RaaD Technology, Movies & News

Well, a few weeks ago I told you about how to get free access to Encyclopaedia Britannica Online and I had to post an update. I just received an email from the Britannica team and was able to set up my free access for the next year.

So, as an update I will start interspersing links to Britannica (instead of something like this or this) along with the usual suspects of regular informational links that I’ve used (wikipedia, imdb, citizendium).

Make sure to let me know what you think by posting comments about the addition of these new links quality wise.

Thanks to SEWilco for the above picture.

Dany

Most mainstream podcasts seem to come out of the west coast, but Wine Library TV is made daily out of NYC and tonight, the host of Gary Vaynerchuk held a viewing party tonight for his Late Night with Conan O’Brien viewing party for his second appearance on Conan’s show.

It was a blast watching Conan with Gary (who hosted the event) and a few dozen of his NYC upper east side fans at Bounce. I even got two free glasses of wine out of the whole affair (one red, one white) and I don’t normally even like the vino, I’m more of a beer guy myself.

It was a total blast at the Gary Vaynerchuk viewing party, I HIGHLY recommend subscribing to the high energy daily Wine Library TV (subscribe here). Oh, buy his book 101 Wines here.

Thanks to NY Magazine for the above pic and thanks to Gary for the AWESOME night!

Dany

Earlier this week, Around the Net (subscribe here) unearthed a funny political video that already got over a million hits in which clips from the original (and best) Star Wars trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) were mixed together with clips and pics of presidential figures like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

This is a hilarious video that any political fan/film wonk needs to see!

Enjoy

Dany

This has been a whirlwind presidential campaign and one man that has seemed to have been left behind is Mike Gravel. He is technically still in the race… he is just going nowhere, FAST.

Gravel decided to do something different and court the sexy Obama Girl in this comical video on Barely Political (subscribe here) even though she herself didn’t vote for Obama… or anyone else either in the primary election.

Thanks to Tech Daily Dose for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

Every year the summer brings us blockbuster movies which is like Christmas for the movie studios because these are the movies that tend to bring in LOTS of money for the studios and this year it looks like Christmas came early for the film industry.

First off, let me say, if you love the summer blockbuster, especially if you’re a Marvel fan, just STOP reading this and get your butt to the theater and STAY THROUGH THE END OF THE CREDITS(!!!), you don’t need to read what I have to say other than that this movie will rock your pants off. I can’t tell you how many people walked out of the theater before seeing probably one of the best credit cookies I can remember and sets up the sequel perfectly.

OK, now that the fanboys and people who I KNOW will love this movie no matter what are gone… onto the review:

Robert Downey Jr. gets the prize roll of the film, he plays Tony Stark and gets to essentially have fun drinking, tooling away as a mechanic/builder, womanizing and just flat out have fun for two thirds of the film and I LOVED every minute of it. Jon Favreau directed the film and has a fun cameo as Stark’s driver/bodyguard and Gwyneth Paltrow plays the spicy Pepper Potts. I couldn’t believe it, I was surprised when I heard that Paltrow was cast in this movie, but after seeing the scenes and banter between her and Downey Jr. it reminded me of one of my favorite on screen relationships: Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant from the hilarious His Girl Friday.

The only real problem with the film was seeing The Dude playing Obadiah Stane and from the very first moment we see him on screen, we know exactly what’s going to happen with this character, now I am not terribly familiar with this character from the comics, but unless Bridges was trying to match the look of the original character, I think this was a bad choice that ultimately hurt the suspense of the film.

I have to say though, this is the superhero origin story that we’ve never gotten before, this film is just a joy to watch. Most times, we need to wade through an origin story (Spider-Man), just to get to the movie we were hoping for (Spider-Man 2). The only other origins story I really enjoyed was one that completely broke the mold for this type of film, Unbreakable from M. Night Shyamalan, which has a secret connection to Iron Man which you’ll only understand if you watch through the end credits.

I also enjoyed some of the little things that Favreau and the writers put into the the film. I grew up with a family that spoke Arabic (a language that I never learned), but watching this film I recognized a lot of very familiar Arabic slang and it was something that I totally wasn’t expecting, not to mention that when I saw that the prisoners in the film passed the time playing backgammon, it made my eyes light up with joy.

Thanks to Georges-Claude Guilbert’s Movie & TV Blog for the above pic.

Enjoy the start of blockbuster movie season!

Dany

There are very few directors whose new movies I actively seek out, but David Mamet has been on that small list ever since he came out with Glengarry Glen Ross.

The movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (a man I’ve been on the lookout for ever since he played the big bad in Serenity), Tim Allen and Joe Mantegna and Mamet crafts an interesting tale of honor in a world that seems to have it in short supply. The story takes place around the world of Jiu-Jitsu.

Ejiofor plays the instructor and proprietor of a Jiu-Jitsu school and he gets sucked into a world of sticky ethical situations, sometimes with honorable and other times despicable people and it takes some time to figure out who is who, but with Mamet’s amazing dialog, scenes that would normally be rushed are filmed with care and scenes that seem like they are going to be cliche, end up surprising you.

This is not an amazing movie, but it was an interesting study of honor among today’s characteristic shades of gray in life and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thanks to IMP Awards for the above pic.

Dany

I used to love listening to Penn Jillette’s radio show on Free FM which was available via podcast. I didn’t always agree with his libertarian viewpoint. It was a great show, but eventually that show ended and I got sad and I KNOW I wasn’t the only one, right Sara?…

Well, now I’m happy again, I just found Penn’s latest internet adventure is with Crackle, his new video broadcast show is called Penn Says (subscribe here) and it started up in mid January. I know I might be late with the news, but all the back episodes are available online so we can all catch up together now. Let’s start with his show on drugs and suicide.

Thanks to Playtime Las Vegas for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

I may be a bit late to the party, but I just started watching Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV (subscribe here), sure I missed the first 450 episodes, but better late than never, right? My only excuse is that I really don’t like wine, but after seeing him interviewed on a recent episode of Internet Superstar (subscribe here or get the HD version), I realized how entertaining and smart he was and I knew that it didn’t matter what I thought about wine, I NEEDED to be watching his show.

From that Internet Superstar interview, I learned that Gary had been invited onto Late Night with Conan O’Brien and I found this clip of his appearance and this SOLIDIFIED that watching Wine Library TV was a must.

Enjoy

Dany

Also, after deciding to write this up, I found that Gary made an appearance on the Ellen Degeneres show, now she wasn’t as adventerous and crazy as Conan, but I have that clip below.

Last week, after watching Diggnation episode 146, I emailed Alex to help him out with a Simpsons reference that he couldn’t remember the origin of and during the next episode, I was surprised to hear that the viewer email they chose to read off on air was the one I sent in.

I thought that it was very cool and HAD to mention it here. I’ve said it many times, but if you aren’t already, subscribe to their weekly video here or get the HD version here.

Dany

Free access to Encyclopædia Britannica is now available online for “online publishers.” What does that mean? Well, it means that anyone who writes regularly (bloggers, webmasters or any writer) should be able to access this new offer without paying the $70/year subscription fee.

I wanted to test this out, so I went to Encyclopedia Britannica’s registration form and filled it out. Hopefully I’ll find out soon how this turns out. If I get access to this, it will mean I can add free links to Britannica’s pages with relevant content, instead of depending so heavily on Wikipedia. I don’t know how long it will take to get access to this though, since they claim to look over every single registrant for this offer.

Thanks to the amazing Buzz Out Loud (subscribe here), it was their 707th episode that brought this to my attention, yeah that’s right, they’ve released over 700 episodes already! They ROCK! Also, thanks to NowSourcing for the above pic.

Dany

This is a GREAT video (probably my favorite from Mahalo Daily [subscribe here]) called I’m Gonna Git You Spamma! starring Veronica Belmont, which may have been inspired by 1970’s style Sexploitation, Blaxploitation or maybe just Quentin Tarantino.

Regardless of the inspiration though, Jason Calacanis and Mahalo are very smart, they use Youtube (the most famous video sharing site) to distribute their videos because they understand that youtube (and sites like it) can be use be a great free distribution method for their videos, which serves as amazing FREE advertising. If Mahalo had stuck to a proprietary video distribution method, like many sites have tried, it would make it that much harder for people to get to see their vidos and also to get people to try searching with Mahalo’s human powered search.

Sadly (for Mahalo), Veronica Belmont is leaving Mahalo Daily now for Revision3, where she has started co-hosting their show Tekzilla. I don’t mind this though, since I love watching Tekzilla and the addition of Ms. Belmont, just makes the show that much better.

Enjoy

Dany

OK, it’s the middle of the week and time for some dating tips… just not very good dating tips. Actually, I don’t recommend this advice for anyone, but it’s still darn funny hearing Klingon dating tips from Lieutenant Commander Worf of Star Trek.

Dany

During some free time over at the Internet TV Revision3 studios, a wide array of nutty Rev3 employees teamed up to group lip dub/sync the INXS song Need You Tonight.

Check the video out here from Vimeo, hopefully soon WordPress.com will allow sites to embed more sources (like Vimeo, which supports HD video), if not all sources of flash video onto their hosted pages.

Thanks to Diggnation (subscribe here) for bringing this video to light and to the cute as a button Sara Lane, the above pic cam from her own site.

Enjoy

Dany

After watching Wednesday’s Around the Net (subscribe here)from last week, I found this video on Break. It’s a bunch of guys who recreated theclassic Super Mario Bros. theme song by using an RC racecar and beer bottles filled with various amounts of liquid.

Take a look.

Dany

I was walking around Chinatown NYC and walked by this store front on one of the side streets and HAD to snap a picture of this after it made me laugh.

Even though the geek worship time travel show Quantum Leap ended almost 15 years ago, there are still geeks hoping that the show’s main character, Sam Beckett (played by Scott Bakula) will be brought home finally… by God?

If you are confused by that last line, go back and watch the show’s final episode, which is probably one of the best final episodes of a long running series I can remember.

Enjoy the geekdom

Dany

CollegeHumor (subscribe here) has come out with another funny video. This time, they ape Apple’s Steve Jobs‘ traditional keynote style with their new video, called The Apple “i.”

The whole thing perfectly captures the reality distortion field that Steve Jobs seems to bring to anything Apple!

Thanks to CollegeHumor for the above pic.

Check it out

Dany

Boba Fett is probably one of the most beloved characters in the Star Wars universe, despite playing a villain. Jeremy Bulloch played Boba Fett in the original Star Wars Trilogy (Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi).

The fans love him so much that the great people at The Dented Helmet and RebelScum got together and built him a replica of his original Boba Fett suit of Mandalorian armor. This is a fun look at the group presenting him with their hard work.

Thanks to Number 13 at the Galactica Watercooler Forum for finding this video!

Enjoy

Dany

I may not be a huge fan of David Letterman, seeing the unofficial Republican nominee, John McCain, come to New York City and drop in during the monologue to skewer the long time Late Show host is definitely worth seeing.

Don’t get me wrong, this video won’t get me to vote for Senator McCain this coming November, but I do like to see these candidates take a break from the intense politicking, to try and have some fun.

I heard about this video from the most recent airing of This Week with George Stephanopoulos (iTunes subscription).

Enjoy

Dany

I was watching one of the most recent episodes of Boing Boing TV (subscribe here) and I HAD to share this video.

Marc Owens created this anime costume with a camera strapped above it, which he walks around Japan wearing… the kicker is that the entire time, he’s seeing the world from the point of view of the camera that’s strapped behind him, giving him the feeling that he’s LIVING in 3rd person mode, just like most role playing games, like the recent Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft and the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Thanks to Gigazine for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

I know that most everyone hates commuting to work, but I doubt that most people are treated this poorly on a daily basis while trying to get to work!

I’ve heard how bad rush hour can be in Japan, but I had never seen anything like this.

Thanks Best of YouTube for the above video (subscribe here).

Dany