• Captain America: The First Avenger New Poster

    // Gradly // blog, Movies, News 3 Responses

    Marvel has released the first official poster for Captain America: The First Avenger and it’s amazing!

    Captain America: The First Avenger hitting 3D and 2D theaters on July 22. Directed by Joe Johnston, the action adventure stars Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, Sebastian Stan, Toby Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Dominic Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci and Neal McDonough.

    Captain America: The First Avenger will focus on the early days of the Marvel Universe when Steve Rogers volunteers to participate in an experimental program that turns him into the Super Soldier known as Captain America.

    Click on the image below to see it in full version.

  • Apple to Introduce iPad 2 And iOS 4.3 To Public Within 10 Days?

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, News, Rants & Raves 1 Response

    We’re firmly in rumor territory now, and MacRumors has managed to piece a few tidbits together that certainly seem to point towards iOS 4.3 being released to the public on February 13th, along with a possible iPad 2 announcement.

    Two of the main additions to iOS in version 4.3 are the personal WiFi hotspot feature along with the ability to use in-app subscriptions.

    With that in mind, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber believes that a Feb 13th release must be on the cards, due to the recent release of News Corps’ The Daily app.

    The Daily requires a subscription – either $1 per week, or $40 per year. They’re using a new in-app subscription payment system from Apple for this – but these in-app subscription APIs aren’t in iOS 4.2. So The Daily launched today, free for a limited time. They announced at the event that this initial free two-week period was brought to us by: Verizon.

    This is certainly a logical conclusion. As things are, there is no way for a user to purchase a subscription to The Daily once the 2 week trial expires. An oversight on Apple’s part? I highly doubt it.

    If that doesn’t convince you, try this on for size. In David Pogue’s original Verizon iPhone review, the NY Times writer claimed that all iPhones will be receiving the new mobile hotspot on, you guessed it, February 13th.

    The single new feature in Verizon’s iPhone is Personal Hotspot, where the iPhone becomes a Wi-Fi base station. Up to five laptops, iPod Touches or other gadgets can get online, using the phone as a glorified Internet antenna.

    That’s incredibly convenient. Many other app phones have it – AT&T’s iPhone gets it on Feb. 13 – but Apple’s execution is especially nice

    Unsurprisingly that review has now been edited to remove all mention of the release date. Ooops!

    Next up we have German blog MacNotes claiming that Apple is planning an event for the coming week that will play host to the iPad 2 announcement along with the iOS 4.3 public release. The site also believes Apple is aiming to release the device in the US during the first half of April. Not long now folks!

    It’s only going to get more interesting from here on, with more pieces starting to slot together. All we need now is a couple of nice iPad 2 spy shots, and rest assured we’ll be bringing them to you as soon as we (hopefully!) have them!

  • Watch volunteers translate Egyptian phone messages in real-time

    // Gradly // blog, google, News, Rants & Raves, Twitter 1 Response

    Don’t believe in the power of crowdsourcing yet? Well, if initiatives such as Wikipedia and Ushahidi haven’t convinced you, the video below should pretty much negate anyone’s doubts about just how monumental a force crowdsourcing has become.

    Earlier today, in response to the continued blackout of the Internet in Egypt, Google announced that it had set up phone numbers in Egypt for protesters to call into, that would then automatically be turned into voicemail messages, that would then be tweeted out on the account @Speak2Tweet.

    As if that wasn’t cool enough, a number of volunteers outside of Egypt (you know, where the Internet still works) decided to collaborate online to get those voicemails – which are mainly in Arabic – translated into English and then we’re guessing that these will then tweeted out yet again (or perhaps they plan to put them all up on some kind of website?).

    We captured a Google Docs spreadsheet just now of volunteers translating the phone messages left by Egyptian protesters at lightning speed. The video below is in real-time – we did nothing to speed it up. Either watch it and be in awe, or go right to the spreadsheet and watch it continue to update (or better yet, if you can translate Arabic to English, lend a hand!):

    Update: We originally assumed that these translations would be retweeted out somehow, but we have yet to see evidence / the tweets yet. We’ve contacted Google (which most likely do not actually have any official connection to these volunteers) to see if it is aware of any efforts to get these translations tweeted out again, but regardless, the effort and the spirit of these volunteers speaks for itself. We’ll update as soon as we find out more information.

    [via: thenextweb]

  • SCARY MOVIE 5 Has Been Announced

    // Gradly // blog, Facebook, Movies, News 1 Response

    In an attempt to prove that Scary Movie’s jokes weren’t funny 11 years ago and still aren’t today, The Weinstein Company announced this morning on Facebook that Scary Movie 5 is, indeed, happening. Yup. Groan. Anyway, other than the simple statement, “Scary Movie 5 is announced by The Weinstein Company,” there haven’t been any other details announced, including no word on whether or not Anna Faris will reprise her role as Cindy Campbell.

    So, is this a good announcement? Probably not. But in the franchise’s defense, the previous film (Scary Movie 4) was released about five years ago, which is plenty of time for the filmmakers to rethink what worked and what didn’t.

    Each film cost under $50 million to produce and they’ve brought in over $818 million worldwide.