Harry Potter" magic with record $92.1 million

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The eighth and final "Harry Potter" movie sold $92.1 million worth tickets in the United States andCanada on its first day in theaters to set a single-day box-office record, according to studio estimates released on Saturday.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2" shattered the single-day record set in 2009 when "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" earned $72.7 million in theaters, said Paul Dergarabedian, head of tracking firm Hollywood.com Box Office.

"To even be close to $100 million for a single day is unprecedented," Dergarabedian said.

Hollywood watchers are attributing the high interest in the film from Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros unit to strong critics' reviews and the fact this is both the final film in the "Harry Potter" series and the only one released in 3D.

"This will be the first 'Potter' movie to earn over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office," Dergarabedian said.

"Harry Potter," which is already the highest grossing film franchise ever with over $6.4 billion in global ticket sales, is based on the novels of author J.K. Rowling and it revolves around the adventures of a young wizard, his friends and their battle against evil.

The record-setting $92.1 million in the United States and Canada was earned at more than 4,300 theaters, including the midnight screenings that extended into the early morning hours of Friday and by themselves earned a record-setting $43.5 million.

Outside the United States and Canada, the film earned an estimated $75 million in 59 countries, Warner Bros officials said.

The movie brought in a record-setting 9.3 million pounds ($14.8 million) in the United Kingdom on Friday, the studio said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bill Trott)

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A Very Strange Literary Experiment Using Water Vapor (Video)

Call it a smoky art installation or a unique tribute to what’s considered a timeless novel: Don Quixote. Also known as “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” by that Cervantes guy, ex-slave, soldier of fortune, and small time entrepreneur. Oh yeah, he wrote a novel too.

There’s supposed to be a message behind this also ingenious little project that enunciates the whole of Don Quixote (a real door stopper it is) letter by letter thru smoke. It’s a pretty incendiary broadside against the art establishment too. The most scathing part reads:

And so just as Don Quixote’s over-credulousness leads him to receive numerous violent thrashings and endanger Sancho Panza endlessly, so does our own artistic credulousness lead to an abundance of hypersyllabic essays on, quite frankly, bad ******* art.

There’s a whole lot more explanatory text that’s best viewed by opening the source link down south. In the meantime, enjoy the video:

Also, since we’re at it, we’d like to recommend an earnest reading of Don Quixote, a novel written at the behest of a Spanish nobleman several centuries ago. It’s a fun portrayal of Spain emerging from the Middle Ages. It’s rife with esoteric references as well. They don’t write books like they used to.

And—Shakespeare can suck it. Cervantes rules. Ha.

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Android Powered Mirai Sano Robot Controls Your House

But will it control you? We can’t tell. Judging by its name alone, the Sanyo-made Mirai is the latest uber-gadget that uses Android OS, which is another boost for the Google guys as they now possess the technology to control the future. It’s Japan only though.

Anyway, as illustrated above, the Mirai Sano is a robot that keeps your house in order. Think minutely adjusted temperature, air conditioning, and kitchen appliances.

Of course, while the gadget inclined may embrace the Mirai warmly, it does inspire reservations. Reservations such as: why allow an autonomous appliance to run your house?

Also, it might inspire more than a few psychological horror movies about humans oppressed by their household AI. Wasn’t there a Simpsons episode along these lines? If we remember correctly, Pierce Brosnan was voicing the evil robot.

A while back, some anonymous commenter posted something along the lines of ‘I always knew Google will be the real Skynet.’ How true, how true.

Moving on, the Mirai Sano hits Japanese retail outlets on Friday. It looks affordable too.

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Researchers Claim Internet Use Affects Memory

Short term memory, that is. A team of scientists from Columbia University conducted tests to determine how people’s memory is affected by internet use. The experiments themselves were simplistic to a fault, requiring mere recall. It’s not as if they forced the participants to stay online for 12 hours then asked them what they did. Instead, a few simple routines bore unexpected results. But the big reveal only comes after the break.

The head of the experimental series was Dr. Betsy Sparrow (sounds like a character off of  a TV series) and a total of four tests were run.

In the first, participants were made to type a sentence onto a computer.

In the second, a trivia question was thrown at the participants.

The fourth and third were unknown but the second was considered the most revelaing. Why? Because the people subjected to the trivia remembered the aprt where the question was saved in one of five desktop folders.

What this means is people’s memory relaxes if they know someone or something wills tore the data for them. If they do, they’r elikely to forget it.

Apparently these results are supposed to be of great significance. Who knew?

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Sony’s PS3 Component Cable Feature Cut Explained

You might be aware by now that Sony views your continued use of component cables with a console that has a perfectly good HDMI port as something of an affront. Or at least, that’s the way it’s been portrayed in the press. The truth is only about 10% more complicated. You see, Sony has no problem with your gaming via component cable to your antiquated, analog little heart’s content.

It’s that other big PS3 feature they keep touting that has suddenly become too good for last generation’s HD cable. The one that’s sort of like Netflix, only without the convenience or the savings. ”The new CECH-3000 series PS3 requires HDMI only for BD movie output in HD, in compliance with AACS standards,” according to Sony, who claim it’s a DRM issue. If only they’d been as concerned about security a few months ago, am I right?

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Google Confirms 10 Million Google+ Users

Earlier in the week we heard a rumor that Google was getting close to 10 million Google+ users, Google’s CEO Larry Page confirmed in the recent earnings call that Google now have over 10 million Google+ users.

It took Google just two weeks to reach 10 million Google+ users, and considering it is still in a trial with limited invitations this is an impressive number.

Larry Page also announced that Google+ users are sharing over 1 billion items per day on their new social network, and during the last week of June Google+ accounted for 35% of all tweeted links.

We suspect that Google+ is going to be extremely popular, and wonder how many Google+ users there will be when Google rolls the service out to everyone.

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gScreen Dual Screen Spacebook Finally Reaches Pre-Order Status

Some of you might remember the dual screened gScreen Spacebook notebook we featured here on Geeky Gadgets back in February 2009. Well gScreen has now finally moved their dual screen Spacebook into pre-ordering status after more than two years of development.

Over the last two years the specifications and screen sizes have increased as you might expect to bring the systems more in-line with power notebooks currently on the market, all-be-it with single screens. The Spacebook is now equipped with 17” full HD dual screens with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 , and their are two models to choose from either an Intel i5 4G or i7 8G.

The Intel Core i5-560M 2.66GHz processor is supported by 4GB of RAM retails for $2395 but is on special offer if you pre-order with a 50% saving. Together with the Intel Core i7-740qm quad-core 1.74Ghz processor supported by 8GB of RAM which retails for $3795 but is also currently down by 50% for pre-orders.

More information on the new gScreen dual screen notebooks is available from the GScreen website

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Google Docs Now Supports RAR & ZIP Files

If you are a user of Google Docs you will be pleased to know that Google has now added support for both RAR and ZIP files. The new compression support now enables you to receive RAR and ZIP files in to your Gmail account and view the contents within your browser without the need to completely download the files to your desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet device.

ZIP and RAR archives that are embedded inside other archives also work. For example, if you have a RAR file inside a ZIP file so you can just click on that file to access the embedded archive.

For more information jump over to the Google Blog post covering the newly added support.

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Otterbox Unveil 3 New HTC EVO 3D Cases

Otterbox has unveiled three new cases it has just launched to help HTC EVO 3D owners keep their device safe, with the introduction of the Defender, Commuter and Impact cases. All three offer slightly different levels of protection and style to your HTC EVO 3D smartphone.

The Defender Series for HTC EVO 3D is perfect for people who need hardcore protection, while the Commuter Series for HTC EVO 3D is a slim case that offers a high quality safeguard against harmful bumps and shocks.

Finally the  Impact Series cases have a core on the inside of the case to dissipate shock and include a self-adhering screen protector. The new HTC EVO 3D Defender, Commuter and Impact series cases will retail for $49.95, $34.95 and $19.95, respectively and can be purchased directly from the Otterbox website.

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Microsoft Leaks New Social Networking Site

It looks like Microsoft has a new social network in the works, called Tulalip, which the company has just leaked on Socl.com, a website which was registered by Microsoft back in 1998.

Microsoft has since removed the details on their new social networking site from Socl, and replace the details with the following statement.

Thanks for stopping by.

Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web.

We didn’t mean to, honest.

There are no details as yet on what Microsoft’s new social network will involve, although it looks like it will feature both Twitter and Facebook integration.

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