This App Lets You See the Invisible Universe Around You [Apps]

Taking augmented reality to its farthest extreme, the Invisible Universe lets you view learn about all the star stuff that makes up your night sky: X-rays, infrared light, gases, all in vivid color and detail. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/F3Cdu0n7D7U/this-app-lets-you-see-the-invisible-universe-around-you

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Anonymous' Director Believes Shakespeare Was 'A Fraud

As part of our Fall Movie Preview, '2012' director Roland Emmerich explains why he's traded action for historical drama.
By Josh Wigler


Joely Richardson and Jamie Campbell Bower in "Anonymous"
Photo: Reiner Bajo/Columbia

For his next trick, Roland Emmerich — the man who brought you such blockbusters as "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" — will be taking you all the way back to the times of ... Shakespeare?

It's perhaps not a conventional choice for a filmmaker who is best known for his over-the-top alien invasions and natural disasters, but make no mistake, "Anonymous" is a movie that is very near and dear to Emmerich's heart. The project — which takes place during Elizabethan England and centers on Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans), the Earl of Oxford and a man who some believe to be the true author of Shakespeare's works — has been in development for nearly a decade. Now, Emmerich's ready to tell his story, with his take on the Man from Stratford's real identity arriving in theaters on October 28.

Click for photos from fall's biggest flicks!

MTV News' Fall Movie Preview continues today with a conversation with Emmerich, who spoke with us about his interest in Shakespeare, the themes of succession and identity crises, how visual effects are actually working to keep budgets down, and whether or not he truly believes that Shakespeare was a fraud.

MTV: "Anonymous" deals with conspiracies centering on Shakespeare and conflicts during Elizabethan England, but for you, at its core, what is this movie about?

Roland Emmerich: In the foreground for people, it's probably the whole issue of did [Shakespeare] write [his works] or did he not? But for me, it was also always about this time and succession. The most important thing in these days was, "Who will be the next king?" Especially Elizabeth's [succession], being the virgin queen, there was a lot of insecurity.

When you want to come up with a story to explain to people why it could have been that the wrong guy got credited, it has to have a really big reason. I kind of thought everything in Shakespeare is about the prince, it's about succession. Half of his plays are pretty much about that. I kind of said, "This has to be the reason why he can't put his name on it."

MTV: It's also interesting when you consider a lot of his work focuses on doubles and dual identities.

Emmerich: Exactly. It's a lot about bastard children, the identity crisis of the young prince, you know? The court, the court intrigue, and about how power gets distributed by the king. I knew that the movie had to be about that.

MTV: On the surface, "Anonymous" doesn't seem like the kind of movie that fans of your films like "Independence Day" or "2012" would necessarily expect from you. What drew you to this? What made this story something you wanted to tell as a filmmaker?

Emmerich: Well, first of all, you get older. [Laughs] I always was super interested in reading about history. I think history is kind of something that isn't explored enough in movies, honest to god. I know this is kind of a relatively adult movie, but I said to myself, if I'm interested in something, I assume other people are too. This time around, it's probably another crowd and another audience. But the movie also doesn't have to perform that well to make money, so I'm kind of hopeful that Sony won't be [left] there with empty pockets.

MTV: You've been attached to this project and working on it for several years before the movie got made. How did "Anonymous" finally come together for you?

Emmerich: I've been on this project for nine years. Around five years ago, Sony greenlit it, and we'd headed to England. We had a lot of money, and [we got] more and more, and it became too expensive of a movie. We also couldn't quite get the cast. So we stopped it. But then I realized that this movie had to be done for a certain price. When I did "2012," I realized that now with digital cameras and blue screens, you can do quite amazing things and you can cheapen a movie without making it look smaller.

This movie, even if it costs very little, when people come out they're asking, "How much did this thing cost?" And I'll say, "Much less than you think!" [Laughs] Some people ask, "What was it, $70 [million]? $90?" And I say, "No, it was $30." And they're super surprised. I tell them, "Look, everyone keeps talking about this, the fact that one day, visual effects can help us to make movies cheaper." And this was actually the first movie where visual effects helped to make a really, really big look, but it actually saved us tons of money.

MTV: What was the research process like on "Anonymous"? What did you do to brush up your Shakespeare, so to speak?

Emmerich: I never claimed to be a big Shakespeare scholar or anything. I've watched every movie that was made about his plays, which is a good way to get into William Shakespeare's plays, because most of the time, the plays themselves — you get the highest grade of talent and I did that. I said to myself, "I'm not a theater director." What we did was we looked for a theater director, and found one in Tamara Harvey, who's very young but has worked under Mark Rylance at [Shakespeare's Globe in London]. We had long discussions with Mark and some Shakespeare actors in London, and we tried to approach it like that. For me, it was very important to get the plays right and the work right. I wanted to glorify William Shakespeare; I didn't want to destroy him.

MTV: But at the core of this movie's marketing campaign, there's been that tantalizing four-word question: "Was Shakespeare a fraud?" Based on what you discovered in the process of making this movie, do you have your answer to that question?

Emmerich: He was a fraud. I'm totally convinced.

MTV: What makes you so convinced?

Emmerich: I read pretty much everything on the Freudian side and the Oxford side and made my own opinion, you know? I'm not alone with this opinion. There are very famous people throughout history, a lot of writers and a lot of artists like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Sigmund Freud. ... There are so many people who were absolutely convinced of what I'm convinced about. And when you talk to Shakespeare scholars, they're kind of totally biased, because they've lived their whole lives and written books about the Man from Stratford. Sure, they have to scream and yell and say this is all nonsense, but I think these guys over the next 20 or 30 years will not be able to uphold this.

I think it's not good to tell kids lies in school, and I'm saying, why not openly discuss that there's a problem? I think to get access to William Shakespeare, the Man from Stratford, for kids today is totally boring. You cannot get this guy together with the plays. The plays are super complex and tell a lot about court life and themes that represent his time incredibly well, and then there's this Bard from Stratford and Avon, a guy who, when you look at him, was probably a businessman.

From "Abduction" to "Muppets, "Moneyball" to "Breaking Dawn," the MTV Movies team is delving into the hottest upcoming flicks in our 2011 Fall Movie Preview. Check back daily for exclusive clips, photos and interviews with the films' biggest stars.

Check out everything we've got on "Anonymous."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1670489/anonymous-movie-shakespeare.jhtml

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The Late Amy Winehouse Memorialized As A Naked Bust

Last month we got to see the latest sculpture masterpiece created by pop culture artist Daniel Edwards and today we get to feast our eyes on his newest offering. While last month Edwards paid tribute to the young love affair betwixt Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, this month he is paying tribute to the late [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pinkisthenewblog/~3/CjtnMX0cbMc/

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Protect Your iPhone 4 with an iFrogz Case

No matter how careful you are, you’re going to drop your phone at some point.  If you tend to not be so careful, or you have a job or hobbies that pose a risk for your phone, you need a protective case.  The iPhone 4 Bullfrogz Case from iFrogz will protect your device from the [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/09/06/protect-your-iphone-4-with-an-ifrogz-case/

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Engadget Podcast 255 - 09.09.2011

As a lover of all things nostalgic and good, you'll certainly appreciate the dulcet tones of Peter Rojas, Engadget founder, major proponent of All Things Good With Tech, and the original voice of the Engadget Podcast, on this edition of the Engadget Podcast. There's a lot of thought work to be done on the week's news, fraught with patent kerfuffles, Android editions, and listener questions, and we do believe we've done the heavy lifting -- with Peter's help. Come join us.

Host: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater
Guest: Peter Rojas
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out


01:30 - Droid Bionic review
10:00 - Droid Bionic arrives at Verizon tomorrow, we go hands-on today (video)
20:00 - Motorola Droid Bionic finally available on Verizon, angels sing in chorus
41:08 - Is this Nintendo's 3DS joystick add-on?
47:35 - Shareholder calls for RIM to sell itself or its patents, in critical open letter
51:25 - HTC sues Apple with help from formerly Google-owned patents
55:25 - Eric Schmidt: Ice Cream Sandwich coming in October or November
57:51 - Listener questions

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Download the podcast

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Send your questions to @tim_stevens.
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E-mail us: podcast at engadget dot com
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Engadget Podcast 255 - 09.09.2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/VgywJAxnDtE/

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Stranger Danger

My sister recently had a talk with my four-year-old nephew Jack about strangers. Here's how it went:

SISTER: Now, Jack, if a stranger says, "Come here, I want to show you something," what do you do?

JACK: I turn around and run!

SISTER: If a stranger says, "Come here, I want to give you some candy," what do you do?

JACK: I turn around and run!

SISTER: If a stranger says, "Come here, I want to show you my puppy," what do you do?

JACK: Oh, I love puppies...

Source: http://www.prettyinthecity.com/blog/2011/7/26/stranger-danger.html

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Security firm RSA attacked using Excel-Flash one-two sucker punch

RSA attacked using Flash vulnerability
It has emerged that the underlying cause of RSA's SecurID gaffe was the recently-reported zero-day vulnerability found in Adobe's Flash Player.

The exploit, which used specially-crafted Flash embedding in Excel spreadsheets, was first reported on March 15 and has since been fixed. RSA was hacked sometime in the first half of March when an employee was successfully spear phished and opened an infected spreadsheet. As soon as the spreadsheet was opened, an advanced persistent threat (APT) -- a backdoor Trojan -- called Poison Ivy was installed. From there, the attackers basically had free reign of RSA's internal network, which led to the eventual dissemination of data pertaining to RSA's two-factor authenticators.

The attack is reminiscent of the APTs used in the China vs. Google attacks from last year -- and indeed, Uri Rivner, the head of new technologies at RSA is quick to point out that that other big companies are being attacked, too: "The number of enterprises hit by APTs grows by the month; and the range of APT targets includes just about every industry. Unofficial tallies number dozens of mega corporations attacked [...] These companies deploy any imaginable combination of state-of-the-art perimeter and end-point security controls, and use all imaginable combinations of security operations and security controls. Yet still the determined attackers find their way in."

What we'd like to know, though, is whether the attack on RSA was caused by Adobe's lackadaisical approach to patching Flash -- or was it the other way around? Was it the RSA attack that first brought the zero-day vulnerability to Adobe's attention?

Security firm RSA attacked using Excel-Flash one-two sucker punch originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 06:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/06/security-firm-rsa-attacked-using-excel-flash-one-two-sucker-punc/

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IN PAGE SIX MAGAZINE: Modern Mad Men ? Kids Who Tweet For a Living

The September 8 issue of Page Six Magazine ? free inside the New York Post ? introduces us to the cool kids on the block: social media managers at well-known brands, a.k.a. people who tweet for a living. ?If I weren?t tweeting about the shows for work, I?d be doing it anyway for my friends,?  says Sarah Epler, who tweets for MTV. Page [...]

Source: http://www.celebritymound.com/in-page-six-magazine-modern-mad-men-%e2%80%93-kids-who-tweet-for-a-living/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-page-six-magazine-modern-mad-men-%25e2%2580%2593-kids-who-tweet-for-a-living

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BillToMobile Lands Deal With T-Mobile, Now Has Direct Relationships With The Top 4 U.S. Carriers

danalMobile payments company BilltoMobile now has direct carrier relationships with all four of the major carriers in the U.S., including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile (the deal with T-Mobile is the newest relationship to be announced). This makes BillToMobile the first and only mobile payments platform to have direct carrier connections with all of the top four major U.S. mobile carriers. Similar to Zong and Boku, BilltoMobile provides a payments platform that allows users to use their mobile phone as their payment option when they check-out online. They input their mobile phone number and in some cases their mobile phone billing zip code. A six-digit number is sent to their cell phones via text as a one time password. They enter this authentication code online to complete the purchase and the charges will be put on their wireless bill.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/F8lF_JJGDtk/

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