Stars of Mass Effect 2 Revealedt

Bioware has announced the cast for the voices of the new game Mass Effect 2, ad the list is star studded. Listed among the main characters were Martin Sheen, Seth Green, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Yvonne Strahovski, Adam Baldwin, and Keith David

Gwen Stefani and Courntey Love Sue Guitar Hero

Gwen Stefnau and Courtney Love are suing Activision,the maker of Guitar Hero, for some miscommunication over their characters, or husband's characters. The characters of both Kurt Cobain and Gwen Stefani are not only available to be played ofr their own songs, but for other songs on the game as well. This has infuriated Stefani and Love alike, and subsequently, they are suing. Activision however has filed a countersuit claiming that both of the artists knew this, and for them skipping out on contractually obligated promotions.

Norway's Cloud Spiral Explained

A spiral cloud in the Norway sky left many screaming UFO's, but it was revealed recently that the spiral was nothing more than a failed Russian missile launch. The missile was supposed to be Russia's great missile yet, with a launch range of over 5,000 miles. However, this was the thirteenth time the missile failed, so, the missile might not be so great.

Disk Plus On Demand

300/300,000 titles are available to watch on Amazon.com with TeVo or on the PC. If these DVD purchases are a hit then it will be the new way to get them faster.

JooJoo Launched

Previously called the CrunchPad, the production contractor went ahead and renamed the $500 tablet the "JooJoo" after an investor backed out. The tablet has a 12.1 inch touch screen and boosts directly to an internet browser via wifi. The production of the product has lead to many legal arguments, with the production contractors ending up on top.

Apple Buys Lala

Apple has bought the music steaming service Lala recently. The site before was known and made popular by allowing streams at a faster rate than most for as little as ten cents per song. They also had an app for the Iphone app allowing them to stream the songs to their Iphones. Apple is not commenting on their motives of the purchase.

Facebook Changes its Privacy Settings

Anounced by Mark Zuckerberg on December 1st, Facebook is now changing its privacy settings that allow you to change the privacy on a post to post basis. For example, if you wanted to post something but didn't want everyone to see it like your parents, you can make it viewable to only your friends. The changes will be put in place over the next few weeks.

Comcast Buys NBC

Comcast has purchased a majority share of NBC from GE. This also includes affiliated networks like SyFy, Bravo, and USA, they also purchased Hulu and Universal theme parks. The final total for all of this rounded out to around $6.4 billion. Comcast is also bringing some of its networks to the share, like E!, Style, and G4. Overall, this is estimated to be worth around $7.25 billion.

Youtube To Stream TV Shows For a Fee

Youtube has announced that it is soon going to be streaming popular TV shows on its website the day after the show has aired. The streams will be going for the same same price it is to download an episode on Itunes, which makes many people question whether this is a god idea on their part. They say that it doesn't matter, because people who download episodes generally only watch them once.

Black Friday Madness Ensues!

Black Friday has past, and the results are in. Spending went up with a .5% increase, and overall Americans spent $10.7 Billion. Wow! Now, people are going on their computers to try and find holiday deals online. A Blackberrie Storm goes for $10 on Amazon.com (with the purchase of a contract as well :\)

Youtube Direct

Youtube Direct was released which gives major news outlets access to user videos as a source for reporting the news. They can request permission for usage of videos from amateur news anchors on the site and therefore possibly be used on television. However none of the people in the footage used will be paid.

The Google Phone is Coming!

The rumors were true, and Google is coming out with a phone that is similar to the Iphone. It has a full keyboard as opposed to full touch screen, and is supposedly going to hit the shelves early next year.

DVD to Blu-Ray Exchange Site

A new site called DVD2Blu-Ray has a catalog of over fifty titles that allows people to exchange their DVDs of those names and exchange them with Blu-Ray discs of the same name. All you have to do is send the DVDs in a prepaid envelope and they'll send you the Blu-Ray for around $8.

Youtube Gets Subtitles!

Youtube will now be adding the new feature pf putting subtitles on all videos. This will be extremely beneficial to the hearing impaired and will also include subtitles in 51 languages, so you can understand videos in any languag

Sprint Makes a Deal With the NFL

The NFL network signed a deal with Sprint to be the exclusive provider of NFL live games. You can watch these live games on your palm pre using Sprint TV of the NFL Mobile Live application. It's also free for Sprint users with a data plan.

Google Chrome OS Released

Google Chrome OS was revealed at a press conference on the 19th, which is free for download just like Google chrome. One of the new features is a seven second boot time and also boasts that you don't need to have a big hard drive because most of the information is stored by Google itself.

AOL Lays Off Many People

AOL has announced that it is going to fire 2,500 people, and its looking for its staff to volunteer. The people who give themselves up will get a bigger severance package than those who stay. Also, AOL will be selling Mapquest to Microsoft.

Computer That Simulates a Cat's Brain

IBM has officially created a computer that is as complex as a cat's brain. 147,456 processors, it still runs eighty three times slower than an actual cats' brain. They're saying now they have about enough power to eventually simulate a human brain, and even create one that interacts and runs as a conscious being. Which is bad.

Zune HD has Free Games!

The Zune HD is now going to have free games with version 4.3 which will enable 3D games. This will unlock a ton of new games that will be very enjoyable for Zune owners.

A pipe break or a river?

Today a pipe broke on the right side of Van Nuys Blvd. The firetrucks are trying to fix the problem. It is so deep it comes up to the bottom of cars and kids feel a pull to play in it. It is making cars driving nervous, and is wasting a lot of water!

Warner Allows Music on Youtube and Free Concerts

Warner Music Group is now allowing certain artists' songs and music videos to be seen on Youtube. As part of the deal they get a large portion of the money from the advertisements on those videos.

Also Yahoo! is showing free webcasts of concerts in promotion for Guitar Hero 5. They are calling the program Guitar Hero Fridays and will be starting with a concert of Weezer.

Microsoft Copy Cat

Microsoft is recruiting Apple Store managers to come and work for Microsoft stores that are in development. The company is wooing the managers over by giving them pay raises and paying for moving expenses. They even plan on imitating the genius bar. Good luck with that one Microsoft.

In other news, the house built entirely made out of legos in Dorking, England was demolished. It was offered for free to anyone who could take it to a new location, but when there were no takers, they just decided to get rid of it.

New Amazon.com Feature

Amazon.com is coming out with the "AmazonBasics" store, which sells basic products like usb cords, blank discs and flash drives for a significantly lower price than its other competitors. People are suspecting that if the store does well, then major companies will have to drop their prices as well.

Also, the FCC is putting a ban on Internet companies slowing internet speeds while people are streaming things. The purpose for this practice was to get people to watch shows online less so that they would not drop their cable companies.

Left 4 Dead 2 Banned and Itunes Prices Raise?

A company that represents artists and collects fees for them is asking Itunes to pay them more. The4 company would like if the artist was paid for each time a 30 second clip of material is played, and paid for songs played in TV episodes bought on Itunes. If the company gets what it wants, we can expect to see a major price raise in songs and other things bought on Itunes the future.

Also, Left 4 Dead 2 was banned in AUstralia because the country deemd it "too violent". The game shows human on hum,an violence against people with a rabies-like disease and was said to be too violent for anyone under 18

Star Tours Gets Revamped and MMS Comes Early

The Star Wars attraction at Disneyland called Star Tours was announced to be closed down in 2010 for remodeling. It was originally opened in 1987 and has not been changed since. It will reopen in 2011 and will include 3D graphics and new voice overs from Yoda voice Frank Oz.

Also, MMS messaging for Iphones was released a little earlier than anticipated, but only to certain customers. Apparently there is no rhyme or reason why, and no standards for who gets it early and who doesn't.

Steve Jobs and Apple Keynote

This year Steve jobs came out and talked a little about the new things itunes has to offer us. First, he said somethings about the Iphone; 30 million iphones were sold in the last 2 years, 75,000 apps were sold, and 1.8 billion downloads were made. he also introduced the new iphone os 3.1 wiht an app store now makes suggestions. Also, now 30,000 ringtones for $1.29 each are available in the itunes store.

In itunes 9 news........
-Itunes is now in 23 countries, and is the #1 music retailer in the world
-8.5 billion songs sold, with 100,000,000 paying accounts
-Genius mixes plays endless mixes of songs from your library
-There's improved syncing, which also allows you to sync albums and faces from iphoto, as well as managing apps on ipod touch and iphone
-Another new feature is you can stream music from other libraries in your home. With home sharing you can copy songs tv shows movies etc. with 5 authorized computers in the home
-Theer's a redesigned store
-And another new feature itunes lp: has lyrics, chronology of albums, videos, pictures, etc.

He-Man Movie Canned

Warner Bros. has decided to not do the planned live action He-Man and the Masters of the Universe movie that they had originally planned to do with Mattel. Luckily Mattel still got away with rights to all of the material, and they can still take the movie elsewhere, it is still a major setback for the movie and He-Man fans everywhere.

Also, a Norwegian bus driver got his named changed to the ultimate nerd dream: Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar- Jankova. It is the longest nerd name recorded in history. he realizes that he spelled "Chewbacka" wrong, and says he will correct next time he changes his name.

Anger Over PS3 Price Drop and Family Guy Outrage

After the PS3's dramatic price drop PS3 put out commercials saying that "You can't believe everything you believe on the internet, otherwise I'd a Nigerian millionaire by now!" The Nigerians were sincerely upset by this statement and they demanded a public apology. They obliged, and nixed the commercial as well.

Also, the March 8th episode of Family Guy got 179,997 complaints to the FCC, which is a bit over the norm of all shows collectively with 578 complaints.

Yoko Drops the Ball and LOTR Author Gets Paid

One of Apple's big announcements today was actually released yesterday by Yoko Ono in a magazine article. The announcement was that the entire Beatle's catalog was going to be available on Itunes. Sorry Apple, she just couldn't keep it in.

Also, after a long law suit, ti was finally decided who would gets rights to the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, New Line Cinema, or J.R.R. Tolkein. Tolkein won, and apparently they owe him millions upon millions of dollars.

New Fantastic Four to Come!

Fox is planning on picking back up on the "Fantastic Four" series, and is planning on hiring Akiva Goldsman, famous for writing "Batman and Robin" (my personal favorite in the previous series) to write the next film. Although considering it killed the series, which would make most people weary, I am excited for this new film.

Also Ebay sold Skype for $2 billion, whihc means they lost $1.1 billion in the sale.

WOW and IPhone News

World of Warcraft is now featuring a new option for people who would like to pay about $30 more where you can switch sides of the battles. So if you have $30, you don't have to worry about being stuck as solely an Elf or scary Ogre.

The Iphone now also has the capability to send pictures and videos using MMS messaging. You can get this but a simple Iphone software update, however it is only available for 3G, and 3GS Iphones.

Wikipedia, Possibly More Reliable

Wikipedia is going to launch a new feature called "WikiTrust" which will only be available to registered users, which uses a colored coated system to highlight which information on a page has been there the longest without being changed. This feature will allow people to see which information is the most trustworthy, hence, "WikiTrust".

Also, an app for the iphone that tracks where your iphone is, helped police for the second time this month catch criminals who had stolen a victims phone. it costs $99 a year, but hey, it just might be worth it.

New School Year, New Posts to Come

This is my first blog post for the 09-10 school year. Soon there will be media posts. Yup!

The Webby's

The Webby Awards were given out last night, hosted by Seth Meyers. Trent Reznor won for artist of the year, the inventor of the world wide web Tim Burners Lee won the life-time achievement award, and Jimmy Fallon won for person of the year. The winners are only allowed to have a five word accpetance speech and Fallon's speech said, "Thank God Conan got promoted!"

New Wii Products and Wii Imitators

At E3, Microsoft debuted its new rival to the Wii, called Natal for the xbox 360 that is similar to the Wii that it is interactive, but it uses a motion sensitive camera instead of something you wear. Nintendo then came out with a new version of theirs as well, which is called the Wii Vitality sensor, which detects your stress levels.

Twitter News

A new, apparently more efficient alternative to twitterberry for blackberries, called ubertwitter, has gotten a lot of praise recently. You can do everything you could do with twitterberry, and more. Its said to be easier to post photos and you can also attach maps so people can know where exactly you are posting your tweets from. You can also disable this feature if you don't want people to know where you are all the time.
Also, Good magazine has a new feature where you can view many of their data charts and pictures from things in the magazine on flickr, along with other things that are put in the magazine as a sample.

Pre Updates & Glowing Monkeys. Wonderful

Verizon has said that it will now be carrying the palm pre, which is a surprise to many who thought its sole carrier was Sprint. Because of this, it seems that Verizon's stock has suddenly rose and Sprint's suddenly dropped. Another update about the pre is that it will actually be able to sync up to itunes. However, many6 suspect that Apple will find a way to block the pre's access to this.

Also, Japanese engineers have stated that5 thery have geneetically engineered monkeys to glow. For real. They took marmosets and when exposed to ultraviolet light, their feet glow. As you can see, we use the technology of today for extremely useful purposes.

Twitter TV

Twitter has teamed up with a production company to create a reality series to track down tweeting celebrities. This has caused much upset among celebrities who tweet, including infamous tweeter Ashton Kutcher, who says that, "Its all fun and games until someone gets stalked."

Also, an artist downloaded an Iphone app for fingerpainting that landed him the cover of the New Yorker. The artist, Jorge Colombo promises a new cover every week.

Search Wihtout a Warrant Legal?

In case you didn't know, if you own a cordless phone, a wireless router, remote car door opener, or even a cell phone, the FCC can search your home with out a warrant. According to the Communications Act of 1934 the FCC has the right to search your home without a warrant to check if you are transmitting unprotected frequencies.

Also, Youtube just released the statistic that around 20 hours of footage is being uploaded to the site every minute. Other sites are boasting they get more footage per minute, but its still pretty impressive.

New Ghostbusters

A new Ghostbusters movie is coming out with a lot of alumnai from the first movies, like Dan Akroid, Sigourney Weaver, and Bill Murray. The movie is said to be centered around a new generation of Ghostbusteres taking over the business. Its said start filming this winter.

Also, the people from Blu-Ray are trying to develop 3D technology that wouldn't require those cheap red and white glasses but instead the nice ones who get in theatres. However it would require a 3D compatible TV.

Next Generation Iphone Rumors

The next generation of the Iphone is rumored to be released on July 17. New features include a camcorder, a 3.2 megapixel camera, a built in FM transmitter, digital compass, and a 32 GB hard drive. It will be listed under the same price as the current Iphone.

The television show Robot Chicken is now collaborating with Spore, to create a downloadable game as part of Spore Galactic Adventure.

New Guitar Hero

Three new versions of Guitar Hero are coming out: Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, and DJ Hero. Guitar Hero 5 has features such as being able to drop in and out of songs and change players, instruments, and difficulty levels while playing. Band Hero is basically a family-friendly version of the game and DJ Hero actually has a turn table with buttons on it and mainly focuses on genres like hip hop and electronica.

Also, Manny Ramirez of the L.A. Dodgers was suspended for fifty games for using performance enhancing drugs. He had just signed a 25 million dollar contract and because of his suspension will probably lose 7.7 million dollars of his salary.

Paying for Online Content? Not So Much Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch and his company the News Corporation are trying to get people to have to pay for online content that they read. Murdoch has a stake in Myspace and Hulu, but doesn't seem to be having much luck at the whole making people pay thing.
Also, the new Kindle has been announced called the Kindle DX, that is larger and has a bigger screen than the old one. It auto-rotates and has a lot more memory space. It's listed at $489.

Sorry, the Pictures Won't Go Onto the Page

An Imax movie is being made of the trip some astronauts will take up to the Hubble telescope. Not only will it be in Imax, but it will be in 3D. The movie will be called Hubble 3D and is scheduled to come out in the spring of 2010.
Also, the Webby Awards winners were announced, with Jimmy Fallon winning person of the year. Trent Reznor won artrist of the year for letting his fans download the album for free before it was released, and Sarah Silverman won bets actress for her Matt Damon video. Twitter won with break-out of the year, and G4 won for bets mobile entertainment site. Congrats to all the winners!

Best-selling Smart Phone of the First Quaretr of the Year Is....

It was announced that the best selling smart phone of the first quarter of 2009 is the Blackberry Curve. The Iphone came in second, followed by the Blackberry Storm, the Blackberry Pearl, and the T-Mobile G1.
The white house has officially created their own facebook, twitter, and myspace pages. The pages are supposed to help sort out information, while also helping people, like how the white house twitter page gives links to accurate information about the swine flu. we'll see how well that works out for them.

Free TV and Phones

Disney has made a deal with Hulu that their ABC shows will be able to be viewed on the site. Shows like Lost and Grey's Anatomy will be able to be viewed as well. Disney is said to be getting 30% of the income of the site. However other Disney owned channels will not be available, like Disney Channel and ESPN.

Also Palm is offering free palm pre's to people who are willing to say their opinions about the phone on sites like Twitter and Facebook. The select few will get the phone and service free for six months.

New PSP

Facebook's chief privacy officer is rumored to leave Facebook. He has not confirmed this, but has said that he may need to take a leave of absence while he campaigns for Attorney General of California in 2010.

Also, the new PSP relase is soon, and it is rumored to be called the PSP Go. It would no longer use drives and discs and would instead have downloaded contact.

Iphone News

News has leaked that instead of Apple making an Iphone with Verizon, Windows is making a deal with Verizon to develop an Iphone type cellular device that would run on Windows mobile. It would have many of the same features as the Iphone, so if you like lamer rip-offs of the Iphone this might be for you.
Also, a Youtube video has been released of someone playing World of Warcraft on an Iphone, and people speculate that there is an app for the Iphone of WOW. Also, developers of WOW have let the game be released to more modes of viewing. Nerds and Nick Bell rejoice.

Holograms are Cool

Verizon is working out a deal with Apple to be a distributor of Iphones once AT&T's exclusive contract runs out. Verizon is already selling Iphones in Europe, but officials of both Apple and Verizon aren't making any statements.
Also, now GE is claiming to have developed a technology that would have the content of 100 DVDs on one disc. Suppsoedly they are using holographic technology, but thy are still trying to develop a way to mass produce these discs in a cheap, efficient way.

Myspace is going extinct. Any Takers?

Myspace is being abandoned by its officials. Even Tom is leaving the company! However rumor has it that a former facebook exec Owen Van Natta will be taking over.
Also, Apple's Steve Jobs is said to return after leaving for having pancreatic cancer all the way back in 2004. So, now he's back. And people are happy. Yayyy!!

New Ninja Turtles

The founders of the illegal download site "The Pirate Bay" were recently found guilty of copyright infringement and could face up to a year in jail. However now the lawyers are trying to call a mistrial, because supposedly the judge had ties to pro-copyright organizations.
Also, plans are set in motion to make a live-action version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The film is supposed to focus more on the turtles origins. Friday was the series' 25th anniversary, and to celebrate the Empire State Building lit itself up in green light.