Proving that the coming singularity between the trends of the ’90s and the obsessions of Tumblr will cause a massive rift in the space time continuum, the Internet belched, producing the following monstrosity. A combination of nerdy dreamboat Benedict Cumberbatch and a Cabbagepatch Kid, though not quite as celever as my favorite pun on the star’s name*, it still should cause you nightmares/beautiful dreams for months:

Yipes. A few years of cryo-sleep, and you look like that? No thanks.

[Via]

*That would be Bunnydict Carrotpatch.

Related Video:

Watch: Breaking Bad Mezco Toyz

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MTV Geek

The alarm on your iPhone might not get the job done if you’re a sound sleeper so transform your phone into a retro alarm clock with the iBell iPhone Alarm Clock, and let your blissful slumber be successfully interrupted by the clamoring of bells.

Technology has come a long way since alarm clocks used bells to signal it was time to get the day started but everybody has to agree they got the job done. Now you can borrow that ingenuity from the past and give it a modern twist.

There are two types of iBells to choose from: The iBell itself, which works like a cradle and lets your phone charge while doing alarm duty, and the iBell mini, a smaller bell-only version that attaches directly to your iPhone. Whichever one you choose, sleeping in should no longer be a problem.

iBell iPhone Alarm Clock

• iBell (cradle) or iBell mini
• iBell colors: black, white
• iBell mini colors: black, white, pink, orange, blue
• Please choose whether you would like the iBell or iBell mini, and which color, in the menu below
• iBell size: 75 x 145 x 105mm (3 x 5.7 x 4.1″)
• iBell mini size: 38 x 100 x 38mm (1.5 x 4 x 1.5″)
• iBell weight: 195g (6.9 oz)
• iBell mini weight: 50g (1.8 oz)
• Materials: ABS, metal
• Instructions: Japanese (but self-explanatory)
• No batteries required
• Requires app to download to use with iPhone alarm. App is in English and Japanese, and free to download
• Not compatible with iPhone 5

The iBell iPhone Alarm Clocks are available for $ 33 at Japan Trend Shop… And the iBell Wake Up Alarm is $ 22.90 at Amazon.com and the iBell Mini Wake Up Alarm is about $ 13 at Amazon.com.

Related Deals: Amazon Coupons

GeekAlerts

On sale this week is the 25th issue of DHP, which the publisher has stuffed with 80 pages of new material including the first Dark Horse work by Matt Fraction, who offers a trippy time-travel story with mind-bending artwork by Christian Ward. DHP #25 also features the start of a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer serial by longtime Buffy writer Jane Espenson and artists Karl Moline & Andy Owens; and “Underground,” a violent new serial conceived by author Andrew Vachss. And of course new episodes of Fred Van Lente and Freddie Williams II’s sixties superhero revival “Brain Boy”; Ron Randall’s cyberpunk “Trekker,” Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s political space opera “Nexus”; Dan Jolley and Leonard Kirk’s resurrected DC project “Bloodhound”; and more.

Dark Horse Presents #25 goes on sale tomorrow (Wednesday, June 19), but below you’ll get an extended preview of the auspicious issue that includes never-before-seen pages.

Dark Horse Presents #25 cover by Steve Morris

I asked Dark Horse Presents’ Associate Editor Jim Gibbons to tell us a little about this kind of anniversary issue of the new series, and here’s what he had to say:

Dark Horse Presents #25 is not only a landmark issue, but also a prime example of what DHP represents: a sampling of all the great kinds of comics Dark Horse has to offer. This issue features an original tale by one of the industry’s top writers (“The Time Ben Fell in Love” by Matt Fraction with art by Christian Ward), one of our most successful licensed comics (Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Jane Espenson, Karl Moline, and Andy Owens), a creator-owned superhero story (Dan Jolley’s Bloodhound with Leonard Kirk and Robin Riggs art), two company-owned superhero stories (Fred Van Lente and Freddie Williams II on Brain Boy and Frank Barbiere on Blackout), a story adapting work from crime fiction writer Andrew Vachss’ (Underground, illustrated by Dominic Reardon), a fantasy tale (Peter Hogan’s King’s Road with Phil Winslade), a true crime story (City of Roses by Phil Stanford and Patric Reynolds), all new tales from comics classics like Ron Randall’s Trekker and Baron and Rude’s Nexus, plus a short from 15-year-old cartoonist Emma T Capps — her first time in print (well, beyond her awesome self-published collections)! It’s an issue with newbies and legends, novelists and tv writers, beautifully painted art and crisp of linework, spies, vampires, criminals, time travelers, and more!

Ideally, there’s something for everyone in each issue of Dark Horse Presents and #25′s is no different.

Pages from “Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Love Vs. Life” Part One by Jane Espenson, Karl Moline & Andy Owens and Michelle Madsen (click to enlarge)

Page from “The Time Ben Fell In Love” by Matt Fraction and Christian Ward

Pages from “Underground” by Andrew Vacchs, Mike Richardson and Dominic Reardon and Jeremy Colwell (click to enlarge)

Pages from “Brain Boy” by Fred Van Lente and Freddie Williams II and Ego (click to enlarge)

Pages from “Trekker” by Ron Randall Jeremy Colwell (click to enlarge)

Page from “King’s Road” by Peter Hogan and Phil Winslade

Pages from “Crime Does Not Pay: City of Roses” by Phil Stanford, Patric Reynolds and Bill Farmer (click to enlarge)

Pages from “Nexus” by Mike Baron, Steve Rude and Glenn Whitmore (click to enlarge)

Page from “Bloodhound’ by Dan Jolley, Leonard Kirk & Robin Riggs and Moose Baumann
Page from “Blackout” by Frank Barbiere and Micah Kaneshiro

Dark Horse Presents #25 goes on sale Wednesday digitally and from finer comics shops.

ComicsAlliance.com

Sending a text message, an email or even placing a call may not be as secure as you’d expect. In light of recent events, that point is more prominent than ever. That is why it’s dangerous to send account credentials or login information through text message, or email. Even despite advanced encryption methods, it seems cloud storage can be a liability, as well.  One way to secure such information even further, especially when passing it along someone else, is to use a unique tool to encrypt the message. Then, even if someone got their hands on the resulting file, they would need the specific decryption software to understand the content. Text to Color is a free Windows application that allows you to hide, or encode text content through a standard BMP format image file.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality Text to Color is essentially a digital steganography tool. Steganography is the practice of writing hidden messages which are encrypted in such a way that only the sender and receiver will be able to understand the related content. Text to Color, takes a selection of text content and integrates it with an image file. The resulting image file looks normal, meaning it doesn’t seem as if there is content hidden within. Although, someone resourceful may be smart enough to figure out that the image is more than it appears to be, especially if it’s the only file that’s passed on. This is because the resulting image just looks like a bunch of colors meshed together.

Pros

• Very simple UI, only five action buttons available
• You can encrypt and decrypt text content to send hidden messages stored in BMP files
• Supports drag and drop, meaning you can just drop a file into the application window (BMP image or TXT)
• The content is decrypted and exported as a text file, and all formatting is preserved

Cons

• If you open the image file with another editing tool before decrypting the text, null values will be added to the content
• There’s no password protection or advanced security features, like when dealing with compressed archives
• The related BMP files are essentially just a bunch of colors, it would seem odd if that’s the only thing you sent to someone
• Both parties need to use the Text to Color application to encrypt and decrypt messages

Discussion

Text to Color is a portable application, which means it comes bundled as a compressed archive. You will need to unzip the related content with an archiver like WinZip, WinRAR or 7Zip first. After the related executable has been unzipped, you can run it from any directory including one located on external drives.

The application itself is very easy to use, and the UI is straightforward. In fact, there are only five different action buttons to control the various functions associated with the app.

• Load Text
• Encode Text
• Save Image
• Load Image
• Decode Image

The text box at the top of the window is obviously for typing content from scratch. You can type your message in the box and decrypt what’s entered, or you can load an external text file. Loading a text file can be done one of two ways, you can use the ‘Load Text’ button or you can drag and drop an existing text file onto the application window. When the content is entered, all you have to do is press ‘Encode Text’ and a Bitmap file will be created with the appropriate content.

The size of the image depends on the amount of text entered. A single sentence resulted in an image with dimensions of 3 by 3 pixels, and an imported document with 633 words resulted in an image with dimensions of 37 by 37 pixels.

Of course, when the content has been encrypted you need to save the resulting image by pressing the ‘Save Image’ button. To reverse the process, just load an image by using the ‘Load Image’ button or dragging an image file onto the window. A preview of the image will appear in the bottom left just below the action buttons. Then, you just need to select “Decode Image,” and the application will convert the hidden text content for reading. Instead of displaying the content in the application window however, Text to Color will generate a text file with the content included.

There’s one issue in particular that I came across, if you preview the image with another editing tool such as Photoshop or Windows Paint, it can result in null values being added to the text content. The extra content will show up when the image is decrypted. You can still read the text from the final output, but some of the formatting is ruined by ‘null’ entries being included in the file. Again, this only happens if you open the exported image in another editing tool.

The encryption and decryption process takes just seconds to complete and the test files were accurate all around. Even the formatting was preserved when decrypting a text document with a bulleted list.

Conclusion and download link

There are many uses for a digital steganography tool like Text to Color. Whatever the reason, it’s a good way to transfer sensitive text content to someone else through email, text or another web based medium. Of course, both parties will need to use the application to encrypt and decrypt the related BMP files and steganography is not a perfect security measure in the least. And there are other steganography tools out there, as pointed out in dotTech’s review of best free steganography programs for Windows. However, Text to Color is a viable choice if you don’t like any of the ones we mentioned in our review of steganography software. In other words, check out the steganography programs we mention in our review of best free steganography programs for Windows before you decide to grab Text to Color — the programs mentioned there are, in our opinion, better.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.0

Supported OS: Windows (XP, Vista, Seven)

Download size: 72.9KB (zipped), 366KB (unzipped)

VirusTotal malware scan results: 0/47

Is it portable? Yes

Text to Color homepage

About the author: Briley Kenney View all posts by Briley Kenney

Briley is a tech/gaming journalist, and electronic gadget enthusiast. Currently, he utilizes his exemplary writing skills to save the world, one post at a time. Briley writes for several online publications including Android Headlines, Blackberry Rocks, The Tech Labs and of course dotTech. His most recent project involved working on a turn based RPG called Tales of Illyria, which is due out soon!

dotTech

Spinoff Online – TV, Film, and Entertainment News Daily

Have you ever wanted to stick your hand into the Sarlacc Pit? I’m guessing you haven’t – regardless, it’s a thing you can do. DeviantArt user pandacatification knitted this hand puppet for a Star Wars contest. The Great Pit of Carkoon and the Sarlacc that resides within are overlooked all too often. The five tentacles go over your fingers like a glove. Just think about how much you could torment your friends!

If you can’t resist the Sarlacc’s charms be sure to visit the DeviantArt page – it’s available to purchase!

(via Neatorama)

Tags: handmade, puppet, star-wars

Nerd Approved – Gadgets and Gizmos

Boeing unveiled the 787-10 Dreamliner at the Paris Air Show today.

(Credit: Boeing)

Boeing today announced the 787-10 Dreamliner, the third (and longest) plane in the often-troubled 787 family, and an aircraft that the aviation giant said will be the most fuel-efficient in the industry.

The unveiling was timed to the Paris Air Show, which is being held this week in Le Bourget, France. That show is the aviation industry’s biggest event of the year, with many companies working hard to make sure their latest projects can be announced, or shown, there. Boeing’s chief rival, Airbus, made its long-awaited first flight of the A350 XWB on Friday to ensure that that plane could make an appearance in Paris.

Boeing said that the 787-10 will have a range of 10,000 nautical miles, allowing it to cover 90 percent of the world’s twin-aisle routes. The new plane, which is expected to go into final assembly and flight test in 2017, with first delivery the following year, will have room for between 300 and 330 passengers. Already, Boeing has received orders for 2012 of the planes from five carriers.

While the announcement is a big one for Boeing, it’s worth noting that the Dreamliner program has been beset by an almost uncountable number of delays for years. The original 787 Dreamliner was announced in 2007 and was expected to make its first flight that year. But because of a wide-ranging litany of problems that first flight didn’t take place until 2009, and the first commercial delivery didn’t happen until 2011.

Even then, the Dreamliner has been plagued by trouble, with a series of battery problems leading to the grounding of the entire worldwide fleet of 787s until Boeing and its partners could convince aviation regulators that there was no more danger of on-board fires.

Still, throughout all its issues, the Dreamliner has continued to be a favorite among airlines, largely because the planes offer unprecedented fuel efficiency due to their use of composite materials and new engines.

Production of the 787-9 Dreamliner is well underway.

Gaming and Culture – The latest in the geek life – CNET News

Here’s a fun action-packed short film from Robert Rodriguez called Two Scoops. It stars twin actresses Electra Avellan and Elise Avellan, who have appeared in the previous Rodriguez films Machete and Grindhouse. They play “ice cream scoopers by day,” and “danger seekers by night.”

One of the awesome things about this project is that when it was announced, Rodriguez invited fans to shoot footage of themselves for the opportunity to collaborate with Rodriguez on finishing the film. The movie has now been completed, and you can watch it below.

Two Scoops’ is a cinematic adventure, created by Robert Rodriguez with the help of his fans. In the film, you will find a scene featuring ‘the agent,’ a secret weapon, and the monster. Each of these elements was either created or inspired by a fan of Robert Rodriguez. Throughout the film, you will also find missing person posters. Each of these ‘missing people’ are fans of Robert Rodriguez, who submitted their photos in order to appear in the film.

Let us know what you think about Rodriguez’s short after you watch it!

GeekTyrant

Radio apps and services are beginning to look as common as file sharing services but with music, it’s always a question of taste and whether or not an app can give you what you like. For me, Pandora has no parallel as far as online radio stations are concerned and I’ve found great music there. Though that doesn’t mean there aren’t any other worthwhile options around. MPme Radio lets you listen to music from radio stations grouped by genres, and while initially launched as an iOS app, it has now made its way to Android as well. You can either search for the right station by picking your favorite genre, or browse the ‘On Air’ radio stations to find what you like. Artists and radio stations you ‘favorite’ can then be quickly accessed and played any time from the ‘Favorites’ tab. In case of your favorite artists, the app searches for stations that are playing songs by them and automatically redirects you to them. From our tests, it appears that some stations have ads while others don’t. Listeners can share songs and also buy the ones they like from Google Play Store for offline playback.

The app sports the latest version of Holo UI that’s developed according to Google’s guidelines, and looks impressive to say the least. When you first launch the app, you land on the ‘On Air’ tab by default, which lists all stations that are playing songs live at the moment. You can switch to specific stations by opening the navigation drawer and switching to the ‘Genres’ tab.

Select one of the available genres and then scroll through the list of radio stations. You can tell which song is currently playing on that station just by looking at the list, since both song title and artist are listed below a station’s name. Tap a radio station to start listening to it.

Tracks are accompanied by album art. The share button allows you to share the song on different sites including Twitter and Facebook. Tap the star and you can add the song and station to your favorites. You can switch back to the stations’ list and the playback will continue, with small player controls appearing at the bottom, allowing you to see what’s playing and play/pause the station. If you tap another station, it will start playing instead.

If you tap the ‘Playlist’ tab on a radio station, you can see which tracks were played previously. The shopping cart button allows you to purchase any of the songs from Google Play Store. Tapping the album art will show you a brief biography of the artist.

The Favorites tab is split into two sub-tabs of its own, one for stations and the other for artists. The app will pretty much always find a station playing your favorite artist, but it does seem that the variety in songs by any particular artist is rather limited. You can connect your Facebook account to MPme Radio (if you didn’t already do so when the app first launched) from its settings.

The stations on MPme Radio appear to be a reasonable balance between trending music and classic tracks. Perhaps that’s why the app claims to be able to find the perfect station for everyone.

Download MPme Radio for Android

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