Hasta La Gadget!

NEW YORK (AP) — Dick Smith, the Oscar-winning “Godfather of Makeup” who amused, fascinated and terrified moviegoers by devising unforgettable transformations for Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” and Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” among many others, has died. He was 92.

Smith, the first makeup artist to win an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died Wednesday night in California of natural causes. His death was confirmed to The Associated Press by the president of the Make-up Artists and Hairstylists Guild, Sue Cabral-Ebert, who declined to give further details. “Our lives have been blessed by our father’s steadfast love and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your kind words in remembrance of him,” Smith’s sons, David and Douglas Smith, said in a statement.

Widely regarded as the master in his field, Smith helped pioneer such now-standard materials as liquid foam latex and make special effects more realistic and spectacular. He was also known and loved for his generosity, whether exchanging letters about his craft with a teenage J.J. Abrams or mentoring future Oscar-winner special effects artist Rick Baker, who in 2011 presented Smith his honorary statuette.

“He took makeup to a whole new level; it’s unbelievable what this man has done,” Baker, whose own credits include “Men in Black” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, said at the ceremony. “His work inspired a whole generation of up and coming artists.”

With Smith on hand, the middle-aged Brando was transformed into the jowly patriarch Vito Corleone, the teenage Blair into a scarred and wild-eyed demon, and William Hurt into a mass of protoplasm for “Altered States.”

Smith and Paul LeBlanc shared an Oscar in 1985 for their work on “Amadeus,” for which Smith spent hours each day turning 44-year-old F. Murray Abraham into an elderly man as Mozart’s rival Antonio Salieri.

“Dick Smith is the best makeup man in the world,” Abraham, himself an Oscar winner for “Amadeus,” later said. “Once I looked into a mirror, at my face, I felt like it was completely convincing.”

Smith also fashioned a mohawk out of a plastic cap and chopped up hair for Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver” and created breasts out of foam rubber for Katherine Ross in “The Stepford Wives.” Through foam latex and a newly flexible kind of false eyelashes, Smith managed to capture extreme old age in “Little Big Man,” which starred Dustin Hoffman, in his mid-30s at the time, as a centenarian claiming he had survived the Battle of Little Big Horn.

“Even when the characters were fantastically weird, I always tried to make them believable,” Smith told the Washington Post in 2007. “Actors have to feel like they are the person they are portraying.”

Before breaking through in Hollywood, he was among the first great makeup artists for television. Smith headed NBC’s makeup division from 1945 to 1959, using soldered wire to create a panther mask for a then-unknown Eva Marie Saint and slushed-in latex to enhance the nose of Jose Ferrer for “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

In the 1960s, his experience turning Jonathan Frid into a 100-plus-year-old vampire for the series “Dark Shadows” helped prepare him for “Little Big Man.” His other notable aging projects included Walter Matthau for “The Sunshine Boys” and Hal Holbrook for the 1967 TV special “Mark Twain Tonight!” for which Smith won a Primetime Emmy. Holbrook and Matthau were among those who participated in a 1991 TV documentary about Smith.

A native of Larchmont, N.Y., Smith described himself as an introvert with little interest in special effects until spotting an instructional manual while attending Yale University. He became so obsessed that he made himself up as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, scaring his classmates. He later turned up at a screening of “Frankenstein” as the title character.

After school and serving in the Army, he acted on his father’s advice and took a chance on television. One of his early assignments was applying makeup to Democratic Party leaders at the 1948 national convention.

Out of all the praise he received, Smith liked to cite a compliment paid by Laurence Olivier, whom Smith worked on for a 1959 TV production of “The Moon and Sixpence.” Olivier’s character was based on the painter Gauguin, who died of leprosy. Smith never forgot Olivier’s response after he completed making up the actor. “‘Dick, it (the makeup) does the acting for me,'” Olivier told him.

It was just yesterday when we brought you word that Xiaomi has been investigated by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) for a possible misleading of consumers due to the numbers of smartphones sold in a short matter of time. This has been termed to be “hunger marketing”, which is to create an impression that the particular device could be in short supply, and hence might just cause folks to hurry up and make a purchase on the spot. Well, the Taiwan FTC has issued a $20,000 fine on Xiaomi for doing so.

Xiaomi has quite an interesting sense of humor however, having introduced a rather cheeky apology via a poster that depicts a cute looking child over on its official Weibo account, which you can see on your right. In the apology, they were sorry to the Taiwanese authorities for not selling the exact number of units as advertised, which if looked from another angle, would still show the world that they have sold quite a large number of handsets in the first place. What do you think of Xiaomi’s sales tactics so far, which more often than not involves selling smartphones in batches, so that an opportunity might arise to make news out of how fast it “sold out”?

Apparently, Xiaomi sold “only” 9,339 devices in the first flash sale, moving 9,492 units in the second sale, and 7,389 in the third, instead of the 30,000 quoted.2

Xiaomi Pays $20,000 Fine For Misleading Taiwanese Consumers

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It was just yesterday when we heard that OnePlus could very well be dropping CyanogenMod in place for its very own operating system on future OnePlus One smartphones. Well, that is on the international front, but what about folks who are living in China? OnePlus CEO Liu Zuohu shared that the company on the whole will be dropping the Oppo Color OS over in China, and instead, will be developing and using its very own OnePlus ROM before the second generation flagship smartphone arrives.

This is a surprise, especially when the OnePlus One smartphone was unveiled just slightly more than two months ago, so to see the existing Color OS ROM being ousted from its handsets in China is quite a surprise. Apparently, this particular in-house ROM is touted to see action in the China market itself only, as international models will continue to make use of CyanogenMod. Apparently, the China-focused ROM which is being developed in-house ought to target the OnePlus’ sequel in due time.

Right now, the trend among Chinese mobile manufacturers including the likes of Oppo, Xiaomi, and Coolpad would be to make use of forked versions of Android over in China, since the stock Android ROM fails to deliver a decent amount of functionality because of China’s great firewall that tends to gimp Google’s products majority of the time anyways.

OnePlus Ditches Color OS In China

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Facebook’s great when it comes to keeping in touch with family and friends all over, not to mention tracking down old acquaintances. In fact, you might be surprised at how you can make new friends through the fabled six degrees of separation idea. Having said that, it is also easy to comment on other peoples’ images and posts, and with Facebook’s Slingshot, it will introduce the ability to add ‘reactions-to-reactions’, where one can bypass reply to unlock.

The Facebook Slingshot photo messaging service and app has received an update earlier this week, and as users gain the ability to bypass the “reply-to-unlock” mechanic, they will now be able to reply to “reactions” using a choice of photos, video or text. In fact, Slingshot version 1.1 is shaping itself up to loosen restrictions under the “reply-to-unlock” mode of operation, where in a fair number of instances, users will first need to respond to an unrelated post before they are able to continue with a conversation.

This makes things a whole lot easier and less complicated, not to mention ease of use is always a welcome feature where mobile apps are concerned. Slingshot version 1.1 will remain free on the App Store as an 11MB download.

Slingshot On Facebook Lets You React To Reactions

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor tells a Virginia newspaper he will resign his seat in the House of Representatives months earlier than expected.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1puQVLX ) reported early Friday that Cantor says he will step down Aug. 18 to make sure constituents have a voice during the “consequential” lame-duck session.

Cantor tells the newspaper he has asked Gov. Terry McAuliffe to call a special election for his district that coincides with the Nov. 4 general election. That would enable his successor to take office immediately.

Cantor’s announcement comes hours after he stepped down as House majority leader Thursday. Cantor had previously said he would serve his full term, which would have ended in January.

Cantor lost to Dave Brat, an underfunded, tea party-backed opponent, in his Republican primary in June.

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Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.timesdispatch.com