The Flight Before Christmas: A young reindeer named Niko dreams about flying like his father who he believes is a member of Santa’s famous Flying Forces. Despite suffering from severe vertigo, he sneaks out of his home to take flying lessons from his friend Julius, a clumsy flying squirrel. Soon after, Niko and Julius learn that Santa and his reindeer are in serious trouble so the pair gather their forest friends and head North to save the day.

Fred Claus: Ever since his younger brother, Nicholas , was born, it seems that nothing Fred Claus does is good enough. Nicholas literally becomes a saint and is beloved by millions worldwide, but Fred is just a regular Joe. When Fred finds himself in need of big money in a hurry, little brother Santa is the only one he can turn to. Soon, Fred is working at the North Pole to earn some quick cash and shaking things up with the elves to the delight of efficiency expert Clyde Northcutt (Kevin Spacey), who is on a mission to close down Santa’s operation. Can the dueling Claus brothers work together to save Christmas?

Christmas in Wonderland: it’s turning out to be a pretty rotten Christmas for the Saunders family. Having just moved to a new city from Los Angeles, they have no friends, no money and, with the exception of the bright-eyed Mary, no Christmas spirit. To make matters worse, their mother is stuck in L.A. Stranded by airline overbookings. So, the Christmas shopping duties fall on Dad and the gloomy kids. Things start looking a bit more like Christmas when 12-year old Brian and 6-year old Mary find a satchel of money at the local mall and they launch a Yuletide shopping spree…that is, until the crooks who counterfeited the money chase them through the mall packed with holiday shoppers.

This week’s DVD is Tropic Thunder.  This was one of the most talked about comedies of the summer movie releases but was lost amongst other top name films such as The Dark Knight and Indiana Jones.  The movie features an awesome cast of mega-stars Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr.

The movie follows around three actors as they film a war film - only to be stranded in the middle of the jungle fighting in an actual war (even though our heroes are absolutely clueless to this fact).  The movie is worth the price of admission just to watch Ben Stiller as an “action hero.”  Robert Downey Jr. is also quite funny as a dedicated actor who undergoes a surgical procedure to become “black” for his role in the film.

If you are looking for a pre-holiday laugh, check out Tropic Thunder

Also dropping this week:

Wall-E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_2aX-784sw

CALGARY, Alberta - A massive ball of fire that lit up the skies over two Western Canadian provinces on Thursday evening was likely among the biggest meteor events to be witnessed in Canada this year, one expert said.

The fireball, which streaked through the darkening skies over Alberta and Saskatchewan at about 5:30 p.m. Calgary time, likely weighed between 1 and 10 tons and shone brightly enough to be seen over an area 435 miles (700 kilometers) wide.

“It was somewhere between the size of a chair to the size of a desk,” said Alan Hildebrand, a planetary scientist at the University of Calgary and a coordinator of a fireball reporting service.

“This one was pretty spectacular. For this year it will be one of the biggest that happens over Canada. … Something like this radiates like a billion-watt bulb. It’s a pretty bright light in the sky.”

Hildebrand said the meteor may have broken into hundreds of smaller meteorites that likely landed in central Saskatchewan near that province’s border with Alberta.

The fireball lit up the skies for about five seconds, he said.

I’ve long suspected that the best job ever would be to work in product stress testing—because you basically get paid to break shit all day. Nokia sent over a bunch of info detailing how their test centers operate, leaving me fully convinced this would indeed be my dream gig. Not only do they run over 200 mechanical tests on these things, but where else could you play with a bunch of machines that bend, bake, humidify, spray, poke and drop phones? (And yeah, that phone in the picture above just got poked a million times…literally.)

Here’s a look at a handful of different tests and what each one tries to accomplish

Nokia places a phone under a bunch of needle-sized water dispensers and then lets it drip all over the phone, which tests for resistance in situations like rain, or splashing from a pool.

The humidity simulation, which tests the durability of phones in up to 95% humidity, is helpful in determining if a phone will hold up in particularly damp areas like South and Central America, where gadgets don’t have the longest lifespan.

Nokia also tests how the phone reacts to various liquids, creams and gels (lotions, hand sanitizers, etc…), since stuff like that tends to accidentally spill while sitting in a purse or backpack with the phone.

Tests for bending and twisting are pretty straight forward and self explanatory. Still, you can’t help but cringe to see a phone placed in such an unnatural position. Nokia says when you have your phone in your back pocket and you sit on it, it’s susceptible to bending.

One of the cooler stress tests that exists is the Drop test—not only because it uses a giant friggin’ machine, but also because they record the drops using a camera that can record 100,000 frames per second, which is 3,000 times faster than the normal video camera. The videos are then analyzed frame by frame, determining the degree to which a device becomes distorted upon impact. Check it out.

A look at the Nokia Damage Test Lab from Tommy on Vimeo.

When Nokia drops a phone, they drop it from about the height of a shirt pocket onto concrete, since that’s a likely scenario for dropped phones. They also attatch a phone under a steel device that pushes down 100 newtons of force.

Nokia has a series of wear and tear stress tests, when gauge the phone’s ability to take bumps, scratches from daily use. Dust testing involves throwing a handful of phones in a dust filled box and letting everything co-mingle. How much dust gets inside? And do buttons stop working when foreign substances get under the surface? This is where you find out.

inside? And do buttons stop working when foreign substances get under the surface? This is where you find out.

They also let phones roll around in a bunch of pieces of hard, pointy plastic to see where it might scratch, scuff or crack under duress. These pieces are like plastic chocolate chips and bite-sized pyramids, and they’re pretty sharp. This phone met an unfortunate demise in the name of quality control.

Other weird tests include rubbing a piece of denim up against a phone to test the effect of friction when the phone rubs up against your clothes and subjection the phone to temperatures ranging between -40 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit; this determines whether or not the phone can survive in the most extreme conditions on earth.

When testing is finished, they have a battery of analytic procedures to determine how well or how poorly a phone held up. This includes analyzing a phone under electron microscopes, 3D X-rays and X-ray Spectroscopes to check for any related damage; possible micron-sized soldering cracks, component failure or any breakdowns in the materials.

As you can see, these tests aren’t lightweight by any means, and most of my Nokia phones over the years have been pretty durable. What about yours?

Sweden - that magical land of meatballs, IKEA, reindeer and 6-foot-tall blonds. Just the word “Swedish” brings to mind fair-haired honeys gallivanting around in the snow in blue and yellow bikinis, throwing snowballs and making out - at least it does for us. And then we came across these Swedish girl party pictures, which further confirmed our everyone’s theory that Sweden is one of the sexiest countries on the planet. There’s so much Nordic booty here, it’s like a Viking ship after a good pillaging. Enjoy!

Downloading ringtones for your iPhone might not be the most expensive item on your budget, but that doesn’t mean making your own doesn’t totally rule!

Using only iTunes (no gimmicks or downloads here), you can make ringtones for your iPhone from any part of any (DRM-free) song in your library.

Now, I’m not particularly tech-savvy, but I have to say this is one of the easiest, raddest things for iPhone users to know.

1. Choose your song and what part of the song you want to record - this only works with DRM-free songs, so you can’t use anything downloaded from iTunes.

The ringtone can be up to 30 seconds long, or shorter. Write down the start and stop times, you’re going to need those later. Once you’ve decided what part of the song you want to be your ringtone, right click on the song. Next, click “Get Info,” which should be at the top of the page.

2. In the “Get Info” menu, click on the “Options” tab. At the top of the window will be options like “Volume adjustment” and “Equalizer Preset,” etc…ignore all that. All you need here are the “Start” and “Stop” times. Enter in the time you want to begin recording in “Start” and the end-time in “Stop.” (If you’re starting your ringtone at the beginning of the song, just leave “Start” as “0:00″.)

3. Click “OK” to save your changes - but don’t worry, the song hasn’t been changed permanently. Once the “Get info” window is closed and you’ve returned to the regular iTunes screen, right-click again on the song. About four options down, you should see “Create AAC Version.” If so, click on that. If not, go to iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > Importing, and change the “Import Using” drop down menu to “AAC Encoder.”

4. After you’ve clicked “Create AAC Version,” your ringtone file should automatically appear in iTunes directly above the original song. Drag and drop your newly-created ringtone file onto your desktop. The file should be labled something like “mynewringtone.m4a” - change “.m4a” to “.m4r” and save the file.

5. Next, delete the original version from iTunes - this will not work if you don’t. Once the iTunes copy is deleted, double-click the “.m4r” file on your desktop and it will open in iTunes as a ringtone! Finally, plug in your iPhone and drag and drop your new custom ringtones into your phone. Now go and annoy everyone around you with your terrible taste in music!

We heard yesterday that Telia customers might be getting an MMS app for their iPhones, and that it was being developed by the carrier themselves, with plans to launch in the next two months. Well, today we’ve gotten word that Mobispine is likely the developer of said application, and that they have plans to offer it to carriers all over planet Earth. Mobispine says that the app will be branded to each particular operator, and distributed via Apple’s App Store, but we don’t know when all of this is going to go down. Now we’d just like to meet the caveman owner of the iPhone pictured above who needed to be told (on November 15th!) that “Obama will be our next president.”

The budget airline’s 2009 calendar features bikini-clad young staff posing next to jet engines, petrol pumps and tool kits.

Last year’s calendar raised more than £55,000 for charity, and the airline hopes to top that figure with the new shots, which feature the likes of Miss Runway, Miss Hostess and Miss Cockpit.

All the money raised will go to Dublin Simon Community, an Irish homeless charity.

The airline has got itself in trouble in the past for putting images of under-dressed young women in its literature. Swedish regulators reprimanded Ryanair over an advert featuring a young woman in a short skirt next to the words “Hottest School Prices”. And the airline’s risqué 2008 calendar raised objections from the Spanish consumer watchdog.

Ryanair said that it would be sending free copies of the new calendar to the watchdog and to a Swedish MP who had complained about the advert.

A spokesman said: “The 2009 edition, which was shot in Spain in September, is even more colourful and sexy and should sell like hot cakes.”

The Dublin Simon Community spokesmand said: “With Government funding constraints we now, more than ever, depend on the generosity of corporate supporters, such as Ryanair, to continue to provide services and shelter to those seeking our assistance.”

The calendar, which costs €10, can be bought from the Ryanair website

“The iPhone OS v2.2 will be in circulation on 21 November’08.”¨

According to the - reliable - source of the information which we can not disclose, the iPhone firmware v2.2 is NOT available to Greek keyboard nor Greek menu. 

Some of the other features of the iPhone OS v2.2 are:

• New look for the Safari with the Google search bar now occupying its own space on the title bar (iPhone v2.2 beta1)
• Add toggle On / Off to disable the auto-correction (iPhone v2.2 beta1).
• 461 Japanese emoji icons (iPhone v2.2 beta1).
• Support for new languages.
• The Line-in audio is activated and can be used through the headphone jack. 
• New features of Maps.app:
  • Google Street View ( iPhone v2.2 beta1 ). Google Street View (iPhone v2.2 beta1). 
  • Google Transit information - Routes public transport (iPhone v2.2 beta2).
  • Walking directions (iPhone v2.2 beta2).
  • Location sharing.
• New features of the App Store:
• The sector ‘Categories’ now shows the icons of the applications instead of the list.
• In each page of the application has been added by a button ‘Tell A Friend’ & ‘Report A Problem’.
• Added the possibility of scoring the application when the user chooses to delete from the device (iPhone v2.2 beta2).
• Added the possibility for direct downloading of podcasts from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store (iPhone v2.2 beta2).