Blog Posts by Jesse Michaels

E.T. probably shouldn't phone home. At least not in video game form.

Argued to be the worst video game ever, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari (and other games like it) may soon see the light of day, if a Canadian video game studio can find them.

According to the Alamogordo Daily News, Canadian developer Fuel Industries has been given permission to scour an old landfill in New Mexico where old copies of the game may be buried. Legend has it that Atari buried several million copies of the game in that landfill, along with copies of an unsuccessful port of arcade classic Pac-Man to the Atari.

[ Related: Atari Breakout celebrated with cool Google Images search game ]

Atari paid Steven Spielberg tens of millions of dollars to license the E.T. name back in 1983, and the dud of a game caused the troubled company's worth to sink even further at the time.

Alamogordo Commissioner Jason Baldwin says he played the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game, and said it was horrible.

(With files from The

Read More »from Ottawa game studio to scour New Mexico landfill for worst video game ever made

Talk about a loaded attraction: a guest at Disney World in Florida found a loaded gun in the seat of a ride at the Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the .380-caliber Cobra semi-automatic pistol had fallen out of the back pocket of 44-year-old Angelo Lista on the bumpy Dinosaur ride. A young boy and his grandmother discovered it and immediately reported the find to a ride attendant.

[ Related: Looking to bypass long lines at Disney World? Hire a disabled guide ]

Orange County Sheriff's deputies safely unloaded and confiscated the weapon. Lista was apparently not aware that guns or weapons of any kind are prohibited inside any Disney park.

Meanwhile, a Disneyland employee has been arrested on suspicion of possessing a destructive device following a small explosion in a trash can at the California theme park on Tuesday that prompted the evacuation of Mickey's Toontown, police said on Wednesday.

Christian Barnes, 22, identified as an outdoor vending cast

Read More »from Disney World guest leaves loaded gun on Animal Kingdom ride

On March 21, 2006, Twitter founder Jack Dempsey posted the very first tweet that's probably more recognized today than in '06 when the fledgling service was trying to make a name for itself.

just setting up my twttr

— Jack Dorsey (@jack) March 21, 2006

Seven years later, Twitter has become an ubiquitous extension of the Internet and part of its now 200 million users' daily lives. In honour of this milestone, the company created a video looking back at the major tweeting milestones of the past seven years.

[ Related: Facebook reportedly planning to mimic Twitter with hashtags ]

Happy 7th birthday Twitter. Here's tweeting at you!

Need to know what’s hot in tech?
Follow @yrightclick on Twitter!

Read More »from Twitter celebrates 7th birthday, 200 million users

Kindle Paperwhite (Courtesy Amazon.ca)One of the top complaints of ereaders - both the devices and the people who use them has been that they can't be read in the dark. No backlight means no sneaking in a chapter while your significant other snoozes beside you in bed.

Amazon seems to have solved that with the release of its first front-lit Kindle - the Paperwhite. I had a chance to test one for a few weeks and was generally pleased with the result.

[ Related: Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite, $89 Kindle launch in Canada ]

The device does live up to its name and makes reading everywhere easy, thanks to its very bright and vivid screen, which boasts a higher contrast display and more pixel density than previous models. The front-lit screen even makes reading in bright conditions a pleasure, such as my my daily bus trip to and from work.

The touch screen also benefits from new capacitive technology, which seemed to account for fewer accidental swipes and taps (compared to my own Kindle Touch).

I didn't have the Kindle long enough

Read More »from Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite lights up a new generation of ereaders

The writer hopes that one day in Movember his moustache will look like Burt Reynolds' or Tom Selleck.We're almost at the halfway point of Movember, and Mo-bros (that's men in Movember-speak) are busy growing and grooming their moustaches across the country.

But what about those of us lacking in the 'stache department? What's a guy to do when he doesn't have much of a cookie duster to show? I'm one of those forlorn fellows,
dreaming of emulating Tom Selleck but with little chance of getting there.

Sure, I could try a distraction like buying a new pair of glasses or donning a disguise, but ultimately my no-stache will still be a topic of conversation among the chattering classes with a better-formed hairy upper lip.

[ Related: Movember: The growing is the hardest part ]

The good folks at Movember have thoughtfully supplied a number of grooming tips, including shampooing regularly, employing conditioner and using a hot towel to cleanse the skin below the moustache.

Good tips, all of them, but what I'm looking for is more along the lines of a moustache growth serum, or even a magic bean

Read More »from Movember: How to turn a ‘no-stache’ into hirsute happiness?

Screen capture from CTV's Lisa LaFlamme Twitter

The news network was covering the fire and subsequent explosions at a racing fuel plant in the city but had quite a bit of trouble spelling its name.

The closest they got was "Winnepeg" in the place name. Unfortunately, their version in the caption was even more mangled — "Winnpieg."

This isn't the first time the city's name has been misspelled — rock group U2 spelled it "Winipeg" and referred to Manitoba as a state during a concert pre-show in the city last year.

Winnipeg was also in the news recently when Toronto Mayor Rob Ford mistook it for the city of Windsor, Ontario during a trade mission to Chicago last month.

Read More »from CNN covers Winnipeg fire but has double trouble spelling the city’s name

REUTERS/Stephen LamGoogle's Nexus 7 tablet might be getting great reviews, including kudos for its affordability, but you wouldn't know it if you've pre-ordered the device (like I have) in Canada.

Despite some anecdotal evidence that the 8GB version of the tablet is shipping, Canadians (and others) who ordered the 16GB model through the Google Play store seem to be in the dark as to when they might receive the highly anticipated tablet.

Adding salt to the pre-order wound is that the tablet has made its way to some stores across the country in limited numbers, allowing anyone to just walk in and pick one up. One potential Nexus 7 owner was angry enough to start an online petition asking for Google to refund shipping costs.

[ Related: Google's Nexus tablet selling fast across retail chains ]

So what's the point of pre-ordering a gadget if you can't reap the benefits of getting it before others? I naively believed that a package would make its way to my doorstop sometime before the tablet would hit retail

Read More »from Canadians who pre-ordered Google's Nexus 7 tablet in the dark on shipping

Hugo Barra, product management director of Android, introduces Google's low-cost computer tablet Nexus 7 during the keynote speech at Google's annual developer conference, Google I/O in San Francisco.In an Apple-style unveiling today at their annual I/O conference, rival Google announced two new products aimed squarely at their competition: The Nexus 7 tablet and Nexus Q media player.

The Nexus 7, having been rumoured for months, comes packed with quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1.2-megapixel front camera and a 1280 x 800 screen running Jelly Bean, Google's newest Android operating system. The tablet will have access to books, movies and music in the cloud through the Google Play store.

Rivals Apple and Amazon will surely be watching closely, with the former also rumoured to be launching a 7" iPad and the latter looking to launch a new version of their popular Kindle Fire tablet.

Google also announced the Nexus Q, a rather interestingly-shaped media streaming device that connects to your TV and can be controlled by an Android device, similar to the Apple TV.

The Nexus 7 starts at $199 U.S. and is expected to ship in mid-July, while the Nexus Q will sell for $299 U.S. and will also

Read More »from Google unveils Nexus 7 tablet, Nexus Q streaming media player