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Ridley Scott Prepares for a Blade Runner Sequel(0)

It has been 30 years since the release of Blade Runner — and Ridley Scott has a sequel on his mind.

Blade Runner

Ridley Scott creates worlds. Whether it is ancient Rome, the infinite blackness of space, or a futuristic Los Angeles, the English director is a master of worlds.

Blade Runner, when it was first released, did moderately well at the box office. But in the 30 years since, it has become not only a classic but also a reference point for filmmakers, students of films, and cinephiles alike. From the first image of the dystopian landscape, audiences knew they were glimpsing a world they had never seen before.

Blade Runner showcased Harrison Ford in perhaps his most subtle yet affecting role. In fact, all the actors in the film — Rutger Hauer, the devastating Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah, and the unforgettable Joe Turkel — deliver such unique performances that the movie is a revelation in terms of acting alone.

HelloFax Integrates with Google Drive and Reinvents the Fax Machine(0)

HelloFax is one step closer to realizing their dream of creating a paperless office by integrating their services with Google Drive.

HelloFax

HelloFax is one of those ideas that makes you wonder why it has taken this long for someone to come up with it. And often, as is the case with CEO Joseph Walla, it takes a young intrepid individual to look at the way something has been done for decades and time immemorial and say, “Wait, why are we still doing things this way?”

“Our objective as a company is to end faxing everywhere for everyone,” says Walla in conversation with Mashable. “It’s so wasteful. It’s environmentally unfriendly, and it’s a waste of time.” Although HelloFax began simply as a faxing service, Walla and co-founder Neal O’Mara realized they were onto something when they added the ability to edit and sign documents inside a browser. This of course eliminates the need to print documents, sign them, and re-scan them so that they can make yet another cyber journey.

“We see faxing the way Google probably sees Android,” continues Walla. “It’s this way of expanding and protecting its core business which is search. Our core business is documents and document signing, and faxing is just this transmission method that hasn’t gone away.”

Jane Jensen’s Moebius Will Be First Game for Pinkerton Road Studio(0)

Game developer and writer Jane Jensen has unveiled the plans behind her upcoming game Moebius. The game will be the first title for Pinkerton Road Studio, the gaming company she and her husband, composer Robert Holmes, founded April of this year.

Jane Jensen’s Moebius

Jane Jensen’s Moebius has three days to go on Kickstarter, and it has already secured over $350,000, all of which will go toward the development of the first game title for the newly-formed Pinkerton Road Studio. Jane Jensen and her husband Robert Holmes announced the formation of the company on April 5, 2012, with the launch of the Kickstarter project.

Jane Jensen’s Moebius and future Pinkerton Road titles will solely focus on story-driven, third-person adventure games. The concept of the Moebius game is described by Jansen as being in the vein of her novel Dante’s Equation and two of the games she helped develop, Gray Matter and Gabriel Knight (from Kickstarter):

“Malachi Rector is an antiquities dealer who hunts down artifacts all over the world. After his upscale Manhattan store is destroyed in a fire, he’s hired by billionaire Amble Dexter to investigate a series of events and document them in his meticulous way.

BlackBerry Is on the Move with Gameloft Titles and More(0)

BlackBerry is mobilizing. We have a saying back home that a soldier that runs is good for another battle. At the moment, BlackBerry seems to be the embodiment of that sentiment. Incentives for developers, a new partnership with Gameloft — it is all part of a restructuring that began with the resignation of RIM’s co-founders.

Up to the RIM

We ran a piece on our sister site, Techiezine.net, where we expressed our excitement for the upcoming BlackBerry 10 smartphone and the company’s new direction. Yes, the phones may only be prototypes as part of long promotional campaign and will likely see many changes by the time their doppelgängers are released, but these are all promising signs of change for the Waterloo-based multinational.

First, RIM gave developers the BlackBerry 10 “DevAlpha” device as well as access to the BlackBerry 10 native software development kit (SDK), which gives developers the APIs for unlocking core device functions such as payment services and push alerts. At the same time, the company stated that it would provide $10,000 to coders for any app certified for BlackBerry 10 that of course met their terms and conditions.

These are no just bold moves. They are necessary ones. Sometimes companies become too entrenched in their business models, strategies that worked in the past. But what this new technology and social movement has shown is that to maintain growth, companies need to evolve. And BlackBerry is evolving.

Movie Posters Beautifully Reimagined(1)

Remember the movie poster? We all used to have them: a poster from a movie that marked or changed our lives, a John Hughes film, a Star Wars print. Somewhere between our teen years and the 90s, movie posters lost some of their popular charm. But there are a handful of artists and graphic designers who are trying to bring back the movie poster, only better.

Justin Van Genderen

Justin Van Genderen was the first of these brilliant designers I stumbled across about a year ago as I was trying to settle a Star Wars bet. Based out of Chicago, Van Genderen’s reimagined Star Wars posters have become a bit of an Internet sensation.

These movie posters are minimalist prints you might expect to see in a travel agency on Alderaan. Reminiscent of 30s art deco posters, the series includes posters for many of the planets named in the Star Wars films: Tatooine, the Hoth System, Coruscant, Naboo, the Dagobah System, and Alderaan, to name a few.

Van Genderen’s work, however, covers more than just the Star Wars films. He has a stunning collection of prints that range from an anime series, cosmonaut prints, travel posters, and much more. For more information on the Star Wars series and Justin Van Genderen’s other work, head to his website, 2046 Design.

SoFi Lets You Borrow Money for School from Alumni(0)

SoFi is an online social-lending service that allows students to borrow money from generous alumni. Everything seems to be social these days. Why not money, too?

SoFi’s Answer to Financial Aid

The SoFi model seems to be a no-brainer. Alumni from a given school are able to provide financial support to future graduates and at the same time earn a little return on their investment. So how does it work?

Alumni provide a source of funding for students from their alma mater, and students apply for these loans as they would any other financial aid program. Loans are provided to students at 6.24 percent interest (5.99 percent if they sign up for auto-pay). There is a loan minimum of $5,000 and a loan maximum of $200,000. Alumni earn 5 percent back on money they have invested in the SoFi program. Finally, SoFi earns approximately 1 percent. Alumni can invest with cash, or they can invest funds directly through their IRA.

No one is truly getting rich off this model (perhaps not initially). But that is precisely the point. The SoFi model provides an alternative to the “cannibalistic” practices that have long been in place in the standard financial aid model that leaves many students paying off loans for decades (if they have not already gone bankrupt). The moment schools and lending programs became a for-profit model our educational system went into a tailspin. SoFi is trying to navigate students out of this spiralling mess.

VerifEyed Will Spot the Real Pictures from the Fake(0)

Another company that launched and made a name for itself at DEMO 2012 is VerifEyed.

What is VerifEyed?

VerifEyed is a cloud-based image verification engine that was designed at of one of the world’s leading image forensics labs. VerifEyed was developed to authenticate images and documents and determine if they have been digitally manipulated or altered. Editing tools like Photoshop have made it easy for individuals and companies alike to alter images in such a way that makes attribution to the original source very difficult at times.

The VerifEyed website explains the technology like this:

“Each device (cameras, cell phones, scanners, etc.) produces a unique mathematical fingerprint. Our database consists of almost all existing capture devices and is constantly being updated.

When verifying an image or searching for traces of image manipulation, we automatically extract hidden fingerprints from a photo and compare them with the mathematical model of its acquisition device. Based on this, we are able to accurately determine if the photo has been tampered with. Several methods are applied to detect traces of tampering on each image.”

DUST 514 for the PS3 Will Change the Way Games Are Played(0)

If you have not already heard, DUST 514 for the PS3 and PS Vita is a multiplayer first-person shooter game by Icelandic developers CCP Games. When DUST 514 finally hits the market, it will not only be a massive success; it will also change the way we view gaming.

DUST 514 — The Sprawling Eve-verse

DUST 514 is set in the Eve universe, CCP’s previous, massively successful title. Players take on the role of hired mercenaries who can seize territory from planets within the Eve-verse for their own alliance and corporation. Players will be involved in large-scale Corporation vs. Corporation battles. Where Eve was a more sprawling universe, DUST 514 will focus on more localized skirmishes.

As the DUST environment grows, you will begin to see crossover of players from the Eve-verse. CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson says that “these communities will meld over time.” However, you will not be able to use a character you created in Eve in DUST because they serve different functions, as Eve characters are essentially pod pilots and Dust characters are mercenaries. Petursson flippantly alluded to the relationship between the two titles: “While the fleet does the flying, the infantry does the dying.”

The current limit for online matches is set at 48 (24 versus 24). CCP, however, has stated there will be no less that 128 players at one time (64 versus 64) for the launch date. The Eve-verse alone has over 400,000 players. With the release of DUST 514, those numbers will only escalate. This is also the first time that a PC game will crossover with a PS3 game.

Made with Pencils Website Brings Hope to Children Around the World(0)

Made with Pencils is a website whose simple mandate is to help educate children around the world. As a tech writer who still carries a notebook everywhere, it is nice to see that a pencil still carries its weight in lead — or gold, depending on your donation.

Made with Pencils, Pencils of Promise

The Made with Pencils project and its parent site Pencils of Promise (PoP) began with a question. PoP founder Adam Braun was approached by little boy in India, who was begging on the streets. Braun asked him, “What do you want most in this world?” “A pencil,” the boy responded. And so began this PoP project that took Braun on a tour of 50 countries and six continents, where he passed out thousands of pens and pencils.

“These pencils, these small pieces of potential, led to powerful conversations with local parents and children across countless cultures and languages,” says Braun. “From years of listening to their words, it became clear that there was a need for an international nonprofit that was led on-the-ground by a staff of locals from within each country, required village participation in each school, and deeply supported, trained and tracked each student to ensure their success.”

The Made with Pencils website is divided into three sections: Auction Gallery, The Pencil Shop, and Made by You. The Auction Gallery contains collages and images sketched by celebrities and artists that were auctioned off to raise funds for the Made with Pencils and PoP projects. There is a tracing of Shaquille O’Neils’s hand that sold for $330, Joe Fenton’s stunning piece called “Faithful,” and a cityscape sketch by Hugh Jackman called “The View,” which sold for over $1,000.

Girlfriend Hire Allows You to Buy a Facebook Girlfriend for a Mere $5(0)

Just when you thought Facebook could not get any creepier, a new website, Girlfriend Hire will send a message from a virtual girlfriend to your Facebook account for a slender $5. We wish this were still April 1rst and this was all just a joke, but the service appears to be legitimate — mostly.

For only $5 via a PayPal account, Girlfriend Hire will hook you up with a ‘girlfriend’ of your choosing. The said girlfriend will then send you a text or post a message directly to your Facebook wall so, presumably, all your Facebook friends can see how ‘lucky’ you are. Facebook was the first to extrapolate the concept of what a ‘friend’ is. Now it seems that the concept of the girlfriend is also being rewritten.

The Girlfriend Hire service works like this: You sign up for a free account, link it to a PayPal account, and then you can start choosing from a list of virtual girlfriends. The setup is not much different than what you would see on a dating site. The only difference here is that there is never any intention of having a real girlfriend, someone you can go with to the movies or grab a soda, or maybe to head up to “Inspiration Point.” Remember that? Those were simpler times.

Speaking of Happy Days, if the classic American sitcom were set in modern times instead of the 50s, you can almost see Ralph Malph or Potsie signing up for a service like this. In that context, the whole thing would be amusing. You would just chuckle and say to yourself, “Potsie, you’re such a Potsie.” But this is not a sitcom.