OnLive: The Future of Gaming? Probably Not.

A new online gaming service called OnLive was announced this week at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), promising a new way to play video games via digital distribution, but will it undermine the hardware based consoles? Instead of worrying about keeping that tricked out gaming rig up to spec, or having a big old console sitting under your TV, OnLive actually runs the games on their own servers and streams the video to you through a 1Mb browser plug-in for your computer or a “microconsole” hooked up to your monitor/HDTV….

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Edgar Wright presents a Marathon of Spaced at the Bloor

Edgar Wright, here in Toronto filming his version of the comic Scott Pilgrim, continues his ‘Wright Stuff’ film festival at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto this weekend with a Marathon screening of all the Spaced TV series episodes – Before Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, there was Spaced. Originally broadcast from 1999 to 2001 on the UK’s Channel 4, director Edgar Wright will be marking the series’ 10th anniversary with a marathon screening of all 14 episodes at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema — FREE for Bloor members and “The…

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RiP: A Remix Manifesto

The new documentary “RiP: A Remix Manifesto” can now be watched at The National Film Board of Canada’s website, or at the director’s website OpenSourceCinema.org… In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The films central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied…

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Toronto’s own Enviroman wants Laurie David to curb his something-asm.

Could local comedian and writer Josh Rachlis be the next Jon Lajoie? In this video we see Josh’s alter-ego Enviroman put his balls on the interwebs in the hopes of landing an engagement kiss date free dinner with former Larry David spouse and Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David. Apparently, being an environmentalist pays a lot better than being a regular everyday normal guy, if the production value in the video is any indication. Check out Josh’s other videos on his YouTube page here. .

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MIT sees dead people. Well, not really.

At last month’s annual TED conference, MIT’s Pattie Maes demoed what she called the new 6th Sense, which took the form of a wearable piece of tech that was able to translate your gestures and behaviour into functional and useable data. The uses for such a device are enormous, as you’ll see in the video, but the most fascinating part is that this is not simply theory but practical fact. At a cost of $350 “cobbled together” with “off the shelf parts” at an MIT lab, the device is not…

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Ash The Potato

This is part of an animation side project I’ve been working on. The site is finished, and the first couple of animations are in the can, so I thought I’d post the latest here for (what I hope will be) your enjoyment.  The website is ashrants.com For those who are curious, the animation is done in the venerable Lightwave 3D, with an able assist in the lip sync department by a program called Magpie Pro.  Magpie makes lip syncing dialogue easy, and can output for just about any 2D or…

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The Return Of True Horror?

One can hope. It’s been a long time coming, but Sam Raimi is back helming a horror movie about a witch who puts a curse on a loan officer who denies her a mortgage extension. Not a sexy Wiccan witch with parent issues, but a ripped from the pages for the Brothers Grimm wart-bespeckled old hag, complete with an evil eye. Way to kick it old school, while keeping it topical. Don’t be surprised if people start rooting for the witch to win, given the current economic climate. Another point…

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Microsoft’s MyPhone Beta And Windows Live

For the past few weeks, I’ve been testing the beta version of Microsoft’s Myphone service, which allows for wireless backup to the web.  Although it delivers exactly what it promises, and does work as a backup, it’s missing the boat in certain areas. The free service will back contacts, calendar, tasks, photos, music, videos and documents to the cloud, so that even if you lose your phone, you can easily recover the data by running the Myphone service on a new device.  On that account it works fine, as I…

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Beatles Go Digital

One of the great rock and roll hold outs in the digital age has been The Beatles.  Rumours of the Fab Four hitting the mp3 stores surface every year like clockwork.  Surprisingly, all the speculation has been wrong. Finally,  Harmonix looks to be on track to be the first to get the Fab Four online, as long as you want to play along, that is.  September 9th, 2009 is the scheduled release date of an unknown number of Beatles tracks (albums?) for the popular music game Rock Band.  Along with…

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McG a kickass filmmaker? Get outta here…

The new Terminator Salvation trailer was released today. In it we see John Connor coming to terms with being the leader of the human resistance, the rise of the Cyborg terminator, and, most importantly, a glimpse of what appears to be a well-made, well-directed, action-packed, moving story with substance. I might have to take back some of what I’ve said about Mc “Charlie’s Angels” G, because if the film is half as good as the trailer….damn. Watch for yourself above or at Yahoo movies. .

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Twitter Back On Bell… For A Price

Some months ago, Twitter removed its SMS based service in Canada, citing high costs. Now the service is back on Bell, but will cost users 15 cents per message, sent or recieved, regardless of whether one has an unlimited SMS package with Bell. A spokesperson for Bell Canada said Twitter is considered a “premium” third-party service, so it’s not covered under its plans. Twitter is an online service that lets people communicate in 140-character status updates and subscribe to the “tweets” of other members. Many people subscribe to hundreds of…

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