Cloud – Page 2

April 5, 2012

Felicia Day Has Seen The (Online) Future Of Television With Geek & Sundry

Felicia Day Has Seen The (Online) Future Of Television With Geek & Sundry | 40Tech

We have come one step closer to Nerdvana. Felicia Day — creator of the incredibly funny and successful web-series about gamers, The Guild — has rolled her success and her understanding of the web and television mediums into a brand new online TV channel just for you and me called Geek & Sundry.

I can’t begin to describe what level of awesome this reaches. Geek & Sundry is, essentially, a niche-focused, online television channel that contains all original, independent programming. FGBG — for geeks, by geeks. But these are geeks with an understanding of what makes a TV series work, not to mention how to extend their brand into as many mediums as possible (comics, games, books, music, merchandise, etc., etc., etc.), and create a cultural movement around their passions and products.

Felicia Day has seen the future of TV — and she is not alone. Some of the greatest cultural icons in geekdom are playing too. Wil Wheaton — the ultimate geek celebrity – has his own show on the network (see below), and guest appearances on The Guild run the gambit from Nathan Fillion to Neil Gaiman. Let’s not forget that Felicia is chummy with the Whedon clan, as well – which never hurts when you are into creating a fan-base that is both loyal and passionate. Geek & Sundry promises to be a regular go-to for geeks of all ages and around the world.

The Guild will be on Geek & Sundry, of course — and if you haven’t watched it and you like giggles, you should get on that — as will six new shows:

The Flog is Felicia Day’s weekly video blog. In the first episode, she talks about many a thing that interests her — and endeavours to become a blacksmith. Or maybe just steal his hammer — you decide.

Wil Wheaton has a show called Table Top, wherein celebrities do not play poker — they play geeky table top games of yore (and possibly now). The first episode has some prominent online personalities and a Mythbuster in a battle for world domination. Fantasy world domination, that is: Small World.

The Swords & Laser podcast will also be bringing its sci-fi/fantasy book-clubbiness to Geek & Sundry, along with Dark Horse Motion Comics, Paul & Storm’s Learning Town, and Written By A Kid, which will feature sci-fi/fantasy/horror stories written by 5-10 year old children brought to life as short films by some cool director-types. Good, quirky fun, that!

Geek & Sundry lives on YouTube, so it’s easy to subscribe to what you like and share it with your friends, family, and the world at large. Doo eeeet!!!

Rock Anthem for Nerds

As a parting gift, I leave you with this awesome rock anthem featuring the cast of The Guild — I’m The One That’s Cool, directed by Jed Whedon. Down with asshats! Up with geeks!

Word.

February 23, 2012

First Netflix Original Series, Lilyhammer: Fun and Worth a Look

First Netflix Original Series, Lilyhammer: Fun and Worth a Look | 40Tech

Netflix has been making big moves lately, spreading its goodness to countries around the world, making television networks nervous, and generally growing its subscriber-base despite annoying a large portion of its American users. One of its most intriguing steps forward has been to launch its own original series, Lilyhammer, starring Steven Van Zandt of Sopranos and Bruce Springsteen Fame. The series is quirky, fun, and well-written enough to keep you coming back for all eight episodes — which Netflix smartly released all at once. None of this “wait a week or month” business! That’s a thing of the past! We’re all about marathons, now, baby.

Lilyhammer takes place in Lilehammer, Norway, where mobster Frankie “The Fixer” Tagliano decides to go when he winds up in the witness protection program. Why Norway, you ask? Because Frankie has a romantic side, and fell in love with the place when he happened to catch the ’94 Winter Olympics. “Clean air, gorgeous broads…” — hey, why not, right? The ensuing culture shock, combined with Frankie’s base nature and… er… life experience, make for some interesting plot lines that I found really enjoyable. Those of you expecting a return to the Sopranos are expecting too much. This is a mobster show, and it has its dark moments, for certain, but the vibe lends itself more to black comedy than hardcore HBO. That said, there’s not a lot of censorship going on, and its definitely not something you want to watch with the little ones.

There are a lot of subtitles in Lilyhammer, but they flow in and out without distracting or annoying the viewer. There is also has some great music, which is unsurprising considering Steven Van Zandt is also the Music Director (and executive producer and sometime writer). Springsteen fans may recognize him as a member of the E-Street Band, and he uses his talent to great effect on the Netflix series.

Lilyhammer Trailer

Netflix also has a a remake of House of Cards on the docket, as well as the much anticipated Arrested Development Season Four (which my wife is simply giddy about). Personally, I find their move into original — and quality — productions to be a fantastic one. It’s another one of those ever-increasing moments in which new technology sets old media companies on its ear and potentially signifies something new and better. Well, unless the old media companies get it in their heads to destroy them, of course. That’s never pretty.

What do you think of Netflix’s move into original programming?

January 7, 2012

What’s The Deal With Pinterest? Even My Wife Likes (Obsesses Over) It!

So, Pinterest… It’s received a lot of coverage in the past year — it’s even received in the realm of 37 million in funding — but I had trouble seeing the appeal. I wasn’t sure the world needed another social bookmarking site. I wasn’t sure the world needed another way to share, well… anything. I admit, most of this feeling had nothing to do with Pinterest, per se, it was really more about social media overwhelm. I’ve seen a ton of social sharing services go up and down over the past few years, and, as much as I love Google+, I think it maxed me out. Besides, you can do things similar to Pinterest using tools like Evernote and Springpad, right? Right?

Then my lovely wife — a person who has no real interest in tech, barely any interest in social networking, and who only got a smartphone because it was free and I “was bugging her about it” — was somehow inspired to try it out. No prompting from me, or anyone else — she came to it entirely on her own. Now… she’s obsessed. Seriously. For example, I see her awake at 3AM and think that she’s feeding the baby, or something — but no. What’s she’s doing is maniacally pinning and re-pinning things to her boards, and often giggling like mad as she does it. There is apparently a lot of funny on Pinterest…

Title Image clipped from Pinterest Comic

Recently, she’s taken to sharing some of that funny with me, and I’ve discovered that a good portion of it is Star Wars based. This confused the hell out of me (though I still shared some of it with you here and here). My wife has no interest in Star Wars. She’s one of the few people who has never even seen the films, and (horrifyingly) will actually say things like “What’s a hansolo?” I still love her, though. She’s that awesome. She’s beginning to make me see value in Pinterest, too. Anything that could inspire my wife to share seriously awesome Star Wars stuffs with me has got to be pretty powerful.

I checked it out a little more thoroughly. I wanted to know what the deal was. Was there a secret sauce? How did it hook her? What I discovered was four things:

Pinterest is incredibly simple.

Pinterest is to sharing fun and useful images what Evernote is to easy, accessible note-taking. It focuses on that one thing, and makes sure that it is the absolute best at it. It doesn’t overwhelm the user.

Pinterest is visual — and good at it.

Everyone loves a good picture and everyone loves a good photo gallery. Funny and beautiful pics have been making the rounds since the internet was able to support them. People like to look at the images they like again and again. And share them, re-share them, and re-share them again, as well. Pinterest makes this easy, but it also makes it beautiful. The designers have done a fantastic job of taking something that could be overwhelming, both in general and visually, and making it joy to experience.

Like crafty things? This is your home.

There are a ton of cool things to discover on Pinterest, but it really seems to have taken off with the crafty and DIY crowd. This is what ultimately hooked my wife. She loves to see things that people have made, especially if it involves baking or making something cool out of something else. She knows I like that sort of thing as well, and has not only shared some cool Star Wars crafts with me, but also a lot of DIY upcycling and repurposing projects. It’s how I came across Homestyler, actually, which was the topic of my previous post. There is some very cool stuff on Pinterest, and more is pinned every day.

Some of My Wife’s Pins

It connects to the real world. It useful.

Pinterest is more than just a place to store and share images. The images link back to the site you found them on — and if we follow the crafty and DIY point from above, you end up with well-organized, very visual bookmarks back to sites that contain information that you might actually use in your real-world life. This makes Pinterest more than just a random bookmarking service, and more than just an image-sharing service. It makes it a tool that is useful to you both on and offline. It helps you to find, share, save and use things that are of interest to you.

We’ve all heard that “<insert service> makes it easy to collect and organize what interests you on the web.” Pinterest actually does it. My wife is living proof. Anything tech-based that can make her go gaga is definitely worth taking a look at. It’s still in beta, but getting an account happens pretty quickly. I recommend giving Pinterest a try. You’ll probably love it.

What do you think of Pinterest? How do you use it?

December 29, 2011

Crazy Things That Happen Every 60 Seconds On The Web

Crazy Things That Happen Every 60 Seconds On The Web | 40Tech

Did you know that, every 60 seconds on the internet, there are over 695,000 Facebook updates, 168 million emails (which, frankly, shakes the whole “email is dead” theory), 219,000 PayPal payments, over 12,000 new Craigslist ads, and about 2 million people watching porn? That’s every single minute, according to the pretty infographics put together by Go-Globe.com. There are also 925 iPhone 4S sales, 11 million IM conversations, 232 computers that got infected with malware, and some 38 tons of e-waste generated.

These are only a few of the highlights of the 40 items listed across the two infographics. Many of the entries are eye-widening, especially when the timeframe is considered, but — maybe because I practically live online — not surprising when considered in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I thought some were a little low. Only 694,445 search queries per minute on Google? Only 416 website hacking attempts? Only 13,000 (plus) iPhone apps downloaded? I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were more.

Check out the infographics below — what stats stand out to you?