Yes, The Flintstones debuted 50 years ago today. You can reminisce about Bedrock below. But only after you suggest an idea for the graphic Google could use to honor one or more of these other upcoming TV anniversaries:
• Gilmore Girls‘ 10th anniversary on Oct. 5
• CSI‘s 10th anniversary on Oc. 6*
• Bosom Buddies‘ 30th anniversary on Nov. 27
• Magnum, P.I.‘s 30th anniversary on Dec. 11
Go!
*They should make the word “Google” look like a bodily fluid stain under a blue light!
Were you engrossed by the multicolored bouncing balls on Google’s home page yesterday? Well, it wasn’t just a really easy game. The interactive graphic was a promotion for Google Instant, Google’s new search engine innovation that was premiered at Google’s press event today.
Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience described Google Instant as “search before you type,” and announced that the feature was implemented on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE today. Here’s the official blog post.
Go check it out. Search results actually appear as you type, supposedly saving two to five seconds per search. The search engine also predicts what you were going to type and runs a search result on that. That’s right. Google search is now so smart that not only can it can actually read your mind, it’ll also hit the enter button for you. READ FULL STORY »
Wondering what’s up with today’s Google homepage? Well, join the club. The nerd club! We take turns bringing bagels and asking questions.
So far, Google’s been mum on why their homepage is featuring, er, mouse-avoiding balls,* saying only that it’s “fast, fun and interactive, just the way we think search should be.” Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with Google’s big media event tomorrow, where the company’s going to unveil their “latest technological innovation.” I hope it’s called Google Balls. I don’t care what it does, just please lord, let it be called Google Balls. READ FULL STORY »
Sleep with one eye open, Apple TV: Google’s hot on your heels. CEO Eric Schmidt demoed the long-awaited Google TV today, and if you like searching, you’ll like it.
GTV uses Chrome to find the content you want, and it searches the web, your DVR, Amazon, Netflix, and whatever cable options you already have; it’s not totally clear yet what the remote will be like, but it looks like it will have a QWERTY keyboard. READ FULL STORY »
Are you tired of sitting on your couch with nothing to do? Are you wasted? (It is the holiday, after all.) Then you’ll love this new video game inspired by The Room. (Click here to play.) Essentially the film in video game form, The Room: The Game takes you inside Johnny’s life, sending you through the streets of San Francisco to fight with your boss about your promotion, buy Lisa a new red dress, and say hi to plenty of doggies. Yesterday, I vowed to play the game for just five f–king minutes…which quickly turned into 90 minutes. (Oops.) It’s as addictive as scotchka! Since I’m not too video game savvy, though, I couldn’t seem to defeat Chris R., no matter how many water bottles and footballs I hurled his way. Enjoy, and try not to throw your computer out the window in frustration.
Hark! A Flash game I cannot stop playing! I’m pathetically addicted to simple click games (Robot Unicorn Attack 4 eva), and “Treadmillasaurus Rex” hits that dangerous sweet spot of easy, goofy, and impossible to play once. Come for the wheel of awesome, stay for the dinosaur in the top hat. Seriously, I can’t stop playing this: READ FULL STORY »
Robot Chicken Emmy winners Seth Green and Matthew Senreich are tackling reality TV — on the Internet. They’ve created ControlTV, a show that will follow six weeks in the life of a man in his twenties, as the audience votes, in real time, on decisions in his life — from what he wears and eats, to where he works, to who he dates. The show, which will begin production in Los Angeles this fall, will be distributed by DBG (www.dbg.tv). The highlights of each day’s action will be edited into a webisode, concluding with a vote. The series has partnered with Ford and Sprint, so the Man Puppet (our term) will drive a 2011 Ford Fiesta and use Sprint’s new HTC EVO4G phone. (I’m surprisingly okay with product tie-ins when the whole point of a show is manipulation. But I stand behind my tweet last night after a certain scripted series on USA: “For every BMW/Bud Light product placement shot on Covert Affairs, I’d like an Auggie sex scene.”)
What do you think about ControlTV? I trust Green and Senreich to make this moving Choose Your Own Adventure book fun. And they appear to have aligned themselves with the right people, who will serve as fellow exec producers: Richard Saperstein, former president of Dimension Films; Bachelor director Ken Fuchs; award-winning commercial director Stephen Kessler; and interactive technology expert Craig Ullman. Will you play?
Google announced its newest Gmail feature yesterday: Phone calls. Yep, the search giant has entered the ring against Skype. Cut to the woman in the bikini holding the sign that says “round one.” Ding ding. Fight!
The new feature integrates Google Voice with Gmail, so to use it, you have to have a Voice account. (Fret not. It’s free.) Install a simple plugin, and then it’s just like using chat — except you’re making phone calls. It’s free in the U.S. and Canada, and really really cheap elsewhere. (Here are some more thorough directions.) READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Television/Jordin AlthausOn Sept. 7, Held Up, the 16-part web series starring It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Kaitlin Olson, The Wire‘s Cyrus Farmer, The Jon Dore Show‘s Jon Dore, and writer-producers Randy and Jason Sklar, premieres on Crackle.com. Below, we’ve got your exclusive first look at the trailer. The story: Bored bank teller/standup comic Ray (Dore) gets his wish for some excitement when two teams of crazy robbers disguised as Rocky I (Farmer), Rocky II (Olson) and Batman and Robin (the Sklar brothers) hold up his branch. It’s a character piece, and one of things the Sklars are most proud of is the love story that develops between Ray and Rocky II. “In the same way that we really love the relationship, and who doesn’t, between Niles and Frasier Crane — that they made Niles even farther to the right than Frasier — we thought how great would it be if Jon is this total smartass, but we have Kaitlin, who is so strong comedically, and he falls in love with her from a comedy perspective,” Randy says.
“Jon says in a later episode, ‘I have a comedy boner for her,’” Jason continues. “The entire time throughout the series, Jon’s pulling the rug out from Jan, the bank manager played by Susan Nakamura. You get the sense that he’s been doing that forever, and now this woman comes in and pulls the rug out from under him and just completely, literally, sweeps him off his feet. So often in TV and movies, the guys get to be funny and the women are hot, and that’s the chemistry. But in this case, you got a funny guy and then an equal or funnier woman, and they connect on that, and he’s like, ‘I want that. That’s hot to me.’” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Courtesy of Nick Pittsinger / Chris Hatcher/PR PhotosIf you were anywhere near an Internet connection yesterday, you heard the hauntingly beautiful ultra-slow Justin Bieber track. Florida-based musician and producer Nick Pittsinger, 20, dramatically slowed Bieber’s “U Smile” down, and the result has been and burst of Internet fame he never expected. “I’m a producer, so I just like to mess around with audio. It was a joke, and now it’s this meme, this phenomenon,” he says. We talked to Pittsinger this morning to get the skinny on his Bieber fever.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Walk me through the process. How did this all start?
NICK PITTSINGER: Me and a friend have inside jokes about Justin Bieber, and I thought it would be an interesting idea to slow it down. When you slow down a video by 800 or 1,000 percent, every detail is seen — you see exactly how stuff breaks or people sneeze. I decided to take that and apply it to this Justin Bieber song. It has a nice melody, and I was pretty sure it would yield a decent [result]. The result was amazing, totally unlike anything I’ve ever heard — and I listen to a lot of stuff. It’s mind-blowing. READ FULL STORY »
