Attention, fellow Geekadelphians! We have some incredible news for you that will surely bring some exciting (and informative) content to Geekadelphia in the coming months. I have been selected by Microsoft to be one of their Student Insiders for 2010!

A Micro-studen-wha? I know, this is as new to me as it most likely is to you. A Microsoft Student Insider is a college (or high school) student who gains exclusive training and experience with various Microsoft products and software via Microsoft  software developers and designers, personal exposure and exciting events. However, it doesn’t stop there: the Student Insiders are tasked with sharing their experiences and revealing insider information to their audience: you!

Luckily for you guys and gals, you’ll be exposed to every nook and cranny I can possibly provide about Microsoft’s Expression Studio 3. I’ll be sharing my experiences with several Expression Studio 3 programs including Expression Design 3, Expression Web 3 and hopefully some Silverlight and/or XNA with a clean slate. I have to admit: I’m not too familiar with Microsoft’s new design software package, so this will be a learning experience for all of us (unless we have some Expression pros in the house — call me!).

So, stay tuned in the coming months for lots of insider tips and tricks on how to get the most out of Microsoft’s Expression Studio as well as exclusive coverage of key events and conferences including MIX10, Microsoft’s fifth annual web design and technology conference in Las Vegas. Also, say hello to the rest of The Student Insider Team!

Spoiler: I’ll be at Microsoft Headquarters for a good portion of next week. Expect an exclusive look into what it’s like within Microsoft’s walls from the eyes of a Student Insider (perhaps literally)!

This Wednesday, Johnny Zito & Tony Trov, the tag-team behind DC Comics’ Black Cherry Bombshells, are releasing a one-shot comic entitled Carnivale DeRobotique. What the… didn’t I just write about you guys?!

The comic tells the story of a rebellious nanny robot, Wendy, who runs away to be a ballerina in the robot circus. Zito calls it “a self contained, 22 page, full color fairy tale from the future.”

I’ve included some of the fantastic art below. Have a look, and be sure to pick up your copy at Brave New Worlds in Old City. Or at… I dunno, whatever comic book stores are in Austin, TX.

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Some of the Shmitten Kittens.

Our good friends over at Shmitten Kitten are hosting their first ever holiday party this Saturday, December 12th, upstairs at the Khyber.

What’s normally a venue full of brodudes swilling PBR, will be transformed into a dance party featuring those foxy Shmitten Kitten gals. So of COURSE the Geekadelphia crew is attending.

DJs include Jennacide, Al B. Sore, and Robot E. Lee. According to Anna, the party is strictly BYOM (Bring Your Own Mistletoe), which is fine with us. Word on the street is that Chris will be attending with a mistletoe hat. It’s a brilliant idea, and I approve.

For more info on the event, check out Shmitten Kitten’s website, and RSVP on their Facebook page. See you there.

Photography by Mykl Roventine

A few contributors to the video games blogosphere have been in a buzz for the past week over a few issues pertaining to MMOs, which has garnered the attention of Massively as well as Creative Director for 38 Studios (you know, MLB pitcher Curt Schilling’s super secret studio), Steven Danuser. While several topics are currently being discussed, the umbrella issue at hand seems to be that something is missing from today’s MMOs: the possibility of failure.

Which got me thinking, this could be seen as an issue in not only MMOs, but games of all genres. It also got me thinking that I cannot think of a single game currently on the market nor in the past that explores this possibility. Granted, there have been games in the past and currently which punish you for failure, but it never has affected the game’s narrative nor its gameplay directly. Since you all know how I feel about Heavy Rain and how Quantic Dream is approaching death I won’t even mention – dammit!

So, take a gander at what these poignant bloggers are discussing and come on back here and lets us know what you think in a broader context. What if death meant more in video games? If death actually changed the landscape or narrative of a game, how would it change gameplay and not only that, design? Know of a game that out there that addresses this idea? Let us know about it or simply speak your mind in the comments section. Who knows, maybe some developers are reading what you have to say right now (creepy, huh?).

Nom nom nom nom! Ben Kessler of Unbreaded

Philadelphia is a city full of geeks. Me and my pals here on Geekadelphia love to show that fact off, and now, once a week, we’ll be highlighting individual geeks here on the blog with Geek of the Week. The featured geek will have a little thumbnail over there on the right, along with their lovely face in our featured content section. Just another way for us to show off our awesome community, and hopefully, introduce you to some great people doing awesome things. Think you should be featured? Have a friend you’d like to see on here? Email us.

One of my favorite internet pals and food blogger extraordinaire, Ben Kessler, is unfortunate lucky enough to be our first Geek of the Week. For those of you who haven’t heard of Ben… well, that surprises me. Ben is one of the founders of Unbreaded, an excellent sandwich blog that recently won Best Food Blog in Best Of Philly. Needless to say, we were quite proud of this extremely justified award. Ben and his team update the site daily, with fresh reviews of sandwiches from around the city, each post accompanied by stunning photos and an in-depth review. And as you can imagine, Unbreaded has a Flickr feed that will make your mouth water.

So what’s the deal with Ben and his blog? What famous comic book hero would he split a sandwich with? Read on to find out!

Hey there Ben! Tell us a bit about yourself and Unbreaded!

I just officially graduated from Drexel University with a B.S. in Business Administration, but mostly I concentrated on Marketing. At Drexel we participate in a co-op program, which means 6 months out of the year I worked a full time job. I met Jeff Vogel at one of these jobs, and we soon became friends. Our daily conversations on food, blogging, technology and other things eventually lead to the idea of starting our own website. When we realized that there was no one writing about the most universal meal, sandwiches, Unbreaded was born!

Rest of the interview, after the jump!

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This is what the editor of Crunchgear looks like, when he descends upon Philadelphia

Our boys over at Crunchgear (hey guys!) have an awesome list up detailing their ultimate Geek weekend in Philadelphia. It’s a part of their new series, where they show off sweet places around the country… for geeks.

From sweet places to visit (Mutter Museum), places to shop (Brave New Worlds, yes!), and places to eat (Pod, National Mechanics, etc), they’ve got quite the impressive list up.

Peter, John, Doug… next time you cats are in town, beers are on us at National Mechanics. And yes, Peter, we’ll even get you one of those Beefeater martinis you like so much. Yeah, that’s right. I remember.

Go give the article a read.

Crunchgear’s Weekend in Philly
www.crunchgear.com/2009/07/10/geek-weekend-philadelphia-pa

In related news, women all over South Philadelphia let out a collective dreamy sigh heard all the way across the river in Camden, New Jersey.

Recently, Chris Wink and Technically Philly wrote up a pretty wild story, about how computers from the Philadelphia School District popped up in a massive e-waste landfill in Ghana. Give it a read, check out the videos. It’s intense.

As a result, Fox News gave the story some coverage, and there’s our boy, on television. Lookin’ good Chris. Lookin’ good.

Fox News: Philly Computers Wind Up in Africa
www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/070809_Philly_Computers_Wind_Up_In_Africa

For those of you who have met some the Geekadelphia crew in person, we are a fairly diverse group. And I’m really proud of that. When we hang out IRL, it’s sort of like a ‘The More You Know’ after-school special kind of moment. We’re a lovely racial cornucopia of cyberspace writers, living together in harmony on the internet, and constantly making inappropriate jokes about one another.

Unfortunately, it seems like it isn’t that way across the blogosphere, and this weekend, I’ll be flying out to Chicago to attend the Blogging While Brown Conference in Chicago, Illinois. The purpose of the conference?

The purpose of Blogging While Brown is to give Bloggers of Color an opportunity to meet each other for the first time, discuss current issues affecting Bloggers of Color, and learn about the latest technology that will assist them with publishing their work. Blogging While Brown was created in response to widespread dissatisfaction with the amount of diversity in some of the largest blogging conferences.

I’m pretty excited to be attending, mostly to learn about these issues. I’ve never dealt with them, so I’m curious as to what other writers are dealing with across the country. It should be a great networking experience.

I might live blog a little from the conference, since I’m sure I’ll meet some cool new people and such. Any readers from Chicago out there? Give me a shout. I could use some company!

Blogging While Brown
www.bloggingwhilebrown.com

Q: How many letters are in the alphabet?
A: 24, because ET went home!

What If E.T. Was One of Us? That’s what Mallory Politz’ has been asking these days… and she’s chosen an awesome, awesome way to figure it out …that may or may not have resulted in the birth of my new fav local blog, E.T. Close Encounters.

Click on the jump to read my interview with the gal behind the mask!

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If there’s one thing we here at Geekadelphia believe in, it’s the inevitable robot uprising and enslavement of humanity. We’re ready for it, whenever it occurs. That cute little robot in the flyer there? Yeah, we’re ready for you, Boombox-bot. Your mechanical arms and adorable “i think i’m Button Gwinnett” wig aren’t going to save you. Bring it.

Speaking of that flyer, if there’s another thing we believe… it’s supporting our boys.

Our pals over at Used Wigs (what up Jeff!) are hosting their first live show this week, on Friday, June 12th, from 8PM to 10PM. The whole crew from their award winning deserving podcast, Used Wigs Radio, will be on stage dishing out the LOLs nonstop at Ardmore’s Milkboy Coffee.

In addition to their hilarious podcast, they’ve got lots of guests planned. Best selling author Josh Piven, comedian Don Weir, and a musical guest, Philadelphia’s Audible.

For more information, hit up the official site over at Used Wigs. See you there!

Seriously. You should be.

Founded by three incredibly talented local Philly writers, Brian James Kirk, Sean Blanda and Christopher Wink, Technically Philly are quickly setting themselves up to be Philadelphia’s local version of TechCrunch. How? By covering all wakes of Philly’s wonderful local tech scene. Just check out their about section.

From the small group of programmers working on the next big Web application to large businesses that employ hundreds, the Philadelphia technology community is growing. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep track of all of the start-ups, organizations, venture capitalists and businesses that are working to make Philadelphia thrive.

Technically Philly will be there to help you stay on top of all of the news that affects our technology community with a Philadelphia-first mind set, and we will let you know when the next event is happening in your neighborhood. In fact, the three editors of Technically Philly have never even set foot in Silicon Valley.

Chris, Sean, and Brian may not have stepped foot in Silicon Valley, but they sure know what they are talking about. Their site boasts an events page, a Twitter, and more. Add ‘em to your RSS, your bookmarks, tattoo their URL on your chest, whatever. Pay them a visit. You won’t be disappointed.

Technically Philly
www.technicallyphilly.com

It should come as no surprise that some Twitter users are in hot water when they tweet about how much they hate their jobs. The 140 character limit is perfect for blowing off steam after a stressful day at the office. As long as you don’t mind the possibility of waking up the next day without a job. The website Resumebear.com has an article titled “30 Ways to Lose a Job on Twitter”, with accompanying screen grabs of what might get you the pink slip. Some of them are actually pretty funny but at the same time nothing I’d want to lose a job over. Next time, grab a beer with a few friends at a bar and vent about work the old fashioned way.

There have been a ton of social networking sites popping up in the last couple of years. At this point I think most people would understand that there are some things you may want to keep private. However, with each new network, there is always a problem with users who get caught in embarrassing situations. Whether it’s a provocative picture on Myspace, to a drunken provocative picture on Facebook, or those creeps who get caught by Chris Hansen on To Catch A Predator. I guess these are the growing pains of Twitter.

To read the rest of the article and get more examples of what might get you fired, head over to the site here.

Via Reumebear.com