Geek News You Should Know: 6/18/14

1) We don't often cover tech stories here but they are certainly geeky in their own right.  Amazon has officially announced their venture into the cell phone market with Fire.  Not to be confused with the Amazon Kindle Fire, although it is similar just smaller, this phone comes back with Amazon features and includes 1-year of Amazon Prime, so you can experience all that Amazon has to offer on your cellphone.  One of the new features they have announced is their dynamic perspective feature, where they offer an almost holographic or 3D look on the home screen and through various apps.  They have also designed the phone to be used just with one hand and menus and scrolling can be done by tilting the phone.  There is also a Firefly feature, that sadly doesn't allow you to watch the Joss Whedon series, but instead allows you to basically Shazam a song or movie, or use your camera on a book or other media and it will pull up more information about whatever you are looking for, which even includes phone numbers, web and e-mail addresses.  The Fire features a 13MP camera, dedicated camera button, free umlimted cloud storage and automatic back-up for photos and videos, 2.2 GHz quad-core processor, and tons of other features.  If you want to check out more information on the device click here.  The Fire will be released on July 25, 2014 and will only be available for AT&T subscribers initially.



I used to own an Amazon Kindle Fire but became frustrated with the device because apps were tied only to the Amazon Appstore, which does not have nearly as good of a collection of apps as Google Play or iTunes.  I also found their web browser frustrating to use and not nearly as fast as they described it.  I sold the device before Christmas after not using it all that much and replaced it with an iPad that I use everyday.  I am hoping for Amazon's sake that their phone is a better product, but I have a feeling no matter how great it sounds on paper, it'll be disappointing because of the restrictions Amazon has in place of it being locked solely to Amazon for most things.  I realize in Amazon's eyes that's their point, they want everyone to only use Amazon for streaming music, videos, audiobooks, etc. but not everyone wants to use Amazon for all of these things.  While the 3D/Dynamic Perspective looks cool, I would imagine people growing tired of this shortly after using it.  Plus, I can't picture a lot of 3rd party developers making apps that feature this just for one phone.  I hope that I'm wrong but I can very well see this device flopping, especially with the iPhone 6 coming out this fall and the Samsung Galaxy 5 which is already available and seems like a much better phone than this one. Amazon shares are up though based on the announcement of the phone so maybe I'm wrong.

2) The first production photo from 50 Shades of Grey was released online in honor of Christian Grey's birthday.  The movie, based on one of the hottest selling books of all time, is hitting theaters on Valentine's Day 2015.  While the photo gives you no indication of anything here it is.




While my only experience of the book is the hosts of a podcast, Party Truck USA, reading the book and doing hilarious chapter recaps of the book weekly and poking fun at all of the ridiculousness of the book. I am excited to see the movie just to see how it turns out and to see if they actually say "Laters baby" in the film.

3) In crazy cross-over comic book news, Dynamite Entertainment announced today that it is teaming up with DC Comics and will be releasing a Django Unchained and Zorro crossover event.  This book is a collaboration between Quentin Tarantino (writer/director of Django Unchained), Reginald Hudlin (who did the comic book adaption of Django Unchained) and Matt Wagner (legendary comic book writer/artist most popular for Grendel).  This will be the first time that any of Quentin's characters have ever continued outside of their original story. Tarantino is a huge fan of comic books and as he co-plotted this book it might be worth checking out when it hits store shelves in late 2014.


4) One of my favorite television series of all time, The Inbetweeners is coming back for their second movie and I couldn't be more excited.  The series is legit laugh out loud funny and had some many great moments.  The Inbetweeners is about a group of social outcasts, who despite trying to be cool keep failing miserably at it. The entire series is available on Netflix, so there is no reason to not check it out (unless you don't have Netflix I guess).  The first movie was released a couple of years ago and was one of the highest grossing movies in the UK's history.  They just released a NSFW trailer for The Inbetweeners 2 and it will be hitting theaters there in August and I hope it will be coming here shortly thereafter.  Here is the trailer for the sequel.



5) Lastly, an image of Shredder from the upcoming TMNT movie was released online and he looks like one bad ass dude.  Check it out!