Ok, wow. I was totally not expecting this. In case you missed part 1, this was how Google's logo looked like yesterday. Now tell me you had predicted the logo was going to look like this today. The recurring theme this year appears to be two stick figures sporting construction outfits and doing something in general. This time though, they're hard at work instead of just messing about. Suspended by a single wire, one of them is giving the Google logo a good scrub. Its partner appears to be in charge of transforming that red ribbon into a bow. Looks like that red ribbon is in fashion again.
What's coming next?
Saturday, December 22, 2007
The Forbidden Kingdom is where Jackie Chan and Jet Li will duel it out onscreen for the very first time! Expect some awesome ass-kicking! I'm not a big fan of the kid though. He looks a bit too goofy (and out of place) in this action film.
A discovery made by a kung fu obsessed American teen sends him on an adventure to China, where he joins up with a band of martial arts warriors in order to free the imprisoned Monkey King.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The first of Google's holiday's doodle logos for 2007 is out. Continuing with previous years' tradition of having multiple celebratory logos, Google's 2007 Holiday Doodle page teases us with the as-yet-unknown second logo that will surely be gracing the front page of Google tomorrow. Last year's series began with Google's logo decorated with a bright red ribbon on Google's big blue G and ended up with a happy kangaroo family standing in front of its logo. If you missed the 2006 series, visit Google's 2006 Holiday Doodle site to view all 5 logos. For more of previous years logos, go to Google's collection of Holiday Logos.
Can you guess what's coming next?
The short version from IMBB:
The mythical world starts a rebellion against humanity in order to rule the Earth, so Hellboy and his team must save the world from the rebellious creatures.
The longer version from IGN:
After an ancient truce existing between humankind and the invisible realm of the fantastic is broken, hell on Earth is ready to erupt. A ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below defies his bloodline and awakens an unstoppable army of creatures. Now, it’s up to the planet’s toughest, roughest superhero to battle the merciless dictator and his marauders. He may be red. He may be horned. He may be misunderstood. But when you need the job done right, it’s time to call in Hellboy (Ron Perlman).
Saving the world is a HELL of a job!
Download HD version at IGN.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
One of the biggest news in the tech world today is that Internet Explorer 8 has passed the Acid2 Test. From the IE8 blog,
As a team, we’ve spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly in IE8 standards mode.
For those not in the know, the Acid2 Test was written to make it easy to test a browser's compliance with web standards like HTML4 and CSS2. There are 2 types of Acid2 Tests - one with data URLs and the other without. This was due to the fact that Internet Explorer and some other browsers do not support data URLs.
In a perfect world, browsers would have proper and consistent support for official web standards and you wouldn't need to worry about your users' browsers as long as your pages followed the official guidelines. The reason why this is such a big deal is because Internet Explorer has the largest market share and passing the test means that some time in the distant future, that perfect world may become a reality.
The ironic part about all this is that while internal builds of IE8 have passed the Acid2 Test, the Acid2 Test on The Web Standards Project site is now broken and will fail to render properly even in compliant browsers! For a working alternative, use the one found at the Acid2 Test author's site.
By now, you should have heard that you could (legally) watch Jackass 2.5 in the comfort of your home. Just head over to the Jackass 2.5 site (before 2008!), show some ID and success! Paramount Pictures, buffering, Johnny Knoxville, pause, rinse and repeat. Or not.
Tired of the occasional stuttering and frequent pauses, the jackass side of me kicked into motion and came up with an ingenious scheme to download Jackass 2.5 so that I could actually watch it and not wait for it. After I tasted sweet success in this endeavor however, the better part of me came into play once again, which is why you're reading this guide right now.
Tools of the trade
First things first. Let's get ourselves prepared. You'll need to download and install the following tools/programs.- Firefox 2.0 and above
- Video DownloadHelper (Firefox Extension)
- Microsoft SilverLight 1.0 (1.1 may not work)
- Hotspot Shield (only necessary if you're outside the US)
- Flashget Classic 1.73 (older versions will also work)
Get me that Jackass!
Once you're sure you've got everything installed, it's time to get into action.- If you're outside the US, start HotSpot Shield. Next, right-click on its icon in your system tray and click on Connect. A browser window should popup and show Hotspot Shield connecting to its servers. When its icon looks like this
, you're good to go. 
Note: HotSpot Shield has a server that seems to be mis-configured in some way. Specifically DNS lookups will fail so your browser will complain about being unable to find sites. If you can't visit any site after Hotspot Shield's icon turns green, simply disconnect and reconnect. Pray that you don't connect to the same server (1/7 probability, a bit lower than Russian Roulette) as these connections are made randomly. If you know how OpenVPN works, you can also edit the config to avoid this. - Next, run Firefox and clear out your cookies. This is to remove the evil jackass_geo_check cookie that you get when you first visited the Jackass site.
- Surf down to the BlockBuster Jackass site in Firefox.
- Surrender your email address to them or use temporaryinbox.com to get a disposable one. After confirming the email address, login (by entering your email address) to begin viewing Jackass 2.5.
- Before it starts however, a short advertisement featuring a spinning globe will get in your way. Ignore it or you could watch it if you really want to. While this advert is playing, click on the arrow beside Download Helper icon (three colored spinning balls) and observe the dropdown menu carefully. You may need to wait a while, but an option called "jackass25_1000k_v1_feature_production.wmv" should appear.
- When that option appears in the dropdown menu, click on it and save it as a text file.
- Open up the text file you'd just saved and copy the mms link (Ctrl+c) inside of it. It should look similar to the one below.
- Now close Hotspot Shield, run Flashget and add a new Flashget download by pressing F4 when the Flashget window appears. Flashget is pretty smart as it'll automatically detect the mms link you just copied (to your clipboard) and paste it into the URL box, so you'll just need to configure the rest of the options as seen below.
- Begin your download by clicking ok.
- Profit!
As promised yesterday, 3D Realms has given us a quick glimpse at what Duke Nukem Forever may look like, that is, if it ever appears on the market. It isn't much, but from the looks of it, Duke's been keeping fit all these years. Still, I'd prefer some shots of Duke kicking ass to a couple of aliens screaming at me.
I'm looking for some alien toilet to park my bricks. Who's first?
Download the HD version at FileShack or http://fusker.pl/duke.
DocSyncer has finally opened their doors to the public. From now until midnight of Christmas Day, the user that refers the most number of new members will win an 8GB iPhone! If you would like to see me win that 8GB iPhone, just click this link and sign up for DocSyncer.
What's DocSyncer?
Ever had the situation where you can't find the document you want? With DocSyncer, you can simply sync them all into your DocSyncer account and you'll be able to access all of them from one common location. When you install DocSyncer on your computer, it'll scan your computer for documents and upload them to your DocSyncer and Google Docs accounts. If you edit any of them, DocSyncer will detect this and sync the new versions into both your accounts, while retaining the old ones.Using DocSyncer
There are a couple of things to do when you first log in to DocSyncer. The very first thing you should do is grant DocSyncer access to your Google Docs account. This is simple to do and should be the first thing you see after logging in for the first time.
Next, you'll be prompted to change your password. For security reasons, sticking to the password that they generated for you is not a good idea. So go ahead and switch it to a decent password.
Finally, you'll be asked to download and install DocSyncer. This is required for syncing your documents to your DocSyncer account and can be installed on as many computers as you want. It currently runs on Windows 2000/XP/Vista, with a Mac OS X version in the works.
However, one other thing I would recommend is to go into your settings and changing "Always use SSL to view documents" to Yes. For some reason, this was set to No by default.
Me and DocSyncer
After installing DocSyncer on my computer, I created a test text document and waited for the magic to happen. Fortunately for me, it wasn't long before it appeared in my DocSyncer account. However, unlike DocSyncer, syncing to Google Docs is not immediate and took quite a while to occur (about 15 - 20 minutes). This is a known issue and the DocSyncer Team hopes to make Google Docs syncing immediate. (I know the screenshot says otherwise, but that's beacuse I took it after it synced to show you the full range of right-click options.)
While waiting for DocSyncer to update the files in my Google Docs, I edited the text document and wondered what would happen. About a minute later, the new version appeared in my DocSyncer account, with the older version available for download! Although I had expected this, it's pretty cool to see it in action.
With nothing showing up in my Google Docs, I tried renaming the test document. I thought to myself, "surely, DocSyncer wouldn't know what to do now". Sadly, my devious plans to trip up DocSyncer weren't going as planned. DocSyncer handled it easily as you can see below.
By now the files had appeared in my Google Docs account. Each new revision was uploaded as a separate file and the uploaded files weren't organized into their respective folders. Both are known issues that they're currently working on. However, be aware that if you edit a file in Google Docs, DocSyncer won't know about it unless you save it to your computer and launch DocSyncer for syncing.
I didn't mention this at the beginning but the very first time I ran DocSyncer, I was wondering why my other documents weren't being synced. As it turns out, syncing is currently limited to the My Documents and Desktop folder. At the moment you can only turn off/on syncing for these folders, although they'll be expanding this to include all folders.
Despite the minor setbacks I've experienced in DocSyncer, using it was mostly a pleasant experience. Even though it's in beta right now, there are no major show-stoppers, thus making it suitable for daily usage. As it continues to evolve, I'd expect it to improve even further in the future.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Shacknews is reporting that 3D Realms has confirmed on their official forums that a trailer for Duke Nukem Forever will be coming out tomorrow some time around noon Central time!
Tomorrow, Wednesday the 19th, around noon CST, we will release the first teaser trailer from Duke Nukem Forever. To tide you over until then, here is a screen shot taken from the teaser.
Download the high-res Duke shot at Shacknews.
[via Duke Nukem Forever Teaser Releasing Tomorrow; This is Real and We Are Not Shitting You @ Shacknews]