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The Writers Guild of America strike is officially on, thanks largely to disputes over payments from DVD sales and content delivered through the intertubes. [NYT] https://gizmodo.com/digital-distribution-tangling-up-writers-guild-of-ameri-317597

Zero-Gravity Football (1981)

This illustration of “zero-gravity football” appears in the 1981 book School, Work and Play (World of Tomorrow). Zero-gravity football is a great sport, but it can only be played in a space colony or a space station, where there are zones in which everything is weightless. The players zoom through the air, powered by small…

ESPN and NCAA Sports Hit Xbox Live Marketplace

Microsoft and ESPN have struck a deal to sell NCAA basketball and football games, the X Games and shows like Madden Nation in the Live Marketplace. Standard-def NCAA games are $3; HD versions run $4.50, and they go live “within 48 hours” of the end of the game. ESPN content is $2 for standard def…

The WSJ Ponders How Google Will Change Phones (Verdict: Feature Explosion)

The Wall Street Journal tweaks the hype for Google’s supposedly hours-away mobile announcement with a boilerplate of speculation about how Google’s open platform will bust open the wireless industry by igniting “a race among Silicon Valley developers, long shut out of the wireless industry, to come up with new applications for cellphones,” like HDTV, multiplayer…

Vote for Giz, See More Boobies

Right, we weren’t getting anywhere with our softly, softly approach, so we are stooping to bribery—with boobies. Did you expect anything less? Here’s the deal: ensure we win the Best Technology Weblog award in this year’s Weblog Awards, and we shall show you boobies. It’s as simple as that. To prime you for what is…

HP MediaSmart Server Now Available; Iomega and Others Unveil Windows Home Servers

At long last, you can go order the eagerly awaited HP MediaSmart Server, running Microsoft’s lovable Windows Home Server software. It’s up at Amazon, Best Buy, CompUSA, and Circuit City, though Amazon is the only one offering any kind of discount from the $750 (1TB) or $600 (500GB) list prices. We’ll give you more on…

Amex Digital’s GPS Equipped Cellphone is Strangely Alluring

Hong Kong’s Amex Digital has just released a GPS-enabled cellphone. The handset sports the common candy bar form factor, measures 114mm x 49.8 mm x 17mm, houses dual speakers, annoys you with a 2.5mm phone jack, has a 1.3MP camera, supports miniSD expansion and has a 2.4 QVGA TFT LCD. With its mediocre aesthetics, why…

RIM Device Users Are Having a Gay Old Time

A survey of business smartphone users has declared those using BlackBerries to be the most satisfied. Palm and Samsung offerings both drew in second place. The main six areas that were surveyed included OS, physical design, ease of operation, audio quality, battery life and utility feature set. RIM excelled in areas concerning battery life and…

Sharp to Step Up Investment in Solar Cell Technology

Official reports from Sharp indicate the company is set to invest heavily in thin film silicon solar cells in the coming year. The production shall take place at Sharp’s Nara Prefecture plant in Japan. Sharp currently stands as the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, but is not meeting the growing demand. The new cells will…

Sony Ericsson Pre-Christmas Cellphone Lineup Leaked?

Those crazy cats at Cellpassion are quite confidently picking November 6th as a proposed launch date for three new Sony Ericsson cellphones. Cellphonepassion has managed to get a few pics together, they are not great quality, but it offers a feel of what may be coming: Apparently the handsets will include the W890i, which will…

Breath Powered USB Charger Puts Your CO2 to Good Use

The great lads at Instructables have put together a USB charger that relies on your end product of expiration, CO2, to get your gadgets charged up. Specifically, it functions on breath power rather than CO2 itself. By attaching to your weedy chest, a generator is driven to produce energy by a system of pulleys that…

NBC Hacked iPhone Video

We just told you about the hacked iPhone we spotted on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. You can spot the proof around 20 seconds in. The sketch is actually incredibly funny—some of the most edgy material we’ve seen on SNL in a while. We may even have to start watching regularly again, you know, if they…

J-Lo Gresso USB Drive Will Abuse Your Wallet, Dignity

Gresso, the makers of all things ridiculous and overpriced, have hit home with their worst idea ever. They intend to pre load their ridiculous and overpriced flash drives with new albums by artists no one is any longer interested in. The first (and possibly last) offering will be Jennifer Lopez’s new album, Brave, which will…

Micro Center Gives $40 Rebate on Leopard OS X

If you are yet to take the plunge to Leopard OS X, perhaps Micro Center’s excellent $40 rebate on all Leopard OS X purchases shall convince you? That’s right, until 11/11 all qualifying purchasers will be able to claim a $40 mail-in rebate, the application form is available for download on Micro Center’s website. Hit…

NBC Has Hacked Their iPhone

If you looked closely at last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live during the iPhone: The Affair sketch, you may or may not have noticed a certain extra “Installer” icon next to the iTunes button. So what’s that icon signify? The iPhone being used was jailbroken (or, hacked for programs and games, in layman terms).…

Andy Rubin Knows What the Google Phone Really is

An excellent article in the New York Times looks at Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, and tries to uncover what the gPhone really shall become in the ever evolving mobile market. The NYT is confident referring to the gPhone as a “software” package, rumors of which we have heard countless times. According to…

Ben Heck’s Definitive Atari Mod Mega Timeline

Console modding extraordinaire Ben Heckendorn is up to it again; reminding us that, yes, he is still selling his sexy revision 5.1 Atari handhelds for $350 and a sacrificial 2600. The Atari Rev 5.1 really is his most complete system yet, including built-in paddle controller, difficulty switches and player 2 port for multiplayer games. And…

UK iPhone Launching with 1.1.2 Firmware, Jailbreak Broken

T3 got their hands on the new European iPhone, and to their delight (and dismay), the phone is pre-installed with firmware 1.1.2—which is newer than the 1.1.1 firmware we currently have in the States. Believe it or not, it’s actually packing some new features. But before you ask, their early testing shows that current Jailbreak…

OLPC XO Laptop for $20*

*You know about OLPC’s Give 1 Get 1 initiative, where buyers will purchase a XO laptop for $399 , and included in the price will be the cost for a second laptop to be donated to a third world child. To back the plan, T-Mobile shall be offering one year’s complimentary Wi-Fi HotSpot access for…

Which TVs are the Most Reliable? Flat Ones.

Consumer Reports’ Annual Product Reliability Survey will be featured in their upcoming December issue. Its news? Flat panel displays are far more reliable than their rear-projection counterparts. Just how much more reliable? Around 15% 500%. The study showed that both LCDs and plasma displays needed repairs, on average, only 3% of the time. Meanwhile, rear-projection…