We love high budget sci fi and action as much as anyone, but who really starred in Iron Man? Robert Downey Jr? Sure, he made an appearance. But so did his co-stars Apple, Dell and Burger King. The Dark Knight? Christian Bale peeked his head in, but so did Canon, Nokia and Bang & Olufsen. Antrepo Design Industry has gone through some of our favorite films and remade the movie posters with a bit more honesty and brand awareness. The ads are a tad light on explosions, but they pack a mighty punch of truth and justice:

Every time I think about "ET", I want to devour a King Size bag of Reese's Pieces. I also remember that movie as the first to use product placement effectively on my poor little soul. Since then, we've watched tons of movies shed integrity to make a buck from sponsors. And it's even come back to haunt us lately. In the end, some might take it too far. But honestly, who didn't want to go buy that Nokia from The Matrix as soon as they left the theater?

Additional posters at the source: Antrepo

I just thought I'd make a quick post to mention that I'm in NYC through October 28th (I got here on the 18th) to take photos in the city. Some of you already know I'm a photographer at heart, and I decided it's time to start pursuing the craft aggressivly in my spare time. I'm uploading shots each day to a flickr set, so check 'em out. There's a lot already, and I still have 5 days of shooting left!

[As a side note... Before I left for NYC I installed a 500GB laptop drive in my Macbook Pro, which only had 20GB of free space left on a 320GB I'd installed shortly after I bought it. Well, it's a good thing I came prepared, because I've already eaten up 25GB of the new drive with photos from the trip just so far. I'll end up with at least twice that. It's not hard to do when you're filling up 8GB CF cards.]

I'll definitely have to narrow things down a lot when I get back home. When it's all said and done, I'll be putting some series' of prints together, along with some coffee table books, etc... Please feel free to comment on the photos on flickr or email me with any questions. Here are a handful of my favorites so far - I'll post a couple new ones each day [on TheTechLounge; I'll post a ton on flickr], but I have some catching up to do:

// day one


// day two


//day three

Look, I gotta admit it. I was really disappointed by BioShock. Ending(s) notwithstanding, I felt that the gameplay had deviated too far from it's namesake. The only thing that made it even remotely difficult was taking out Big Daddies, which with the abbondanza of ammunition and stims made even the most stressful part of the game a chore. Lots of hit points don't make the game more interesting, it makes it boring.

And what did we get in place of that? The opportunity to play the game like a human being or as a vampiric arch-sociopath who eats the faces of children. What else did we give up? Oh, yeah, a sense of horror that the vessel itself is trying to kill you, but because you've developed a unique method of combat (or non-combat) you can stand your ground in clever and divergent ways that make the game reflect you, instead of working a keyboard until you get to the next stretch of dialogue.

Gee, a sequel to a successful game. Call me nonplussed.

E3 2009 will be open to the general public on Friday June 5 and Saturday June 6. The press will have exclusive access to the convention floor and meeting rooms on Tuesday, June 2. Of the big press conferences we've come to expect and love, Level Up's source says to "expect a boat load of press conferences on Monday during the day and on Tuesday morning."

Apparently it took a couple of years for folks in the game industry to realize that nearly sixty thousand warm bodies in attendance might have upside. All of those nearly out-of-work booth babes and forsaken cosplay artisans, ousted by the privatization of E3 two years ago, might have reason to saddle up once again. Especially if Vivendi decides to re-join the fold.

Ever need just a little more real estate on your computer screen? I certainly could. I spend an inordinate amount of time using programs like Photoshop and Flash, and could always use an extra place to put all those little palettes and menus.

These new MIMO displays from Korea’s Nanovision let you add a tiny 7″ LCD to your PC as a secondary monitor. Each mini-widescreen monitor features a sharp 800×480 display resolution, and can be rotated into landscape or portrait modes.

For a hundie stick you could add one of these little dudes and have all kinds of fun. It's like those gaming keyboard displays, but infinitely more useful. A full sized monitor will set you back several hundreds, and unless you're a power-user, it probably won't offer you any more benefit than what you get from this kind of monitor. Keeping a media player or reference manual visible on a mini-LCD would unclutter my workflow in all the right ways.

The slightly pricier of the two has a touchscreen, and if it was wireless, I think you might be looking at the perfect aux display. I wonder if wireless-USB could make that happen...I'd spend a whole lot more time on the toilet.

Gears of War 2 is everything it’s supposed to be — the same loud, visceral war epic with a few new weapons, a few new characters and a whole lot more explosions. The plot has just as many cliffhangers as the first one (though it does wrap up the Maria storyline), and the conflict between Locusts and Humans is less resolved at the end of Gears 2 than it was at the end of Gears 1.

In short, Gears 2 is The Empire Strikes Back. And I, for one, think that’s a good thing.

I, for one, would like to take this moment to thank Epic Games for producing the first Gears of War. If it wasn't for your enthusiastic and determined development team, I would have had a reason to dress myself in something other than a half-rate neck beard and boxer briefs for two months in 2007. I salute you. And I hope that the chainsaw battles, gib-filled headshots, and purposeful story line of your next game result in nakedness and lack of general hygienic responsibility for masses of gamers starting November 7th.

The Tesla people tell me that when the battery is half-way discharged, and the car is off, and the ESS is cool, then the pump will shut off. Fine. But my average daily drive is less than 60 miles, and I have only driven far enough to drain half the battery 4 times since I got my car three months ago. So, except a few hours on these four occasions, this poor pump has been running 24 hours per day, 7 days a week for three months solid.

I noticed another funny thing: if I charged the car up and let it sit for a few days without driving, I found that the battery was no longer anywhere near full. I guess that the constantly-running coolant pump, along with its support electronics, is draining the battery.

So, the pump only turns off when the battery runs below the halfway point? That makes me thing of the irksome days of old, when you had to run your batteries down on your cell phone to "condition" the battery. I don't want to think about the logistics of keeping my battery charged. I want to tear ass down Route 1, my lack of hair flying in the wind, with no regard for my personal safety. Gas mileage? Eco-friendliness? Pfft. You don't have to check the gas gauge daily on a 65 Mustang Fastback to make sure she's ready to go.

As part of the London Games Fringe (an indie adjunct to the full-blown London Games Festival), female gamers will be able to compete head-to-head in the first Grl Gmr Tournament.

Taking place on October 25th at the Rocket on Holloway Road, the tournament will consist of Wii Tennis, Tekken, Unreal Tournament, Kuri Kuri Mix and Mario Kart competitions. Five individual winners will be named, with one overall winner being crowned Champion.

Yeah, I had no idea that's where Tetris parts came from. If only to drive the point further, the image name is (I kid you not, I swear, go look for yourself)

grl_gmr_wee2

Seriously? No one tripped all over this? Although if this is our generation's model for foxy boxing, I have to say, they have my full support.

Kotaku:

New York's powerful police unions say that a violent new video game called "Saints Row 2" is an abomination. In the game, the player controls a gang member who can steal, do drugs and kill as many characters as possible, including police officers.

bit-tech.net:

In a recent round table discussion between the Church of England and a collection of some of the leading charity groups in the UK, the Church of England came to the surprising conclusion that games can be a force for good in the modern world.

Yeah, I took all that out of context, not unlike detractors of gaming. That said, I'm not surprised by either side, since my last priest used to play quite a bit of Diablo II. As a paladin, naturally. I don't know why, he seemed more of the assassin type. I'm just sayin', don't read into that, unless you really want to.

By the way, here's a review of Saints Row 2, in case you're suddenly interested, by Tom Chick:

I've been reviewing games for 16 years. The entire time, I've tried to avoid using the word "fun" because it's so subjective. It's a fine concept when you're just shooting the breeze with friends. But as a critical observation, it's simply not helpful. Since it means different things to different people, it says more about the person using the word than the thing he's describing. I consider it a crutch for lazy writers.

Today, I'm going to make an exception: Saints Row 2 is fun. It's so fun that I'm not sore about all the times it did something glitchy or just locked up. It's so fun that I don't mind the so-so graphics. It's so fun that I can easily look past the crass and occasionally tasteless writing.

Blizzard's executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo has his hand in just about everything the company does, so though I was scheduled to speak to him specifically about Diablo III, our conversation meanders a bit.

We start off discussing the newly-revealed Wizard class the firm had only that morning revealed as a part of the latest Diablo title, but soon we're covering everything from Blizzard's efforts to stem the tide of cheaters in their online games to the company's efforts to bring their games to the silver screen.

This marks the third interview in my series of talks from Blizzcon 2008 which includes chats with World of Warcraft lead producer J. Allen Brack and StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder. The final part, an interview with Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime on the company's current and future plans, should appear soon.

Now he doesn't say how the end-game quest to rescue the Rainbow King from the Guild of Lollipopmen is going to play out, not, of course, to spoil Diablo III, but he doesn't deny the finale, either.

My question is whether or not the voice acting was supplied by Bob Ross himself, years ago, and they hung on to that IP until rendering technology grew to match his flowery, though rusted candor, or if they tapped a particularly good imitator.

But no matter the case, just remember, the trees are happy and God bless.

YouTube is getting its Hulu on. The Google-owned video site has partnered with CBS to air full-length TV shows, starting today (Oct. 10).

For now a select group of old and new shows will appear, including "MacGyver," "Star Trek" and the original "Beverly Hills 90210," the season premieres of Showtime's "Dexter" and "Californication," and current episodes of "The Young and the Restless."

CBS is finally catching up with the rest of the pack with this move. The other shows that are available are great and all, but MacGyver? Seriously? It's everyone's favorite non-violent action hero! This is God's gift to internet denizens. And a curse to business productivity.

I had totally forgotten about the internal monologue that goes on in Mac's head during the show. It makes watching so much better. The cheese factor was through the roof back then, and it holds up so well today.

We have tested hundreds of products, including cable and accessory products -- some better then others, for sure.
A fair number of the products, marketed as Rev 1.3b, actually tested worse than others at Rev.1.3a. Why?

Any time you see anyone advertising their product as anything better than 1.3a, it should automatically sound an alarm.

If you pay any attention to the vast world of consumer electronics, you recognize marketing-speak instantly. The trouble with the whole HDMI mess is that future / backward compatibility instantly come into question. In your head, at least. Apparently, anything past 1.3a is just for testing purposes, i.e. has no effect on the performance of the product sportin' that spec. All's you need is HDMI 1.3a to be on top of your game. Don't sweat the other stuff.

Markus Kison designs a new kind of memorial: “‘Touched Echo’ is a minimal medial intervention in public space. The visitors of the Brühl’s Terrace (Dresden, Germany) are taken back in time to the night of the terrible air raid on 13th February 1945. In their role as a performer they put themselves into the place of the people who shut their ears away from the noise of the explosions. While leaning on the balustrade the sound of airplanes and explosions is transmitted from the swinging balustrade through their arm directly into into the inner ear (bone conduction).

To hear anything at all, you have to get into the same position as those who experienced the bombing of Dresden sixty-something years ago. You always take something away from a somber installation like this one, but putting the visitors in the driver's seat adds an extra dimension of creepiness and proximity to the memorialized event. And the tech behind it doesn't detract - it enables the memorial. It's like an interactive ghost story. Wicked.

According to Secure Computing Corp., spammers were nearly seven times more likely to slap Obama's name in the subject line than McCain's during September. The bulk of Obama's lead in the spam wars came from a massive blitz early in the month.

The numbers didn't surprise Krasser. "Palin and Obama are the most targeted by spammers because they got more media attention during the month," he said. "Spam trends generally follow media trends, they're just trying to judge what the public is interested in."

Obama beating McCain in Spam Wars is interesting, but I'd be willing to bet that Ben Bernanke and his oddly mesmerizing beard are far ahead by now.

Beards are a tricky subject; on land, a beard traditionally indicates that a man serves the evil of the world. On the open seas, however, those of the hairy face champion the greater good. Technically, Wall Street is based on terra firma. But markets are turbulent, fluid entities. You be the judge.

On the up side, the 280 is the single fastest GPU on the market. On the down side people don't buy GPUs, they buy graphics cards, and the 280 is not the single fastest graphics card on the market. That honour goes to the ATI 4870X2 by a large margin. With the new-gen GT200 parts, Nvidia loses on all fronts, performance, performance per dollar, and performance per watt, they simply aren't competitive.

That brings us to the new parts, the 270 and 290. They popped up on a PNY price list a few weeks ago, and then were pulled off immediately. This part is what we were calling the GT200b in May, but the public code name is GT206. It is simply an optically shrunk GT200, so clock for clock, you won't get any speed boost out of it. It is meant to fatten up the margins by reducing cost. If the GT200 is a 576mm^2 die, and the 206 is around 460mm^2 (~21mm*21mm die), even with the more expensive 55nm process, NV should save some money.

I am really curious to see how well twin 260s work on one PCB. 270s. You know what I mean. The last GX2 really wasn't that bad, and if you compare it to an HD 4870 X2, it, weh, er, consumes a lot less power.

And that's something to be proud about.

I have been fiddling around in the LittleBigPlanet beta for about a week now and have not even come close to creating anything this unbelievably impressive. PSN user Upsilandre has created a level in LittleBigPlanet featuring an actual working calculator.

Now, at first this seems kind of boring and almost shrug-worthy. But before you dismiss it, keep in mind that there is nothing in LittleBigPlanet that allows you to just easily create something that adds and subtracts numbers. Upsilandre constructed this ingenious gizmo using more than 1600 parts, including 610 magnetic switches, 500 wires, and 430 pistons.

The more I see of this game, the more I want to buy a PS3 just so I can own it. If you took Super Mario, dropped in the construction elements of The Incredible Machine, and dressed the entire mess up with some swanky current-gen graphics, you'd have LittleBigPlanet. And the Sackboy caricatures of other game characters make my skull want to explode from the cute / awesome overload.

Watch this video and imagine Sackboy groovin'. Too bad this isn't the start of the day, because you would have gotten your daily workout from deskchair-dancing non-stop.

Finally! Details! On a Bungie Halo title! Courtesy of Microsoft's TGS address, the Halo 3 singleplayer expansion - first revealed in a trailer a few weeks back - now has a name (Halo 3: Recon), a setting and a rough release date. The expansion will serve as a prequel to the events of Halo 3, with the player taking the role of a UNSC recon soldier, who is our "new hero" for a "new campaign".

This trailer gives me a lot of hope. Halo's always been fairly sterile, as far as I can remember. Lots of pretty lighting, lush outdoor (and indoor) environments, and plenty of big guns. The dark, rainy environment in this non-in-game footage looks to add a grittier aesthetic to this installation of the series. Hopefully, the ideas that came about for the creation of that trailer are going to make it into this expansion. I promise I don't just want the game to turn into Halo: Gears of War Edition.

Update: Joystiq says that "Halo 3 Recon" is going to sell as a standalone and will not require an original Halo 3 disc to play. And it's in development by Bungie. Sweet.

Engadget received an invitation for a town-hall event in San Francisco about new Apple notebooks, featuring an image of what could be hinting at possible new aluminum enclosures for 13-inch MacBooks.

tw.apple.pro purports to have images of new aluminum cases for the MacBooks. Judging from the height of the ports (and if the photos are authentic) the new MacBooks could be significantly thinner than their predecessors.

In addition to this event announcement, the Inquisitr is reporting that Apple's pricing for the new notebooks has shown up at retail stores - and the low-end model is priced at $800. They speculate that this may be either a new, smaller "netbook" or possibly just a more agressively priced macbook. Only time will tell.

If the leaked photos of macbook casings are legit, that's gonna be a pretty sexy notebook. There was also talk of dedicated Nvidia graphics for the macbooks, possibly at the Oct. 14 event. This might be the perfect computer to buy before the financial world collapses and we're all walking around with duct-taped laptops and cardboard shoes. The Man is probably going to start rationing internet access, too. These are dark days that we're living in. Or that I'm living in. In my head.

The first products to come out of the Blue Label process are laptops, one each from HP and Toshiba. Best Buy talked to its customers about their "ideal laptop" and learned that consumers wished for longer battery life, a thin and lightweight design, an illuminated keyboard, more optimal screen size and superior warranty support.

In response, Best Buy worked with HP and Toshiba to create exclusive laptops that are less than 1.5 inches thick, weigh less than 5 pounds, feature an exclusive exterior design, a backlit keyboard and come with a two-year warranty at no extra charge. In addition, the laptops feature 30 days of support from Geek Squad, Best Buy's team of Agents and Installers who assist with set-up and troubleshooting of Best Buy-purchased products.

It'd be sweet if you could custom configure a range of notebooks based on a list of ever-evolving options that Best Buy / whoever discovered to be favorable add-ons. Think Dell except products driven by customer feedback. Also think Luby's, except you get a computer with all the fixin's that you could ever want. And you can't eat the computer. Unless you're into that kind of thing.

Would that be more or less extreme than veganism? I have great respect for either group. It's gotta be a tough life.

When they're not hand-wringing over the recent drop in Apple's share price, Mac enthusiasts have been transfixed lately by the mystery product, code-named "brick," that's due for release later this month.

Some bloggers and pundits have suggested it might be a new iteration of Apple TV or an updated Mac Mini. But according to a report on 9to5Mac.com, "brick" refers not to what it is, but how it's made. The Web site, which cites an anonymous source, says the code name has to do with a manufacturing process for Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro lines of laptops. Apple (AAPL) will build the notebook out of a single piece of carved-out aluminum—a brick.

Only Apple would, or realistically, could, take a word infamously characterized as the greatest shortcoming of their greatest product, and spin it into marketing.

Oh, like there wasn't a memo.

No bad press indeed--would you like your Macbook pre-bricked? Of course, because that's f'ing secksy. I will be impressed if this design incorporates the chassis into the machine's cooling, though. Seems to me that just leaving it a solid shell is waste of industrial engineering.