As you may, or may not, know (probably the latter, as I've never knowingly mentioned it before) Colonel Fitz-Tightly is the closest Little-Frigging-In-The-Wold has to a so-called 'community leader'. Like all such 'community leaders', it is a position he himself seems to have elected himself to, without reference to anyone else. Mostly, it seems, this is because he apparently enjoys the sound of his own opinions, and is ever-willing to offer instant reactions to anything and everything put to him by the media without the need for even the slightest pause for reflection. This is - of course - a big plus in the contemporary 24-hour instant media world where immediate reaction is prized far higher than sober reflection or apposite judgement. Consequently - as with all such people in the...

Which of the contenders for best picture will be helped by a single-transferable vote?The popular narrative among Oscar speculators this year is that the best picture will be a straight fight between box-office behemoth Avatar and critics' favourite The Hurt Locker. But additional spice will come from the fact that, for the first time since 1943, this category will be decided via instant run-off voting rather than first-past-the-post. Academy members must rank their 10 choices for best picture in order of preference (1, 2, 3, etc).If no film is shown to be the first choice of a majority of voters, the film with the least first-choice votes is eliminated and the second choices of those voters are then distributed. This process continues until a winner has more than 50% of the votes....

Winner of our free 1TB portable external hard drive giveaway from WD announced, congrats! Also, are you on Facebook? If you are, we've just launched our fan page, another way to stay up to date with us and of course our weekly free gadget giveaways. Hang it on the clothsline for instant green power Hanging out in the sun has many solar benefits; and here is one concept design that harnesses that solar energy and then juices up your gadgets. This Sunbox plays on this theory that on your way out to work, you hang out the device on your clothsline and when you get back in the evening, it’s all charged up. Latch it on to your TV, music system, hair-dryer for instant power. Designer Jinsic Kim says “people usually hangout wet cloths on the clothsline to dry up with natural...

10 Amazing Prefab HousesYou're doing it wrong! Chinese demolition men accidentally create the leaning tower of LiuzhouTop 33 World’s Strangest BuildingsIncredible Underground Residence in SwitzerlandThe Secret Cities of Yemen12 unbelievably filthy apartmentsHotel de Glace, Canada's ice hotel (via)Farmer loses High Court fight to save hidden castleSuspended houseThe Nazrid Palaces of the Alhambra (via)The world’s 18 strangest homes (via)China's Instant...

If you are like me you probably have some favourite platforms that you find useful for your online life. This is a list of what I found worked and didn’t work during my time in China. I thought that it would be handy to know, so that if you were visiting you could put surrogate services in place to continue your online life. Works well Flickr - both Uploadr and the site work just as well as they work at home Delicious - again just works as well as you would expect it to at home Google - seemed to work fine, though this may change because they haven’t been the best corporate citizen in China recently. Interestingly, typing Google.com took me directly through to the US site rather than their usual trick of geo-targeting and loading up their local country portal instead - which...

Just a quick reminder to all our readers who are yet to enter our Geeky Gadgets Giveaway, where one lucky reader will win Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer. The contest is free to enter, and it is open to Geeky Gadgets readers from anywhere in the world, just follow the instructions over at the contest entry page at the link below. Win A Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer The contest will close at 5PM (UK Time) on Sunday the 24th Of January 2010. Good Luck Everyone ! This is a post from Geeky Gadgets, who bring you the latest cool Gadgets.Reminder – Win A Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer Related posts:Win A Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer – Geeky Gadgets Giveaway Cool Gadgets – The Polaroid PoGo Instant Photo Printer Polaroid Brings Back Instant Cameras...

It is time for this weeks Geeky Gadgets giveaway. This weeks prize is a cool Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer that lets you print your photos via Bluetooth or USB from a range of gadgets including mobile phones and digital cameras. The contest is free to enter, and it is open to Geeky Gadgets readers from anywhere in the world, just follow the instructions below on how to enter. How to Enter If you want to win a Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer, all you have to do is subscribe to our RSS feed, and leave a comment below, and Re-Tweet this post if you use twitter. Full details on how to subscribe can be found on our Free Newsletter page. (If you are already subscribed just leave a comment below). Contest Rules The contest will close on Sunday 24th January 2010, at 5PM (UK......

Polaroid stopped making their instant cameras a while back, great news for all the Polaroid fans out there as they are set to bring back their instant cameras with a new model the Polaroid PIC 1000. Luckily the Polaroid Pic100 still keeps some of the cool retro style of the old Polaroid instant cameras, and it will print our your photos with the classic white borders on Polaroid Color 600 instant film. The Polaroid Pic 100 will go on sale later in the year, and will cost around $100, which isn’t bad, and they certainly are a lot of fun to use. Coolest Gadgets via Technabob This is a post from Geeky Gadgets, who bring you the latest cool Gadgets.Polaroid Brings Back Instant Cameras With the PIC 1000 Related posts:Cool Gadgets – The Polaroid PoGo Instant Photo Printer Sweep...

Polaroid is one of those household names that will likely be remembered for a long time.  Their instant pictures brought joy to a great deal of people who were used to having to wait at least a week to see their handy work.  After digital cameras became popular Polaroid was never the same again.  They made attempts to keep up with the times by creating digital cameras that also printed pictures.  However, they didn’t exactly catch on.  Well now Polaroid is going for a different angle, they’re bringing back their original models. Yes, that’s right Polaroid is going to create brand new cameras that take pictures just like they did in the good old days.  Truthfully I was recently considering trying to find a working Polaroid camera, purely because I enjoy older...

Polaroid has confirmed its come-back with the promise of releasing a new Polaroid instant camera later this year. There’s been a campaign and the Impossible Project rallied to keep the format alive by actually buying a Polaroid Film factory and promised us a new camera this year. And here it is. The new camera will come in three colours – silver, black and faux wood and offer fans of the romanticised format to relive those glory days. Other points are a tad sketchy but I’m guessing that these new cameras will follow the tried-and-tested designs of old. Polaroid says that the new PIC-1000 will cost around £60. Related posts:Polaroid Camera’s Back Next Year – Instant Happiness! Polaroid Pogo Instant Digital Camera Out This Year Pogo Like A Polaroid...

Some people think that the constitutionality of the individual health care mandate is the most important legal issue of the day. But others clearly believe that it is the question of whether instant replay review of NFL referee calls should be conducted under a de novo standard. For those interested in this crucial issue, Texas lawprof Mitchell Berman has written a particularly thorough statement of the case for a de novo standard in this article on Slate. I defended the same position in much lesser depth here and here. The second of my previous two posts on this subject has lots of links to arguments on both sides by other legal scholars. No one can say that we legal academics ignore the truly vital questions of the day. Copyright © 2009 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use...

Duke Law Professor Joseph Blocher’s argument that NFL instant replay reviews should reconsider on-field calls de novo has resulted in an extensive debate. The Wall Street Journal law blog has a list of various links here. I endorsed Blocher’s argument in this post. There has also been a response by Josh Patashnik of the New Republic, which the WSJ survey didn’t include. I still maintain, along with Blocher, that de novo review would increase the accuracy of calls at little or no cost to other important objectives. Some of the critics claim that instant replay calls aren’t likely to be any more accurate than those made on the field. This strikes me as extremely unlikely. An official in the instant replay booth can review the play from several different angles over the course of a...

Coffee lovers urged: Give up filter and save the planet in an instant - Scotsman.com News Dr Reay, a senior lecturer in carbon management at Edinburgh University, claims that the average cup of black filter coffee is responsible for 125 grams of carbon emissions. But the figure for a regular cup of black instant coffee is around 80g. Add milk to your morning coffee, and the methane belched by dairy cows means you increase your coffee's climate-changing emissions by more than a third. Dr Reay added: "The environmental group WWF has calculated it takes 200 litres of water to produce the coffee, milk, sugar and cup for just one regular takeout latte. If everyone ditched their pre-work coffee fix that would do wonders for the planet." Nasty foreign muck, I don't touch it anyway....

Most lawyers know that appellate courts usually review lower courts’ legal decisions de novo, while overturning factfinding and trail management decisions only if the lower court was guilty of “abuse of discretion.” In other words, if the appellate judges believe the lower court got the law wrong, they will reverse its decision; but they will only reverse a finding of fact if the lower court made an especially egregious or obvious mistake. Instant replay in the NFL and now major league baseball is similar to appellate review of factual decisions: by NFL rules, the referee’s call on the field can only be reversed if the replay provides “conclusive” or “indisputable” evidence that the ref blew it. However, law professor Joseph Blocher makes a strong argument that instant...

The PoGo Instant Photo Printer from Polaroid is full of new technology such as Bluetooth and inkless printing. The built in Bluetooth allows you to wirelessly print photos from your mobile phone. So if you’re out and about taking snaps you can print them off and keep them looking shiny in your little photo album. This portable printer connects to your camera via a USB cable which unfortunately is not included in the box, but once sorted with that, it’s extremely simple to connect your digital camera or mobile phone and start printing your pictures. The printer is capable of printing photos of 2” x 3” in size which is probably all you can expect from a pocket-sized printer. The printer uses ‘magic’ Zink paper which means no more silly flapping of your photos to dry them as it...

Via JuliaM, it seems that our government-in-waiting has the potential to be just as fucking awful as the one currently in power.A Tory government would use instant penalties on teenage yobs instead of relying on Asbos, the party said yesterday.Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said he favoured quick intervention against teenage yobs through grounding orders, community punishments and property confiscation.Don't tell me: you'll also be marching them to cashpoints to pay instant fines as well, yeah? And this will only apply to those nasty young yobs—of course it will. There will definitely be no function creep, will there? Oh, nooooo...Fuck. Off....

Yet another retro gadget has made its way on to the Christmas shopping shelves and this time it is in the form of the Polaroid Instant Camera. Not quite the same one from the good old days, but in fact a more modern take on the instant camera situation. We love it – for the same price as a reasonable digital camera you get a lot more fun with this Polaroid camera. Now available with FREE DELIVERY. Combining the instant fun of an old school Polaroid camera with the groundbreaking technology of the smash hit PoGo Printer, this up to 7 mega pixel* snapper does exactly what it says on the tin; takes a picture then ejects a print on a 2”x3” slice of sticky-back photo paper. Read More >> What else does it feature? Instant images printed View and crop image on camera before...

Our industry is renowned for producing lots of acronyms – it makes sure no one else knows what we are talking about ! VoIM or Voice over Instant Messenger is the ability while instant messaging to then have a voice call using VoIP, the question here is are we talking an IM client with VoIP capability or a VoIP client with IM capability, by this we mean MSN Messenger which most users will use for Instant Messaging and probably not think about the VoIP capabilities or Skype where most people will use the VoIP capability and not think too much about Instant Messages. I guess this technology will grow and grow as it seems logical to turn an IM conversation into voice if more clarification is needed (we can still talk faster than we can type – for now anyway !) Currently this is...

Sony will be working hand in hand with Netflix in order to make available thousands upon thousands of movies and TV episodes from Netflix to be streamed straight onto TVs as long as your living room (or wherever else that you’re most comfortable with to be entertained) has some room for a PS3 console. This streaming service from Netflix will be made available to the PS3 from November onwards for free, but bear in mind this is limited to just folks living in the US as other people outside of the country will have to settle for what they have currently. It does make us wonder though – will this move see an increase in PS3 sales just to take advantage of such a feature? After all, the console does already come with a very attractive price point at this moment in time. With the...

Awesome news abounds! Polaroid has confirmed that it’s getting together with instant film fans, The Impossible Project, to resurrect the classic and well loved instant film cameras. Yup -the format that was killed off last year is coming back people! The Impossible Project has spent the past 12 months working on a new film for existing Polaroid cameras, even going as far as running the former Polaroid factory in Enschede, Holland. Polaroid plans to relaunch their Polaroid Instant Cameras next year, with The Impossible Project creating Instant Film for the newly created insti-snappers. There’ll be the option for black and white and colour versions. This proves that the customer is always right – where there’s a will……….. Related posts:Polaroid Pogo...

It’s the Heinz Salad Cream of the photography world. The demise of Polaroid saw an outcry from students and 70’s swinger parties alike, and eventually the whole world mourned the passing of instant photography, as it was lead round the back by mobile camera technology and savagely murdered to death. But lo, what’s this? The instant camera is to stage a resurrection worthy of the big JC himself. The new management of Polaroid have announced that in partnership with The Impossible Project, a foundation created to ensure the survival of instant photography, Polaroid will be relaunching the iconic One Step camera in mid-2010: Production of Polaroid film stopped last year, when factories in Mexico and the Netherlands were closed down by the new owner of Polaroid, who were...

Polaroids are famous for being instant, and the company has moved with the times to keep up with the digital revolution by offering the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer that will help you print out your favorite digital snapshots in a jiffy. Well, this time round the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer will come in pink for one sole reason – to appeal to ladies worldwide to pick up a gadget that they otherwise wouldn’t spend a minute looking at it. We jest, this new shade is for a good cause to show support for the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month that started yesterday. Each $49.99 printer sold on Polaroid.com will see $10 donated to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF). Go on now, be a good samaritan. Press Release Coolest Gadgets UK – For all your...

If there was ever a doubt that the Premier League is the greatest league in the world, then tell the non-believers to watch today’s Manchester derby. What a game. What a game! The match is an instant classic and a brilliant advertisement for football and the Premier League. Played at a blistering pace at times and with plenty of sensational goals, this game had everything. However, one sour note was Alan Wiley joking and laughing with Sir Alex Ferguson near the end of the game while Mark Hughes was furious at more than four minutes of added time being played. For Wiley to do that at that particular time in the game was bad form. This game will go down in the history books as one of the most amazing Manchester derbies ever. Manchester City supporters will feel cheated, but their...

Polaroid pictures are artifacts of a bygone analogue age and the brand once synonymous with instant pictures is now used to brand digital cameras, printers, photo frames and software. Whilst instant film no longer exists, you can still have the same polaroid experience online. Rollip.com is an online service that provides a service which converts a digital image into a good facsimile of a Polaroid picture. Here is a before and after shot just so you can see how authentic the ‘Polaroid’ looks....

That pop-up message window may be an irritant to many of us, but new research shows it can be used as an aid to getting over depression. Researchers have found that online talking treatment using instant messaging can help people recover from depression. Accessing treatment online could make psychological therapies more widely available, and help people who find it challenging to visit a therapist. What do we know already? Talking treatments have been shown to help people with depression, but a shortage of therapists and long waiting times mean that it's not always easy to get treatment. According to the Mental Health Foundation, it's common for British patients to wait more than a year to get talking treatment, and 78 percent of GPs have prescribed antidepressant drugs through lack of an...

Summer’s here for some parts of the world, and that would mean organizing cookouts as well as having a generally fun time with friends and family while the sun still shines. The Asado Grill Instant BBQ Stand ought to make those cookouts a much more fun experience, as it boasts both simplicity and genius in a single contraption - all you need to do is slot your instant barbecue in the top, place the Asado wherever you like, light it up and you’re good to go. Because of those slender little legs that lift the Asado high up, you can place the BBQ anywhere you like without damaging the surface underneath – on grass, even on a tabletop. It’s based on a design of portable grill that South American gauchos would carry on their horses as they ranched cattle over the wide plains....

Working in a Supermarket means I have regular contact with the General Public, and sometimes I do wonder how some of these people manage to even dress themselves in the morning. Today I found a list of some of the most moronic things I was asked one day when there wasn’t much work to do. Here is a selection of some of the things I was asked and some of the responses from customers to my questions…. Taking in Films Me: Which size prints would you like? Customer: 1 Hour. Me: When would you like these films ready by? Customer: As soon as possible! Me: 1 Hour? Customer: Oh God no! Not that quickly! Customers Using the Digital Kiosk Customer: What does this mean? Me: What does it say on the screen? Customer: It says do you want to put your photos onto a CD? Me: …Well do you...

Let’s face the facts here - TVs that we see sold in stores these days are awy too advanced compared to the original black and white model that came out all those decades ago, and most people in the past would never have thought of such technology being made available to the masses today. After all, TVs are no longer limited to just receiving information over the air via its antenna, but they have become an essential part of the living room, with some people using it as their de facto computer monitor, while others have one primarily just to play high definition video games on it. LG goes one step up by harnessing the power of the Internet, introducing a couple of full HD 1080p HDTVs that will feature Netflix instant streaming software that have been pre-loaded into the TV itself,...

Looks like Polaroid has announced a ship date for the Polaroid Pogo. Or should I say month? According to Like Cool, Polaroid will ship the Pogo Instant Digital Camera next month. If you recall, the Pogo was the merging of a digital camera with the Zink portable printer. The Zink, which stood for “zero ink” prints a smidge-proof, water-resistant, fade resistant print with a no ink, heat activated process. Polaroid has been waiting for this development (pardon the pun) so they could finally get back to what their core business was … instant print pictures. When instant print film died a lingering death (which Polaroid finally put out of it’s misery by simply stopping production), they wandered the wilderness of digital cameras with lackluster designs which could be consider...

The Polaroid Two has arrived in the UK -- it's a digital instant camera that puts your prints in your hands as soon as they're...