Congrats once again to Jon. Below is the image that we took a close-up of.
Flashback Friday – LG Chocolate
Remember the original LG Chocolate, way back in 2006?
Not so long ago, but the real story is a strange deal the LG chocolate had with a large Domino’s pizza.
Sweet deal
Chocolate with pizza never sounded so good….
Photos courtesy Gizmodo and Top10list.org.
Watercooler Wednesday – News-Heavy Tech Blogs
Welcome to Watercooler Wednesday on Friday! We sincerely apologize to all five of our blog readers for our two-day absence. We were probably busy scouting out the best fact-heavy, most boringest tech blogs for you to spend your Friday night reading. Who are you kidding, you don’t have plans for Friday night. So enjoy!
First up, we offer you the site for everything Apple, from the new off-campus, 21,000 square foot cafeteria, one of just over 20 food facilities for Apple employees (we’re betting they just have barrels and barrels of apples sitting in there), to information on other conferences for those who weren’t nerdy enough to get into WWDC (Appsterdam anyone?). Be sure to check out tuaw.com for all your latest Apple news.
Apple Headquarters
So let’s say you want to go ahead and work for Apple now that you know the great cafeteria options they provide. Perhaps you’ll find a free Ivy League education useful courtesy the Business Insider, or perhaps you’d like to know what you’d make as an intern for Apple. You’d be happy to know that you’d land in the top ten of the highest-paid tech interns in the country. And just in case you wanted to know how annoying you are on Twitter, see this explanation of Klouchebag, a spin-off of Klout, and be sure to visit their site to bring yourself down a peg.
Mostly Noise
And if you’re now sick of exploring the Internet, how about gaining a whole new perspective on the human body through Google’s BodyBrowser? And don’t forget about a moving personification of Google products, creating an interesting comparison between the caveman past and the tech-heavy future. That’s right, this is the place to be for all things Google.
Zygote Body
Photos courtesy Googlesystem, Tuaw, Business Insider, and Klouchebag.
Tell Us Tuesday – Lamborghini Urus
Just when you thought SUVs were so 2000′s, Lamborghini unveiled their Urus concept at the Beijing Auto Show on Monday. Following the highly successful cue of the Porsche Cayenne, Lambo has been trying to keep up in the luxury car market. From movie stints in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight to 5,000 fake sales, it seems like 2012 may be the year of the Lamborghini. Check out the sizzling pics of the Urus below, along with Batman and his new sidekick (no, not Robin). What do you think about Lamborghini’s new direction?
Photos courtesy Wired.com and MotorTrend.com.
Meet a Member Monday – Vincent
And now we continue meeting members of the PowerSkin staff with an expose on Vincent, the heavily-accented, oft-apologetic man of very few words.
Vincent, tell me about yourself.
I am Vincent.
What do you do all day?
I make invoices and handle accounts payable and receivable.
Why do you have such a thick accent? How long have you been in the U.S.?
5 years.
Where are you from?
Taiwan.
What do you do on the weekends?
I always stay at home. I don’t like to hang out.
What did you think about your birthday celebration on Friday?
It was funny and I was so happy because I felt so good.
What did you think about the cake we got for you today?
It was good.
Well, there you have it. Thanks for an enlightening interview, Vincent.
Flashback Friday – The Original Macintosh
What kind of progress can 28 years accomplish? Anyone remember these big, bulky computers?
The original.
Retailing for $2500, it’s amazing the advancements that have occurred with computers, and technology in general (see previous Google glasses post), over the past three decades.
Remember when the iMac was all the rage? They could be found in computer labs and school libraries across the country.
Now Mac computers come in standard silver.
What more could Apple do to improve on their Macbooks?
Could this be any thinner?
Be sure to check out Wall St Cheat Sheet for the full progression in images.
Tech Trivia Thursday – Week 1
Welcome to Tech Trivia Thursday, which will probably eventually be renamed simply Trivia Thursday, because let’s face it, there is only so much we can do with tech products. Now don’t worry, this isn’t real trivia, so you don’t really have to think much, and you don’t have to know anything special to win. And to kick off our pioneering post, we are offering a 20% discount on any, that’s right ANY, PowerSkin product from our website to the first person to get it right. All you have to do is leave a comment below telling us your guess, with a valid email address, and we’ll let you know if you’ve won.
Okay, so here’s how it works. We give you an extreme close-up picture of something, and you guess what it’s a picture of. You have to name the entire object, not just the part of it that the close-up shows. For example, if we take a close-up of a hamburger, and you can only make out the bun, you have to name the hamburger, not just the bun. Okay, check out the picture below, and good luck!
P.S. We apologize for the fuzziness. We can’t make it too easy.
What the heck is this? (It's not too hard)
Water Cooler Wednesday – Funny and Interesting Tech Blogs
Ah, Wednesday, the oft-forgotten day, the literal and figurative middle child of the week. We may gripe about how we hate the start of the workweek on Mondays, love to eat cheap tacos on Tuesdays, start drinking and partying in dorms on Thursdays, hash-tag our favorite follows on TGIFridays, and, well Saturday and Sunday speak for themselves, but Wednesday is often left out of the mix. It is neither despised nor beloved, neither denounced nor lauded, simply there.
Today we begin the first issue in our Wednesday series of blog posts. Perhaps because it’s not the nineties, or maybe because most interaction nowadays is done through a screen (see past blog post), water coolers just aren’t in anymore. Well, they’re making a comeback now, and though we recognize it may not necessarily be around the water cooler, we want to start talking about new voices and ideas in the Internet tech world. Because we know that today’s tech generation has an attention span of an ADD kid on crack, we present a short and (literally) sweet list of tech blogs that offer up interesting and humorous news items in the tech world. Take a peek, and let us know of some of your faves and daily must-reads. Enjoy!
Gizmodo.com – This site offers a Stoner Channel for those of you who, you know, stone. A favorite article of ours? A 2-minute expose on an elevator’s lickable cookie wallpaper.
Lickin' it doggie style
Neatorama.com – As the name may suggest, this is a treasure trove of neat articles ranging from an offering of desktop wallpaper of Jason’s take on Where’s Waldo made for the criminal in all of us to the flavor and nutrition of a BLT in a single potato chip. This is a blog recommended for foreigners seeking an overview of the great USofA.
Tell Us Tuesday – Google Glasses
Our inaugurate week of brand-spanking-new blog posts continues, with an opinion blog inviting reader response.
Today, we’d like to talk about Google’s latest attempt at making nerds look cool (aren’t we all ‘nerds’ at this point).
They’ve now come up with glasses that project a not-so-virtual reality, strategically placed, smack-dab in front of your screen-dependent face. These glasses open up a whole new world for the visually challenged: new ways to game, an industry from which Google may have gotten their inspiration, a continuation of SecondLife, only with real friends this time, and a full-on Google + advertisement, the brand’s real specialty.
Your new reality.
Many call this yet another of Google’s attacks on individual privacy, and it sure is hard to argue. From Gmail’s data sharing controversy in 2004, to Google Buzz’s automatic publicizing of user’s contacts, to Google Streetview data collection catching people unawares, to their recent privacy policy change affecting YouTube, Google search, Gmail, and Google +, the original start-up search engine has faced many a criticism for releasing unauthorized information about its users. But this is different – this one’s more about control than anything else. After all, Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, was quoted in a 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal as saying that “most people…want Google to tell them what they should be doing next”.
And Google seems to do a lot of strategic ad placing in general, so why not place a computer screen in front of your face 24/7? As if we couldn’t get any more distant – cell phones to AIM to Facebook to virtual reality in real life. We don’t really see how it could get much worse. I mean, just imagine it. We already drive in enclosed capsules called cars, or even more imposing, SUVs, with most interaction with other drivers kept to a stray middle finger here and there; or we ride in subways engrossed in our texts (no, not books, but messages) and cell phone conversations, hardly able to get distracted by real people sitting next to us unless they happen to shoulder-bump us into a brawl. Now we get to not only ignore our immediate surroundings even more, but Google’s YouTube video description has the double-o balls to call it “putting you back in the moment” (for the record, we appreciate all technological advances, as we would not be in business without them).
If it wasn’t weird enough that people would appear to be talking to themselves on their Bluetooth headsets way back in 2005, now they’ll be seeing things that aren’t really there. Wasn’t this once considered justification for institutionalization? Well, as the age-old adage goes, what’s old is new. For a world obsessed with friending, following, and connecting, we sure are making it increasingly more complicated to just hang out with each other. More than that, this generation has redefined the way people hang out – it’s not so much face-to-face as screen-to-screen.
It’s not breaking news that nerds have taken over the world, from Harvard drop-out Zuckerberg to NYU alum Dorsey to Stanford grads Page and Brin, so that old saying back in high school that you should treat the social outcasts nicely, as they may end up as your bosses, couldn’t be more true. Google’s latest nerd rescue gives a whole new meaning to face-to-face interaction. Smart as the new hot has never been so…real?
P.S. We love Google and we are all nerds here at XPAL Power. Much love.
Related Links
IdeaLab – Google Glasses with Prescriptions
Meet a Member Monday
We are starting a new feature here on our blog, and on Mondays, we will be updating the site with a few fun facts about some of our team members in our West-coast offices.
First up, we have one of our customer service representatives, Baxter.
A typical day for young Baxter.
Baxter, why are you here?
I love business, and I plan on getting my MBA in five years.
Tell us about your educational background.
I went to UC San Diego and got a degree in human biology.
What do you do for fun?
I’ve played tennis since I was three years old, I like to go running, and I go to the gym every day.
That’s your idea of fun? Where do you like to go on vacation?
Las Vegas. I love to go clubbing. My favorite club is the Marquee at the Cosmopolitan.
That’s more like it. What’s your favorite thing about working at XPAL Power?
Every day is different. I’m doing new and challenging things all the time.
Everyone has an embarrassing high school moment. What’s yours?
I once fell asleep during class, and farted myself awake.
That’s disgusting.
I’m sorry.
Okay, what cell phone do you have?
The iPhone 3GS. I can’t wait for the next model to be released.
It’s been released. Twice. It’s called the iPhone 4 and 4S.
I’m holding out for the iPhone 5.
What else is interesting about you?
A lot of people say I sound like Ben Affleck. They also say I look like him.
Not so sure about that last one….
