Blue Brain

Back in April of this year I purchased an iPad, after seeing the various demos of comic book apps I was impressed. As a kid I was very much into a handful of comics, but as I got older I grew out of them. I continued to think comics were for kids, but with my fancy new iPad I decided to check out some comics recommended to me by some adult comic fans. “The Walking Dead” written by Robert Kirkman was one that was continually recommended, I grabbed the first few issues and was instantly hooked. The artwork was great, but I was shocked how excellent the writing was.

The story chronicles the travels of a group of people trying to survive in a world stricken by a zombie apocalypse. The group is led by Rick Grimes, who was a police officer in the old world. As their situation grows more and more grim, the group’s desperation to survive pushes them to do almost anything to stay alive. Although, there are zombies in The Walking Dead, the story is as much about zombies as Lost was a story about a strange island. Similar to Lost, the real stories lie in the survivors, their moral decisions, and how they must change and adapt to this new world. The biggest threat to the survivors safety aren’t the zombies, it’s the other human survivors. Resources are scarce and safe shelter is hard to find, desperation brings out the worst in some. Continue Reading…

People don’t like to be told when they can consume their content, whether it is television, radio or news – busy lifestyles rarely fit the schedules of such inflexible broadcasts. Now I’m not saying live content is dead. I don’t know anyone who would want to watch the Superbowl days after, or listen to a news broadcast from last week.

Competition for our attention is growing; free internet content is readily and easily available for consumption on cell phones and portable devices of all types. The only problem with all this free content is, well… most of it is poorly produced crap, or recycled content. This will not be the case forever and the shift has already begun, more and more professionals are turning to the internet for its freedom and ease of delivery. Continue Reading…

Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Text-Books and now Comic Books are slated to be on Apple’s iPad. Let’s see how comic books look on that Kindle of yours — pretty sad right? Panelfly is the name of the comic-book reader iPhone app that is now planning on diving into the iPad market — can’t say I blame them. Although I’m not a huge comic book fan myself, if I were to read them digitally the iPad’s screen appears to be a beautiful way to do so.

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Heavy Metal isn’t usually my go-to genre of music when I turn on my iPod — you have to be in a certain mood for metal. When I do feel the urge for the heavy stuff The Charred Walls of The Damned is at the top of my playlist. The band consists of Steve DiGiorgio, Tim “Ripper” Owens, Jason Suecof and Richard Christy (yes, the same Richard Christy of from The Howard Stern Show). Christy explained on The Howard Stern Show that the band’s name derived from a series of radio prank calls he and Sal Governale made to a Tradio show on a Christian radio station. In mentioning the pranks they had been receiving, the host describes how he prays for the pranksters and will “save their soul” and to be “saved by God’s grace and not in the devil’s hell where you’d be put in your nails in the charred walls of the damned”.

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There’s no lack of Apple iPad related news. It’s only been a week since it’s was announced, and there’s no lack of speculation, rumors and news.

• Major Textbook and educational publishing companies have all made deals with the ScrollMotion to develop textbook apps and test-prep / study guide apps for the Apple iPad.  [Source: Wall Street Journal]
  
• Rupert Murdoch says “We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99… we think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books.” He prefers Apple’s new pricing flexibility for it’s upcoming iBook store. Expect all the “big six” publishers prices to soon follow suite. [Source: AllThingsDigital]
  
• Apple’s iPad May Gain an Intelligent Bezel in the Future. Today, the US Patent and Trademark Office officially published two major granted patents of Apple’s covering tablets and advanced touch technologies.  [Source: PatentlyApple]
  
• iPad was (maybe) supposed to contain a camera? [Source: Gizmodo]
• iPad apps to cost more than iPhone apps.  [Source: TechRadar]

The Lost 2-hour season premier of the final season kicks off tonight. The show notorious for raising a handful of questions for every 1 question it answers is back to finally wrap-up everything into one neat little package? Right? I hope so. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve yelled out “WHAT?” at the end an episode. I realize it’s just a TV show but there are so many loose ends that need to be wrapped up that I’m almost watching in disbelief that it’s possible to make sense of it all. What is all that crazy jungle whispering? How did John Locke come back to life? What’s up with Walt’s have special powers?  Why does Hurley see dead people? How does Hurley remain to be 300lbs on an island with limited food resources? Where is Claire? How is the island connected to Egyptian mythology? … I could do this all day.

The producers have said they plan to wrap up long-standing mysteries, such as the nature of the smoke monster, the four-toed statue of Taweret, the identity of the Adam & Eve skeletons from the season one episode “House of the Rising Sun”, and the reason the Dharma periodic resupply drops continue after the purge. Let’s hope they don’t disappoint.

It’s only been a few days since Steve Jobs came out and announced the details for the much hyped Apple tablet — which we now know has been officially titled the iPad. Rumored for years to be a revolutionary multi-touch tablet PC with an equally revolutionary operating system. Let’s just say, the actual product was far less impressive than the rumors. The overwhelming response amongst fans and the media are disappointment and scepticism. The most common complaints are “This is just an oversized iPod Touch”, no flash support, no camera, no multitasking, no USB ports, some have even called it lazy engineering on part of Apple.

The naysayers are right in many ways — the iPad is running on a modified version of the iPhone OS on a much larger screen.  But let’s be honest, how often do expectations meet reality? Not very often. People just want to be wowed. And I can’t blame them; it’s easier to criticize than to innovate. But let’s not forget, even the original iPod was criticized by some as overpriced and unimpressive when it was announced. The reality is this is still an impressive product with a very large customer appeal. I’ll tell you why — I personally know alot of people who are technologically inept. They hate computers and complicated technology BUT, almost ALL of them eventually purchased either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Why? It’s user-friendly technology. From launching programs, to purchasing apps, games, music and videos — it’s all simple. People love simple, alot of technology is driven by the desire to simplify everyday actions.

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Well it’s finally out! The new Microsoft OS — Windows 7, or as the critics would call it  “the what Vista should have been” OS. I never really understood all the Vista bashing that went on. Although I was not an early adopter of Vista, I did install it and had been running it (after the first major service pack) for about a year and I found it to be a perfectly stable OS. However, I have been running Windows 7 beta for a few months now and have found it to be great product. Again, with any new OS you probably don’t want to install it on older hardware — older hardware seems to operate smoother with an OS of the same era.

So here’s a quick roundup of some great Windows 7 Related articles & Reviews to celebrate the launch.

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What do you get when you put Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, David Zayas, Giselle Itié, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a film together? Exactly what you’d expect — a huge budget, lots of explosions, non-stop fighting and mostly mediocre acting talent. All the ingrediants for a great cheesey, mindless action film.

It’s called The Expendables. It’s about a team of the world’s most dangerous and highly-trained mercenaries who go on a mission to South America to overthrow and assassinate a powerful, evil dictator and his army, who has been causing devastation, chaos and torture for the last twenty years.

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Were you pissed off when it was announced the new iPod Nanos have a FM radio feature implemented — meanwhile your expensive iPhone or iPod touch didn’t have this simple feature? We don’t normally report on rumors — however, there is a pretty solid rumor that an iPhone radio.app is being developed in-house by Apple for use on the iPhone and iPod touch. From what we’ve heard, the app will be allowed to operate in the background like iPod.app and will offer the same functionality as the FM radio in the new iPod Nanos.  The source mentioned that this application could also be incorporated into the iPod.app before release.

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