Hasta La Gadget!

You might recall in late October, I mentioned a company called ScreenUsed was auctioning off some cool and geeky props and other items that were used in movies and TV shows. One of the items that the company was auctioning off online was a clapperboard that was used during the filming of The Empire Strikes Back.

A clapperboard is also known as a camera slate, and the actual item from the auction is pictured above if you still aren’t sure what I’m talking about. The coolest thing about this particular clapperboard was that it still had the date written on it in marker, and you can see the remnants of erased scene numbers and take counts.

ScreenUsed says that it set a record for sales price for a clapperboard during its November 3 online auction when The Empire Strikes Back clapperboard sold for $38,350. Anotherbig-ticket item purchased during this auction included the Rocketeer helmet worn in the movie The Rocketeer, which sold for $29,500.

The actual Mattel Hoverboard used in Back to the Future sold for $22,420. Christopher Reeve’s Superman Bodysuit worn in Superman III went for $23,600. There’s no mention of exactly how much the Ricky Bobby Racing Suit worn in the Will Ferrell film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby sold for.

Star Wars clapperboard sets auction record is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Who would have thought that our earth would actually belong to someone, and that someone has decided to auction it off to the highest bidder? Appearing on the Japanese Yahoo Auction page, earth started with a price of just 69 yen (!!!), which was the equivalent of $0.86, but as at press time, the Auction page is still up, although the price of our precious earth has ballooned to $87,000 thereabouts after conversion. Definitely a bargain considering the amount of real estate you will be getting, but bear in mind that the earth you’re getting has been listed as “authentic” and “used,” with a “no return” policy in tow.

The seller claims that the earth was bestowed unto him by the Almighty Himself, who actually handed it over to him in a dream. Since it is not the best of times at the moment, perhaps it would be more prudent to sell the whole earth and what – pay rent to the highest bidder in the end? According to the seller, each bid ought to be accompanied by a message that oozes with seriousness in the intention to own the earth, and should there be an excess of prank bids, he will close the auction, starting over at 69 yen all again.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Gmail is the most popular webmail in the world according to ComScore report, Yahoo acquires Stamped,

If a vintage video game is rare enough, it can sell for huge money. Back in 2010, a copy of the Atari 2600 game Air Raid sold for $31,600. The reason is because it was the only known copy with a box. Now another copy of Air Raid has shown up with both the box and instruction manual. That makes this the only known complete copy in existence. As of now it is up to nearly $18,000 on an online auction.

This complete copy of Air Raid was discovered by a family in Southern California. Their father was given the game by a sales rep for the company Men-A-Vision while he tended to a game retail space in a local drug store.

After the store closed he was given the video game stock and the Atari display kiosk, where these games have been stored for about thirty years.

They read about the selling price of the first one and of course liked what they heard. I wonder how high it will go before the auction ends on November 4th.

[via Geekosystem]

Three 3rd-party modified MacBook Pro units were put up for sale this week in limited iterations including a customized top lid with Steve Jobs‘s own visage reflecting deeply in the Apple logo. The proceeds from each of these notebooks, each of them created by the Apple customizers at Uncover, will be sold for 9500,00 Euro, aka right around 12 thousand bucks here in the USA. This set of three units will be sold with all proceeds going to a couple of charities you’re just going to love.

The design of the Apple, for those of you that don’t remember all the way back to last year, comes from designer Jonathan Mak – or at least is based upon that design per their press release. This set of three notebooks is all the same, each model coming with 2.7GHz configurations, 16GB memory, and a 750GB solid state drive inside. Each model is made with essentially the same components as the normal MacBook Pro with Retina display, but the Apple logo on the top cover is laser-cut to create the face of Jobs.

The proceeds will be split between the charity Get It Done and another group by the name of SellanApp where it’ll be working with developers working on iOS apps that specifically “don’t have a direct business model, but have a clear societal value.” The bottom of the notebook will also include the following inscription laser-cut into the metal:

“When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs

This is just one of a vast collection of tributes that have been made to Jobs over the past year, with today’s one-year anniversary of his passing making the world once again remember his impact. Of course according to Apple, his influence doesn’t just stop at the idea that everything from his design knowledge to his leadership skills are still being studied today. His design influence in each of the major products in the field being released even today had Jobs hand in them well before they came to fruition.

Have a peek at the small timeline below for more Steve Jobs tributes and memories from the past year, and let us know if you feel that a MacBook Pro with Retina Display is a fabulous way to remember the man’s visage. Also let us know if you plan on picking up one of these three 12 thousand dollar notebooks.

Steve Jobs tribute MacBooks set up for charity auction is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

FCC meetings can be momentous occasions under the right circumstances, although it’s seldom the case that we see the agency pass two potentially far-reaching measures in one sitting, like we just saw on Friday. To start, regulators have voted in favor of a proposal that will review spectrum sale rules and might drop the case-by-case determinations in favor of a more consistent screening mechanism. The reexamination will also consider a change to the ownership rules surrounding wireless frequencies that treats bands below 1GHz differently than those above — the better to address a chorus of smaller carriers that don’t like all the prime spectrum going to the companies with the most existing clout, namely AT&T and Verizon. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski argues that reform could spur innovation through more competition, although dissenting Commissioner Robert McDowell is worried that consistent rules will somehow create “uncertainty.”

Side-by-side with the review, the FCC is proposing an incentive-based reverse auction strategy to have TV broadcasters voluntarily give up their spectrum for cellular and data use. The multi-phase approach would have TV providers set the price at which they’re willing to sell their spectrum to the FCC; those that just can’t bear to part with their airwaves would be corralled into a tighter band range to make for larger available frequency blocks in the auction that follows. As with other FCC proposals, there’s likely to be a long interval between the auction vote, the review and any definitive rulemaking, let alone an impact — auctions by themselves can take years to play out. Still, any success with the measures could head off spectrum crunches while simultaneously preventing any solutions from consolidating too much power and creating their own problems.

[Tower photo via Shutterstock]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

FCC votes in favor of rethinking spectrum holding rules, goading broadcasters into wireless selloffs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 21:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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