Comic Book Resources - CBR News - The Comic Wire
When “Annihilation” begins, several months have passed since the end of the four preceding mini-series. Giffen isn’t sure of the exact amount of time, his editor Andy Schmidt is in charge of the overall timeline of events in “Annihilation.” “Believe it or not all those ‘Annihilation Day’ captions, none of the creative guys touch them,” Giffen told CBR News. “Andy Schmidt is the one who fills all those in. He is the one who has the over view and is keeping track of all the time lines because he’s also the guy who is keeping track of all the mini-series and knows whether or not the ‘Silver Surfer’ series happened over a week and that maybe ‘Nova’ happened in a month. But a substantial enough time has passed that a firm alliance has been pulled together.”
With the exception of Ronin, the Annihilation minis were far, far better than they had any right to be. Cosmic Marvel has got a long and dubious history of mediocrity and tedium, but these stories had real punch, but also just straight up quality writing and art. For the first time ever, I’m interested in what’s going to happen in the Marvel Universe’s cosmos.
THE BEAT » Blog Archive » Claypool goes online
After a well documented struggle to stay in the Diamond catalog, Claypool Comics has just announced that they are going to the web and shutting down their print operations.
After almost fourteen years and more than 300 issues — one of the longest runs in the history of independent comics — publisher Claypool Comics is telling the world of print, “Thank you and farewell.” After ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE DARK #166 (shipping in February 2007), SOULSEARCHERS AND COMPANY #82 (also shipping in February), and DEADBEATS #82 (shipping in March), Claypool will cut back its line to DEADBEATS alone and put new adventures of that series’ vampire-haunted world on the Internet. Claypool’s trade-paperback comics collections (under the Boffin Books imprint) and back issues will remain available as long as supplies last.
[…]
Diamond has graciously guaranteed that the Claypool line will be allowed to finish out its run with enough time to bring both SOULSEARCHERS and DEADBEATS to exciting story resolutions, ensuring that long-time readers won’t be disappointed.
I never really got into Claypool. They just didn’t publish my kind of comic, but that’s not to say they weren’t one of the more important indies in the industry, and seeing them leave the print world is big news for any comic who’s not named Marvel, DC, Image or Dark Horse.
Diamond continues to be the nicest, most PR conscious monopoly in any industry, which is really not saying much. They are shutting down an independent publisher all on their own.
It’ll be interesting to follow Claypool, and see if they can turn a profit being a small, non print based comic company with a well defined audience going in. If they can, that’s huge news for every comic company, regardless of name. I think if anyone can do it, they can. While its not large, they do have a loyal fan base going into the venture, along with fourteen years of experience. You really couldn’t ask for a more favorable starting point, I think.
Cool new technology called Photosynth stitches together 2D images to create a 3D environment, including annotations that ‘track’ across viewpoints.
Among other potential uses, this kind of tech is vital for ideas like virtual and/or augmented reality. Very cool stuff.
(Via The Speculist.)
Next Generation - E3 Finished as Big Exhibs Pull Support
The ESA will today seek to salvage some good from the wreckage of E3; but the spectacle that has held the industry in thrall for 12 years is at an end. As Next-Gen exclusively reported Sunday, all major exhibitors have effectively pulled their support from the show, prompting the majority of game publishers to also cancel plans for high-cost booths. The ESA will make an announcement later today that will attempt to add some gloss to this catastrophe, with some form of media-focused boutique event - branded E3 - taking its place.
The leviathan dies. I can’t say I’m particularly shocked. This has turned into as much of a velvet rope event as it is anything else. Now it looks like the industry giants are seeing that the benefit just didn’t justify the cost. Game Politics has a good, short, interview with a “knowledgeable game industry source” that sheds a little light on why this came about.
It’s only a matter of time that once VoIP software becomes ubiquitous that hardware will soon follow. This hardware would be of particular use to, say, students on America’s wireless campuses.
The Wi-Fi in your handset | CNET News.com
What if, instead of burning up minutes on your cell phone plan, you could make free or cheap calls over the wireless networks that allow Internet access in many coffee shops, airports and homes?
New phones coming on the market will allow just that.
Instead of relying on standard cell phone networks, some phones will make use of the anarchic global patchwork of so-called Wi-Fi hot spots. Other phones will be able to switch easily between the two modes
[…]
The major cell phone companies have taken notice of Wi-Fi phones, and some have chosen to deal with the potential threat by embracing it and building it into their business plans.
Read the rest of it. Its kind of nice for a large company to embrace a new technology that could be potentially dangerous to their current business model, instead of trying to crush, outlaw, or marginalize it.
Eye transmits to brain at ethernet speed - LiveScience - MSNBC.com
The human retina contains about 10 times more ganglion cells than that of guinea pigs, so it would transmit data at roughly 10 million bits per second, the researchers estimate. This is comparable to an Ethernet connection, which transmits information between computers at speeds of 10 million to 100 million bits per second.
Zomg! I don’t know that this really means anything, but it’s kind of a cool coincidence.
So, Ann Coultier (CRAZY!) accused former President Bill Clinton of being gay.
David Letterman responds.
Just a short reminder that a friend of mine is running an all-day cook-and-blogathon over here for the National Kidney Foundation. Check it out if you like food.
The Technology Chronicles : Urine for a surprise
You’re in a bar, had a few drinks and head into the men’s room before hitting the road. That’s precisely the time when Wizmark, the Interactive Urinal Communicator, wants to have a word with you. “Hey you! Yeah, you. Having a few drinks? Then listen up! Think you had one too many? Then it’s time to call a cab…”
(read the article for a sound clip link to the actual audio)
Man, I don’t know about you, but If I’m drunk, and I hear something like this, it isn’t going to make me think again about driving drunk*. It is far more likely for me to get startled, and possibly make a mess. Also, if I have to hear that every single time I use the rest room, that bar would probably not have the pleasure of my business again.
*I’m incredibly careful about drinking and driving. If I have one beer in the afternoon, I won’t drive till the next day, but that’s really neither here nor there.
(Edited by Rhadamanthos because there was no link to the actual audio where it said ‘click HERE’ and I didn’t add one cause direct linking is bad, m’kay?)
Most of the Ziggurati just watched Conan: The Barbarian tonight. A good time was had by all, but I was shocked and horrified to find out that this movie was actually made in 1982, not the 70’s like we thought. Look for at least two new taglines up top inspired by the movie.
Continuing with the Conan trend for tonight, a post at The Lair of the Evil DM points to a large collection of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories that are in the public domain and on Project Gutenburg. Go have a look if you’ve never read any Conan. The Tower of the Elephant(.txt)(.html) is probably my favorite story, but that may well be because it’s the first one I’ve read.
Techcrunch » Blog Archive » US House: Schools must block MySpace, many other sites
An incredibly vague law, DOPA will require schools and libraries to block access to a potentially huge range of sites on the internet. The goal is to protect children from adult predators. Sites that must be blocked include those that allow people to post profiles, include personal information and allow “communication among users.”
Now, it still has to go through the Senate, but this bill passed by a shocking 410-15. Click the link though. There’s a good roundup of five very good links about DOPA that you should check out.
It looks like Internet Explorer 7, much to the delight of malware creators everywhere I’m sure, is going to be an automatic update. So says Ars Technica:
Now, according to Microsoft’s IEBlog, the release version of IE7 will be distributed via a high-priority automatic update, in addition to being made available from a standalone download site. The installation can still be canceled manually by the user if desired, and IE7 will not automatically make itself the default browser. However, for most people, this will mean the new IE will magically appear on their computers upon its release.
The article goes on to say that this update will require Window’s Genuine Advantage verification. I wonder how many naive users will be able to navigate through that. Those are the users that are really going to be targeted for IE7 anyway.
Via Techcrunch, I found a single ajax page that allows you to access AIM/ICQ, Yahoo IM, Jabber/Gtalk, and MSN chat from the same portal. Not too useful for day to day stuff, but if you find yourself at a computer that doesn’t have your IM client of choice, this is one easy stop to get whatever you use.
Did you guys see Bubba Ho-Tep? You should. It was good. Anyway, I was imdb’ing Bruce Campbell’s name to remember the name of Alien Apocolipse, and I noticed the top movie on his list of movies. Bubba Nosferatu! Color me excited.
It’s got “she-vampires”!
Admin here. I’ve been tweaking our spam settings again lately, so please, if you’ve posted a legitimate comment and it got eaten by the spamtrap, contact me.
I got the weirdest, and possibly most brilliant spam in my inbox today. I don’t know if anyone else reads their spam folder for fun, but I sometimes do. I’ve been getting a lot of emails that have image attachments of a document, and Gmail has picked those up all without a problem. This email has that, but it got through the spam filters with a pretty neat trick.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Fantasy World News Generator:
Today’s Top Story
SKULLSHORT, Deathwing - Hezbollah inflicted heavy casualties on minotaur soldiers as they battled for a key hilltop town in southern Deathwing for a fourth day Wednesday, with as many as 14 soldiers reported killed. Lebanese officials, meanwhile, confirmed that four Empire observers were killed by a minotaur airstrike on their post Tuesday night.
Fun stuff.
(Crossposted to Kill the Wizard First. Via The 20′ by 20′ Room.)
I’m backing off on political stuff here on ZoD, for a variety of reasons, but I couldn’t resist one more — mostly because it’s deeply informative. Also, frankly, terrifying.
Behold: The Maze. An 8 part series on exactly how fucked up medical billing is in this country, from the perspective of the doctor. Link is to the last part, which has an index to earlier segments at the top.
stealth mod: added Meta category