geekosystem

Muppet Studios have released their latest in patriotic videos, featuring their resident patriot Sam Eagle.  We're going to try not to give away the funny, but suffice to say that he decides to perform a song without really looking at the lyrics first. Kind of reminds us of when Glenn Beck realized that Born in the U.S.A isn't all about fireworks and apple pie. Video below:

Thanks to the wonders of 3D printing, MakerBot enthusiast Junior Tan has built an iPhone case that puts John Marston to shame. Modeled on the Ruger LCR Double-Action Revolver, Tan's case can be printed out and assembled by anyone with a MakerBot of their own.

From Daily Yomiuri Online comes the story of a couple of hackers who didn't feel that regular run-of-the-mill identity theft was really enough. After slipping a trojan into an adult computer game, and then putting it up on file sharing websites, the two men found themselves with the personal information of a whole bunch of people who play sex games. What to do, what to do... How about: solicit money in exchange for not leaking that the person plays sex games to the internet? Well when you put it that way...

It didn't seem possible, but they found a way to make light-up shoes cool for people over 12 years old. The shoe revampers over at Diversitile have made several upgrades to the traditional Nike model and will soon help turn your feet into crime-fighting machines, complete with functioning arc reactors (and by functioning, I mean glowing). But with something like this, you know they'll be limited edition, so follow along at Diversitile vigilantly and take swift action. Just how Iron Man would.

They may not SHIELD (see what I did there?) your feet any more than a regular shoe, but when people see these bad boys on you, they'll know who they're dealing with. See below for a closer look at the shiny reactor tongue and the alternate color scheme that probably won't sell a single pair until the colorful batch runs out.

Some people just can't follow directions. Others, like Los Angeles native Lauren Rosenberg, follow directions a little too well. On January 19 she needed directions for her walk in Park City, Utah. She used her Blackberry to search Google Maps for the directions. These directions happened to contain a half-mile stint down "Deer Valley Drive," also known as "Utah State Route 224." Being a highway, Deer Valley Drive has no sidewalks or pedestrian paths to speak of. Instead of seeking an alternate route, Rosenberg walked down the middle of the highway and was unsurprisingly struck by a vehicle. She is now suing Google for $100,000 in medical expenses along with punitive damages. She is also, more sensibly, suing the man who ran into her, Patrick Harwood of Park City, Utah. The pedestrian may always have the right of way, but here I almost feel bad for the driver.

Whereas the first wave of reports on this weekend's box-office focused on Shrek Forever After's coming out ahead of this week's new releases, Sex and the City 2 and The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the overseas numbers tell a different story: Prince of Persia actually topped the world box offices.

Whereas Sex and the City 2 edged out Prince of Persia in the U.S., with a box office of $32.1 million versus Prince's $30.2 million (both were trounced by Shrek's $43.3 million), Prince of Persia dominated in foreign markets: It took in $59 million. Sex and the City 2: $27.6 million overseas; Shrek, $18.5 million overseas.

Are you familiar with those Maxim photo spreads that consist of scantily clad models lounging around while vaguely sexist slogans flit by in the background? Don't act like you aren't. Well, Redditor RequiemOfSyris and her roommates brilliantly turned the tables on one such Maxim pic, which consisted of The Hills star Audrina Patridge sitting half-nude on a washing machine with the charming slogan "Doesn't every guy want to see a girl on her knees scrubbing the bathroom floor with a toothbrush while wearing lingerie?" above her.

Their addition: "I like to see a girl in the study, proof-reading her just-completed astrophysics thesis while sipping Earl-Grey tea in her tweed sweater and modest, conservative plaid pencil skirt." Even more impressively, they actually drew glasses, clothes, and an astrophysics tome into the picture. Not only a great subversion of Maxim's pandery lad-mag ethos, but, in our opinion, far more attractive.

Larger comparison pics after the jump:

On Thursday, Edgar Wright, director of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, posted on the movie's Facebook page that as soon as the page hit 100,000 fans, he would release a brand new trailer.  The large, and patient fan base for Bryan Lee O'Malley's independent comic series went to work, and the 100k mark was hit earlier this morning.

Question and answer sites online are often incredibly helpful, and thus incredibly popular. Thanks to sites like Yahoo Answers, I actually phrase a lot of my searches in the form of a question now, just so I can be sure to line up a queue of sites where users provide answers to user-asked questions. Facebook now wants to tap this market, providing that same service to its millions of users with the new application, Questions. Applications for beta testers are currently available.

The people at Facebook are eager to plug both the service and the propect of beta testing it:

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It's up to you. You'll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people — including job recruiters. And we'll bring our best beta testers out to California to tour Facebook headquarters and meet the team.

The application process is merely devising three interesting questions, then answering them to the best of your abilities, doing research to ensure top quality responses. It's an interesting choice to let users pick their own questions, and it's unclear whether applicants would be helped or hurt by choosing very specific questions that cater exactly to the areas of their expertise.

In what will be seen as a heartbreaker by many fans and a major setback by the rest, Guillermo del Toro announced today that he will no longer be directing the Hobbit movie. Speaking to fan community TheOneRing.net, del Toro cited scheduling problems as his main reason for departing.

“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming “The Hobbit,” I am faced with the hardest decision of my life”, says Guillermo. “After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures. I remain grateful to Peter, Fran and Philippa Boyens, New Line and Warner Brothers and to all my crew in New Zealand. I’ve been privileged to work in one of the greatest countries on earth with some of the best people ever in our craft and my life will be forever changed. The blessings have been plenty, but the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project. Both as a co-writer and as a director, I wlsh the production nothing but the very best of luck and I will be first in line to see the finished product. I remain an ally to it and its makers, present and future, and fully support a smooth transition to a new director”.

The autonomous quadrocopter is a type of unmanned aerial vehicle being designed by the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Laboratory. They've released some video of the 'copter going through its paces. The video below the jump is not of somebody piloting an odd helicopter through openings that are only 3 inches larger than its body. No. It's a video of a helicopter piloting itself through openings that are only 3 inches larger than its body.

When Viewpoint magazine asked design firm BaseNow "If you could redesign any brand, which would it be?" they arrived at an answer quickly and unanimously: NASA.

Base's view is that NASA's traditional "meatball" logo isn't bad, exactly, it's just that "what looks futuristic today looks passe tomorrow. And of course tomorrow comes faster today than it did yesterday." We can see their point, after all, who knows today that the red chevron in the logo represents the shape of planned hypersonic airplane wings in 1959? But we're still not sure if we like their replacement.

The Colossal K was a 450-foot tall cooling tower built at the very very end of the Cold War as a part of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, in order to refine nuclear materials for nuclear weapons. Due to its late arrival, it didn't get much use, and all of its technological equipment was removed seven years ago. Now, at the very end of its life cycle, it's getting a lot of attention: as the second largest nuclear cooling tower to undergo controlled demolition ever. It bears mentioning again that the Colossal K is more than two football fields wide. Video below.

It always seemed like a no-brainer. My phone can connect to the internet. Skype simply requires an internet connection to make free calls. I can make free Skype calls with my phone. Of course, an application that would allow smart phone users to use their phone network to make free phone calls is something that most cellphone carriers are uncomfortable with, to say the least. The Skype app for the iPhone has, up until now, been restricted to Wifi only. I.e., you can make free calls, but only when you are in range of a traditional Wifi network. You can't do it from anywhere by using AT&T's 3G network. Well, Skype has finally updated with the ability to use 3G networks to make calls, but get this: you have to pay for it.

No, not the difference in the angular position of two stationary points relative to each other from different viewing positions. The primal embodiment of fear, famous for possessing the Green Lantern of Earth Hal Jordan and with his power nearly destroying the Lantern Corp. Warner Bros. has released an official synopsis for its upcoming Green Lantern movie, and with it has revealed the major villain that they will feature. We've already seen pictures of Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond, and Mark Strong has already been confirmed to play Sinestro; but it's understandable that a primal force of fear, imprisoned for millennia inside the Central Power Battery on Oa, might not show up to walk around set. It's that whole... doesn't really have a physical form thing.