PALAOA, the Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean, listens to the waters below Antarctica for the sounds of whales and other marine mammals amidst a soundscape of constantly shifting ice. Here's what they're hearing right now.

PALAOA's Livestream page has links to the audio stream in both MP3 and OGG-Vorbis.

If you're expecting to tune in and instantly hear glorious, crystal-clear whale song, you might be disappointed. As the page explains:

Please note, this transmission is not optimized for easy listening, but for scientific research. It is highly compressed...so sound quality is far from perfect. Additionally, animal voices may be very faint. Amplifier settings are a compromise between picking up distant animals and not overdriving the system by nearby calving icebergs...A constant hiss pervading the signal is partly due to electronic noise as we push the hydrophone amplifiers to their limits, but also the natural ocean background noise made audible here through the use of ultra sensitive hydrophones. Additional broad band noise caused by wind, waves and currents adds to it on occasion. There a three sources of click-like interference: switching relais, electrostatic discharges caused by snow drift, and sferics produced by thunderstorms ten thousands of kilometers away.

Still, the idea is undeniably cool and there is some impressive technology that makes it all happen.
Two hydrophones capture the underwater audio outside a wind and solar powered observatory on the Ekström ice shelf. The data is transmitted wirelessly to another base in Germany and then beamed to listeners worldwide via satellite.

If you're looking for some ambient noise to listen to while you do some work or drift to sleep, it's hard to think of anything more amazing than this. [PALOAO]

Caleb Larsen's "A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter" isn't quite as menacing as its name makes it out to be, but it's definitely a flighty little fellow: it continually creates new eBay auctions for itself via a built-in Ethernet jack.

No owner is quite good enough for this big-headed piece. Larsen's "Tool," a shiny, black cube with an Ethernet jack, pings a server every ten minutes to determine if it is listed for sale on eBay. If it's not, it creates a new auction. Mind you, this isn't only a conceptual function of the piece; it really is constantly auctioning itself and being purchased by new owners. You can view the current auction at http://atooltodeceiveandslaughter.com/.

The going price for the current auction, ending in five days, is $4,250. The piece has been in circulation since 2008.

"A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter" isn't for art collectors with fragile egos. It will leave you. Unless, of course, you forget to plug it in. [Caleb Larsen via Make]

There's no shortage of portable, wafer-thin speakers for iPods, iPhones and other pocketable media devices. But the "oh-look-at-me-and-my-cool-case" Card Speaker, designed by IDEA International, has the trappings to make it stand out from the pack.

The Card Speaker is about the same size as an iPod and shares its design principles, too: simple and clean. The company claims it "puts most every mp3 accessory to shame with its good looks and crisp fidelity." The former may be true, though the latter remains to be seen.

Still, if its packaging is any reflection on the Card Speaker's sound quality, it could live up to its description. The portable speaker comes in a handsome case with space for a short 3.5mm cord and a USB cable for charging. The Card Speaker's battery lasts up to five hours on a charge, certainly enough time for a stranger to notice your portable audio set up and compliment you on its elegance.

The $75 Card Speaker comes in silver or black and can be had at The Ghostly Store. [Unplggd]

Yesterday Google updated their Google Voice extension for Chrome, allowing Voice-heads to call numbers directly from their browsers. If you love Google or hate retyping phone numbers, this one's for you.

One of the great things about upgrading to a smartphone years ago was that all numbers were links. The updated Voice extension for Chrome allows for a similar streamlining in your browser.

The extension basically just turns phone numbers into clickable links, eliminating the need to cut and paste them across windows. It also adds a phone icon to Chrome, letting you quickly place calls and choose the number from which you do so. While it's a nice step towards a lazier future, there are some caveats. Mac users, for example, will need to install the latest Chromium build, not just the regular old Chrome, to gain the functionality.

Some people might find this capability insignificant, but anything that makes it easier to order food from places I find on Yelp is worthwhile in my book. [Google via TechCrunch]

These lathed oak jar lamps, designed by Noon Studios, are an exquisite marriage of form and function. Removing all buttons and switches, a simple twist of their tops allows more or less light to spill from the jar.

Most lamps looks like something you'd build with an erector set. London-based Noon Studio's Jar Lamps go for something a little softer, a little simpler, and a lot more beautiful. Instead of shining light directly on your desktop, these desk lamps throw a nice even glow on your workspace.

There's no information on availability, as is often the tragic case with objects of beauty you find on the internet, but check out Noon Studio's site to see more of their work. [Noon Studio via NOTCOT]

George Hotz, the young gun who first hacked the iPhone 2G, has claimed to have compromised the Playstation 3. On his blog, Hotz wrote:

I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip.

Hotz hasn't revealed the exact details of the exploit, so nothing's confirmed quite yet, but interested PS3 users should stay tuned to see how this unfolds. [iHackintosh]

We've covered how technology has shaped relief efforts in Haiti and shown how it has affected our perception of the nation's continuing tragedy. CNN is now offering new perspectives of the devastated nation with three interactive, immersive videos.

The videos were shot over the last week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital and largest city, the third of which captures the destruction most strikingly. The technology comes courtesy of Immersive Media, a company that specializes in interactive 360 degree video and helped provide much of the data that powers Google Street View. Their website already had demos of their unique videos, in which the viewer has full control to pan and zoom even as the video plays, but it's good to see the technology being applied to a very current event and displayed on as visible a platform as CNN.com.

The situation in Haiti remains in many ways unfathomable, no matter how many reports or photos or statistics one consumes. But this type of project shows how technology is constantly providing new ways to experience and understand the world. [CNN via Boing Boing]

If simply flying your RC plane isn't quite giving you the thrill it used to, it could be time to upgrade your firepower. The plug and play Quanum bomb system might be just the bad idea you were looking for.

Looking disturbingly realistic and being dangerously easy to install, the Quanum RC bomb system could spell trouble if found in the hands of the wrong remote control pilots.

Though RC bombs aren't exactly a new idea, Quanum's $17 kit seems simple and effective. The system sticks onto the underside of any RC aircraft, size .25 or larger, and can be triggered by an extra servo channel in your receiver. The bomb itself is made of a durable nylon. You can fill it with any payload your fiendish heart desires. Packing it with chalk powder results in a nice plume of smoke; filling it with strawberry jam results in hilarity of some sort.

The system includes an extra release plate so you can design and drop your own custom armaments: a bouquet of flowers for an unsuspecting loved one or maybe some fertilizer over your pumpkin patch. JUST KIDDING. Load that sucker up with a water balloon and then it's bombs away. [Nerd Approved]

Pinch to zoom? Nah. Try unfold to zoom. The Map2, a "zoomable map on paper," is a clever invention that packs more detailed maps underneath its folds.

With GPS and map software ubiquitous on every smartphone, it's a sad reality that paper maps have fallen by the wayside. With location-based searching, powerful zoom capaibilities, and a GPS chip tracking your every move, it's hard to deny the advantages of digital maps.

But there's still something satisfying about squinting your eyes, pointing your index finger, and finding your route on a good old paper map. Enter Map2, a high tech, low tech map that lets you zoom in to a more detailed view without going digital.

From the original fold, each of the four quadrants can be unfolded to reveal a more detailed map of that area; the Map2 is essentially five maps in one.

If you're looking for a compromise between the comforting exactitude of digital maps and the old-fashioned thrill of not knowing exactly where you're going, the Map2 might be just the ticket. The $13 map is currently only available for the City of London, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this solution roll out for other cities in the near future. [Wired]

It's no secret that Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo are always expanding their reaches, slowly but surely adding new products and services into their line-ups. The New York Times's Nick Bilton took a step back and surveyed their empires.

It doesn't come as much of a surprise to see how much these four behemoths overlap, and I doubt anyone will be surprised when these companies continue to fill in this grid in 2010.

Looking at the empty spaces reveals where we might look for these companies to grow. There have been grumblings of a Google music store for a while, and it seems entirely possible that Apple's Tablet will at least in part emphasize its capabilities as a gaming device.

As the companies stretch and grow, some of their endeavors will prove more successful than others, but until then this chart is an interesting reminder of how vast their reaches already are. [New York Times Bits]