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.

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Legendary French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard — director of nearly 100 films — is about to bring the 3rd dimension to the art house film with his Goodbye to Language.

The French New Wave

When you hear of the French New wave, you immediately center on two names: Truffaut and Godard. Truffaut exploded onto the scene with his autobiographical film The 400 Blows and later the seminal Jules et Jim. Godard began his prolific career with the iconic film Breathless and Bande à part (think Tarantino’s and Lawrence Bender’s production company A Band Apart).

Godard and Truffaut’s films are as much a revelation today as they were a half century ago. The French New Wave marked a new direction in cinema. These intrepid, young French artists found their inspiration in the works of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu and the Italian Neo-Realists, including Rossellini,Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film Bicycle Thieves. And their visual language, especially in the case of Godard and Truffaut, was heavily influenced by Orson Welles’s underrated 1958 film Touch of Evil.

Where have you been Godard?

I hate to admit that when I heard that the 81-year-old Godard was making a new film, I was first a little shocked that he was still alive. Like the elder musicians in the documentary Buena Vista Social Club, time may have forgotten these aging masters, but many still have so much life and creativity left to share.

Goodbye to Language

Godard’s new film, Goodbye to Language, will be shot in 3D, a kind of art house Hugo. The French filmmaker expressed his desire to shoot in 3D back in 2010 when he first began talking about this new project. “Maybe I’ll even shoot my next film in 3D,” Godard told the Zurich newspaper Die SonntagsZeitung. “I always like it when new techniques are introduced. Because it doesn’t have any rules yet. And one can do everything.”

There are scant details about Goodbye to Language. In his own words, Godard states the following:

“It’s about a man and his wife who no longer speak the same language. The dog they take on walks then intervenes and speaks. How I’ll do it, I don’t yet know. The rest is simple.”

When it comes to Godard and his films, nothing is that simple.

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.”

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A young Kenyan developer has come up with an ingenuous design for a type of shoe charger that would allow you to power-up your devices while you do what comes naturally: walking.

Shoe Charger for Your Smartphone

Anthony Mutua demonstrated this shoe charger technology at the Science and Innovation Week taking place at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi. Mutua’s patented design is able to harvest the energy that is generated while a person walks.

A specialized chip is inserted into the sole of a shoe, where energy in the form of electricity can be stored. Speaking with Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper, Mutua says, “The electricity is generated by the act of walking and running, and can be harvested in two ways.”

One method has your phone or music player connected to the shoe via a thin extension cable so that the device can be charged instantaneously. The alternative is to charge the device immediately following the walk or run, using the energy harnessed in the chip’s crystals.

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Instacanvas, or Instacanv.as, is both a gallery and marketplace where Instagram users can display, buy, and/or sell their Instagram photos. Instacanvas launched in beta eight weeks ago and now is up and running as an e-commerce site.

The Instacanvas Gallery

A recent graduate of MuckerLab’s Startup Program, the L.A.-based Instacanvas launched with a very simple plan: provide Instagram users a venue to showcase and sell their work. Anyone who wants to buy selected prints can have them instantly printed on canvas, the other half of the startup’s name. The site already has upward of 30,000 galleries and over a million unique monthly viewers.

Photographs are printed on museum-quality canvas with a 1.5 inch-thick frame. Users can print their own photos or browse galleries of artists from around the world. Prints start at $39.95 for a 12″ x 12″ frame and go up to $79.99 for 20″ x 20″ canvas. Instacanvas pays artists 20 percent of the sale, although you are not paid out until you have earned over $100 (checks come via PayPal). In order to keep track of sales, your Instacanvas gallery will display gallery views, number of prints sold, and total earnings.

CEO Matt Munson explains the company’s origins:

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WhoSay is another social media website making a name for itself. But you will never get to use it — not unless you can win a daytime Emmy, hit a ball out of Fenway, or write a critically-acclaimed collection of short stories.

“It’s Not Easy Being Me”

Celebrities don’t have it easy. Anonymity is a luxury they do not have. Paparazzi follow them wherever they go. Their every indiscretion (real or fabricated) ends up in the tabloids. Sure, there are the perks — the accolades, the adoration, the hedonistic lifestyles — but being famous is no free ride (well, not always).

An area where a lot of celebrities are starting to venture into is the realm of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Mobli — celebs are all over the social Web. However, many are still a little camera shy when it comes to social media. Enter WhoSay.

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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.

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The Pixlr-o-matix or Pixlr app for the iOS is yet another photo-editing application at the App Store — but we guarantee that this one is definitely worth your while.

Pixlr

Like so many mobile applications, the Pixlr app began as an online application. Pixlr is an online photo-editing software that requires no downloads and gives you various methods to tweak your photos, including a seamless integration with image hosting and sharing site Photobucket.

Pixlr may not have secured a billion-dollar deal like Instagram did, but its partnership with design software mega-giants Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD, was definitely newsworthy.

Pixlr App for the iOS and Android

The Pixlr app went mobile in August of last year and has since been developing a steady following, although its numbers have dipped slightly over the last few weeks. The recent drop in popularity might of course be the result of Instagram’s mercurial success, but if you are interested in a broad range of editing tools, this app is a must.

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Aperion Aris Wireless Speaker is bringing a little audio cool to the PC. Until now, it was Mac devices that enjoyed audiophilic equipment. Now, Windows PC users can partake in all this sonic, wireless fun.

Aperion Aris Wireless Speaker

Windows 7 and Windows 8 Consumer Preview computers can now wirelessly stream tunes on the Aperion Aris Wireless Speaker using Microsoft’s “Play To,” a kind of iTunes feature for the PC that allows users to access music and video files from any device that is connected to a particular network. Why it has taken this long for Microsoft to get with the times is a revolving question these days. But I digress.

The Aperion Aris Wireless Speaker will also be able to stream music from any tablet and smartphone. The Aperion website states that they will “be providing ARIS Music Apps for Apple iPad and iPhone devices, Android devices, and for Windows 8 Metro very soon. Of course, if you are already using a favorite DLNA App on your device, ARIS will show up on it as a new device under your control.”

Some of the features of the Aperion Aris Wireless Speaker include single-piece brushed aluminum enclosure, adjustable and removable steel base, 100 watt RMS total power, six internal speakers (four powered drivers, two passive radiators), three sound modes (natural, bass boost, and enhanced stereo), as well as simple connection to your home network via push-button or wizard for Wi-Fi and plug-and-play for Ethernet. The Aperion Aris is also DLNA-certified.

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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.

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