stars

Once upon a time, Debbie did Dallas. Monday, Steve Wozniak is fully intending to hump a little Hollywood. Yes, unbridled, uninhibited, unimaginable sex. In the form of the Argentine tango.

His e-mails to his Facebook Support Group have become so detailed, so intimate, that at times, I find myself wondering what it would be like if Woz grabbed me by the digits and whisked me onto the dance floor.

I imagine that his grip might be a little sweaty and uncertain. I also imagine that I would be wishing he were his professional partner, Karina Smirnoff.

However, Woz is determined … Read more

(Updated 12.23PST. Herewith Mark Cuban's latest Twittered news- with Dallas being smoked by Cleveland, Cuban tweeted: "just found out got fined25k by nba.) nice". Oh, Lordy.)

How can anyone not enjoy Mark Cuban?

A man who danced passably well on "Dancing with the Stars". A man who tends to say frightfully sensible things as loudly as possible in the hope that someone will hear. And a man who has been fined a total of $1.5million, some of it for complaining about NBA refs.

It seems as if he has been strangely quiet on … Read more

Updated on March 28 at 12 p.m. PDT: The developers of Star Guitar explained to me that the latency between chord changes is intentional--it's meant to change on the first beat of the next measure. If you want to change it immediately, you can simply double-tap. Also, Star Guitar also records .WAV files--they're hidden at the bottom of the library list, below all the .pattern files that represent the built-in rhythms (you can edit them or create new ones on your computer). Finally, they asked me to link to the demo video on YouTube, so here it is.

I've been playing around with a new iPhone app, Star Guitar, for the last day or so, and it's a sophisticated piece of work that could help beginning guitar players learn how chords fit together into songs, as well as give more experienced songwriters a quick way to record their ideas when they don't have a guitar handy.

Released last week by Amidio, the creators of the Noise.io Pro synthesizer application for the iPhone, Star Guitar is based around a calculator-like interface that lets you choose from 144 chords.

The designers had to be very clever to fit that many chords on a single screen--essentially, you start by picking one of the seven natural-tone letters (A through G), then adding various modifications (flat or sharp, seventh, major, and suspended fourth). You might have to consult the help screen to figure out exactly which combination of buttons will create a particular chord--for example, a G6 is created by hitting "G" and "major"--but for the most part, if you know your chords, it's fairly intuitive.

If you don't know your chords, it's a fantastic way to learn what all these cryptically named chords sound like. I've played for years, but still have to think for a few seconds before I could hum you the notes in a suspended fourth. With Star Guitar, I can just play it. … Read more

I know that most of you are, by now, so into "Dancing with the Stars" that you are being accused of ADD. Attention to Dancing Disorder.

So please pay attention, because I have an announcement to make. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's iTunes has crashed. And it is affecting his rehearsals significantly.

I know that you will all want to join me at the heart of the problem. So here is Woz's own description from his latest e-mail to his Facebook Support Group: "it quits with horrible error messages...odd, since I'd had no crashes … Read more

Correction 3-27-09: This article originally characterized California's proposed standard as "new legislation," when in fact it is a proposed regulation.

The state of California is considering adopting a regulation that will prevent sales of TVs that don't meet a relatively stringent energy efficiency requirement. Most TVs CNET has tested fail to meet the requirement today, although the standard as currently proposed won't go into effect until 2011.

According to its FAQ, the California Energy Commission plans to vote on the proposal this summer. The most recent draft of the proposal (PDF) puts forth the specific power-efficiency requirements, based on watts-per-square-inch of screen, in a tiered approach. Tier 1 would go into effect in 2011, while the stricter Tier 2 would hit in 2013. There's also an alternate, more lenient version of Tier 1 included in the proposal. Televisions that fail the requirement would be ineligible for sale in the state.

Digging into the proposal, we found that it's significantly more-aggressive than the current voluntary Energy Star 3.0 program, for which nearly every new HDTV qualifies. Among LCD TVs we tested in 2008, 19 out of 38, or exactly half, fail the requirement for 2011, while all but two fail for 2013. Among plasmas all but 3 out of 23 fail. Check out the chart below for specifics.

… Read more

The British are looking very hard in the mirror these days. Perhaps it is related to the belief that the country is running out of money.

In any case, who would have thought that they would choose to give up mandatory education about the Second World War and begin teaching their children about Twitter and Wikipedia?

The plans, leaked to the dastardly press (perhaps some devious cove just twittered a tiny URL to a password-protected site), give children relief from having to learn too many dates, place names, and pesky scientific formulas. You can google all that nonsense, anyway.

But … Read more

I am fairly confident in thinking that Steve Wozniak has never slept with Charlie Sheen.

Perhaps it was this small, imperfectly-formed thought embedded in people's minds that saved the Apple co-founder on "Dancing with the Stars" and condemned Denise Richards, the former Mrs. Sheen, to elimination. People's predilections are often based on such fickle suppositions--especially when it comes to voting up to 13 times.

Perhaps, though, it was also the tech industry that lifted Woz up on an emotional sedan chair and carried his beaten body to yet another week of competition.

In the elimination show, … Read more

We all die. And none of us wants to breathe our last without experiencing everything.

This is precisely why one can admire Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's attempts to dance the samba with a bad hamstring on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."

However, on Monday night, he walked a delicate line between parody and embarrassment. And I am not sure many police officers would have let him back into the driver's seat after his walk.

Actually, for a part of his samba, he rolled a less than delicate line on the floor, attempting a "worm&… Read more