Hot Tub Time Machine follows a group of best friends who’ve become bored with their adult lives. In 2010, three old friends, Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson), and Lou (Rob Corddry), do not have the lives they once wished for. Adam has been dumped by his girlfriend; Lou is a party guy who can’t find the party; Nick’s wife controls his every move; and video game-obsessed Jacob won’t leave his basement. Divorced, depressed, and otherwise unsatisfied, they decide to spend a weekend in an old favorite ski village, After a crazy night of drinking in a ski resort hot tub, the men wake up, heads’ pounding, in the year 1986. This is their chance to kick some past and change their futures, have a choice to walk the same path and not upset the space/time continuum, or to re-do things that felt unfinished, including the decision to dump or not dump an old girlfriend, or stand up to a bully. One will find a new love life, one will learn to stand up for himself with the ladies, one will find his mojo, and one will make sure he still exists!

It may centre on the decade of shame, but you don’t have to have been of age in the ’80s to get into the groove. The foursome of leads on electric form makes this the best dumb fun of the year to date, and you have to watch out for Hot Tub Time Machine 2. This movie works best when it’s at its most vile and ridiculous. It’s only in the serious moments that it lags, it doesn’t have the chops to pull off being a complete movie the way better entries in the raunchy genre have. It’s funny when it needs to be and entertaining enough overall, especially in a couple of brilliantly staged musical moments, that you’ll enjoy it. It’s best seen as a group experience, the perfect buddy movie, the movie to see when you’re out on the town a little bit tipsy and ready for action.

I would recommend HTTM to anyone with a sense of humor not wanting to think too deeply and wanting to be entertained for 90 minutes. Though there are plot holes, there is no recognition of the space-time continuum – actually, the future repercussions of the characters’ actions would have never worked out like they do. But I was still entertained; I laughed and wanted to see where the characters went. I time to time find myself remembering lines from the film and smiling. I would watch it again and again I give it 6.5 stars. Recommend these other movies to watch: Nutty Professor, My stepmother is an Alien and Zoolander.

In 50 years of James Bond, I have analysed and come up with the top 5 best and worst 007 movies.

BEST

1. Goldfinger

Investigating a gold magnate’s smuggling, James Bond uncovers a plot to contaminate the Fort Knox gold reserve.

2. Casino Royale

Armed with a license to kill, Secret Agent James Bond sets out on his first mission as 007 and must defeat a weapons dealer in a high stakes game of poker at Casino Royale, but things are not what they seem.

3. From Russia with Love

James Bond willingly falls into an assassination ploy involving a naive Russian beauty in order to retrieve a Soviet encryption device that was stolen by SPECTRE.

4. You Only Live Twice

Agent 007 and the Japanese secret service ninja force must find and stop the true culprit of a series of spacejackings before nuclear war is provoked.

5. Skyfall

Bond’s loyalty to M is tested when her past comes back to haunt her. Whilst MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost

WORST

1. Die Another Day

Pierce Brosnan bids farewell to Bond with a stinker that can fairly be called the franchise’s Batman & Robin. There’s a kernel of an interesting idea in the plot, about a North Korean general—who remakes himself through surgery as a white Anglo businessman—with plans to harness the sun’s rays for a destructive laser.

2. Tomorrow Never Dies

The second Brosnan Bond was a troubled production, with numerous script rewrites, openly unhappy performers and the absence of hands-on producer, who’d recently passed away. So it’s kind of a miracle the movie is as watchable as it is, even though it’s still a pale shadow of Brosnan’s inaugural GoldenEye.

3. A view to a Kill

How do you screw up a Bond film in which both Christopher Walken and Grace Jones plot to flood Silicon Valley by blowing up the San Andreas Fault? Here’s your blueprint. The constant quips of 58-year-old Roger Moore come off like ossified shtick, and his chemistry with Bond girl Tanya Roberts is nonexistent.

4. Live and Let Die

Roger Moore’s interpretation of 007 as a mobile cardboard cutout isn’t helped by the fact that the producers decided to turn his inaugural entry into a blaxploitation movie, spiced with offensive ooga-booga voodoo scenes and cringeworthy comic relief. We’d have been happy to let this one die, frankly.

5. The World is not enough

Having exhausted the novelty factor of a new 007 by this point, you can feel the producers straining to come up with ways to keep viewers interested in Bond 19: Here’s an even more extreme version of a ski chase, one with helicopters, too. Our oil-pipeline plot is torn straight from today’s headlines.

Submarine cable operator, SEACOM, has sent a notification to its customers that there will be a scheduled freeze in the better part of the festive season.

They said:

SEACOM will be observing a General Network Freeze on all Service Delivery and Build related planned works from 06:00 GMT Thursday 19th December 2013 until 06:00 GMT Thursday 9th January 2014.

Bitcoin was the first widely used cryptocurrency, but there many more of the same kind about five of them

The Bitcoin

Bitcoin comes from miners who process and add transactions to the Bitcoin public record and get rewarded with Bitcoins for their efforts. Changes to the mining process are negotiated and when 80 per cent of miners agree, the change becomes mandatory.

This process has worked well because the miners have an interest in keeping a stable reliable system that does not drop in price or go into a bubble then crash. The value of a Bitcoin is set by the market, which is the shared delusion of market players as there is no backing to the currency.

In terms of risk it sits somewhere between the share market, which can drop significantly but seldom to zero, and the derivatives market where you can lose more than you invested.

While Bitcoin transactions are public the true identities can be hidden so it’s an easy way to purchase illegal goods or shift money around the world from one Bitcoin wallet to another and then to a normal currency. The low transaction fees and inability to track and tax money also appeals to some.

Litecoin

Litecoin is built on Bitcoin ideals but aims to have a wider range of miners with algorithms that do not give a great advantage to hi-tech miners. Tugs such as faster transactions and a bigger currency limit also help but the same problems that plague Bitcoin will also affect Litecoin.

Bitcoin can be converted into other currencies quite easily but it’s difficult with Litecoin and the other cryptocurrencies, so one has to change it to Bitcoin then a normal currency.

Peercoin

This coin has a built-in interest rate of 1 percent annually, which is trivial compared to exchange rate movements. Each transaction costs 0.01 Litecoin which does not suit high volume or low value trading.

Namecoin

It is built on Bitcoin technology but adds a parallel internet which is uncensored and outside government control.

As a result Namecoin is a much riskier option than Bitcoin, which does diminish Namecoin’s attraction.

Quarkcoin

In concept, Quarkcoin (or Quark) is close to Litecoin. It has faster transaction times than Bitcoin. Its security algorithms are much more advanced than Bitcoin and this means that normal PCs can be competitive in mining coins. Miners who buy expensive high speed machines for Quarkcoin will have much less of an advantage than those doing the same for Bitcoin.

What’s the importance?

The new cryptocurrencies dicussed are based on Bitcoin but all have added tweaks which may make them better technologies in the longer term. Bitcoin is by far the biggest with about $12 billion value which is some 16 times bigger than its nearest rival Litecoin.

In the long-term, a concern is the weakness of the SHA-2 encryption algorithm which is the basis of all cryptocurrencies above, with the exception of Quarkcoin.

When should you use a cryptocurrency?

If you are an investor who enjoys playing the market then all cryptocurrencies have a lot of ups and downs and if you get it right there is money to be made.

There is a lot of good theory about boom and bust in speculative markets. Expect to lose if you are not a knowledgeable investor who is familiar with charting and market psychology. Margin trading is already happening, so you can profit (or lose) on rises and falls in cryptocurrencies.

Fraud and other problems are common so be very careful and read a lot before you do anything.

If cryptocurrencies are like other speculative activities, the early players and the big players benefit to the disadvantage of the late entrants and the small players. Given the recent spike in cryptocurrency values we are most likely past the early entry stage.

The majority of cryptocurrency activity still appears to be speculative rather than usage as a currency. If this state of affairs starts to reverse then cryptocurrencies may do well; if not then the whole concept may die like the great South Sea Bubble.

Probably the biggest practical use for cryptocurrencies is in international money transfers where the overheads of credit card fees and currency exchange margins are ridiculously high.

Moving your Bitcoins into normal cash still attracts money of around 5 percent including buying and selling, so real savings will only be made if your destination is happy to work with Bitcoin.

MTN Ghana has partnered with GeoPoll in a move to allow its customers share their views via SMS with GeoPoll survey teams and in turn earn airtime credit.

So how does this thing work; GeoPoll will send short, free-to-respond, easy-to-answer questions directly to subscribers’ phones on various social and developmental issues.  Within a few minutes, respondents are able to complete polls helping organizations around the world better understand their opinions, interest, and ideas.  Upon completion of the surveys, mobile subscribers are eligible to receive airtime as compensation.

The Chief Marketing Officer of MTN, Rahul De, described the GeoPoll service as a unique and innovative service that will further drive the socio-economic development of Ghana by making the concerns of ordinary citizens known to government as well as to international bodies such as the United Nations and African Development Bank. The polls can also be used to help track the impact of donor funds on communities.

 “We are very excited to help bring the voice of Ghanaians to the world stage to address important local and global challenges.  We have been blown away by the outstanding response GeoPoll has already received in Ghana,” said James Eberhard, CEO of Mobile Accord, the parent company of GeoPoll. 

In a move that will change the quality of products and solutions in the African market forever, Tezza Solutions CEO Roland Omoresemi has urged firms to ensure that their products and solutions meet the quality analysis test before unveiling them into the market by following new application development methodologies and working with software testing firms.

Speaking during the Tezza IT Forum in Nairobi recently, Omoresemi noted that the challenges and downtime experienced by various institutions attributed to software hitches are a clear demonstration that companies are not adequately testing their innovations before releasing them into the market.

“The software hitches in ATMs owned by various banks can be attributed to buying unproven software, insufficient attention to project risk and relying on the promise of customization to backfill functionality gaps in off the shelf applications,” said Omoresemi.

He added that companies should ensure that they address various key issues – including business requirements, end to end testing, integration and performance testing – before launching any products and solutions.

The Forum – held under the theme “Building reliable systems through dev-ops and continuous delivery” – gave delegates an opportunity to discover how current industry trends and technologies are impacting businesses and the corporate environment.

The Forum deliberated on how corporate clients can improve the overall quality of software applications by adopting next generation technology to ensure continuous innovation of ideas through collaborative development, testing, release management and deployment across the value chain.

Omoresemi urged companies and their chief information officers (CIOs) to adopt DevOps – a software development method that involves communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and IT professionals -while developing and deploying their products and solutions saying this can help improve the overall quality of releases.

The Forum also discussed that CIOs should focus on functionality, concentrate on applications’ capability in common usage scenarios and have a well-skilled team to ensure that there releases meet quality assurance standards.

IBM’s director for software driven innovation Philipe Fanjere said businesses stand to lose by not using tested software.

“Untested products will always result in a lack of continuous delivery that will impact the entire business operation, consequently resulting in costly error-prone manual processes once technology fails as well as slow deployment and need for upgrades,” said Mr Fanjere.

Fanjere said the most benefit derived from DevOps is that it helps balance the speed, cost, quality and risk when releasing new products.

******They killed him, clearly and definitely. Brody’s dead******

The argument that could be made is that Brody has always been dead for as long as we’ve known him. Even here, in the last few happy minutes that he and Carrie shared together in the safe house (where it was all too clear to us, the viewers, that things were about to go horribly wrong) it was only Carrie’s impassioned speech about them being meant to be together and that she’s also pregnant, that seemed to bring Brody back to life if, only temporarily.

But this was the ending Brody needed. Any consideration of him becoming a super-spy alongside Carrie and Saul, or him is doing a Mr. Mom, while Carrie fought terrorists, would have ruined Homeland. A happy ending just wasn’t in the cards for him, that’s not what Homeland is about. This season in particular has shown us what the spy life can do to its best and brightest, how it exhausts and then discards you once you’ve completed your mission. Brody is the ultimate example of this. Also for Saul, having achieved the unachievable with his huge win on the Javadi front was still kicked out of the agency for his trouble. He seemingly got off easy compared to many of his peers.

“The Star” (on the wall) is perhaps one of the saddest hours of TV we’ve seen in a while, and it’s also a reminder that for all the Carrie low energy that’s been going around this season, Claire Danes remains an amazing performer. In the end, her and Brody’s story was truly tragic, and even with Brody gone Carrie is continuously reminded of his presence by the baby inside her. In fact, it amazes me how this one episode turned that entire pregnancy subplot around so that it’s suddenly a very compelling and painful part of the character. The easy route would be to go with the “this baby is a part of Brody” thread, but no, Carrie wants nothing to do with the thing.

Damian Lewis is less flashy than Danes in his final appearance as Brody, but he’s perfect in his world-weary, resigned approach to where his life has taken him. Any ideas of getting out of Iran for the sake of his daughter are gone now (Brody’s family isn’t even mentioned) as the ex-Marine reflects on the madness of it all. His remarking that at least his dad isn’t around anymore to see any of this is a heartbreaking moment, as are the final seconds of his phone call with Carrie where she begs him to stay on for a few more seconds of just… silence.

The episode certainly leaves a lot open as for where things will go next season. And yes, it has some illogical plotting bouncing around as well as a clunky conclusion, but that doesn’t really matter. Because when Carrie quietly scrawls that star for Brody on the wall, a star that no one will recognize except her and maybe a few other people, we couldn’t ask for a better memorial to the character. Brody may have outlived his usefulness on the show — as well as in the show’s reality — but damn if he wasn’t a great television character.

Wouldn’t watch it a second time, no need to because its below average, I can only hope that season 4 will have a great plot. 5.5 stars for this season, not worth comparing any other series with it, maybe prison break season 2, as it also lost its plot.

We all love photo moments, whether with friends, family or workmates. As holidays jet in IBM Research Africa in partnership with iHub, A24Media and independent photographer Mutua Matheka have launched “The World is Our Lab” photo competition in a move that will see incredible individual and professional photographers earn bucks every time they capture a memorable moment.

The Pan-African photo competition dubbed “The World Is Our Lab” is open today and runs until January 31^st 2014.

According to IBM, winners of each category will take home a Lenovo T440 laptop with photo editing software and an all-expense-paid trip to IBM’s new Africa research lab,the iHub Nairobi and a photography workshop with one of Africa’s most exciting young photographers Mutua Matheka .For those that reside in Kenya, don’t fret, IBM will give you a 3-day trip for two people to the beautiful Hemingways Hotel Watamu instead of the trip to Nairobi.

The first competition is for amateur, semiprofessional and professional photographers. These have to register on the photo competition website and submit their photos, which must adhere to certain specifications while the second competition is a Social media competition where users will be assigned a different task every two weeks to highlight different things in their part of Africa under the hashtag #IBMResearchAfrica.

After submission, every week, Mutua Matheka will highlight some of the best photos that have been submitted for the task.

The three categories of the competition are

• African Grand Challenges
• African City Systems
• African Innovation

Click here to enter competition or visit The World is Our Lab website for more information. Over 300 participants have already signed up and have submitted 249 photos at the time of going to press.

HP has joined in the competition in the market as it has unveiled a wireless printer, the HP Deskjet 2545 All-in-One.

The printer comes with a copier scanner and printer;and with its wireless capability one can send documents form a Smartphone, tablet as well as any other internet devices. It is also small enough to be incorporated on your working area as it is the same size as a CPU.

The HP Deskjet 2545 All-in-One, is bound to give Dell and Epsons a good enough competition as the Ink Advantage printing system allow consumers to save 0 percent on printing cost annually. Not only that, HP promises that this printer will deliver fine prints both in color and black and white printing.

The printer’s tools has cartridges for insertion and electricity cables if you’ll be using Wi-Fi, plus a USB cable if otherwise. The machine is easy to operate and is not noisy; it also has an LCD display that shows the printing status.

Technology company, Samsung, is set to launch 4 mobile devices in the first quarter of 2014 according to media report. The move, experts believe, is in line with the company’s goal of maintaining dominance in the smartphone sector.

This year, Samsung launched nine versions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 alone in addition to several other new gadgets all of which were adjudged to be successful in the tech market.

With the introduction of more devices next year, the company is seeking to improve upon the gains that it’s made over the last year in global tablet sales.

While the company has not released an official statement confirming or denying the report, SamMobile said that it can only say for certain that Samsung will release the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite in Q1 2014, although it suspects the company might also release a 12.2-inch version of its Galaxy Note tablet and a 13.3-inch tablet that may dual-boot with both Android and Windows.

The next LG Smartphone you buy will be having Blackberry’s BBM pre-installed; starting with the LG G Pro Lite.

BlackBerry announced a bundling agreement with LG Electronics involving both standard and virtual preloading  which will be using the LG App Manager.

“BBM is widely used throughout the Middle East, Africa and Indonesia where smartphone users tend to engage heavily in social networking,” said Kevin Shin, Vice President of Marketing for Asia, the Middle East and CIS countries of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company “The LG G Pro Lite offers an optimized BBM experience with its large, high quality display and embedded Stylus Pen.”

This information comes after BlackBerry launched the client on Android and iOS nearly two months ago. The Android version was reportedly downloaded over 10 million times in just twenty-four hours after release.

The iOS version glided up the charts to be the number one free app in more than 75 countries in the same time period. That’s quite a feat for a chat service that previously only resided on BlackBerry phones.

The company also restated that the BBM service will continue to be upgraded for Android and iPhone users in the coming months, with updates that will include support for BBM Channels, as well as support for BBM Voice calling and BBM Video calling.

The founder of iBridge HUB in Ibadan, and the initiator of iCODE, has stressed that the nation’s 2 online megastores, JUMIA Nigeria and Konga.com can help Nigerian start-ups and SMEs to grow. He said both platforms have sufficient capacity that start-ups can leverage on for growth.

According to him, both platforms have been able to overcome the trust challenge that was a major deterrent discouraging Nigerians from shopping online. He added that the megastores have the strong backbone to support features such as money back guarantee and free delivery to any part of Nigeria.
“They can deliver products nationwide, no start-up can do that,” he said.
He added that the level of security on both platforms is laudable and something that the start-ups do not have the technical capacity to support.
He stressed that Nigerian online shoppers are conscious of the kinds of transactions they do online and would not be willing to use their banking details on a platform they don’t trust.
“I buy things online but I don’t just enter my details anywhere or everywhere; like other online shoppers, I am very selective and I take security seriously. If an SME set up an online payment platform, I am not sure that everyone would rush to it and start entering their card details straightway,” he said.
He added that the mega platforms have avenues that start-ups can explore to take their products online and would be available to hundreds of thousands of online shoppers.
“The traffic on those sites can not paralleled by anyone set up by a startup. Why not just put your products there and let them take commission from the earnings you make. This is how businesses in their early phases can grow,” he said.

Retired C.I.A. agent Frank Moses reunites his unlikely team of elite operatives for a global quest to track down a missing portable nuclear device. If you liked the first RED, you will like this 2^nd one even better, trust me on this. It is funny, witty, snappy, lively, sarcastic, engrossing and entertaining. Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta Jones and Brian Cox; what a cast…. yet it’s just a better version of Expendables and with better actors.

This is a very enjoyable film, as the story continues with the retired – and more dangerous than anybody else – agents. Frank and his comrades find themselves treading all over the globe and finding conflict at each stop. If you haven’t seen the first film, you can still enjoy this piece. You won’t understand all of the relationships immediately, but the story stands on its own. And it does a very good job at that.

The movie was so much fun. It has clever and well-thought out jokes throughout the film and they keep coming and are skillfully timed. The action is thrilling – non-stop action to get your blood pumping filled this movie. It has the same feel of cool, unreasonable stunts and explosions from the first movie, but they also added a lot more hand-to-hand combat, which is still very amusing to watch and excellently choreographed. Comparable movies are Expandables, RIPD and Tower Heist.

The acting is great and the story was well-written with actual twists. The soundtrack and sound effects made all the guns and explosions that much more convincing and enjoyable. In total, RED 2 is much better than the first one, and I really enjoyed the first movie. You should check it out if you like funny, entertaining and action packed movies! You won’t regret it! Can’t wait for RED3

Avatar fans you need not wait any longer, just 2 years, it’s finally here and production will be done in New Zealand.

James Cameron, producer Jon Landau and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key have announced that all three Avatar sequels will be filmed in New Zealand. The Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce had this to say about the announcement.

“The Avatar sequels will provide hundreds of jobs and thousands of hours of work directly in the screen sector as well as jobs right across the economy.”

The director reveals that he originally wanted to explore other worlds in Pandora’s solar system, but now he just plans to show fans more of Pandora itself.

“It’s going to be a lot of new imagery and a lot of new environments and creatures across Pandora. We’re blowing it out all over the place. At first I thought I was going to take it onto other worlds as well, in the same solar system, but it turned out not to be necessary. I mean the Pandora that we have imagined will be a fantasy land that is going to occupy people for decades to come, the way I see it.”

He also cleared up a rumor that Avatar 2 will be set entirely underwater, which is not the case.

“There’s a fair bit of underwater stuff. It’s been inaccurately said that the second film takes place underwater. That’s not true. There are underwater scenes and surface-water scenes having to do with indigenous ocean cultures that are distributed across the three films.”

It isn’t immediately clear when production will begin in New Zealand, but it was revealed that production on Avatar 2, Avatar 3 and Avatar 4 will take place over a nine-month shoot. The budget for all three movies combined is expected to exceed a whopping $1 billion.

Avatar was released December 18th, 2009 and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel Moore, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Laz Alonso. The film is directed by James Cameron.

Avatar 2 comes to theaters November 2016

Avatar 3 comes to theaters November 2017

Avatar 4 comes to theaters November 2018

The original Avatar won three Academy Awards and is the highest grossing film in history, bringing in more them $2.7 billion worldwide. Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment will be producing the sequels. Can’t wait to watch the sequels, all excited.