Filed under: Action & Adventure, Drama, Thrillers, Fandom, Angelina Jolie, Movie Marketing, Images

Now that’s what I’m talking about! I believe this one photo single-handedly illustrates and combines every male fantasy into one: Hot girl … on a red sports car … holding two powerful weapons. The “American Dream” has officially come true! Personally, I love Angelina Jolie when she takes on a badass role — and, quite frankly, I wish she would slip them in there more often. The Tomb Raider flicks — eh? — but she was fantastic in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and judging from these newly-released photos over on JustJared, her latest film don’t look so bad either.

What you’re looking at is a photo from Jolie’s newest flick, Wanted. Based on a comic book miniseries (written by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones), Wanted tells the story of a “mama’s boy” (James McAvoy) who learns that his recently-assassinated father was part of an elite group of assassins. Following dad’s death, the boy is recruited by the same organization and trained (by Morgan Freeman who, in case you did not know, never stops acting) to follow in his father’s footsteps. Jolie plays a jewel thief named The Fox. Director Timur Bekmambetov will make his English-language debut off a script penned by at least four different people (including Michael Brandt). Wanted is currently set to speed into theaters on March 28, 2008.

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Talk about going global - Samsung certainly reiterates its intention to continue being a heavyweight throughout the earth with this artistic creation that comes in the shape of a globe, comprising of Samsung handsets from the past to the present. This artistic interpretation of being a global company is currently on display at the Caravan shopping mall in Kiev, Ukraine, in hope that it will create a higher brand awareness for this Korean start up. Pretty interesting, but it is pretty contradictory to see mimes marketing a skeletal globe comprised of cellphones, which are, you know, suppose to help you keep in touch with one another through conversations and not sign language?

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Filed under: Cellphones

While the Apple-Vodafone rumors have been swirling for months, an unnamed “source” has apparently found that the two firms are now breaking down the minute details that are holding back a (potentially) forthcoming launch. Most importantly, it seems that Vodafone doesn’t want to “give up as much control” as did AT&T here in the States, and below is a brief list of reported “iPhone enhancements [that] carriers are looking for:”

• Vodafone wants the YouTube application to “work much more like the Internet version.”
• Improvements to Outlook and Exchange support
• Improved security and firewalls
• Tweaks to Apple’s WEP and WPA security key requirements
• Web browser improvements, namely, the ability to simply “cut and paste“

So, there you have it — now how’s about we just start compromising and get a deal together for all the patient Europeans, yeah?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Previews, PlayStation Network

If you have no idea what Soldner-X: Himmelsstürmer is, think back to the glory days of the original PlayStation, to when Square-Enix was still Squaresoft. They tried out different game genres, one of which was a horizontal space shooter called Einhander. The game meshed 2D and 3D in a really unique way and kicked a lot of ass. That’s what nostalgia we get when staring at the Soldner-X screenshots, or those contained in our gallery below. The little power-up bar along the bottom is incredibly reminiscent of the Gradius games, too. Two of our favorite horizontal shooters combined into a pretty 720p, 60fps masterwork? We’ll download.

Some of the key features in the title are standard fare: unlockable difficulties, power-ups, etc. There are a few tweaks to the genre to make it stand out, though. One of these is a “tactical” element system like chaining, berserker mode, and effectiveness systems. We could draw parallels all day, but to have these all in one place is a nice effort. We can’t wait to see if the “over the top” boss fights really are insane. What do you guys think? Would this be a welcome change from the dual-analog shooters plaguing the PlayStation Network?

[via PS3 Forums]

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Filed under: Food Gadgets, Spices

All five of the pepper mills you see pictured above are mine. That might be more pepper mills than the average household requires, but I like my kitchen gadgets and I like having a spice option for every necessity. That includes having coarse or fine grind pepper whenever I want it without futzing with adjustments on a single grinder. The two in the middle came my way when my great-aunt Flora downsized her kitchen several years back (that’s also how I acquired my very functional 25-year-old Cuisinart). The tarnished silver one is an ancient Peugeot, that after some thorough cleaning (although I don’t think I’ve polished it in years), has the most amazingly smooth action.

Because of my experience with that particular pepper grinder, I was really surprised yesterday when a friend asked me to recommend a new pepper mill for him. He said that he had a 30-year-old Peugeot that wasn’t working well anymore and he wanted to try treat himself to a new grinder. I told him that if he really wanted a new grinder that he should head over to Fante’s, which has all of their mills loaded with pepper and available to be handled before purchase (your local kitchen supply store may do the same thing). However, I also suggested he give that old Peugeot a cleansing before giving up on it. While he may still indulge in a new grinder, he sent me an email tonight saying that his old one is working so much better. Success!

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Filed under: Gaming

It’s not set in stone, but in an interview with CNET.au, RedOctane cofounder Charles Huang suggested that the DS version of Guitar Hero III would include a guitar controller “as long as it makes sense and it plays well.” Huang went on to say that RedOctane is “exploring ways to get peripherals on a DS game,” and that the company is working on approach with Nintendo’s assistance. Given the novel controllers we’ve already seen hit the DS, RedOctane’s got some work to do to back up Huang’s assertion that GHIII on the DS “will play probably unlike any other DS game that has come out,” but we’re willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt — they seem to have a handle on that whole “gameplay” thing.

[Via DS Fanboy]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX)

There is an interesting piece out of comScore today. The company released its Top 50 Web Rankings for July, and Time Warner Inc.’s (NYSE: TWX) AOL property of Advertising.com looks like it kicked some you know what.

In July, Advertising.com remained on the top of the Ad Focus ranking from comScore. The advertising audience of 180 million Americans tracked put AOL’s Advertising.com as #1 with 158,905 unique visitors, above ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK) with 131.9 million users and both Google and Yahoo! having more than 131 million uniue visitors.

It reached some 88% of the more than 180 million Americans online that comScore measures results from. Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Ad Network, which includes Google Adwords and Google AdSense Programs, joined the ranking this month at number four, reaching 73 percent of the U.S. online population. That number is actually shocking if you read it. It isn’t on the number of ads, but it is on the reach. The Time Warner Network is also #3 on the list as far as unique users: 1) Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) with 133,428,000, 2) Google Sites with 123,892,000 and 3) Tme Warner Network with 123,702,000, and 4) Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) with 118,154,000 uniques.

Maybe Dick Parsons can roll back some of that soft guidance for the AOL unit, although this isn’t the same measurement. Be very clear that this isn’t tracking the total time and the like, but that is a substantial number and leaves room for some further exploitation of AOL from Time Warner. If it does follow my belief that AOL will become a unit via the tracking stock toward the end of the year, then AOL should try to keep those metrics higher and higher.

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Interviews

The Switched Questionnaire: Darren Hayes

Not a lot of artists have made the switch from old world of music-label-driven marketing and promotion for CDs to the new world of self-released albums, track giveaways, and MySpace pages, but Darren Hayes, the former lead singer of late-’90s dance-pop duo Savage Garden, has entered the world of Music Web 2.0 with flying colors. In the months before the release of his new two-CD album ‘This Delicate Thing We’ve Made,’ Hayes got 600,000 people to visit his MySpace Page — pretty good for a guy who’s spend much of the last few years since the breakup of Savage Garden battling depression, getting divorced from his wife, and subsequently marrying a man (becoming one half of the U.K.’s second same-sex marriage after Elton John and David Furnish). Turns out Hayes is quite opinionated about the gadgets he brings around with him on tour, as you’ll soon discover when you read his answers to the latest Switched Questionnaire.

What gadgets do you always bring with you to the set (for down-time)?

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Filed under: Computers, MySpace

We thought the social networking craze had gone about as niche as it possibly could with the likes of Eons.com (for the over-50 set), Yub.com (for shoppers) and NurseLinkup.com (for … you guessed it!). But now the U.S. government has hopped on the bandwagon with a site so super niche, most of us aren’t allowed to even view it. In December, all of our country’s national intelligence agencies will gain access to A-Space, a MySpace-like internal network to help different departments communicate. The ‘A’ in A-Space is for ‘analyst.’

As tough as it may be to believe, the creation of a social network for spooks is part of the post 9/11 overhaul to make the sharing of information between departments easier. This MySpace for analysts will, in addition to the standard social networking features, have a recommendation system similar to Amazon’s that will connect people to other analysts and relevant areas of research and espionage. The site will also have document creation and hosting abilities, with different levels of access.

A-Space is, of course, voluntary. This no doubt comes as a relief to those spies who aren’t crazy about the idea of having their faces and details posted on the A-Space pages of every friend-hoarding Tom, Dick and Harry employed by a three-lettered government agency.

From TechCrunch

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• Army Deploys Armed Robots to Iraq
• Pentagon to Implant Chips in Soldiers Bodies
• Homeland Security Goes Sci-Fi

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Filed under: Audio/Video, iPod, iPhone

We said it first, and now everyone else is starting to come around. Analysts are saying that next month they expect a refreshed iPod, which will likely use the same big and responsive touchscreen that the iPhone uses. Apple Insider is reporting that we can expect an update of both the iPod and the iPod Nano.

Many are expecting the updated video iPod would also use the same big widescreen display that the iPhone uses. According to analysts, the new Nano may well see a price drop and an increase over the maximum 8-gigabyte (GB) memory it has now.

We’ll just have to wait and see what actually happens when Steve Jobs makes the announcement, which will most likely take place at next month’s annual Apple Expo in Paris.

From Engadget and Apple Insider

Related Links:

• The Touch Screen iPod in September?
• iPhone Nano: Is it Coming or What?
• Does the Media Love Apple Too Much

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