Apple Evolution – Visual History of Apple Products, from the Apple IIe, iMac to the iPhone

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Why you should never fall asleep in elmo’s cellar bar.

GTA IV, supposedly the biggest thing in the history of modern electronic entertainment, has been leaked on the internet. If you’re one of the lucky ones with a modded 360 and a copy of the game, disconnect from Live before you play it. Rockstar is watching out for people who go online with these before they’re supposed to. [Kotaku]

After nearly a year, the iPhone has finally received its first [Questionably the first, but definitely the worst - Ed.] starring role in a music video. Unfortunately, the video is “Smell Yo Dick”, by sassy rapper Riskay. This is the ultimate manifestation of the downside to being mainstream accessible. What do you think Steve Jobs will say to himself when he watches this unbelievable song’s music video? Will he regret not only catering to Mactards? Will he resent the free advertising in this song? Will he start asking lazy Apple Engineers to get on the ball or smell his dick? Only Steve knows. The video, filled with NSFW language, below.

In the self-explanatory guide to detecting cheaters, the phone is featured in a variety of situations both good (a friend takes pictures of Riskay’s man with another woman) and evil (Riskay’s boyfriend declines her call). By the end, Riskay sends her man’s beloved JesusPhone flying off the balcony, but it’s the phone that gets the last laugh—it still works. [via Jezebel]

Flickr users can now add video clips alongside their photos, a much requested and much anticipated feature that has been promised for over a year.

The product is not a YouTube clone by any means. The Flickr team, led by Director of Product Management Kakul Srivastava, spent considerable time debating the feature set and user experience internally before launch.

The goal is not to have people upload long videos or clips of copyrighted material. To reinforce that, videos can be only 90 seconds in length and 150MB in size (however these limitations may be changed later, Srivastava says).

In a phone prebriefing, I was very critical of the length limitation. But the team then brought me in for a demo and I was sold. The short clips are a perfect compliment to event photos, in my opinion.

Videos are treated the same way as photos and are placed alongside those photos in albums and the main stream. Videos can also be tagged (and geotagged) in the same way as photos.

The video player itself is extremely clean, so videos look like photos on pages that include them. Videos can also be embedded, of course, as we’ve done above.

Another great feature is the ability to play the videos from the thumbnail screens as well as the permanent page for the video.

Flickr video also differentiates itself from YouTube by only allowing pro users upload videos (it costs $25/yr to be a pro user), although both free and pro users can view videos. As with photos, videos can be made public or private. They can also be shared/embedded individually or as part of sets. But like YouTube, Flickr is providing an API for programmers to create services that access videos hosted on Flickr.

Other standard Flickr features are also available for video, such as search by tags and descriptions, uploads directly from camera phones, and various licensing options.

With this launch, video sharing sites that have focused on privately shared videos should be worried. These include Motionbox, Viddyou, and Vimeo, among others.

The BBC’s iPlayer video service will soon be available via the Nintendo Wii.

The video download and streaming service that lets people catch up with BBC programmes will soon be a channel on the hugely popular game console. Early versions of the service will be available from 9 April but more polished software will be released as the service is developed. The BBC is still at loggerheads with internet service providers (ISPs) over who should pay for extra network costs.

ISPs say the iPlayer is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope. Simon Gunter, from ISP Tiscali, is leading a call for the BBC to help pay for the rising costs. But Ashley Highfield, head of future media and technology at the corporation, has said he believes the cost of network upgrades should be carried by ISPs. The news of the Nintendo Wii deal comes as the BBC reveals a steep rise in the numbers of people using the iPlayer.

The iPlayer on the Wii is currently being tested and the BBC expects to release more test versions in late 2008. An early version of the service is available from 9 April. It is only available in the UK to licence-fee payers. The iPlayer will be accessible via the internet channel on the Wii console. The BBC said a message would be sent to Wii owners to alert them to its availability.

The news comes as the BBC releases the latest viewing figures for the iPlayer.

In March 2008, more than 17.2 million requests to download or stream BBC programmes were made via the iPlayer. This is up 25% on the previous month and means more than 42 million programmes have been accessed via the iPlayer since its Christmas 2007 launch. Nintendo’s Wii has rapidly become the world’s most popular console largely thanks to its innovative motion-sensitive controller. In the UK it has become the fastest-selling console ever, shifting more than one million units in just 38 weeks after going on sale.

Great news, world! I’m very pleased to announce that Veronica Belmont has joined the Revision3 family as Patrick Norton’s co-host on our tech-centric show Tekzilla, and we couldn’t be happier to have her on board.

Not only does Veronica fit in well here because she’s got the brains (oh, the brains!), but she’s just an all-around cool person, too. We’re honored to have her with us, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her to the Revision3 team.

Check out the official press release on Tekzilla’s latest great addition here.

This shows Microsoft Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 running 108 applications at only 30% processor usage, according to Daniel Smith, who sent it in response to the picture of Mac OS X Leopard running 150 applications this weekend. His specs are nothing to write home about:

I’m runnin a stock Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 4GB of RAM. I counted 108 apps total and gave up bored after I had running anything from Photoshop, Visual studio 2008, Office professional 2007, Safari, and Media Center all the way down to that rescource hog, Minesweeper.

One, if not the most controversial post ever published on TechCrunch was Dan Ackerman Greenberg’s The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos. A TechCrunch reader took this post and mixed it into his own viral video, as above. Great summary of the original post, and well put together…and yes, we took the viral bait as well

Remember when Facebook was the more professional alternative to MySpace? Now that the gates have opened for people to create applications, Facebook profiles have become cluttered catastrophes of html. Here’s 7 popular ones that take up valuable Scrabulous room.

7- Super Poke

Screw the Pillsbury Dough Boy; poking is not fun. On the Internet, it’s even a bigger bother, as these little pokes can be annoying and evoke neurosis. You have to ask yourself: “To poke, or not to poke?” “What if you poke and you don’t get poked back?” “And, if you poke one, should you poke them all?” You may not be as neurotic, or have as much time on your hands as, say, an Internet list writer, but you know you’ve have poke debates in your head before.

6- Friends for Sale

There is no doubt that most people would sell their friends out for what’s in between Bill Gates’ couch cushions. It’s just crazy that over 670 thousand people would do it for fake money! Yes, over 11 percent of Facebook users want to buy, sell and trade their friends like tickets on Stubhub for nothing more than the good feeling of killing an hour of their life.

5- Compare People

Your friends already have low self-esteem, now they have to hear it from you that they aren’t as attractive as Billy Joe Blow? As if telling your friends they suck in real-life wasn’t embarrassing enough. Talk about an assault on our personal relationships. This is going to make the next bowling night awkward.

4. Dr. Phil’s Personality Test

Ok, anything with Dr. Phil’s name attached to it deserves to be attacked, but this takes the cake. Over 11 thousand people trust Dr. Phil’s automated quiz to tell them what type of personality they are? Have they ever watched him on TV for even a minute. You’re not even getting that moron; instead it’s a virtual representation of a self-help hack. This is just as bad as asking the guy who pumps your gas what your purpose in life is if you choose Premium over Regular.

3. Would You Do Me?

This application poses a simple question: Would you fuck your friends? Sure, meaningless trysts and self-exploitation kick ass, but this is just as shocking and disgusting as the Gene Simmons Sex Tape. Yuck. Think about this: over 16 thousand people are asking close friends, relatives, and co-workers if they are “doable.” Here’s a tip: All you need is a dark bar and $100 worth of tequila.

2. Take. Premium Quizzes

Everyone’s taken at least one of those ridiculous personality tests in their lifetime. That’s why it’s not surprising that Take. Premium Quizzes is so prolific in its attacks on America’s eyeballs. With over 107 quizzes like “How Many Kids Will You Have” prove that six questions, including “what sexual positions do you prefer” will tell you how many children you’ll have. And quizzes like “What Underwear Are You” will tell you if you’re a thong or a boy short. This application is totally Granny Panties.

1. Vampires/ Zombies/ WereWolves/ Slayers

These applications have evoked a unanimous sentiment of disgust with their virtual bites and attacks. They’ve been grouped into one entry because, they are basically one application with four different characters. With a collective 353,538 daily users, these viral creatures have been terrorizing our FaceBook pages for too long. And we posit that none of this virtual zombie warfare will prepare us for the eventual rise of the undead.