1. iTunes

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iTunes has everything you want — music, movies, TV shows, games, apps, ebooks, and more. The smartphone is the most important gadget of all time, while the iPad is the most desired gift of the year (ever?). Do you really need me to explain why an iTunes Gift Card is at the top of this list? Plus, you can totally rub this card in the nose of your Android-loving friends. Bless ‘em, they just don’t realize they’re using inferior products. But your card is all the proof you need; the Android Marketplace doesn’t offer gift cards!

2. Xbox Live

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If you’re serious about gaming, then you own an Xbox 360. Xbox Live is like Xbox’s very own iTunes, offering most of the same movies, music, and TV shows, along with the biggest video game selection of any download service — some of which are even Kinect-friendly. But the real reason most players want an Xbox Live Gift Card is to get a year’s subscription to Xbox Live Gold membership. So if you really want your gift card to be a hit, make sure it’s for at least $60 (or just buy an Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership card; some places, like Amazon, have them on sale for $49 at the time of this writing).

3. Amazon.com

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There’s nothing Amazon doesn’t have. Seriously, need a carburetor? They got that. Lava lamp? Well, duh. Dixie Cup? Mm-hmm. Fake handlebar mustache? Are you kidding — of course! They also have a killer selection of all the things we geeks love: games, movies, graphic novels, toys, electronics, ebooks, and on and on. An Amazon Gift Card is the next best thing to giving a blank check.

4. Best Buy

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If you really need an explanation for why geeks love Best Buy, clearly you’ve never been in one. There’s something about walking into a Best Buy… it’s like the Chocolate Factory for geeks. They’ve got everything electronic: computers, smartphones, flat-screen TVs, game consoles, cameras, and loads more. They’ve also got a darn good selection of Blu-ray and DVD, video games, and music CDs. And if you’re not sure what you’re looking for, Best Buy’s sales staff is knowledgeable and helpful.

5. LEGO

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No other toy in the world has as many child and adult fans as LEGO. We geeks are particularly fond of the LEGO Star Wars sets, though there’s an enormous contingent of adult fans of LEGO (AFOLs, as they call themselves) that are true pioneers of the utterly jaw-dropping things you can do with those magical plastic bricks. 2012 promises to be a big year, too, with partnerships from major properties coming to LEGO that include The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, superhero franchises Marvel and DC, new dinosaur-themed sets, and tons more. LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes, the next big LEGO video game, is also expected sometime in 2012.

6. Regal Cinemas

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Some people will tell you that movie theaters are dying. The rising cost of movie tickets certainly doesn’t help matters. But I’d contend that people are just waiting for something worth going to the cinema for. And one look at the 2012 movie calendar shows that there are going to be tons of great reasons in the months to come: The Hunger Games, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Brave, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and plenty more. Regal is the nation’s biggest theater chain, but you’ll want to check your local area for a dominance of other chains like AMC, Cinemark, or Carmike.

7. ThinkGeek

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As the biggest and best online retailer for the fun, the unexpected, and the just plain awesome, there really is nothing else like ThinkGeek (though we’re also fond of X-treme Geek). They carry thousands of products that you never knew you needed — until you see it on their website. ThinkGeek’s ace in the hole is that every product they sell is hand-picked by their own staff of hardcore geeks. So if you’re looking for geeky gifts, you can’t go wrong with anything in their catalog. Where else can you find plush bacon, Han Solo-in-carbonite ice cube trays, or caffeinated marshmallows?

8. GameStop

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For the gamer geek, there is no better gift card than a GameStop card. Not only do they have probably the most extensive collection of video games in any bricks-and-mortar retailer, every store also has a fantastic selection of used games. And they accept trade-ins. The only downside? Video games are all they sell, so don’t bother if your geek recipient isn’t into gaming (which seems impossible, but there are exceptions to every rule).

9. Threadless

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There are a ton of great online retailers out there for cool, original t-shirts. Teefury is another big favorite, and we love Splitreason, too. But the biggest and best has to be Threadless. They create new t-shirt designs every week, and most of them are extra geek-friendly, featuring mash-ups of popular franchises. Most of their shirts are just $12, so the price is right, too. Want to stand out at your next comic book convention or LAN party? You can’t go wrong with Threadless.

10. Openbucks

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Openbucks is a new kind of gift card for a new kind of shopper. Created by the Gift Card Payment Network, you pick up one of these cards at Subway, Circle K, CVS, Citgo, Sports Authority, or Hess, and then redeem them inside some of your favorite online games. Titles that support Openbucks’ cards include Battlestar Galactica, Need For Speed World, Dark Orbit, Parallel Kingdom: Age of Thrones, Metin 2, Cross Fire, Adventure Quest, and more. Additional games are being added all the time.

11. Sideshow Collectibles

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Their products don’t come cheap, but for good reason — they’re incredibly well made. Whether you’re looking for a life-sized bust or a collectible figurine, they’ve got items from all of your favorite properties, including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Disney, Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Terminator, and many more. Don’t see your geeky friend’s favorite franchise? You should also try Gentle Giant and Weta.

12. Facebook Credits

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Sneer all you want, but Facebook has become a major part of all of our lives. (Even John Romero made a Facebook game.) Millions of Facebook members play games there every day, so a Facebook Credits Gift Card might be just the ticket. Your recipient will be able to spend it on premium in-game items in Mafia Wars and the like. You can only buy these gift cards in the real world, but you’ll find them almost everywhere. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, GameStop, Radio Shack, and 7-Eleven all carry them.

Assassin's Creed Revelations screenshot

First of all, of course, there’s the flagship console series which has gone annual now with major new releases. Revelations, the fourth entry in the series, puts you in the shoes of Ezio Auditore one last time, concluding his story that began in Assassin’s Creed II with a “full circle” plot that takes him back to the stomping grounds of his ancestor, Altaïr.

Assassin's Creed Multiplayer Rearmed

A pair of iOS games are planned for the coming weeks: Assassin’s Creed: Multiplayer Rearmed, and the just-announced Assassin’s Creed Recollections. Rearmed is a top-down multiplayer fighting game fueled by in-app purchases (the game itself is a free download). It’s currently available for iPhone, but an iPad version is coming shortly. Not yet released is Recollections, which is described as a real-time board game for iPad that, based on the screenshots, appears to involve collecting cards that represent various characters. It’s a multiplayer game as well, and is expected to drop around the same time as Revelations.

Assassin's Creed Recollection

There’s Assassin’s Creed Embers, an animated short film that tells the last chapter of Ezio Auditore’s life (presumably from either before or after the events in Revelations). There are various ways you’ll be able to get to see this short, chief among them by pre-ordering the Signature Edition of Revelations from Gamestop — a purchase that will also get you an additional singleplayer mission, additional multiplayer content, weapon capacity upgrades, the game’s soundtrack by Jesper Kyd, and more.

There’s Path to Revelations, a scavenger hunting Facebook game that’s primarily intended to get you excited about the new game. Another Facebook feature lets you create a custom video that details your own fictional Assassin heritage.

Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia

There’s the Assassin’s Creed Encyclopedia, cataloging the vast AC universe, which will also be released sometime in November. The full-color, 256-page book sells for $35, and should help clarify many of the dangling questions you have about past games (without giving anything away about the future, of course) and all other corners of the universe.

I’m sure there’s more than this. There are comic books and novels, game guides, and some wicked cool swag, for example. But you get the idea. There’s never been a better time to be an Assassin’s Creed fan, and I’m excited to be one!

Xbox Live with Bing integration

“Metro” is the codename of this Fall’s annual Xbox Live update, which among other things is going to make your dashboard look an awful lot like Bing mixed with Windows Phone 7.

Here’s a breakdown of the major changes you can expect.

The big focus for this update is the integration of Bing and giving greater power to Kinect. You’ll be able to navigate the entire dashboard using Kinect if you want, primarily with voice control. But the look and feel of the new interface comes directly from Windows Phone 7, using a Microsoft design called Metro (hence the update’s codename).

It sounds as if the integration of Bing is going to fundamentally change how a lot of people use their Xbox. Using Kinect’s voice control, you can easily tell your Xbox what you’re looking for, and Bing will bring up results from every media type you use: games, movies, TV, music, and more, from sources that include not just your own media collection but Netflix, Hulu, Zune, and more. Under each search result, you’ll see a rating and an icon, showing what form of media it is. The thinking is that this Bing search function is so simple and powerful — particularly if you own a Kinect sensor — that many gamers may just forego traditional tabbed dashboard navigation in favor of Bing-powered voice search.

Then of course there’s live television. It’s coming, but deals haven’t been finalized yet, so Microsoft’s not saying who they’ve got or when they’ll have it. But according to Gizmodo, some TV networks will be available to view live television, while others will simply offer their top shows as video on demand. No DVR recording function is currently planned, but you will be able to chat with friends while watching live TV.

Another major new addition is sharing Achievements on Facebook. Game developers can set their games so that they automatically update Facebook every time you get a new Achievement, but you’ll always have the option of turning this off. Or you’ll be able to set your system to prompt you each time you get an Achievement, to manually make the Facebook update yourself.

A beta of the new Xbox Live dashboard is supposed to happen sometime in October, with a final release sometime before Christmas.

You can always go back to reading the Battlestar Galactica Series Bible if you have some spare time. That should do the trick every time. Alternatively, you can join in on the discussion about the best characters of Battlestar Galactica. But here’s another cool idea. Why don’t you change your Facebook profile pic to reflect your passion?

I stumbled upon what might be the coolest profile pics ever: Cylon Facebook profile pics! These images are the creation of Kaitlin, who is 21 years old, born on Friday the 13th, and a self-proclaimed super nerd. Super nerd or not, I love what she has created: two Cylon Facebook profile pics!

You know how some people pay a lot of attention to the picture they use on their Facebook profile? That’s quite understandable, and whatever people choose, that is their business. Of course, one cannot guarantee that other people will find your choice cool. If, however, your friends are huge Battlestar Galactica fans, then these two images will up your cred.

Here’s the first one:

Cyclon Facebook Profile Pic

And here’s the other Cylon:

Cyclon Facebook Profile Pic 2

Sure, she could have created profile pics that are more life-like (although I am not sure if that term applies to Cylons). That, would however, not be as cool as having a “default” Facebook profile pic, don’t you think? Kaitlin says you can use the images as long as you give her the credit. Now that is pretty cool of her as well!

Pig Up by PopCap

Those devious souls at PopCap have unleashed their latest and greatest upon the populace, and it’s every bit as compulsively addictive as you’d expect.

PopCap — which was just purchased by EA Games — makers of Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma, and dozens of other wildly popular puzzle games, has released its first new IP in years. It’s called Pig Up, and it’s playable exclusively on Facebook.

You play as a pig with wooden flaps attached to his arms. You’re shot out of a canon at the start of a level, and your job is to flap those wings — by clicking your mouse or pressing the space bar — to keep the little guy afloat. Hold down the button to make him fly higher and longer, but either way, he’ll soon come back down and you’ll need to flap again. The twist is that you only have a limited number of “flaps” available, so you must choose wisely when to use them. You start off near the ground, but can flap up higher and higher way up into the stratosphere, where the dangers are greater but so are the rewards. “Flapples” float all around, and if you munch one, it adds a flap to your available tally. But there are bees that have to be avoided, or they’ll subtract from your flap count.

The game tests your skills against your Facebook friends’ in typical fashion, showing their high scores as special Flapples for you to eat and blow past. The more you play, the more goodies you unlock to upgrade your pig’s abilities.

PopCap says that this version of Pig Up is just a beta test, and that the final version will have some differences. But it seems awfully polished to me. Give it a try and see if you agree!

Pig Up by PopCap

You are looking at a Facebook “Like” button made of LEGO bricks. But this is no ordinary MOC. This particular LEGO creation is hardwired to Facebook and has LED lights on the inside. The result is the LikeLight — a device that lights up every time someone clicks on the “Like” link on a particular Facebook page.

It can be made to work for any Facebook page; at the time of this writing, it’s apparently wired into Lil Wayne’s page. The device was made by an ad agency called Red Pepper, as a social media experiment, using an Arduino microcontroller, an Ethernet connection, and some simple PHP code. I’m not sure what the real-life applications are for something like this… I suppose it could be a nifty conversation piece in a bricks-and-mortar store or restaurant, constantly blinking whenever a customer Likes that business.

For ages, it’s been rumored that Google was planning a social network to rival Facebook, since Facebook has radically changed the way so many of us use the web. Google has finally unveiled its next big thing, but it’s not a social network at all. It’s more of a “social search” function built into its popular search engine results.

“Google +1” is a direct competitor to Facebook’s ever-present “Like” button, and you can try it out right now. It hasn’t been implemented for all users yet, but if you opt in to Google +1, you can mark the websites you like best. When one of your Google friends or contacts (via Google Profiles) runs a similar search, they’ll see your +1 likes as a sort of personal advice/recommendation. (You have to have a public Profile to activate the +1 feature.) It adds a more social aspect to web search, and it makes a whole lot of sense once you see it in practice.

It remains to be seen if Google +1 will be able to successfully compete with Facebook’s Like button, since Facebook has such a huge head start. But like Facebook, Google is expected to have its +1 button showing up on other webpages (like the one you’re reading now), paid ads, and lots more.

Speaking of digestible bites…
…A team of scientists and culinary students produced edible printed objects using pureed foodstuffs instead of printer ink. While I’m not really sure what this means for our foodie future, aside perhaps from edible menus as automatic appetizers (bread baskets are so 2010), they’re printing up a veritable feast with chocolate, cheese, scallops, turkey, hummus and celery on the menu.

And in more printing news…
…A doctor has figured out a way to print new organs. Admittedly, I’m struggling to wrap my mind around this one. His research has thus far centered on printed kidneys. Comparing the process to baking a cake while printing a kidney on the TED stage, in essence a scan creates the image of the kidney to be replaced, while an accompanying tissue sample allows the printer to reproduce layer upon layer of kidney matter. The end result will, if perfected, be a functioning kidney – as of now there’s controversy as to whether or not the result is simply a kidney-shaped mold. Clearly this could have an enormous impact on organ transplants.

No food, no sleep, no potty breaks…
…Because Dragon Age II has launched in the US. The highly-anticipated game, which features a non-linear storyline and a crapload of dialog just like its predecessor, focuses on the tale of a predetermined character (as opposed to Origins PC customization). RPG aficionados can look forward to a month – or more – of solid gameplay to eclipse all other concerns in life.

Up, up and away…
…although I must say I can’t imagine the idea taking off anytime soon (no pun intended, of course). A National Geographic crew has created a replica of the house featured in the movie Up! for their new television series How Hard Can It Be?. While the concept of an actual house that flies under power of an actual bunch of helium balloons is pretty neat, for a great many obvious reasons it lacks any practicality whatsoever. But could it signal ideas for a future that takes “sky rise” to a whole new level?

Skype me, baybee…
…and on Facebook, no less. It could be that you’ll soon be able to launch a Skype video call to a Facebook friend. Rumors have it that Skype and Facebook have resumed their talks for a potential partnership. Keen Skypers have likely noticed that since Skype 5.0′s release it’s been possible to voice call Facebook friends, but video has remained missing, due to the two companies’ inability to reach an agreement…yet.

There’s no escaping the Angry Birds, or their rivals the green pigs. Even if you don’t have access to one of the eight platforms the game is currently available for — which include iOS, Windows, and PlayStation 3 — anyone with an Internet connection will soon be able to join in the wildly popular puzzler, thanks to a version that’s in the works for Facebook.

Angry Birds is no longer just a simple downloadable game. It’s an empire boasting more than 75 million downloads, allowing Rovio to achieve something few downloadable titles ever do: a prominent place in pop culture. More versions of the flagship game are in production, including Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare versions, and there’s been talk of a cartoon show for TV. Rovio today unleashed the first two of 4 animated shorts based on the Bird characters. Conan O’Brien recently played a life-sized version of the game on his TBS show.

The just-announced Facebook game will be based on the original, but tweaked for social media audiences. Much like Bejeweled was distilled down to a one-minute, free-to-play Facebook version called Bejeweled Blitz, Rovio’s Angry Birds will get some new aspects such as beefing up the villainous pigs’ role.

Meanwhile, Rovio plans to keep building its franchise with plans in the works for other games that star the titular Birds, a la Nintendo’s use of Mario in numerous titles. The company has suggested that a racing game and a sports game are among the possibilities.

Anytime you build a franchise out of something that’s this big of a hit, you risk over-saturation. Do you think Angry Birds is in danger of surpassing that point of critical mass? Or does the Facebook version sound like fun?

FAIL: Doing Your Homework
…which is precisely what the Department of Homeland Security failed to do when it yanked some 84,000 sites offline during a massive Internet raid for child pornography and counterfeit goods. To be fair, they got it right with a whopping 10 sites which deserved that increasingly infamous DHS seizure image. But the 84,000 which did not have received little to no acknowledgment of the fairly substantial “oopsy”. The problem came when DHS seized the entire domain of DNS provider FreeDNS. For the most part the problem has been fixed, so all is once again well. Except for the lack of a simple “our bad” for the inconvenience.

WIN: Trivial AI
In case you missed the headlines, Watson wiped the floor with two Jeopardy contestants, ending the three day tournament with $77,147 (the human contestants, two of the best in the show’s history, racked up $24,000 and $21,600). Who’s Watson? It’s IBM’s stupidly expensive trivia computer named after the company’s founder Thomas J. Watson. Watson’s mechanisms are unique; it answers questions based on the nuances of human language rather than keyword searches like you’d expect from the AI behind Google. Watson’s database of journals, newspapers and other reference sources was scanned based on questions typed while Alex Trebek spoke them aloud, and Watson buzzed in if it was confident its answer was correct. Of course, it’s not the first time IBM’s tried to prove that AI pwns humanity – their Deep Blue project in 1997 was a major step forward. But what’s the point? Watson’s technology could someday be answering your customer service questions – and let’s face it. Watson can’t be much worse than the average customer service we receive from most major companies now.

FAIL: Perspective
It’s Facebook, people. It’s not life or death. And if it makes you feel uncomfortable, stop using it. But according to a Scottish study, Facebook users with many friends are more likely to feel anxiety about using the site – whether it’s performance pressure or some form of social anxiety wasn’t exactly clear. The bulk of the study concentrated on how the study respondents felt about the in’s and out’s of maintaining a friends list – such as angst over rejecting a friend request. But a large number of respondents also reported feeling anxiety about not checking the site regularly to keep up with their news feed. Given that the study focused on students, doesn’t it seem like they should have more important things to feel anxious about?

FAIL: Free Software
News picked up this week that Microsoft’s license for anyone distributing Windows or Xbox-related software through their version of Apple’s App Store is decidedly anti-open source. So much so that one developer and Red Hat employee has decreed on his blog that Microsoft is clearly against free software. My question is…is this really a surprise to anyone?

WIN: Stardust
No, not the Ziggy variety (because Ziggy Stardust is always a win). Mission Stardust-NeXT, or New EXploration of Tempel-1, brought the Stardust probe on its closest swing to comet Tempel-1, making it the first time a comet has been revisited. And Stardust swooped in at an impressive 10.6 kilometers per second, one of the fastest probes in history. The point? Perhaps boring to laymen; Stardust was busy taking measurements of the dust in the comet’s coma. As the comet and Stardust are 209 million miles from Earth, it takes a full 18 minutes for Stardust’s results to be received. Why is it a win? Well, why not? It’s human ingenuity at its best. Onward and upward, NASA.

WIN: Medieval Machinery
In the “creative usage of archaic weaponry” category we have Mexican drug dealers winning this week with the application of a catapult to sail marijuana across the border between Mexico and Arizona. The 3 yard tall catapult is capable of launching 4.4 pounds of weed at a time. Catapults aren’t just for little people flinging pumpkins anymore, folks.

FAIL: Spammers
Facebook means business when it comes to penalizing spammers who exploit, hack and otherwise annoy their way into the social networking giant’s vast user base. This was evidenced in a recent court ruling that has spammer Philip Porembski owing Facebook a cool $360,500,000 in damages following a phishing attack that sent 7.2 million spam messages across the site. The messages mostly lead to sites designed to phish login credentials from users, though there were also messages that contained links that earned Porembski money every time they were clicked. Somehow I doubt it was $360,500,000 worth of earnings, however, so Facebook may face an uphill battle to see even a fraction of its winnings. Facebook claims 4,500 people deactivated their accounts due to Porembski’s spam.

WIN: Cooperation
After Egypt shut off access to the Internet this week, a French ISP set up a dial-up network Egyptians can use to reach the Internet. The non-profit ISP, French Data Network, allows anyone with an analog phone and international long distance capabilities to dial in to +33 1 72 89 01 50 with login username & password both “toto” (sans quotes).

FAIL: Saving Throw
This week a court ruled that Dungeons & Dragons threatens prison security by encouraging gang-like behavior. The Dungeon Master, doling out directions to players, is akin to a gang boss, according to people actually responsible for our safety and well being. Goblins everywhere are sleeping more soundly tonight courtesy of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

An aside…
As an aside, I’d like to take a moment to mention the 25th anniversary of the explosion of the shuttle Challenger, which was honored with memorials on Friday. 73 seconds was the total duration of the ill-fated flight, the story of which we all know well. As I was a school child who stayed home to watch the launch, the images will be forever burned into my memory. Even in the wake of the disaster I proudly told anyone who asked that I wanted to be an astronaut – perhaps even moreso for having seen the dangers of manned spaceflight in living color. May the Challenger heroes and all the heroes who’ve given their lives for the advancement of mankind beyond this blue planet rest in peace.

The White House will be utilizing the social aspects of Twitter and YouTube in particular to complement the President’s State of the Union Address. Senior administrative officials in the Obama administration will field questions from Twitter users after the speech, while later in the week Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will also do a question and answer session on the microblogging giant.

The climax of the White House’s State of the Union social media campaign will be a live question and answer video session with President Obama on YouTube.

Injecting a dose of spirituality into the matter was Pope Benedict XVI, who acknowledged that new technologies are allowing Christians to spread the gospel and to connect with others in an ever-expanding variety of ways. He also urged Christian social networkers to maintain a Christian presence online. He warned specifically against creating fake profiles to achieve popularity or settle some matter of ego. (Shamefully, we’re now headed to MySpace to delete our 78 faux Steven Seagal profiles.)

What does this all mean? Probably nothing. Unless a sudden influx of political enthusiasts and/or idle patriots floods Twitter this week, or unless Facebook surges with new Christian profiles in the wake of the Pope’s declarations, we can be fairly sure that these novel events are precisely that: novel events, of not much lasting consequence in terms of the member base of any social media site. After all, hundreds of millions of users are already on Facebook, which is in and of itself beyond a household name – if not a household obsession. Twitter is already processing over 1 billion tweets per month from users all over the globe. It may tickle people to see the President and the Pope on the new media bandwagon, but it’s entirely likely said people will already be wired into social activities online.

But, if nothing else, the endorsement of social networking from the Pontiff and the usage of same by the President will reaffirm the usefulness of social media in connecting people with a common interest or cause. Which is something that should be, given the fact that “social networking” is social by nature, self-evident. However, it’s entirely easy to get lost in the sea of solo status updates and forget that some of the strongest features of social networking involve interacting with others – even some pretty powerful folks, who are coming around.

FAIL: Job Security
Again. This seems to be a recurring theme in our weekly updates. Perhaps, given the economy and the fickle nature of the Internet, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see 47% of MySpace’s employees sacked this week. It’s even less of a surprise since, at least to me, MySpace’s decline has been fairly evident for some time. 500 employees lost their jobs, but MySpace CEO Mike Jones was quick to assure the media the firings “were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product”. Those who made the cut? Mostly developers. According to survivors, virtually every other role was axed.

WIN: AMBER Alerts
This week Facebook partnered with the AMBER Alert program to allow users to sign up for AMBER Alert bulletins to be delivered directly to their news feeds. The AMBER Alert program has recovered some 525 children safely, but approximately 800,000 children go missing every year. With Facebook reporting a member base of over 500 million, it can’t hurt to have that kind of exposure.

WIN: Sex on Mars
The Journal of Cosmology‘s recent publication about a privately-funded manned mission to Mars included a chapter on sex and reproduction on the Red Planet. Sex in space is a subject that’s been given little scientific treatment hitherto, but Dr. Rhawn Joseph, author of the “Sex on Mars” chapter of the report, insists there would be many conditions, particularly social pressure, that push Mars colonists into having sex with the intention of conceiving. He also proposes infants born on Mars would be different than babies born on Earth due to environmental variables, and that it would only take a few generations for an entirely new species to develop. Which brings to mind a publicly-funded endeavour, Pioneer One, an ongoing low-budget television show about a youth born on Mars who comes to Earth under mysterious circumstances. Despite occasional moments of dubious accents and a fair bit of camera instability, the show is worth a watch, which can be done free via its web site.

FAIL: Wetting Yourself
No, this isn’t a fetish item. More a reference to intense fear, something WikiLeaks’ revelations caused a Florida trailer park resident who was so traumatized by what he read on the infamous site that he’s suing Julian Assange for a host of alleged offenses, from terrorism to treason to just plain “he scared the $%@# out of me”. I do feel badly for the Floridian in question, but I can’t help but think the depression, anxiety and hypertension he’s accusing WikiLeaks of inspiring in him might have also been created by, you know, an Ed Wood movie. Kudos to him, however, for having the balls to make very public accusations against an organization that, if it flexed the collective muscles of its staunch and equally infamous supporters, might make Rambo piss himself, too.

WIN: STS-133
NASA released a “no really, this time we mean it” statement announcing the new launch date for Discovery’s final mission, STS-133. Of course, nobody can fault NASA for pushing the launch back, and back, and back, due to pesky problems that made it not quite worth the risk. That’s why today’s announcement is a win. For those of us enthusiastic about the space program every launch day is like Christmas, and this time we get another shot at festive joy on February 24th. Bonus: the mission will carry the first ever human-like robot into space, R2 aka Robonaut, who’ll tweet from the International Space Station to @AstroRobonaut. Unfortunately STS-133 is one of the last 2 shuttle missions to be flown before the fleet is retired completely, so it will be tinged with sorrow that even a totally awesome microblogging robot cannot erase.

Gerry Mckay took the idea a whole step further by designing a Twitter and Facebook special edition of Superstars. Both version have a complete style guide with colors, fonts, laces, logo and slogans. If you are an Adidas fan and like Twitter or Facebook these concept photos will leave you wanting one.

Blue is my favorite color, and if the Facebook Superstar was real I would buy it for the color only. Back in high-school I owned two Superstars the original black striped one and a light blue striped one not much unlike the Twitter Superstar blue.

This concept made me think why large brands like Adidas and Nike aren’t closing deals with popular social networks. In an era were kids grow up with internet totally integrated in their life, I wouldn’t be surprised if they bought shoes and clothes branded by their favorites online “hang out”.

I remember in high-school when Michael Jordan was the sport icon, lots of guys wore the Air Jordan sneakers. Now that being a geek is more a pro then a con unlike a few years ago, I say bring on the geek branded clothes and shoes.

Here’s the list in reverse order.

1. Admitting that you like iTunes
2. Not knowing the difference between binary and hexadecimal
3. Not knowing what MMORPG stands for
4. Loving your cable or telecom company
5. Not knowing the name of the book that Blade Runner was based on
6. Confusing Star Wars and Star Trek
7. Believing the “free” in open source refers to price
8. Defending Facebook for its privacy transgressions
9. Taking something into Geek Squad to get fixed
10. Buying a paper computer book at Barnes & Noble

So what will happen to you if you ever admit to committing one of these sins?  Let’s just say that it is a good thing that I am not a card-carrying geek.  One sin and your geek creds are put at risk.  Two sins and your card gets revoked.

Now I will not put anyone on the spot by asking you to make confessions, but hey, if you want to share, why not? ;)

Photo via happyeclair

The man who once promised to “make you his b*tch” (with Daikatana, a game so bad it couldn’t even make you its meter maid), has released his latest game, and it’s one of those painfully cute Facebook social games in the same vein as Farmville.

It’s called Ravenwood Fair, and Romero built it in just 2 months alongside eight employees of LOLapps, a company that exclusively makes Facebook games. (Other games in LOLapps portfolio include Garden Life and Critter Island. Combined, LOLapps boasts 150 million active users every month.) Romero is best remembered as being the co-creator of id Software’s first roster of first-person shooters like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. If you see a disconnect here between the dark, Hellspawn-infested dungeons of those 3D shooters and the cabbage patch sensibilities of a social gaming app… you’re not alone.

But consider it from an business point of view: as a consultant for LOLapps, Romero was able to invest just two months of work in this Facebook app which, if it proves as successful as Farmville, could breed endless ongoing revenues for himself and LOLapps via the vast amount of casual users that play Facebook games — an amount which drastically outweighs the number of traditional MMO players in the world. Should Ravenwood Fair become a hit, Romero intends to continue updating it over time with additional levels and more of the game’s ongoing storyline. If the game doesn’t catch on, Romero’s not out very much time or investment. It’s an easy bet.

I’m curious to know what longtime gamers think. Is Romero onto something here? Should more “serious” game developers jump on the social gaming bandwagon? Or is Romero slumming in the doldrums, lowering his standards to make an easy buck?

That’s what graphic designer Robert Penney did, and he came up with the 1984 version of THE social network of today. Check out the image below.

You might want to click on the image for a larger view, although it really does put some strain on the eyes. Then again, what can you expect from a computer display back in 1984? Penney described this project:

Personal project imagining a how Facebook would have looked on an old fashioned computer in 1984, using a pixelated DOS-style font and a heavy use of texture, lighting and reflection. The ‘Home’ screen displays various updates from users which relate to the time period. For example, note ‘updated via Analog Motorola‘ instead of an iPhone or Blackberry.

I like the first status update – “George Orwell must be embarrassed now it’s finally 1984!” (I think I shall look for an e-book of that and read it again.)

There are probably inconsistencies here, but hey, all for fun, right? Tell me, what do you think of Penney’s rendition of Facebook decades before its time? Would you have spent as much time on it as you are doing so now? ;)

The view the complete analysis of Zynga, an infographic created by Infographiclabs, head over to The Blog Herald.

The movie is due to be released in October, and in July, we saw the full trailer of The Social Network. Here it is, in case you didn’t get to see it.

I have to admit – in spite of the overly dramatic treatment, the trailer makes the movie seem interesting.

This is not the main reason for this post, though. The release of the full trailer spawned other “trailers” of movies about social networks. Some people have a lot of time on their hands, and the temptation of poking more fun at Facebook (in spite of or because of its popularity, you tell me) is just too big to resist.

“The Twit Network” is my favorite – as the title says, it is Rated Awesome!

It latches on to the drama of the original but makes it so hilarious that you can’t help but want the movie to be real. That should make for a good background movie on a night of geeky revelry.

Here’s another “trailer,” this time of MySpace. I don’t really use my MySpace account, but this video about the “other” social network will introduce you to Tom, the guy who built his own empire. It’s not as well-crafted as the other two videos, but you can’t leave MySpace out of the picture.

And that, folks, is what happens when you make movies of people like Mark Zuckerberg. So tell me, are you going to watch The Social Network?

I have a very strict morning routine. 6:00 am hits the clock and I pivot out of the bed to my right, put my feet on the floor, and grab my iPhone with my right hand. Once I disconnect it from the wall, I go through my ritual: e-mail, Facebook, Twitter. Then I get up, feed the dogs, and I go on about my day.

Since I got my iPhone 4, I’ve noticed that Twitter loads slower from my iPhone. I’m not sure if it’s the official Twitter app or the iPhone itself, but it’s irritating. When it comes time to load up a pic or two, it seems to take forever, which makes me frustrated. Not a good way to start your day.

Just the other day, I discovered a page on Facebook dedicated to this addictive game – Tetris Jewelry. These colorful pendants are really cute. Whether you’re at the beach or out in town, they will suit you just fine.

If you change the necklace, you can even wear this piece for a not-so-informal party!

They also have some Tetris rings, which ought to be great conversation pieces – not to mention that they will look great with practically anything.

Guys, before you scoff and discount this page altogether, you ought to know that they also feature items that are designed specially for you!

Check out this Tetris pendant for men. I think it looks pretty cool, doesn’t it? Even if that’s not the final product, I can just imagine how it would look finished.

Of course, it’s not all about jewelry either. Basically, this Facebook page seems to be dedicated to anyone who cannot ignore the allure of the video game. The best thing about social networks? You can interact with other likeminded individuals. Why don’t you check Tetris Jewelry out for yourself and get to know other Tetris enthusiasts from all over the world? You never know just what you might find.

So anyway, this time, a book has been published about Facebook – if not exactly about Mark Zuckerberg. (I just now realized how his last name can take on an entirely different meaning if the first letter was pronounced differently…)

The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (Simon & Schuster, 372 pages, $26), is written by David Kirkpatrick and takes on a more meaningful approach to the story that surrounds Facebook. Unlike the movie, the book doesn’t limit itself to how Facebook was founded or how Mark Zuckerberg was a klutzy geek way back when.

Still, it seems that journalist David Kirkpatrick did quite well in making the birth of Facebook exciting, which I am sure it was anyway. For example, did you know that Zuckerberg received $10 million – anonymously – four months after the site was launched?

The book also takes on a more interesting topic: how the social network has impacted the lives of people around the world – that includes all of us, who probably do not go a day without Facebooking. See, the noun has even become a verb!

So Mark Zuckerberg may not be our favorite guy, but I think that I just might get my hands on this book. I’m a bit short on reading material anyway. Interested?

Mark Zuckerberg rose to fame when, at the age of 23, he founded the most popular social networking site today – Facebook. Who doesn’t know about Facebook? Who is not on Facebook? Heck, even my in-laws have a Facebook account!

Anyhow, with popularity comes controversy, and Zuckerberg has gotten more than his share – probably rightly so. Certain changes in the settings of Facebook has riled up many people, worst of all the privacy settings.

With this movie in the works, though, it looks like Zuckerberg is about to taste a dose of his own medicine. While he is scrambling for ways to alleviate the fears (and the ire) of the hundreds of millions of Facebook users, the screenplay of the movie of his life – albeit an exaggerated version of it – has leaked. Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, it portrays him as an insecure sex addict. How worse can it get?

The movie is being produced by Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher. As for what Zuckerberg thinks about the movie? He has been silent so far.

People may poke fun at him all they want, but he IS worth $4 billion. At the end of the day, this insecure geek just might have the last laugh after all.

And while Facebook introduced about a billion “Like” button according to their own sayings the Facebook Wall is still one big stream of data. There is no way to organize all incoming feeds on your Wall into categories to keep a clear summary of everything.

This is where the “Like Button” website comes in handy. Developed by Facebook but under another domain. You get an overview of all mayor websites like CNN, New York Times, Mashable, Tech Crunch etc. And the site automatically detects if you are logged in to Facebook and lists your Friends that have liked something on those website.

You can chose to view the sites per categories like News, Information Games, Entertainment, etc. Or you can add your own custom site, for example Forevergeek and it will list your friends who liked it and the most shared entries with the count of people who have shared it. You can see how I blurred three people, those appeared on the list because they are on my friends list and they “Liked” something from YouTube. Beneath them you get YouTube’s most shared videos.

You can choose “Custom” from the drop down list and add your own websites you want to keep track off. I added Forevergeek, YouTube and Vimeo which the latter two being ones that are shared a lot by my Facebook friends. If you have a website of your own and have implemented the “Like” button this would be a simple way to add all those websites and keep track of its Facebook popularity.

I’m definitely bookmarking Like Button and making it part of my daily website viewing. And while my Facebook friends start sharing more websites I’ll keep adding the ones they share the most to keep a clear summary and have a quick overview of what they are currently interested in.

Follow the developer Zach Allia on Twitter to keep up to date with developing. According to this tweet there is a big update coming out tomorrow, I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

I am now currently addicted to Hotel City, another time management Facebook game app. Augh, when will this madness end!

Hotel City is pretty similar to Restaurant City or Cafe World, except that you are taking care of a Hotel. You can hire friends  as your staff and you can decorate every room of your hotel, from the furniture to the wallpaper.

What I like about Hotel City:

• It needs less maintenance compared to other games like Farmville or Cafe World. While the other games require you to track multiple crops, dishes or employees, Hotel City only requires you to take note of when the shift of ALL your employees end. You can actually let them work for 24 hours straight (woohoo slave driver!), so basically, you only need to log in once a day in Hotel City
• Hotel City is very light on the system even though it’s a flash-based app. I noticed that every time I load Cafe World or Restaurant City my laptop (I’m using a MacBook Pro), the temperature of my mac would start climbing up to 68C from 61C
• It doesn’t eat up a lot of your time since you have the option to log in every 24 hours. But if you’re meticulous about decorating each and every room of your hotel, well, that’s another story.

Right now, the game is at its beta stage so be patient if you encounter a few bugs and errors every now and then!

Oh, here’s a tip on how to make money in Hotel City: remember to visit all your friends hotels, especially for the first time because you get a +1000 first time visit gold bonus per friend. Plus, a friend might be hiding a bag of gold in their hotel!

Play the Game: Hotel City