Offbeat posts

Things that we take for granted can be challenging in zero gravity. Take cutting your finger nails, for instance. It’s something that few people think about as a challenge. In space, they can be floating projectiles that end up in astronauts’ eyes, inhaled, or otherwise embedded where they do not belong. The answer – suction. If you can stand watching someone else trim their nails, here’s a video from the quirky Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield as he demonstrates the complications of this mundane task in space. …

Americans crave football and appreciate a positive customer service experience. They pay, on average, about $100 a year for sports programming. Seventy-three percent of U.S. males and 55 percent of females watch football. How do they get their football fix? Sixty percent watch NFL football on television sets, and eight percent catch games on their computers. Twenty-seven percent of Americans watch between six and ten hours of football per week during the NFL season. The cable industry is thriving—it raked in 97.6 billion in revenue last year alone. So, how do consumers feel about the customer…

Iron Man 3 opens the 2013 summer blockbuster season on May 3rd. This season (as with a few in the past decade) appears to be loaded with geek-favoring titles that should keep the trend of Hollywood success going strong this summer, but one does not have to wait four months to get their geeky fix in at the cinema. Here are 12 movies due out over the next few months to keep us occupied until summer.   Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters January 25 Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton play the grown up variations of the child heroes. They got their taste of witch blood early. Now they’ve taken their skills to a…

This image perfectly sums up some pretty good and relevant comebacks as what the mushrooms stand for within Nintendo Mario games. The red and white mushroom will make you grow bigger and the green and white mushroom will give you an extra life. …

Google Authorship has been around for a while. It has helped many bloggers and journalists stand out by having their images appear directly in search results next to the articles they publish. It highlights the number of people that have them in their Google+ circles and gives a link to other writings by the author. This is nothing new. Google AuthorRank has been given much speculation for about a year now. The idea is simple – Google will give higher rankings to those who have demonstrated expertise in a particular field. If someone is prolific at writing about a subject and their writing is well…

It’s getting more difficult all the time to blow the minds of kids today. They’re more computer literate before hitting junior high than most of their parents. Toddlers can work an iPad before they can tie their shoe. The graphics on video games and movies are real enough to fool the eye (something we tested recently with Skyrim and Facebook). 3D was big for a few minutes in 2010, then faded into obscurity. The technology was the big thing at CES 2010 and was barely represented at all at this year’s CES. In 1953, St. John Pubications released something that blew the minds of kids and adults alike. 3D had…

Now this is a story all about how… CDZA co-founder, Joe Sabia turns one of the most popular 90s sitcom theme songs into a geeky yet admirable experiment. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was the first memorable moment when we were introduced to the actor Will Smith, and created a theme song that is recognizable by the masses, but would you still recognize the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song in another language? Would it even mean the same transferred from another language back into English? …

Do you remember who won CNET’s “Best of CES” award last year? Probably not. What you likely will remember is who should have but didn’t win it this year, thanks to a boneheaded PR move by CBS. The parent company of CNET is in heated litigation with Hopper, the Dish Network service that allows users to skip past commercials. It has been deemed dangerous and potentially illegal by just about every major television network as it promotes an technology that cuts off their revenue stream. When CNET’s editorial team voted that Hopper would get the top prize, CBS brass reacted swiftly, saying that the litigation…

Some of you may have caught the Golden Globes last night on television and perhaps enjoyed the hosts more than the nominations or winners even. One of the nominations was for the well-known musical turned movie Les Miserable. As with any traditional media having the ability to change a mistake once printed is a lot harder than it would be to correct an online image or a tweet. The movie critics fair this movie well but let’s hope they get it better than this newspaper did. …

Everyone knows about Google’s search domination. Most are aware of their foray into social media and other internet-based engagements. Some know that they’ve ventured into hardware with driverless cars, nifty glasses, and various attempts at computers. What many do not realize is that Google is deeply embedded into renewable energy and has just invested in their 10th green venture, bringing the total to 10 with investments over $1 billion. Their $200 million stake in Spinning Spur in the Texas panhandle makes 5 wind projects to match their 5 solar projects. They now have investments that…