Recently in Technology Category

Thanks to @NathanFillion for clueing me in to the car/bike/toy of the future, the Persu Hybrid. Close your eyes and picture this: A three wheeled, enclosed vehicle that seats 2, gets 75-100 MPG, goes 0-60 in 6 seconds, goes at least 20 miles all-electric and goes at least 400 miles on each 6 gallon tank of gas and is projected to cost less than $25,000.

Now open your eyes and click the above link (yes, I do know that your eyes weren't really closed).

Also, if you think $25,000 is expensive, look at it this way:

If you drive your regular car 12,000 miles per year and get 30 MPG, that's $960/year in gas at $2.40/gallon. With the Persu, that cost drops to $384/year, a savings of $576. In five years you've saved $2,880. Add in cost of oil changes and other car maintenance and you're saving even more. Yes, I know this isn't a car for a family and is more like a 2nd vehicle, but for single people or for a 2nd car, it's rather amazing. Also, according to Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson (click on the "video" tab on the left), it's really, REALLY fun. In fact, he says it's the most fun you can have and coming from a thrill seeker, that's high praise, indeed!

Watch all the videos, read the specs and then tell me you don't want one!

Thanks to @KarinaLongworth for the heads up on Twitter Vote Report (TVR). A method of tracking how the vote is going across the country, TVR is using hashtags (#______) to collect information and report on the happenings around the country on election day, even if you don't use Twitter (more on this below).

For example: "#10003 L:10th & Broadway #wait:120 back later #votereport" would mean that I am in zip code 10003 at 10th and Broadway and the wait at the polls is 2 hours and I'll be back to vote later. That's a simple one.

A more serious issue could be reported thusly:
"#10003 L:10th & Broadway #EPNY #bad #machine broken, no prov. ballots" which would mean I am in zip code 10003 at 10th and Broadway, I am having a bed experience at the polls and I need the Election Protection Coalition because the voting machines are broken and I can't get a provisional ballot from the polling place." See? A lot of info in a small space.

Even if you don't use Twitter, you can still submit reports by text to 66937 (MOZES), by phone to 567-258-VOTE or by downloading the iPhone App.

More info can be found, here.

Our right to vote is arguably the most important and powerful right we possess in this country and we all need to do our part to make sure that none of us are disenfranchised!

Well, it turns out that the Bionic Woman pilot that's floating around out there may just be the wrong one, in that sections of it have been re-cast or re-shot or both. Even if this turns out to be true, I loved what I saw and assuming they don't all of a sudden turn her into a 12 year-old girl or a 78 year-old grandmother, I am reasonably confident that NBC has another hit on their hands!

More on what I thought of some other pilots in the coming days.

Ah, leaks! What would a journalist be without them? Well, each year it seems that more and more of the new season TV pilots get leaked on to the 'net and while I deplore piracy, I do believe that leaking TV shows on to the 'Net may only serve to drive viewers to a show. What do I mean by that? Well, if enough intrepid bloggers watch a show a month or two in advance of its airing and then write about how cool it is, it starts buzz and thereby drives eyeballs to the airing of the premiere. Whatever you may believe, the number of people who can actually navigate Bittorrent and download a show is still relatively small, so most people are not downloading the pilots. Many people are still without DVRs, even. And before you cry "Snakes on a plane!" let me point out to you that the studio behind that bomb misread all the buzz flying around the web. They bought into the "any publicity is good publicity" canard and thought that all of the blogs "dedicated" to the film meant that B.O. would be high. Guess again. We were laughing at the film, not with it and word is, you had to actually be high to like the film.

I have managed to get copies of a few of the upcoming season's pilots and will endeavor to let you know how cool or, well, not cool they are. As I've said, I suspect that these particular pilots have been officially unofficially released in order to create buzz, but if that's the case, I am more than happy to indulge. I mean, what might have happened to Threshold, Invasion, Surface, Eyes and dozens of other quality shows, if they'd only been "leaked" to the blogosphere? Maybe nothing different, but maybe, just maybe they'd have earned a few extra tenths of a rating point on their debut and carried some more viewers over and survived. The truth is, most of these particular shows are getting very high positives in advance of their airings.

At any rate, watch this space for some (always spoiler-free) thoughts on NBC's Bionic Woman and Chuck (anyone remember Jake 2.0?), ABC's Pushing Daisies, FOX's The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which apparently doesn't start until Spring '08), the CW's Reaper and Showtime's Californication and the new season of Weeds.

So you know the feature on IMDb that gives you recommendations based on what film you're looking at? Well, some of these are really strange. While looking something up for a different story, I just looked at the page for Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep and the recommendations were:

Click
World Trade Center
The Notebook
The Adventures of Sebastian Cole
The Legend of Bagger Vance

Now, I realize that technology is imperfect, but come on!

So while researching my incoming links, I found the following paragraphs regarding Peer Pressure, the Ottoman Rapists along with the Rohal/Osborne follow-up:

FIQUE DE OLHO NO SEU PUFE: O maior sucesso da semana na Internet é a descoberta de Pretty Ricky - Late Night Special, onde adolescentes egocêntricos (redundância?) violentam o pobre pufe da sala de todas as maneiras imagináveis, num intenso e altamente homoerótico gangbang, em que os indivíduos se alternam entre fazer sexo sem concessão com o pobre móvel e se seduzirem com seus movimentos peristálticos frente ao espelho. Você nunca mais vai olhar para a sua mobília do mesmo modo novamente. Veja o vídeo aqui, mas assegure-se de ter aguarrás para limpar seus olhos por perto. Tem uma variação do ato também, chamado "Pretty Ricky - Lingerie". A quem o pobre pufe vai recorrer?

Como eu vou ligar Pretty Ricky aos Mumblecorers? Fácil: em menos de uma semana Kent Osborne (uma das vozes no desenho Bob Esponja e ator de Hannah Takes The Stairs) e Todd Rohal (diretor de The Guatemalan Handshake e também ator no filme de Joe Swanberg) encarnam Peer Pressure e te ensinam como blogar.

I used my Mac's Sherlock to effect a translation, and well, this is what I got:

The latest honor for Messers Rohal and Osborn is: #53 - Most Viewed (This Week) - People & Blogs - All. They're up to over 12,000 views only hours after Matt Dentler posted on their passing of the 8,000 mark.

And then I find this pic.
I love the Internet.

So we've had an Ottoman gang bang, the brilliant response and yet another fake sex R&B "masterpiece", so you might now very reasonably ask, how can we possibly top that?

Well, our very, VERY strange brothers from across the Pacific have a solution and I must share it with you:

A few days ago, David Poland posted about Disney's launch of a Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End embed for blogs. In his post, Poland remarks that "This is what you call owning the property and building a viral audience while making it easy for both the aggregators and the consumers. This is the future... studios doing what YouTube does and controlling how things are done as they wish. The consumer is getting an equally good product either way." I beg to differ. This is actually what you call giving Disney loads of free advertising. If this is really the future, it's depressing as hell.

As of today, the IMDb (finally) removed the "adult" tag from Shortbus and the film now turns up in regular searches. This hardly addresses the main issue of the IMDb's policy towards films they label as "adult." This policy is at best, misguided and at worse, flat out censorship.

God, I love the bloggosphere! If it wasn't for Eugene's post (and for Jay Brannan's You Tube video), I wouldn't have known about the IMDb's practice of censoring searches and wouldn't have written about it and so on and so on....

Isn't it nice when something that makes you angry (happy, aroused, sad, etc.) affects other people, as well? And then they go and write about it, too? Well, it seems like the IMDb story regarding Shortbus and other films has some serious legs, after all. Here are some news sources that picked up on my little post and ran with it:

indieWIRE.com
Dig it! I've been Fleshbotted!
Boingboing!
Cinema Blend
Comstock Films
Matchcut.org's boards
The Alien Experience boards
Other aggregators who have picked up the story include News Is Free

More to come?

Folks,

My apologies, but I've been laid up with some sort of nasty flu-like virus that has limited my actions pretty much to lying in bed and snacking on tylenol, electrolyte-laced drinks and the odd klonapin for sleeping. LOVE the zepams, people! Things weren't SO bad. I mean, I was able to watch the entire first season of ABC's excellent mid-90's TV series, Murder One and an fine way to spend a few feverish days, that is. I only wish my Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Chosen Collection had shown up the day it was supposed to, instead of a day late.

Anyway, the real point of this post is to drool over the new announcement of: