Anyone who still uses Facebook has probably been dreading the official implementation of the redesign. Soon, you will have no choice but to use the clunky and slow look they have decided on. At first everyone was forgiving about the “new Facebook”, but after a few profile visits the honeymoon was over. It is a shame that a system that was working just fine for the folks who didn’t add every application known to man has to fall to the wayside.

The tab called “Boxes” is just a statement of indecision in itself. While it is understandable why the design has been setup a certain way, it is unclear why the implementation is going to be completed in September when only around 20% of the users have even tried the new look. It is likely that the developers would wait until there was a larger base of people familiar with the redesign if they were not in such a hurry to run the new ad system.

So…what do you think? Let us know in the comments….

—–Amber from The Simian Downtime Analyst

This teaser trailer is mainly to bring to life some of my favorite screenshots - it doesn’t show much of the actual story - just a visual treat for everyone. You can leave me a comment at my thread here!

“You can’t call yourselves The Doors because you can’t have The Doors without Jim Morrison,” argued Densmore’s attorney S. Jerome Mandel, summing up the legal conclusion of the disagreement that has torn the already fragmented legend into further shreds.

Densmore’s rationale was simple: Jim wouldn’t have approved.

Continue reading at Wired.

I grew up on the Christopher Reeve movies - but at my age and maturity now, I know along with others that anything that proceeded Richard Donner’s first movie was plane childish. Which is why when I heard Bryan Singer was going to make a Superman reflective of Richard Donner’s style, I was intrigued.

But then the movie came out. I was very very bored! It didn’t feel like a Superman film, more or less, a soup opera - when they said they were going to make a few changes, I was hoping they would be make Lex Luthor a more convincing villian (like his portrayal in Smallville). Anyways, as known, they kept everything the same but added two characters, one being Superman’s son. Pathetic.

So whats the point to all this blabber! I have some very exciting news!

Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov has told The Wall Street Journal that the studio is going to be reintroducing Superman. I assume that this will be similar to how Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk was a reboot of Ang Lee’s Hulk.

I’m very excited about this - and the studio is quoted saying it will have a much darker tone to it, reflecting the success of The Dark Knight. I just hope and prey that they pay attention to the source material and base the story line on a successful comic book. And if they want my suggestion, I say they choose the Death of Superman - or maybe if they want a origin story - Birthright.

Regardless, Warner Bros, please put back the reputation of The Man of Steel at the cinemas!

A hi-res version can be found at the official site!

The clip is of course the Cinematic Trailer for Blizzard Entertainment second expansion, “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.” The game is expected to be available later this year.

Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures have a Warcraft movie based on the popular fantasy video game franchise in development as well. When the project was announced, it was said to be live-action with a yet to be determined level of CG environments and effects. The story would take place about a year before the events in “World of Warcraft” and would be told from the Alliance perspective. No release date for the big screen adaptation has been announced.

For now, we’re starting it small. You can opt-in by going to this forum thread or, you can e-mail us TheGeekMedia(at)gmail(dot)com .

Turns out that after all the hype, all the press - the two researchers on a quest to prove the existence of Bigfoot that the ape like carcass that was encased in a block of ice was the famous creature - discovered it was no more then a rubber gorilla outfit.

Turns out the Police Officer (who created the hoax) who was on medical leave will also get a nice surprise as the Sherrif has filed for his termination.

I guess people will never stop looking for the mythical Bigfoot, and I guess its because they can’t face defeet.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARTICLE.

Folks,

As of now, the Non Disclosure portions of our North American Beta Testing Agreement are now officially lifted. From this point on players may now freely talk about their experiences in the game as well as post screenshots, videos, etc. We will be sending an email out to all our current players with full details about the lift over the next 24 hours. Players with access to our forums can also see the letter there. Players may not talk about nor reprint posts from our forums and our Test Servers (currently Deathsword) are still fully covered by the confidentiality portions of our Beta Testing Agreement. So, other than that, free feel to talk about and share your experiences in WAR.

My thanks go out to everyone who has beta tested and continues to beta test WAR. It has been with your help and feedback that WAR is where it is today. We really appreciate your effort.

WAR is almost upon us!

Mark Jacobs
VP, GM Mythic Entertainment

We’ll be jabbering about this extensively on the next episode of R&D, have fun kids!

The highly anticipated sequel to Gears of War is going to have an optional violence filter in attempt to ease concerns about the graphic content in the game. While the filter is turned on, blood will turn into sparks and the harsh language will be removed.

The game is due out on November 7th. Click here to watch video about the content filter.

If Pandora can’t come up with a solution to these issues then, one of the largest names in internet radio may end. That’s pretty sad if you stop to think about it. Hundreds of internet radio stations don’t pay royalties. Many of them should but, they are so small they fall under the radar.

Then, there are internet radio stations that use royalty free music. There are also stations that cater to a sub-genre of music. Those stations get their music directly from the small labels and artists they play.

What really gets to me about this issue is, Pandora actually helps the artist. Traditional radio does not give you the option to buy the music you hear. You have to find that music. Traditional radio also only plays certain songs by an artist. Places similar to Pandora (like last.fm) give you the chance to hear songs you would never hear on the radio and, artists you would never hear on the radio.

I’ve bought plenty of music thanks to Pandora and last.fm . I’ve also discovered plenty of new artists thanks to those two sites. I can not say the same for traditional radio. Yet, Pandora and stations like Pandora are seemingly punished for introducing people to good music, and helping the artists. Something isn’t right here.

This is yet another reason why the laws that previously worked for broadcasting need to see a change. There are two totally different types of media being distributed in today’s world. Traditional media and new media. The laws that take care of traditional media don’t work for new media. Services like Pandora need to stick around and continue to provide us with entertainment and good music.

You can watch the press conference here. At one point the mic cuts out and, some sound issues are present. It’s apparently raw footage from the KING5.com website.

[video found thanks to John McCrea's blog]

Nathan: I got this in my inbox, and I though the community should see this, as they also may relate to it. This video has taken the Youtube population by storm getting over 25,000,000 views. It’s not a varation of a Rickroll, somebody injuring themselves horribly, or a cat eating corn. This is something I thought should be shown, as it was very touching to me.

The Geek Media is looking for members of the community who feel like getting a little geeky and want to (dare we say it?) blog! That’s right. We’re looking for you.

Here’s what we want out of the posts;
* Gaming, Tech, Web 2.0 and “Geek” news from around the world
* Articles that are editorial in nature dealing with the above news categories
* Reviews on new games, products, and gadgets
* Articles that are opinion dealing with the above news categories

If you feel like you want to write anything dealing with that, let us know! E-mail us at TheGeekMedia(at)gmail(dot)com with a couple of samples or a link to your own blog. We’ll take it from there.

Just a note; you are not required to post on a daily basis. Once every week or two is fine. Post as you see fit.

Sometime in the near future, an organization known as “Pathopens” promises to bring peace to the world. But when something goes terribly wrong, Nick Stratum, an engineer for the prestigious company, locks himself into a cryo chamber to protect himself from the ensuing chaos. Two thousand years later, Nick awakens to find that the world has turned into a barren lifeless wasteland and he begins a journey to find any survivors. This leads him to a race of humans and the introduction of a young girl whom have grey skin and speak in a strange and eerie dialect. But the more Nick learns about this new race, the more dangerous it becomes for him as he discovers that this new evolution of humans worship a devise, if activated, could bring certain doom to the entire colony.

Click on the poster to watch the teaser trailer in HD!

Staring Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser MD), Nathan Fillion (Firefly) and Felicia Day (The Guild), the story begins with Dr Horrible (Harris) recording a video blog post about his plans of evil while at the same time answering blog reader questions.  During this portion of Act 1 his love interest is revealed.  Penny (Day), whom he briefly speaks with at the local laundromat while in his alter-ego persona of ‘Billy’, is portrayed as the typical ‘cute girl next door’, whereas Billy (Dr Horrible) is portrayed as the classic love-struck geek; stumbling over his words as he talks, hiding behind his iPhone as to not get into any deep conversation.  It is also during this first scene in the laundromat that the first “sing along” part of the series begins.

Dr Horrible’s first act of evil is the theaft of a compound that will assist him in making a freeze ray, however, during the theaft the anti-villian/antagonist/all-around-dick, Captain Hammer (Fillion), appears.  Dr Horrible’s theaft has quite the unforseen outcome as it brings together Captain Hammer and Penny.  As the series continues into Act 2 and 3, we learn more about Dr Horrible’s motives.

I went into this series not really knowing what to expect.  The series artwork that appears on the iTunes Music Store has a very 1950s Sci-Fi look to it, but upon sitting down and watching the first act it was quite a different story.  The series reminded me a bit of the old Flash TV series, as well as the old Adam West Batman series, when it came to the comical portrayal of the heroes and villians.

I’ve never been much of a fan of musicals, especially Disney musicals.  I guess comical, or in the case of Disney, cartoony musicals just overloaded on the cute factor more than I could stomach.  Dr Horrible, however, was one of the very few musicals that I could actually sit back, watch and enjoy.

The series has a good amount of “mark out moments”.  I first found myself saying “Hey, isn’t that Doogie Howser?” and then immediatly being surprised that he is actually quite a talented singer.  Following DrH was Captain Hammer who I was REALLY surprised about how well he could also sing.  Penny, however, was the most interesting part for me.  I didn’t really recognize her from anything, as I never watched the Buffy TV series.  When I researched what other works she was in I discovered that she plays the lead roal in the internet-based video series “The Guild”, a fictional story about the real-world players of World of Warcraft.

While the three-part series, as a whole, was quite entertaining I couldn’t help but feel that all of the story elements and plot points had been done before in other movies, TV shows and the like.  What Dr Horrible does, however, is present those elements and points together in a very enjoyable way.  While I did find myself sarcasticly thinking “wow, haven’t seen that plot device before!”, I also found myself pulled into the whole story from start to finish, regardless of the fact that the story is quite brief.

After finishing up with Act 3 and being very much held in suspence for a good 4-5 minutes after the climax, we are treated with the completion of Dr Horrible’s goal.  We are left wondering if there will be any more stories from within this universe that Joss Whedon created.

Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog: Act 1 is available for free from the official Dr Horrible website, and all three acts are individually available on for the low price of $1.99 each.  Every geek should watch this series at least once in their life.  In my opinion, Dr Horrible could be considered, though in smaller ‘bite-sized’ form, a very much modern and geeky take on Phantom of the Opera.

In the past few weeks I’ve seen a huge influx of fake emails and webpages often leading to people having their information stolen. These sites are simply to harvest information and exploit it. And, possibly even sell this information to a 3rd party.

So here’s a quick how-to in detecting harmful emails. Please note this isn’t a fool proof method, but it’s often the way I’ve seen these emails come through.

So let’s take a quick look at what I got today in my inbox:

A screen capture of a fake Chase email.

Looks pretty generic right? Wrong.

Most, if not all but ONE of the links in this email are generic. Most people do not think to check such a thing, especially with how vague the message is. Most emails will try and say “we lost your information and need you to update it” or “there was an error in your account” or something to that matter. It’s easy to miss this if you actually have an account with the company.

So all you need to do to check is the following. Again, this is a common method, but probably not foolproof.

Step 1: Right-click the link that suggests to "go here" to do whatever it is asking.

Step 2: Paste the link into a text box somewhere. The browser URL box is a fast way to do this, but DON'T press enter! A safer way would be to use a text editor program.

As you can see the address has a bit of an anomaly in it. The “www.hisand.cn” should in fact be “www.chase.com” but it is not, therefore making it a fake online form you would have filled out and given all your information to.

It’s a simple two-step process that takes only minutes if not seconds. Remember, it wouldn’t hurt to do this with any type of “official” email you get from whichever company.

Also, it should be known that you can do the same thing within web sites as well. However, it’s much more difficult to see if your actually being “phished” depending on the web page. Myspace plus many other websites have had problems with phishing as well, and has taken measures to let you know when your leaving the site. You know those annoying “Your now leaving this site” pages? Well, those serve a very needed purpose. Many browsers also have phishing detection built in.

I hope this helps some people avoid these problems in the future!

Disclaimer: Nathan Allen Pinard is a professional composer, not an IT expert. Please remember that this is not a fool-proof way to detect fraudulent emails, but will work on most.

It’s a really interesting and novel idea that just might work! I know we’re interested to try out some other recipes that Adreena comes up with. We’re also enjoying watching machinima while we’re learning to cook.

Check out Cooking With Ethnea on WeGame.

I personally have one password for everything, however, its a password that not even my closest of friends would know. Nevertheless, according to this article I found on Digital Domain, passwords may be ancient technology already…

Password-based log-ons are susceptible to being compromised in any number of ways. Consider a single threat, that posed by phishers who trick us into clicking to a site designed to mimic a legitimate one in order to harvest our log-on information.

Once we’ve been suckered at one site and our password purloined, it can be tried at other sites. The solution urged by the experts is to abandon passwords — and to move to a fundamentally different model, one in which humans play little or no part in logging on. Instead, machines have a cryptographically encoded conversation to establish both parties’ authenticity, using digital keys that we, as users, have no need to see.

In short, we need a log-on system that relies on cryptography, not mnemonics.

Read More Here!

You can watch the clip using the player below!