The former Jordan Roseman, raised in rural Iowa and schooled on a diet of 70s disco and 80s Depeche Mode and OMD that he tried to crank out on his Apple II computer, probably should prepare himself for some much-deserved fame right about now. He might also think about leaving his job as DJ at many of the hot locations in the city. Read the rest of this entry »

The Plaid Mystery

I don’t think there’s a quick explanation for it, but what is up with so much red plaid everywhere? Honestly, it can’t just be about the holiday season and the obvious red color scheme because this has been around for much of the year. And while this is a completely unscientific observation, I think I have a few hunches as to why this bold print seems to linger, and probably will so, even after we all take down our Christmas trees and store our ornaments from this holiday season. Read the rest of this entry »

Funny, when I go to McDonald’s, it’s usually for fast (emphasis on “fast”) food—a quick burger, fries, drink. Nothing special, really. But did you know you could also linger around, open up your laptop and surf the web as you stuffed your mouth with Chicken McNuggets and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches?

Well, at approximately 11,000 (out of 14,000)  Mickey D’s around the country, you can get this Wifi service, except that it will cost you a little less than the #1 (Big Mac) meal deal –a whopping $2.95 for two hours of access time. That’s just enough time to linger at a McDonald’s perhaps without people thinking you have no life. But why pay for this service? Why not go to a place like Starbucks, or even park outside and access what is essentially free Wifi access, as long as you have some kind AT&T phone service? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long time coming.  Finally, after 50 years of enduring nationwide noise pollution, the House passed a bill yesterday that would turn down the volume on loud television advertisements.  There’s even a cutesy acronym slapped onto the act:  Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, or CALM. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the main US trade show for cars, held next month in Detroit at the North American Auto Show, Los Angeles holds an annual display, bringing together many new models and concept vehicles for the public to see.

Overall, the show at the LA Convention Center is important for the volume of cars held in three cavernous halls. And even if Detroit still rules supreme because it attracts the world media for the occasional “world” debuts and the annual announcements of the cars of the year, LA is still a pretty fine show.

Here are some of the more impressive new models that I saw last weekend: Read the rest of this entry »

Along with Entertainment Weekly I celebrate the weekly wonder that is Jane Lynch, who plays the balls-to-wall coach on one of this year’s most vibrant new TV shows, “Glee”. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week’s trifecta of tacky behavior –Joe Wilson, in a historic first, heckling the President before a formal address to Congress, Serena Williams screaming expletives and threats at a line-judge at match point at the US Open, and a drunk Kanye West grabbing the mike from winner Taylor Swift at the MTV VMAs—was a strangely aligned set of events that have underlined what many have suspected about social civility in the US: it is rapidly withering away. Read the rest of this entry »

(More) Cash For Clunkers

By all accounts, the federal “Cash for Clunkers” program, launched this week, has been a success. Many Americans have flocked to car dealerships across the country in hopes of turning in their heaps for a rebate of up to $4500 towards the purchase of more efficient car. That’s the hope of the new program. We’re being told that this spending incentive will not only spur the economy out of its miserable recession, but also help reduce the carbon footprint in our car-obsessed society. Read the rest of this entry »

Namechk is a useful site that allows its users to find out if their favorite username or vanity url has been taken on just about every social networking site known to man (80+).

How it works: Go to the site, type your standard Internet moniker, and Namechk will quickly search and find if your “johnnyfortran8″ is available to use on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Vox and many others.

On the flip side, if you’re in the final stages of erasing your name and presence from the Internet in an attempt to Become Web Dead, you can use the service as a means to verify that you’ve actually wiped clean all of your accounts — even the obligatory services you signed up for in an attempt to get that one piece of information you couldn’t live without. Give it a shot. Read the rest of this entry »

The Barrier is Broken: A Sub $100 Blu-ray Player

So now we finally have it.  For all of you HD movie aficionados who’ve been holding out on buying a Blu-ray player in the hope that the psychological $100 price barrier would be broken:  your day has come. Read the rest of this entry »

Bringing you the latest news in the wall-to-wall coverage of the death of the King of Pop, we’d like to let you know what stories are obsessing not just the celebu-tainment fluff programs like “Extra” and “The Insider” (damn you, Lara Spencer!), but also the legit news organizations like CNN and MSNBC that have worked themselves into a frenzied lather with the incessant “Breaking News” news crawls or bloated panels of experts. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s in a Name?

Not too terribly much according to the folks in Nokia’s R & D Department.

Or, perhaps the technological mavens at our favorite Finnish phone manufacturer feel that their handsets transcend the pedestrian markings of a common name, and prefer instead to assign a string of ones and zeros to their beloved mobile multimedia devices.

*Update 7-13-09* Nokia is launching the “Surge” Smartphone!!

But for many, a high-end cell or smart phone is an object of desire.  It would be virtually impossible to deny that on the whole, we see devices like these as extensions of ourselves — we customize our ring tones with our favorite songs, substitute our original face plates with ones that offer a bit more pizazz, and install applications that reflect our contrasting lifestyles and personalities, and to top it off, we buy lavish accessories that further increase the appeal and functionality of our devices.

Yes, the stuff of dreams.  But who dreams of numbers? Read the rest of this entry »

Uber-Twit Ashton Kutcher, occasionally outraged global citizen, took to sending a Tweet yesterday to all 2 million-plus other Twits that follow his every move and utterance. He is apparently livid at the brutal prison sentence handed down on Sunday to American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee by the North Korean government. Ling and Lee, who both work for Current TV, based in San Francisco, were captured and arrested on March 17 for, in North Korea’s view, crossing illegally into its territory. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Wii first arrived on the gaming scene, there were countless stories about how users were enthusiastically hurling their controllers at their new HDTVs with reckless abandon.  We also heard of the horrors where countless, dedicated Nintendo fanboys would find themselves  in the ER or end up bed-ridden due to physical pain as a result of the unique (and very physical) nature of the console’s fun stick.

Read the rest of this entry »

In our cruel, clinical and impersonal world, where we no longer communicate with each other in person and rely on IMs and Blackberrys to convey our emotions, may we present to you the glorious examples that are Tarra and Bella. These are animals, not humans. Read the rest of this entry »

It was hard not to be overcome with emotion while watching the star-studded “We Are One” inauguration celebration from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington yesterday. No need to bear the harsh elements mind you, we all watched it in the comfort of our living rooms (thanks, HBO, for the free viewing). And it was a stirring spectacle from start to finish. Bruce Springsteen singing “The Rising”, accompanied by a legion of gospel singers, Garth Brooks doing a rousing medley of “American Pie”, “Shout” and “We Shall Be Free”, Usher and Shakira holding their own alongside Stevie Wonder for a spunky “Higher Ground”, etc. And it was hard not to tear up when Bono of U2 sang about “Early morning, April 4/The shots rang out/In the Memphis sky” during “Pride (In the Name of Love)” on the day before we celebrate what would have been the 80th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King and two days before his ultimate legacy is finally sworn in as President of “this great land”, as Bono said. “This isn’t even my land”, he continued, but clearly he and his band members were honored, along with a host of others, to be able to take part in history and really live this momentous occasion. Read the rest of this entry »