Few people were debating that the $299 on contract price for Nokia’s Atom-powered Booklet 3G was a bit steep, but now it has fallen more in line with its closest competition thanks to a price drop at Best Buy Mobile. From December 13th “through the holidays,” the Windows 7-packin’ machine (which we just recently reviewed) will be available for $199.99 with a two-year AT&T Data Connect plan. Of course, there’s a good chance you’ll regret the decision to jump on this when the next-generation Atom hits at CES (which ishappening, right Intel?), but hey, Santa’s got to do what Santa’s got to do.
• The Wall Street Journal says it’s made by HTC and called the Nexus One. It’ll be sold online, directly by Google. You’ll have to get your own cell service (which suggests it’s an unlocked device). Curiously, the WSJ says, “unlike the more than half-dozen Android phones made by phone manufacturers today, Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone.” Sounds weird, since they designed the look and feel of the software on the Droid and G1 too, except that our source had told us before that the current Android we know isn’t the “real” Android. Also odd sounding: that name, Nexus One. But maybe not that odd.
• Google confirmed they handed out “a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe.”
• A bunch of Google employees tweeted stuff like the phone is “like an iPhone on beautifying steroids.”
• It probably looks like this:
• It’s supposedly an unlocked GSM phone running Android 2.1, powered by the crazyfast Snapdragon processor, with an OLED touchscreen (no keyboard), dual mics (for killing background noise), and enhanced voice-to-text powers. It’s gonna be alllll Google branding. And it’s probably coming out in January. Which jives with what our source saw a couple weeks ago, a huge screen running a brand new version of Android unlike anything out there.
• We heard it was referred to, at least in some capacity in the staff meeting where they were handed out, as the “Passion.”
If Google really is going to push this as The Google Phone (and it’s not just a dev phone), it’s hard to overstate just how radically this changes the landscape not just for Android, but what it means for Google and their relationship to the cellphone industry. The Google Phone would be a radically different model, a shift from the Microsoft one—make the software, let somebody else deal with the hardware—to the Apple and BlackBerry one—make the software and the hardware, tightly integrated. And Google’s even taking a step further, by selling it directly, bypassing the carriers, at least initially. (Google would not be the first to sell a high-powered unlocked phone—see Sony Ericsson and Nokia—but neither them are, um, Google, and their well-known failures with that approach makes it even ballsier.)
It’s a powerful message: to the companies making phones running Android, to the carriers, to developers, to consumers. Google is in this, to win. Everything has changed. You know, unless it hasn’t.
Unorthodox media center PCs aren’t anything new; if you can dream it up, there’s most likely an option out there with your name on it. Piixl’s newest entry, however, has a fairly decent shot at appealing to more than just the home theater junkies, but only time will tell if the London-based startup can convince consumers that they really need another slab of machinery behind their flat-panel. The EdgeCenter 3770 is essentially an ultraslim HTPC with an enclosure that’s engineered to mount directly behind flat-panel HDTVs through their VESA mounting interface. The whole thing is just 30mm deep and can fit screens ranging from 37- to 70-inches, and if you’re worried about it being underpowered, don’t be. The base configuration is equipped with a 3Ghz Core 2 Duo chip, while Core i5 and Core i7 options (not to mention discrete GPUs) are available for those with the spare poundage. Interested parties can order theirs now starting at £2,490 ($4,043), though it’s frighteningly easy to push that well into five figure territory.
Whether making your own lens hood to create custom bokeh, breathing like a sniper to get a blur-free photo, or angling your body to look the best in pictures, we shared some great photography hacks this year.
Software and Photoshop tricks are great, but they’re a poor substitution for doing things in-camera. Over the last year we shared a variety of hacks for taking better photos, looking better in photos, and ways to get professional results without spending your rent money on camera accessories.
What’s a bokeh you say? It’s that oh-so-wonderful fuzziness in the background of photographs with a shallow depth of field and accompanying starry highlights. You can create you own bokeh effects with a little craftiness.
We live in a culture of oversharing, so odds are someone, somewhere will be snapping and posting photos taken of you at various events. To help ensure you look your best, heed where you position your tongue.
People often lament that they “just missed it!” upon seeing they failed to capture a pivotal moment in the action. You can avoid missing the action by treating your still camera like a video camera.
You have a camera and a willing subject, but you’re not sure how to break your portraits out of the flat blandness that plagues many snapshots. Avoid boring compositions with these tips.
Many a photography enthusiast has assumed the equipment necessary is far too expensive for quality high speed photography captures. A high speed capture studio on the cheap can be had with this handy guide.
Making abstract wallpaper and gorgeous slow-exposure shots doesn’t require a bunch of design apps or photography lessons. Learn how to literally toss your camera to make abstract light art.
Whether you head 30 or 3000 miles away, you’ll want to bring back great photos of your vacation. The New York Times posts questions and answers on how to achieve great vacation photos.
Taking a good self-portrait is both a handy skill and a way to expand your photographic repertoire. Save your next profile picture from the camera-held-at-arms-length cliche with these tips.
Daytime photo tricks don’t always translate when you’re trying to capture the perfect night shot. The Photography Bay web site outlines tips for taking a stellar post-sunset shot without relying on a tripod or expensive flash system.
When the camera comes out, a lot of people instinctively declare that they look awful in pictures. Learn how to be more photogenic and put your best face forward.
If the DIY Fiber Optic Ring Flash we wrote about required too many specialist parts for your taste, check out this much simpler remix. The construction is easy and done with common household items.
Photography is a creative art, no doubt, but creative doesn’t mean doing everything willy-nilly however you want. Use these basic rules of composition to give your photos an extra boost of visual appeal.
Beauty dishes are great flash modifiers for portrait photographs, but even a cheap model will set you back at least $100. Skip it—a surprisingly effective DIY beauty dish costs less than $20.
Gizmodo’s John Mahoney explains how to take high dynamic range (HDR) photos so that the results of your photograph more accurately recreate what you were seeing when you snapped the shutter.
You don’t need a blockbuster budget to get high-quality light for your portraits. By coaxing the sun to help in your photographic endeavors, you can create stunning portraits on a tiny budget.
Lightboxes aren’t just for the professionals any longer. Using them to illuminate your Craigslist and eBay listings can help make a sale, and amateur photogs can get professional-looking shots with one. Create your own using K’nex and a little know how.
Panoramic software has come a long way toward making panoramic images child’s work. Great software or not, there’s no substitution for good source material. Take better panoramic pictures with these tips
Whether you’re interested in learning more about lighting to add to your photography skill set or you’re just curious how proper studio lighting works, this handy guide will provide some photo-enhancing insight.
Tilt-shift lenses create a great miniature effect on photographs of everyday things. The problem? These specialized lenses are insanely expensive (think $1,000 range). This video from Make demonstrates how to make a DIY tilt-shift lens on the cheap.
Sunsets are one of nature’s more spectacular displays, and a good one is worth preserving with a photograph. Take pictures that will capture the perfect dusk moment with these photography tips.
The right flash can make or break your shot. Unfortunately, not all built-in flashes are created equal. DIY web site Instructables demonstrates how to create a worthy on-the-spot flash diffuser using an empty cigarette packet.
A high-end macro lens for your camera can easily run upwards of a thousand dollars, but you can make a super-simple macro lens for a few bucks out of old binoculars.
Have a favorite photography-related hack from 2009 that wasn’t featured here? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
Incredulously enough, no other major camera maker has come out and mimicked Samsung’s front-facing LCD approach found on the TL225 (or ST550 in some areas), so if you’re in the market, it’s either this one or the lesser-specced TL220 (ST500). If you’re considering picking up the former as a bang-up gift for your special someone, you’d probably do yourself a solid by taking a peek at a few reviews around the web. The long and short of it is this: the camera’s dual LCDs are well implemented, and they actually do come in handy for those looking to handle the “self-portrait” duties in the relationship. Beyond that, however, there wasn’t a lot of praise to go around. For starters, the camera relies only on microSD memory, so those spare SD cards you’ve got laying around are no good here. Then there’s the so-so image quality coupled with the staggeringly weak battery life; Photography Blog was only able to squeeze out around 100 shots while making heavy use of the touchscreen. Everyone seemed to agree that the cam wasn’t for everyone, so be sure and take a look around before committing.
Read – Photography Blog Read – About Read – Photography Bay Read – Digital Camera Info Read – CNET Read – Steves Digicams
Google Voice, which lets users consolidate all their phones under one number, archive your texts and voicemails, and much, much more, is two things to most people: vaguely promising, and totally confusing. Here’s how to make the switch, in plain English.
The Pitch
It doesn’t really help to describe Google Voice in terms of what it is—a bizarrely fragmented hodgepodge of different telecom and internet technologies, drawn together by Google—so you just have to start with what it does. In short, it can completely change how you use your phones, more or less for free.
• It can give all of your phones the same number for incoming calls. Google will assigned you a new, Google Voice-specific phone number for free, which you can forward to as many phones as you want. What always drives the point of Google Voice home for people is when I have them call my number, which causes three of my phones to ring at once. You can keep this number forever, too, without ever having to worry about porting it from carrier to carrier. • It can give your phones the same outgoing number as well, with which you can make free domestic calls (well, sort of—more on that later), and very cheap international calls. Since Google Voice routes your calls through their phone system, they can connect you directly to cheap VoIP services to the rest of the world. It seems like you’re just making a regular call, but behind the scenes you’re doing something more akin to Skyping. End result: money saved. • You can send and receive unlimited text messages for free. To make things even better, they’re all all archived in your online Google Voice account, where they’re fully searchable. • It’s got the best voicemail system in the world. Leaving a message at a Google Voice number is nothing like leaving your voice on a regular voicemail service—that is to say, it’s not like sending your voice into a barely accessible technological horror pit where it might get listened to, but will probably be ignored. No, Google Voice is different: It stores your messages online, and converts them to text (which can then be sent to you as an SMS or an email). You can archive, forward, delete or save these messages from a simple interface on your phone or computer. Think of it as Gmail, except with voices. Plus, it’s flexible in lots of little ways—you can change your voicemail greetings on a per caller basis, for example, or opt to listen to voicemails as they’re being recorded. • This voicemail system isn’t just for Google Voice numbers, either—you essentially replace your carrier voicemail with Google Voice voicemail, without using a new number. It’s brilliant. • You have full control over your calls. You can record them for later listening, and have them transcribed into text. • You can screen callers. You can block numbers, or have callers record their names for your approval. You can have certain contacts only forwarded to certain phones,
Each of these features is compelling enough on its own—together, they’ll totally change how you use your phones, changing you from a mere mobile customer to a full-on switchboard operator, self-spy, info hoarder and telco executive. It’s like you run your own little phone company, just for yourself. For free. Spectacular.
The Catch(es)
Now that I’ve got you all riled, it’s time for me to pour an icy bucket of water down the front of your pants. Google Voice, as incredible a concept and service as it is, isn’t perfect. In fact, there are a few things you need to know and accept before taking the dive, and they might be dealbreakers:
• You can’t use your own phone number. At least, not in the way you wish you could. In an ideal world, you’d be able to port your old cellphone number to Google Voice, and have that—the digits people have been using to get in touch with you for years—be your new all-inclusive point of contact. You can’t do this yet. For now, the closest you can come is to port your voicemail to Google Voice. That means that your T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon or Sprint number’s voicemail can be outsourced to Google, but not its calls. You can unify all your phones under your new Google Voice number, but that means you have to switch. Along with the basic inconvenience of telling everyone about your new number, you’re trusting an awful lot in a beta service, the terms of which could change quickly and without notice. It’s not something I worry about, but it’s not nothing, either.
• You can’t record calls that you’ve placed, just calls that you’ve received. And every time you initiate recording, Google Voice notifies the other person on the line. This is all makes perfect moral and procedural sense, but just in case you had the impression that there were no limits on your recording abilities, well, there are.
• The mobile app situation isn’t ideal. There are apps for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and iPhone via jailbreak, and they all work. That said, they’re not perfect—they can be slow, poorly integrated, glitchy, or hard to figure out. And since they’re supposed to replace the dialer on your phone entirely, this isn’t wonderful. The online mobile interface is a good fallback for placing calls and sending texts, but navigating to that adds an extra step to any call or text that can get tiresome after a while.
• Lastly, the way American phones work, you’re still going to end up paying for your minutes, somehow. Just because Google Voice says you can make free domestic calls and cheap international calls doesn’t mean that you actually can: in both cases, you need to dial out to Google Voice’s external system in the first place, which means you’re still using your monthly minute allotment. There are ways around this which I’ll discuss later, but Google Voice, as good as it is, isn’t magic.
Discouraged? Don’t be. Google Voice is still well worth you time and effort, and it’s only going to get better. Now, for God’s sake let’s get started already.
The Process
Signing up. This is simultaneously the easiest and most irritating part of Google Voice: It’s still invite only. Lucky for you, “Invite” in this case doesn’t mean you actually have to wait for an individual to select you from the masses; it’s just Google’s way of saying their keeping the signup pace down at manageable levels while the service is still in beta. Just submit your address, after which Google “anticipate[s] that it will be a short wait before you receive your invitation.”
What’s a short wait? My invite took about four days. Some come within 48 hours. At worst, they take about two weeks. Lots of you will have already received your invite, and just not done a whole lot with it—you guys can keep reading—while the rest of you should just bookmark this post, and come back to it once you get your invite. Protip: check your spam filters.
—
Ok, hello again, people I was talking to anywhere between two seconds and two weeks ago! How are you? Now that you’ve got your invite, you can log in to your Google Voice Dashboard. It’ll look familiar if you’ve used any Google Service before:
Logging in. Follow your confirmation link, or navigate here. Click around for a while to get a feel for the interface. This is how you’ll manage your phones from now on. It’s liberatingly simple.
Picking your number. You’ll be given a choice of numbers, which you can choose from practically any available area code. Choose wisely: this will be your primary number from here on out. Choosing your first number is free; changing it in the future will cost you $10. Boo, waah, etcetera! But really not a huge deal.
Adding your phones. This is assuming you want to forward a single number to all your phones, which is kind of the point here, so: Go to the Google Voice settings page (up in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. In the first section, called “Phones,” click “Add a Phone” or “Add Another Phone.” Give it a name “My iPhone” and enter its phone number. That’s it.
Now you’ll be given a passcode, which you’ll use to authenticate your existing phone. Clicking “Connect” will call your phone from your Google Voice number, and a friendly robot will ask for you code. Enter it. That’s it!
Setting up your voicemail. Now that the phone is added, it can accept calls directed to your Google Voice number. If the call is ignored, it will forward the voicemail to Google Voice, where it will be stored online. Alternately, if you only want to use Google Voice for voicemail, you can disable the calling feature (by unchecking the box next to the phone), and set up the service to hijack your actual cellphone number’s voicemails—even when the call didn’t get routed through Google Voice.
This is much easier that it sounds: Just click “Activate Google Voicemail” next to your newly-added phone, and enter the number they give you exactly as it’s written, symbols and all. Once you “call” that number, you’ll get some kind of message on your phone. On the iPhone, it looks like this.
Your voicemail has been switched—all you need to do now is set up a quick bookmark in your mobile phone to Google Voice, which provides a functional, if sparse, interface for your Google Voice messages. It’s like visual voicemail, except through your browser. (Or a mobile app, which I’ll get to soon.)
Choosing the rest of your settings. Now you’ll see your phone listed under the “Phones” settings tab. The other tabs contain a few pages of settings for your Google Voice account. How you toggle these is up to you, but here are the most important ones: If you want to forward SMSes to email, you’ll have to enable that in the “Voicemail and SMS” tab; call screening settings are located under the “Calls” tab; and international call credit can be added under the “Billing” tab, from a credit card. Finding your feet. Take some time to experiment with some of Google Voice’s core features now. Place a call using the button at the top left of the Google Voice homepage. Enter your recipient’s number, and choose which of your phones you’d like to place the call with. Google Voice will call your phone first, which upon answering will immediately call your recipient’s phone, which will think it’s getting a call from your new Google Voice number. It might sound odd in writing, but once you see it work, it just kind of clicks. You can also place these calls from the mobile web interface, without a computer. Texting is more direct—you can send those directly from the web interface without any intervention from your phone.
Placing calls. The aforementioned methods is the most obvious, and it will reliably work. It’s a little cumbersome, especially if you’re used to just tapping on a contact and placing a call. Thankfully there are a few more ways to place calls from your phone, and have it routed through Google Voice:
• Apps: This is by far the best way to use Google Voice. Android has an official Google Voice app, as does BlackBerry.These automate the dialing/texting out process, so you don’t need to mess with a web interface—you just opt to make some or all of your calls through Google Voice, and the app takes care of the rest. Windows Mobile has unofficial clients that do the job pretty well, as does the Pre, in the App Catalog. iPhone clients are available, but they’re not approved by Apple: You’ll need to jailbreak your phone and install them from Cydia.
• The call-in method: Simply dial your new Google Voice number from your cellphone or landline, press 2 once it’s connected, then enter the number you want to dial. This is less convenient than the web interface method, even, but it’s vital to the next one:
• The contact method: This is a little cheat to automate the aforementioned process. What you’re doing, basically, is saving your Google Voice number, a pause, the number 2 (which selects “call another phone” from the Google Voice automated menu tree), a pause, then your recipient’s number.
Adding a pause is different on each phone—on the iPhone, for example, you need to save a number as a contact, and in the number editing screen, press the “+*#” button at the bottom left of the keypad. The zero will be replaced with a “pause” button, which when pressed inserts a comma into the number. Google is your friend for this one, though most smartphones make the option available in their respective contact editing screens.
• The 406 method: Have the person you want to text send a message to your Google Voice account. When you receive the message, it will be from a number you don’t recognize, with the area code 406. It will be labeled with the sending contact’s name, and any replies to that number will return to the person who sent them, but the number is completely new. This is a Google Voice alias, which you can use forever: Just save it as part of your friend’s contacts—perhaps as a secondary cellphone or a work number, whatever you can remember—and use it as their primary contact number when call through GV.
Sending Texts. Again, using the web interface is a great way to send texts, as are the mobile apps. But the best solution? The 406 trick listed above works for SMSes too.
The Hacks
As you’ve probably noticed, Google Voice is kind of a loose system—and a system that’s ripe for a little gaming. There are two methods that currently work for getting truly unlimited, free calls over Google Voice. This is where things get really interesting. Interesting in a good way for you; interesting in a terrifying way for the phone companies.
• The Calling Circle Method: You know how some carriers let you designate a few contacts that don’t count toward your monthly allotment of minutes, like T-Mobile MyFaves, or the AT&T A-List? By making your Google Voice number one of your friends, you can filter all your calls through Google, whether they be free domestic calls or cheap international calls. Once your Google number is added to your circle, making free calls is simply a matter of dialing into your Google Voice number and, using Google’s audio menu system, dialing through to your recipient. (The contact method listed above will work too.)
To make incoming calls—including outgoing calls initiated from the Google Voice web interface—free, you’ll need to change your Google Voice settings under the “Calls” tab. Select “Display my Google Voice Number” under the “Caller ID (in)” setting, and you’re good to go. A full setup guide for the calling circle method can be found here.
Note: Designating Google Voice as one of your preferred contacts may be against your carrier’s user policies—check with them if you’re concerned.
• The VoIP method: By signing up for a number with free VoIP service Gizmo5 and adding to to your Google Voice account as a phone, you can place unlimited free calls from your VoIP number to landlines. You can also forward the calls through to Skype, if you’d prefer. This isn’t a solution for mobile phones, but it’s a great way to make yourself an effectively unlimited VoIP landline for free. Lifehacker’s got the whole rundown here. UPDATE: Registrations for Gizmo5 have been closed. Sorry!
Easing the Transition
Lifehacker has assembled a fantastic guide for easing the transition from many numbers to one, covering everything from how to convince people not to call your old numbers, to coping with voice latency.
That’s pretty much it! If you have any tips to tricks for getting the most out fo Google Voice, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides.
And if you have any topics you’d like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy Voicing, folks!
INTERNET You are on the internet, seeking entertainment. There is a grue here. Josh Topolsky, Paul Miller, and Nilay Patel are discussing the week in technology news, including the new Dell Vostro V13, the Barnes and Noble Nook, the CrunchPad / Joojoo, and the myth of the Apple Tablet.
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After Google distributes its Android phone to employees to test, CNET gets a look. The slick-looking unlocked HTC “mobile lab” device runs the Android 2.1 operating system. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-10414406-251.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Android Atlas/a/p
Thought Mitsubishi’s LaserVue set was pricey? Hah. HDI, the California startup with dreams of producing a 100-inch 3D HDTV that’s driven by lasers, has just released the first hint of a price range, and as predicted, it ain’t cheap. The set — which has already been deemed a favorite by The Woz — has reportedly had its first batch manufactured over in China, and we’re told that a smattering of ’em should be available by May. If all goes well, the HDTV should be in full-scale production mode by Christmas of next year, and we’ve learned that the whole thing will measure around 10-inches thick. Amazingly, it’ll also go relatively easy on the power meter, but the $10,000 to $15,000 price estimate is bound to shock some. Of course, Panasonic’s own 103-inch 3D HDTV is currently pegged at around $75,000, so when you think of it from that perspective, HDI’s offering is a bona fide bargain. And totally worth liquidating your future kid’s college fund for.
11:50: Ten minutes left until the star (Daniel Radcliffe) and the director (David Yates) pop up and start talking about the movie while watching the movie.
11:51: If you’re using the PlayStation 3, you should make sure you’ve got the correct audio output to hear the audio stream. Otherwise, like myself last time, you’ll hear nothing.
11:53: If you miss this, it’ll be on BD-Live in a few weeks, says the British announcer.
11:53: I just figured out that they’re doing this livecast at 12 noon instead of 6PM Pacific because kids in the UK need to watch this too. Otherwise, it’d be 2 in the morning.
11:55: There’s a weird bug right now with two audio streams being overlayed simultaneously. One announcement and one…announcement.
12:00: Two voices talking simultaneously is more annoying than you’d imagine.
12:02: It’s about to start in a minute.
12:02: Before we start, I gotta say this was probably in the top half of the Harry Potter movies, for me. The only problems I had with it was the fact that it looked like the whole movie had a power outage. And, that it didn’t follow the book as closely as other movies.
12:03: It’s starting.
12:04: I’m having audio difficulties and had to restart the movie.
12:05: It would be nice to go through one of these screenings without technical problems. You’d think the PS3 would be the most stable platform, but I guess not. And now it’s having trouble loading the BD-Live.
12:06: Millions of kids around the world are logging into BD-Live right now apparently. Hey kids, get off my (virtual) lawn.
12:06: I’m back in! Daniel is talking about Harry Potter and how he differs from the character.
12:07: To answer a person who asked a question about if Dan learned anything from Harry Potter, he says yes.
12:10: His favorite movie is #5. He likes shooting and watching that one.
12:10: The director says he doesn’t have a favorite.
12:12: Oh wait, the director couldn’t make it—this is someone else.
12:12: Harry Potter is there though.
12:13: Daniel is saying the director is great, and can see the whole film while shooting an individual scene.
12:13: Here’s a little hint of how Dumbledore is gay: he was treasuring a knitting magazine (with JK, the author, on the cover).
12:15: Someone asked what other movies he wants to try and get into, and Dan says he wants to concentrate on finishing the last two movies, and then maybe go back to the stage in London or NY.
12:17: Now a question about Alan Rickman. How did Dan feel about hearing Alan Rickman speak, in the first movie? Answer: probably terrified.
12:19: It’s too bad the director isn’t here, because I would very much ask him why the movie is shot during a power outage…in a black hole. Seriously, I couldn’t see anything.
12:20: Q: Is Helena Bonham Carter as cool as she looks?
12:20: A: Yes. Also she is mad. And she pulls off that wig well, and she is hilarious.
12:23: Someone just asked him about what bands he likes. It’d be better if they focused on, you know, what’s going on in the movie, but I guess that’s the kind of question we’re going to get today.
12:24: Q: Is Emma Watson as beautiful in person as she is in the movies?
12:24: A: “Yes!!” That Dan.
12:25: And now they’re singing the praises of Blu-ray, and saying the interactive experience of Blu-ray is “mindblowing.”
12:25: This is the first time they’ve actually seen one of the Harry Potter movies on Blu-ray, apparently.
12:27: What Blu-rays would you want directors’ Q&A of? Post in the comments.
12:27: Q: “What’s your favorite special effects sequence in this film?”
12:27: A: The island near the end of the movie, with the cabin and all the monsters in the water.
12:28: A: Dan’s favorite is the dragon chase in #4.
12:30: Q: “If you had the ability to use an invisibility cloak, what would you do?”
12:30: A: Dan says robbing banks. He did not say sneaking a peek of Emma Watson.
12:32: Q: “Are you or the others going to be Twittering soon?”
12:32: A: Dan says no. He says he likes Twitter, but he feels he’d be inundated.
12:35: Dan’s talking about sports.
12:36: For the most part, the audio stream is a lot more stable than it was during the Terminator live event.
12:38: What’s the next step in these? Video streaming of them in a corner? That might be pretty fun.
12:39: Dan says he was in the right place at the right time to get the part of Harry.
12:43: Unfortunately the two people answering questions, Dan and the other guy, don’t know any technical stuff. It’s too bad the director couldn’t show up.
12:44: Q: Has anyone ever challenged you to a Harry Potter trivia match?
12:44: A: Yes, and I’ve lost every time.
12:48: I’m leaving out the questions about him playing Quidditch and other silly dialogue, btw.
12:54: To answer my own question, I would really love to hear Michael Bay give a commentary on Transformers 2. I’d like to hear his thoughts behind why he wanted to do the CG a certain way, or if he left that all up to the CG folks.
12:57: Q: Besides acting, do you want to get into another part of the film business?
12:57: A: I’d love to direct, but it’s a long way off.
12:59: And now, a peepee break.
1:06: We’re back.
1:06: They’re talking about how an actor on screen now playing Marcus Belby was killed, stabbed, while protecting his brother.
1:10: It would be nicer if you could submit questions directly from your Blu-ray player as well. That would make it more of an all-in-one experience, without having to have a phone or a computer in front of you.
1:15: On another note, BD-Live kind of forms the basis of community watching, in a sense. Right now you can watch with directors and hear them talk, but if you can go in the direction of the Netflix community watch on Xbox Live, you can get communal viewings with your friends as well. That would be pretty interesting, being able to watch the same movie, synced, with a buddy across the country.
1:21: Someone asked if they could get Ricky Gervais into the movies.
1:34: Slight spoiler for #7: They’ll be playing themselves in that one scene.
1:41: They’re talking about the acting process, and the audition process and so forth. Nothing that interesting.
1:43: Q: Do you find it hard working around green screens and CG?
1:44: A: Not really. I don’t have to spend a lot of time in front of a green screen. I only have to do about three days in front of a green screen at a time. In the first film I did a month in front of a screen for Quidditch and that was mind numbing.
1:52: Looks like the audio stream just cut out.
1:53: It’s back.
2:00: I’d also like to hear JJ Abrams talk about Star Trek too. That would be one interesting live commentary.
2:01: I think they’re doing another peepee break now.
2:10: Now the audio is just cutting in and out like mad.
2:29: Oh wow has it been 20 minutes since I typed something. How long is this movie?
2:34: The audio is finicky again, and the movie’s about to end.
2:42: Movie’s over, and they’re saying their thanks for watching.
2:42: Thanks for reading! (Maybe we should stick with Sci Fi movies from now on.)
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
It wasn’t supposed to exist. “The” 
Whether making your own lens hood to create custom bokeh, breathing like a sniper to get a blur-free photo, or angling your body to look the best in pictures, we shared some great photography hacks this year.
Whether you head 30 or 3000 miles away, you’ll want to bring back great photos of your vacation. The New York Times posts questions and answers on how to achieve great vacation photos.
Taking a good self-portrait is both a handy skill and a way to expand your photographic repertoire. Save your next profile picture from the camera-held-at-arms-length cliche with these tips.
Daytime photo tricks don’t always translate when you’re trying to capture the perfect night shot. The Photography Bay web site outlines tips for taking a stellar post-sunset shot without relying on a tripod or expensive flash system.
Photography is a creative art, no doubt, but creative doesn’t mean doing everything willy-nilly however you want. Use these basic rules of composition to give your photos an extra boost of visual appeal.
Picking your number. You’ll be given a choice of numbers, which you can choose from practically any available area code. Choose wisely: this will be your primary number from here on out. Choosing your first number is free; changing it in the future will cost you $10. Boo, waah, etcetera! But really not a huge deal.
This is much easier that it sounds: Just click “Activate Google Voicemail” next to your newly-added phone, and enter the number they give you exactly as it’s written, symbols and all. Once you “call” that number, you’ll get some kind of message on your phone. On the iPhone, it looks like this.
Placing calls. The aforementioned methods is the most obvious, and it will reliably work. It’s a little cumbersome, especially if you’re used to just tapping on a contact and placing a call. Thankfully there are a few more ways to place calls from your phone, and have it routed through Google Voice:
Sending Texts. Again, using the web interface is a great way to send texts, as are the mobile apps. But the best solution? The 406 trick listed above works for SMSes too.
