Common Paradox Tech Blog

I’m sure plenty of you have seen the amazing “Ataque de Panico!” video from Fede Alvarez by now, but here’s how it paid off. His $300 video landed him a $30 million contract with Ghost House Pictures.

That (understatement)very lucrative(/understatement) contract is with Sam Raimi’s studio. That’s right, a $300 video on youtube and a boatload of talent can score you a job in Spidey’s house. So next time anyone tells you that uploading your filmed-off-the-mirror practice videos for the next American Idol audition isn’t worth the time or embarrassment, show them this story.

And congrats to Fede. Work this great deserves it. [Yahoo! Movies, Thanks jesuswhammy]

Okay, so maybe Bell wasn’t the right choice for launching the Pre in Canada… Today MobileSyrup noted that Canadian wireless reseller Wireless Wave had discounted the Palm Pre to $0 with a new Bell contract. It appears that the continually discounted price of the Pre in Canada has done little to drive sales, but given that Bell (and Telus) both just picked up the iPhone, we can guess where their marketing dollars have been going as of late.

While it is clear that Palm and Sprint are still special friends here in the US of A, somehow we doubt that Bell has maintained special Canadian friend status. Makes one wonder how many of those 210,000 unsold units from the last quarter are sitting on shelves in Canada.

Well, here’s hoping that Telus can do a better job with the Pre and Pixi.

While it was Jon Rubinstein’s job to play Palm’s Chief Optimism Officer as well as CEO during yesterday’s financial conference call, analysts and investors alike have picked apart his and CFO Doug Jefferies’ comments and don’t like some of what was said. In fact, investors liked it so little that the stock opened Friday trading down more than 10% from Thursday’s pre-conference call close of $11.72. From the opening bell investors never looked back, with Palm closing today’s trading down a stunning 13%. Today marked the first time in nearly eight months since Palm’s share price dropped below $10, though it ended the day at $10.17, a drop of 44% from its 52-week high of $18.09 at the end of September. At one point during the day Palm traded as low as $9.60.

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Yesterday, I wrote a post on our sister site MobileCrunch about the estimated amount of applications that were available on Android Market according to AndroLib, which aims to serve as both a comprehensive directory and a search engine for Google’s mobile applications store.

The service’s automated statistics pegged the number of apps available for download at over 20,000, free and paid combined. As we wrote, it was the closest thing to getting a confirmed number straight from the Googleplex.

Lo and behold: Google got in touch with us this morning to let us know that the company, contrary to popular belief, isn’t all that shy about disclosing just how many apps are available through Android Market based on internal metrics.

When a man in the UK was asked to be the best man at his friend’s wedding, he was touched. So touched, that he promised not to pull any pranks before or during the wedding. After the wedding though, that’s another story.

This man, who is choosing to stay anonymous, has set up this Twitter account for the sole purpose of automatically tweeting when the newlyweds are having sex. I’m not kidding. Read the entire tweet stream from the bottom up if you want the full story. But basically, this guy was watching his friend’s house while they went on their honeymoon and he placed a device under their mattress. This device, which is similar to the one found here, is a pressure-sensitive pad that tweets out when sexual activity starts, when it ends, the force of the “action,” and a “frenzy” rating.

Maybe everyone wouldn’t be so riled up about Facebook’s privacy changes if they knew what’s up over at Twitter. A best man set up a prank where his friend’s bed now tweets whenever the newlyweds are, *ahem*, “on the job.”

The best man promised the groom that there wouldn’t be any tricks before the wedding. Of course, he didn’t say anything about after the wedding. Using the same concept behind the Twittering office chair, the best man set up a system where every time there’s increased activity up top, the bed reports it. Once all is said and done, the bed reports a summary (including a “frenzy index”), along with a judge’s comment for good measure.

The anonymous best man defends himself by saying “BTW – he stitched me up something rotten when he was my best man so I reckon this is reasonable payback ” He also promises that he will never reveal who he is or the identity of the couple.

Depending on how you look at it, it’s either a gross invasion of privacy or a hilarious prank. Tomato toh-mah-toe, I say. If this happened to me, it would definitely be one of those “I hate my friends” moments when I found out. [@newlywedsontjob via 140char, thanks Everyone Like Me]

So you’ve spent a few grand on a Vertu phone, but need something else to illustrate just how much of a high roller you are. Would a matching Vertu pen, Bluetooth headset and memory card reader do the job?

Sold together under the ‘V Collection‘ title, the pricing hasn’t been confirmed yet but we don’t need to tell you it’ll be more than the average phone costs.

Looking much like the ballpoint pen included in the collection, the Bluetooth 2.1 headset has six hours of talktime, and features a fold-out earpiece with metal ear loop for attaching to your hearing-hole. The memory card reader, which also looks like a pen, only reads microSD cards so won’t be of much help to digital camera users unless they use a microSD card adapter too. [Vertu V Collection via SlashGear]

Nobody wants to pay for iPhone apps, and some people simply don’t. The good news is, you don’t really need to: For almost every paid app, there’s a free app that’s nearly as good. Here are the best of the best.

A lot of these apps will be familiar to anyone who’s checked out our Essential iPhone Apps directory before, and yeah, there is a lot of overlap. What we’ve done, basically, is strip out the dollar signs from list, then fill in the gaps with more free.

With the new list, you can turn a fresh, untouched iPhone or iPod Touch into a decked-out powerhouse without spending a single dollar.

(To view the following gallery as a single page, click here.)

gawkerGallery(5423680,31,’Free iPhone Apps’);

What counts as an essential iPhone app changes all the time, and so should our guide: If we’ve missed anything huge, or you’ve got a much better suggestion for a particular type of app, let us know, or say so in the comments. We’ll be updating this thing pretty frequently, and a million Gizmodo readers can do a better job at sorting through the app mess than a single Gizmodo editor. Enjoy!

Apparently, Target cashiers now play a “game” when checking people out at the register. The game scores you based on how fast you’re doing your job. This does not sound like a very fun game.

I mean, sure, maybe you’re really into challenges and want to win so you become more efficient while having fun and it’s all win-win. But boy, this sure does seem like a great way for Target to bully and shame its employees into working as fast as humanly possible. Remember, cashiers: the gamemaster is always watching. And if you lose the game, you lose your job. [Dennis Crowley via Kottke]

HTC will be launching the same phone under two names—Bravo in the US, and Passion in Europe, according to new leaks. Only trouble is, it doesn’t look much like the Passion we know and love, does it?

Despite the difference in appearance, the Bravo/Passion sounds hot to trot, running on lovely, lovely Android 2.0, and a Snapdragon QDS 1GHz CPU.

Ai.rs has got the exclusive pics-and-info prize, claiming the screen is a 3.7-inch capacitive AMOLED (in contrast to the 3.5-incher previous pics had it at), the camera is a 5.0-megapixel AF job which can handle 720p video recording, and there’s a 1400mAh battery—which is the only real downside to this otherwise terrific-sounding Passion/Bravo. Bravssion? Passvo?

Whatever it is, the US launch has been delayed until January, with the European launch slated for April. [Digitimes and Ai.rs]