Fatbob

Meet Premier, Newegg’s $49 answer to Amazon Prime. With free three-day shipping, discounted expedited shipping, and free returns, it’s a legitimate competitor to Amazon’s proven customer loyalty program.

Premier of course lacks the video streaming library found on Prime.

Newegg is the second largest e-retailer in the U.S., with 25 million registered users. Second only to Amazon, of course. This launch comes just days after Amazon speculated on its quarterly earnings call that the retailer could raise the price of prime from $80 to $100 or even $120.

“We always seek ways to improve the customer experience and implementing a benefit program is the latest example of how we’re making it easier and more rewarding to shop at Newegg.com,” Soren Mills, Chief Marketing Officer of Newegg North America said in a released statement. “Free expedited shipping is in itself a great benefit, but beyond that we’re including many other perks to enhance the shopping experience.”

Newegg packed other trivial features into its Premier program. Pricing alerts, member-only pricing, dedicated customer service telephone number. And, if that’s not enough, it features “Member-only shopping experience with custom backgrounds and information panel.” Take that, Amazon. Backgrounds.

It seems like snoring has become more of an epidemic than any of us have realized. At CES, Sleep Number revealed its IQ bed that lets bedmates silence a snoring partner. But now there's a pillow that can stop a deafening snorer all by itself.

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Hey, that's a good question! It's unlikely that Ewok tribes keep human dresses around for just this sort of occasion. Where did they get that dress (screenshot below) that they gave to Leia?

There's good potential for a story here. Writers have done a lot with minor characters. One broken droid who briefly appeared at the beginning of Episode IV was turned into Skippy the Jedi Droid. Writers could tell the story of the woman who wore Leia's dress before Wicket and his friends ate her. Heck, why not make it a feature-length movie?

Pininfarina is known for turning Ferraris and other exotic cars into even more impressive works of art, so it's a safe assumption that its new 4.EVER Pininfarina Cambiano writing instrument is going to cost a small fortune when available. But with an inkless design that never needs a new cartridge, it could eventually pay for itself—after a century of use.

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If you’ve ever tried playing music while gaming on a PC, you know the dangers of leaving your current window to change songs; Valve is looking to help you out with their latest update to SteamOS and Big Picture. With Steam Music Beta, you can point Steam to where your music collection is stored on your PC and it will have access to all of your music. While you’re in a game, the music is accessible through the Steam overlay where you can pause, play, skip tracks, browse your collection, or manage your playlist, all without ever leaving the game...

Read the full article: Steam Now Has Music Integration For Big Picture And SteamOS

Can you believe its been twenty years since Ace Ventura: Pet Detective hit theaters? It was Jim Carrey’s breakout hit movie, released while he was still working on the TV show In Living Color. (It wasn’t his first movie, though. He was awful cute in Earth Girls Are Easy.) Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was the beginning of a string of films that made Carrey a household name. I bet there’s a lot of trivia you don’t know about the movie.

1. Jim Carrey wasn’t the first choice for Ace Ventura. As difficult as it is to imagine another actor in the Ace Ventura role, Carrey wasn’t the studio’s first choice. Actor Rick Moranis was approached about the part, but chose to turn it down and do the live-action version of The Flintstones instead.

7. Tone Loc was the biggest actor in the movie. As strange as it seems now, Tone Loc was the biggest name in the cast upon filming the movie. Carrey was still just a Living Color cast member at the time and Friends hadn’t premiered yet. Shadyac wanted a name with some credibility to pair with Carrey and Tone Loc sorta, kinda had that in 1993. Plus, he fit the budget.

What does Friends have to do with it? Oh, Courteney Cox was in the movie. That was back when she was “that girl from the Bruce Springsteen video” or "Alex Keaton's girlfriend." Read the rest of the 15 Surprising Facts at Uproxx.

Battery fires are no fun. JustaskBoeing. Problem is, lithium-ion batteries are full of liquid acid electrolyte that gushes out when a battery's housing ruptures, causing chemical burns and fires. Not fun. But what if, instead of burny liquid, batteries were filled with a viscous goo that would stay put? That's exactly what these Washington State University researchers propose.

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Apparently not even Elton John is immune to the Bible-based movie trend sweeping Hollywood  – but this being Elton John, he’s not exactly going the “serious historical epic” route.

John’s Rocket Pictures has picked up the rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice‘s play Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, with the intention of turning it into an animated musical feature. Get more details after the jump.

THR reports that John will executive produce the film, along with Webber and Rice. Rocket Pictures’ Steve Hamilton Shaw and David Furnish will produce. No writer, director, or stars are attached at this time. The play is based on the “coat of many colors” story from the Biblical Book of Genesis, which also served as the basis for the 2000 direct-to-video animated feature Joseph: King of Dreams.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was originally conceived by Webber and Rice in the late ’60s for performance in schools. Since its first stage production in 1970, it’s become one of the most performed musicals in theater history. Thousands of schools put on the play each year, and it’s been on Broadway and the West End. In 1999, Donny Osmond starred in a direct-to-video film based on the musical.

In December, Webber credited Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables for reviving Hollywood’s interest in musicals. He revealed at the time that a Cats movie was being developed at Universal, and said in a separate interview that a Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat film was “definitely happening.”

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is one of several projects John’s Rocket Pictures has in the works. The company is also producing the John biopic Rocketman, starring Tom Hardy, and is working on the Gnomeo & Juliet sequel Sherlock Gnomes and the animated feature Will Gallows and the Snake Bellied Troll.

• Commercials Director Michael Gracey to Direct Elton John Biopic ‘Rocketman’
• Sequel Bits: Viacom CEO Hints at ‘Mission: Impossible 5′, Plus: ‘Rambo 5′, ‘Gnomeo & Juliet: Sherlock Gnomes’, ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II’
• 2012 Super Bowl TV Commercials Directed By Filmmakers
• Elton John’s Top Casting Choice for the Elton John Biopic: Justin Timberlake
• Elton John Prepping Autobiographical Fantasy ‘Rocketman’
• ‘The Union,’ Cameron Crowe’s Elton John Documentary, Airs On HBO In January

If Steve Jobs had gotten his way, that VAIO in your lap could've been running OS X, Apple's operating system. It sounds like fiction, but consider the source: former Sony president Kunitake Ando. The revelation, which stems from an interview Ando...

Shannon Suttle, 36, stands in the parking lot of a hospital in Zebulon, N.C. His stepson, Michael Morones, just underwent an emergency tracheotomy. The procedure went well: "He's resting now. We got to see him right after the surgery," Suttle says

It's good news he and his family could use

Last week, Michael tried to kill himself by hanging, allegedly after enduring months of bullying at school, in part because of his passion for the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. He's alive but suffering from severe brain damage, unconscious and unable to breathe without assistance. Doctors predict he'll be blind if he ever wakes up Read more...

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EVE: Valkyrie, CCP Games' space dogfighting game, will be co-published by Oculus VR as an Oculus Rift headset exclusive. EVE: Valkyrie started life as EVE VR, an Oculus Rift tech demo built by a small team at CCP. The experience snowballed from...

Namco Bandai officially announced plans to change its name to Bandai Namco. The change, which spans the company's many regional subsidiaries, will go into effect on April 1. Yes, that's April Fool's Day. No, we're pretty sure Namco Ban – sorry,...

Chucklefish is looking to ramp up development on another game. While the studio is hard at work on bringing Starbound out of beta, Chucklefish is putting together a second, separate team in the UK to work on something new. Chucklefish assures this...

Everything you think you know about boozing is wrong

It seems like every time we're out with friends on a Saturday night, we hear the same old adages about our alcoholic beverages. Drinking a beer? Better not have a cocktail. Feeling sick? Have a cup of coffee. But, not surprisingly, these old remedies and sayings hold few truths.

Mental Floss compiled some of the most prevalent misconceptions about our favorite adult libations and got the hilarious host of the web series My Drunk Kitchen, Hannah Hart, to debunk them. Hart's web series, as the title suggests, centers around her attempting to cook a meal while also getting very drunk. Who better to educate the world on this subject? Read more...

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Back in 1985 Tipper Gore testified in front of a Senate committee warning that children were being exposed to all kinds of naughty stuff in modern music. Sex, heresy and violence were destroying good old-fashioned American values. Won't somebody think of the children!

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Evolution and creationism duked it out on Tuesday at the Creation Museum in Kentucky in front of a packed auditorium and hundreds of thousands of viewers at home

The two-and-a-half-hour debate pitted Bill Nye, a science educator and TV personality, against Ken Ham, president of the creationism organization Answers in Genesis and head of the Creation Museum.

Nye and Ham argued over whether creationism is a viable scientific model for explaining the origins of Earth, and while they mostly stayed on topic, both repeated their points so many times that it was easy to get lost. Instead of watching all 150 minutes of the debate, check out Mashable's recap, above, which boils down the main points in just under four minutes. Read more...

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A large beetles called the Makech (Zopherus chilensis) is sometimes worn as jewelry in the Yucatan region of Mexico where it thrives. People attach gems and chains to its shell in order to wear it as a necklace. They are kept as pets when not being worn.  

According to legend, a Maya princess from long ago was destined to marry the prince of a neighboring kingdom, but instead she fell in love with a noble warrior from her village. Enraged, her father announced his intention to kill the warrior. Fear-stricken, the princess pleaded for the young man’s life. If he were spared, she promised to willingly marry the prince as had been planned.

The king listened to his sobbing daughter and consoled her. “Don’t worry, your handsome warrior shall live”. And he kept his word… in a way. A practitioner of the dark arts was called in, and turned the warrior into a beetle. The horrified princess scooped up her beloved and carried him to her room. She adorned him with the most beautiful jewels she could find and placed him on her breast, so he would always be near her heart.

I don’t know …the place where a necklace pendant falls is not where I want to feel an insect crawling around on me. Mike Powell and Juergen Horn visited a shop where Makech are sold. See more pictures and a video of some of these decorated bugs in action at Yucatan for 91 Days.

Like the daily newspaper, the printed phone bill and personal checks, the video game instruction manual is facing extinction in our increasingly paperless world. Hold off on mourning, though. Nintendo has spent the last year or so quietly implementing a digital revival that's been a joy to behold.

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One of the difficulties with comedy is that describing or paraphrasing a joke frequently makes it cease to be funny, so it's hard to convey Jazzpunk's charm without completely squashing its humor in the process. However, this promotional breakfast cereal that Adult Swim and Necrophone Games sent our way gives a good feel for what kind of gags you'll find in the game. They even included a copy of the game on a 5 1/4-inch flopp! Even if you're not prone to reading nutrition facts or ingredients on foodstuffs, you might want to make an exception.

Jazzpunk will be hitting Steam on both PC and Mac this Friday. Expect our full review tomorrow!

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