Father Of 30 Kids Says He Can’t Afford Child Support

The thing about kids is, they’re expensive. If you’re a parent, you know what I mean. It’s not just formula and diapers that can sweep your bank account clean; there’s always an expense to worry about even as they grow older, between school needs and any activities they take part in. Sports and cheerleading can add up outrageous amounts of dough for parents, as often schools don’t have the funding for everything the kids need and the outlay is up to Mom and Dad.

Apparently, a Tennessee man didn’t count on any of that before he fathered 30–as in three zero–children.

33-year old Desmond Hatchett has kids with 11 women, and twice now, four of those women were pregnant in the same year. Not only is that an insane amount of birthdays to keep up with, it’s also bleeding Hatchett’s wallet dry. He says he only makes minimum wage and since the courts demanded that part of his paycheck be divided up for child support, he’s having a hard time making ends meet. Because the amount has to be divvied up between so many people, some of the moms get less than $1.50 a month, which makes the whole thing seem sort of counterproductive. Now he’s asking the courts for a break, although there’s no word yet on how they’ll respond.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by admin - May 19, 2012 at 2:36 pm

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Super Mario Brothers In Stop-Motion Animation

Stop-motion animation has always fascinated me, mostly because of the extreme amount of patience it takes to pull off. If you’ve ever watched the behind-the-scenes of a stop-motion film, you’ll know what I mean. Each movement a character makes is done by hand, and the animator has to figure out what the movements are ahead of time, mapping out how many moves it will take for the character to hit their mark. When it’s done well, stop-motion is beautiful, like a moving piece of art.

One of my favorite examples of stop-motion is the film “Coraline”, adapted from the Neil Gaiman book of the same name. The film is gorgeous, colorful, whimsical, everything you want in a movie, really. The art direction is amazing. In order to get everything perfect, the animators ran through the entire thing once before they even filmed it, which means they basically made the movie twice. The amount of detail they managed to put into that miniature world is astounding, and I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates art or animation.

If you know what you’re doing–and are extremely meticulous–you can make your own stop-motion video. A guy going by the name of Mystery Guitar Man has done just that, featuring Mario of Super Mario Brothers. While it’s not movie-quality, he says it only took a week to make, and that’s pretty impressive. The video gives us a slightly more 3-D look at an 8-bit world and takes some creative liberties with the mustachioed plumber that will make you smile.

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Lisa Marie Presley Gets Mixed Reviews

It can’t be easy to be the King’s daughter. Not only does Lisa Marie have an enormous legacy to live up to musically, she’s also been scrutinized her entire life because nothing she does is private.

Of course, she hasn’t always chosen the most low-key ways to go about things; in 1994 she married Michael Jackson, perhaps the only other man in the world as famous as her father. The marriage lasted two years before she moved on to actor Nicholas Cage, which lasted a whopping 108 days.

But Presley is moving to stamp her mark on the music industry in a different way than she set out to with her first album, “To Whom It May Concern” (2003), which she says wasn’t truly what she wanted to convey because it was full of defensive songs mixed with a bit of anger.

“I made a lot of defensive and angry songs, probably anticipating what was expected of me and fighting against it … there was a lot of production and hiding behind things, not really wanting to lay myself out there because I was afraid or feeling too vulnerable,” she said.

Her new album, “Storm and Grace”, is released this week and represents what Presley calls the quiet, calmed down side of her. She references her father briefly on the album by way of the song “Sticks and Stones”, touching on the fact that everyone expects her to live up to his name and talent, but for the most part it’s pure Americana, and it’s garnering good reviews so far.

Presley’s performance on “American Idol” earlier this week, however, is getting some mixed reactions. It seems she will always have her detractors, no matter how much her father was universally loved…or perhaps because of it.

Follow @indigenous_ Najla Moh’d Almidfa
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Lisa marie presley sang a beautiful song on #americanIdol , she had the daddy’s air in her..
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Follow @ConnieTalbot607 Connie Talbot
@ConnieTalbot607
Watching American idol .. Lisa Marie. Presley never heard her sing before ..♥
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Follow @mizannie mizannie
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Lisa Marie Presley just “sang” on #Idol. My daughter said it “sounded like a funeral.” #lookedlikeonetoo
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Follow @BBrownAI11 Baylie Brown
@BBrownAI11
Lisa Marie Presley is like Lana Del Ray’s momma… Musically.
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Follow @craigberman Craig Berman
@craigberman
This is Lisa Marie Presley’s first #Idol appearance, and apparently she’s so thrilled she decided to dress like the undead.
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What If The Google Penguin Update Inadvertently Killed The Web As We Know It?

Note: Perhaps the headline of this article is a little sensational, but don’t overlook the “what if” part. I’m not suggesting Google has some plot to kill the web. However, many businesses rely on Google and people are freaking out about backlinks. Some are going so far as to threaten legal action if links are not removed. Links. If such legal action ever resulted in the outlawing of links in any capacity, the web as we know it could be put into great jeopardy. People would be afraid to link. I don’t think Google intends for anything like that to happen, but people don’t always respond to things in the most rational of ways. I don’t believe we will see links outlawed, or that the Penguin update will kill the web. However, reactions to Google penalties are leading to some pretty strong actions from some.

Google has said on multiple occasions that it thinks the Penguin update has been a success. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

PageRank And The Web

WWW, as you may know, stands for World Wide Web. It’s a web because it it’s connected by links. Sites all over the web link to one another, creating a path for users to click from page to the next. Often those pages are to different sites. This is the way it has worked for years. Just think what it would be like if sites couldn’t freely link to one another. The web would be broken, and users would suffer.

When Google launched with its PageRank algorithm, it was a revolution in search. It seemed to be a better way of doing search. It gave a rhyme and reason to the ranking of search results. Today, Google uses over 200 signals to rank its search results, which are becoming more personalized than ever before. PageRank still matters, but it’s far from the only thing that matters.

Yet, it is PageRank that has given links on the web so much power to influence the visibility of web content. Now that just about everyone is on the web, everyone is fighting to have their content seen. Once upon a time, you would have thought: the more links the better. More links can only lead to more chances people will see your content. Now, somewhat ironically, people are finding that that the links they have out there are making their content less visible. In some cases, they’re making it practically non-existent in Google, or at least so buried, it might as well be non-existent.

Freak Out Time?

Google’s Penguin update has been a major wake up call to webmasters about certain kinds of linking practices. The update was designed to target sites violating Google’s quality guidelines. Among those guidelines are: “Don’t participate in link schemes” and “Avoid hidden text or hidden links.”

Some of Google’s guidelines are obvious – avoid obviously unethical practices. But in the link schemes department, things can get a little blurry. Just ask WPMU.org, which got hit by Penguin over a few questionable links (interestingly enough, after seemingly benefiting from Google’s Panda update, designed to reward higher quality sites).

A lot of webmasters have taken to the forums and blogs to complain about the Penguin update, but Google has, on more than on occasion, deemed the update a success. We’ll also be seeing it come back around every so often, much like its Panda predecessor.

Even before Penguin, Google was sending out tons of messages to webmasters alerting them of questionable links. All of this has gotten webmasters in to a frenzy to clean-up their link profiles, and reduce the number of links Google considers to be of poor quality, in hopes that their content can find its way back into Google search visibility.

Legal Action Over Links?

Some webmasters have even gone so far as to threaten legal action over sites that are linking to them. We referenced this in another article after Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable mentioned that this was happening. Now, Greg Finn at Search Engine Land has pointed to a specific example where PSKL got a DMCA take down notice from LifeShield, after writing a positive review.

Now, to be clear, this DMCA takedown notice is not in reference to any content theft or content use. It’s about links. It threatens legal action. It says:

I request you to remove from following website (pskl.us)
all links to www.lifeshield.com website as soon as possible.
In order to find the links please do the following:
1) If this is an online website directory, use directory’s search system to find “LifeShield” links.
2) If there are hidden links in the source code of website, open website’s main page and view its source code. Search for “lifeshield.com” in the source code and you will see hidden links.

It also says:

LifeShield, Inc will be perusing legal action if the webmaster does not remove the referenced link within 48 hours.

Jeremy at PSKL actually shares the entire conversation around the matter, which did include an apology, indicating that PSKL shouldn’t have been on the list of sites that received a notice. Jeremy, however, took issue that there was a list of sites getting such notices. Throughout the conversation, it is revealed that LifeShield had a site “cloak lifeshield and generate over 700K back links” without LifeShield’s knowledge, and that “Google stepped in and slapped” them with a penalty, which led to layoffs at the company.

Jeremy responded with, “So you’re saying that somebody went out and bought 700K back links for you, knowing that it would get you penalized by Google? So does that mean you had (Company name) send out 700K DMCA notices? Talk about throwing good money after bad. Report the linkspam to the spam team at Google, then spend that money on an SEO expert rather than on trying to bully people with intimidation.”

The response was actually longer than that, and included the metaphor of putting out a house fire with manure, but that was the main gist.

I suggest reading Jeremy’s entire post. It’s pretty interesting.

Is This Where The Web Should Go?

He does make another important point in this: A party creating large quantities of backlinks to a site in order to generate SEO (or, in this case, destroy SEO) is unethical. It is not illegal.

While many may not have a problem with such practices becoming illegal, it’s the idea that the law could intervene with linking in any form that could lead to greater problems. Just consider all fo the gray area there already is in fair use law. There will always be different interpretations, and that can get dangerous.

For the record (granted, I’m no lawyer), I wouldn’t expect any legal action, such as that threatened in LifeShield’s DMCA notice to hold much water in a court of law. Finn also points to two cases (Ford Motor Company v. 2600 Enterprises) and (Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.com, Inc.), where the legality of linking prevailed.

But even if things like this have to go to court, it’s going to be a major inconvenience, and legal fees will have to be paid. If sites practicing legitimate, ethical linking habits get caught up in this, where will that leave the web?

Is this what linking on the World Wide Web will become? Will you have to worry about getting sued because you linked to a site, and that site may or may not find your site to be a strong enough site to desire a link from? Could you get sued because your page didn’t have a high enough PageRank, and not enough link juice to help the site you’re linking to in its search engine visibility?

LifeShield seems to be targeting some very specific webspam, but sending out notices to a whole list of sites. It’s likely that LifeShield isn’t the only company panicing and resorting to such action. It’s unfortunate, for the company if some negative SEO (it’s unclear if this was from a competitor) was able to have such an impact on its business, as Jeremy suggests, this may not be the best way of trying to resolve the issue.

Let’s Give Google Some Credit.

You can point to Google’s guidelines and its algorithm updates, which clearly do cause some to think this way, but just the same, Google can’t be held entirely to blame for this kind of mentality either. The company has said in the past that people shouldn’t obsess with PageRank, and that it uses over 200 signals to rank content. PageRank is not the only thing that matters. In fact, the company puts out huge lists of signal changes every month.

It shows the power over society that Google really holds though. It shows how much businesses rely on Google search that they will go so far as to threaten sites that are simply linking to them with legal action.

Should such legal action ever lead to a victory in court, that could mean very bad news for the Web as we know it, and people could be afraid to link. I would imagine that would spawn more issues of sites not getting the credit (and possible referral traffic) they deserve.

Do you think Google’s guidelines and penalties can have an influence on the law? Now that would be power, and made even more ironic still, by the fact that Google is constantly under scrutiny of its own.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image: Batman Returns (Warner Bros.)

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Facebook Advertising Slammed on Eve of IPO

This week could have been a better one for Facebook. An ominous constellation of events aligned that conjured up a palpable cloud of doubt over Facebook’s ability to lure and sustain advertisers. First, WordStream released the results of a study that shows Google leads Facebook in a number of advertising-related areas like ad targeting options and ad formats. Then, the week was capped off with an announcement from General Motors that it would be pulling all $10 million from its paid advertising campaign on Facebook because, in short, GM says they don’t work.

Do you ever click on Facebook ads or do you pretty much ignore them as clutter? If you’ve purchased any Facebook ads, do you think they’re fairly useless or have you enjoyed some success with them? Share your experiences below.

Not the best sentiments to have attached to your company if you’re Facebook considering the company is likely to make its initial public offering this coming Friday. Facebook wants people to spend and invest money with the site, not withdraw it. So were the last few days a dreary period of runic divination for Facebook or just unfortunate happenstance? The short-term ramifications will largely be nonexistent but such developments do cast a thin pall on what should be Facebook’s most glorious achievement yet: having the most lucrative IPO in the history of tech businesses.

Going Places

GM’s announcement to stop paying for ads is likely a lot of sound and fury signifying very little. What’s of greater import is which party, GM or Facebook, let the other down. As far as GM goes, there’s been some talk that it was handling its social media campaign poorly or simply had misguided expectations from advertising on Facebook. One of GM’s chief competitors didn’t shy away from highlighting this possibility.

Follow @Ford Ford Motor Company
@Ford
It’s all about the execution. Our Facebook ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content & innovation.
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Zuh-zing.

GM insists that its decision to stop with the paid Facebook ads was purely coincidental that it happened so soon before Facebook’s IPO and the Wall Street Journal, who broke the story yesterday, reports that GM had always intended to reassess how it’s spending money on the site. Regardless, whether you call it fate or call it intentional, it’s hard to dismiss this peculiar sequence of events.

“A lot of people are probably suspicious of the timing of that announcement,” said Andrew Frank, a marketing analyst with Gartner, who spoke to WebProNews about GM’s decision.

Although the timing may be curious, Frank doesn’t think GM’s withdrawal of advertising funds is a hostile decision nor should it be seen as a total freeze on Facebook’s potential to appeal to large companies. “Facebook very frequently updates its formats and releases new products, so it will have another chance to pitch to GM,” he said.

GM’s cessation of paid ads on the site isn’t such a dark omen for Facebook’s future relationship with other high-profile advertisers, either, he adds. “It won’t have too much of an effect. $10 million is pretty small to the overall scheme of Facebook revenue.” He added, “It’s clearly a negative, but I think that advertisers will probably look beyond that one data point.”

Still, others think there might be cause for some apprehension on the advertisers’ side of the street. Larry Kim, the CTO of WordStream, the company that produced the report yesterday that showed Facebook lagging behind Google, told WebProNews that he isn’t surprised GM dropped its paid ads on Facebook.

“It’s not a great way of selling cars,” Kim said, “but if it truly isn’t a great way to sell cars, is there a risk that other brands need to figure out as well? Absolutely.”

The potential certainly exists for Facebook to become a great place to sell cars, however, that would take a lot of big directional changes on the company’s part. Just don’t hold your breath on that happening anytime soon.

Backseat Drivers

Mark Zuckerberg (now) famously wrote to shareholders in Facebook’s official S-1 filing, “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.” A recent profile in New York portrays a Zuckerberg who was disdainful of advertising on Facebook in the early days, not wanting it to become the “ad-choked cesspool” that MySpace eventually melted into.

It would appear that Zuckerberg’s disposition toward advertising has survived to this day and, riding into the company’s IPO lucre, he is content to relegate advertisers to the backseat. He claims that he’s sticking to the mission to make the internet more social, not more fertile for advertisers.

Whether you’re a frustrated advertiser or just a studied speculator on the side, that may not exactly come as news to you. “Based on the very slow pace of ad innovation in the last six years, it’s clearly not Facebook’s top priority,” Kim said. “They’ve made significant advances with social networks, such as with Timeline, but not nearly anything of that scale on the advertising side. It’s ten year’s behind.”

Facebook’s lack of prioritizing is what informs Kim’s lack of surprise that GM won’t pay for more ads on Facebook. “There’s no shortage of places that companies like GM can spend on advertising,” he said. “Why spend money on a website that’s not even doing their best to make the most out of advertising?”

Aye, but if you’re looking to advertise, there’s the rub. Facebook has an unprecedented reach of users with so much information collected on each and every one of them. The built-in reach of ads on the site is one of the most alluring reasons companies choose to advertising on Facebook in the first place, even in spite of a glaring paucity of research that shows whether advertising on Facebook even works. With Facebook on track to register its 1 billionth user as soon as later this year, advertisers can’t ignore Facebook anymore than iron shavings can resist a magnet.

The problem isn’t whether to advertise or not on Facebook – it’s a foregone conclusion at this point – but what to expect to get out of advertising on Facebook. One of the big problems that companies are having with Facebook advertising is measuring the efficacy of the ads, which may have been GM’s problem.

“People are still trying to figure out the return on investment on Facebook,” Kim said. “The most effective thing you can do is drive fanpage “likes,” but the economics of a fanpage “likes” are really unknown. It isn’t clear if those are even worth anything.”

Until such values get established, for now companies are banking on the extraordinary access that Facebook has to people as the best return on its ads.

“A lot of advertising decisions are based on reach and frequencies and Facebook has pretty good metrics,” Frank said, “especially with engagement metrics, which are just off the chart.” He expects that the optimization and effectiveness of the ads will come in due time.

Asleep at the Wheel?

Facebook’s revenue ballooned on the strength of advertising sales to $3.7 billion in 2011, which makes the absence of GM’s $10 million a proverbial drop in the bucket for Facebook. Nevertheless, some spectators began prognosticating Facebook’s demise following GM’s announcement. And while it’s true that GM’s reduction of how much it spends on ads – it still plans to spend $30 million on maintaining a presence on the site – does mean that two of the top three advertisers in the United States have decided to spend less on Facebook this year, it’s hardly any indication that we should expect Facebook to start wheezing along after its IPO. After all, it’s got nearly a billion users’ worth of data it’s largely not using.

“Facebook has yet to really tap into the value of the data they have for advertising,” Frank said. “From a targeting standpoint, most of the ads that Facebook sells are probably not really optimized for the platform.” While Facebook might monetize their audience at a lower rate than, say, Google, he doesn’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. “It’s just a question of whether they prioritize that side of the business.”

Realistically, Facebook probably doesn’t need to take advertising too seriously for now because it would require a grand overhaul of the site’s advertising platform. The company seems to have a developed a ridiculously successful formula, so why mess with it?

In the end, Facebook obviously doesn’t need to cater to advertisers in order to succeed – just watch the company’s stock blow up on Friday (or whenever the IPO happens). It probably wouldn’t even need to change up much, really, to enhance the way it makes money off of advertising. “Facebook has all these fan Pages for people that they’re just giving away for free,” Kim said. “Instead of charging for ads that are boring and nobody clicks on, start charging for Facebook Pages.” By making the brand Page as engaging as possible with pulls and such to engage an audience, Kim thinks that method of generating revenue through ads would be much more lucrative.

And that’s the easy route of changing things, according to Kim. If Facebook really wanted to go for Vegas-level winnings with ads, it could easily retool its targeting options. “I don’t think Facebook is doing a great job in terms of ad targeting options,” he said. “It knows what demographic you belong to but it doesn’t know anything more specific, like if you’re looking to buy a flight to San Francisco.” By tapping into more specific data of its users, Facebook could easily maximize the value of its ads.

“There’s no technical reason why Facebook can’t optimize its targeting options,” Kim added.

Whether it’s stuffing a cookie in your browser that retargets ads on Facebook based on what you’ve been looking at elsewhere on the internet or making it easier for Facebookers to connect directly to a business via mobile ads, Facebook has an inventory of options when it comes to really maximizing the site’s advertising potential. The means exist. It’s just a matter of whether Facebook wants to go that route. Or, more dreadfully, if it ever needs to take that route.

Regardless of where Facebook goes after this GM blemish, one thing’s for certain: nobody thinks that Facebook’s star isn’t done rising just yet.

Frank doesn’t see the GM announcement really slowing Facebook’s ascent, either. “The Facebook story is so full of promise and impact and hype that it’s hard to see GM’s decision having that much of an impact.”

Likewise, Kim is curious to see where that Facebook story continues to. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for what Facebook’s built and I’m optimistic about what they’re going to be doing in the future,” he said.

Facebook didn’t get to where it is by following the rules and just because a company like General Motors withdrew a fractional amount of money from its advertising campaign is hardly enough to slow down Facebook’s momentum or people’s confidence in the site. More, it may signify that Facebook shares the driver’s seat with no one.

What would you like to see Facebook do to improve the ads? Should the company make them more relevant and personal or will you continue to just ignore them either way? Does the GM withdrawal affect how you think Facebook’s upcoming IPO will be perceived by investors? Join the debate below.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by admin - at 2:35 pm

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Facebook Acquires Karma, A “Social And Mobile Gifting” Service

It’s been quite the busy day for Facebook. You may have heard: the company went public. They also acquired Karma, which is described as a social and mobile gifting service.

The way Karma works, is: you send a gift, with a card, and Karma will notify your friend via text messager, email or Facebook. They can accept the gift as is or swap it for something else, or donate the value of it to charity. They enter their address, and Karma sends the gift.

The company was founded in 2011.

It’s going to be interesting to see how Facebook uses this. It could be a pretty interesting layer to Facebook as an ecommerce platform.

Facebook released the following statement:

“We’ve been really impressed with the Karma team and all they accomplished in such a short time. This acquisition combines Karma’s passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook’s platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways.”

A post from the Karma team on the Karma blog says, “Over the last year, we’ve built a new e-commerce platform from the ground up. We’ve been honored to partner with amazing brands to create a curated catalog of products. We made those products instantly giftable in a brand new way. And we harnessed the power of Facebook’s social network to ensure you never miss a chance to show someone you care. The phenomenal response and feedback we’ve heard from customers has more than exceeded our expectations. And we’re just getting started — today we take social gifting to the next level.”

“We’re thrilled to announce that Karma has been acquired by Facebook,” the post continues. “The service that Karma provides will continue to operate in full force. By combining the incredible passion of our community with Facebook’s platform we can delight users in new and meaningful ways. As we say … only good things will follow.”

No word so far on the terms of the deal.

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The Illustrative Works of Drew Struzan

Unless you are a professional or aspiring illustrator, you probably don’t know who Drew Struzan is. But if you have been to a movie in the past 30 years, you probably know his work, you just didn’t know it.

We have covered a lot of different takes on classic movie posters here at webpronews, all of them unique and creative in their own way. But what about the originals? Some works just cannot be improved upon. Such is the case with Drew Struzan.

For a complete list of his works, and they are extensive, refer to drewstruzan.com

Adventures in Babysitting

Adventures in Babysitting

Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights

Back to the Future 1

Back to the Future 1

Big Trouble in Little China
Big Trouble in Little China

Blade Runner

Blade Runner

Dune

Dune

Hell Boy

Hell Boy

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Pan's Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth

Star Wars - A New hope

Star Wars – A New Hope

The Goonies

The Goonies

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption

The Thing

The Thing

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead

The Mist

The Mist

The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose

Born in Oregan City, Oregan, Struzan attended the Art Center College of Design in West Los Angelos, California.

Struzan showed promise as fine artist but as he put it, “I was poor and hungry, and illustration was the shortest path to a slice of bread, as compared to a gallery showing.”

He got his start in L.A., illustrating album covers for some very famous bands including The Beach Boys, Bee Gees, Roy Orbison, Black Sabbath, Glenn Miller, Iron Butterfly, Bach, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Liberace.

His first big break, and probably what he is now most famous for, is his 1978 depiction of Star Wars for the re-release. Keeping close ties with George Lucas, he is also the designer of the original Industrial Light and Magic logo.

He currently lives in California with his wife Dylan, and son Christian.

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iPhone Dock Recreates Iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey Scene In LEGO

Okay, so before you get started reading this, head on over to this video and get it started playing in the background, then come back. Done? Alright, here we go.

If you’re familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, you will no doubt remember the scene near the beginning where the black monolith appears amongst all the apes. Upon touching it, they begin to make significant evolutionary leaps, including walking upright and using tools (and killing each other with said tools). In fact, chances are you’re familiar with it anyway. It’s so deeply ingrained in popular culture that most people are at least vaguely aware of it. It’s also been parodied and referenced in countless other movies and TV shows, including Pixar’s Wall-E.

Well, thanks to the magic of the internet, we’ve found another awesome tribute to this particular classic. Last night on reddit a user posted a photo with the title “A friend’s husband just built this iPhone charging station.” The link led to this Imgur page, where you can see the following picture (click for full size):

2001: A Space iPhone Dock

This is just all kinds of awesome. Unfortunately, the image is not posted to any particular Imgur user’s account, so there’s no way to give proper credit to the creator. Whoever he is, though, he’s definitely had a stroke of genius here.

And speaking of iPhones and 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’re probably better off not asking Siri to open the pod bay doors…

Siri Doesn't Appreciate HAL Jokes

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After IPO, Facebook’s Next Conquest is Mobile

Prior to his company’s initial public offering today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that finding a way to monetize the website’s mobile platform is his priority for the rest of 2012 (and presumably beyond if Facebook doesn’t produce any results that it likes).

Facebook’s already becoming a pain in the backside for mobile carriers as more people are using the site, presumably both on the web and mobile, to send messages instead of straight-out texting. Add to that the strain that your typical Facebook activity, like uploading photos and videos, is putting on mobile networks and it starts to sound like Facebook is taking their share as well as the carriers’ share.

That’s only the current problem wireless carriers are having with Facebook. Who knows what innovations Facebook might come up with in the future that could increase the tax that it takes on mobile providers. A telecom analyst told the New York Times today about some potentially terrifying possibilities – terrifying if you’re AT&T or Verizon, at least – of how Facebook could seriously bite into mobile industry, such as with the creation of a built-in voice messaging feature.

As more people bypass their mobile carriers’s paid services and use free alternatives to texting and, possibly, actually calling people (if people even still continue to want to do that in the future), expect that the carriers will find ways to recoup that loss of revenue, perhaps most likely by hiking up the price of data plans or even capping data usage.

Then again, there’s no real reason why Facebook and the dons of the wireless industry can’t find an accord. Facebook’s new App Center presents one opportunity the two parties might be able to play nicely together, not to mention the fact that most people probably consider things like their mobile Facebook experience whenever they’re considering a smartphone purchase from a carrier.

Or, if people are speculating that Apple could possibly become a wireless service provider, who’s to say that Facebook couldn’t do the same thing if it was to be so bold?

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Facebook’s Big Day: The Highlights

The Facebook IPO has been dominating the news today. Unless you were present at NASDAQ or Facebook’s Menlo Park, California headquarters, it’s probable that you may have missed some details of the drama. It’s also very likely that you had concerns or obligations other than keeping up on Facebook news today.

Luckily, the New York Post has been live-blogging the momentous occasion for those of us who haven’t become billionaires today. To familiarize yourself with the topic and arm yourself with some talking points for the inevitable Facebook-centered conversations this weekend, here are some of the highlights of Facebook’s big day:

  • Facebook priced its shares at $38 each, the high end of predicted price ranges. By offering over 421 million shares, Facebook raised around $16 billion dollars.
  • This price values Facebook at $104 billion, or about half the value of Wal-Mart.
  • Facebook celebrated the IPO with an all-night employee “hackathon” complete with beer, street hockey, and LEGOS.
  • Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, sold 30 million shares today, making around $1.15 billion in cash. He also controls 32% of Facebook’s shares, making his net worth more than $19 billion. Zuckerberg is now the 29th richest person in the world.
  • Before the NASDAQ opened for the day, Zuckerberg said the following to his employees:

    “Right now this all seems like a big deal. Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing: Our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. In the past eight years, all of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You’ve done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of, and I can’t wait to see what you guys all do going forward.”

  • Watch as the 28-year-old Zuckerberg presses a button and makes himself a multi-billionaire:

    Watch live streaming video from nasdaq at livestream.com
  • Zuckerberg was given a commemorative hoodie from NASDAQ to mark the occasion.
  • Facebook stock was set to begin trading at 11 am, but was delayed 30 minutes. NASDAQ stated the delay was due to technical glitches caused by the incredible demand for the stock.
  • Facebook stock began trading at 11:30 am for $42.25 per share, but quickly dipped back down to around $38. The stock then climbed back to hover around $40 for most of the day, before ending the day right back at its original value: $38.18.

    A graph of Facebook's stock price on its first day
    (graph courtesy Yahoo! Finance)

  • This moderate performance disappointed many, and fell far short of some analysts’ wild expectations. Also, this weak performance may have caused game company Zynga’s stock to fall off a cliff.
  • Over 500 million Facebook shares were traded on its first day, a record for an IPO.
  • The excitement around the Facebook brand has generated the most small investor demand for an IPO in history. This is something that billionaire Mark Cuban warned against on Thursday.
  • Facebook still hasn’t shed it’s privacy issues. On today, of all days, a San Jose judge allowed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook to proceed. The lawsuit concerns Facebook’s tracking of users who are not logged into its website, but a Facebook spokesperson stated that “We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously.”

There you have it. In the end, the unbelievable hype over Facebook’s stock might have prevented it from soaring too high, and investors were responsible and restrained with their trading. What comes next for Facebook’s stock is unclear, but what is clear is that the company now has investors to please on a quarterly basis. That means Facebook will be pushing hard to increase its revenue using every possible method. What that will mean for Facebook users could end up being the most interesting story of 2012.

(via New York Post)

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