Hasta La Gadget!

Anyone who’s used to wearing the earbuds that come with an iPod or almost any other media player will tell you the first purchase worth making after buying a new device is a decent pair of earbuds or headphones. Too many people crank up the volume in their stock earbuds to try and improve the audio quality of their music and in the end just cause damage to their ears. Future Sonics wants to fight that trend with the new Atrio Special Edition Earphones.

The Atrio earphones feature Future Sonics’ proprietary “Power of 1” audio technology that reportedly delivers superior sound at lower volumes, resulting in a more natural sound that won’t damage your ears but still sounds great. They also feature some passive noise isolation to keep out unwanted sound while you focus on what you want to hear. The Atrio Professional line is available in red, blue, and black, while the Special Edition earphones come in a soft chocolate brown. All models are available now for $229.00 list price.

Hey guys! MySpace! [Hold for applause.] It’s back! Not that it ever went away, really. We all just kind of, sort of forgot about it, in the wake of Facebook’s runaway success (MySpace now claims around one-fifth of Facebook’s worldwide userbase). MySpace, is (understandably) looking to reinvent itself.

The site seems to be moving away from the user-based social networking that put it on the map, instead focusing more on the sort of entertainment offerings that have helped keep it afloat in recent years. As the site put it in a statement, “previously MySpace was people-focused, now the focus is content.”

Though, as it put it in the promotional video below, “It’s not powered by data, it’s powered by you.”

The site really seems to be positioning itself to compete against the likes of Twitter, rather than Facebook, focusing on, “Real time entertainment trends around the Web.” News from around the Web will pop up based on the preferences of the users.

The news and content is largely entertainment based, including selections from TV shows, musicians, movies, and comedians with MySpace page. It will also provide editorial content like “11 Movies to See This Year.” Content will also be pulled from partners like MTV, The Los Angeles Times, Access Hollywood, The New York Times, and The Village Voice.

Users will be able to pick one of three views for their homepage, including a list view, a magazine-esque grid view, and a video-based TV view.

Who’s more influential than Barack Obama? Lots of people, apparently. According to a new survey by the slightly less than scientific research firm/dudes interest Website, Ask.men, there are roughly 20 men who who wield more influence than the President.

The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart took the top spot for 2010. He’s joined in the top ten by a few tech luminaries. Bill Gates scored surprisingly high at number two on the list–interesting given the fact that he is no longer in charge of the software empire he helped build, instead turning his full-time attention to the charitable works of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg came in at number three. The combination of a wildly popular social network and a successful–if unflattering–hit movie based on your life is pretty hard to beat.

Steve Jobs came in at number four–a fact that he’s most likely rubbing in the face of RIM and Google’s Android team, as we speak.

Rapper Kayne West rounded out the top five, which surely means that’ll we’ll be seeing a lot more dudes running our with their bottom teeth replaced with diamonds.

It’s not quite “take this job and shove it,” but Microsoft’s soon to be former chief software Ray Ozzie had some strong words about the future of the PC and Microsoft in a new memo titled “Dawn of a New Day.”

Ozzie posted the memo on his personal blog with the date October 28th. Clearly the Microsoft executive has been sent back from the near future to tell us all about the future of the industry.

Ozzie wrote of a disconnect between the software giant’s take on the computer and the views he believes average users hold,

For the most part, we’ve grown to perceive of ‘computing’ as being equated with specific familiar ‘artifacts’ such as the ‘computer’, the ‘program’ that’s installed on a computer, and the ‘files’ that are stored on that computer’s ‘desktop’. For the majority of users, the PC is largely indistinguishable even from the ‘browser’ or ‘Internet.’

Ozzie added that users have already “begun to move away” from concepts like PCs, CD software, and desktops.

“We’re moving toward a world of 1) cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and 2) appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services,” he wrote. “[T]hose who build and deploy application fabrics targeting connected devices understand how challenging it can be to simply & reliably just ‘sync’ or ‘stream’. To achieve these seemingly simple objectives will require dramatic innovation in human interface, hardware, software and services.”

Who would win in a fight between Luke Skywalker and Wolverine*? If you have an answer at the ready with a needlessly articulate argument to back it up, you’ve probably got quite a Halloween costume lined up. If that costume happens to be star of this year’s early-summer eponymous sequel, Iron Man, you might want to click on over to instructables where you can find several DIY Arc Reactors that no Iron Man costume would be complete without.

Some are ridiculously intricate and complicated. Some are more approachable for those without engineering degrees. You can even purchase a DIY kit to get started on yours with all the parts included. But I’m of the opinion, if you want to stay true to the costume, you have to lock yourself down in your basement or garage and make one for yourself.

Take a look at one simple video walk-through after the jump.

* the answer is Luke Skywalker because he could use The Force to pin Wolverine down and then slice him up with his lightsaber–if it can cut through the space metals on the Death Star, it can surely make butter of Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton. Even if it couldn’t, enough damage could be inflicted on Wolverine’s fleshy parts that he would not be able to recover.