Step 1: Announce a ridiculously fast gigabit fiber internet service. Step 2: Show everybody how much their internet sucks with the new YouTube speed dashboard.
Unlike most speedtests, it aggregates and shows your video download speed over time, and compares it to other people on the city, state, national and global level, so you can see how your broadband stacks up—and when it doesn't.
It doesn't? *RabbleRabbleRabbleRabbleRabble* [YouTube, Google via TechCrunch]
Just another of Kevin Smith's classic, self-censored, family-appropriate comments from his Macworld Q&A session. [Wired]
TechCrunch has run a dubious-sounding piece, quoting sources as saying Amazon's working on a scheme to give each Amazon Prime user a free Kindle. With an annual membership to Prime costing $79 for extra-fast shipping, they'd be losing $120 from the retail value of the first-gen Kindle.
While I don't think it'll be offered to the one-month trial members, it would definitely encourage more Prime sign-ups—and therefore, more Amazon purchases. Still, to give away a free Kindle sounds way too generous, even for Amazon. [TechCrunch]
At first glance, I thought Mathmos has released a new mood light, but that glowing blue image is actually of Saturn, captured by the Hubble telescope. It's a very rare photo, as both poles and rings are visible.
You actually just make out the Northern Lights-like aurorae on both poles, which is apparently caused by solar wind from the sun mixing up with molecules. Sadly, this is the only chance you'll get at having Saturn's aurorae as your desktop wallpaper, as the angle from which they can be viewed at is only possible twice every 30 years, and the Hubble telescope will no longer be used when the next opportunity comes along.
I feel pretty sad about that, but not as sad as I was when reading xkcd's biography on the life of the Mars Spirit Rover. Let's not get our space-set emotional battles mixed up, now. [The Guardian]
You have to break open an egg to get to the edible goodness—so it makes sense you'd have to take a hammer to an $800 lamp to make it work. Wait, what am I saying?
It may look very cool in its "I'm making a statement" type of way, but to spend $800 on a lamp you need to break open in order to make it work is absurd. Only at the MoMA store, obviously. [MoMA via Technabob]
Glimpsed in the most hi-res outfit we've seen so far is the HTC Legend, which—if rumors prove correct—should be shown off next week at MWC.
It still looks like the Hero only with a unibody aluminum shell, but according to Dutch carrier KPN it'll go on sale March. KPN's advert for the Legend touts it as having a 600Mhz processor, an optical trackpad instead of the ball seen on previous models, and a 3.2-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. The other specs gleaned from KPN seem par for the course—a 5.0-megapixel camera with LED flash, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Android 2.1 (Eclair), and it looks like it'll be running HTC Sense, the Android skin which they've used on a lot of their recent models.
The leaked pics we saw recently of the Legend showed it as having black plastic inserts at the base and top of the back casing, where the SIM card, microSD card slot and camera are. It's still got a chin by the looks of the profile photo on KPN's site, but if you ask me that's a good thing. This is definitely a phone to get excited about. [Tweakers via Electronista]
Just as Motorola was getting its act together and releasing brilliant hardware after years of, well, dirge, they're now splitting down the middle into two independent companies—on one side the phone division, the other, wireless networking. Don't glare at your Droid and vow to never put more money into Motorola, because the split is actually a good thing.
It'll make them more streamlined and focused, with equal attention being placed on each side—though the handset and set-top box side will own the name and license it to the dustier wireless networking and radio systems unit. Sounds fair, considering we only care about the mobile division anyway, but apparently they're both raking in around the same amount in sales (approximately $11 billion last year each).
Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day when I could write about Moto's corporate struggles and actually be able to put a positive spin on it, but it does sound like the right decision has been made up above. [NY Times]
Swapping Twitterberry for Ubertwitter was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life, but even that has its shortfalls. BlackBerry's impending Twitter app looks heaps better, from the design to actual usability.
It's not available yet, but you can sign up for an invite code for the beta launch later this year. I haven't tested it out yet on my Bold 9700 as am juggling another phone today, but I'll definitely be giving my thoughts on it next week after trying it out properly (read: tweeting about my cat).
In the meantime, let's look at some of those features. You can compose a new tweet from the feed of updates, rather than having to go to a separate screen like in most apps. It's compatible with a lot of the native BlackBerry programs, enabling you to send a URL from the browser to Twitter (automatically resizing it to a bit.ly link), with the same process possible when taking a photo, using the Twitpic service.
The navigation icons at the top are a heck of a lot cleaner and more in keeping with the BlackBerry UI—as you'd expect, considering they developed it. From left to right, the icons include help, replies, your profile, direct messages, search for a user, search (which lets you filter by proximity), and trending topics.
Direct messages are pushed through instantly, and the official retweet function is supported by the app. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing, I'll leave it to you to decide, but I personally can't stand that new recycled retweet feature. Nothing worse than seeing someone's face in your feed, who you unfollowed long ago. Or maybe that's just me.
Before the big roll-out at the end of the year, BlackBerry intends on polishing it up and has even mentioned the possibility of adding geo-tagging support, lists, profile editing and multi-account log-in. All those features would be excellent please BlackBerry, but particularly the latter. [BlackBerry Blogs]
Good news—Digitimes is reporting that many of the Taiwanese phone suppliers are ditching resistive touchscreens and focusing their attentions on ramping up production of the much more superior capacitive panels. Today is a great day to be a finger. [Digitimes]
While new colorways aren't exactly our bag, we'll make an exception for the Panasonic GF1 just because it's so damned cool. It'll be available in silver and pink options from March 12th. [Panasonic via Akihabara News]
Of all the xkcd comics, it's the Valentine's Day ones that are always my favorites. Even when they're bittersweet like this one.
You can click on the image for a closer look.
I suppose the lesson is to forget romance once science comes into the picture. [xkcd]
Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.
You're looking at a mosquito who got taken down mid-flight by a "Death Star" laser gun designed by Nathan Myhrvold. The malaria-carrying pest never saw it coming, but you can watch everything happen over and over again in this video.
The idea behind the "Death Star" laser is that it could be used to control mosquito populations in developing countries in hopes of reducing the number of deaths due to malaria, a disease frequently carried by the flying insects. The device was shown off during the TED 2010 conference and does in fact appear to be capable of tracking and killing mosquitoes. Oh, and it was built out of parts found on eBay. [Wired]
Yes, Google will plan my wedding one day. Or at least I might use the wedding planning templates in Google Docs to organize things while wishing that Sergey Brin and Larry Page would personally plan my bachelorette party.
Right in time for the cheesiest of all romantic holidays, Google has partnered with Style Me Pretty to provide 20 different customizable wedding planning templates through Google Docs. There's a template for nearly everything from writing vows to sorting out seating arrangements.
Not that I'm ungrateful to Google for assisting me in in becoming a ball-and-chain one day, but geez. Getting into the wedding business seems a bit too much. Even for the Big G. [Google Blog via TechCrunch]
Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.
Fred Morrison didn't cure a disease, go to the moon, or invent some high-tech gadget. But he made many of our lives just a bit happier with a simple toy that prompted dreams of flying saucers and sparked intramural games.
According to his son, "old age caught up" with Morrison as he dealt with a battle against cancer. Yet somehow, this remark appears to be the only sad line in Morrison's obituary.
The man's life sounds like it contained as much joy as he brought to children and adults around the world with his invention. In fact, even the events which led to the creation of what is now known as a Frisbee sound happy:
Morrison and his future wife, Lu, used to toss a tin cake pan on the beach in California. The idea grew as Morrison considered ways to make the cake pans fly better and after serving as a pilot in World War II, Morrison began manufacturing his flying discs in 1948.
From there the simple plastic disc would change name from "Pluto Platter" to "Frisbee," but it would remain an staple in memories of summers in the park, beach games of Frisbee golf, and late night Ultimate Frisbee competitions.
So, while Fred Morrison's passing is a sad event, it's heartwarming to hear that he led a good life as he gave us an excuse to laugh and giggle as we send pieces of plastic whizzing through the air. [Yahoo]
Picture from Wikipedia
Next week, for the first time, the public will be able to see how our government might respond to a full-fledged act of cyber terrorism, in a simulation that will include top intelligence and security officials.
On February 16, the Bipartisan Policy Center-hosted event, dubbed Cyber ShockWave, will assemble many top officials in the "White House situation room"—recreated by set designers in a conference room at the Mandarin Hotel—to respond to a multifacted cyber attack of which they will have no previous knowledge.
The attack, designed by security experts and embellished by professional scriptwriters (really), will unfold dynamically throughout the course of the simulation. The participants, including former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponter and former Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend among others, will have to figure out a course of action on the fly.
The fun part: we'll get to see how they do. Though the government has held similar simulations in the past, this will be the first time the process will be open to the public. CNN camera crews will be on location, shooting video that will run in the days following.
I'm curious to see how this group of people who are, of course, quite intelligent, but also, you know, quite old, respond to a fully-realized cyber attack. Hopefully they'll be able to sort out their firewalls from their Firefoxes. [The Atlantic via Computer World UK]
The iTunes Store is close to hitting 10 billion song downloads and to celebrate Apple is giving a lucky boy or gal a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. Of course, no purchase is necessary to be entered into the drawing.
To throw your name into the hat, you can either purchase a song from the iTunes store or fill out this form anytime between today and whenever the 10 billionth song is downloaded. The important part is that:
The prize will be awarded for the entry (either through a song download or through the non-purchase online entry) sent immediately following the download of the 9,999,999,999th song.
I just wonder what the winning song will be (assuming that it's a purchase-based entry that wins). [Apple]
An Onion News Network piece that makes fun of NASA and awkward flirtation all at once? Be still my laughing heart. Seriously, though: it's good to have an eight-year plan.
Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love. [The Onion]
Anthony Holtvogt was careless enough to accidentally fire his gun in a restaurant, but thankfully his girlfriend must've bought her BlackBerry from Superman. It's the only explanation I've got for the fact that the phone stopped a bullet.
Ok, so maybe it was simply a matter of the BlackBerry being in just the right spot and the bullet hitting it in just the right way. And it's entirely possible that Anthony got dumped after accidentally shooting his own girlfriend.
I just like to think that it really was Superman's BlackBerry and that it really did save a relationship. [WDTN via GottaBeMobile—Thanks, Matthew!]
It feels like all of the nine million Google Buzz posts and comments flooded your inbox this week. And as if that wasn't enough, suddenly that creepy ex started "following" you. Google has a fix for one of those issues.
As a result of user feedback, Google has made these little changes to turn Buzz into something slightly less creepy without having to resort to elaborate workarounds:
Now if only they could make the whole thing less annoying. [Gmail Blog]
Somehow it's just not fun to work in a messy or unorganized kitchen—or at least that's my excuse. The Ekokook kitchen concept is neither though. It's organized, clean, eco-friendly, and oh-so-gorgeous.
Ekokook's entire layout appears to have been very well thought out with fresh vegetable storage, water conservation, container gardening, waste sorting, recycling, and composting. And it really doesn't hurt that the design itself seems to promote neatness.
I can already imagine leaving a plate of freshly baked cookies sitting on that counter. [Inhabitat]
