Author: Serkadis

“This will be the most important thing I’ve ever done” – Steve Jobs, referring to the soon-to-be-launched Apple Tablet.

We haven’t heard this first hand, but we’ve heard it multiple times second and third hand from completely independent sources. Senior Apple execs and friends of Jobs are telling people that he’s about as excited about the upcoming Apple Tablet as he’s ever been. Coming from the man who has created so much, that’s saying something.

If Steve Jobs thinks the iPhone was just a warm up act to this device, I can’t wait to see what it can do. As if our expectations weren’t already set high enough. We’ll all know a lot more this Wednesday.

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One of the most interesting things about Foursquare is the local venue deals offered through the service. Unfortunately, the only way to find them is either to check-in to a place at or near where one of the deals is, or to check out Foursquare’s Businesses page, which just has a huge list of all their deals in every city. But now there’s a better way built using Yahoo Pipes.

Arthur Klepchukov implemented a pipe which simply takes the Foursquare Businesses page and runs it through some filters to get at the new deals in certain cities. As you can see, in Klepchukov’s version, he’s just looking for new deals in Oakland, Berkley, and Emoryville. But since it’s built with Yahoo Pipes, anyone can take it and easily plug in any city they wish to monitor.

It makes some sense that Foursquare wouldn’t more clearly promote which deals are going on where — after all, most venues probably don’t want everyone in a city trying to take advantage of the deal (much like any other form of coupon). But this information can be very useful to people in various cities trying to decide where to go for lunch, for example.

And with the number of these deals quickly increasing in a number of cities, it’s not a bad idea to track them so you don’t miss the really good ones. After all, everyone love free beer.

[photo: flickr/Schlüsselbein2007]

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You’re nobody til somebody kills you on the Net: Oscar-nominated star Johnny Depp is the latest celebrity to die an early death at the hands of online rumors.

According to the unconfirmed reports, the Kentucky-born Depp died in a car-crash near the port city of Bordeaux in France early Sunday. The hoax apparently started via a fake news story — hosted on Angelfire.com — which was made to appear as an actual CNN story. This fake web page also has a picture of brutally crashed car presumed to be one Johnny, 46, was traveling in.

The Depp Death Hoax gained prominence thanks to the social networking and micro blogging site Twitter, where “RIP Johnny Depp” has been a trending topic for much of the day.

“But it’s tied down to AT&T…” Those may be words that you’ll never hear again when it comes to the iPhone. Now, it’s not written in stone just yet, but one of Hot Hardware’s inside sources feels very confident that AT&T will lose its iPhone exclusivity during Apple’s big announcement this week. If this is true, coupled with an announcement / beta release of iPhone 4.0, Apple’s iPhone sales could skyrocket — especially since some people have avoided the iPhone like the plague strictly because of AT&T. Where will the iPhone go? Will there be an unlocked version available? We’re not quite sure, but we’ll find out soon as it’s shaping up to be a big week for Apple with a tablet announcement, iPhone 4.0 and now possibly the iPhone may finally be unshackled from AT&T’s grip. One thing to consider, however, is that if AT&T loses its exclusivity this Wednesday, who’s going to want to buy an AT&T-locked iPhone until the next generation model comes out? That along gives us some doubt.

Thanks, Rosa!

[Via Business Insider]

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One of the aspects of science communications that can frustrate even its most sophisticated practitioners is the ability of scientists to reach confident conclusions about the big picture even when a field retains significant uncertainties. You can look no further than dark matter for an example: researchers are pretty confident that it’s out there, even though we still haven’t identified what it might consist of. But climatology remains the field where uncertainties, both real and imagined, are most likely to become front page news. The journal Nature has devoted a series of articles to discussing why that’s likely to be the case.

The editorial staff assigned one of their senior reporters to identifying the areas of most significant uncertainty when it comes to climatology and, as that reporter noted, the primary challenge is whittling things down: the most recent IPCC report identified 54 items that it termed “key uncertainties.” Contrary to some accusations, this suggests that the areas where climate science needs some work haven’t exactly been swept under the rug by the scientific community. But, at the same time, scientists have clearly looked at these uncertainties and decided that they’re not so significant that the basics of climate change are questionable.

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Looks like the color-crazy engineers in the Pentax labs are brewing up some new goodies: these images of a new Optio H90 and new orange-topped Optio L10 were briefly up on a retailer site today, and Photorumors managed to retrieve the images from Google’s cache. There’s also an entry for a third Optio, but there was no associated image or info, so there’s at least one surprise left in this world.

Pentax Optio H90 and Optio L10 cameras briefly leak out originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fist-pumping doesn’t come cheap. The cast of MTV’s runaway hit Jersey Shore want a hefty boost to their salaries before they will agree to spend another summer in Seaside Heights. The Shore’s beloved “guidos and guidettes” — which includes Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, “Pauly D” Delvecchio, and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino — earned only a few hundred dollars each per episode for the first season of Jersey Shore and they reportedly want ten times that sum next season.

“They want $10,000 an episode, arguing that the stars from ‘The Hills’ get $100,000 per episode and that show doesn’t even rate as high. They’re hanging together like the cast of ‘Friends’ and saying if they don’t all get the pay increase, none of them will return.”

The six-week reality soap — which wrapped Season One last Thursday night — has made pop culture stars of its cast of twentysomething. Snooki claims she’s had to hire a bodyguard since being featured on Jersey Shore, and DJ Pauly D now commands up to $10,000 to perform at parties.

Salary negotiations are being spearheaded by Britney Spears’ manager Larry Rudolph, who also represents Pauly D.

Friday’s Hope for Haiti Now telethon, led by George Clooney and Haiti-born rapper Wyclef Jean, has raised more than $57 million for relief to the earthquake-ravaged island nation, according to preliminary figures. Show organizers call the figure a record for public donations in a disaster relief telethon.

The telethon – broadcast from Los Angeles, New York and London – saw more than 140 celebs come together to perform and raise funds to aid relief in the Caribbean state, which has been struck by two huge earthquakes in the last two weeks, leaving thousands dead. The two-hour telethon featured more celebrities singing songs and telling stories loss and survival in Haiti, as well as taking donations by phone. It was broadcast on television networks around the world, online, and on mobile carriers.

The Hope for Haiti Now album was the biggest one-day album pre-order in iTunes history and is currently No. 1 on iTunes’ album chart in 18 countries. All the proceeds of the album will be given to Red Cross, United Nations World Food Program, Partners in Health, Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, Yele Haiti Foundation, UNICEF and Oxfam America.

The album features 20 tracks and is priced at $7.99. The individual tracks can be downloaded for just $0.99 per track.

Here’s the tracklisitng:

1. Send Me An Angel by Alicia Keys
2. A Message 2010 by Coldplay
3. We Shall Overcome by Bruce Springsteen
4. Time to Love / Bridge Over Troubled Water by Stevie Wonder
5. I’ll Stand by You (with The Roots) by Shakira
6. Motherless Child by John Legend
7. Hard Times Come Again No More (with the Roots) by Mary J. Blige
8. Breathless by Taylor Swift
9. Lift Me Up by Christina Aguilera
10. Driven to Tears by Sting
11. Halo by Beyoncé
12. Lean on Me (with Keith Urban & Kid Rock) by Sheryl Crow
13. Like a Prayer by Madonna
14. Hallelujah (with Charlie Sexton) by Justin Timberlake
15. Let It Be (The Roots) by Jennifer Hudson
16. Many Rivers to Cross by Emeline Michel
17. Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour) (with Rihanna, Bono & The Edge) by Jay-Z (Live Version)
18. Alone and Forsaken (with Dave Mathews) by Neil Young
19. Rivers of Babylon / Yele (Medley) by Wyclef Jean
20. Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour) (with Rihanna, Bono & The Edge) by Jay-Z (Version 1.0)

The final week of January is here and we have some new shows starting this week. 

Don’t miss the Ultimate Guide to the 2010 Winter TV Season Premieres with free downloads by premiere date & by show name!  I’ve updated this guide with some additions and network changes.

      Damages retuns to FX on Monday

Sunday, January 24

Matchmaker-Masterpiece Theater (9pm on PBS – Available in HD) – Made for TV Movie with a new adaptation of Jan Austen’s classic “Emma”

American Paranormal (8pm on National Geographic – Available in HD) – A new series premiere with a team of experts using scientific means to either validate or debunk different paranormal happenings.  This first episode focuses on Bigfoot.

Ice Dreams (9pm on Hallmark) – A new movie about a former Olympic figure skater who agrees to coach a young student.

Cantore Stories (10pm on The Weather Channel) – This is a first for me – a Weather Channel premiere with meteorologist Jim Cantore exploring different areas.  This is not a new show but a new season starting with a backstage pass to the Winter Games.

Twins: What You Never Knew (10pm on TLC – Available in HD) – A special on TLC that looks at the phenomenon of twins.

An Evening of Stars: Tribute to Lionel Richie (10pm on BET) – As the title says, a tribute to pop singer Lionel Richie – an event to benefit the United Negro College Fund.

 

Monday, January 25

Handy Manny School for Tools (8:25am on Disney) – A series premier of a new kids morning show.

The Electric Company (5:30pm on PBS) – The new version of the popular childrens series returns for season 2.

The Inbetweeners (9pm on BBC America) – The series premiere (for BBCA) of a popular British Import.  The comedy is about four akward boys coming of age in a British public school.

Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders (10pm on PBS – Available in HD – an interesting take on a music-centric show

Damages (10pm on FX – Available in HD) – Season 3 begins with Patty Hewes and her nemisis Ellen Parsons continue their battle in this popular legal drama.

Greek (10pm on ABC Family – Available in HD) – Greek returns for 10 more episodes to close out season 3.

Secret Diary of a Call Girl (10pm on Showtime – Available in HD)

Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union (10:30pm on Showtime – Available in HD) – Season 3

 

Tuesday, January 26

24/7 Jimmie Johnson: Race to Daytona (10pm on HBO – Available in HD) – Series premiere

Wednesday, January 27

Big Chef Takes on Little Chef (8pm on Planet Green – Available in HD) – Season 1 finale

State of the Union Address (9pm on Most channels – Available in HD) – President Obama gives the official U.S. state of the union speech from Washington D.C.

Psych (10pm on USA– Available in HD) – Season 4 returns

Launch My Line (10pm on Bravo) – Season 1 finale (2 parts)

Spectacle: Elvis Costellow With… (10pm on Sundance) – Season 2 finale

Sports Jobs with Junior Seau (10:30pm on Versus) – Season 1 finale

 

Thursday, January 28

Live for the Moment (8pm on CBS) – Jeff Probst hosts this new realityTV series that focuses on how we live our everyday lives and the importance of doing it right.  An event inspires a person to share insights on how to change one’s life.  Produced by Mark Burnett & Jeff Probst.

Storytellers with John Mayer (8pm on VH1) – John Mayer does his round on the popular music “series” Storytellers.

America’s Best Dance Crew (10pm on MTV) – Randy Jackson’s dance contest realityTV show returns with the season 5 premiere

Soundstage: The Fray (10pm on PBS) This PBS music concert series has Denver’s “The Fray” singing several of their popular songs from the past year

 

Friday, January 29

Kitchen Nightmares (9pm on Fox) – Season 4 premiere of the popular realityTV show with Chef Ramsey yelling at everyone.

Dollhouse (8pm on Fox – Available in HD) – The series finale

 

Saturday, January 30

Four Weddings (10pm on TLC – Available in HD) – Season 2 premiere of this realityTV show

Miss America 2010 (8pm on TLC – Available in HD) – The 88th edition of the Miss America Pageant – this would be that “Trump” version of course.

 

Sunday, January 31

The Cleveland Show (8:30pm on Fox– Available in HD) – Season 1 returns.

Family Guy (9pm on Fox – Available in HD) – Season 8 returns

American Dad (9:30pm on Fox ) – Season 5 returns

 

 

If you follow GeekTonic just for the TV Premieres and news, you’ll want to click Here If You Would L-ike to Get a Regular E-mail for GeekTonic TV Premieres & News

Sources close to Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are putting the kibosh on widespread reports that the stars have signed papers for a legal separation and custody over their six children.

Many sources close to the family told PEOPLE Magazine that the news — which broke in the UK’s notoriously-unreliable News of The World — is entirely untrue. “Everything is fine,” says a spy.

A source allegedly told the newspaper: “The document was signed in early January. Both Brad and Angelina had signed it. The contract was like a tailor-made version of a pre-nuptial agreement except for an unmarried couple’s split. It seemed clear they want the world to know they’ll both play a part in the upbringing of the children. But Angelina will actually be the one who lives with them full-time.”

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were no-shows at last weeks Golden Globes and Brad flew solo to Friday’s Hope for Haiti Now Telethon. Their is still no confirmation or denial from a Brad or Angie rep.

The couple first got together in 2004 after they starred together in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Brad ended his nearly five year marriage to Jennifer Aniston shortly after. Brangelina have six children together – Shiloh and twins Knox and Vivienne as well as three adopted children – Maddox, from Cambodia, Zahara from Ethiopia, and Pax from Vietnam.

Apparently, it’s DIY Sunday here at Crunchgear. Here’s another little project for you to do, using an inexpensive digital picture frame and some steampunk aesthetic to create a pretty sweet looking clock.

The creator of this project built a custom frame, upholstered it, added some custom brass accents, and then set the whole thing up to advance one image per second, based on a series of pictures that she created using some images from flickr. The end result is a really nice looking clock that would look great in an airship or steam powered car. She’s nice enough to include instructions, as well as the source code required to reprogram the frame, and a link to the original flickr art used to show the time.

[via Make]

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After three straight days of hard declines in New York, the next few hours will reveal whether the bleeding will continue overseas.

Australia, for one, is expected to open sharply lower according to the Sydney Morning Herald, based on action in the futures market.

Just like everyone else, Australians are worried about two things: Obama’s new regulations, and China, though you have to figure the latter, given its thirst for Australian natural resources is the real issue for them.

Given China’s resource and production overcapacity, it won’t take much for demand for Australian iron ore to drop to a trickle.

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See Also:

• Did We Only Include Australia In The MAVINS Because We Needed An "A"?
• China Sneezed And Brazil, Australia, The Commodities Industry, And The US Market All Just Caught A Cold
• The Next BRICs: Six Surging Countries You Must Pay Attention To This Decade

We’ve all seen it, that spiro-graphed, color-splotched invitation to Apple’s Jan. 27 event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Weekend Update isn’t on the inside, but we hear rumors that Jobs will storm the stage dressed as Moses, carrying the new tablet, which will be made of stone, under his robes. Apparently, that’s where it’s been hiding all along. Either that, or Weekend Update is going a little nuts from “tablet fatigue.”

Before we got to rumors, plans and all important educated guesses, AllThingsD spent the week doing reporting about real companies with products you can actually buy.

Walt’s column wasn’t exactly its normal, gadgety self this week. Maybe he’s saving his strength. Instead of the newest thing that won’t be leaving your pocket, he covered a service that claims to help you remember everything. Evernote, with its adorable little elephant logo, aims to be a sort of digital filing cabinet in the cloud, allowing you to save information, images, notes and just about anything else that can be digitized. Walt had good things to say all around, even if the available apps didn’t give every device the same functionality. Weekend Update liked the auto text-recognition feature that makes pictures of text searchable. We’ll never carry a business card home again. Neither rain nor snow nor tablet rumors can keep Walt from his appointed rounds at Mossberg’s Mailbox, and this week he grabbed a couple questions about e-readers, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer 8 and the right laptop for the young and litigious. Walt cleared up the myth that e-books can’t highlight text (even if they don’t do it in color yet), and then moved on to a question about what IE8 refers to as “accelerators.” Before tying up the mailbag strings for anther week, he also gave counsel to a future counselor. He recommended a moderately priced Windows 7 laptop or a Macbook for the incoming law student, though he suggested it would be a good idea to check with the school and current students for specific needs. Weekend Update thinks that last bit is extra good advice. Katie was busy this week testing the latest Bluetooth earpiece from Aliph’s Jawbone line. The Jawbone Icon is the first earpiece to run with a software package that allows the addition of apps just for the earpiece. Overall Katie thought the Icon represented a step forward for Bluetooth earpieces but hopes for upgrades to the app suite will bring more robust features. Oh yeah, and she was glad that they finally got rid of those tricky hidden control buttons.

At MediaMemo, Peter gave us the continued saga of e-magazines and the world’s slowest moving electronic construction project. It looks like the Time Inc. e-mag prototypes won’t be part of Wednesday’s Apple (AAPL) event, even though there was much hullabaloo made over its Sports Illustrated prototype. Condé Nast, on the other hand has declared it’s GQ mag-as-app tests a success. No word yet on who will be three-quarters naked on the first 10-inch screen edition. Completing the out-with-the-print, in-with-the-electronic trifecta was Peter’s post about The New York Times (NYT) paywall announcement. They claim they will erect a metered wall in 2011, which seems like an awfully long time in the shifting sands of the Web. Outside partners may be playing a factor, and some speculate that the 2011 date is just a declaration that they will be waiting-and-seeing. Peter doesn’t see what that would accomplish and cites some experts that assert that a year isn’t an unreasonable amount of time to build a complex paywall with necessary features.

Digital Daily was on the ball this week with John’s signature, hard-hitting hilarity. John’s early report proved correct when sources suggested that the EU’s approval of the pending Oracle (ORCL)-Sun (JAVA) acquisition was nigh. Not to leave the tablet news out in the cold, John asked some important questions about a future tablet’s data consumption habits and thinks it might end up in a class of its own. A big, beautiful screen means big, beautiful images and video, which mean gloriously huge file sizes. Hooray for wifi. To round out the week, John coverd a story about Google’s (GOOG) Larry and Sergey planning to sell about $5.5 billion in stock over five years. We’re not sure whether the proper term is “cashing out” or “cashing in,” but they are going to be doing a lot of one or the other. The move will remove them as a two-man majority voting block, but their remaining 47 percent will assure their velvety duet will still ring clearly at board meetings.

Boomtown led off with some viral video for the ages. Jimmy Fallon one-upped the “pants on the ground” video by performing the sarcastic ballad as Neil Young. We’re not sure the audience caught that it was Jimmy right way, partially because Young was making the TV rounds about that time and partially becuase Fallon does a decent Neal impression. Kara asked her readers to vote on what they expect the new tablet’s name will be, making the iPad her own prediction. Kara has an eerie way of getting this stuff right, so Weekend Update is gonna go ahead and get that tattoo this weekend. Kara finished us off with a quick post about her trip to Sundance and all the geektastic happenings there. Kara’s Winnebago, which we call “Operation Rolling Thunder” was crammed full of wife, kids, mom, dog, and maybe a few stowaway Bay Area indie filmmakers who tied themselves to the undercarriage. Read the post; there’s never a dull moment on a Swisher expedition.

AllTingsD is back on Monday with some great new stuff to fee that techie habit. And don’t forget to set your homepages here on Tuesday night (as if they weren’t already) to see live photos and blogging from Apple’s big unveiling. We’ll see you there, and will be sure to let you know if Jobs does in fact part the bay in his walk from Marin to San Francisco that morning.

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Article Tags: ClimateGate, Himalayan Glacier Data, YouTube

Independent scientists have discovered that previous estimates regarding the melt rate of Himalayan glaciers were wrong. Combined with last fall’s “climategate” scandal, these findings add to the arguments for climate change skeptics. The agency that issued the report said that the error does not undermine the seriousness of climate change and it is still a threat.

H/T ClimateGate.com The media is starting to get it

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Following Tiger Woods’s media-saturating infidelity scandal, a lot of the golfer’s sponsors ended their relationship with him — but not EA Sports. They made a very public decision to stick with the athlete who’s been the cover star of their golf game franchise since 1999, and in an interview with CNBC, president Peter Moore says they haven’t seen any affect to sales as a result.

“We’ve looked actually at the overall franchise for calendar year 2008 and 2009 and are slightly up when we look at all platforms for the Tiger franchise,” Moore said. “Despite what has gone on in his personal life, we’ve seen no negative impact on sales.”

This is, however, potentially a bit misleading. Woods’s scandal didn’t go public until late November, leaving only a little over a month for the controversy to really affect sales.

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After stretching itself in an epic, multi-year lending binge, the Bank of China is planning a big share sale to raise cash, deleverage, and up its reservers.

The bank could raise up to $30 billion according to WSJ.

This is a tricky moment for the Chinese financial system. Regulators, who finally appear to be getting serious about slowing lending, are hoping to engineer a modest slowdown in hopes of prevent a bubble (though it’s probably too late).

World markets have been reacting violently, perhaps on the tightening in China, and signs the US is undoing the Wall Street support mechanisms that were build up under the first year of the Obama administration.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• China and the U.S.: Dysfunctional Real Estate Bubble Twins
• STRATFOR’S TOP PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEXT DECADE: China Collapse, Global Labor Shortages, New American Dominance
• China Is Tightening, The FHA Is Tightening, And The Massachusetts Election Means Massive Fiscal Tightening

This guest post is by Jeff Scott, founder and publisher of 148Apps, a blog providing fanatical coverage of everything iPhone and hopefully soon, the Apple tablet.

While we still don’t know the name of the new tablet device; could be iPad, iTablet, iSlate, iCanvas, or an extension of the MacBook name. But what we do know, due to many recent leaks on the announcement coming from Apple next week, the tablet is being targeted as a gaming device.

Connections with the device and gaming started when the Wall Street Journal reveled that Apple had been working with Electronic Arts purportedly to have games available to demo for the device reveal on January 27th. What games EA will be presenting, we don’t know. This follows earlier reports that Apple had been in contact with “select developers” to create apps to showcase on the device. At that time we were unable to find anyone to admit to working with Apple for the Tablet launch.

Then in the last couple days came indications from many gaming related publications small and large that they had been invited to the special Apple event on 1/27. This shows a clear push by Apple to have the device covered in the games press, pointing to gaming as a major target for the device.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Apple tablet as a gaming device.

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Titanic has hit an iceberg named Avatar.

James Cameron’s 3-D spectacular replaced his 1997 melodrama as the biggest international release of all-time selling over $1.8 billion worth of tickets worldwide over the weekend. Avatar is on the verge of claiming its worldwide crown, which distributor 20th Century Fox said Sunday. The sci-fi adventure topped the box office for its sixth straight weekend in a row domestically, pulling in another $36 million.