Wired's Oscar Picks, Where Math Nerds, Hackers and 3-D Spectacles Win

The Oscars are great, but let's face it: It's a party for Hollywood's most pretty, popular kids. And at the end of the night, they — not the dweebs — take home most of the little gold men.

Not that the Oscars aren't geek-friendly — surely more than a few members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would qualify as film nerds. And while the winners tend to skew more arty and dramatic than anything, each year a few geeks sneak their way down the red carpet. (David Fincher, who are you wearing?!)

But imagine if the Oscars took place in a parallel universe where the things that get geek juices flowing also garnered Academy votes. Where movies get judged more on subject matter (badass female hackers, for example) or filmmakers' nerdy ambitions (a swooping 3-D adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret) than the traditional metrics. That's what we've done with this alternate-reality take on the Academy Awards 2012.

So, without further ado, may we present the Wired Oscars. Our winners may not leave victorious from whatever-it's-called-now theater, but they will always be winners to us.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired

Agree? Disagree? Tell us what movies, actors and filmmakers you would stuff in the Oscars envelopes this year.

View the original article here

Kenseth holds off Earnhardt to win wild Daytona 500

View the original article here

Nokia Lumia 900 to be released in Europe on April 9th. Lumia 610 on June 11th.

Nokia has presented at the MWC 2012 the Nokia Lumia 900 version for Europe as well the newest and most affordable member of their Windows Phone 7 phone family, the Lumia 610. The biggest question left open was the release date of these phones. Today, Mobilefun site had advanced with these dates.

The Lumia 900 is, according with this site, to be released on the April 9th. The top-end WP7 by Nokia, featuring a 1.4 Ghz processor, stands out from the other models essentially by his a 4.3? display and front-face camera. One curious detail is also, according with the same source, that this phone will arrive with WP7 Tango OS version.

The Nokia Lumia 610, the first 256 Mb RAM phone operating with a WP7 OS, should arrive only on June 11th and it will be destined mainly to youngsters due to his lower price tag that is expected to be 189 Euros before taxes.

[Via]

View the original article here

Amazon Leads Price War: Drops AWS Pricing Again, Leans Heavy on Reserved Instances

According to Amazon's blog today, the company is now on their 19th price cut since AWS debuted, but who's counting? Well, they are, apparently. The company is lowering pricing on EC2 instances, ElastiCache, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) and Amazon Elastic Map Reduce are all dropping significantly. Significantly, Amazon is heavily emphasizing its price cuts on Reserved Instances.

The EC2 pricing is dropping by up to 10% for on-demand instances. If you're consuming Reserved Instances, Amazon is dropping prices up to 37%.

Amazon is also appealing to heavy users with its price cuts, offering volume discounts of 10% for customers that own more than $250,000 of Reserved Instances for additional Reserved Instances. After the $2 million mark, Amazon is offering a 20% discount, and Amazon is asking customers to call if they pass the $5 million threshold.

The prices for RDS are dropping by similar amounts. If you're using on-demand RDS, pricing drops by up to 10%. Amazon has shaved pricing as much as 42% for Reserved Instances of RDS. Likewise, ElastiCache is dropping by up to 10% if you use on-demand instances. (ElastiCache doesn't have reserved pricing on its pricing page.)

What's interesting, aside from the actual price drop, is the emphasis Amazon is putting on the Reserved Instances. By moving more customers to Reserved Instances, Amazon can better plan its capacity needs for the next few years and helps lock customers into using AWS. Companies could switch to RackSpace, Google or another provider – but they'd be losing some significant chunks of change in doing so.

This seems like a pretty smart move on Amazon's part, and I'm wondering how long it's going to take for other providers to introduce something similar. As far as I know, Amazon is the only major player offering this kind of pricing scheme and seems to be handily undercutting the other players.

Like This | 0 Comments

View the original article here

Smoked By Symbian? Yup That’s Right Smoked By Symbian!

By now everyone is familiar with the “Smoked By Windows Phone” challenge right? If not this is where you take any non-Windows Phone and do little head to head with a Windows Phone in everyday tasks.

Ali from My Nokia Blog got to have spend a little quality time with the Nokia 808 and decided to take it over to the “Smoked By Windows Phone” booth for the challenge.   The challenge was picked and it was the good old take a picture and send it in a text message challenge.

After the challenge was over Ali had fresh 100 euro’s and more than few people now have respect for Symbian. The secret to the win is the fact that like the Windows Phone you can unlock the 808 and go straight to the camera buy pushing the shutter key.  Unlike the Windows Phone which takes two seconds to fire up the camera the 808 takes less than a second!

Let’s also remember that the Nokia 808 that Ali was using was a prototype which means that the 808 will only be faster and snappier when in comes out in the 2 Qtr of this year!

I already have a few dollars set aside in my personal Nokia 808 fund…How about you?

Kevin Everett
Proud Nokia Geek since 1997 who loves to collect old Nokia phones (owns everything from the 1992's Nokia 100 up to the very latest Nokia N9) and is very happy to share his knowledge with you. He is a writer for Daily Mobile and Nokia Innovations. Enjoy his Nokia nerd knowledge and feel free to follow him on twitter https://twitter.com/#!/NokiaKnowings
http://www.nokiainnovation.com/

View the original article here

T-Mobile US customers to get unlimited calling for $10

Current customers will soon be able to call any mobile number, regardless of carrier, for a flat rate of $10. The new feature does not require a contract, and can be added or removed from a particular plan at will.

This is great if you're planning on making more calls for a specific time period, like when on a business trip and don't want the incurred expense for calls to other mobile carriers. You can then remove the unlimited calls add-on when you don't need it any more.

The new feature is set to be introduced in the United States and Puerto Rico on April 4th.

Source

View the original article here

Obama moves G-8 summit from Chicago to super-secure location

(AP Photo/Cliff Owen) President Barack Obama addresses the American Israel Public Affairs …How will it play in Chicago?

As recently as January 25, Chicago's Chamber of Commerce was talking up the economic benefits of hosting the Group of Eight summit of economic powers and playing down the prospects for disruptions that could affect the talks and tarnish the Windy City's image.

On Monday, President Barack Obama pulled the plug on his adoptive hometown's hopes and announced he was moving the annual summit to the super-secure Camp David retreat on Maryland's Catoctin Mountain.

"To facilitate a free-flowing discussion with our close G-8 partners, the President is inviting his fellow G-8 leaders to Camp David on May 18-19 for the G-8 Summit, which will address a broad range of economic, political and security issues," White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Asked why Obama had opted to move the summit, which is expected to focus on Europe's debt crisis and ways to boost the global economy, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor emailed that the president felt Camp David "would provide an informal and intimate setting to have a free-flowing conversation."

"He very much looks forward to coming to his hometown for a critically important NATO summit, as planned," Vietor added. That meeting will take place on May 20-21.

The Chicago Chamber of Commerce had no immediate comment. But in a late-February statement, President and CEO Jerry Roper and Lori Healy, executive director of the Chicago G-8 and NATO Host Committee, invited businesses to a briefing to highlight how the two summits "present an exciting opportunity to highlight our extraordinary city to the world."

CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, who keeps painstaking track of presidential doings, wrote on Twitter that "it will be the first time Pres. Obama has hosted foreign leaders at Camp David in his 22 visits to date." He also noted that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, invited 19 world leaders over the course of 149 visits to the secluded retreat.

More popular Yahoo! News stories:

• Egypt Islamist lawmaker fired for nose job

• Obama, appearing with Netanyahu, sees 'difficult months' ahead in Iran standoff

• Romney hoping for a 'reset' among voters, after a long and heated primary

Want more of our best political stories? Visit The Ticket or connect with us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or add us on Tumblr. Handy with a camera? Join our Election 2012 Flickr group to submit your photos of the campaign in action.

View the original article here