The 404 775: Where we <3 Japan (podcast)

Watch this: Ep. 775: Where we <3 Japan

32:22

We're keeping Japan in our collective thoughts today as the country continues to suffer from the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit this morning. Be sure to visit RedCross.org for how you can help with the relief effort.

As usual, Google is doing its part to help on the tech side with a Person Finder to help locate displaced family and friends in Japan. Google launched a similar project in February of last year amid the Chilean earthquake disaster.

It's hard to think about anything but our friends in the East, but today also happens to be iPad 2 day, and there are already people in line for the release at 5 p.m. tonight.

And after spending almost 41 hours in line (all the way through last night's torrents), college student Amanda Foote just sold her first-place spot in line for $900. She plans to use the money to buy Lady Gaga tickets.

This morning also marked the release of the trailer for JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg's new sci-fi thriller "Super 8." The Twitter-exclusive full-length trailer finally gives context to the teaser we first saw in last year's Super Bowl ad, although we still don't know exactly what escaped from the train crash.

In typical Bad Robot fashion, JJ Abrams and his crew add to the mystery of the film with an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) alongside viral marketing that creates an entire world to discover around the film.

There's already a product page in place for Rocket Poppeteers that lets you sign up and create your own member certificate, as well as an easter egg editing room whose URL is seen in this frozen screenshot from the trailer.

After an extended chat about the origin of ARGs, Jeff and I both have stories to talk about that deal with our beats--video games and printers, respectively. Jeff's story is about the Microsoft Kinect setting a new Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling consumer electronic device in a 60-day time span.

The company sold just over 10 million units of the Kinect in four months, so it's safe to assume that motion-controlled video games definitely won't be going the way of plastic accessory games like Guitar Hero.

We don't talk about printers very often, but we can't resist mentioning a car crash out of Boston carrying a load of printer ink that made for an incredible live art piece, however unintentional.

A tractor-trailer hauling over 8,000 gallons of printer ink to a local newspaper spilled all over a highway in Peabody, Mass., with a Pollockesque aftermath; luckily nobody was injured in the crash, but we can imagine the number of penny-pinchers after the splatter rushing to siphon the liquid gold (red, blue, green, and yellow too) to save money on ink.

We'll end this week's collection of news with today's Kodak Deal of the Day--you can get a Dell XPS Core i5 Dual Core 2.3GHz 17-inch Blu-ray laptop with free shipping for just $999.99, so don't miss out on that deal if you need a new PC.

Have a great weekend, and be sure to check out RedCross.org for instructions on how you can help with the Japanese earthquake relief effort with a simple text message from your mobile phone.