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28th
JAN
iPad Hands-On [Engadget]
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Tech
Engadget did a great little walk through of how the new iPad works. Video is below:
27th
JAN
Download A Digital Copy of Terminator Salvation for FREE! [Deals]
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Movies & TV
This is legit! Just downloaded it myself.
DivX and CinemaNow are giving away a free digital copy of Terminator Salvation. I’m sure the /Film readers will be quick to comment that “it’s not worth that much”, but a deal is a deal. All you have to do is click here, enter coupon code TS201023, and sign up for a CinemaNow account. You’ll need to have DivX player to play the movie file. Say what you want about the movie, this thing is free!
UPDATE: Offer has expired. Hopefully some of you got a piece of the action.
27th
Comparing the Big 4: Google vs. Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Yahoo!
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Tech
It’s no secret that Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo are always expanding their reaches, slowly but surely adding new products and services into their line-ups. The New York Times’s Nick Bilton took a step back and surveyed their empires.
It doesn’t come as much of a surprise to see how much these four behemoths overlap, and I doubt anyone will be surprised when these companies continue to fill in this grid in 2010.
Looking at the empty spaces reveals where we might look for these companies to grow. There have been grumblings of a Google music store for a while, and it seems entirely possible that Apple’s Tablet will at least in part emphasize its capabilities as a gaming device.
As the companies stretch and grow, some of their endeavors will prove more successful than others, but until then this chart is an interesting reminder of how vast their reaches already are.
Tags: Apple, Google, Hardware, Internet, Microsoft, Search, Software, Technology, Yahoo!
26th
JAN
Avatar Is Now the Top-Grossing Movie of All Time
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Movies & TV
Over the course of the weekend, James Cameron’s Avatar was on track to beat Titanic’s record and become the top-grossing film of all time. The numbers have been verified, and Avatar’s worldwide gross stands at over $1.292 billion dollars, which topsTitanic’s $1.242 billion. The domestic record hasn’t yet fallen — by Sunday Avatar was still about $50m shy of Titanic’s $600.8m US gross. About 70% of Avatar’s revenue comes from foreign markets, compared to Titanic’s 67%.
For those of you that are like me and care about ticket sales more than gross income (which doesn’t take inflation into account), Avatar is 26th. Below is a link for you to check out the top grossing films with and without inflation taken into account. Interestingly enough Titanic is only 6th with Gone With The Wind taking the top spot and Star Wars coming in 2nd.
Domestic Grosses Adjusted for Inflation [Box Office Mojo]
Tags: Avatar, Gone With The Wind, Movies, Star Wars, Titanic
20th
JAN
Brain Size Can Predict Game Performance
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Gaming, Medicine
If you wonder why you suck so badly at Modern Warfare 2, it could be biological. According to a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, the size of your brain can predict how well you perform in video games,
(Presumably mad) scientists at the University of Illinois say specific parts of the striatum, a collection of tissues deep inside the cerebral cortex, influence a person’s ability to “refine his or her motor skills, learn new procedures, develop useful strategies and adapt to a quickly changing environments.” In short: All the skills you need to do well in a game.
“This is the first time that we’ve been able to take a real world task like a video game and show that the size of specific brain regions is predictive of performance and learning rates on this video game,” said Kirk Erickson, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and first author on the study.
Sadly, it doesn’t work in reverse, so you can’t play a bunch of video games and grow those structures in your brain — you’re stuck with the equipment you were born with.
Study shows that better gamers have bigger brains, are better learners too [Engadget]
Tags: Research, Science, University of Illinois, Video Games