorrow at the E3 video games conference. However, a video detailing the new console is part of the June edition of Qore, Sony’s online video magazine, which briefly became available ahead of schedule over the weekend. (Of course, it’s entirely possible the publishing ‘blunder’ was a way of sparking publicity.)
As part of the clip, Sony’s John Koller reveals that the device is 43 per cent lighter than the existing PSP-3000, largely because the UMD drive has been replaced with a Bluetooth/16 GB flash memory combination, with games downloaded directly to the memory rather than bought on physical media. The reduction in size hasn’t come at too much expense to the screen, which is 3.8” (compared with 4.3” on the PSP-3000).
The Universal Media Disc format had been designed as a way to get the storage advantages of a DVD on a portable console, plus makes it possible to sell legal movies for the PSP. In practice the format proved too easy to hack, while movie discs had the twin problems of the UMD format usually requiring DVD extras to be ditched to save space, and the reluctance of buyers to purchase a disc exclusively for the console, particularly if they already owned the title.
Though new incarnations of both Grand Turismo and Metal Gear Solid will appear on the Go, the clip gives the impression the device may be aimed at casual gamers with many titles being shorter games (presumably at a low price) designed to be downloaded and played on impulse.
It appears many of the other core features of the PSP, such as playback of various audio and video formats, and slick integration with the PS3, will be present on the new console. Pricing isn’t yet confirmed, while the release will be sometime this fall.
Monday Morning Humor: Cool Guys Don’t Look at Explosions
Aired on Sunday evening during the 2009 edition of the MTV Movie Awards, this video takes a look at one of the most hilarious action-movie cliche: Heroes walking away from explosions in slow-motion.
Microsoft Bing: The Decision Engine
Did you know that Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, went live this morning? Redmond dubs its new service as a decision engine, and after using it for an hour, I have to agree with them. I decided that I liked Google more… for now. What I find really strange is that everything Bing does, it does in a way that’s very similar to Google, with a few extra blings. I invite you to try it out for a while and make the observation for yourself. And if you’re feeling too lazy to head over there, here’s the search engine’s official promotional video:
Have you tried Bing yet? Care to share your thoughts about it with us? As always, the comments section is open for discussion!