I burn, I pine, I perish...

While I love my new Dell Studio XPS 16, there are some outrageously excessive laptops stuffed with awesomeness. Now, much like Alienware's products which start at $1,500, they seem awesome but are expensive and unlike Alienware, not as customizable. The first drool educing laptop is the GScreen Spacebook from a company called (believe it or not) GSCREEN. Now the base model is a 15.4 inch "Spacebook"(named so because it was recovered from the Roswell crash or something), it weighs in at a slightly chubby 8.7 pounds, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8700 2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2 cache, 1066 MHz FSB, DDR2 800 MHz SDRAM with expansion up to 4 GB, 250 GB SATA hard drive, 3 USB 2.0 ports, CD/DVD burner and 6-in-1 media card reader and there's something else....


Oh that's right, IT'S GOT TWO SLIDING SCREENS!!! I don't have any children yet but I would be willing to issue an IOU for the first born if GScreen is willing to send Casual Geekery one for free for us to test drive. I promise we have a lot more followers than that one listed. We've... been having problems... with the tubes.

Why is this awesome: It has two 15-inch screens. It's perfect for photographers, graphic artists, video editors, really anyone that wants to multitask. Or just people who want have Hulu open to while they also play Halo. OK, so I can't explain why it's so awesome, it just is. Well the $3,000 price tag is not so awesome but that may be lower when it ships.

Next up, Intel's concept notebook that really tries to one up the GScreen by having not one, not two, not three but four screens!


And three of them are touchscreens! Suck on that GScreen! I kid, I'd actually rather have the GScreen but I can see why these are both awesome. Check out CNET's videos about it.

Why this is awesome: The three screens would be ideal for multitasking you don't need a full screen for like swishing through your iTunes albums to change songs without dropping your main screen, arranging your favorite widgets or apps to make them readily available, or apparently you can also use them for multi-touch capabilities.

I imagine this is what we'll start to see more and more of in the future. Multiple screens will become common place much the same way built-in web cams have become in the last couple years. Or maybe they'll stay regulated to the odd ball offerings like the fingerprint scanners have kinda been.

Last on the list is Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds with it's flip out 10-inch screen. Not bad at all for a $1,149 base price.


This would be more my speed if I was going to purchase a multi-screen laptop. Or I could spend $149 at ThinkGeek.com and get essentially the same thing.


Which I think I'll do the next time I have some cash.

finally the Missing Messaging Services comes to the iphone (see what I did with the capitalization there?)

Finally the iPhone, which is an amazing piece of technology, has caught up with phones from the early 2000s. It can now send pictures and videos… woooo… Ok it has a ton of other awesome features, but till today (September 25, 2009) whenever a non-iPhone user sent a picture text message the iPhone user was given a really hard to use link to go to and retrieve the picture, so basically no iPhone user has ever seen any pictures sent to them.


AT&T claims that they were nervous that the iPhone users would send loads of pictures to everyone and it would make the already unreliable network more unreliable. I have heard, though never seen, that the iPhone is practically unusable in places like the Bay Area and NY City where there are a really high concentrations of iPhones. Ok maybe they have a point. If the current iPhone users basically lock up the network with their current use and features, then adding more features will probably cause even more issues, now that they are sending all those pictures they take with the built in camera to everyone in their contact lists.

The iPhone has built in email and its possible to send pictures via email, which would be a great alternative to MMS if everyone out there also had an emailing phone. This is not always the case - either the phone has no email at all or the email is not really that accessible, like it is on my Verizon Voyager. So using the practically ancient technology called MMS - which most phones have had access too since its launch in March of 2002 - makes more sense, as it is basically standard.

The iPhone update came out today, and requires the owner to hook up their phone to iTunes and download the update. I am told it is small and should be quick. I am glad for this; finally my friends can see all those hilarious pictures I have wanted to send them. Let the drunken MMSing commence!

Max Brooks has my dream job

Mel's offspring has offically cornered the market on writing anything he wants about zombies and having a publishing house buy it, sell it and make them both a shit ton of money. So I guess I should really concentrate on journalism. The odds of two guys getting that career are about the same as running into a real zombie.

For those of you that are living under a zombie rock, Max Brooks wrote a great satirical piece in 2003 called The Zombie Survival Guide. It's essentially a how-to manual for the average Joe when it comes to surviving the immanent zombie apocalypse.


While the guide was a success, apparently no one listened to its advice because - as we all know- The Zombie War brought us to the brink of extinction. If it weren't for the details of the Redeker Plan and the sheer balls displayed by the United States walking corpses may have been all that was left on the planet. And of course Brooks documented this all in his after action report, World War Z.

Now, Brooks has a new work coming out October 6 called The Zombie Survival Gudie: Recorded Attacks, a graphic novel that illustrates some of the more fantastical (and fictional) zombie encounters in history as first mentioned in the original survival guide. Check out this video preview of it.

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks from Crown Books on Vimeo.

Awesomeness incarnate! Check out the official web site for the first 21 pages of the book. It details a massive outbreak in Roman controlled Britain where a Roman Legion develops the first battle doctrine that is actually effective against the walking dead.

As a side note, here's some awesome art that represents the Battle of Yonkers from World War Z. Sorry, I forgot where I found it so there's not attribution.

Everyone send an apology card to Bryan Singer

"Superman Returns" was not a great movie by any means but at least it didn't look like "The Hulk". It could have been a better movie but it was average for the superhero movies of the era. This was pre "The Dark Knight" after all.

But let's all thank our Lord and savior that Tim Burton's "Superman Lives" never saw the light of day. For those of you that are unfamiliar, back in the mid to late 90s, Kevin Smith was offered re-write work at Warner Brothers and found a copy of their new Superman script. After he finished bashing the hell out of it to numerous executives they let him write his own version. Here's how it went down in Smith's own words.



As he said, based on his treatment of the script Tim Burton signed on to direct and Nicholas Cage signed on to star. The movie fell apart and it's a good thing. THIS is what Cage would have looked like as the Man of Steel.

Words actually fail me. Max Payne actually looks good by comparison. Let's ignore the Eric Draven hair, the washed out look of the photo and the fact that Cage looks like he's higher than your average Phish fan on tour. That leaves the suit. WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THAT?!?! Is that really what the '90s were like? Would that have passed muster a decade ago? I thought I remembered the '90s pretty well and while there was a problem with neon in the beginning and flannel in the middle, I don't remember ever being in a mindset where that would have been acceptable.

Plus, I know it's just a wardrobe test photo but that is a really bad quality photo. To put it into perspective, this was a MAJOR STUDIO wardrobe test being done for what was hoped to be a blockbuster summer movie.

And this is what actor Thomas Jane PERSONALLY PAID FOR when he heard there might be a Johan Hex movie.


Need I say more?

Oh and in case you're wondering, a small snippet of Kevin Smith's draft did make it into "Superman Returns". It's the part where Superman flies Lois Lane into the stratosphere to tell her that he hears people calling out for help every day and it's hard not to be Superman. Apparently, Smith had set the scene on the top of Mt. Rushmore. and the dialog was very different. More about their personal relationship than his need to be a hero. You can check out all of Smith's script here.

Max Payne's journey into the night conitnues

Some of the best memories of my college years involved gathering around the PS2 with good friends and taking turns blowing away wave after wave of bad guys while chomping pain killers and using "bullet time" to look really cool doing it. Those were the days of playing Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.

The story of a DEA agent framed for murder and sent on the run was set to comic book-style Noir cut scenes where Max made insane, verbose and awesome lines like "Gognitti ran out of steam in a dead end valley with steam boiling out of the sewer grates, like all the fires of hell were burning high beneath us... It was shakedown time"

The sequel was just as awesome though slightly the same as the first, Max, now back on the NYPD, finds out what rock bottom really is. But that was all the way back in 2003. After the game's end credits we were promised "Max Payne's journey into the night will continue." But it never came... Until Now!!!


Rockstar Games has finally announced Max Payne 3 but there's a slight problem. This was Max the first time we saw him, a strung out undercover agent with a dead wife and baby.


And this was him in the second game. A slightly chubbier, tireder, alcohol detective with no real reason to live except for a femme fatale who's gunning for him.



Now this is Max 12 years later, working in private security in Brazil and looking like he finally found true rock bottom.


Kudos Max, it only took you the better part of two decades to reach the end of your rope!

Holy hell they decided to go in a bold direction with this new game! They changed up Max's look dramatically, removed him from the noir capital of the world, New York City, and judging from the screen shots on the official web site, have decided to set the game during the day- something that didn't happen once in the first two.

While I have my reservations I'll probably give the PC version a try when it comes out next year. After all, I've been waiting six years to see if Max finally has one fucking day of happiness in his miserable life. What's another few months?

Another Reason I Hate Peta

Is PETA f-n serious with this article.

I like cute cuddly animals and stuff, and I am not a super big fan of the horrible abuses that humans sometimes put animals through in the name of progress, but PETA is doing it all wrong cause now every time i read something about them it makes me want to club baby seals.

How about this shit? Are you kidding me!?
1) PETA has never been to a Phish show or else they would have noticed the malnourished dogs wandering around the lot.
2) The name is terrible! I love Phish and I think I would quit if they changed their names to Sea Kittens, there is nothing shred worthy in that name

PETA stop messing with my band and get out of my tech news!

The "shrink effect"

Caution: this is a rant, and as with many of my rants it may contain run- on sentences, and tenuous logic. You have been warned!!

I have no idea if this is a real notion or if it already has a name, but I am going to call it the “shrink effect”. The “shrink effect” is the notion that technology is merging together. Let me give you an example. In the world of instant messaging there is AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, Gchat, Skype, and I am sure I am missing a couple of big ones, but it really does not matter to my point.

If everyone you communicate with was only on one of these than this would not matter, but the fact is that most people have their friends spread out through at least a couple of these applications. I, personally, am only on Gchat and therefore only talk to people on Gchat (but I am different). I do this because I like the Gchat interface within Gmail and since I am logged in to Gmail all day it makes sense to use the chat feature. I have friends that still use AIM, and some people I used to play WoW with all used MSN. I am a stick-in-the-mud and only talk to people on Gchat. However, people that want to talk to their friends across the different networks can download third party software that will connect all these different chats; for instance Pigden.

Pigden allows you to log into all your different chat accounts and have them all in the same place, so you don’t need to run many different apps to converse with your friends. Pigden is an example of the “shrinking effect." With Pigden, there is one place to chat with everyone, despite the fact that they are actually on different services.

Another example is Tweetdeck, the third party Twitter application. With Tweetdeck you can use your Twitter account, but you can also have it interface with Facebook, allowing you to send your status updates to both through the single interface. Again we are shrinking two services down to one.

I think that this notion of shrinking is going to continue. We will see it not just in terms of chat, but for internet log in. OpenID is an example of this. It allows you to log into it and have your log in be used in several places on the internet. Logging into Google gives you access to a ton of personalized functionality like your documents, your blogs, your email, your reader, your news, etc. With one log in, I get access to a ton of functionality and I can interact with other peoples' Google functionality with their own ID. I can comment on their blogs, share reader items and documents with them all. Facebook wants to be this too; this is why they have instant messaging as well as voice chat which is on the way. In Facebook’s case, they want to be the one-stop-shop for all your social interaction. I would not be surprised if Facebook implemented a way to blog and have that blog available to yours friends. With a Facebook log in, you have access to the whole Facebook framework where you are already connected to your friends and family. If everyone is on Facebook already and Facebook had instant messaging and voice chat with one log in, you are now connected to and can interact seamlessly with those people. You don’t have to give out separate user names for different applications in order to have people interact with you, no longer will you need to put your AIM name into Facebook for people to message you - they can just do it through Facebook. While I think that Facebook is currently too bloated (see my other entries about that) they are continuously improving their interface.

Google already has a really good integration and has been moving towards more social features, but it does not have the social connectivity that Facebook already has. Even if they did implement something like this, Facebook already has the market share. I don’t think that this will be a sudden thing, but one day we will wake up and realized that all our interactions are taking place in one place rather than through several different mediums, and Facebook want to be this place.

Another example of the "shrink effect" is Pay Pal. Pay Pal wants to be the one place for all your online financial transactions. The idea is that with a Pay Pal account, you only need one log in to buy, or sell online. I think that this is the way to go, however, it requires that all the online sellers get in bed with Pay Pal. Google has something like this too. Whichever company is able to make themselves the fully integrated method of payment online will have a huge market place and it will be very hard for other companies to infiltrate the space. (Also, Hey newspaper industry! Incorporate yourselves with Pay Pal and you can make micro payment work, but you all need to be on board!)

This entry is a lot of me kind of rambling, and why not? That’s what I do, but something to just note here is that there will always be new things popping up all the time. However, these will be used by the fringes and will not have the same level of exposure to the masses (I mean the masses thing that the internet is the Internet Explorer icon). Innovation will continue but I expect that these innovations will start out as things unto themselves and will then be incorporated by the big players as they take on popularity. For instance, I think that Twitter will eventually be bought and integrated into either Facebook or Google. I am not sure what the end result of that integration would be, but I can see this happening and, hell, Facebook has already made their Status very Twitter like. I even see people @replying to each other on Facebook. Basically, the big players in social media will win by being a one-stop-shop for everything. A place where you can go and be fully integrated with everything you need to communicate and live online.

Talking face...book

Here I go again with another entry about Facebook. This time I am writing about the voice chat they are adding via a browser plug-in. The technology for this is coming from a Boston based company (which is awesome!) called Vivox.


I have never heard of them, but I guess they also make voice chat for Second Life and EVE online, neither of which I have ever played but both have a decent following, so there must be tons of people out there that regularly use their service. Adding this to Facebook makes some sense. Basically Facebook is taking the next step to make itself a totally integral part of your life. Now you can not only stalk your friends and acquaintances, waste lots of time playing Mafia wars, and comparing which 80’s icons you best match to your friends - you can do it all while actually talking to the person!

A while back Facebook rolled out its own chat feature which was basically a way to instant message your friends who are logged into Facebook too. I never use this feature and from what people have said, it never really worked all that well. I think that the voice chat will follow suit. It’s an interesting thing to add to Facebook but in the end it will not be all that revolutionary or even useful. I am sure some people will use it, it does make more sense that eBay buying Skype, however, because at least Facebook is meant to be a social experience.


There has been some speculation that this would cause people to strip down their friend list so that casual acquaintances don't try to voice chat them. I honestly don’t think that this will be the case, basically because this works both ways. For example I have a bunch of people in my friends list that I do not want to talk to on the phone or via a voice chat because I am not friends with these people enough to want to really talk to them. If you know me, you know that I don’t even really like talking on the phone to people I do like so I will never start a voice chat with any of them. Now this works in reverse too, I am sure I am on some peoples' friends list and they don’t want to talk to me, so they never will. Time is a premium in our society, why would people waste it talking on voice chat to people they don’t really care to talk to anyway? I think that our friend lists will remain more or less the same and this new feature will have very little impact (especially since I will only be logging into Facebook Lite).

In conclusion I think it’s interesting that Facebook added this, I am planning another entry that will go into detail about this, but over all I don’t think the voice chat will have much of an impact on Facebook users at all… at least not now.