Visit the Shaks

It's the ultimate solution for travelers who are unable to get the space in their carry-on luggage to store a 4x3x2 mouse.  Space is at a premium when traveling anywhere, after all, so why take up space that could be used to hold an extra stick of deodorant if you don't have to?  Simply deflate your mouse, roll it up, and...  wait, what?  You don't have an inflatable mouse?!

I guess I should point out that no one has an inflatable mouse yet, since Yanko Design is more of a potential company and not an actual manufacturing firm, but if they had one of these available for the price of a normal mouse, or if I thought I could hack something together, I'd totally make/use a blow-up mouse, if only because it'd be awesome to fill with helium for pranking purposes.  Imagine the look in your co-worker's faces when you walk away from your desk and your mouse suddenly goes airborne!

H/T:  Engadget, of course. 

Valentine’s Day is rapidly approaching, and if you don’t want to fall victim to a massacre, you’d better have something adorable and mushy for that certain someone in your life.  Might I suggest this 8-Bit Dynamic Life tee-shirt from Think Geek?  The meter perks up from 2.5 hearts to a robust 6 hearts when in the presence of another shirt or the transmitter pack available for purchase should you not have a loved one. 

The best part of the heart life bar tee-shirt is the ambient radiation from the hearts leaves your genitals sterile and useless!  Hooray!  Oh wait, I might be confusing tee-shirt radiation with television radiation.  Either way, that’s not a good thing. 

If only there was some way they could rig the hearts on the shirt to detect the scent of coffee, and to refill appropriately as I refill my mug and/or stomach with hot java, then I think we’d be on to something.  The Beatles once sang that all you need is love, but they also didn’t have to get up before dawn every morning to sit in front of a computer all day.

H/T:  Jade from JadeMyst 

Click and drag a little love into your life with this heart-shaped mouse from the Victoria & Albert Museum Shop.  What better way to show the geek in your life that you love him/her than by offering your tacit approval of their horrible addiction to Solitaire or Minesweeper by giving them the tool they need to feed their compulsive clicking?  We both know you're a passive-aggressive enabler, so get to enabling!

The mouse is compatible to both USB and P/S ports and works with both Mac and PC, so even if you’re not exactly the sort to know a motherboard from a fully operational funkadelic mothership, you can be confident this is one gift that’s going to work with whatever system or software your sweetheart loves almost as much as s/he loves you.  Plus, it’s made in Switzerland, so odds are good that the mouse is actually a gigantic piece of chocolate wrapped in some sort of hard candy/plastic shell. 

H/T:  PopGadget

Virtual worlds are the hot new thing thanks to the massive success of World of Warcraft and Second Life, both of which I’ve spent a great deal of time in.  I was resistant at first, of course, and WoW has more love in my heart than Second Life does (because my computers don’t like SL), but there’s no denying it’s one of the biggest technical success stories in quite some time.

Pure West, the force behind Second Skin, peels back the pixels to get at the people behind the avatars.  It’s a study of virtual worlds and how they bring people thousands of miles apart closer together through the power of the Internet.  Every day, couples meet, fall in love, break up, and even marry inside and through connections made in virtual worlds, and every day those virtual worlds grow larger and larger, becoming more and more important in pop culture. 

Second Skin is shooting for a release at the prestigious South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas; if all goes well, I have no doubt you’ll be seeing it in the documentary section of your local video store or on Amazon before too long.  After checking out the trailer, it looks like it’s going to be incredibly interesting.

Everyone I know plays some sort of MMO-type game.  Everyone.  It looks as though this documentary is going to be a fair treatment of the average player.  We’re not all addicts, after all, and not everyone is going to kill themselves because of a virtual world or the actual people in said virtual world. 

Virtual worlders are just like you and me.  Actually, if you look at the roster of writers at Shak Media, they are you and me.  Or at least, me and Ivy, who is a reformed Second Lifer and Wii junkie.  We’re everywhere!

H/T:  Massively

According to Go Nintendo, one of my favorite Nintendo blogs, South Korea has one of the greatest things ever to be put on television:  Guitar Hero contests.  That's right, if you're good enough at everyone's fake guitar game, you too can be on TV and get your 15 minutes of fame. 

Now, I'm not very good at the game (about as bad as I am at real guitar), but check this kid out.  He's amazing for 8 years old, and pretty amazing for anyone of any age.  If only our video game television networks would, you know, have more video gaming contests and less reruns of "Cops."  Good luck with that.

See also:  Silicon Era

Here’s a little bit of great news for movie nerds like myself, who’ve been looking all over for that one last existing copy of “The Gong Show Movie” or “White Line Fever.”  Sony and HP are finally making some good use of the massive capabilities of a computer manufacturing company and one of the world’s largest movie catalogues by enabling, finally, on-demand DVD burning and purchase!

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has become the first major studio to license niche and older DVD titles for production and distribution through HP's year-old DVD manufactured-on-demand service, the two companies said on Thursday.

The MOD service allows Sony to offer a wider choice of catalog titles to consumers because HP can press and ship single discs as they are ordered through affiliated Web sites.

Sony has not released some of the content—including classic television shows, foreign and independent movies, specialty programming such as religious or food shows, and local sporting events—because of the cost of maintaining inventory and the difficulties of gauging demand, said David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

"We know there is strong consumer demand for these titles, and by working with HP we can monetize our deep product library and help give retailers the means to bring a wider offering of Sony Pictures products to consumers without a significant investment in inventory," Bishop said in a statement. 

As a serious movie buff, a lot of my favorite movies haven’t been put out on DVD, or were only released for one pressing and then disappeared off the face of the earth before I even knew they were released, let alone before I had the chance to buy them.  It’ll be nice to finally have the shot to be able to own, say, a pressing of the 1986 Fred Dekker classic “Night of the Creeps” or an 18-DVD collection of The Best of The Maury Show:  World’s Fattest Babies for my very own.

World of Warcraft, the popular MMORPG game from Blizzard, has finally topped a significant milestone.  As of this week, the world's most popular game has topped 10 million paid subscribers.  The numbers are fascinating once you break them down:  2 million subscribers in Europe, 2.5 million in the United States (including myself), and a staggering 5.5 million in Asia.

Asians love their MMOs, that's for sure.  Even more importantly, the Asian market is crazy for Blizzard properties like Warcraft and (especially) Starcraft.  While WoW is newer in most Asian territories, and releases slower, Blizzard is still expanding the service, which guarantees good returns for the immediate future, with an inevitable bump once the next expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, is released.  Once upon a time, 100,000 seemed like a lot of people playing a game online.  I wonder where the ceiling for WoW truly is.  12 million?  15 million? 

There's a lot of the world still waiting for an official World of Warcraft release.

H/T:  Kotaku

Image:  TechFresh

In the never-ending war on piracy, the MPAA, RIAA, and other industry lobbying arms have done some pretty heinous things, so lying about numbers... excuse me, incorrectly deducing statistics that just so happened to force colleges and universities into adopting industry-supported anti-piracy measures... is the least of the things they've done.  I'd rather the MPAA spread propaganda rather than illegal rootkits like Sony included on CDs, simply because propaganda is more effective and less damaging in a monetary sense.

But just how off were the numbers?  From the IMDB: 

The Motion Picture Association of America has acknowledged that a study that it commissioned in 2005 -- that concluded that widespread illegal downloading of movies on college campuses was responsible for billions of dollars in losses -- was wrong. The study had claimed that students with access to high-speed Internet connections in college dorms were to blame for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses from online pirating. However, on Tuesday, the MPAA admitted that it got the figure wrong because of "human error" and that it was more like 15 percent. But Mark Luker, vice president of Educause, told the Associated Press Tuesday that the study did not take into account the fact that 80 percent of college students live off campus. He figured that campus networks may be responsible for only 3 percent of illegal downloads. The industry's earlier figure, he maintained, was intended to show that if college campuses got tough on the issue of illegal downloads, "it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry." He said that the new figures show that campus action would "have only a small impact." For its part, the MPAA said Tuesday, "We take this error very seriously and have taken strong and immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report."

Fool me once, shame on you, MPAA.  Excuse me if I don't buy any of your anti-piracy arguments ever again.  As we all know, statistics are the third type of lies, and I've always been more than a little suspicious that piracy is always blamed for flagging sales, rather than industry bloat, a constant rehashing of older/better films, lousy conditions in theaters, and the economy. 

DVD sales certainly haven't slowed down, and people have been bootlegging movies for 30 years.  At least with a fake DVD you don't have to watch annoying anti-piracy adverts, and you can be sure it'll play on whatever DVD player you have.

Have a history of sales? Like to work from your home? Love our site? Well then, Shakadoo may need you.

We are looking for experienced and motivated individuals to add to our sales staff. If you think you might be a good fit or know someone who who would be, email your resume to us here at  sales@shakadoo.com

It's usually a shame when someone dies too early, especially when that someone is as talented as actor Heath Ledger, who was found dead this evening at his New York City apartment.  Ledger gained renown for his roles in "Monster's Ball" and "Brokeback Mountain," but his career was otherwise checkered and piecemeal, with a lot of appearances in generally awful movies.  His history with the sort of genre films that geeks everywhere embrace was, to put it mildly, concerning when Ledger was announced as The Joker in the upcoming Batman film, "The Dark Knight."   

I know I was one of many people to dismiss him when he was cast in the role, thanks in no small part to the six months of awful "Brokeback Moutain" jokes I had to endure.  However, the more I saw Ledger in the Joker makeup, and the more I heard him deliver The Joker's lines, the more I warmed up to him.  I think this trailer below is what finally made me stop with all the reservations and be finally, truly excited about the man behind the makeup. 

RIP, Heath.   

Remember when I was all excited that I finally bought a Wii?  Well, as it turns out, I was not quite that lucky, as over the weekend Wal-Mart informed me that I was too slow, that I was a jive sucker, and that, alas, I did not get a Wii, but they'll try to get me one in 10 days or give me back my money.  Sigh.

To comfort myself, I decided to look at some great Wii mods from Morpheon Mods.  The picture above is the Wii mod they made for one Mr. Kevin Smith, director of such slacker classics as Clerks, Mall Rats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and the like.  I guess you have to bribe someone or be a famous Hollywood director to get a Wii.  Or at least get lucky, which I am absolutely incapable of being. 

H/T:  Gizmodo

So, I bit the bullet and today, through the horrible monsters at Wal-Mart, I bought myself a massive Nintendo Wii bundle.  After shipping and handling, it comes out to cost just slightly over $725.  Yeah, I know, I blew a LOT of money, but I also get a LOT of goodies on the side.  Check it out.

Nintendo Wii Customer Choice Bundle
Nintendo Wii Console
DreamGear Cooling Stand 4-in-1 Wii
Wii Remote Controller
Wii Nunchuk Controller
Mario Party 8
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
NBA Live 08
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
Fire Emblem
Lego Star Wars: Complete Saga

This is all thanks to the magic of the website Nintendo Wii Tracker.  I've been watching the site for about two weeks now, just hoping to get lucky and find some online retailer with Wiis in stock, and today, luckily, I found one.  After a little debate with myself as to whether or not I wanted to drop a whole paycheck on the system with all those games, I realised most of the games were ones I'd want to buy anyway, so I held my nose and jumped on it.

If you got your Wii, how'd you swing it?  Did you pick up a bundle pack like I did?  Do you have any recommendations for games?

I just had a few minutes to check out the video about the Apple MacBook Air. I WANT it! I want it bad.

I have been a PC user up until now but am seriously considering converting just because the Air is so cool.

Super Sleek
Aside from the incredible thinness (0.16 to 0.76 inch- about the size of your index finger) and light weight ( just 3 lbs!) it also offers the advantages of a full size notebook. Like a full size key board that is back lit for ease of use in low light situations such as conference rooms and airplanes.

Impressive Display 
The glossy 13.3-inch, widescreen LED backlit display is the same viewable size as the screen on MacBook. The 1280-by-800 resolution gives you vibrant images and rich colors at full brightness.

Built In Camera
Unlike most other ultraportable notebooks, MacBook Air includes a built-in camera they refer to as iSite. The iSight camera along with iChat software makes video chatting easy anywhere there’s a wireless network.

Slim Battery
This impressively slim battery does not compromise power. It is said to provide 5 hours of wireless activity.

Touchpad Capabilities
Last but not least is the feature that I loved most. The oversized trackpad with multi-touch technology. This design is taken from the gesture based commands of the iPhone and Ipod. You can pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image. It will recognize the difference between two finger commands and three finger commands.

The Dilemma...I know nothing about operating a Mac. I am a self taught PC user (other than the DOS class in high school many moons ago) and would not consider myself highly techy. But this machine is so sexy I feel like I must have it. But I am trepidatious. Is the conversion too hard to tackle for an ole gal like me? You know what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks. Will I feel lost and therefore less productive? I certainly dont have time to be less productive. These are the questions that I ask myself.

Of course the Apple Store offers free tutoring and classes that I can take, but again thats just more time invested that could be spent elsewhere. So what do I do??? I ask you Shak-ers that are Mac converts; will I regret it? Let me know what you all think so I can make the right decision.

I'll eagerly await your vote...To Mac or not to Mac, that is the question.

It's hard to keep up with all those social media websites out there.  Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon... for most people, it's just a bunch of compound words and spelling errors, but for the geek, it's a lifestyle.  That's why you might want to pick up one of these Web 2.0 teeshirts.  It lists over 20 of the most popular user-generated websites and allows you to use a marker to check off the ones you're a part of!  It lends you immediate geek cachet, so head over to Spreadshirt and pick one up for under $13!

H/T:  Gizmodo

Image:  Massively

Are you willing to give the power company basically unlimited access to your electronics in an effort to conserve energy?  If California has its way, you won't have a choice.  From World Net Daily via Engadget: 

The government is seeking to limit rolling blackouts and free up electric and natural gas resources by mandating that every new heating and cooling system include a "non-removable" FM receiver. The thermostat is also capable of controlling other appliances in the house, such as electric water heaters, refrigerators, pool pumps, computers and lights in response to signals from utility companies. If contractors and residents refuse to comply with the mandate, their building permits will be denied.

The proposal, set to be considered by the commission Jan. 30, requires each thermostat to be equipped with a radio communication device to send "price signals" and automatically adjust temperature up or down 4 degrees for cooling and heating, as California's public and private utility organizations deem necessary.

Now, saving the environment is all well and good, but the last person I want making the decisions for the temperature of my house is someone who doesn't have to live in said house.  Especially when they talk about controlling the supply of power to important thing like refridgerators, water heaters, and my computer.  At my house, we do have a shut-off box that the utility company can control on hot summer days, but it's only for the central air, not anything else, and it gets us a break on the utility bill. 

That's fine; intruding into my home is not cool.  Or hot.  Whatever the weather's like. 

How was your morning?  Did you have a good drive into work, should you drive into work?  Have a delicious bowl of cereal and your traditional 32 oz Styrofoam cup of coffee from the gas station?  It’s cold out there, so I hope you bundled up before you left home.

Unfortunately, there’s been a problem for all of us who have website hosting through Dreamhost.  However you’re paying for your hosting, go right now and check your billing statement.  I’ll wait.

*waits for the screaming and cursing to die down*

Thanks to a major snafu on their part, Dreamhost has billed users for an entire year (December 2008) rather than last month (December 2007), slapping bills ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars into checking accounts and credit cards worldwide.  That means if you wrote that mortgage check on Friday, it might’ve bounced today.  Which means you’ll have overdraft fees, late fees for your mortgage, credit penalties, and a whole world of excrement to sort through.  I hope you enjoy making lots of telephone calls to customer service centers across the globe, because that’s your future. 

It’s almost as if the Dreamhost billing department came into your house, hopped up onto your breakfast nook, dropped trou, and deposited a steaming pile of grump into your cereal, isn’t it?  Judging from the over 460 angry responses, a lot of otherwise competent and well-behaved bill payers woke up to a bowl of Total and poop.

Image:  I Can Has Cheezburger

I-Mockery, one of the best gaming-related websites on the internet, has a great list of the 50 greatest arcade consoles ever made.  For those of you too young to remember the glory days of the arcade, a console is this big box that has a video game inside.  Just one video game, mind you.  Despite being the size of a wardrobe, there was usually only one or two games inside those giant machines. 

It was designed to get your attention and take all your quarters.  Once upon a time, they only cost a quarter to play, and you didn't have to stomp on a giant flashing footpad to get your little guy to do stuff and kill things.  It was just you, a 64-oz soda, a bag full of money you were SUPPOSED to do your laundry with, and Donkey Kong. 

Of course, since I'm only in my mid-20s, I missed most of the great arcade days, but several of those machines ate a lot of my money, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet, anything you had so sit on, and the classic cocktail table design of Ms. Pac-Man that they used to have in my neighborhood Pizza Hut.  I miss that game.

What was your favorite arcade game back in the day?

H/T:  Destructoid 

Dell’s boutique brand, Alienware (disclosure:  I have and love my Alienware laptop), has released what is probably the coolest monitor I’ve ever seen for computer usage.  It’s a four-panel monitor that mimics real peripheral vision with its beefy 2880 x 900 measurements.  I’ve seen multi-monitor setups before, but this not only takes the cake, it takes the whole bakery.  It’s not available for purchase yet, but it’s from Alienware, so it’ll go for well over $2000, at least. 

Speaking of things I’ll never be able to buy ever, Panasonic does Alienware and the TV industry one better by launching a massive, 11-foot wide 150-inch television.  The previous leader was Sharp’s 108-inch TV, but this… yeah, this blows that out of the water.  I’m not even sure I have an uninterrupted 11-foot span of wall in my house that isn’t my hallway.  Forget that monitor; this is what I want to hook my computer up to!

So have you always wanted to be James Bond, but lack the million-dollar budget for all those cool spy goodies?  Well, Kipkay Videos has a guide, as you'll see below, as to how you can build your own color video and audio spy sunglasses for under $40!  Well, not counting the cost of the camcorder to stick in your pocket or backpack, but hey, that's still a bargain!

I'm a nut for spy goodies and other improvised gadgetry.  If you can stick a sword in a cane, I want to buy it, even though I don't know how to use a sword or need a cane.  If you have sunglasses with a little mirror on the back so you can see if someone's following you, I'm immediately interested.  There's nothing I've wanted more than a house with at least one secret passage behind a bookshelf leading to a hidden room, unless that house was also a castle.

H/T: Pop-Fi

So you're on a date with that lucky young man/woman/other, and you're ready to throw caution to the wind and lead with your lips.  But you just had a big plate of garlic and onions, and s/he had the fried catfish.  So if you want to find out if your breath is ready for a little person-to-person, why not try the Seju Kiss-Me Meter? 

It detects five levels of breath stank, and rates you accordingly.  There's also a built-in Breathalyzer.  It calibrates automatically, uses very little power, and clips right onto your cell phone, so you can discreetly check your funk levels while pretending you're on the phone.  Brilliant!  You'll never have to brush your teeth again!

Image/HT:  Engadget

With the impending change-over from Warner Studios from HD DVD to Blu-ray, the format war looks like it’s just about dead save Universal.  Now, I’ve made no secret of my loathing for Blu-ray, for Sony’s proprietary systems, for the fact that Sony rushed out an incomplete format that still lacks a lot of the features of HD DVD and still needs firmware upgrades because first-generation players won’t handle all new Blu-ray DVDs, and because I like my 200-something DVDs the way they are and don’t need HD versions. 

I love my On Demand service from the local cable monopoly.  I love being able to watch whatever’s available at any time of the day or night, regardless of what else is on or the appropriateness of the program.  Horror movie before breakfast?  Done.  Cartoons at midnight?  All over it.  Sure, the selection is limited, but usually I can find something on that I want to watch more than what’s actually on TV. 

Thankfully, Netflix and LG are working on something that may solve the selection problem.  There’s even been a high-definition movie streamed instantly across the aether.  If you’d like to read more about it, head on over here and check out my article.

I just subscribed to Netflix last week, and so far I'm really digging it.  I just got in my copy of "Death Race 2000" Saturday, and I'm really excited about watching everything they have to offer.  If they could just stream the movies straight to my cable box, I'd never go to the video store again!

I’m not a big user of Skype and Skype-type programs.  I’ve got it installed on my computer, but it rarely gets activated since I don’t really know anyone who uses it on any regular basis who doesn’t already have my cell number.  I can appreciate using it to talk during the day or whatever, but at night you may as well burn up some of those free minutes since you’re paying for them. 

I tend to use Ventrillo or TeamSpeak more often, while playing around in World of Warcraft, but maybe I’d use Skype more often if I had something like the $22 mouse Skype telephone.  Then again, the design looks counterintuitive (mouse cord on what I assume to be the earpiece of the telephone, but may not be), so it might just annoy me mercilessly.  Considering I have a headset with a microphone already, I don’t see how I’d need something like this, unless I wanted it for traveling or needed a new headset/mouse. 

H/T:  PopGadget

Image:  GeekAlerts

It’s hard to believe that Apple Computers is older than I am.  The company has undergone some radical changes in its time (they’re not even really a computer company anymore), and this excellently geeky tee shirt from Insanely Great Shirts is a good indicator of the Apple time line in gray cotton glory. 

The first computer I ever saw was an Apple computer, sometime in the mid 80s.  Like everyone else, it was in a public school computer lab, where the mighty Apple was used for Number Crunchers and, if you were lucky, a game of Oregon Trail you could get halfway through in your 30 minute computer period.  They were big, ugly, square, beige things (beige box is the attack apple uses against PCs these days, though most PCs look worlds better than any aqua blue G4 or desk space eating, massive silver heat grated G5).  Back then, Macs were the cheap computers used by public institutions and PCs were the expensive, high end things you looked at in magazines. 

Of course, because everyone else moved to standardized parts made on assembly lines years before Apple scrapped the low-powered, yet scaldingly hot, PowerPC processor platform, PCs dropped in price while Apple continued to dutifully charge more for an underpowered computer.  Consumers were able to pick up computers more powerful than the mighty Mac for a third of the price, schools finally realized that they could do the same thing but cheaper by buying in bulk.  Those looking for raw power for gaming or heavy applications could turn to niche PC builders who use higher quality, bleeding edge parts (like an Alienware, Velocity Micro, Falcon Northwest, or a VoodooPC) with similar price points and sexier packaging than the mom friendly pastel Apple. 

Now every classroom has at least one or 2 computers in it, the local library branch has at least 10 computers in it, and Apple has become a consumer electronics company thanks to the iPod turning Apple from an also ran popular among lazy graphics professionals who don’t want to learn the slightly different short cuts to do Adobe work on a PC or Mactel to a fad laptop for hipsters.  Apple Computers now sells anything but, selling itself as an idiot-proof, virus-safe computer alternative that is also somehow hipper than the competition. 

They spent years bashing Intel, then they sell out to Intel when PowerPC processors become too valuable to the video game industry to use for boutique computers.  They spend years developing the Macintosh OS, then scrap it all and co-opt BSD for OSX (I’ve maintained that Vista should’ve been a fresh reboot, with an XP emulator like DOSBox for legacy program support like Apple’s Rosetta and the former Classic mode for PowerPC Macs).  They stay on proprietary parts for years, then slowly migrate to the same guts as any Dell or HP (without lowering prices).  They run Steve Jobs out of town, then they snuggle back up to him when he sweeps in to save to company.

If anything, you have to give Apple credit for corporate chutzpa.

H/T:  TechDigest.tv