Steve Jobs June 9, 2008 Keynote (in 60 Seconds)

Stephen King is Voted the 34th Most Powerful Celebrity According to the Forbes Celebrity 100 List

The king of horror was scraping by on a schoolteacher’s salary before his novel Carrie came out in 1974. Since then he has sold 300 million books. Fifty-four of his novels and short stories have been turned into films, including Carrie and The Shining.  Stephen King earned an estimated $45 million last year.  The Forbes rankings are determined by earnings, web hits, press mentions and television mentions. Read more here.

 

USB Mix Tape

Burning a CD for someone is all well and good, but it just can’t capture the feeling of an old mix tape. Now you can get that handmade feeling with digital files thanks to the USB Mix Tape ($40). This clever kit comes with a 64MB USB drive that is hidden inside a cassette tape, complete with a blank liner you can use to write down your playlist and message — no rewinding required.

 

The New Star Wars: The Clone Wars Trailer

Warner Bros. Pictures and Lucasfilm have revealed the new trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, coming to theaters on August 15. The CG-animated sci-fi action-adventure will feature Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padmé Amidala, along with brand-new heroes like Anakin’s padawan learner, Ahsoka, as well as sinister villains led by Palpatine, Count Dooku and General Grievous.

You can watch the trailer in High Definition QuickTime and Flash format here.

 

The First Five Pages of Joe Hill’s Locke & Key #5 Comic

The Locke family plays houseguest to Sam Lesser, just in from the West Coast, and ready to kill them one at a time to get what he came for: the key that will set his master loose. Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) continues his all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder, with Gabriel Rodriguez handling art and cover duties. Check out the first 5 pages of issue # 5  here.

 

12 Movie/TV Tech Toys We Want!

 

Lightsabers, hoverboards, the Batmobile, and more — these are the pop culture gadgets we dream of owning…Read more here.

 

Harry Potter Prequel Auctioned for $48,858

An 800-word prequel to the Harry Potter series, handwritten by author J.K. Rowling, sold for nearly 25,000 pounds at a charity auction Tuesday.

With the winning bid of $48,858, the absent bidder paid more than $59 a word for Rowling’s short story during the event at the flagship of Waterstone’s book store chain in London. Proceeds will benefit the writers’ association English PEN and a dyslexia charity.

A short mystery story by acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard raised $7,816.

Rowling was able to squeeze her Harry Potter prequel onto both sides of a piece of A5 paper, which is slightly bigger than a postcard.

The prequel to the seven-book series is set three years before Harry is born and features the characters Sirius Black and James Potter, Harry’s father. They get into trouble with a policeman before escaping with broomsticks, drumsticks and a little bit of magic.

Rowling made it clear there was no hope for a new Potter novel and finished her card by writing, “From the prequel I am not working on — but that was fun!”

Twelve other authors and illustrators also contributed cards to the auction, including Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing and novelists Nick Hornby and Margaret Atwood.

Copies of all the cards will be on display in Waterstone’s stores and online following the auction, and they will be collected into a book available in August.

The final installment of Rowling’s seven-book Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” was published last year.

Rowling has said she has no plans to write another novel about the boy wizard, but in December she sold a handwritten, leather-bound book of fairy tales she described as drawing on the series’ themes for nearly $4 million at auction. The money went to the Children’s Voice, a charity she co-founded in 2005.

The prequel is below and you can click on the image to enlarge it and read both sides. 

Some Facts About Scrabble

Scrabble came about in 1939 when architect Alfred Mosher Butts modified a game he had been working on earlier – Lexiko. At first he called it Criss-Crosswords and based the values of the letters on based on letter usages from the New York Times (and other reputable sources). In 1948, he allowed James Brunot to manufacture the game as long as he got a cut of each board sold… which wasn’t much, at first. They actually lost money the first year they produced it. Legend goes, though, that the President of Macy’s played the game while on vacation and, upon his return to work, was shocked that his store didn’t carry it. When they did start to carry it, sales skyrocketed.

There are 96 two-letter words that are “legal” in Scrabble… including 10 that are spelled with vowels only AA, AE, AI, AY, OE, OI, OY, YA, YE, YO.

A Scrabble board is 15 spaces high and 15 spaces wide, for a total of 225 squares.

The highest known score for a single word in competition Scrabble is 392. In 1982, Dr. Saladin Khoshnaw achieved this score for the word “caziques,” which means “Indian chief.”

The highest possible score a player can get in Scrabble on a first turn is for the word MUZJIKS (128 points).

The game is sold in 121 countries in 29 different languages.

One hundred million sets have been sold worldwide.

Celebrities known for being Scrabble fans include Sting, Keanu Reeves, Moby, John Travolta and Carol Burnett.

Scrabble sets are found in one out of every three American homes.

Scrabble is a real word. It means “to scratch frantically.”

Scrabble was a daytime game show (on NBC), hosted by Chuck Woolery, from July 1984 to March 1990. A second run of the show aired from January to June, 1993.

The game has 100 tiles.

In America and Canada, when a player who empties their rack on one play, it’s called a “bingo.” Elsewhere, it’s called a “bonus.” The player gets 50 additional points.

What kind of wood is used to make Scrabble letters? Vermont Maple.

ETAERIO is the seven-letter word most likely to appear on a Scrabble rack.

The original Scrabble didn’t include a board. It was played with just the tiles

 

Disney.com Now Streaming Full-Length Movies

Disney  has begun streaming full-length movies for free on Disney.com.

The movies including “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “The Princess Diaries 2″ and “Freaky Friday” which will be available on the site for one week each, following their ABC broadcast on “Wonderful World of Disney” this summer.