geekosystem

If you haven't seen Howl's Moving Castle by Studio Ghibli, you've really been missing out. Luckily, you can solve that here and now with the most definitive home release yet. Sporting both DVD and Blu-ray with a list price of $39.99, the combo pack for the film dropped on May 21st, and it's the first time the film's been made available on Blu-ray. Even if you've seen the movie a million times before, it's worth seeing it one more time just for that.

When it comes to monitors, folks tend to be incredibly picky or don't really care. You're either in the crowd that asks for IPS and HDMI ports, or you're just looking for something "that looks really good" to use for video games and the like. It's pretty rare for people to be somewhere between the two extremes, but it's not impossible. If you're more of the former than the latter, the LG Touch 10 ET83 Multi-touch monitor is probably for you.

As some of you noticed on Facebook last week, I've recently been intrigued by the new Netflix series Hemlock Grove. After watching my way through the first half of the series over a lazy weekend, I'm impressed enough to finish. The show, based on a horror novel by Brian McGreevy, did better than House of Cards its "opening weekend" on Netflix, and not undeservedly. Not that it's better than House of Cards. It's not. In fact, it's kind of bad, but it's just the right kind of bad to keep me watching.

In the latest addition to his "Clueless Gamer" series of videos, Conan O'Brien plays and reviews The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Here we see him scream at the sight of a woman, reenact junior high school conversations, and give surprisingly good advice on how to kill mammoths. I have to admit, he's making really good points about the game, just more bewilderingly and with less gamer jargon.

So far, we here at Geekosystem have had the pleasure of reviewing two distinctive Tokyoflash watches, the analog Uzumaki and the On Air. Now, I'm going to finish up the saga with a review of Tokyoflash's Kisai Night Vision, perhaps the Tokyoflashiest one of the batch. If you want a snazzy conversation starter, this one definitely makes the cut.

Earlier, we took a look at Tokyoflash's analog Uzumaki watch -- which artfully obfuscated the time while keeping it digital. This time we look at the Kisai On Air watch. This handsome fellow sports a touch screen, sleek design, and a beautifully shiny acetate housing. But will it stand up to Max's snobbery?

The search juggernaut Google announced today that it had acquired Zagat, the restaurant ratings company. Zagat has built a reputation over the past three decades for its 30-point rating system and handy guide books. In their announcement, Google praises Zagat as being “'mobile' before 'mobile' involved electronics," and a forerunner of user-generated content. In their announcement, Google says that Zagat ratings will become foundational to their local search offerings. This is likely to include Google's somewhat maligned Places ratings and recommendation service. It's almost certain that we'll also be seeing Zagat reviews in Google Maps, which has offered sparse user ratings for years. The acquisition of Zagat is a reminder that, behind the scenes, Google is fighting a shadow war with sites like Yelp, Facebook, and Foursquare. These companies, and others, are all competing to supply you, the user, with aggregated reviews of nearby businesses. Given GMap's ubiquity, coupling it with a trusted review source like Zagat could give them an edge and maybe knock the Yelpers down a peg. (Google Blog via Ars Technica)