Star Wars Fan Film Winner 2010

Sorry but I'm off for the day... hope this suffices for a blog post!

Star Wars
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Facebook Places - foursquare And Gowalla On Board?

Last night Facebook announced it's entry into location based services and the giant offered foursquare and Gowalla a chance to sing the praises of "Places" and it's api. There had been a lot of speculation of late that Facebook may have been in the market to acquire one of these smaller players or that their entry would simply squash them out of existence. The move, at least on the surface, of making places an open api for the smaller companies to hang their code onto is either an olive branch or perhaps a trial balloon. In any event it will be interesting to see how this plays out and if being a feeder for Facebook (they will consume data driven from foursquare and Gowalla but not offer anything in the other direction) helps to accelerate the growth of these services. If the later is true, I hope they can keep up with the Facebook affect!

A Little Distracted

I'm up early cooking up some goodness in the lab at work, and therefore my usual blogging over morning coffee is suffering the consequences this morning. Here is a fun little blooper real from Google to get your morning going and hopefully both of our days will start on the right foot! I'll try to find some news to discuss later in the day if all goes well.

btw, if you want to check out what it is that I do why not take a test drive?

http://manage.screenscape.net/signup/testDrive

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It Was Only A Matter Of Time - Droid R2-D2

In keeping with yesterday's post regarding the cast of Star Wars invading Orlando on the weekend, Motorola, Google, and Verizon are hinting at a new android phone called.... wait for it... Droid R2-D2. The phone maker seems to have had no issue in making a white model (ahemmm!) with graphics on the back that resemble the lovable and trusty droid from the Star Wars franchise. 

According to cnet "Over the weekend, one of Verizon's official twitter accountsposted the picture you see to the left. As you can clearly see, the phone bears more than a passing resemblance to our favorite little Astromech. The entire back of the phone looks exactly like R2-D2 with a white base for the design."

Here's a link if you are interested in finding out more: 

Here's the twitter account to follow:

And here is a photo of our two favorite droids (credit  http://twitter.com/VZWOffers/):

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Star Wars Deleted Lightsaber Scene Screened For First Time

This weekend George Lucas, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher took the stage at Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando with John Stewart and a cast of storm troopers. The city was celebrating classic franchise and one of the highlights for the throngs of fans gathered was this deleted scene, screened for the first time.

Now, I'm a huge fan of the Star Wars series but I was not nearly as excited as the guy you hear predominantly shouting his approval. I'm actually apt to applaud Mr. Lucas for making a good choice and leaving this one on the cutting room floor. Wish I were in Orlando though! I'll bet it was a zoo... 

Credit: Laughing Squid

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How To Become Super - The Tutorial

I'm tired this morning and I wish I could summon up the powers of a super hero to get all the chores done that need tending to. If only I knew how to conjure up such wonders... but wait, the internet was created just for such advice, wasn't it?

Of course it was, and thanks to the great folks at Geeks are Sexy you don't even have to look that hard for the answers:

Oh, and in case you can't find your answer here, there is version two: 

Die and Return doesn't sound like a great option to me, so where is that Magic Ring?

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Twitter's New Tweet Button For Websites

Twitter added a new feature for website owners yesterday. The Tweet button allows you to embed a small pieces of code in your site that  will allow twitter owners to tweet your page to their followers, big deal you say... I can already do this, true but the difference in this button is that it embeds your twitter username in the tweet and launches a new overlay page that then keeps the reader on your site. A small but powerful step forward for site owners, IMHO. See twitter's video explanation:

...and here it is, give it a click!

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Twitter's Deceased-user Policy

I guess when you are a social network you have to consider these things. Twitter, as reported by cnet's  Josh Lowensohn, has apparently created a policy on how it should deal with the passing of users. I had not even considered that there should be such policies but it makes a heap of sense. What should happen to the musings of a loved one? Will it be a painful reminder or a testament to the life and times of the individual? When my grandfather passed away over a decade ago he left behind years of journals, I'm not sure which relative ended up with them or what there fate was. It's obvious that we are living in a very different world than my grandfather grew up in, in our world we have the opportunity to leave a little bit of ourselves behind for future generations to ponder and perhaps gain a bit of insight into who we are (where). Our legacy may very well be our 140 character thoughts, our blog posts, our YouTube videos, and the things we've "Liked" on Facebook. I hope that all of these services have or will develop deceased-user policies to preserve and protect our identities.

If we are notified that a Twitter user has passed away, we can remove their account or assist family members in saving a backup of their public Tweets.

Please contact us with the following information:

1. Your full name, contact information (including email address), and your relationship to the deceased user.
2. The username of the Twitter account, or a link to the profile page of the Twitter account.
3. A link to a public obituary or news article.

You can contact us at privacy@twitter.com, or by mail or fax:

Twitter Inc.,
c/o: Trust & Safety

795 Folsom Street, Suite 600

San Francisco, CA 94107
Fax: 415-222-9958

We will respond by email with any additional information we might need.

Please note that we cannot allow access to the account or disclose other non-public information regarding the account

http://support.twitter.com/groups/33-report-a-violation/topics/122-reporting-violations/articles/87894-how-to-contact-twitter-about-a-deceased-user

foursquare Superuser To The Rescue!

An honor has been bestowed upon me, one that I really hadn't realized that I had received until I was comparing accounts on foursquare.com with a few co-workers. It seems that I am a Superuser and with this comes super powers... well not really but I am able to help foursquare maintain their data regarding their venues. Dare i say it? "With great power comes great responsibility"... you knew I would!

So, what is a Superuser and how do you become one? (like a lot of foursquares's badges they are quite secretive about how to achieve them). We were able to do a quick Google search and ascertain the following: 

"Superusers are regular users who’ve been hand selected by the Foursquare staff to help maintain the venue database.

There are two types of superusers, Level 1 and Level 2. Level 1 superusers have the ability to edit any venue, including name, address, map pin location and tags. They can also suggest duplicate venues to be merged and mark venues as closed.

Level 2 superusers have all the abilities of a Level 1 superuser, but they can also complete merges suggested by other superusers and add categories to venues. To merge venues, they use a special interface that shows both venues to be merged. They can choose which information to keep from each venue page, but they cannot choose which map pin should be kept. This is why it’s important to choose the location with the best map pin when suggesting venues to be merged.

A Level 3 superuser option exists which allows those superusers to create and remove venue aliases. Due to the potential for abuse, however, this level has never been awarded is only awarded very rarely." http://aboutfoursquare.com/faq-what-is-a-superuser/

The biggest issue I've had with foursquare to date is that I can be standing in the doorway of a venue and be told that I'm hundreds of meters away, I always just chalked that up to my phone or provider but now I am able to see and correct the issue for all foursquare players and the power in the universe has shifted on the side of good! May the foursquare be with you. (Sorry, but I crack me up some times.)

European Commission Lobbies, And Gets, One Charger For All Cellphones

Starting in 2011, most cellphones sold in the European Union will have a single charger compatible with most devices. So far 10 major hardware providers including Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research In Motion, have signed on to a pact that would mean no more proprietary connectors incompatible with other phones. It would appear however that the rest of us will have to wait some time before the companies jump on board in North America and elsewhere. Without the power of government behind such a move the manufacturers are slow to make change happen and 3rd party vendors do not wield enough clout to push for change. The current practice is wasteful and inconvenient and perhaps the Euro experiment will cause the phone manufacturers to see the benefits of a single standard. One can only hope!

Sources: CNN and Europa press release