Category Archives: Arts and Culture

Samsung’s Latest Galaxy Phone Is Built Like A Tank

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Steve Kovach

You carry your smartphone with you just about everywhere, so there’s a decent expectation over its two-year life that you’ll drop it. Get it wet. Dribble some food on it.

Samsung’s answer to those everyday problems is the Galaxy S5 Active, a new smartphone that takes the company’s flagship Galaxy S5 phone and wraps it in a sturdy shell built to withstand drops, dings, spills, and scratches. It’s also water resistant and dustproof, meaning you can dunk it in shallow water for a few minutes and everything will still work perfectly.


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Hugh Jackman Breezes Through CBS’s Ruthlessly Upbeat All-Star Tony Show

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By Jeremy Gerard

About midway through CBS’s live telecast of the 68th Tony Awards on Sunday night, host Hugh Jackman told the audience at Radio City Music Hall that the first show he’d ever been cast in was Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. To prepare, in fact, he’d learned all eight parts to Rock Island,’ the opening number of that signature piece of syncopated Americana, and to prove it, he performed a minute or so, sprecht-singing all eight parts.

The first words are: Cash for the merchandise/Cash for the buttonhooks, which sounds like the beginning of an ode to Broadway, 2014. Then he ushered out LL Cool J and TI, and all three of them rapped “Rock Island,” which sounded a lot like Sesame Street, 1995. It was funny and toothless. Much the same can be said for the most breathlessly upbeat Tony broadcast in memory. Almost nothing memorable happened over the course of just over three hours of good cheer.

Jackman looked somewhat raffish and ragged of beard, as though he was coming from an audition for a revival of Sunday In The Park With George.

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Facebook to Acquire Oculus VR for $2 Billion

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Transaction expected to close in Q2 of this year.

by Scott Lowe

Facebook has announced that it will acquire Oculus VR, makers of the Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Announced today, the social networking giant will acquire the Oculus VR for $400 million in cash and 23.1 million in Facebook shares.

“While the applications for virtual reality technology beyond gaming are in their nascent stages, several industries are already experimenting with the technology, and Facebook plans to extend Oculus’ existing advantage in gaming to new verticals, including communications, media and entertainment, education and other areas.” a Facebook press release read. “Given these broad potential applications, virtual reality technology is a strong candidate to emerge as the next social and communications platform.”


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CinemaCon: Theatre Ad Sales Rise 6.5% To $678M In 2013 Following 2-Year Slump

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By DAVID LIEBERMAN

This is the highest sales total that the Cinema Advertising Council has reported since it began keeping tabs in 2002 — and no doubt comes as a relief for the industry following a 1.2% downturn in 2012 and a 2.1% drop the year before. “This growth is a result of more new brands moving into cinema, the unique power of the movie theatre as a venue for creative, engaging advertising, and a movement by agencies to a more video-neutral approach that places cinema alongside TV and online platforms,” CAC President Katy Loria says.

“We are optimistic about this revenue momentum, and the direction the marketplace is headed with a strong start to 2014 as we enter upfront season.”

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Wearables are white-hot at CES 2014. So they’re doomed, right?

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A look back at past hot trends at the consumer electronics mega-event reveals an awful lot of mega-fails.

by Roger Cheng

LAS VEGAS — This year’s Consumer Electronics Show will see dozens upon dozens of wearable technology products vie to become this year’s breakout device.

And most — if not all — will be forgotten in the coming months.

That’s because when all the booths are taken down, the convention lights are dimmed, and the last of the tech executives board their flights, we all finally escape the reality-distortion field that is Las Vegas and CES.

A look back at past confabs shows that the hot item at CES is a leading indicator of failure for the rest of that year. Remember how 3D televisions were supposed to be all the rage? Or when ultrabooks were a thing? Not only does garnering hype at CES not guarantee success, it’s become almost an omen of ill fortune.

Read more: http://www.cnet.com/8301-35299_1-57616550/wearables-are-white-hot-at-ces-2014-so-theyre-doomed-right/#ixzz2pWV0q9L8

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Apple and Samsung Could Be Dethroned by Asus’ Radical New Device

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By Sam Mattera

When it comes to the U.S. smartphone market, it’s mostly a two-horse race. Cumulatively, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) and Samsung (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF ) sell two out of every three smartphones, with smaller manufacturers such as HTC and Motorola fighting for what’s left.

But that could change next year, when Asus brings its PadFone to the United States. The device, powered by Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG ) Android, is particularly revolutionary and has the potential to disrupt the mobile market.

Asus’ PadFone combines a tablet with a smartphone
The term “phablet” has arisen to define phones such as Samsung’s Galaxy Note III — too small to be a tablet, yet too large to be a smartphone: a hybrid of form factors. But Asus’ PadFone might be the ultimate phablet: Buyers get both a tablet and smartphone, but none of the trade-offs that traditional phablets entail.

Normally, the PadFone Infinity is a standard, 5-inch smartphone running Google’s Android. It has a high-end processor and 13-megapixel camera. In other words, it’s largely indistinguishable from many other Android smartphones. But it has one huge advantage over its competitors — a proprietary dock.

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Paul Walker’s “Fast and Furious 4″ car for sale at $1.4 million

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By Armando

Paul Walker’s “Fast and Furious 4″ Nissan GT-R for sale at $1.4 million

A few years ago Steve McQueen’s GT40 fetched for $11 million on a Pebble Beach Auction block, becoming the most expensive American car ever sold. Following the unexpected death of Paul Walker, the tradition of collecting celebrity vehicles is back in business.

Check out the car here: http://suchen.mobile.de

The car in the ad is allegedly the same one used by Paul Walker’s character in Fast and the Furious franchise, a Nissan Skyline GT-R of the R34 which appeared in the fourth film. Apparently, the car was seized by the US government a few months ago, along with many other cars, due to auto safety and emission rules non-compliance.

So how did it end up being in Germany?

A few months ago, a German car magazine posted a review of the car, wherein the owner also reveals its in his possession and has on sale for 300,00 euros (around $400k). Within the last few days, another ad for the car has come up, only this time with a new price: 1 million euros (approximately $1,373,000).

It is kind of creepy when someone cashes in on a former celebrity ownership. But in this day and age, we all know it won’t be the last.

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Delivery drones are coming: Jeff Bezos promises half-hour shipping with Amazon Prime Air

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By David Pierce

Jeff Bezos is nothing if not a showman. Amazon’s CEO loves a good reveal, and took the opportunity afforded by a 60 Minutes segment to show off his company’s latest creation: drones that can deliver packages up to five pounds, to your house in less than half an hour. They’re technically octocopters, as part of a program called “Amazon Prime Air.” A drone sits at the end of a conveyer belt, waiting to pick up a package — Bezos says 86 percent of Amazon’s packages are under five pounds — and can carry them up to ten miles from the fulfillment center. As soon as Amazon can work out the regulations and figure out how to prevent your packages from being dropped on your head from above, Bezos promised, there will be a fleet of shipping drones taking the sky.

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How video games are transforming the film industry

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Posted by Steve Boxer

At one time it was the game industry that wanted to emulate films. But now the movie industry is adopting the technology of video games

Amid the debate about television stealing the film industry’s thunder, another entertainment form has crept up unnoticed, further threatening Hollywood’s creative hegemony: video games. With a new, much more powerful generation of games consoles poised to arrive – Microsoft’s Xbox One goes on sale on Friday, with Sony’s PlayStation 4 due a week later – the games companies reckon they finally have the ammunition to shake off the perception that their digital epics are inferior to movies.

I’m in a place that could not reinforce that impression more emphatically: the historic Ealing studios, where classics such as The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers were filmed. But I’m here to experience the process of making a video game called Ryse: Son of Rome, an epic tale charting the Roman conquest of Britain, which will be a launch title for the Xbox One. And the studio is nowadays home to The Imaginarium, an outfit co-founded by Andy Serkis, who – as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings – is perhaps the world’s leading exponent of performance-capture, in which every nuance of an actor’s performance (specifically movement, voice and facial expressions) is recorded and mapped on to a video game character.

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