Playlist: Yoostar, Tweeting Too Hard, Wii Sports Resort
Jul 24, 2009 News
: Illustration: Christoph Niemann
James Cameron should have known you’d make a better Sarah Connor than Linda Hamilton. Now you can prove it. The $170 Yoostar system’s greenscreen and video camera let you digitally remove actors from famous scenes and put yourself in their places. If you grow bored with The Terminator, choose from clips of dozens of other films like The Godfather and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. When it’s a wrap, upload your take to the Web and show everyone that you really oughta be in pictures.
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Decades before the Army launched a PC game to lure joystick jockeys into its ranks, this action-adventure flick hinged on a delectable premise: What if an arcade game were an intergalactic recruiting tool? Starfighter follows a trailer-park teen from kill screen to killing aliens. Sure, this remastered edition has bonus goodies. But we’re just psyched for an excuse (spoiler alert!) to relive the destruction of Xur and the Kodan Armada.
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Twitter is chock-full of micro faux pas. Want to find the best/worst offenders? Tweetingtoohard.com lets the crowd rank the most arrogant, heinous, and tone-deaf tweets. Our number one: “Went to the gym this morning. As I left, everyone said I was the best!”
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Forget baseball, golf, and boxing. Wii Sports Resort adds adventurous activities like canoeing, wakeboarding, and everyone’s hot-weather favorite: swordplay. The new MotionPlus peripheral allows for more precise movements, so if you’re playing archery, a small shake of your hand might send the arrow off into the weeds. No more blaming the controller for your misfires.
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Your kids will eat something besides quesadillas and chicken nuggets—Hugh Garvey and Matthew Yeomans are sure of it. Based on the duo’s popular blog, this book aims to turn picky children into little foodies. The Mediterranean-inspired recipes include risotto with pancetta, squash, and kale, zucchini hummus, and the irresistibly named “get your kids to eat their vegetables” dressing. Tip for the ages: Add fat, salt, and acid to food to make it taste better (sorry, cardiologists).
image: Image: Urban Outfitters
Think developing your own film is DIY? Try assembling your very own camera. Dreamed up by Tokyo-based design team SuperHeadz, the $28 Plamodel kit comes with all the necessary moving parts, as well as a mini screwdriver. When it’s complete, use the 35-mm lens to snap a smug self-portrait in celebration of how handy you are.
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Our appetite for vampire shows knows no limit. BBC America’s latest import, premiering July 25, could be subtitled “Find Out What Happens When a Werewolf, Ghost, and Vampire Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real.” Turns out, if you fill a British house with different species of undead trying to pass as human, you get a dark, bloody, often naked comedy of errors. Eat your heart out, Twilight.*
* Speaking of TV, there’s this new DVD set—the entire run of some show called Battlestar Galactica. Might be worth checking out.
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Even the Babylonians probably wouldn’t have grokked singer Alex Ebert’s math theory: “0 is magnetic, and 4 + 3 might equal 1 or 2.5, depending on the magnitude of 0.” Lucky for Ebert, the absolute value of his psychedelic folk pop is much easier to calculate. Filled out by musicians, including trumpet and conga players, the 13 songs on the troupe’s effervescent debut Up From Below add up to |a|wesome.
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For ’80s cheesy goodness, it’s hard to top Bonnie Tyler’s melodramatic music video. Now, 26 years later, director Russell Mulcahy’s crowning moment (Highlander aside) has been reincarnated on YouTube. With rewritten lyrics by Dascottjr that describe the action and props—the random blue curtain, magically opening doors, Fonzie impersonators—everything takes on new meaning and unprecedented levels of hilarity.
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While visiting Michael Swanwick’s home, photographer Kyle Cassidy charmed his way into taking a peek at the sci-fi author’s workspace. Cassidy says he felt as if he’d “cracked open Swanwick’s skull and seen inside his genius.” Thus began a project: snapping photos at the lairs of award-winning writers like Joe Haldeman, Gregory Frost, Piers Anthony, and Neil Gaiman (at left). It’s Cribs for the literary set.
Tags: moved-temporarily, Multimedia, temporarily
Artifacts From the Future: Online Dating Site
Jul 23, 2009 Internet
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Click on the thumbnails below for a closer look at an online dating site from 2020.
What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years? We need your help creating a new artifact from the future for every issue of Wired magazine. Each month, we’ll propose a scenario and ask for your prognostications. Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. Check out this month’s challenge.
The concept for this artifact came from Sally McGrane. Wired creative director Scott Dadich, design director Wyatt Mitchell, contributing designer Walter Baumann, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, photo assistant Catherine Seriosa, senior editor Chris Baker, associate editor Catherine DiBenedetto, and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image.
Photo: Catherine Seriosa; babies: Makemebabies.com by Luxand, Inc. Face Detection
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We’re predicting a spin-off of match.com that won’t involve any tedious questionnaires. Singles simply send in a saliva sample and let their DNA speak for itself. The service then hooks up members who are compatible at the genetic level.
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Research has already given scientists the ability to detect breast cancer markers and the so-called sprinters gene. Genetic behavioral traits and susceptibility to drugs like tobacco are next on the list.
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Based on his scent, Command3rKooL would be a great match for igotalotaluv. Studies suggest that a woman will prefer the aroma of a man whose major histocompatability complex — a series of genes involved in the immune system — is very different from her own. However, Command3rKooL’s biological clock is ticking dangerously close to useless as he pushes into the last 26 years of his life.
Scientists could be able to predict Schizophrenia and identify intelligence by the year 2020, as those traits have already been tentatively linked to specific regions of DNA. But the genetic cause of gaming fetishes has yet to be discovered.
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We used Makemebabies.com to get a glimpse of the offspring’s appearance. DNAmatch.com would calculate the possibilities for the tyke’s genetic profile by combining igotalotaluv’s alleles with Command3rKooL’s. This little boy could be quite smart, and possibly an alcoholic.
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The genes responsible for lactose intolerance and alcohol flush reaction are current subjects of research, but funding for studies on the genetic predisposition to Irish folk dancing is pending NIH approval.
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Dimples and widow’s peak are known dominant genetic traits. Scientists are still searching for the genes responsible for perfect pitch.
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Gene expression is harder to predict than the genes are to detect. Even if someone has the gene for a trait, that doesn’t necessarily mean the body will transcribe and translate it into a protein.
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This search tool allows igotalotaluv to exclude guys with the traits she just doesn’t like.
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Not everyone on dating sites is looking for the parent of their future children. Scroll past the paternal types to find a more short-term partner.
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There’s no easier way to fake your way out of bad date than by blaming Comcast for a bad holodeck connection.
