Archive for the ‘Amazon’ Category

courtesy Last Exit To Nowhere

Geeks love movies.
Geeks love T-shirts.
Geeks love to express their love of movies on their T-shirts.
And the folks at Last Exit To Nowhere love to make geeky t-shirts inspired by geeky movies.

The company was set up about 3 years ago by a bunch of movie geeks who also happen to be designers, illustrators, screenprinters and photographers. Their goal was to create something a little bit different, and you can see the pride they obviously take in their work from the results.
Where their designs differ from the plethora of other T-shirts out there is in the almost forgotten art of subtlety. Anyone can knock up a shirt with the movie’s logo on it or write something ‘witty’ in The Terminator font, but Last Exit likes to do it in a much more esoteric way. Of course, as soon as someone has a great idea like this, there’s instantly hundreds of copycats around the web, but beware of imitations!

The Overlook Hotel

I’ve seen hundreds of variations of Jack Nicholson’s head coming through the chopped up doorway saying “Here’s Johnny!”, but Last Exit’s take on The Shining resulted in a vintage effect logo for ‘The Overlook Hotel’, complete with the mountains in background.
Why settle for Sloth’s ever quotable, but eminently predictable, “Hey, you guys!” on your Goonies-themed tee, when you could have the logo for the “Lighthouse Lounge” resturant and bar?

Sometimes they take the logo of a company glimpsed for only a few moments in the film and reproduce it, as they’ve done with Omni Consumer Products (OCP) from Robocop and Jack Burton’s Pork Chop Express.

Weyland Yutani Corp

Other designs feature logos for corporations only mentioned verbally in the movie, which Last Exit then creates from scratch in the appropriate style. Ever wondered what the Alien franchise’s ‘Weyland-Yutani’ Corp’s logo would look like? Or how about Gaff’s Spinner from Blade Runner?

Some of the best ones are designed like tourist souvenirs from the real and fictional locations in some of our favourite flicks. How about a shirt from ‘Devil’s Tower, Wyoming’ or ‘Hill Valley High School’? Or maybe even the pub featured in An American Werewolf in London: ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’?

Abe Froman

My favourite thing about the ‘Abe Froman, Sausage King Of Chicago’ one my wife got for me is that so few people actually get it. To them it could just a cute 50s style illustration of a guy with a sausage on a fork, only the Trufan™ will recognise it for what it is and give you that knowing nod of approval. Shame on you if you just had to Google it…

Do you know what the Shimata Dominguez Corporation do? Where did you see Jaffe’s Burger Den? What about Charlie Croker’s Couch Tours? There are so many great design from great movies that it’s actually really tough to decide which ones to buy! There is one odd thing though – all the tees seem to be based on movies from the 20th century, with only a few more recent ones. You won’t find any referencing The Matrix or Moon. Maybe the studios keep a tighter reign on the copyright these days, which is a real shame as I’d love a Lunar Industries t-shirt!

They produce some of the designs in slim-fit and hoodie styles, as well as kids sizes so the little geeklets can be in on the joke too, even if they don’t really get it. Add to that some special posters and embroidered caps and it’s a one stop shop for geek satisfaction. They use the highest quality t-shirts and the screenprinting is faultless – unless it’s supposed to have a vintage look of course. International shipping starts at £4, which seems very reasonable to me given that I’ve paid upwards of $10 to get shirts shipped from the US to England in the past. The ones I’ve ordered for myself have generally arrived the next day.

Last Exit To Nowhere is very active on the social media scene, and are constantly previewing new designs and running competitions through their twitter account @lastexitshirts and facebook page. Their #hashtag games are great fun to take part in even if you don’t win – the last two were #BestTopicalFilm and #BestHorrorMonster – and then there’s always the photo of the month competition, where people show off their purchases in very creative ways.

Speaking of competitions, Last Exit To Nowhere has very kindly given five lucky GeekDad readers the chance to win one their fabulous t-shirts. We thought we’d make it a bit more interesting than just leaving a comment, so we’ve put together a little multiple choice quiz for you. Correctly name all 20 movies that each of these t-shirt designs were inspired by, leave your email address and we’ll pick five winners at random on the 13th September.

Even if you don’t win, you can still save 15% on the price of the t-shirts be using the code GEEKDAD at the checkout on lastexittonowhere.com.

Continue reading here:
Last Exit To GeekDad

Related Posts:

• Lumix DMC-LX5 review roundup: great hardware for a not-so-great price

Down here in Melbourne, Australia the annual science fiction and fantasy convention AussieCon has been host to the 68th World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention. And, as part of the event the Hugo Awards were handed out tonight (Sunday 5 September). The Hugo Awards are the premier award in the science fiction genre, honoring science fiction literature and media as well as the genre’s fans. The awards began back in 1953 and have a long tradition of honoring the greats of fantasy and science fiction such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Neil Gaiman and so many others; while still celebrating and recognising the role of fans to this genre — the favorite amongst all GeekDads, everywhere.

If you want to read some of the winning and nominated works, check out the artwork of the winning illustrators and designer, check out the background of the best editors or sign up to the successful fanzines of this year’s awards. There are a host of links to winners and nominees at the AussieCon 4 website.

So, without further ado, the winners are…

BEST NOVEL
[Tie for first place]
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

BEST NOVELLA
“Palimpsest” by Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace; Orbit)

BEST NOVELETTE
“The Island” by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2; Eos)

BEST SHORT STORY
“Bridesicle” by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)

BEST RELATED WORK
This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”) by Jack Vance (Subterranean)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY
Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm
Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – LONG FORM
Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION – SHORT FORM
Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars”
Written by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford; Directed by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM
Ellen Datlow

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST
Shaun Tan

BEST SEMIPROZINE
Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace and Cheryl Morgan

BEST FAN WRITER
Frederik Pohl

BEST FANZINE
StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith

BEST FAN ARTIST
Brad W. Foster

THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER
Seanan McGuire

See original here:
Hugo Award Winners Announced at AussieCon 4

Related Posts:

• Apple 16GB iPhone 3G S – AT&T, White

In Machete, Danny Trejo reprises his role from the Spy Kids films. Or perhaps not.

1. Will My Kids Like It?

You may remember the title character Machete, the gruff but lovable uncle played by Danny Trejo in the Spy Kids series. Turns out, this is NOT the sequel to Spy Kids 3D. But my kids – who have become extreme fans of director Robert Rodriguez, who also did Sin City and Grindhouse – already knew that when they begged me to take them. Here Machete, the former federale, illegally crosses the border from Mexico into Texas and gets caught up in a political scheme that gives him the chance to pay back the corrupt leaders who betrayed him. There’s also lots of romping about with such co-stars as Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez (the helicopter pilot from Avatar). So yeah, if your kids are teenage boys, they’ll like it.

2. Will the Clerk at the Ticket Booth Let Me Drop the Kids Off to See This R-rated Film While I Go Next Door to Watch George Clooney?

No.

3. Will I Like It?

Surprisingly, yes. Although I had to hide my eyes at several points in the action, this is a grainy exploitation flick with lots of humor and intelligence.

4. How is the Cast?

Danny Trejo’s lived-in face is of course worth watching all on its own. And with Robert DeNiro, Cheech Marin, Steven Seagal and Don Johnson in supporting roles, Rodriguez certainly had a lot to work with.

5. Does it Have Any Redeeming Social Value?

Although I hadn’t seen it mentioned in any of the reviews, the plot actually centers around the issue of illegal immigration. You will gain an appreciation of the role Mexican workers play in the US economy, versus how they are perceived by some of our louder politicians. So you could almost call it educational.

6. When Would be the Best Time for a Bathroom Break?

When the hero swings out of the hospital window using the bad guy’s disemboweled small intestine as a rope, or any time Trejo starts swinging those machetes. You’re not going to be looking at the screen then anyway.

7. Any Good Previews?

What is it with previews that show you the entire movie? I guess they’re helpful to keep you informed if you’re not planning on seeing those movies anyway. But Green Hornet looked promising.

8. How Are the Special Effects?

Did I mention the intestines?

9. Is It Loud or Scary?

No, it’s not particularly loud.

10. Is the Ending Satisfying?

Rodriguez puts an interesting twist on the classic hero riding off into the sunset ending – and then throws up title cards which promise sequels to come.

Follow this link:
10 Things Parents Should Know About Machete

Related Posts:

• St. Dupont “Service Without Fail” RAID Watch

Buckminister Fuller's geodesic dome for Expo 67 in Montreal inspired the buckyball. Image: Kathy Ceceri

Carbon is a remarkable little atom. When it’s arranged in sheets, it’s soft as pencil lead. Arrange it in crystals, and it’s hard as diamonds. On September 4, 1985, three scientists trying to figure out the structure of a carbon molecule known as C60 began playing around with toothpicks and jellybeans. One of them began sticking his jellybean atoms together in the shape of alternating pentagons and hexagons. Interestingly, his structure began to curve into a ball.

To the scientists, the sphere created this arrangement of candy and sticks looked an awful lot like the geodesic dome built by visionary architect R. Buckminster Fuller in 1967 for the world’s fair in Montreal.  As it turned out, the jellybean model of C60 was correct, and the molecule discovered was named “buckminsterfullerene” after its inspiration.

The exhibit “Molecules That Matter” used dog toys as buckyballs. Image: Kathy Ceceri

This was not some esoteric finding. The advent of the fullerene, which can be round, ellipsoid or tube-shaped, led to the entire nanotech industry. Today fullerenes show up in everything from ultra-light, ultra-strong bicycle frames and tennis rackets to “nanopants” that are soft and breathable yet repeal water and stains. And they make great desk toys, too.

You can still visit Bucky Fuller’s geodesic dome in Montreal, too. Today it houses the Biosphere, a museum about the region’s ecology. There’s an exhibit about Fuller inside.

Thanks to the Tang Museum’s exhibit Molecules That Matter, which introduced my family to Buckyballs.  Curator Ray Giguere noted that dog toys made very good models. And thanks to Google, which today has an animated doodle honoring the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the Buckyball.

See the article here:
Happy 25th Birthday to the Buckyball!

Related Posts:

• Apple 16GB iPhone 3G S – AT&T, White

Photo: Ken Denmead

It was sort of a last-minute decision for me to attend PAX Prime. I’d read (with some amount of envy) about the GeekDads attending PAX East earlier this year but hadn’t even considered the possibility of attending PAX myself, at least not this year —we had too many trips planned, vacation time was running out, etc. But here I am anyway! I’m just a lucky guy, with a fantastic wife who indulges my geekery.

I really didn’t have much of an idea what to expect. I’m staying with a friend, about a half-hour bus ride away from downtown and the convention center, so I missed a lot of the hustle and bustle when I arrived Thursday night. Riding the bus into town, I was torn between gawking out the window (watching for my first glimpse of downtown Seattle) and reading the con-appropriate book I’d brought with me, Tom Bissel’s Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. (Note: if you love video games, you need to read this book. I’ll tell you all about it later.) I did glance up from time to time, and got a glimpse of the loading cranes down at the harbor. They had the look of giant metal giraffes gathered around a watering hole—sort of a starved cousin of the AT-AT, maybe.

Photo: Ken Denmead

My bus stop was right across the street from the Benaroya Theater, where Warren Spector would be delivering the PAX keynote speech in about an hour and a half, and I saw people in geeky T-shirts and PAX badges on lanyards headed that way. But I’d seen on Twitter that some people had been in line for the keynote for nearly two hours already, so I decided it wasn’t really worth trying for. Instead, I walked over to the Sheraton, picked up my Speaker badge (surprisingly quickly) and then headed to the convention center, where I met up with fellow GeekDads Dave Banks and Michael Harrison.

Since the halls weren’t open yet, we kicked off PAX the right way: with a game of San Juan, on a little cafe table that was much too small. We finished up right at 10:00, and headed upstairs to explore the main hall. After finding a helpful Enforcer (the volunteers at PAX) who got us maps and schedules, we entered the Exhibit Hall and commenced gawking.

My first impression was that it was loud. The entrance we’d chosen was facing a Rock Band 3 stage, where somebody was belting out an off-tune rendition of some song I’ve since blocked out of my head. My second impression was: hey, look at all this room to walk! (I’ve been told that Saturday will be much more crowded, but it’s hard to imagine it beating the Comic-Con crowds.)

I walked around and admired a lot of the video games being demoed throughout the hall, but my main destination was the tabletop gaming sections, which were mostly around the edges. I got my first glimpse of Flying Frog Production’s upcoming Invasion From Outer Space game (which looks awesome) as well as Mayfair’s Settlers of America (which looks daunting). There was also a game of Settlers of Catan being played on a Microsoft Surface table, which was pretty impressive. And then I boggled over Geek Chic’s custom-made gaming tables, which look like nice dining tables until you pull off the leaves to uncover the gorgeous gaming surface underneath.

I’d love to tell you all about the rest of the day, but I really need to get going so I can catch my bus downtown again. We met up with Ken Denmead when he arrived and got to see the Dungeons & Dragons party bus, and then tried out the D&D Essentials Red Box. It was in fact my first ever experience with D&D, and it was pretty fun. I can see why it could become a lifestyle. I played a bunch of games from the Tabletop Gaming Headquarters, where you could check out a board game from their library and take it to any of the many many tables around the convention center. And then, as I was making my last sweep through the convention center on my way out to catch my bus … I saw an empty seat at a Microsoft Surface table, where they were playing some sort of space-aliens cooperative tower defense game. I stayed for about an hour, missing the midnight bus home by about five minutes, and ended up waiting an extra 25 minutes for the next bus.

It was a long, full day, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Go here to see the original:
PAX: First Impressions

Related Posts:

• Video: Thanko’s New Spy Watch Is Waterproof
• Alleged Samsung NX100 pics and specs surface
• St. Dupont “Service Without Fail” RAID Watch
• Apple 16GB iPhone 3G S – AT&T, White
• Samsung excuses absence of Super AMOLED on Galaxy Tab with Super TFT (video)

Photo: Ken Denmead

It was sort of a last-minute decision for me to attend PAX Prime. I’d read (with some amount of envy) about the GeekDads attending PAX East earlier this year but hadn’t even considered the possibility of attending PAX myself, at least not this year —we had too many trips planned, vacation time was running out, etc. But here I am anyway! I’m just a lucky guy, with a fantastic wife who indulges my geekery.

I really didn’t have much of an idea what to expect. I’m staying with a friend, about a half-hour bus ride away from downtown and the convention center, so I missed a lot of the hustle and bustle when I arrived Thursday night. Riding the bus into town, I was torn between gawking out the window (watching for my first glimpse of downtown Seattle) and reading the con-appropriate book I’d brought with me, Tom Bissel’s Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. (Note: if you love video games, you need to read this book. I’ll tell you all about it later.) I did glance up from time to time, and got a glimpse of the loading cranes down at the harbor. They had the look of giant metal giraffes gathered around a watering hole—sort of a starved cousin of the AT-AT, maybe.

Photo: Ken Denmead

My bus stop was right across the street from the Benaroya Theater, where Warren Spector would be delivering the PAX keynote speech in about an hour and a half, and I saw people in geeky T-shirts and PAX badges on lanyards headed that way. But I’d seen on Twitter that some people had been in line for the keynote for nearly two hours already, so I decided it wasn’t really worth trying for. Instead, I walked over to the Sheraton, picked up my Speaker badge (surprisingly quickly) and then headed to the convention center, where I met up with fellow GeekDads Dave Banks and Michael Harrison.

Since the halls weren’t open yet, we kicked off PAX the right way: with a game of San Juan, on a little cafe table that was much too small. We finished up right at 10:00, and headed upstairs to explore the main hall. After finding a helpful Enforcer (the volunteers at PAX) who got us maps and schedules, we entered the Exhibit Hall and commenced gawking.

My first impression was that it was loud. The entrance we’d chosen was facing a Rock Band 3 stage, where somebody was belting out an off-tune rendition of some song I’ve since blocked out of my head. My second impression was: hey, look at all this room to walk! (I’ve been told that Saturday will be much more crowded, but it’s hard to imagine it beating the Comic-Con crowds.)

I walked around and admired a lot of the video games being demoed throughout the hall, but my main destination was the tabletop gaming sections, which were mostly around the edges. I got my first glimpse of Flying Frog Production’s upcoming Invasion From Outer Space game (which looks awesome) as well as Mayfair’s Settlers of America (which looks daunting). There was also a game of Settlers of Catan being played on a Microsoft Surface table, which was pretty impressive. And then I boggled over Geek Chic’s custom-made gaming tables, which look like nice dining tables until you pull off the leaves to uncover the gorgeous gaming surface underneath.

I’d love to tell you all about the rest of the day, but I really need to get going so I can catch my bus downtown again. We met up with Ken Denmead when he arrived and got to see the Dungeons & Dragons party bus, and then tried out the D&D Essentials Red Box. It was in fact my first ever experience with D&D, and it was pretty fun. I can see why it could become a lifestyle. I played a bunch of games from the Tabletop Gaming Headquarters, where you could check out a board game from their library and take it to any of the many many tables around the convention center. And then, as I was making my last sweep through the convention center on my way out to catch my bus … I saw an empty seat at a Microsoft Surface table, where they were playing some sort of space-aliens cooperative tower defense game. I stayed for about an hour, missing the midnight bus home by about five minutes, and ended up waiting an extra 25 minutes for the next bus.

It was a long, full day, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Read more here:
PAX: First Impressions

Related Posts:

• Samsung excuses absence of Super AMOLED on Galaxy Tab with Super TFT (video)
• PS3 jailbreak adapted to Nokia N900, Palm Pre in wake of Australian ban (video)
• Microsoft Argues That Android Isn’t ‘Free’
• Sony shows off Google TV (or a video of it, anyway) at IFA 2010
• LG LEX8 ‘Nano LED’ TV eyes-on

Kindle DX Promotional Photo from Amazon.com

It’s easy to figure out why e-readers and tablets are the size that they are: They’re all about the size of paperback books, whether trade (iPad) or mass-market (the Kindle 3). Some oversized models, like the Kindle DX, are closer to big hardcovers. But why are books the size that they are? It turns out it’s because of sheep. Sheepskin, to be exact.

Carl Pyrdum, who writes the blog Get Medieval while he finishes his PhD in Literature at Yale, has the skinny on book sizes. You see, before Europeans learned how to make paper from the Arabs (who’d learned it from the Chinese), books were made from parchment, which was usually made from sheepskin. Sometimes, they’d use calfskin, too; if it was really primo stuff, it was called vellum. Like reading a whole book made out of veal.

We eventually mostly gave up on parchment, because it was expensive, and hard to work with. (There’s a reason medieval monks wrote manuscripts; preparing the parchment was penance.) But all of today’s book sizes (and by proxy, most of our gadget sizes) were established in the Middle Ages, and printers and papermakers carried them over. Booksellers and publishers still use these terms today:

• Fold a sheet of parchment once (two leaves/four pages per sheet) for a folio; if you fold sheets of paper once without a cover, you’ve got a tabloid.
• Twice for a quarto (8pp/s), the size of a big dictionary or big laptop;
• Three times for an octavo (16pp/s), a hardcover or Kindle DX;
• Four times for a duodecimo (24 pp/s), a trade paperback/iPad
• Four times (a slightly different way) for a 16mo (yes, they gave up), aka mass-market paperback/e-reader;
• Five times for a 32mo, aka notepad/old-school smartphone sized
• Six times for a 64mo, or as Erasmus called it, a Codex Nano.

All images via Get Medieval.

Story continues …

Read the original post:
The Hidden Link Between E-Readers and Sheep (It’s Not What You Think)

Related Posts:

• Video from cell phone question?
• Klipsch Image S5i Rugged in-ear headphones earn our respect (video)
• LG E900 Windows 7 Phone video hands-on
• Harvest for Windows Phone 7: Bridgestomp
• phone number program for PC?

Image: Scholastic Press

Yet again, I’ve got my daughter to thank.

It was on her recommendation back in January that I picked up — and plowed through — Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and its sequel, Catching Fire, which means I now owe her for the experience of reading the trilogy-concluding Mockingjay, just released at the end of August. (For the record: Kelsey got first crack at the book on the day it arrived, but I stayed up late that night reading pretty much the whole thing in one sitting.)

A warning: This is a spoiler-free review, but starting with the next paragraph our thoughts on the third book are likely to give away a few big pieces of the first two, so if you haven’t read them, you may want to click that “back” button on your browser now, or do a quick-scroll down to the next GeekDad piece.

With Mockingjay, Collins returns to the country of Panem — in which a ruthless Capitol state forces the children of its outlying districts to compete in annual battles to the death — and her story of Katniss Everdeen, a teenage hero of those Hunger Games who has become the face of a nationwide rebellion.

When I started reading Mockingjay, I was taken back to the release of Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. In much the same way that the tone of that book’s opening third threw me off — what with Harry being cooped up and half the wizarding world calling him a liar and all — it took me a while to get used to the new world of Mockingjay. There are no more Games, no more Arena: Every district’s streets are the battlefield, and the ongoing war is violent and grinding and numbing. (Mockingjay remains a Young Adult book, just to be clear, though it is fittingly darker and more brutal than its predecessors, with some disturbing insight into the fates of some of the teenage combatants.)

I’d bet Collins takes some lumps for the tone, but I give her a ton of credit for not shying away from the jagged edges of humanity which science fiction has traditionally explored. There’s the psychological toll the Games and subsequent rebellion take on Katniss and her friends and family. There are the questions of what happens when the good guys consider acting like the bad guys and whether those ends justify the means. There are issues of politics and survival and vengeance versus justice.

There’s also the “love triangle” subplot between Katniss, her lifelong-friend-turned-hardened-rebel Gale Hawthorne, and Peeta Mellark, a former arena competitor who has never hesitated to put his life before hers. (Though this is an ongoing and key thread in Katniss’ story, Collins’ has never made it the story-driver: To write The Hunger Games saga off as a sci-fi-cloaked “girl who likes two boys” tale is to miss the point entirely.)

Kelsey loved the book and said it was “a really good way to wrap up the series,” (we both had very small quibbles with parts of it near the end) though she did admit that “it felt overly emphasized that Katniss was a pawn in the war.” That said, she enjoyed the expansion of the character roster to include former Hunger Games foes and seeing Katniss develop new friendships.

What Collins has achieved in Mockingjay is impressive: The pacing is different from the first two books, but it remains a page-turner, and there are more than a few excellent cliffhangers, creeping terror moments, and twists and genuine surprises. She balances harried action sequences with throat-lump good quiet sections and manages an awfully satisfying ending to the book and the trilogy.

She’s also managed to craft science fiction that’s incredibly readable and entertaining and thought-provoking to both kids and their parents — and that’s a victory to be celebrated.

Continued here:
Review: Mockingjay Emerges Victorious

Related Posts:

• William Gibson’s New Book Is Out Tomorrow. Are You Getting It?
• William Gibson’s New Book Is Out In Two Days. Are You Getting It?
• Games: Chillingo Intros Lamp of Aladdin iPhone, iPad

Image: Pearl Crescent

Geocaching tends to have quite a few electronic helpers, based on the fact that it’s an electronic sport. Letterboxing, however, the old fashioned analog version of geocaching, has usually been a pen-and-paper kind of activity. I recently reviewed BoxFinder, an app for letterboxing clues. I have since found a second one called Clue Tracker.

Clue Tracker will allow you to search for letterboxes through Atlas Quest or Letterboxing North America (LbNA), the two major letterboxing websites. You can search for boxes near your location, by address or zip code or by box name. Once you choose a letterbox to find, touch the map to show where the box is located or to get directions to the box. You can also save the letterbox by touching the backback. Once you save several letterboxes, you can display all of them on one map.

If you save a clue that is from Atlas Quest, Clue Tracker saves the clue text for offline use. If you save a clue from Letterboxing North America, whether the clue text is saved locally or not depends on how the person entered the clue on LbNA. The Clue Tracker authors do plan some improvements regarding this issue in the future, however, and will eventually allow offline clue reading for all clues. They also plan to add support for more than one set of saved letterboxes.

For saved letterboxes, there is also a Notes field for recording information about the boxes, or about your adventure in finding them. To get there from the Saved Letterboxes area, touch “Edit” and you’ll see the Notes field.

Touching LbNA or AQ on a clue screen will take you to Safari and out of the program, since it shows you the clue on the LbNA or Atlas Quest website. Fortunately, when you start up Clue Tracker again, it takes you right back to where you were, at the clue. This is a very nice feature. The app also allows you to log into your Letterboxing North America account to hide the boxes you’ve planted yourself and those you have already found.

Clue Tracker is simple to use, and does what it is supposed to do, but for a few of the letterboxes, it is only useful at home and in wifi hot spots for people with an iPod Touch. It is available in the iTunes store for $4.99.

Wired: Best for those with an iPhone, lets you view multiple clues on a map and gives directions to the clue start. Has a notes field.

Tired: Some of the clues won’t save within the app.

Note: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Go here to read the rest:
Review: Find Your Next Letterbox With the Clue Tracker iPhone App

Related Posts:

• Harvest for Windows Phone 7: Bridgestomp
• phone number program for PC?
• Will Geico be releasing their Glove Box phone application for Android phones?
• How do i put music on my phone?
• I am confused about where all the Android phone apps are?

It’s been a tough three years for fans of Lego and the Harry Potter stories. When the theme was discontinued at the end of 2007, many of us despaired of them ever coming back. When Lego and Warner Brothers announced earlier this year that six new sets would be coming out this fall, hope was restored. And now the release date is less than a month away!

In addition to the Lego Hogwarts game that came out last month, six new sets will hit shelves on October 1. Most of them are retreads of old sets, with somewhat different designs and different minifigs, but that’s not a bad thing, really: I’d be much happier paying $130 for a new Hogwarts set than paying $500-something for an old one. The sets are, in ascending order of price and awesomeness: Freeing Dobby, Quidditch Match, Hagrid’s Hut, The Burrow, Hogwarts Express and of course Hogwarts Castle.

As far as I’m aware, the only truly new set among those is The Burrow. While this set looks excellent, I’m a bit annoyed that it’s based on the movie of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and not on that or any of the other books. You can tell this because the set includes minifigs of Fenrir Greyback and Bellatrix Lestrange, as well as flames that you can put on the house to show it burning — as every fan of the books knows, the scene in the film where Greyback and Bellatrix attack the protagonists at The Burrow and set the house ablaze appears not at all in the book.

But no matter: the sets are still very cool, and I’m sure my family will be acquiring several. Just from the pictures online, my favorite is Hogwarts Castle, but its price and the coolness of the Hogwarts Express one might make me change my mind — heck, the latter might be worth it just to get the awesome Luna Lovegood minifig.

Images © The LEGO Group

Here is the original post:
Harry Potter and the Return to Lego

Related Posts:

• 100 + LEGO Robotics Technic Rxc Gears Axles Pins Beams
• Apple 16GB iPhone 3G S – AT&T, White
• PnP – a LEGO Pick & Place Robot
• Lego Challenge 4