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Rock Band Films Latest Video With Security Cameras

by Blake Besharian, posted May 14th 2008 at 12:35PM

band uses cctv to film music video

The Get Out Clause -- an unsigned band from Manchester, England -- has used the eyes of the surveillance state to produce its own music video. While Britain currently has an estimated 13-million closed-circuit TV cameras (CCTV), the band only played to 80 of them around the city of Manchester. After playing its song for the CCTV cameras (and anyone else who happened to be around), the band requested the footage from the organizations that own the cameras, under the UK's Freedom of Information Act. While only about 20 of the locations eventually turned over the footage, they had more than enough footage to make a pretty solid music video.

"We wanted to produce something that looked good and that wasn't too expensive to do," guitarist Tony Churnside told Sky News.

Seems the Freedom of Information act could have saved Kevin Smith a bunch of money when he made 'Clerks.' We really wonder if this is the last time we'll see this tricky way of filming (actually, it's not, as Adam Rifkin's recent 'Look' proved). [Source: The Telegraph]


Robot Spiders, Dragonflies, Snakes to Aid Soldiers in War Zones

by Blake Besharian, posted May 10th 2008 at 8:52AM



As if warfare weren't already creepy enough, BAE Systems, a British defense company, has released a promotional video of robotic spiders, dragonflies and snakes it is developing to aid soldiers in combat zones. The robotic creatures are being funded by a $38 million contract with the U.S. Army that is part of a massive, and costly, effort to modernize the weaponry of the armed forces. The robots will slither and crawl around corners, into caves, and through booby-trapped streets, sending images back to screens in a command center or to a screen mounted on a soldiers wrist.

The purpose is to "extend the warfighter's senses and reach, providing operational capabilities that would otherwise be costly, impossible, or deadly to achieve," says Joseph Mait, MAST cooperative agreement manager for the Army Research Laboratory.

Other remote controlled devices are in the works as well, such as the unmanned drones that are currently used for bombing raids and reconnaissance. The hope is that using these robots will cut down on the number of casualties suffered by U.S. forces, and possibly civilians, while improving the accuracy of missile attacks and raids. However the potential for misuse of these robots, such as spying on citizens or other governments, is straight out of some sci-fi movie.

In any case we hope we never see one of these little creatures on our windowsill. [Source: Daily Mail UK]

Live Madonna Concert Streamed Online for Free Tonight

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 30th 2008 at 8:09PMBreaking News

Madonna's free concert

Couldn't get tickets to see the Madonna concert at NYC's Roseland Ballroom tonight? Well, now you don't even have to be in New York for one of the biggest concerts of the year, since MSN.com is streaming the entire show live tonight on its "MSN in Concert" Web site. Unfortunately, the show will only be available live for the Material Girl's U.S. fans, so the rest of the planet has to wait for a free on-demand version coming May 15th. So what will they be missing? In addition to the entire live performance and the debut of her single "Four Minutes", the show will include rehearsal footage, and a pre-recorded interview with Madge.

The show will be filmed by Control Room, the company that filmed the Live Earth concert series. If you're worried about quality, rest assured because 8-10 HD(1080p) cameras will be filming the show and the sound will be Dolby 5.1 surround.

So, if you messed up and forgot to get your significant other tickets, or you just want to watch the concert for free, tonight's your chance. Order some takeout, hook the laptop up to the TV, and make sure you're parked on the couch with that special someone tonight at 10 PM EST.

Electric Cars From Norway Coming to a City Near You

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 29th 2008 at 7:02AMBreaking News




Think Global an electric car company based in Norway, announced last week that it will ship 50,000 of its electric cars to the U.S. The new Think vehicles are plug-in electrics that look like a cross between a Smart Car and a VW Cabriolet. The electric cars are shorter than the Smart car, but taller. In addition to the convertible pictured above, Think Global will release a two seater coup model.

The cars top out around 65 miles-per-hour and get about 110 miles to the charge, which is perfect for getting around the city, but good luck taking them on a roadtrip. The Think will set you back something like $17,000 in the U.S. and, curiously, the batteries will be leased separately for about $100 or $200 each, and may even include wireless and insurance. This is significantly less than other electric cars out there, like the Tesla, which costs more than $100,000, and will hopefully bring the electric car within reach for the average man/woman.

Think Global was launched in Oslo in 1991 and bought by Ford in 1999. Ford stopped leasing the cars in 2003, when California stopped requiring auto makers to produce zero-emissions vehicles. Now, Think is owned by Inspire, and its tech savvy investors hooked up with Google in 2006 to figure out what it means to be a 21st-century car company. The result is expected to hit the road by the end of the year, so pretty soon you can start spending all your gas money on your hefty electric bill. [Source: ValleyWag]

Parents More Concerned About Sex Than Violence In Video Games

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 25th 2008 at 2:43PM


In a recent survey the gaming site, WhatTheyPlay.Com, asked its visitors, who are mostly the parents, to rate what they found most offensive in video games. The site is an online resource for parents, filled with information about the video games their children might be playing, as well as ratings by the Entertainment Software Association(formerly the ESRB) and ratings voted upon by users. The results of the poll showed that 37 percent of US parents thought a man and a woman having sex was the most offensive act, while two men kissing was deemed slightly more offensive than a severed head, with 27 percent and 26 percent of the vote, respectively.

These results sugggest that American parents have largely given up on their crusade against violence in video games and are now more concerned with sex. It's not the same around the world, though: A Norwegian gaming site ran the same poll with nearly the opposite results -- the severed head won 65.8% of the vote! We remember the days when you couldn't change the channel without hearing some pundit ranting about violence in mortal combat, and the demoralizing effect it has on children.

What could possibly be gained by keeping our kids from seeing pixelated versions of human sexuality, we may never know, but apparently American parents still think it's a worthwhile pursuit. So does the ESA. Of the 23 games it has rated Adults-Only, only two were given the rating for reasons other than sexual content, and one of those was an online gambling game. [Source Gaming Today]

Google Street View Catches Kid Crashing on Bike

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 24th 2008 at 1:30PM




The list of embarrassing things that Google has caught with its street view feature got a little bit longer recently. This poor kid in Cleveland was caught wrecking his bike on the sidewalk while a woman looked on from her porch. The kid's ill fated ride is now memorialized forever in the Google Street View of 90th street, and we suspect his pride may have sustained more injuries than his body. Hope he's enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame somewhere.

Sales of Wii Games Lagging Due to Untraditional Fan Base

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 22nd 2008 at 4:26PM


Despite being the most popular gaming console, the sales of Wii games lag far behind the sales of competitors. This is probably due to it's fan base, which includes a large number of women, older consumers and young children. Unlike the traditional fan base of young males, these consumers are more likely to stick with the games that came with the system or its various add ons. So while the Wii might be situated in your grandparents living room, there's a good chance that grandpa doesn't play anything other than Wii sports.

A Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter, quoted by the New York Times says "It reflects the broadening of the demographic, Nintendo's market doesn't feel the same sense of urgency to buy every game that's coming out."

In addition the usual advertising channels that video game companies use to reach their consumers, fail to reach the Wii's nontraditional fan base. The result is critically acclaimed games, like Zach and Wiki have been flops, while Wii Play, a game that comes free with an additional controller, is the second highest seller on NPD groups top selling games list.

This could mean trouble for games targeted at the so called "hard core gamers", but other games like the soon to be released Mario Kart, or Wii Fit will hopefully be more popular with these nontraditional gamers. In fact Nintendo is betting on Mario Kart being a bridge game that will reinvigorate Wii users, and convince them to spend more on wii games. In the meantime we hope your grandpa doesn't get Wii-itis from too much Wii bowling. [Source: The New York Times]

Darwin's Complete Works Now Available for Free Online

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 22nd 2008 at 11:12AM


darwin online

Thanks to the U.K.'s Cambridge University, Charles Darwin's complete works are now available for free online at the Web site Darwin-Online.org.uk. The venerable institution has digitized more than 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images by Darwin, and made them all searchable. Only about 50% of the materials that will ultimately be available in 2009 -- the bicentennial of Darwins' birth -- are currently online.

Some of the materials on the site have never been published or transcribed before, such as Darwin's field notebook from his voyage to the Galapagos. The original notebook was stolen in the 1980s, and the version online has been transcribed from microfilm. Other works first published by the site include the 'Journal Of Researches' (1839), 'The Descent Of Man' (1871), 'The Zoology Of The Voyage Of HMS Beagle' (1838-43) and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the groundbreaking 'Origin Of Species.' In addition to Darwin's own writings, the online catalog will feature supplementary texts about Darwin, including contemporary views, references, obituaries and recollections of his life.

All of this is impressive and points toward the future of digital libraries and digitized resources. However, we hope that online resources of the future won't look like a public library homepage circa 1995. While we don't judge a book by its cover or anything, we think such a monumental undertaking deserves a bit more flash, and we mean that in every possible sense. [Source: Darwin Online, via BBC]

Illegal File Search Site YouTorrent Says It's Going Legit

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 21st 2008 at 7:33AM






The popular torrent search site YouTorrent, has announced that it is going legit, and is offering itself up for sale, after only four months of leading people to places they could get illegally copied movies, tv shows, and music on the Web (YouTorrent is a meta search engine that indexes other major torrent sites.) In the last four months, the site has become one of the most popular torrent search engines on the 'net, partly due to its slick design and ad free policy. The other reason -- as previously mentioned -- was the massive amounts of illegal material that it linked to.

Last week, though, YouTorrent stopped indexing sites that do not claim to hold the copyrights to the material posted on them. This change is sure to disperse its visitors to the multitude of other sites that offer the same service, but YouTorrent's owner, a mysterious 22-year-old computer science whiz who calls himself 'Jon,' has another trick up his sleave.

In an interview with businessweek in London, 'Jon', whose anonymity was part of the agreement to do the interview, said:

"My goal is to be in the top 100 most-visited sites on the Internet in two years," and "If I can corner the torrent market, everyone would rely on the site for profits, just as people look to Google for search-based advertising revenue."

Patrick, a YouTorrent representative, told torrentfreak.com, that "The YouTorrent project has grown very quickly and unfortunately is not in line with the owning company's core business."

Going legit might be this entrepeneur's attempt to make the site palatable for buyers, or it could have been part of the plan from the start. Either way, it will be interesting to see if anyone buys before YouTorrent sinks into irrelevance. [Source: BetaNews]


British Village Attacked By Wikipedia Vandals

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 17th 2008 at 9:12PMBreaking News




The Wikipedia entry on the tiny town of Denshaw says that it's a small village in the northwestern corner of England consisting of a few farmhouses, an inn, six pubs, and a two-classroom schoolhouse. Until recently though, Wikipedia also said it was home to a population infested with tapeworms and an inn filled with prostitutes. Sounds like an exciting place -- well, it would be, if any of that were true.

Recently, Denshaw has been the subject of some nasty Wikipedia hoaxes. Anonymous users have posted that the village consists of four obese and malnourished residents, who suffer because the hills block out all but a few hours of sunlight daily. Other attacks have included a post that "none of the girls there are fit" and that the local brass band competition is celebrated by "cow shooting, rock rolling, and sheep hurling".

The residents of Denshaw have a surprisingly lighthearted take on the whole thing. "I think it's absolutely hilarious," says local parish councillor Ken Hulme, who originally discovered the Wikipedia spoofs. "The BBC could do with finding out who's responsible and giving them a job as a scriptwriter."

Looks like John Siegenthaler could take a page from their book. [Source: The Daily Mail]

Remote-Control Car Plays Super Mario Theme On Water Bottles (Video)

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 16th 2008 at 4:19PM



This video made us so nostalgic for the '80s that we just had to share. In the clip, an anonymous Chinese man has arranged a row of bottles filled with varying levels of liquid in a parking garage. Each of the bottles is filled with the right amount of water to play specific notes in the Super Mario Bros video game theme. The bottles are lined up in the right order so that when a remote-control (RC) car runs along the row with a piece of metal strapped to it, the Mario theme plays.

While a man named Michel Lauzière has done similar things with roller skates and a Mozart theme, we gotta admit that this 'Mario Bros' trick is a little bit cooler. Besides, the look on that parking lot security guard's face is priceless. Nice one, random Chinese guy! [Source: Break.com, via Autoblog]

Secret Scientology Materials Available On Wikileaks

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 15th 2008 at 12:06PM






The Church of Scientology is mad at Wikileaks for posting several of their internal documents. The documents include e-mails and an entire part of their so called "OT levels", a piece of their secret bible. In response to the CoS's threats of retribution, Wikileaks says it will be releasing several thousand more documents next week.

We took a look at the stuff already posted on Wikileaks, specifically the document on "OT levels" and, while it's mostly unintelligible, there are some creepy bits that struck our fancy .

The "OT drills" are written in an unidentified scrawl and tell you to

"seat yourself unobtrusively where you can observe a number of people. Spot things and people you can have. Do to cognition. Note it."

Another tells you to

"Note some physical thing about yourself you don't like. Observing people, in them note that body part. Do to some change. Note it down."

It's not hard to imagine Tom and Katie doing this all day. In fact, the emphasis on observation would seem to make Scientology the perfect religion for an actor. It makes you wonder, though, if Scientology were real, and if that aforementioned drill worked, don't you think Tom would have used it to make himself taller by now?

From Fark

Picking Apart the First Documented Case of "Wiiitis"

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 8th 2008 at 2:47PM




We've all heard of sports related injuries, but until recently, there was no such thing as a 'Wii-Sports'-related injury. Now, in the June 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Julio Bonis first coined the term Wii-itis, and now it has been investigated by a team at the Mayo Clinic. In an article in this May's issue of 'Skeletal Radiology,' doctors diagnosed a 22-year-old boy with the condition, which they defined as soreness and inflammation caused by too much Wii Bowling, which is one of the games on 'Wii-Sports.' The abstract states that an MRI scan revealed:

"marked T2-weighted signal abnormality within several muscles of the shoulder and upper arm, without evidence of macroscopic partial- or full-thickness tearing of the muscle or of intramuscular hematoma."

Now, this sounds really scary to the layman, and the first time we read it, we didn't understand what was going on. But dug a little deeper and translated that statement into: No serious muscle tears, or internal bleeding (hematoma), and the t-2 signals are an indication of the little tears in the muscle that cause soreness. So, basically, don't swear off Wii-playing playing yet, because this first documented case of wii-itis is a 22-year-old with a sore shoulder. The article goes on to suggest that the cause of this soreness may be:

"[L]ittle resistance is offered by the light 200 g handheld controller to the aggressive maneuvers made by the participant, which may lead to awkward deceleration forces being applied to the upper extremity.... It is likely that, during the deceleration phase of swinging the Wii controller, there is significant eccentric loading on the participant's muscle groups, causing the ultrastructural damage, as demonstrated in this case."

The doctors think that the controller's light weight is the cause of the muscle strain, but can you imagine playing the Nintendo Wii if the controller were properly weighted for a bowling ball or baseball bat? That would really cause some damage.

It should also be noted that ultrastructural damage is usually due to stress from exercise, and is the cause of the soreness you feel a day or so after working out, so the Wii-related injuries are about as serious as that.

Nevertheless you can expect some new warnings on your Wii system in the future probably telling you to stretch out your shoulder before gaming. We can't wait.


Related Links:

MySpace to Launch Joint Music Venture With Major Labels

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 7th 2008 at 8:11AM





MySpace, the popular social networking site, has come up with a creative solution to a lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group. Instead of just settling with Universal, Myspace (owned by News Corp) announced a new joint business venture with three major record labels: Warner, Sony BMG and Universal.

The company will be called Myspace Music and will launch in July or August of this year. It will be owned by News Corp and the three labels, with an initial investment of $120 million distributed among the labels. The new service will include the streaming rights to the entire catalogs of the three labels, as well as a DRM-free online music store. Users will also have access to an improved music player that supports the creation of playlists, in addition to the increased amount of streaming music available for their profiles. The venture will redistribute ad revenues to the labels based on their stake in the company, not based on the number of plays their copyrighted material. The advertisements will initially be display ads, but may move to an audio format embedded in streaming music files at a later date.

All in all, it sounds like good news for MySpace users and bands, with greater availability of music to stream and a proper company to promote the bands on the Myspace Records label. The deal also serves as a reminder that the record companiwa are no longer counting on getting paid directly for the music they hold copyrights to, and points toward an ad-supported future business model. Looks like MySpace will be trying to cram a few more ads into their crowded interface soon, but we don't mind as long as we can listen to whatever music we want for free.

Related links:

Naked Canadians Consider Class Action Lawsuit Against Paypal

by Blake Besharian, posted Apr 7th 2008 at 7:37AM




Today a group of naked Canadians are considering a class action lawsuit against PayPal. The Federation of Canadian Naturists (FCN) -- an organization for Canadian nudists-- claims that PayPal suddenly cut off its services to them, refusing to process their magazine subscription payments after four years of business.

The FCN are not the first business to get denied services for supposedly breaking the acceptable use policy. Since 2003, PayPal has excluded so called "sexually oriented Web sites" from using their services for the purchase of digital goods like membership or subscription fees. However, any Web site is allowed to use PayPal for the sale of sexually oriented physical goods, like DVDs or magazines that are then delivered by hand to the customer. PayPal claims this is due to the immense administrative cost of doing business with an industry riddled with criminal schemes and frequent "charge backs" (when a customer disputes a charge to their paypal account.) In addition to this discrepancy between physical and digital goods, PayPal further reserves the right to deny Web sites that are distributing sexually oriented material involving minors or for Web sites that "facilitate meetings for sexually oriented activities." These two lines from the Mature Audiences section of their Acceptable Use Policy are what PayPal claims the FCN has violated.

While the nudists object to being considered sexually oriented in the first place, the government affairs director for the federation, Judy Williams, says "PayPal's decision about Going Natural and its claims about the FCN are unfounded embellishments born of ignorance."

According to the history, naturists base their practice on a nineteenth-century reform movement that believed the cure for the ailments of industrial society "was exposure to the natural healing elements or fresh air, sunlight, and water--preferably with loose or absent clothing." In addition, they don't believe that the naked body is inherently erotic, which anyone who has been to a nude beach can attest to. While the images in Going Natural magazine might include pictures of naked minors, a court would probably deem them no more pornographic than those baby pictures of you with a shampoo mohawk.

The last line of the PayPal's Mature audiences policy says that "PayPal will not include sexual preferences or viewpoints as a factor in determining what goods or services are prohibited under the Mature Audiences Policy." We think the FCN might not agree.

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