Michael Bay, most famous for his horrid movie Pearl Harbor and his rather successfull Bad Boys series, has released a trailer for his upcoming Transformers movie. It is hosted on Rated-M so go check it out.

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Another piece of cool tech from the GeekBrief.TV. The Nokia N93 has a 3.2MP camera (w/ camcorder functionality) featuring Carl Zeiss Lenses and a x3 optical zoom. It should be much better than the crap in most current camera phones … and the feature list of the N93 seems to be pretty cool too. Check it out.

Apple celebrated the one year anniversary of podcasting today by listing off the top podcasts according to the iTunes ratings. Podcasting, under a variety of names, has existed since the dawn of the 21st century, but it wasn’t until iTunes that podcasting took off. The term podcasting was first coined by Adam Curry and is derived from the words iPod and Broadcasting (a misnomer since it require neither an iPod nor over the air transmission).

I personally find Audio podcasts to be a tad cumbersome. When I listen to the radio, I listen for a bit for information or music while I’m either doing something else or driving somewhere. Audio podcasts don’t effectively work, but a chain of them might … I don’t know. I found listening to the CBC Radio 3 and TWiT to be kind of fun, but not something I was hooked on.

Video podcasting, on the other hand, has really latched into me in the last month since my regualarly scheduled TV programs have disappeared. Like TV, Video Podcasts are episode based and are usually released on a very set schedule. This means for me, the Video Podcasts function much like regular TV for me now since I timeshift and rip out commercials.

Here are a few of the video podcasts I’m following: The Show (with Zefrank), 88Slide, Ask a Ninja, Doogtoons, GeekBrief.TV, Hak.5, and Shobiz Newsy News. Others that should be mentioned are Tiki Bar and Diggnation … however unlike my previous mentioned, these ones are extremely popular … and I can’t stand them. I find them either incredibly boring or just horrid. I really should watch Tiki Bar again … I couldn’t get past episode 2 the first time around … and Diggnation … well … it is like TWiT but with video of two guys sitting around talking about stories on Digg. I really wish I could get into it, but I can’t. Anyway, I suggest you check out the podcasts … and may I suggest using the Democracy Player?

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Aspyr Media, Inc. announced today that Sid Meier’s Civilization IV has begun shipping in North America for Intel and PowerPC Macintosh.

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A live report about a murderer on the loose is interrupted when the suspect himself walks through the report to turn himself in at the police station. The most shocking part, to most, is how calm and well-spoken the muder suspect is. It is an amazing clip …

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Ever wondered what really happened when the emperor learned of the destruction of the first Death Star? Well robot chicken has an absolutely hilarious clip of a phone call between Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Check it out!

“Oh Oh I’m sorry! I thought my dark lord of the sith could protect one little thermal exhaust port. It’s only 2 meters wide!”

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A cool piece of tech that I learned about from the GeekBrief.TV Podshow. The RoverTV is a super slim TV built by Doghouse Electronics that reduces its size by having no built-in hard drive. Instead, it uses a SD card reader for its storage (yah!) and comes with either a 1GB or 2GB card. The main coolness factor for this device is the fact that it plugs into virtually any media device (TV, DVD, CD, FM radio, etc) in addition to being able to sync content from TiVo, iTunes, and more. What is not exactly clear, though, is what video codecs the device supports. In the press release, they mention the device supports WAV, MP3, MP4, JPEG, BMP, and GIF. So it obviously also has picture display capabilities. However, all these feature pale in comparison to the last one. The RoverTV also has an AV output, so you can watch your recorded TV programs on your TV. Imagine that huh? The “big” screen (read as 4:3 aspect ratio) retails for US$299 and the widescreen version (16:9) retails for US$349. Apple should really get off its ass and get its Video iPod to market before there isn’t a market for them to come into.

I have two fan films I wish to draw your attention to:

1)  Ryan vs. Dorkman.   It might sound like a dumb name, but the fight sequence is well done (baring one glaring mistake) … and I love the end.

2) The Injured Trooper.   Funny as all hell.   A stormtrooper gets shot and injured and his companions try to figure out what to do with him since no one has ever survived being shot before …

Could someone explain this to me?

“Japan’s fertility rate fell to an all-time low of 1.25 last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population from declining.”

Jin597, you have to help stem the decline …

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