The Daily Dose

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Monday, Feb. 22, 2010

Today in Techland: I chatted up the new champ of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Dan Feyer, who made is ascent to the throne Sunday in Brooklyn, while Lev wondered just how Plants vs. Zombies made it to the top of best selling apps list. Elsewhere, Steve pushed pause on his favorite Alien 3 moment, and Peter got his hands on Verizon’s Motorola Devour.

Here’s what else is going on in nerd news around the Web:

Trouble in Wonderland: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland could face an international boycott on cinema screens due to Disney’s decision to reduce the film’s theater run from 17 to 13 weeks. Odeon, the biggest exhibitor in the U.K., has already vowed not to show Alice on any of its screens and now it looks like American company AMC Entertainment might do the same. Seems like the studios are hell bent on sending Disney a pretty strong message in the form of a huge profit shrink.

Your typos are Google’s padded profit margin: According to Harvard researchers, Google is earning around $497 million a year from its display ads that appear on sites registered with URLs that mimic common typos.

Award season is in full swing: Saturday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Scientific and Technical Awards presentation yielded the top awards in technological advancements to the film industry. On behalf of Avatar fans everywhere, I thank ye, wise techies. Read more about the winners here.

Your Daily Dinosaur:

Uhh, guys? Did RollingStone.com let its domain name expire? It sure looked that way. Today, the site was down for a few hours while displaying a “Coming Soon” screen, evident of most recently purchased domain names. Whoops.

Missing: Filmmaker Andrew Koenig has been missing since he was last seen in Vancouver on Feb. 14. Koenig is the son of Walter Koenig (Star Trek’s Pavel Chekov). The Vancouver police are asking that anyone with any information please call the department at 604-717-2534.

Michael Jackson. In Space. Tomorrow, Disney Theme Parks will begin screening the late King of Pop’s creepy, space musical Captain EO in 3D in its Tomorrowland Theater. This is a brilliant/terrible idea.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kBeD1L_nd4]

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