Legion of Geek

We tore ourselves away from Spore long enough to check out these links for you.

Games

• Video diary: Game producer talks Star Wars: Unleashed on the Wii

TV

• Vampire dating service: “True Blood” continues its ARG tactics
• iTunes in HD: Download free shows while they last
• Whedon writes: “Dollhouse” shuts down for more script doctoring

Books

• Listmania: SciFi/Fantasy best selling books of the week

Comics

• Because good stories never die: “Angel: After the Fall” #12 reviewed

Gear

• Android imminent: Google’s new iPhone competitor may be arriving in weeks

Productivity

• Incoming apps: Top 10 lifehacking programs not yet released

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about:internets Easter Egg in Google Chrome.

[Via Accettura and Waxy.org]

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Never one to shy away from inventive music-making, the inimitable David Byrne shows off his latest project in the video embedded above. He’s giving people the opportunity to “play the house,” an “instrument” he’s constructed out of ordinary household fixtures such as pipes and other mechanical objects — all controlled by an organ console, open to the public. Along with Brian Eno, David Byrne is one of the most notable thinkers and practitioners at the intersection of technology and music.

Apparently there is a bug in Wordpress 2.5.1 that eats iframes, so if the above video embed isn’t showing up, check out the video thusly:

• Pop-up version of the video
• Original video at Wired

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Culling useful links for geeks from around the intarwebs since July 2, 2008:

• Get stuff: 30+ places to download free music
• GTD FTW: How to set Gmail as your default email client in Firefox 3
• Lunar eyecandy: Man on the Moon, Future and Past
• The digital living room: The Roku box to expand beyond Netflix. Living room Trojan horse?
• Drunken superheroes: Cinematical’s Hancock review
• Keep that 2g iPhone? Original iPhones can be deactivated and used as WiFi iPods

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The Associated Press has sent 7 DMCA takedown notices to The Drudge Retort, a social news-type portal riffing on The Drudge Report, for alleged copyright violation by the usage of story headlines and short excerpts (including ample linkage back to the original articles). The Drudge Retort works much like digg, Mixx or Reddit in highlighting popular content around particular topics and linking back to the original sources. Having worked in social media for several years we can tell you how effective a listing on digg, for example, can be at driving traffic back to the original article — but the AP apparently either does not appreciate the benefit of what amounts to free promotion or for reasons of sheer boneheadedness is choosing to punish sites who find its content valuable.

While we believe content creators have every right to take advantage of copyright statues to preserve their ability to make a living off their creations, we do not believe the Associated Press has a right to define Fair Use more narrowly than the law does. While the AP claims that taking specifically the headline and the story lead-in perpetrates “‘hot news’ misappropriation under New York state law,” it is difficult to understand how this “special case” is different from other cases in which Fair Use offers clear protection. The Fair Use doctrine specifies a four-point test be applied to cases of alleged copyright infringement:

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If you think you have a tough time packing your gear for the family camping trip, imagine what NASA has to go through to prepare for its next manned mission to the moon. This week NASA engineers conducted tests of the gear they’re planning to bring on the next lunar voyage, and Wired has a nice gallery up of photos from the event. They chose the Grant County ORV Park in Moses Lake, Washington as their location, both for its similarity to the moon’s terrain as well as apparently the similarity in local population (as evidenced by this shot). The thumbnail at right features what is obviously an extremely sophisticated Guitar Hero controller astronauts will be able to entertain themselves with during their tenure on Earth’s satellite.^*

* OK not really. But we do hope they at least get to bring Rock Band.

More NASA images:

[Show as slideshow]

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From the “it was only a matter of time” department comes the news that some intrepid, uh, entrepreneur has listed an eBay auction to sell up to 10 Facebook profiles, each containing a minimum of 200 “real friends.” Other than being a sad, basement-dwelling loser who would resort to any measure to make human contact, why would anyone be interested in purchasing fake Facebook profiles? To make teh munniez, of course! Slimeball marketers could use the profiles to surreptitiously hawk their wares to the “real friends” these profiles are attached to. Would you like a side of tripe with that spam?

[Via WebGuild]

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Yesterday we drooled over the announcement of the next generation iPhone, but despite its generous bells and whistles, there is one thing we haven’t seen it do: make popcorn. Apparently, the latest craze sweeping the globe is to use your cell phone to make corn kernals pop and men leery of leaving their cels in the front pockets. Since this is unofficial multilingual day here at Legion of Geek, you can also see videos of this in both Japanese and English as well.

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Along with today’s announcement of a sale date for the 3G iPhone comes a new commercial touting the new phone’s well, shinyness. Other Apple goodness today includes talk of the new version of OS X, Snow Leopard, the .mac replacement, mobileme and the countries that will finally getting iPhone access on July 11th. It’s a good day to be a Mac lover.

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We try not to be slobbering fanboys when it comes to gadgets, but we just can’t help ourselves with the announcement of the new 3G iPhone. Not only is it faster, slimmer and packed with more functions (GPS ftw), but it’s cheaper, too, coming in at $199 for the 8gb model.

And it plays games! Oh does it play the games. Mostly with our souls. These bad boys will be available on July 11th, coincidentally when we’ll be shutting down the site to stand in line at the local Apple store.

More details can be found on Engadget’s liveblog post of the announcement.

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