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AP - George Clooney's hitman tale "The American" took down Robert Rodriguez's revenge romp "Machete" at the box office over the long U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend.
HP's PhotoSmart eStation C510 printer will feature an Android-powered tablet that can be used for a number of things. But what does it have to do with the printer?
Macworld.com - If you’re using iWeb to host your blog, photo gallery, travel guide, or portfolio, Apple has a hefty-sized update for you.
RIM today quietly slipped word that BlackBerry App World has passed 10,000 apps. The figure comes 1.5 years after the mobile store launched and shortly after the launch of App World 2.0 last month. Its climb has been relatively brisk in 2010, moving up from about 7,000 in the spring....
BP spilled $3.6m in Gulf spin campaign
Following its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP went from spending about $57,000 a month on Google search ads to an enormous $3.6 million outlay for the month of June alone, according to a report citing internal Google documents.…
AP - A nanny who worked for Anna Nicole Smith in the last months of her life said Tuesday that she found bloody syringes and cotton balls, and sometimes a spoon with liquid, inside a bathroom that the celebrity model, her lawyer-boyfriend and her psychiatrist emerged from.
Belive this one at your own risk: The Sun in the UK is reporting that, due to his commitment to the BBC series Sherlock, Martin Freeman has turned down an offer to play Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.
The idea that Freeman might be offered the part isn’t at all difficult to believe, and he’s long been one of the first names mentioned in fantasy casting of the film. Between roles on The Office and as Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Freeman has already been a big part of two geek-friendly properties. Might as well go for the trifecta.
And he looks rather Hobbit-like already, so why not have him be Bilbo? Other than the fact I”m not really convinced that Freeman has what will be required to hold down the center of a pair of fantasy adventure films like The Hobbit parts one and two. Looking the part isn’t quite enough, and while I like Freeman a lot and think he’s quite appealing as a comic actor, I’m not convinced that he’s the guy around whom to build these films.
Anyway, this is the Sun, which is correct about movie casting news roughly as often as your dog might be if you asked him to drool on a list of actor names for any potential film. So this isn’t yet anything to take very seriously in the first place. [TheOneRing]
LiveScience.com - Weight loss may have an unwanted side effect, according to a new study in the journal Nature: It may send a flood of environmental pollutants into the bloodstream.
We’ve already seen at least two trailers for the festival hit Monsters, directed by Gareth Edwards. Now there’s a new green-band trailer, which can be seen after the break.
This one (for now) is only available on Hulu, which means it is meant for, and only accessible by North American audiences. Sorry about that; when there’s a YouTube version (soon, I’d expect) we’ll embed it.
Students are starting to return to college campuses, but according to a report commissioned by conferencing company Intercall, that doesn't mean they're heading back into the classroom.
The survey asked over 500 college students nationwide about their experiences with viewing course content over video streamed online. And 78% reported that their professors have used web streaming - either a live feed or videotaped lectures - with nearly a third saying that their professors use web streaming frequently. 21% of students reported that over half their course learning is done by viewing video content online.
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Skipping School, Except on Exam Days
Many students admitted that they only show up to class for the exams, and instead borrow notes and tapes from others in their class. 32% say they've asked a friend or classmate to record a class for them so they didn't have to attend in person.
The top benefits college students associate with having their lectures and college courses available via video online are "being able to 'attend' classes even though they are really out of town" (63%) and "being able to attend class when they want, not when the university has it scheduled" (58%). 47% reported that online content made it easier for them to work more hours at their jobs. And 43% touted the benefit of not having to get dressed for class. Only 15% listed "being able to attend more parties" as the main benefit of having their courses available online.
Video Streaming Makes Them Better Students?
Students also said that being able to access course content online gave them the flexibility to learn at their own pace. 64% said that viewing classes via online video lets them fast forward through the parts they do not find useful. More than half also said that online video helps them to spend more time studying by themselves. In addition, many reported that they felt more comfortable asking questions to professors online because they don't have to speak up in front of the class.
Three-quarters of those responding said that having their professors post video online or live stream their lectures would help them be better prepared for exams. And over half said that they think they can learn more effectively when they can watch videos via live streaming than when they sit in a classroom, with 54% saying they've seen their grades improve because of access to video lectures.
A third of those responding admitted that their parents would be upset to hear about the frequency with which they skip class or about their preference for finding alternative ways to access course material. (Only a third?!)
But whether or not parents understand, the results of this study seem to confirm what many already see as higher education's future: it's going to be online. Many students already prefer it that way.
Photo credits: Flickr user Sholeh
DiscussReuters - A U.S. judge refused on Tuesday to lift a ban on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research despite Obama administration warnings it would set back key research and cost more than a thousand jobs.
AFP - US computer titan Hewlett-Packard filed suit against former chief executive Mark Hurd on Tuesday after he was named a co-president at US business software giant Oracle.
We’ve half-joked about Peter Berg’s film Battleship, which already boasts a cast including Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Rhianna and Brooklyn Decker. That’s an odd-sounding cast for a mega-budget film about a battle with aliens.
Now a serious name has been added to lend some weight to the cast: Liam Neeson will anchor the picture as Admiral Shane.
Universal announced Neeson’s involvement, and clarified a few of the other roles in the film about “a battle on land, sea and the sky between earth’s forces and attacking aliens.”
Neeson’s Admiral Shane is father to Brooklyn Decker’s character, and she in turn is engaged to a Naval officer played by Taylor Kitsch. The older brother to Kitsch’s officer is played by Alexander Skarsgard, who plays a commanding officer. Rhianna is a weapons analyst on the USS John Paul Jones. Of course. That’s a real ship, but given Rhianna’s role, I can only think of it in relation to the Led Zeppelin bass player. Does she develop killer bass lines with which to knock the aliens out of the sky?
I joke about it, but I’ve actually been told good things about the ideas for the film, at least with respect to the idea of making a big popcorn film about a human/alien war. (The script is by Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber, and was rewritten by Brian Koppelman and David Levien.) I don’t expect Shakespeare, but maybe Battleship will end up being a lot more satisfying than most of the crap that littered the summer of 2010. At the very least, stuff will probably blow up real good.
Battleship began filming today in Hawaii; the film will be released on May 18, 2012.
AP - Iraq displayed hundreds of recovered artifacts Tuesday that were among the country's looted heritage and span the ages from a 4,400-year-old statue of a Sumerian king to a chrome-plated AK-47 bearing Saddam Hussein's image.
Inception has inspired a lot more than just infographics, people are having fun recreating scenes using LEGO. Above you can see a glimpse of -infomaniac-’s recreation of the scene where gravity alters a city street. After the jump you will see a photo of Alex Eylar’s recreation of the zero-g/rotating hallway sequence. Get a better look at both LEGO creations below.
-infomaniac-’s City Street (via: Brothersbrick)
Production Photo from the movie:
Alex Eylar’s Hallway sequence:
The set-up (how it was created):
DIY repair shop iFixit today posted a teardown of the new iPod shuffle that reveals an extremely tight if limited construction. The device took about half an hour to pry open as the clip was both press-fit into the body and glued at the same time; while sturdy, it guaranteed that anyone would have to "break it" to open it. To save on space, Apple has also soldered the battery directly to the circuit board and uses very small connectors that could easily snap if the explorer isn't careful....
To celebrate and coincide with its fifth-year anniversary, Eye-Fi has announced a new Developer Program that will expand its wireless SD card platform. Eye-Fi makes memory SDHC cards that have their own Wi-Fi connection and can send images captured by compatible digital cameras to a predetermined location on the web. Now, third-party developers can embed Eye-Fi functionality in their own apps....'We don't want him. But you can't have him'
Hewlett-Packard has sued disgraced former chief executive Mark Hurd in an effort to stop him from joining Oracle.…
Google has announced that Yahoo users will now be able to quickly and easily sign up for Google products using their Yahoo email address. The feature, according to some in the industry, will be a boon for Google and OpenID, the Internet standard behind the feature. But what benefit does this provide for Yahoo?
Will making it easier for Yahoo users to sign in to Google - a direct competitor - draw users away from the portal, search and mail provider or will it help create an overall better user experience? According to Yahoo, making a process that users were already engaged in simpler will provide a better user experience and keep users interested in one of its most solid products - Yahoo Mail.
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According to Kaliya Hamlin of IdentityWoman.net, the step is a big one for OpenID.
"People have been asking FOREVER when are the big web portals actually going to accept other people's OpenIDs. This a significant step by Google to become a relying party," Hamlin told us today.
Scott Kveton, co-founder of the OpenID Foundation, agreed that it was "a big step forward for making OpenID that much easier to use".
"Making it easier to have Google and Yahoo work together is great for Google," said Kveton, but he questioned the advantage for Yahoo. He noted that "making it easier to on-board users into Google via their email accounts means being able to suck in the social graph."
We asked Eran Hammer-Lahav, an Open Web advocate for Yahoo, about the feature and he told us that it had been in some form of discussion for over two years now and would provide a better user experience for Yahoo's users.
"We don't try to lock our users in any way," said Hammer-Lahav. "We want them to have a better Web experience no matter what site they are on, just by being a Yahoo user. Yahoo is not in the business of locking users to only use its services, especially when the Web is getting so much more distributed and social."
Hammer-Lahav told us that Yahoo believes its mail product is strong enough to keep users happy (and loyal), as evidenced by when Yahoo was one of the first email providers to provide address book mobility. When we asked if Yahoo would be offering the same sort of feature, he explained that there weren't many Yahoo products that required email sign-ins, but the company is adding OpenID support for activities like adding comments, which do require full account sign-ins. In this case, Google added this functionality, he explained, because Yahoo email account holders make up a large percentage of the email market and those trying to create Google accounts.
In the end, that may be just it - the simple fact that users will be drawn to Google's growing arsenal of Web tools, from Google Docs to Voice to AdWords, and it's better to keep what business you can rather than have your users abandon your product completely.
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