ORIGINALLY AIRED: 12/2/2004

Matt Hoffman, Yellow Arrow, LAN Party

Episode #2864

Fun Flash Diversions: A viewer sent in a link for Pixel My Ride at deviantart.com, which lets customize your online ride. Kevin P. countered that choice with Create-A-Ride at newgrounds.com, where you can save your car’s “VIN” and edit it later. The game even allows you to go driving down the street in your car, and “slam” it with hydraulics. And then there’s Custom Rides (also at newgrounds.com) which, yes, has drop-n-drag “hot girls.”

Gorillaz Wants YOU (Maybe): Studio band Gorillaz is hosting an online talent competition to find new members. Would you make a good cartoon character in a music video? Sign up now!

Next-Gen Tease: Electronic Arts presented some “screenshots” representative of what we may see on next-generation consoles, reports 1up.com. Why, they look better than life itself!

Chi-Lan interviewed pro BMX biker Matt Hoffman in what must be world’s largest back yard devoted to extreme sports. A 20-year veteran of BMX, Hoffman is a 10-time freestyle world champion. He’s also started his own line of bikes, with entry, intermediate, and pro levels. Visit http://hoffmanbikes.com/ for more info.

In tech topics…
“The Man” Gets Into the Blog Biz: Microsoft has launched its own blog space, making the beta of MSN Spaces public: http://spaces.msn.com. Check out just how ugly you can make a Microsoft blog look with this creative effort by our own line producer, Scott Moschella: http://spaces.msn.com/members/lineproducer. (How’s that for a short ‘n’ snappy URL, eh?)

No Hitman Behind Bars: Can violent video games make violent convicts more violent? A Missouri prison pulls ‘em just to make sure, reports the Kansas City Star (registration required). 

Oh. Yeah. That. So? Electronic Arts finally responds to the controversy of overworked programmers after a disgruntled EA spouse blogged about the poor working conditions at EA. 

If you’re like Kevin Rose, you may be concerned about simply leaving all your data on your computer’s hard drive. Sure, you can back it up on an external drive such as Kevin’s preferred Maxtor One Touch – but that won’t stop thieves from stealing both it and your PC. And don’t think that CDs are necessarily the answer, what with the dreaded “CD rot” that may make important discs unreadable.

No, you should consider solid state storage, such as the 1 GB thumb drive offered by SanDisk or smaller sizes by PNY. An added benefit to using thumb drives for storage is the fact that you can store them as well – in all sorts of secretive places. Kevin suggested hollowing out the foam heal of a running shoe or cutting out the pages of a thick (preferably geeky) book. Also, you can use an OXO can opener on cans to separate (not cut) their lids, empty them out, and then reuse them as sneaky stashes with the leads back on.

Derek from Watrous, SK, Canada wanted to know if the pictures he’s seen online of the PlayStation 3 are the real deal.

Nope. They’re actually poorly made Photoshop composites that somebody thought would be cool to post online. Mac users often do this as well, though their creations are often convincing enough to make people want to buy the supposedly upcoming iMacs and Power Macs.

Brendan Moran investigated the very first cell-phone film festival, which you can enter yourself. Here’s what he has to report:

There is a great chance you already watch too much TV. Get ready to watch more, on your cell phone. In a few years, video on the really small screen will be something we take for granted, in the way camera phones are today.  A Georgia film company is ahead of the cell phone video curve. Zoie Films is sponsoring what they’re calling the first ever cell phone film fest. 

Zoie Films is accepting all kinds of short films, from TV commercials, music videos to movie trailers.  Anything that translated well to a 1.5” screen is welcome. Alas, no one is actually shooting the short film using a cell phone. All the submissions so far were shot with a camera that doesn’t take calls. 

The deadline for submitting a film is December 20th. The top 30 entries will be screened via cell phone starting Christmas day. Look for them if you’re a Nokia, AT&T and Sprint. If you want more information about the “Zoie Cellular Cinema Festival,” check out their website at zoiefilms.com

Yellow Arrow is a collaborative art project in New York that has grown into an international phenomenon. Basically, people are given free yellow arrow stickers that they place around their cities to point out particular locations. Each arrow is given an ID number, which the arrow-placer uses to post a text message for; thus, if you see an arrow, you call the Yellow Arrow phone number, plug in the ID number, and receive the location-based text.

The ID for The Screen Savers’ studio arrow is g3wdm.
 
To learn how to participate in the Yellow Arrow project, head over to yellowarrow.org.