Nurse, Pass the Scpl

There's really not much exciting news out there today, but I figured that I'd talk about what interested me the most: the Razr's potential replacement. Motorola has been selling the Motofone F3 in India and it's poised to make a grand entrance to Europe and the U.S. very soon. It's the first in its line of Linux-based phones, strangely called Scapl for "Scalpel." They originally planned on Scpl replacing the Razr line because they were based on an aging OS, and it could sell for as little as $50 retail! What's really nice about the Motofone is that it's a damned phone! None of these stupid features no one uses. It focuses on making calls well, downloadable ringtone, and text messaging and that's mostly it. Hence, you can expect ridiculous battery life out of it. Plus, the display is e-Paper rather than TFT LCD, which means that once an image/text is displayed it requires no additional power to maintain it on the screen. Supposedly, they've improved the interface as well. I think that this is a great step for them because I think people are tired of phones costing so much money when all they want is a phone, not a PDA. It'd be perfect for high schoolers especially since they don't deserve/need fancy, expensive cell phones. College students typically don't either, and could one more cheap thing in their lives. And plus, it's perfect for older demographics.

As many of my regulars are no doubt already aware, I got into a pretty scary car wreck in May because I fell asleep behind the week after a grueling week of staying up late studying for finals. Now, Mercedes has developed technology to detect fatigue in the driver and try to warn them. It's actually a pretty neat system that relies on a number of factors including time of day, how long you've been driving, how often you blink, if you're moving the wheel, etc. I think that's pretty exciting because it could totally save lives (and probably will). I've been pretty harsh on the Zune because, well, everyone has and it's hard to find good things to say about it. Well, the NPD Group (generally fairly reliable) claims that the Zune was second in the portable digital player market its opening week. It failed miserably online, but I guess a decent number of people bought it at stores? I personally think that people are holding back to see a 2G Zune. Google has decided to take down its Google Answers service. They didn't explain why, really, but it was kind of neat for people who didn't know how to find answers to the questions they wanted answered. Lastly, BitTorrent has teamed up with some big names to add more mainstream content for legal download via BitTorrent early next year. I'm glad they're doing this, and I hope it works out for them. I'll, of course, keep you posted when these things actually go live.

There's actually some movie news today, and I'll start it off with some reviews, all of which are from AICN. One is for Curse of the Golden Flower and it sounds like not only is it a visual masterpiece but the acting is top-notch. As an added bonus, we get some cleavage shots, apparently, which is always appreciated. The other notable ones are for Apocalypto, but neither sound all that impressed. In fact, it sounds like one of those movies that are just as good with the audio muted. Now for the fun stuff: trailers, in order of increasing coolness. First off, Yahoo Movies now has the trailer for Pride, and it actually looks like it may be one of those good inspirational kind of movies as opposed to really corny and boring. Moviefone has the exclusive new trailer for The Dead Girl, and it looks better than before, especially since it's nominated for best feature film in the Independent Spirit Awards, and I didn't realize how good the cast was. Lastly, Apple has the totally sweet new trailer for Smokin' Aces, which sounds like Ocean's Eleven but for assassins rather than thieves. When you can toss around names like Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Common, Ben Affleck, and Jason Bateman, you know it's going to be a fun movie.

I just uploaded some pictures from my camera tonight and so I thought I'd share one of my cousin once removed (i.e. my cousin's son) in full A&M garb for the Lone Star Showdown last Friday. I know it goes against every burnt orange fiber of my being, but he just looks so precious.



Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. Who is your favorite electric guitarist? Or top three, if you can't decide on one?
I don't really know, but my favorite guitarist in general is John Frusciante, who likely wails on an electric guitar regularly.

2. Describe your dream guitar. What color is it? What brand? What special touches does it have?
A Special Grand Concert Francisco Navarro. You can see it here. It'd have to be Cedar top with a Brazilian Rosewood.

3. Bass guitars are electric guitars too. Who is your favorite bassist?
I don't think I really have one, but Tim Commerford from Audioslave (and Rage Against the Machine) is pretty good.

4. Name one of your favorite electric guitar solos.
Psh, I couldn't even say right now. A lot of my favorite guitar solos are on acoustic.