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Comedy site Funny or Die beat out the competition in getting "iSteve," the first Steve Jobs biopic, out for viewing. Take that, Ashton Kutcher. In all that haste, Funny of Die may have cut a few corners as far as accuracy goes. That's left the film open for evisceration by Apple fans on high alert for anachronistic images.

The film is full of tripping Steve Jobs scenes, Bill Gates beating computer components with a hammer, and Steve Wozniak looking like he just wandered off the set of "Lost." It's also full of computer parts that just don't fit the time period. It's the sort of thing that will either make Apple fanboys giggle, or send them up in arms to the Internet to complain.… Read more

Finding true love is as difficult as finding an original needle in a sewing establishment.

No art form has ever made that more poignant than "The Bachelor" and its sister show "The Bachelorette."

For weeks and weeks, potential partners are examined, touched, whispered to, held and discarded, until, somehow, a lasting happiness emerges. Oddly, so many of these couples break up around four minutes after the show is over.

Still, the wise people behind the apparently rather fine HTC One thought it would be a good idea to compare choosing a phone to choosing one's … Read more

Steve Jobs was always a fine salesman.

The people at Funny Or Die involved in making "iSteve" -- a movie of his life -- are similarly inventive.

I was breathlessly sent a link this morning to the teaser trailer for this movie. It promised: "The trailer for iSteve, Funny or Die's Steve Jobs movie with Justin Long is finally here."

That, it is. But it's quite a minimalist trailer.

There are few real, well, pictures.

There are words, however.

"Genius left unchecked can lead to ruin," says someone.

"You gotta ride … Read more

Yep, there's another Steve Jobs movie on the way.

No, it's not the one featuring Ashton Kutcher as the late, mercurial technology executive. And it's not the one still being penned by Aaron Sorkin either.

Instead, it's a 60-minute film produced by Funny or Die, the same comedy site that made "The Landlord," a two-minute clip featuring actor Will Ferrell and co-creator Adam McKay's 2-year-old daughter that's since tallied just shy of 80 million views.

According to The New York Times, Funny or Die has put together a film called "iSteve" starring Justin Long, the same actor Apple tapped for its famous switch ads featuring Long and John Hodgman as personifications of Apple's Mac and Microsoft's Windows PCs. … Read more

The times have a-changed. This generation's Bob Dylans, Joan Baezes, and Ramblin' Jack Elliotts aren't gathering in locales like New York's legendary Washington Square Park to swap chords and licks. They're busily congregating in the gigantic public park that is the Internet, via social media.

And, as a recent video makes clear, YouTube, Facebook, and other such sites seem also to be taking the place of street corners or truck beds when it comes to providing a stage for budding protest singers and their songs.

Forest Gibson and Zachary Cohn's "The Day the LOLcats Died" (embedded below) is certainly not the first Internet protest song, or even the first anti-SOPA tune to wend its way across the Web. ("Firewall" and "SOPA Cabana" are but two other anti-antipiracy screeds that have come before--with "Cabana" even suggesting Dylan and his "Subterranean Homesick Blues" via handwritten lyrics on cards).

But the presentation and form of "LOLCats" call to mind, in a way these other tunes don't, the stereotypical image of the protest singer: a lone soul busily killing fascists with his or her acoustic machine.… Read more

If there were an epitaph that perfectly describes Steve Jobs' life on earth, it is one that he helped craft himself for the iconic "Think Different" Apple advertising campaign.

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push … Read more

Lying Liar's Dice is a simple but addictive game that lets you play the old barroom standby, Liar's Dice, on your iPhone. The interface is sparse, but it offers all the information you need to play Liar's Dice with your friends on one phone, or against a surprisingly savvy AI. Along with the classic version of the game, you also get a number of features in Lying Liar's Dice you can tweak to make the game more interesting such as wild dice, and single-die showdowns, among many variations.

For those who have never played, Liar's … Read more

The clock is now ticking for consumers to file claims against Nvidia for defective graphics processors. As a result of a class action settlement, consumers were allowed to begin filing their claims related to the cost of repairing laptops that contained the defective chips on Thursday and have until March 14 to file a claim. But this settlement shouldn't be confused with a series of large payouts by Nvidia to PC makers dating back to July 2008.

Nvidia's problems began back in 2007, as CNET has reported, when defective Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) began showing up in laptops from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell--among others.

Nvidia responded for the first time officially in July 2008. At that time, Nvidia took a charge of $196 million. The company took additional charges over the next two years, which, in total, were close to half a billion dollars.

No small part of this money has been allocated for PC makers (also referred to as original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs) that, over the last few years, have been making repairs to laptops from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell. Most laptops affected are older models shipped in 2008.

So, then, what is the class action about? This is settling consumer claims, which Nvidia describes as a "group of customers who wanted remedy [because they] didn't get a repair from their OEM, or they didn't know to get a repair from their OEM, or they felt that their repair wasn't satisfactory," according to a statement from an Nvidia spokesman. (A list of the affected models is here.)

Symptoms are described as (PDF) "distorted or scrambled video on the notebook computer screen...No video on the notebook computer screen even when the notebook computer is on...Random characters, lines or garbled images on the notebook computer screen," among other issues.

In response to the settlement dated August 12, 2010, Nvidia issued this statement.… Read more

Over the years, we've worked hard to cover products and services as they've launched and well into their successes and failures. And like any business venture, there's risk involved.

The Web is no different, leaving many sites to close up shop--sometimes just a few months after what their creators had hoped would be a successful launch. In other cases, it's a slow death march, stretched out with the occasional change in strategy, or a last-ditch re-branding effort.

2010 brought the closure of quite a few sites. Some names on this list you'll recognize right away. … Read more