I love art. I love Star Wars. I really love free stuff. There’s a good chance you do as well. Here’s how to get your very own Star Wars-themed copy of ImagineFX, the magazine for fantasy and sci-fi digital art.

If you’ve upgraded your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to the latest iOS 5, you have access to Apple’s Newsstand app which gives you instant access to thousands of periodicals. Launch the app on your device and head to the store section. Search for “ImagineFX” and get their free magazine app. (Alternatively, you can go to the iTunes Store and do the same thing.) After you’ve installed the ImagineFX app, you can go to their store of back issues to download a bunch of recent magazines for $6.99 each.

To celebrate the launch of Newstand, you can also grab their October 2011 issue free for a limited time. This is the impressive, Star Wars-themed issue filled with great visuals from the legendary franchise. There’s even a tutorial that teaches you how to draw a very menacing Darth Maul.

There’s no telling how long this offer will last so download it today.

Like any new technology, the field of e-books for kids is still experiencing growing pains. In recent history there have been a few exceptional examples of e-books done right, most notably with the classic The Monster at the End of this Book starring the loveable, cute, and furry Grover, as well as this year’s exceptional, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Now Marvel Comics has gotten into the game with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man: An Origin Story, currently available for the iPhone and iPad for $6.99. Can the House of Ideas keep up with Sesame Street and Charlie Brown? Let’s take a look.
Read More

This time around on Bubble Pipe Theater, Rob, Tim, and Tommy discuss the NikeMag Back For the Future benefit auctions (read: pricey sneakers), the Star Wars Blu-rays (again), fictional technology we’d like to see in real life, the Walt Disney Family Museum, arcade nostalgia, Wii hacking, our current obsessions, and more.

In the inaugural episode of Bubble Pipe Theater, Tommy, John, Tim, and Rob discuss the ‘Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig)’ phenomenom, a horrible movie called Birdemic, an eerie correlation between Planet of the Apes and Pixar’s Cars franchise, and everyone’s current obsessions. We’re excited to kick off this geek culture podcast, and we hope you bear with us through the first few episodes as we get all the technical details ironed out.

Geeks and trivia go hand in hand. Something about obsessing over details more than the average person.

The new social trivia challenge QRANK gives you a venue to show off your geekly prowess. The game can be accessed two ways: via a free iPhone/iPod touch app or Facebook application. Either means gives you equal gameplay.

In QRANK you are presented with a gameboard of 20 tiles representing the four categories du jour. The possible subjects include Science & Nature, Literature, Sports, History & Place, Business & Government, Life, and—my favorite—Entertainment. You select 10 questions to answer in your daily session. Points for each question start at 200, 400, and 1000, depending on difficulty. Point values rapidly decline the longer you wait to answer. To sweeten the pot, there also randomly placed 2X and 3X bonuses.

Read More