geekosystem

The Microsoft Surface, or Surface RT, is a tablet that boasts Windows 8 in a lot of ways but fails to deliver in many others. The limitations are such that most technology pundits consider the device to be something of a cluster. Basically, the Surface RT is okay for what it is, but it isn't what many had hoped it would be. That doesn't mean it isn't a fine and wonderful device for, say, your uncle that still has trouble checking his email and uses Internet Explorer. Even Oprah loves the Surface RT, and has added it as one of her favorite things, which says a lot about the intended audience for the tablet.

Zach Anner, a standup comic with cerebral palsy from Austin, Texas, captured the hearts of the Internet back in 2010 when he submitted his bid to Oprah Winfrey's "Your OWN Show" contest. He's back again to announce his brand new show, "Riding Shotgun." In a YouTube video released this morning, Anner promises the people of the Internet that they would have a great deal to do with actually making the show.

Yesterday, Oprah Winfrey aired the last episode of her syndicated talk show, which had been running for 25 years. In honor of this historic milestone, the team behind the web browser Opera released a few of the emails they had received over the years from Oprah fans who mistook the browser for the talk-show host. "We've been receiving lots of mail from Oprah fans, asking us questions, complaining or simply just opening up, telling us about their lives. We've tried to answer these emails the best we can."

An animated GIF of this which surfaced at the end of November has been making the rounds again lately; here it is in its original, Conan show context.

Specifically, she says:

I could definitely write and eight, ninth, tenth.  I could.  Easily.

But then she says:

I'm not going to say I won't.  I don't think I will.  I loved writing those books.  I loved writing them.  I feel I am done, but you never know.

We take this as a very author-y way of saying that you are done with a story, but you love the world and the characters, so who's to say that you won't one day have an idea that becomes another book. In other words: don't hold your breath. (via io9.)

Pac-Man is Moleskine (Kotaku) Miyamoto Wants to Make A Rubik's Cube? (Eurogamer) This Deer Made Out of Typewriter Parts is Adorable, Actually (Jeremy Mayer) Hello Kitty R2-D2 (Google News) Mark Zuckerberg on Oprah (Cindy W) Avengers Hulk Will Be Mo-Cap (Blastr) Samus and the Colossus (David-Hsu-Yen) (pic (click to embiggen) via Wondermark.)

In case you don't know, Oprah has been running a competition to give one lucky citizen the chance to have his or her own television show. Anyone can enter by submitting a tape, but then the tape must be voted up in an online poll to be in contention for earning its creator a series. One contestant, Zach Anner, suffers from cerebral palsy and wants to host a humorous travel show that would illustrate great trips that anyone can take. He has become an internet sensation via 4chan and Reddit, and for a week up until June 22 was the strong front-runner.

But in the span of an hour around or just before 3pm EDT, the woman who had been trailing Anner for some time, Doctor Phyllis, took the lead. And she did so at what sounds to be an unbelievable rate. The Huffington Post reports an increase of 300,000 votes in 20 minutes. Reddit reports 600,000 in an hour. Either way, the voting rates being bandied around are astounding, corroborate with what many Internet denizens who have been following the proceedings saw, and justly aroused suspicion.

There's a lot of anger and snark on the internet (I should know, I write some of it), so it was great news that this weekend gave us an internet story that just makes you smile. That story is the tale of Zach Anner, a young man with cerebral palsy, who became the internet's latest celebrity when he entered Oprah Winfrey's contest to give a regular person their own TV show. Anner's audition video was hilarious and his overall good nature won over the internet and soon a few well-placed links had landed him more than two and a half million votes!

If you are familiar with Internet message boards much, you may have noticed a preponderance of friendly strangers who vaguely agree with you and then link to fake-looking websites promoting Acai, the palm-borne purple berry which is very high in antioxidants (true) but which they often claim can cure cancer, diabetes, and such (not true).

ABC's Nightline has done a nice job of sweeping through the claims and counterclaims about acai in their episode tonight, talking to scientific researchers about the berry's properties, flying to the Amazon to meet the people whose livelihood it constitutes, and even talking with Dr. Mehmet Oz, who appeared on an infamous episode of Oprah in which the use of the unscientific word "superfood" to describe acai launched a thousand acai spam sites pretending to have their backing, many of which Oz and Oprah have sued. Dr. Oz: "If my name or picture is next to a product being sold, you can guarantee it's a scam, because I don't endorse any products and I would never let anyone use my name or my face, image, to sell a product." Video after the jump:

Kevin Smith's recent spat with Southwest Airlines may have given us a new corollary to "never get involved in a land war in Asia": Don't detain a beloved cult director with 1.65 million Twitter followers for being "too fat to fly" (Smith's words) when he's already onboard the plane, stridently defending your "Customer of Size" policy while offering him a $100 voucher (Smith: "the way a john tosses a hooker a c-note"), and then take to your weirdly capitalized corporate blog -- which is lined with peanuts, by the way -- to passive-aggressively 'apologize' to "Not So Silent Bob." Referring to him as "Not So Silent Bob" being a great way to show a 'with it' knowledge of his films and also to say: Hey guy, stop complaining about this incident on Twitter already. Well, Kevin Smith is still 'not so silent' about the Southwest Airlines incident. After innumerable Tweets about the incident yesterday, many of which were self-made or retweeted fat jokes, Smith is back today, and it sounds like the offered c-note did not win him over.

...And Conan doesn't look too happy. Maybe they forgot the Cheetos?