Filed under: Action & Adventure, Casting, Warner Brothers, RumorMonger, Fandom, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Monday Morning Poll

Whether we’re ready for it or not, the new live action Justice League of America movie will most likely head into production early next year. Thus, a firm cast needs to be in place soon. Here’s what we know so far: Happy Feet’s George Miller has signed on to direct the film, which will most likely come out in the summer of 2009. Christian Bale will not be playing Batman, and, as of right now, the same goes for Brandon Routh with regards to Superman. Warner Bros. would like to use the Justice League movie to help launch other superhero franchises like Aquaman, Wonder Woman and the Flash. As of right now, no one has been cast.

It will be important to have a few familiar faces in the line-up, and so far it seems Warners might be leaning towards casting a well known personality in the Batman role (Ryan Gosling’s name has come up on more than one occasion). Just recently, Tom Welling was rumored to be up for the Superman part, however IESB claims to know that’s not happening. With so much time between Superman films (we may not see Bryan Singer revisit the character until 2010), don’t be surprised if Brandon Routh’s name doesn’t come up more than once. I have a feeling the other superhero characters will be played by relative unknowns (like Singer did with Routh in Superman Returns), and what they’ll do is surround those unknowns with popular folks in the Batman and Superman roles since these will be one-off jobs, and those actors probably won’t need to sign for multiple pictures. Then again, I could be wrong.

So, I ask you: Who would need to play Batman and Superman in Justice League in order to get you super excited for the film?

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Sprint just brought up their Palm Centro site and with it, a few more details to make the dealio all official-io. The “world’s smallest Palm device” will cost you $100 beans after $100 mail-in rebate, minimum $25 data plan, and two year commitment to Sprint (and Garnet) when it launches on October 14th. We’re also seeing a choice of a candy-red finish for the first time if black is a bit too staid for your tastes. Perhaps we’ll hear a little more later today when the DigitalLife show kicks off in New York.

[Thanks, Conrad A-B.]

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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), Yahoo! (YHOO)

In a recent piece on C/NET, there’s some chatter that the mortgage mess will ultimately lower online spending — taking some of the wind out of biggies like Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Hey, just based on my own browsing, I’m not seeing many mortgage banners. So should we be worried?

I had a chance to interview Frank Addante, who is a veteran of the online advertising world. He sold one of his companies to DoubleClick and his latest gig is The Rubicon Project.

According to him:

“Comparing today’s ad market to the online ad market of 2001 is rubbish. The online ad market in 2001 was fueled by dot-coms spending VC money. Back then I invested years working to get major traditional advertisers to understand the opportunity and spend money online and today, they do. The current market is more diversified and as a result more resilient to changing market dynamics.

“The fact remains that 33% of consumer time is spent online today. However, only 5% of advertising budgets are spent online. What’s significant about that? It means advertisers are spending money in places where people aren’t.

“Further, 30-50% of U.S. based websites’ traffic is coming from international consumers. Today, much of that international ad space is wasted. It’s as though websites are throwing it in the trash, but not intentionally.”

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

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Filed under: PlayStation Store, News

The US PSN Store has yet to be updated but still we know what’s due to be released. How do we do it? Witchcraft? Voodoo? The Cell processor’s built in time-machine feature (it’s there, trust us). Actually, none of those things. We check the PlayStation.Blog, just like everyone else. Here’re todays upcoming updates:

• Clive Barker’s Jericho demo (free)
• NBA 2K8 demo (free)
• Motorstorm Capitano vehicle pack ($0.99)
• Ninja Gaiden Speed Master game pack ($unknown)
• NBA 08 Upside Progression System tutorial video (free)
• Eye of Judgment overview video (free)
• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock trailer (free)
• Iron Man film trailer (free)
• We Own The Night film trailer (free)

Demos for everyone! By “everyone” we mean “PS3 and 360 owners.” Today marks the first time that people have got the same demos on the same day, regardless of their console choice. We’re excited to try out and curious to see whether the demo will make an impact on which of the three basketball games being released next week people will pick up.

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Along with the ConnectR, iRobot has also announced its iRobot Looj, a robot made to clean out your gutters. This way, you won’t have to whip out the ladder anymore and risk falling off your roof. The 2.25-inch Looj sweeps out dirt and leaves from your gutters, making sure no blockage gets in the way of your getter doing its job. Looj also comes with a detachable handle so you can get in on the act, even helping out the robot do its dirty work. Though, why even bother? The iRobot Looj will cost under $100 when it makes its way ti the consumer market around Christmas.

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The SitePoint crew was in the 600-strong audience at the opening of Web Directions South 2007 in Sydney today. Conference runner John Allsopp took the stage to open the conference and introduce some of the major themes.

Top of his list was that the mobile web has arrived. John mentioned devices like the Apple iPhone, Nokia’s WebKit-powered mobile browser, and the Nintendo Wii as devices that are changing the way people use the Web. Reflecting these advancements, the conference this year has a special focus on mobile web technology.

Keynote speaker Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare, then stepped up to speak on The Perils of Popularity, focusing on the current trends in social networking. Sinha showed how the new crop of social networking sites are based around shared activities (e.g. Facebook) and objects (e.g. YouTube).

At several points during her talk, Sinha paused to poll the audience about their current focus, and was surprised to find the Sydney audience seemed to have different priorities than audiences she has addressed in Silicon Valley. For example, only a smattering of Web Directions South attendees indicated they were currently developing Facebook applications, whereas stateside it’s apparently “all about Facebook Apps.”

Sinha outlined three models of sociality within social networks:

• The Google model of blind sociality, in which the network cannot be browsed, only searched (e.g. Picasa Web, Google Calendar).
• The Digg model of encouraging mobs, which is very powerful at generating “popular” content, but is problematic in that users tend to work in mobs, not independently.
• The YouTube model of exploiting social gestures of viewing, favoriting, and tagging.

Sinha encouraged attendees to consider the model of sociality they use, and the consequences it will have on the type of “popular” content it will highlight for your users.

Sinha also theorised out that Google is actively working against several of these models of sociality, because closed circles of object sharing within social networks do not translate well into algorithms like Google Pagerank, which can only measure quality of content by gauging popularity on the open Web.

Tags: wds07

This article provided by sitepoint.com.

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A few months ago there was a big hype created when Richard Gere kissed Shilpa openlt in public at an Aids Awareness event in New Delhi. If people are thinking that the incident’s effect is over then be ready for a big shock. Shilpa was treated very harshly by a police officer at the Chhatrapati […]

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Filed under: Computers

It’s been said that a dog is a man’s best friend. It’s also been said that one day robots will take over the world and put us all to work doing their bidding. So, it’s with conflicted feelings that we report on a new robot dog, one that has the potential to be a little more useful than Sony’s dearly departed (and frequently copied) Aibo. This new robo-mutt, called LittleDog, has been developed at American robotics company Boston Dynamics for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA). The hope is that it will someday become a battle-ready companion for soldiers at war.

The dogs, which at this point look something like a boom-box with legs, have been delivered to various top robotics universities around the country, including MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon, for them to develop the best software to control the bots. Each month the universities will send in their latest versions of the software they develop for DARPA scientists to put through its paces, tasking the robot pooches with scampering over obstacles and the like, as shown in the above test video that demonstrates current submissions from Carnegie Mellon and USC.

What exactly the military will do with these dogs remains to be seen, but scouting and recon along with possible supply delivery seem perfectly reasonable. Games of fetch, however, are probably out of the question … at least until someone grafts a head onto these suckers.

From New Scientist Tech

Related Links:

• The Dog That Speaks French, Sort Of…
• Sony’s Robo Dog Back from the Dead
• Attack of the Clones

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