Emily Is Literally Virtual

Emily isn't a real girl. She's from Image Metrics and is one of the first animations to leap over the barrier called "uncanny valley," which refers to the perception that the closer animation gets to human likeness, the less realistic it looks. "Ninety percent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real," says the head guy at Image Metrics. (t/y Jim)

The Daily Freak Show

James gets swept away by the myriad enticements of the WOW Storefront Gallery's "I Am 8-Bit" opening-night party. Playing video games with a six-foot joystick and touch-sensitive silver spheres! Countless cute boys, sexy models playing Nintendo in their underwear, and a line wrapping around the block. Not to mention eye-popping artwork that sells so fast that it practically flies off the walls. Plus, James gets intellectual for a second with Film Threat's Chris Gore, ambushes Spike TV's journalist during her report, and gets to play "fairy godmother" when he escorts a few lucky partygoers from the endless queue directly into the party.

G4 at 8-Bit

G4tv's Blair Herber was at Thursday's "I Am 8-Bit" opening at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery and talked to a number of the contributing artists about their work. Good video.

More I Am 8-Bit Pics for the Diehard Gamer

Another look at Thursday's gala opening reception for the "I Am 8-Bit" retrotechno art show at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery on Hollywood Boulevard. All photos by Debbi Rotkowitz.

8-Bit Feedback

Gay Gamer's rep, teknomcr, was at the "I Am 8-Bit" opening at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery last night and shot 157 photos of the "amazing" show.

Game On: "I Am 8-Bit" Opening-Night Video

The World of Wonder Storefront Gallery's highly anticipated "I Am 8-Bit" show opened last night. See the excitement as the last preparations are made, the party begins, and a line forms all the way down the block.

Techno Prisoners: The Geek Show at World of Wonder

Last night's "I Am 8-Bit" opening reception at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery began officially at 8, but was already packed by 6:30. Scantily clad girls playing games in the window kept waiting hordes outside entertained. Inside, the over 100 techno-themed paintings, co-curated by Jon Gibson and Derek Puleson, were selling off the walls, with tiny "Game Over" stickers replacing those old-school red dots indicating a work had been bought. Other bonus points were an endless supply of Colt 45 and dollar-off vouchers for hotdogs at the famous Skooby's next door. Photos this page are by Thairin Smothers. After the jump, a kind of video arcade of pictures taken by John Durkin.

"I Am 8-Bit" Opening at World of Wonder Storefront Gallery Imminent!

Above, art terrorist Ron English's posters of Barack Obama as Abe Lincoln get plastered onto the sacred World of Wonder building in honor of tonight's gala opening reception for the "I Am 8-Bit" show (which has already sold a whopping $12,000-worth of art right off the gallery floor!) beginning in 2.5 hours (8PM). Below, anticipation grows inside the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery.

(Photos by Jim Wirt)

Art Exhibit-bit-bit-bit-bit-bit-bit-bit Opens Tomorrow

High Score! The blik crew has been hard at work getting the gallery ready for tomorrow's "I Am 8-Bit" show, and here a couple of pics to show you their progress. Super Mario would be proud! The art show, at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery, kicks off tomorrow night at 8PM with a gala opening reception featuring music, liquor, and a lot of surprises. Or music, surprises, and a lot of liquor. In our opinion this could be the gallery's most pop-cultural exhibit ever!

(Photos by Thairin Smothers)

I Am 8-Bit: Blik Pix Totally Sick

What a difference a day makes. The crew from blik are in the gallery today installing their self-adhesive removable decals for the "I Am 8-Bit" show, opening this Thursday at 8PM. As you can see from the photos, the gallery is getting quite an overhaul. It's like a game of Tetris gone wild.

– Jim Wirt; photos by Derek Puleston

Seti Potatoes*

RDF, the company making Wife Swap, How to Look Good Naked, and Don't Forget the Lyrics, is trying to expand its audience and corrupt the minds of aliens! (t/y Fenton

_________________
* As in settee potatoes, as in couch potatoes. No? Not embracing it?

Dinosaur Watch

A living dinosaur doesn't eat the children at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. (Dinosaurs come from here)

The Return of "I Am 8-Bit"

We are incredibly excited to announce that "I AM 8-BIT" – Los Angeles' largest group art show – is moving to the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery this year. The annual show is inspired by the many characters and worlds of classic '80s videogames. "Mario, Mega Man, Pac-Man, and Sonic are just as iconic to our generation as the Beatles were in the past," says "I AM 8-BIT" founder and guest co-curator, Jon M Gibson. "They are our childhood heroes, our babysitters, our most awesome fantasies – and it's amazing to see how wildly and diversely artists choose to interpret them."

Opening August 14, and featuring over 100 artists (the show's largest contingent yet), it features a roster of established street and underground talent. "I was a fan of 'I AM 8-BIT' because it was the one art show in LA that strived to incorporate a wide variety of artists, from pop painters to animators to graphic designers," explains guest co-curator Derek Puleston.

(See also GameDaily and Gamasutra)

Black Hole to Devour Earth

The Large Hadron Collider being built at Cern Laboratories (which is what the "new internet" – "the grid" – is being activated for) could potentially create a black hole that will devour Earth, or "could transform the Earth almost instantly into a dead, dense lump." HOT! (NY Times; photo: Peter Ginter via National Geographic)

– James St James

Radiohead: Dancing in the Dark

Here's Radiohead's new "House of Cards" video, directed by James Frost. The stunning, eerie look was created by replacing cameras and lights with 3-D plotting technologies (lasers) that collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects, and visualized the data. Or words to that effect. And the song's not bad either. Wonder if it was less or more expensive to make without cameras and lights.

The Etch of Madness

Khan Can, and Does: Student Hacks Into School's Computers

Omar Khan, an 18-year-old student at Orange County's prestigious Tesoro High School, one of the country's best, and which was a location on the Real Housewives of Orange County reality show, was arrested and charged with breaking into the school and changing his grades from Fs to As. If he's convicted on the 69 charges that include altering and stealing public records, computer fraud, burglary, identity theft, receiving stolen property, and conspiracy, he could spend 38 years in prison. (TimesOnline)

Prosecutors claim that the teenager, who is alleged to have broken into the school late at night with a stolen master key, also changed the grades of 12 other students, and that he installed spyware on school hard drives that allowed him to access the computers from remote locations.

Why Fight Wi-Fi?

A group of annoying Santa Fe, New Mexico, citizens say they're allergic to wireless internet signals and want WiFi banned from public buildings. Said one afflicted man: "I get chest pain and it doesn't go away right away." Well, WiFi's not going away either, said Santa Fe's city councilor, pointing out the city's WiFi saturation. "It's not 1692, it's 2008. Santa Fe needs to embrace this technology." That's why they make Allerest. (Source)

The Googly Eye

Searching the slightly stalkerish Google maps feature, I checked out World of Wonder's address to see if Tom Wolf had been captured by the camera having a smoke outside. He hadn't, but it did capture early bird Jeremy Simmons climbing out of his car in the still-empty parking lot. The red car indicates poor Lydia Rendon is already slaving away in the office. Check your home address – did the Google-cam capture you?

– Steven Corfe

What?

Is it just my freakish ears, or do other iPhone users have a problem with their ears pressing the mute button mid-conversation?

– Steven Corfe

Judgement Day

Creepy.

– Tom Wolf

Quote Unquote

"MP3s have very bad sound. If you find out you like good sound you have to go out and get a good unit to play over. If the guy making the record likes good sound, the price goes up. People have to have higher standards. Some might say ‘that’s elitist.’ You can get any song you want in the world. If you don’t care about good sound, none of this matters for a second. If no one cares, it will stay the same. Technology is talking us backwards, making it easier to make things worse.” – Lou Reed on technology, at SXSW. (via Variety)

Was It Ever Thus?

Medieval tech support. (t/y Brother Jason)

Over the Moon

The Virgin Galactic spacecraft, being unveiled in New York today, is already under construction. Test flights are scheduled to begin in June, with commercial flights starting a year later. If it's anything like Virgin America, already-ticketed astronauts like Victoria Principal, Stephen Hawking, and Princess Beatrice will have to pay an astronomical price for the unearthly steak sandwich. (Source)

Wii Are Amused

Her Majesty the Queen is not really such a fuddy-duddy. Well, actually she is – but only in everything except hi-tech gadgetry. (Allegedly, she loaded her own iPod with 10,000 tunes.) When Prince William's girlfriend, Kate Middleton, gave him a Nintendo Wii console for Christmas, grandma Liz wanted in on it when she got a look at how much fun he was having. "It was hilarious," said a Palace source. "William was in fits of laughter. He was enormously impressed at having such a cool gran. And although she is 81 the Queen's hand-eye coordination was as good as somebody half her age." Now William can't get the remote out of her royal clutches. Word around the Palace is that she's a real whiz at bowling in Wii Sports. (The People)

Why? And by Why? We Mean When?

Sharp's 108-inch Aquos LCD TV – five inches more than last year's puny 103-incher from Panasonic and a whole yard longer than a six-foot man lying prostrate in front of it, which he will, out of respect – is a very real item that ships this summer. Which doesn't give you much time to knock out that wall between the living room and the bedroom. (Gizmodo)

Let's Do Lynch

Wait. Don't look at this bit of David Lynch homespun wisdom here. It'll read better if you wait to view it on your iPhone. Oh, all right, go ahead.

The Kindle Should Burn

Tom Wolf writes:

Ok, I try really hard not to get worked up about these sorts of things, but in the end I just can't seem to put it out of my mind. A week or two ago now, Amazon released the Kindle, an ebook device. It's been talked about to death all over the web, one reason why I didn't want to write this, but I still can't stop getting involved in conversations when it comes up. Joey, my assistant, has had to listen to several rants about it after I've read something online. After the jump are my thoughts on the device in no particular order (they are not original or even remotely interesting and I'm so sick of reading about it I didn't bother looking up anything, so it's all from memory).

Writers Block

Words come back to bite them in the assets.

Twin Powers

This set of blister-packed eco bulbs were biked to World of Wonder by GE on the eve of NBC's Green Is Universal(ly boring) week. The accompanying seven-page letter offered lots of green tips, such as accept deliveries only from companies using alternative fuel. And it revealed GE's plan to cut its emmissions by an enormous 1%. By 2012. But what better way to end the green-is-good week than by hacking down a beautiful 85-foot tree and dragging it to Rockefeller Centre where it will be strung with thousands of GE light bulbs.

Hilton Switches from "That's Hot" to "That's Cold"

The foolish few who thought Paris Hilton eventually would go away and be replaced have another think coming. The heiress would have herself replaced with... herself. She's planning to be frozen with Tinkerbell and Cinderella at the moment of death and defrosted at some future date. She's invested a lot of money in the world's biggest suspended animation storage company, Cryonics Institute in Michigan, and invested a lot of time researching the process. "It's so cool," she said. "Almost all the cells in the body are still alive when death is pronounced. And if you're immediately cooled, you can be perfectly preserved. My life could be extended by hundreds and thousands of years." Good Christ! Not that we have to worry about meeting up with her in a hundred years. But our children! Our poor kids. Wasn't it yesterday that she said the new and improved her wanted to leave her mark on the world? After she's been defrosted she'll leave a wet spot. That's hot. (via Female First)

One-Cent Post

If you type "Lance Bass GQ" into Google search, as we did earlier, it asks, "Did you mean: Lance Bass GAY."

Candy Man

This pedophile, whose website showed around 200 photographs of him sexually abusing a dozen young boys, disguised his identity by digitally altering his face to look like a giant lollipop. Germany’s federal police force, the Bundeskriminalamt, in collaboration with Interpol’s Trafficking in Human Beings unit, worked from original photos found on the man's site and were able to cut through the bullshit and expose his face. Long story short: Have you seen him? (Interpol)

Did You Know?

We didn't. And we're not sure we want to. (t/y Eduardo)

Country Metal

A robot playing Patsy Cline's "Crazy" on the theramin still brings a tear to the eye. That's some good songwritin'. (moonmilk via boingboing)

Two Things 2.0

The Aptera three-wheeled hybrid, which gets 230 mpg and speeds up to a breakneck 55 mph, is available for pre-order, will cost around $30,000, and starts shipping in 12 months. Be the first in your neighborhood to own one. And when we say "first" we mean "only." (via Tech Digest)

To travel creatively and economically, this family lives on a bus. The car slips conveniently into the luggage compartment, making the word "cargo" seem quite literal. (t/y Eduardo)

You Are Now Free to Walk Outside the Cabin

Recent NASA photo. More here. (t/y Jeff)

If Britney Can Say It, Why Can't I?

"I was just creating an eBay profile to bid on something pertaining to the Just Britney art show opening Friday, September 28," says Steven Corfe, "when I got this message relating to my username of choice."

Before and After

And speaking of photographs the stars would rather you didn't see, check out the website of professional photo retouching service iWanexStudio. Choose Portfolio, click on a celebrity, and drag the cursor on and off and on and off their portrait. Yipes. We're particularly fond of how they hacked away at Kelly Clarkson. It's like noninvasive cosmetic surgery. (t/y Nick)

Zeno Evil

At left, the finishing touches are applied to the five-years-in-the-making project of a small group of engineers, designers and, programmers at Hanson Robotics in Richardson, Texas: a 17-inch-high, six-pound robotic boy that essentially looks like a Japanese animé version of a primordial dwarf with pretensions to Chuckie. They call him Zeno. David Hanson, the mastermind behind Zeno, also has a real-boy son named Zeno. Jiminy Cricket, now we're frightened! Aren't you? Just a little? Or do you want one? (My Way; photos: AP/Tony Gutierrez)

Simon on Crystal?

We all want one, but what is it? (t/y John)

iLetter

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has just cemented his position as best tech exec ever, says Farhad Manjoo at Machinist, though tech mogul earlier dismissed complaints about yesterday's $200 iPhone pricecut from customers who had bought iPhones right out of the gate, saying "That's what happens with technology." But in an open letter to Apple customers, Jobs now says he's sorry, and offers everyone who bought a pre-discount iPhone $100 in Apple Store credit. Jobs' entire letter after the jump. (t/y Mona; photo: Reuters/Robert Galbraith)

Dread and Board

Off to Rome on Friday. Unless, of course, we don't get to go because the boyfriend is on a No Fly list. He flew to Portland last weekend for a wedding and decided to take a pocket knife on board. He was detained briefly and forced to mail the knife to himself using this new Homeland Security machine which had a "hole that resembled a vagina" (his words, not mine). He stuck the "weapon" into the vagina (women, please don't over-analyze this) and it wrapped the weapon in bubble wrap and then the vagina asked for his credit card number and claimed it would "mail him his belongings within a few days for 10 dollars." Then they asked him to get into an enclosed glass box to test for explosives, which sent high-speed puffs of air over his entire body. When they blew air up his pants, he posed for the security personnel like Marilyn Monroe over the subway grate, at which point they let him go without further questions.

– Ray Cochran

Franklin Mint

The new 100 bill (not pictured), due out at the end of next year, will be a bit more difficult for counterfeiters to duplicate. The Associated Press says the Ben Franklin C-note, the bill most counterfeited outside the US, is being redesigned with a whole slew of techno bells and whistles, employing a security thread on each bill with 650,000 minuscule lenses that magnify even smaller microprinting. When you move the bill side to side, the image appears to move up and down; move the bill up and down and the image seems to move from side to side. "It is a really complex optical structure on a microscopic scale," said Douglas Crane, a vice president at Crane & Co. "It makes for a very compelling high security device." And Crane & Co will be seeing quite a few of those bills; the company has a $46 million contract to produce the new security threads. (Yahoo; t/y Jeff)

Mash Notes

"Here’s what would happen if Patrick Bateman was to tie Phil Collins and Eminem together with one of his exquisite silk sheets and they were to make babies," says Birdie Song of this "Land of Confusion" vs "Without Me" mashup. (via BWE)

Tiny Tech

For years decades it was Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, blah blah blah. But now the coolest logo-flaunting is an email that reads:

From my iPhone

It's almost worth adding as the signature to any old email one sends. Meanwhile, the best hi-tech gadget I've invested in of late is the Sesame Street remote control.

– Fenton Bailey

Deep Dish

It's a UFO: Unquestionable Future Obsession. The Moller M200G Hover-Car can float 10 feet off the ground and cruise at 50 MPH. Because it's classified as a recreation device and not an aircraft, it's not subject to FAA regulations and anybody can operate it. When available, the machine will cost between $90,000 and $125,000, but no official release date has been announced. Watch it fly at Gizmodo.

how r u

In his La Dolce Vita column in the Village Voice, Michael Musto nails – fingernails – the problem with texting: