Bonus Download Wednesday Continues: Apple's iOS Movies App Is Awesome [Ios Apps]

By Sam Biddle Oct 12, 2011 1:53 PM 21,146 33

Apple's "iTunes Movie Trailers" app is one hell of a misnomer: it doesn't just beam down the giant library of trailers we love. The new app lets you buy tickets, find nearby theaters, and chart film releases on a calendar.

This could be really, really useful: watch a trailer that looks great, check if it's out yet, find the nearest theater it's playing in, then buy a ticket for you and your beautiful significant other. Even sync it across your devices with iCloud! All from your iOS 5 gadget. Go download it now. [iTunes via 9to5Mac]

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The Avengers Trailer Is Full of Explosions and Iron Man and Awesome and The Hulk [Video]

By Sam Biddle Oct 11, 2011 10:20 AM 43,298 117

It'll take a lot to screw this up: Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, and a handful of other extremely cool heroes in uniform, all blowing things up together wonderfully. Watch this trailer in HD... now.

It'll be tough waiting until next year for this, but until then, I'll keep this incredible line by Iron Man in my head:

"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away, and what are you?
"Uhm, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist..."

Other points of awesomeness:

Sammy Jackson's eyepatch
Everything Tony Stark will say
Thor looking out of place
Lasers
Car explosion chain reaction
Advanced aircraft
Captain America eating sushi off his shield [Apple]

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AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime) [Android]

By Brent Rose Oct 11, 2011 12:01 AM 25,270 33

Sweet Jesus. AT&T is adding five new Android phones to their portfolio this week. That will bring them up to 19 Android devices in for 2011. The 'droid is strong with this one.

Here they are in order that you probably care about them:

When the original Morola Atrix was announced at CES back in January it had as calling it the best Android phone in the show. It was a real beefcake, and it could power a laptop dock (which we thought was cool for like five seconds). It really was an excellent phone (full review). Truth be told, the Atrix 2 isn't the most monumental upgrade we can image. The biggest difference is that it has AT&T's answer to 4G (HSPA+) which should give you theoretical download speeds of 21Mbps. It's no LTE, but it's significantly faster than 3G. It's camera has gone from 5 megapixels to 8 megapixels, and it's now capable of recording 1080p HD video. And the screen has been stretched to 4.3 inches from the original Atrix's 4 inches. While more screen real estate is good, they both have 960x540 pixels, which means pixel density will actually be worse on the new bigger screen. Hrmm... that sounds a lot like the screen on the Droid Bionic, which we were none too keen on.

Not content to let Verizon have all the Samsung QWERTY keyboard fun today, AT&T brings to the table the Samsung Captivate Glide, a sequel to AT&T's first serious Android phone. It's a 4G (HSPA+) phone with a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, and a slide-out keyboard. The kicker with this one is that it has a dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, to Verizon's phone's (the Stratosphere) just has a single-core 1GHz Hummingbird processor. I'll take two cores over one every day, however, balancing out the scorecard is the keyboard on the Stratosphere looks way more usable (five rows of keys vs. four on the Captivate Glide) and Verizon's 4G LTE is faster than AT&T's 4G HSPA+.

This phone is significant because it's only the second Android phone to be available on GoPhone, AT&T's pre-paid network (the first being the LG Thrive). For a pre-pare (which are lower-end, by definition, basically) the AT&T Avail (made by ZTE) ain't bad. It's got a 3.5-inch touch screen, 5- megapixel camera and runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). No mention of processor speed, but if I were a betting man I'd gamble on... 800MHz. We'll update when we know for sure. I will say that this looks like it's the nicest pre-paid phone you can get on GoPhone.

Now, here's where the phones start slowly devolving into weirdness.

"Fat boy on a diet, don't try it. I'll check your ass like a looter in a riot." -Cypress Hill. So, here's an odd duck. The Pantech Pocket has a 4-inch screen and it's pretty slim from back-to-front at only 11.3 millimeters. But check out the width on this thing. Sucker is wiiide. That aside, it's a pretty decent mid-range phone with 4G support, 5MP camera, and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Again, no mention of processor here, so I'd bet on 800MHz. Maybe 1GHz.

I bet this poor phone got teased in high school. It's kind of a wimpy weirdo. Whereas the Pantech Pocket was wide, the DoubleTime is thick. That's because it has not one but two screens (both low-resolution 3.2-inch touch screens), and a clam-shell fold-out keyboard. It's got a 600MHz processor, a waifish 260MB of RAM, and it runs Android 2.2 (Froyo). This phone would have been awesome two-and-a-half years ago, but it's pretty terrible by today's standards. It's also got a lot of pink on it. Basically, this is a glorified feature phone aimed at high school girls. There, I said it.

These monkeys should all be out of their respective barrels by Q4. Who's excited about what?

You can keep up with Brent Rose, the author of this post, on Google+ or Twitter. Related Stories

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BASE Jumping off Cliffs Never Looked So Scary Awesome [Video]

The maniacs at Melbourne Skydive Centre are still falling off things with style. I've only ever gone cliff-diving once, and it was nothing like this. This looks shades of terrifying and exhilarating that I can hardly imagine.

Just... ok, if you're moving that fast and that far, how the hell do you stop? [Vimeo via NOTCOT]

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Yes, BigDog Is Still the Creepiest, Most Awesome Robot of All Time [Video]

Just when I stopped having nightmares about BigDog, the freaky quadruped robot that will become a soldier's best friend one day. Boston Dynamics' founder Marc Raibert just sent me this music video showing the best moments of its evolution. Great.

Raibert was the MIT professor who founded the MIT Leg Lab and then Boston Dynamics in the early 90s. He and his team developed BigDog for the US military, a biological-like hopping quadruped that can climb through rubble, snow, ice, dirt and jump pover obstacles like a demonic goat from hell. When it gets fully developed, BigDog will carry equipment for US infantry troops.

This video shows the evolution of this amazing machine. No matter how many times I see it in action, even it failures, it never ceases to amaze me. I'm just sad they didn't include footage of BigDog's special-needs cousin, though. [Thanks Marc!]

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Only Awesome People Need a Carbon Fiber Tub [Desired]

So you might think a carbon fiber bathtub is silly, but somewhere there's a person who won't just bathe themselves in a common porcelain basin—they need excess. The Corcel
N°1 is a beautiful thing for the awesomely opulent.

Carbon fiber is tough and versatile, sure, but the Corcel N°1 is made of the material because it's expensive and looks badass—making it part of a time-honored tradition of giving random household objects the carbon fiber treatment. I suppose the tub will probably last a lifetime as well. The Corcel N°1 is eight feet long and holds almost 90 gallons of water. That's pretty big, so I'm assuming it isn't intended for single occupancy.

So why do people need this tub? Because until swimming in heaps of money is actually possible, splashing around inside a vessel that costs a lot of money will have to suffice. The Corcel N°1 is limited to a production run of fifty-one. You'll have to figure out how much it costs, because the price isn't listed on the product's website. Then again, if you're seriously considering one of these monsters, I'm sure cost isn't a concern.[Corcel N°1 via Elite Choice]

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Ask a Pro: How to Shoot an Awesome Music Video on a Rollercoaster Without Permission [Video]

How do you shoot a music video on a legendary Coney Island roller coaster? If you've got the budget, you could rent the ride for $6000 per day—double director Jeremy Johnstone's budget for the entire video shoot.

Here's how he shot Wye Oak's video for "Holy Holy" in two days in July during a record-breaking heatwave with no permits and no permission—without killing anyone.

Currently nominated for an Emmy for his work on the titles for the defunct AMC show Rubicon, Johnstone, 29, has always been a scrappy director, even though he mostly works on commercials for big companies like Toyota. He started shooting digital at the beginning of his career, when the industry was just starting to switch. "I realized I could fake big budget on a small budget," he told me. "My commercial work is low budget. I just make it look like $300,000."

Johnstone's treatment for the video called for shooting not only on the famously rough-and-tumble, Coney Island Cyclone rollercoaster, but also on the Tickler-a modern steel roller coaster with tight turns and abrupt drops-and the Brooklyn Flyer-a huge carousel of swings that spins riders over 100 feet in the air.

The first challenge: Not getting caught. Johnstone's plan sounds ludicrously simple to the point of being impossible. Oh sure, they'd just sneak bags full of gear past park staff onto the rides, wait until they were out of sight, set everything up before the ride got too crazy and shoot the video anyway. On several trips to the amusement park, Johnstone and his producer meticulously timed the setup time and figured out that they had 20 seconds on the Flyer, 30 seconds on the Tickler and 40 seconds on the Cyclone. In other words they'd have to set everything up in less than the time it takes for a smartphone to power on.

Even after meticulous planning, the rides themselves were a free-for-all. Each called for different shots, for which they'd be fighting against the disabling physics of Coney Island's most violent rides. For example on the Flyer, Johnstone held the camera as tightly as possible while his director of photography watched a monitor and screamed instructions over the noise and chaos of the ride. They then hid everything away, got back in line only to live the strenuous, discombobulating experience again. Johnstone's body suffered more than nausea: While shooting point-of-view footage on the Cyclone, Johnstone split open his knuckle. And for a shot on the relatively gentle teacups Johnstone pressed a monopod tightly into his crotch to steady the shot. "I hurt my nuts pretty bad," he says.

The Gear You Have, Not the Gear You Want

Johnstone knew that despite his preparations they'd still be tossed around, and that the raw footage would reflect the frantic scramble and chaos of the shoot. Johnstone's challenge would be to make the video ambling and ethereal, like the song. To achieve this effect, Johnstone had Wye Oak's lead singer Jan Wasner lip-sync the song in double time whenever possible while he shot the footage on a Canon 7D, which can shoot 60 frames per second. At that speed, the footage could then be slowed down without affecting video quality.

Many times, though, it was hard enough just to hang on—Wasner couldn't lip-sync on many shots because rides were just too rocky. On the first day of the shoot, Johnstone had to give up his plan to shoot with an SLR on the Cyclone because it was too dangerous—the weight of a five-pound camera setup jammed together with the force of the ride was too difficult to control. Enter the now-definitive camera for extreme HD shooting on the cheap: the GoPro.

While Johnstone was looking for ways to bring order to the chaos of the rides, he wanted the shots of the band walking around Coney Island to be dreamlike and disorienting. If he'd had the money, he would have rented a professional SnorriCam rig. In these setups, a very steady, shock-absorbing camera-mount is tightly strapped to an actor's body. The camera points back at the actor so that they never move even while the background behind them does. (Think the drug binge scenes in Requiem For a Dream.) Since Johnstone couldn't afford one, he and his crew built theirs from plans they found on the internet for $20 worth of materials. For the bodycam footage—and for a few other shots in the video—the crew used a Canon 5D Mark II because it has a full-frame rather than crop sensor, which is good for the close ups because it shoots at a wider angle.

"For me this video was about using non-traditional routes to get things otherwise impossible. Whether its technology or planning and preparation or just pure effort, using what's available in non-traditional ways to create new and unique outcomes. Whether it's the DIY SnorriCam setup or the DSLR mounted coaster shots, the GoPro Cyclone footage or the two person teamwork to get the swing shots, each shot in the video was a unique hurdle and having that crew I could rely on and having everyone pushing ideas out and just putting in maximum effort made it almost magical in my mind. We achieved something I had no idea was possible."

"Holy Holy" is Jeremy Johnstone's twentieth music video—most of them shot for less than $5000. He also runs his own commercial production company Rockadee. "Holy Holy" is the latest single off Wye Oak's record The Civilian available now on Merge Records.Related Stories

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Awesome Sandcrawler Building Is George Lucas' First Good Idea in 28 Years [Video]

Yes, this eight-story building looks like a Jawa sandcrawler made of glass and steel because it is a sandcrawler made of glass and steel. Lucasfilm is now building it in Singapore. It will be their first overseas production facility.

The sandcrawler-inspired complex was designed by architectural firm Aedas. It's actually quite beautiful, especially its Endor-ish interior patio. The complex will house production offices for Lucasfilm, LucasArts, TV and feature animation teams, as well as a 100-seat movie theatre.

After the dumbest changes ever in the Blu-ray edition of Star Wars, it's nice to know that George Lucas and his cronies can approve something as cool as this—unless this means that they would change the sandcrawler from rusty metal to shiny glass in a future special edition of Star Wars. That will actually make me go to California and tear down the Skywalker Ranch with a M1 Abrams tank.

In fact, this may very well be the first cool idea to come out of Lucas and Co. since Return of the Jedi in 1983. Not that Return of the Jedi was that cool. Only half of it is cool. You know, the half in which there are no fucking Ewoks.

The complex is now being built in Fusionopolis and it will be completed by late 2012. [Aedas and Lucasfilm via Inhabitat]

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Lightning Striking Eiffel Tower Is All Shades of Awesome and Frightening [Image Cache]

I wonder if they make tourist go down the Eiffel Tower if there's a lightning storm approaching to Paris. After looking at this lightning engulfing its metal structure, I know I'd instantly get the hell out of there.

If you enlarge the image, it looks like the electrical beam is getting in and out the metal structure of the tower. The image was taken by amateur photographer Bertrand Kulik during a lightning storm in July 2010. It will appear in an exhibition called Celestial Lights, Human Lights in Issy L'eveque, Burgundy. [BBC]

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9 Tools to Make Burning Man Extra Awesome [Tool Kit]

Ah, Burning Man. It's art meets music meets dirt meets naked meets fucking amazing. As a two-time burner myself (who is sadly missing it this year) I can personally guarantee that this gear will maximize your awesome.

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Awesome Full Image of Earth Gives You an Idea of How Huge Hurricane Irene Is (Updated) [Hurricane Irene]

This image of the full disk of Earth, taken this morning at 10:45AM by NASA/NOAA GOES-13 satellite, gives you an idea of what a huge mother Irene is going to be. Here's the last image, taken at 12:30pm.

Data shows its diameter is now about 510 miles. Brace yourselves, East coasters. [Flickr and Flickr—Thanks Rebecca!]

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Drift HD 1080p Rugged Cam Lightning Review: Awesome? Check. Reliable? Ehhh, Not So Much [Video]

Man, and the Drift HD was so close to being a super-stealthy altrernative to my GoPro. If only it would just stay on.

The video quality is top-notch with a 170-degree field of vision. Its rubberized exterior survived being dropped (repeatedly). The Drift HD is 25 percent smaller than its predecessor at 4 inches, the HD 170 and weighs just 4.23 oz—saving you the typical neck strain of supporting a helmet-mounted camera all day. Its torpedo shape—as opposed to the GoPro's camera shape—makes it less obtrusive when you've got it strapped to your noggin or handlebars. It also supports HDMI and USB output, as well as up to a 32GB microSD card—plenty of space for a few full-HD videos. The built-in LCD is handy too for quick reviews of what I'd just shot.

This review should have included a POV video of me zip-lining 1500-feet of Sierra Foothill through the treetops. Unfortunately the Drift HD decided to stop recording three seconds in with nary a warning beep (so instead, you get a 17 second clip of me dicking around with it in the car.) It did work pretty reliably throughout testing, but had a weird tendency to stop on its own accord. That's not necessarily a deal breaker but damn, disappointing.

Drift HD 1080p

Dimensions: 104.14mm x 50mm x 33mm
Weight: 4.23 oz
Video Res: 1080p (30fps), 720p (60fps) & WVGA
Video Format: 16:9
Camera Res: 9MP
Price: $370

It's a great little action cam with a penchant for screwing my directorial vision. It'll retail for $370 when it's released August 31st.

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