Microsoft Kin Phones Discontinued

The supposed ultimate social networking phone from Microsoft, the Kin, has been discontinued. Microsoft has officially announced that they won’t be producing any more Kin phones because of poor sales.

The Microsoft Kin phone is far too expensive for a phone that was designed to be used as a social networking phone and obviously aimed at the teenage market. However, Microsoft will continue to provide support for those who have already purchased the Kin phone. [Geeky Gadgets]

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Pearl’s E-Ink Next-Gen Tech Displays Contrast 50 Times Greater

The real “winner” of the e-book wars is E Ink, the Mass.-based (it was spun off from a project at MIT) company that develops the technology behind the screens of all the top readers, including the Kindle and nook. If you’re holding a Kindle or a nook, congrats, you’re holding the same core technology: E Ink’s display. The company has announced that its next-generation display, named Pearl, will be available in “Q2.” Pretty sure the second quarter of the year ended yesterday, so I’m going to go ahead and assume that the next new version of the Kindle, nook, etc. will use the new display. My bad: the new Kindle DX has the Pearl display. That’s even better news, yes.

So what’s new with Pearl? E Ink says it has a contrast ratio that’s 50 times greater than the current display, named Vizplex (seen here, Photoshopped for no particular reason other than that it looks neat). Combine that with a whiter display and you’ve got yourself a highly readable display—text “pops,” so to speak. Considering how readable the current E Ink display is (quite readable, that is), this is most welcomed news indeed.

The new display is also more environmentally friendly than the previous display—never mind the sense of cutting down tree after tree to make paper.

Amazon has a knack for releasing new Kindles in the fall, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see Pearl make its debut with a new Kindle in the coming months. (Presumably others readers, whenever they’re updated, will make use of Pearl as well.)

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Are Airships Making A Grand Comeback?

Sir David King, who you know is a big deal because dude’s knighted (and he’s director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford), sees a different method of freight delivery becoming a reality in the near future: cargo blimps.

While a blimp moves significantly slower than an airplane (currently not going much faster than 75 mph), they could potentially haul more, deliver goods to a wider range of places and do it without leaving a huge carbon footprint.

Where planes rely on fuel and runways, a blimp could take advantage of alternative methods for each. Solar power could keep a blimp in the sky, for instance, and it could be designed to be its own loading dock, so it wouldn’t have to land at any specialized facility. Depending on its size, the floating crafts could also haul twice as much as your average 747 freight plane.

Just how possible is the idea? Sir King thinks it could happen within the next 10 years, and that’s not as crazy as it may sound. “There are an awful lot of people we talk to who say this is going to happen,” said King. “This is something I believe is going to happen.”

We have certainly been writing about more and more zeppelins and blimps lately, and all around the world there’s been an increased interest in the technology, including America’s own Lockheed Martin, which received a grant from the US government.

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Kindle For Android Is Available Now

Apparently the app will come pre loaded on the Samsung Galaxy Android phone in addition to the Dell Streak.

For those with Android devices you can download it from the Android market.

Fan-Funded Nazi UFO Movie Has Raised $7.65 Million

You must have loved the trailer for that Nazi UFO movie we showed you last week, because thanks to fan donations, the project has already pulled in 90 percent of the feature-length project’s $8.5 million budget.

Iron Sky’s premise is that Nazis in flying saucers escaped to the moon during the closing days of World War II, and in 2018 they return to conquer the Earth. Casting for the film is almost done, and filming will begin in Australia and Germany later this year.

Though Iron Sky’s success in pulling in fan funding might encourage others to create films in which the audience and investor are the same, special-effects guru Samuli Torssonen warns that theirs is a special case.

“We didn’t come out of nowhere,” he said. “We’ve been building our Internet community and visibility since 1999, with Star Wreck. You have to invest a lot of time and energy to win the trust of the Internet audience.”

Teaser Footage Below: Read more

Ant-Man Movie Update

Writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz) talked briefly with Box Office Magazine about his big screen adaptation of Marvel’s Ant-Man which has been long in development. Wright says he hasn’t yet started writing a second draft of the script, and won’t be able to until September. He also talks about his vision for the film. Read his comments after the jump.

I haven’t actually started the second draft yet–I’m not going to be able to until this film [Scott Pilgrim] is out–but what we wrote for the first draft, and what Marvel really liked, is that it’s funny, but it’s a genre film. It’s about the level of comedy that Iron Man has. The idea is to make a high-concept genre film where it’s within another genre. His suit and its power is the big gadget and it takes place in the real world. I just wanted to do something that was slightly different than the superhero origin film. I felt that between that and the various mad scientist, crazy doctor films that we’ve all seen, this would be a way into an origin that was slightly different. I’m not really a multi-tasker–I haven’t done anything since Marvel liked our first draft.

I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about Wright’s first draft. I’ve even heard that Marvel wants to push the project into production as soon as Wright becomes available. Read more from Wright, including why Nick Frost and Simon Pegg weren’t given roles in Scott Pilgrim, in Box Office Magazine.

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Marvel Comics Launches Television Division

Everything eventually loses steam, and I can’t help but wonder when Marvel will start to see greatly diminishing returns. There have been nearly a dozen feature films in the past ten years, Disney invested $4 billion to ensure we’d get more, and now comes news that the comic book titan will invade your TV.

The Hollywood Reporter says Marvel Television is the company’s latest venture, one no doubt sparked by the recent Disney agreement, so in tune with vertically integrating everything is the House of Mouse. In fact, a few weeks ago, it was announced that Marvel characters would have a permanent home in the Disney theme parks, which shouldn’t come as any great shock.

My initial thought was all the old Marvel cartoons and even the made-for-DVD animation we’ve seen recently, but apparently, live-action series are being discussed. And here’s where Marvel might find it has too much of a good thing.

Jeph Loeb, who used to executive produce Heroes, is running Marvel Television, and that kind of makes sense. He know TV, and even though he’s never written for Marvel and the company likes to elevate writers it’s familiar with, Heroes certainly paid an homage to superheroes, particularly X-Men. However, some early fans of Heroes don’t have many kind words to say about Loeb, so this announcement may not please them very much.

The interesting decision Disney has to make here is what characters go where. Obviously, Fox, Sony, and Paramount are bleeding dry the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Avengers universes. Do we develop shows based on characters that are really under the radar or does Disney kind of pull back on Marvel’s full-scale theatrical assault and save some of the good characters for the small screen?

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DIY Halo Elite Costume - Amazing!

Oh, you’ve made your own assault rifle from Halo? That’s cute. Wait, you’ve made your own Spartan suit? Meh, it’s okay, we guess. See, the dudes at Peter Mander FX have ruined us forever, because they’ve produced about the best homage to Halo one could ever hope for: the ultra-realistic Elite suit you see above.

Largely comprised of plastic, TLC and dark magicks, the suit not only looks impressive, but it’s animatronic. We can’t imagine the blood, sweat and/or tears it took to produce such a lifelike recreation of this Covenant class, but we can get some idea from the video documenting the creation of this behemoth, which you can find past the break. Read more

‘Space Battleship Yamato’ Live Action Movie Trailer - Awesome!

Here’s the good news—we just saw the new trailer for Space Battleship Yamato, and it looks like director Takashi Yamazaki’s 2.2-billion-yen budget was well spent. Space Battleship Yamato could surprise us all by being one of the best sci-fi movies of the year.

But here’s the bad news—the film, a live-action adaptation of the original anime TV series, doesn’t have a U.S. release date, so for now the only way to see it when it opens Dec. 1 is for those of us who don’t already live there to head to Japan. Read more

Marvel Digital Comics - Free Mondays (6/28/2010)

Welcome to FREE Mondays! Each week we focus on all of the newly digitized books you can read for FREE inside the greatest collection of Marvel comics available online: Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited! Plus, we’ll let you know what’s coming up next week for FREE, too! With each book, not only are you getting a free peek inside Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, but each free Digital Comic either gives you a look at a book featured in a recent collection or a comic that’s in stores now.

 

How would you like to have five free digital comics to help get you through the school and work week? Here ya go!

MARVEL MANGAVERSE #1
MARVEL MANGAVERSE #2
MARVEL MANGAVERSE #3
MARVEL MANGAVERSE #4
MARVEL MANGAVERSE #5

Find our what next week’s five free digital comics will be below!*

DEADPOOL: MERC WITH A MOUTH #1
DOOMWAR #1
ULTIMATE COMICS ARMOR WARS #1
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #1
UNCANNY X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #1

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