Jebus Chris T. VS Budd A. App. Rejected by Apple

I've only skimmed Apple's App Review Guidelines, but I'm pretty sure that Moral Decay isn't exactly designed in accordance to them. But who knows, maybe Apple will approve aniPhone game that involves Jesus Chris T. gunning down sumo wrestlers, aliens, and other bad guys.

After all, it's perfectly possible that Apple will overlook that the Moral Decay app has the potential to be offensive to a group, portrays realistic violence, has realistic depictions of weapons, is probably designed to upset some users, and contains potentially offensive references to a religion.

Ah, who am I kidding. That video above is probably the closest we'll get to playing this game.

Boeing's New Spy Plane Will Fly For Five Years Straight

The SolarEagle is Boeing's winning design for an unmanned plane capable of continually flying for five years on reconnaissance and commutations missions above 65,000 feet. The solar-powered, propeller-driven UAV will begin test flights in 2014.

The Boeing UAV was the winning bid in a DARPA contest named Vulture II. It's another one of those peculiar projects with high ambitions designed to encourage the next level of technological development. With a goal of flying at stratospheric height for five years, Boeing's SolarEagle only has to achieve a demonstration flight of 30-to-90 days by 2014.

A product of the same Phantom Works lab behind the hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye, this slimmer eye-in-the-sky's actually propeller-driven and uses electric motors set into a "high-aspect-ratio" 400-foot wing designed to capture the sun's rays while providing little drag from the earth's atmosphere. With a 1,000-pound payload it won't be dropping bombs anytime soon, just helping the people who drop the bombs figure out where to put them.

House Your Wireless Apple Products in a Nice, Wooden Tray

Keep your wireless keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and Apple remote neat, perfectly placed, and right at your fingertips. For those of us who don't have the full collection, there are three variations of this black walnut keyboard tray, so no worries.

They keyboard-only tray runs for $69, keyboard+trackpad is $74, and the model pictured is $79. If you're on the eco side, you'll be glad to know that all parts of the tray's design and production were created using sustainable practices.

Are You Reading This During Sex?

Our undying love for the Internet has gone a bit too far, according to a recent study claiming that almost a quarter of US residents think it's acceptable to be online during sex. Are you one of them?

The study, conducted by computer security firm PC Tools, surveyed 1,012 U.S. adults in a random phone poll.

PC Tools' study also highlights some other disturbing trends in Internet connectivity. According to the poll, 29% of Americans think it's ok to be "plugged in" during a honeymoon, 26% stay connected during fancy dinners, 8% surf the web during religious services, and 6% are online during weddings.

 Is PC Tools trying to tell us that nearly a quarter of Americans are simultaneously getting it on and reading work emails? Or are they just watching Internet porn?

Pretend Your iPhone Is Just a Really Impressively Modded NES Controller

Instead of buying this $5 decal and pretending that your super-sophisticated 21st century smartphone is an old Nintendo controller, why not pretend that you just happen to have a magical NES controller that can run apps and make phone calls?

Kinda make phone calls, anyway—and hey, it's only an NES controller, after all! The decal, which can be had for $5 on Etsy, is made for the iPhone 4 and has a little hole for its camera.


All of our stickers are printed using solvent ink on quality vinyl and then passed through one of our giant plotters and die cut. This isn't cheap sticker paper from an office supply store, this is certifiable vinyl powered awesomeness. Rated 5-7 years of outdoor life.

I just hope that these so called angry birds don't cause my seven-year-old self to neglect that adorable Italian plumber.

Ultraviolet Laser Turns Humans Into Zombies

Apparently, firing a 405-nanometer ultraviolet laser beam to your face doesn't kill you. It just turns you into a creepy zombie, using a system called Fade Out. This is how it works.

Invented by Japanese artists Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi, Fade Out creates images that glow in the dark using a 405-nanometer laser beam. First, their software analyzes the source image, turning it to grayscale and determining the intensity of each pixel. Then it fires the laser to different points in the canvas—in the case above, on a face—timing the firing so the pixels fade in synchronization. By the time the last pixel is fired, the ones fired at the beginning have already faded to the point in which they are almost gone. The process creates the highlights and the shadows necessary to create the image.

You can see it more clearly in this other video:

According to the artists, the process could be used in entertainment. Because firing ultraviolet lasers at your face is a whole lot of fun!

When and Where Can You Buy the HTC Desire HD and Z Phones?

Interested in getting one of the new HTC phones? Read on for some launch details in Europe and the US.

Vodafone was first with support of the phones, announcing at the event that they would sell both the Desire HD and Desire Z from mid-October, in Europe. While they haven't announced tariffs, it's expected to be the usual free up-front phone, on monthly plans starting at around £30 (in the UK at least).

TechRadar has reported that they've heard the Desire HD will be available on all of the UK networks except for O2, though that could change. T-Mobile has confirmed that they'll be selling the Desire HD from £40 a month—pricey, but then knowing from experience T-Mobile is generally pretty good at bargaining with.

Despite initial thoughts that these phones would be non-US launches, we heard from HTC US, who confirmed the Desire HD will be "shipping in North America later this year." No word on the Desire Z, but then it's far too similar to the G2 to warrant a launch there.

Back to the UK, and both phones will of course be sold through The Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U, plus Amazon, Play.com and various other online retailers. Amazon UK has confirmed it will cost £499 from October 18th, whereas Play.com has undercut them by £30, offering it for £470—with an earlier release date too, of October 11th.

The Desire Z is listed on Play.com for £430, with the same release date expected, and unfortunately Amazon hasn't improved its pricing for their offering of the Desire Z, which will cost £499 from the 18th.

We've waiting to hear back from all the UK networks about pricing, but if anyone spots any more deals, do get in touch.
Clove.co.uk is going to sell the Desire HD for £493.50 and the Desire Z for £434.75.

Handtec.co.uk will offer the Desire HD for £489.96 and the Desire Z for £433.56. While the exact release date isn't mentioned, they do say that stock is expecting "week commencing 4th October."

Expansys.com will have them in-store (online) for the 11th of October, with the Desire HD and Desire Z being £500 and £450 each.

Beam Your Laptop to Your TV With Veebeam

Veebeam does not do anything new. There are a variety of ways to get content from your computer to your TV. But the Veebeam does it easily. Web? Games? Movies? Hulu? With a Wireless USB dongle and receiver, you're set.

By plugging the $99 Veebeam's antenna into your computer's USB port, whatever is on your screen is shot over to your TV via composite or HDMI-connected receiver. Simply as that. No cords and no software. The cleverness here is that you don't need to worry about the permission of content providers to watch whatever online content you want on your TV. Hulu? Bring it on. ABC streaming episodes? Sure. If you can play it on your laptop or view it in your browser, it's all gravy.

Wireless USB, which powers the Veebeam, uses Ultra-WideBand technology, which, for our purposes, means those scenes from Mad Men get streamed smoothly (and in HD, if you're willing to pay an extra $40). If you don't feel like waiting around for AirPlay (or don't have any Apple devices to use it with), this might simplify your couch vegetation habits.

To Hold HTC's Desire Z Is To Love It

I've personally been waiting so long for the Desire Z, I felt like my mind would explode once I held it. Luckily I'm still alive to tell the tale of how beautiful the phone is to hold.

It's the thinness which does it for me. With its new "Z hinge" slide-out process, HTC has managed to keep the waistline down on the Desire Z, with the shaped corners helping make it appear even thinner than it is—much like the MacBook Air does.

But beauty isn't everything, as you will have noticed. Running the newly-improved HTC Sense on top of Android, the whole experience is as fast as you've come to expect from HTC's Android phones, and the responsiveness of the touchscreen is high.

A Chandelier Fit For a Mad Scientist's Lair

No, that's not a sentinel hanging from this family's ceiling. It's one hundred petri dishes attached to 15,000 feet of fiber optics, perhaps pausing for a moment before reaching down to strike at those dining below?

Bacterioptica, as the chandelier is named, is designed to be a growing, changing household organism. By interchanging different sized petri dishes, adjusting the lighting intensity, and altering stem and arm lengths, the chandelier can be reconfigured infinitely many ways. If you look closely, you can see how it would make a kick-ass Alien. Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Dell's Inspiron Duo Is a 10" Netbook/Tablet Transformer

What, pray tell, is this? It's Dell's new Inspiron Duo, a 10" tablet that opens up and twirls its screen to transform itself into a netbook. Craziest of all? They're saying it'll be available before the end of the year.

Dell showed off the crazy little guy, which runs Windows 7 Premium and packs a dual-core Atom N550 processor, at the second day keynote of Intel's IDF conference. There's no word if they've made any concessions to make its version of Windows 7 more tablet friendly, but this Inspiron gets kudos for audacity alone.

Is Steve Jobs a Closet Ninja?

This is probably just unfounded gossip, but Bloomberg is reporting on a story about Steve Jobs getting stopped at the Kansai International Airport last July, after security found ninja stars in his carry-on luggage. And boy he got pissed-off.

This is where I tell you that he took out his Hattori Hanzō sword and killed everyone in the airport lobby, running away with the shurikens in his Quinjet. But according to Bloomberg's translation of Japanese SPA! magazine, this is what happened:

Jobs said it wouldn't make sense for a person to try to hijack his own plane, according to the report. He then told officials he would never visit Japan again, the magazine reported.

Bloomberg claims that a Kansai Airport's spokesman confirmed the episode... but he wouldn't reveal the name of the passenger involved in the incident. The spokesman said the private jet passenger trashed the shuriken at the security point, but declined to disclose his name because of the airport's privacy policy. Bloomberg also says that the airport doesn't have a separate boarding for private jet passengers, which explains why this unidentified man had to pass through the usual security point.

Apple declined to comment, which could mean two things: This rumor is so ridiculous that it doesn't need commentary or this rumor is so ridiculous that it doesn't need commentary. Or a third: It may be true. I want to believe it is. If any of you have any photos of Steve trashing his ninja stars at the security point, send them to me.

In any case, if any of us appear dead with a sai up our most tender parts, another rumor would be confirmed: Steve has been watching too many Teenage Mutant Turtles episodes on his Apple TV.

The Facebook Movie is "One of the Must-See Films of the Year"

An early preview of The Social Network has had reviewers foaming at the mouth, with /Film's Peter Sciretta declaring it as his "favorite movie of the year (so far)." Yes, this is the film about Zuckerberg creating Facebook.

While it wasn't the final cut, the movie was screened for a few select publications, and casting a quick eye over their initial thoughts, this could very well turn out to be an award-winner. 

Sciretta wrote that "after returning home from the screening, I was tempted to read the screenplay - that's how good it is."

The Sydney Morning Herald was equally complimentary. "This is an astounding film about one of the most important seismic shifts in communication in the modern age, and the way innovation and ethics are not often related."

Acknowledging that the content could scare people off with visions of coding and typeface arguments, Cinematical said in their preview that "with The Social Network, director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin turn some fairly dry, nerdy content about fairly dry, nerdy characters into one of the must-see films of the year, and they don't waste any time getting right to it."

Sci-Fi Author's Wireless ISP Will Give You 20Mbps Downloads For $40/Month

Sci-Fi author Rudy Rucker is one of the folks behind the cleverest wireless ISP serving San Francisco. He and his team have set up a system to provide customers with reliable 10-30Mbps download speeds for a mere $40 per month.

Sure, you could get theoretical speeds of about "20 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up from Comcast for $55 per month," but the service provided by Rucker's company, MonkeyBrains, is providing reliable and consistent speeds:

MonkeyBrains guarantees at least 10 Mbps symmetrical and most customers see 15-20 Mbps. Some customers see 25-30 Mbps with a good connection. According to [a company employee], this depends on the company's backhaul connection, which is in the process of being upgraded. Once that happens, he expects 30 Mbps+ connections will be common.

There are initial startup costs associated with the service—it costs about $250 to install the required antenna—but MonkeyBrains appears to be offering customers several free months of service to compensate for that cost.

The company is still small: It has "about 100 antennas, each of which may serve one or many customers—an average of 5-10 per antenna"—but it certainly appears to be off to a good start. Of course, the downside of a company like MonkeyBrains is that it provides such great—and cheap—service because it's sticking to a small area and focusing on those customers. This means that those of us who live outside of San Francisco are left hoping that someone will think to run a small WISP with a silly name in our areas too.

Zune HD2 In the Works at Microsoft?

Rumors of the Zune HD2, a next-gen entertainment device that would run Windows Phone 7's spiffy Xbox Live games, have been kicking around for months. But a new Microsoft job listing suggests that now it's actually in the works.

The listing, which was dug up by WMPoweruser, calls for a mechanical engineer to help build "the next generation of portable entertainment and communication devices" for Microsoft's Portable Entertainment Group.

Though there's still no saying exactly what form the device might take—it could be a radical departure from the Zune HD, maybe a gaming-centric device or a Microsoft phone—what seems likeliest is a next-gen Zune that's part of the Windows Phone 7 family, an iPod Touch-competitor that would help Microsoft gain much-needed footing for their promising but late-to-the-game platform.

Over at ZDNet, Mary-Jo Foley's Microsoft tipsters have told her that the device would come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB varieties sometime next year, but it wouldn't be surprising if Microsoft started drumming up excitement for a WP7-running, next-gen Zune amidst the Windows Phone 7 launch next month.

Happy 25th Birthday, Super Mario Brothers!

On September 13, 1985, Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan, meaning the world's most famous plumber's most famous game is now 25 years old. Happy birthday!

It seems almost pointless marking the occasion with a round-up, or a few paragraphs outlining his importance to video games - and video gamers - because it's Mario. He isn't important to video games. He is video games.

Whether appearing in his own flagship games or in spin-off titles where he plays basketball or becomes a paper airplane, Nintendo's mascot has been the most recognisable (and profitable) face this industry has ever - and will likely ever - see, almost single-handedly driving Nintendo through five whole generations of video game success.

He is the most recognisable face in gaming. His games are some of the highest-selling, and most critically-acclaimed of all time. And while other companies and characters either disappear into the history books or undergo awkward changes as they cling to relevance, Mario remains almost exactly the same. Still wearing redoveralls, still with that goofy moustache, still risking life and limb to rescue the same, careless Princess.

And what started it all? Sure, he was in Donkey Kong in 1981, but he didn't have a name. Sure, there was Mario Bros. in 1983, but it was the Famicom (and NES) edition of Super Mario Bros. that made him. Heck, many people - myself included - would probably say that of all of Mario's core games, Super Mario Bros. was perhaps their favourite. It's definitely the most iconic.

So here's to you, Super Mario Bros. Others will pay their dues over the course of the day, I'm sure, so let me just say...happy birthday. And may your next 25 years be as successful and enjoyable for us all as your first.

iPhone 4 Fitted Inside A Canon SLR Body

One things for sure: putting your iPhone 4 inside a Canon SLR isn't as useful as adding a SLR lens to your iPhone. But with this custom-made getup, you won't think about dropping your iPhone every time you hold it up.

The Secret Behind The New iPod Nano & iPod Shuffle

It didn't take much effort for Apple to design the newiPod Nano and iPod shuffle. All they did was cut the old iPod nano in half.

Nerdrage Fantasy

What induces nerd rage in you?

Apple's App Store Dominated By Pay Apps, Google's By Free Apps

Are iPhone owners more willing to pay for applications than Android owners? Or are Android developers just more interested in giving away their apps?

Something's going on with these two app markets which have completely different make ups, according to Royal Pingdom. Pingdom surveyed the App Store and the Android Market and discovered that only 30% of the apps in Apple's store are free, while 65% of the apps in the Android Market are free.

Why the disparity? Pingdom speculates that maybe more Google developers are just hobbyists or tinkers who can get their app in store because they don't have to deal with Apple's gate keepers. Another important factor, Google only supports paid apps in 13 countries.

It's also much easier to install pirated software on Android phones than it is Apple phones. So perhaps this pushes down sales.

Maybe it's just cultural? Google gives away Android. Apple does not.