Fringe Goes Into the Future

The cast and crew of Fringe put on an emotionally charged panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con. As the countdown to the final season begins, fans packed the room to learn what news they could for the upcoming fifth season. Cast Members Anna Torv (Oliva), Joshua Jackson (Peter), John Noble (Walter),  Lance Reddick (Broyles), and Jasika Nicole (Astrid) shared their favorite memories from previous seasons. Tears flowed from cast and fans alike as they listened to Nicole talk about her relationship with Walter’s character and his real life counterpart, “Fortunately the relationship that John and I have in real life translated on camera, so this beautiful connection evolved in the storytelling. Astrid’s first big episode was realized because of her relationship with the doctor. It was a lovely way to explore this burgeoning relationship.”

John Noble spoke about how the defining factor of the show that keeps everyone together is love, “All the characters have developed genuine love. The love between the father and son, the love between Peter and Olivia.” This he says, is what will make the final chapter absolutely brilliant.

The panel kicked off with a tease for the final season – the video was actually comprised of clips from Season Four’s episode, “Letters of Transit,” which takes place in the year of 2036, and arguably one of the best episodes from last season. It was confirmed that the new season will take place in this future where the Observers have taken over Earth. It is up to the Fringe team, past and present, to restore the world to its rightful place.

The final season airs on September 28, 2012 on Fox.



More Bad News for BlackBerry

In the mobile device world there is a heated battle between the most popular handset creators. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry once tore up the market, but with the onset of the iPhone and then Google’s Android platform, the future is no longer certain.

Now, what is certain is that BlackBerry is no longer a real contender in this fight and is barely keeping its head above water. It hasn’t been a good week for RIM.

First, According to a poll conducted by Baird & Co by William Power, 31% of registered BB10 app developers are jumping ship and will not develop anything for the new BB10 platform.

RIM executive Alec Saunders is trying to spin that pool suggesting that the survey doesn’t reflect what is actually happening out there. The BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour that hosts a media event for developers in 23 cities is reporting “over capacity” registrations at most of its events.

The Power survey did only hit up 200 developers and quizzed them on their long term intentions for developing on BlackBerry. Saunders claims RIM has received feedback from over 500 developers all excited for the next BlackBerry OS.

We won’t be seeing any BlackBerrys running BB10 until first quarter 2013, and this may play into the general reluctance we are hearing. Everyone is waiting on something from BlackBerry to prove it still is a contender in this market.

Secondly this week Research in Motion was slapped with a $147 Million Lawsuit by a jury in California stating that the BlackBerry Enterprise Software infringes on a patent held by Mformation in New Jersey.

RIM claims that all of their software is independently developed and that the claim by Mformation is invalid. The jury didn’t see it that way, and while sticking to their guns, RIM plans to appeal the decision. Experts speculate that this lawsuit is unlikely to be overturned, however they could challenge the amount so they don’t have to pay out as much.

The total amount equates to $8 for every unit sold in the United States that contains the offending software.

So all in all, not a great week for the handheld giant. This bad news just hinders their struggle to recover from some poor business decisions.

Are you a BlackBerry fan? If so, do you think BlackBerry can recover or are its days numbered?

Deadpool Video Game Teaser Trailer is Online

Movies based on Video Games tend to suck. And video games based on movies have never been really better either. But there are a good handful of games based on comics that are really good (Arkham Assylum and City for instance) but then that rule gets broken when you make a comic book into a movie, then make that movie version into a video game.

Thankfully, a Deadpool video game will stand a better chance since it has not been made into a movie yet.

Check out the teaser trailer:

I don’t know about you, but that kind of had a stink of Duke Nukem Forever on it.

The character does break the fourth wall, but the gags (at least here) are pretty shallow and weak. I could see myself getting REALLY irritated with constant commentary like this. In the comics Deadpool is annoyingly sarcastic, has mental conflicts with himself, and talks to ‘the reader’ a lot, but I am not sure how this will translate into an action-packed video game.

It will all depend on the storyline (which I hope isn’t just weak reasons to make Deadpool kill people) and on game play. If there are a multitude of takedowns and weapon choices (which there should be,) then I can see some value.

We will have to wait for a full trailer or even a demo before I get excited about this one.



Amazing Millennium Falcon Skirt [Pic]

Hey! That’s Jennifer Landa, Star Wars fangirl extraordinaire and the lady who had that awesome Death Star Dress at SDCC last year. Awesome Skirt, Jennifer!

[Via SWBlog]

Hidden Galaxies Discovered

Dark matter has been something that astrophysicists have postulated about for some time – matter we cannot see but must exist for things to make sense in the universe. A new technique has been demonstrated in a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that indicates that entirely starless galaxies conclusively exist, even if we don’t know the exact shape and size of them.

These galaxies are composed of cosmic dust and dark matter in proportions that don’t quite meet the requirements for star formation.

The technique involves examining the illumination of hydrogen in these “dark galaxies”. The hydrogen glows in the intense light released from a nearby quasar – a black-hole powered object. The glow released is a specific UV frequency that, once stretched out from the voyage to Earth, becomes visible to us at blue-violet light.

As the team filtered down their readings to the specific frequency required, they eventually narrowed the findings to the 12 brightest galaxies – the “dark dozen” – around a particularly luminous quasar, HE0109-3518, nicknamed “the phone number”. While 12 might not seem like a huge number in astronomical terms, it is the very first evidence of confirmed dark galaxies, which is pretty special.

“The first study was really just discovery research, to demonstrate that the technique works,” says Sebastiano Cantalupo, from the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was lead author of the paper.

The observations were performed at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) (a highly creative name dontchya think?) in Chile, as the quasar is in a southern hemisphere constellation. Further observations are scheduled for the fall to fully examine the dark dozen, and the team is hoping to conduct a search from the Keck telescope in Hawaii for northern hemisphere dark galaxies.

[via Time | Picture Source: Argonne National Laboratory (CC)]

Facebook Employs New Tactics to Combat Teen Cyber Bullying

Cyber bullying has been on the rise in the last decade and the main facilitator has been the social network boom. Facebook’s latest scheme to combat this distasteful use of our freedom of communication targets the 13 to 14-year-old user who may feel too intimidated to hit the site’s “report” button.

The new button says “This post is a problem” prompting the kids to answer a few questions about why they’re upset by a particular post on Facebook. The questionnaire attempts to take the kids to a solution that’s suitable for the problem at hand. If it’s more that they’re annoyed, rather than frightened by the post, then it suggests that they message their friend and let them know it makes them uncomfortable. If the post seems more dangerous in nature, then it suggests they message an adult about it and get some help. It even directs teens to suicide hotlines and professional help if it believes the user has suicidal tendencies.

These new tactics have been put into action after consultation with researches at Columbia and Yale Universities. It’s believed that measures like this are becoming critical as the younger generations start living their lives half in the real world, and half in cyberspace. Social interaction, both good and bad, is happening more and more online and it’s important that younger generations know how to seek out support networks when they feel attacked in the more virtual side of their world.

Hopefully more measures like this will reduce the emotional abuse that happens online and also help those who are more ignorant about the effect of their words, helping them realize how what they say and type can affect others much more deeply than they initially expect.

[Via AllFacebook | Bullying Picture by BigStockPhoto.com]

San Diego Comic-Con 2012 in Pictures: Day 4 [Gallery]

Unfortunately, yesterday was the last day at SDCC 2012. We’ve already posted galleries for day 1, day 2, and day 3, so now, all that’s missing now are pictures from day 4. A big thank you to Pat Loika and San Diego Shooter for the awesome pics!

Who among you guys had the chance to attend? How was the event compared to last year? Let us know in the comments section below!

[Pat Loika | San Diego Shooter]

Zombie Head Popcorn Bucket [Pic]

This really cool zombie head popcorn bucket was made by the New York office of the Y&R ad agency specially for Motor City Nightmares, a horror film convention in Detroit, Michigan. According to Buzzfeed, customizable buckets like this one should be available for bulk orders at horrorbucket.com (Unavailable for now).

[Buzzfeed]