Why Second Life will never go mainstream: For me, this biggest thing that put me off was the enormous learning curve. When I first played World of Warcraft I was up and playing like a noob that thought he was a pro in minutes. Second Life had me fumbling around for half an hour before I got fed up and uninstalled it.
To promote the Simpsons Move a 7-Eleven in Burbank, California has been dressed up as Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart, complete with Slurpee machines and Krusty-Os.
Aleks has a round-up of Secondfest, the Second Life virtual festival that happened over the weekend.
As anyone that knows me can tell you, Blade Runner is one of my favourite movies — so any article with something to say about it is going to catch my attention. I had to share this one, however, over at Popular Mechanics, about the pre-digital special effects used in the film and how well they stand up to today’s CGI-fueled sci-fi.
I’m also still very eagerly awaiting the long-overdue “Final Cut” and “Special Edition” DVDs due out later this year. I’ll believe it when I see them.
The iPhone Dissected. Literally. You’ve just got home with a $500 state-of-the-art* mobile phone. What’s the first thing you’re going to want to do? Rip it apart! (via Boing Boing)
*[If state-of-the-art means a phone that can’t send MMS, use an MP3 for a ringtone or copy and paste text]
Update: I swear I’m not obsessed with destroying expensive gadgets! PCWorld scratch and drop-test the new Apple phone and stick the video on You Tube. Meanwhile, Daring Fireball has a thorough round-up of first impressions of the iPhone.
Monkey: Journey to the West: The latest collaborative project by Gorillaz co-creators Jamie Hewlett (also famous for creating Tank Girl) and Damon Albarn is an opera based on the 16th century Chinese novel “Journey to the West” — better known, thanks to the BBC re-dubbing of the 1970s Japanese TV-series, as Monkey. Lots of info, illustrations and photos can be found on the myspace page.
The show started at the Manchester Palace Theatre last night and continues until the 7th July. It then moves to the Theatre de Chatelet in Paris from 13th September until the 13th October.
“Imagine: Damon and Jamie’s Excellent Adventure“, a documentary on the show, premieres on Wednesday 4th July at 10.35pm on BBC1 in the UK. The site contains clips from the forthcoming show.
Nintendo announce that they’re going to be offering a WiiWare development platform so independents can create their own games which can then be made available via the Wii Shop Channel. Hopefully, then, we’ll get to see some of these delights in the near future.
Unlike everyone else, I didn’t bother to blog the dramatic chipmunk video (Pedantry: it’s a prairie dog) the other week, but I thought I’d take the time to reveal it’s Japanese TV-show origin… and a Victorian-style re-imagining.
Not new news by any stretch, but this is the first time I’ve seen the infamous rejection letter that Disney sent in response to a woman who applied for a job as an animator with my own eyes: “women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing cartoons for the screen in making animated cartoons, as that is performed entirely by young men”. (via Boing Boing)
IGN has an interesting bit (well, a ton) of speculation over the forthcoming fourth Indiana Jones movie now that it’s been rumoured that it will be set in the year 1957.
As for facts, the official Indiana Jones web site states that new film will be set some time in the 1950’s, and will star Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent… and, of course, Harrison Ford. Directed by Steven Spielberg, it’ll hit cinemas on May 22, 2008.