So You Think You Can Dance - Top 16

After Faina and Jimmy went home last week, I was really disappointed that Cedric had not gotten eliminated (yet again!)

Well, anyways, here’s what happened in that magical world, we call dance:

Last night, the top 16 danced (actually, it was 15, more on that later):

The guest judge this week, was Debbie Allen, who most people know from Fame (was first a movie in 1980, then became a very popular tv show that ran from ‘82 to ‘87. She won two Emmys and a Golden Globe and runs “The Debbie Allen Dance Academy“)

1) Sara & Jesús started the show with a krumping routine choreographed by Lil’ C, to the song “It’s Okay (One Blood)” by The Game (ft. Jr. Read). They hit the stage with a bang, dressed in matching jeans, white shoes and red t-shirts, and bring a lot of energy and a great attitude. The judges were all wowed.

My verdict: Krumping may have been new to both of them, but they’re Safe!

2) New couple Shauna & Cedric got a Mia Michaels’ contemporary piece, which they danced to The Family Stand’s “I Thought We Had”. They get onto the stage and start their little acting routine (which included Cedric crying in the corner while Shauna danced an amazing solo). Debbie Allen praises them and says how Cedric is an inspiration to other boys to dance (and offers him a scholarship to her school after he gets eliminated). Mary says it wasn’t good enough and says that it’s Cedric’s time to leave. Nigel says that he agrees with both of them: Cedric is an inspiration and that it just wasn’t good enough, (and he talks about how sometimes judges make mistakes, like saving Cedric last week, and then he mentions Paris Hilton’s jail sentence). (Anyways, both Mary and Nigel pretty much say “Cedric you’re outta here!”)

My verdict: Their dance was about “the beginning of ends and the celebration of goodbye’s”, well I think it’s time to say good bye to Cedric - Bottom 3!

3) Lacey & Kameron are up next, and they’re dancing a Tony Meredith piece, the infamous quickstep, (otherwise known as “The Kiss of Death”, as you may remember from pretty much everyone’s attempts at this “kryptonite” dance last season). And Kameron’s mohawk is gone this week (I miss his mohawk!). This might just be the best quickstep and the only successful quickstep, to ever be performed on the show.

My verdict: This couple is stronger than superman and always entertaining - Safe!

4) Anya & Danny are going to be dancing a Dan Karaty hip hop routine to the song “Oh Timbaland”, by, you guessed it, Timbaland. The choreography is pretty cool and of course the judges agree, they’re totally just drooling over Danny.

My verdict: I think it was pretty good, but they just might be in danger - Bottom 3!

5) The first rumba ever to be performed on the show, is going to be danced by none other than Sabra & Dominic. They get to learn it from Jean-Marc (and his bright red-headed wife), and dance to the Pussycat Dolls’ song “Stickwitu” (interesting song choice, I’m not sure how the Pussycat Dolls make you think of the rumba but anyways….) They really nailed it and the crowd was freaking out. Dominic really impressed. Debbie delays to create some tension then screams for the fire department because it was so hot, Mary loved it (this included A LOT of screaming) and Nigel did too.

My verdict: I think we’re gonna “Stickwitu” another week - Safe.

6) Next up, Lauren & Neil, they picked the tango and will be taught by Jean-Marc, to the song “Tanguera” by Sexteto Mayor. It was a game of cat & mouse, but they couldn’t completely sell it to the judges. Mary says that it was ok but there was some problem with the footwork and Nigel tells Neil that he overdanced but he dances “like a dude”. The judges agreed that the intro may have been the best part, and they both look hot.

My verdict: I really like Lauren & Neil, but they might be in danger tonight - Bottom 3.

7) Wade Robson, king of abstract and unique dance pieces, will be teaching Jaimie & Hok, a jazz piece, to the song “The Chairman’s Waltz” from Memoirs of a Geisha. Jaimie is supposed to be a flower and Hok is supposed to be a hummingbird. Hok does some insect-like twitches and is really sharp with his moves and Jaimie is being really powerful (and trying not to kill Hok with her razor sharp hair spikes).

My verdict: You know the story with the birds & the bees? Well, anyways, they were great - Safe.

8) Last up is none other than Jessi & Pasha, who will be dancing the Cha Cha, which is choreographed by Tony Meredith, and will be dancing to the song “Let’s Get Loud” by J-Lo. It’s supposed to be really hot, will it? Lets see. Wait!!! What’s this?!?!? Jessi is in an ambulance, she’s having trouble breathing and has to stay in the hospital. I don’t know what to say, Jessi won’t be dancing tonight. Pasha’s gonna have to show his skills without her, and he’s wearing a sleeveless shirt, I’m sure the ladies are happy. Pasha nails the dance (and gets a standing ovation). I almost forgot, because Jessi wasn’t there, Pasha was dancing with a replacement partner, Tony Meredith’s assistant, who’s at least 15 years older than Jessi, but Pasha pulls it off. The judges loved it (and I’m sure every teenage girl did too).

My verdict: Pasha’s gonna be safe.

Note: no matter what happens, Jessi will perform a solo tonight, if she is unable to perform then she will be CUT!

The bottom 3(1/2) couples: Shauna & Cedric, Lauren & Neil, and Anya & Danny and Jessi

Who’s going home?: Guys - Cedric, Girls - I don’t want any of the girls to go home (but it could be Jessi if she’s not there).

Tune in to Fox at 9 to see who goes home (And Fergie’s performing “Glamorous” FYI).

Lacey & Kameron’s Top 20 routine on SYTYCD

Lacey & Kameron, on So You Think You Can Dance, performing a Mia Michael’s contemporary routine to the song “Dancing” by Elisa. (During the top 20)

 

Hidden Palms - “Stand By Your Woman” (Ep. 7)

The penultimate episode of yet another CW to die.

Here’s the trailer for this episode and the episode before (”Dangerous Liaisons”):

Check out Hidden Palms’ site at the CW, for pics, downloads and episode descriptions here

New movies in theaters

Ratatouille

Stars: Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, Patton Oswalt…

The Plot: A Parisian rat with a sophisticated palate makes him his in an upscale restaurant that is ruled by an eccentric, world-famous chef.

My Take: Well, it’s one for the kids and it’s certainly highly anticipated. I think it just might live up to all the buzz.

Live Free or Die Hard

Stars: Bruce Willis, Justin Long

The Plot: John McClane (Willis) takes on an Internet-based terrorist organization who is systematically shutting down the United States.

My Take: This is certainly a forgotten franchise, back when Willis had hair, and I can say, as of right now, I’m not rushing out to go see it. The cast is also not that strong (the guy from the Mac commercials? C’mon.). And the plot seems to be the same as every other movie ever created.

Sicko

Stars: Michael Moore

The Plot: An exposé on the inner workings of America’s health-care system.

My Take: Without a doubt, a massively talked-about, controversial film, where supposedly employees from top drug companies supplied Moore with memos, first-hand accounts, data, etc; while at the same time, these same companies circulated tip sheets on what to do in case of a Michael Moore attack. Also in the news, hackers managed to post the entire film a couple of weeks in advance. Well, the question is, will the movie be as well received as Fahrenheit 9/11 or end up in the trash? We’ll see soon.

Gadget of the day

The APC UPB10 Mobile Power Pack allows you to charge your electronics while on the road. So if you realise you’ve forgotten to charge your cellphone, PDA or iPod, for example, but you have your UPB10, fully charged, then all you have to do if plug in your USB-based charger for whatever device you’re trying to charge into the UPB10, and voila! It’s lightweight and very easy to use.

First iPhone reviews

Walt Mossberg, of the Wall Street Journal, who I spoke about in a previous post, and David Pogue, of the New York Times, are the first people to review the iPhone.

 

Their verdict? They both love it.

Mossberg is the more ethusiastic of the two. He calls it a “beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer” (note: he calls it a computer, not a phone). He uses lots of big words (probably from a thesaurus), which all pretty much say how the phones (and its features) are the best he’s ever tested. At first, he had a lot of trouble, as many (or most) people will, with the keyboard, and after three days he was ready to “throw it out the window”, but after five days he had grown to love it. His only real drawback was that it’s an AT&T-only device. And AT&T’s EDGE service, he complains, is too slow for the hardcore user. (Note: It’s locked so that you can’t put in your own SIM card).

Pogue is a bit more negative, but says pretty much the same things as Mossberg. He says that the glass screen didn’t scratch as bad as he’d feared, but it’s fast and beautiful and he wants it to bear his children. He loves the voice mail system but complains that simple things (like making a call) take more button-pressing than usual. And, like Mossberg, he loves the web browser, but Pogue complains that the battery life isn;t as good as Apple promised, especially with video. He also complains about the lack of voice dialing, instant messaging, and a memory card slot (although no Apple product has EVER had a memory card slot). He also points out that when you buy a 4GB or an 8GB iPhone, not to forget that 700MB will be consumed by the iPhone’s operating system. (I don’t think anyone else even thought of that point). He continues, and complains about the keyboard (”The BlackBerry won’t be going away anytime soon”). And of course he absolutely hates the AT&T network.

So these two just say the same thing that everyone was thinking: about the keyboard and about the network. But just give the keyboard a week before you give up on it. But in the end, either you get it or you don’t.

For Walt Mossberg’s full review, click here (his site) or here (Wall Street Journal)

For David Pogue’s full review, click here (New York Times)

To read USA Today’s review, click here

“One number for life”

A new FREE service, called GrandCentral, allows people to reach you any of your phones, with the use of a single number. So when someone calls your new number, all of your phones ring simultaneously. It’ll no longer require people to track you down by dialing all your numbers (work, cell, home…), this new service will find you, no matter which phone you’re with.

As a bonus, all messages now go to a single voice mail box. You can listen to your messages in any of two ways:

The first, you dial in from any phone (a text message arrives on your cell to tell you have a message), and pick up your messages. If you call in from your cell, you don’t even have to enter your password.

Or, you can listen to your messages online (at GrandCentral’s website) and download them as audio files to cherish forever and forever. You can also be notified by e-mail, that you have messages, and a link in the e-mail will take you online to play the messages.

This service is free, if you have two phone numbers. There is also a premium plan, which costs $15 USD, which offers more of everything: up to six phone numbers and voice messages kept forever (instead of 30 days with the free plan), and the features go on…

There’s two major downsides to joining GrandCentral: firstly, if they don’t have phone numbers for your location, then you might get an out-of-town number. (Hawaii and Maine have no phone numbers at all).

Secondly, after you get your new number, people will still be dialing your old numbers so you’ll have to check your old voice messages AND your new ones (GrandCentral links all your phone numbers to your new number but GrandCentral only checks voice messages, on your new number ONLY).

These may not be major downsides but it’s still a hassle. One, if they have no numbers in your area or if you get an out-of-town numbers or, two, if you have to constantly check your new voice message inbox AND all your old inboxes.

Here’s some of the more interesting features of GrandCentral:

Caller naming: Every person who calls is announced by name when they call (for example: “call from Brad Pitt”). How does it know their name? Sometimes it comes from caller ID. GrandCentral also knows every name in your online address book, which you can import (so you’ll have your contacts from Yahoo, Gmail or whatever e-mail program you use). Callers who don’t have a name, are asked to state their name the first time they call. On every call after this, GrandCentral remembers and recognizes them.

Listen In: For the first time in cellphone history, you can now listen to a message as someone is leaving it (just like most home answering machines). This is what happens: your phone rings and displays the person’s name (like it usually does), but when you answer it, a GrandCentral recording tells you the caller’s name and then offers you four options: 1) accept the call (you talk to the person), 2) send to voice mail, 3) listen in on voice mail or 4) accept and record the call (you talk to the person and it’ll record the conversation, which is pretty neat, especially if it’s, for example, an important business conversation or someone giving you driving directions). By the way, during all of this, the caller has no idea what’s going on, his phone is still ringing.

Ringback music: Popular with teens in Europe, it lets you replace the ringing sound the caller hears, while waiting for you to answer, with music (any MP3 of your choice)

Switch lines: Any time during a call, you can press a key, to make all of your phones ring again, so that you can pick up a different phone in mid-conversation, all the while, unknown to the person on the other end. For example, if your heading out the door, you can switch from a landline to your cellphone (or as you arrive at home, from your cell to your landline, in order to save your precious minutes).

Customize greetings: Possibly the most fun of all of GrandCentral’s features, this feature allows you to record a different message for each person in your address book. You can also tell GrandCentral to answer certain people’s calls with the classic “The number you have dialed is no longer in service” message. Ah, technology is so evil.

Phone spam filter: This just might be the most useful feature ever invented, GrandCentral keeps a database of telemarketers that is constantly updated by reports from its subscribers. Your phone doesn’t ring when a telemarketer, who is in the database, attempts to call you and sell you long distance.

Quick changes: With a quick click at GrandCentral’s site, you can have all your calls directed to voice mail when you don’t want to be bothered, or it can direct all calls to a new, temporary number (like a hotel) or it can prevent your home phone from ringing during work hours.

Web buttons: You can put a “call me” button on your website, which is a great way to get people from your MySpace, Facebook, eBay, or some dating site, to be able to call you without giving away your number.

As I said before, all these features are free, if you were to get them from your phone company they’d be either expensive or unavailable.

If you were to explore the idea, having one phone number associated with you, no matter your location, an amazing idea, and an easier way to be able to stay in touch. On the other hand, for some people, the last thing they want is people being able to find them wherever they are.

Anyways, GrandCentral just may have revolutionized the phone game or, as The New York Times says, “GrandCentral has rewritten the rules in the game of telephone”.

Note: GrandCentral is only available in the U.S., but may be available in Canada soon.

“Real” price of the iPhone

Well, here’s the bad news: it’s $60 USD/month for 450 minutes, $80 USD/month for 900 minutes, or $100 USD/month for 1350 minutes. If that’s not enough minutes, then you can pay $220 USD/month for a crazy 6000 minutes!

The good news: ALL plans include unlimited email and web, rollover minutes, unlimited mobile-to-mobile, and 200 text messages a month. And, all plans, except the cheapest plan, include unlimited nights and weekends (the cheapest plan only gets 5000 minutes of those).

Is this a good deal? Let’s see. AT&T’s cheapest voice-only plan costs $40 a month for 450 minutes, 5000 nights and weekend minutes, and no data services at all. (And text messages are about 15 cents a pop.) Add $20 a month for unlimited web. For the $60 of the iPhone’s cheapest plan, you can get AT&T’s 900-minute plan with no data service.

Looking at it another way, AT&T’s Messaging Unlimited plan costs $20 a month extra. Its unlimited messaging and media plan (which gives you access to cellular video as well) costs another $40 a month. The company has a bunch of plans for web browsing phones. The closest to what the iPhone gets you is the SmartPhone Max, at $30 extra per month.

Putting it all together, designing  a comparable plan to iPhone’s $60 service on AT&T with a non-iPhone device would actually cost about $70 a month. Believe it or not, iPhone service is actually a bargain!

On the other hand, $60 a month or more isn’t cheap. Over the life of the phone that equates to $1,440. Add in the price of the phone and activation fees and the cheapest amount you’ll spend on an iPhone over the next two years is $1,975. WOW! (And don’t forget the cancellation fee you’ll pay on your old phone…)

The cost of overnight computers

Thirty percent of corporate computers are not switched off at night (according to a study done by 1E, a power management company). So, what’s the cost of leaving computers on overnight? Well, it costs 1.72 billion dollars and 14.4 million metric tons of CO2.

Somehow, people see shutting off their computers, or at the very least putting them into sleep mode, as too much trouble. This problem was supposed to be resolved by Vista, but Vista’s “power management features” doesn’t seem to be doing much.

 1E also calculated that that massive energy saving could be acheived if you install their software (up to $75 per PC).

Now, if only 1E would help this problem by shutting off their computers instead of calculating all sorts of things. But, if it takes a power management company to get everyone to stop wasting all this energy then I, for one, am behind them, all the way.

Or, for those of us who wish to save that $75, then you can get this free software, which is supposed to reduce your CO2 emissions by as much as 10% so check it out.

The US PC energy report has found some of the following interesting facts:

- Out of 104 million office PCs in the US, at least 31.2 million are left on all night.

- Turning off every work computer in the United States every night would save as much CO2 emissions as taking every car in the state of Maryland off the road.

- The simple step of shutting computers down each night can save a 10,000 PC enterprise more than $165,000 a year in energy costs.

To read the whole report, click here.

To calculate how much energy, money and CO2 YOU waste each year, click here

iPhone called a ‘breakthrough’

Even though the iPhone is not yet available, tech expert Walt Mossberg, from the Wall Street Journal, has already got his hands on one.

            Excerpt from his review:

“We have been testing the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the country. Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.”

“Expectations for the iPhone have been so high that it can’t possibly meet them all. It isn’t for the average person who just wants a cheap, small phone for calling and texting. But, despite its network limitations, the iPhone is a whole new experience and a pleasure to use.”

Read a full review (including a feature by feature breakdown) at his website.