Brain chemistry questionnaires, genetic testing: online dating sites are going to pretty extreme lengths to prove that their methodology is the most advanced. Because hey, then they can justify higher rates! But does any of it actually work?

The NY Times gives a rundown of a few sites that embrace Cupid's geekier side. For a $2000 lifetime membership, for example, ScientificMatch.com uses a DNA sample—from a cheek swab, sicko—to test for genetic markers in your immune system that may indicate compatibility. Chemistry.com employs a questionnaire developed by a biological anthropologist to match up temperaments for $50/month. And eHarmony, the granddaddy of them all, uses sociological variables to filter and sort its members for up to $46/month.

Online dating is a $976 million a year industry, so it's either working for some people or singles are very persistent/wealthy these days. But success rates are hard to measure, even for dating sites with a scientific slant. And whatever successes are found may not stem from fancy questionnaires as much as the self-selecting, pre-screened pool of people ready to find that special someone:

The sites attract cohorts of people interested in slowing down the online dating and mating process, in finding out more information about potential partners - or in ruling out unlikely suitors - before they graduate to the meet-and-greet stage.

And while $50 a month might sound expensive for meeting someone, the Times also points out that it's a heck of a lot less than a monthly tab at a single's bar. [NY Times]

Warner Music, one of the four largest record labels, is upset with just how free their music is online, and they're not talking about piracy: They're worried about legit, ad-supported services like Last.fm, Spotify and Pandora. Uh oh.

Warner execs, who were just yesterday lamenting the (shocking!) correlation between raised iTunes prices and decrease sales, are just as uncomfortable with above-ground free services. Says Warner's Edgar Bronfman Jr, via the BBC:

Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed.

"The 'get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price' strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future.

The free services he's referring to are only free in the sense that you don't have to pay upfront for music streaming; they're not free in that you're generally being subjected to ads in exchange for listening.

Their problem with services like this seems to be twofold. The first and most obvious problem with a service like Pandora is that their advertising is probably bring in much, much less revenue that a simple digital or physical purchase. The second issue, subtle as it may be, is even more pernicious: to allow services to exist to appear to give away your music at no real cost is to devalue your product, making customers less likely to pay for it in the future. At least, that's the thinking.

Whether Warner will sever existing agreements or just refuse to enter into new ones remains to be seen, but one thing's for certain—the music industry is no happier to dismantle their decades-old business model than the the media is. It's just a shame they're figuring that out now, just as ad-supported music sites are coming of age, in no small part due to major label support. Business!

Update: Though the original BBC article makes reference to Pandora, the company tells reader Ryan Murphy that their service shouldn't be affected:

Edgar Bronfman's comment on the Warner conference call was addressing free on-demand services such as Spotify that are directly licensed. Pandora operates under a different licensing structure and won't be impacted by Warner's apparent decision with respect to free, on-demand services.

[BBC]

According to an FCC filing confidentiality request, it seems likely that the Pre could arrive on AT&T this May. Neat, but why would anyone choose AT&T over Sprint or Verizon? (That's an earnest question, in case you're of that misunderstood camp and care to enlighten the group.) [FCC and PreCentral via Engadget]

Occasionally I cover my ears and sing "Lalalala, I'm not listening to your concept description." Today I'm covering them and begging "No! Don't punch holes into my poor earlobes and make me use this hearing aid when I'm old! Please!"

I understand that it's a gradual process to stretch out one's earlobes and wear jewelry that looks like the PLUG hearing aid concept—heck, it's even trendy to some—but that doesn't mean that I could imagine a lot of people actually using this hearing aid if it ever turns into a real product. [Design Affairs]

TechCrunch is reporting that an iPad-friendly version of Hulu is in the works, and may be ready in time for the tablet's launch. Oh, sweet mercy, let it be true.

The bad news is that the rumor gets pretty vague "industry insider" sourcing. The good news is that the move would make perfect sense for Hulu, especially given that they've reportedly already had an iPhone app in the works for some time.

The barriers to entry for Hulu on the iPad aren't as insurmountable as they may seem. All of Hulu's videos are already encoded in H.264, which is supported by Quicktime and Safari. So Hulu could simply have its videos open in Quicktime (since the iPad and iPhone don't support Flash). Or, more likely, they could build a custom app with its own player. Of course, since Hulu.com is built on Flash, the result might not look or act quite the way the site does, but as long as the content is there, I'm fine with that.

As with all rumors, time will tell. But this one's got a shorter time horizon than most. The iPad launches in March, and having Hulu along for the ride would be a pretty sweet selling point. [TechCrunch]

Nielsen stats put the average teen's texting rate at about ten per hour during the day. This, and basic math, leads to some terrifying conclusions!

For example: Nielsen says that this rate of texting results in somewhere over 3000 text per month, per teen, on average. This means that nearly half of every day is texting time for these people, which, assuming they sleep at all, means that they're either texting steadily all day, or a ton during after-school hours. And let's say these texts average out to about 80 characters, which is half the maximum length for a text message: Even if the average word length is very generous five characters (that's six, including a space), these kids are tapping out about 40,000 words of ephemeral nothingness every month, or roughly one Catcher in the Rye's worth of "WILL UR BRTHR BUY US SUM BEER?" and "R U REDDY 2 DO IT YET?" every two months.

What happens when these people get old? Nielsen, for what it's worth, says they'll just keep texting. [Marketing Vox via Textually via Twitter]

For this week's Shooting Challenge, we're playing with the human mind. How do you know something in a picture is really that large or small? Or put differently, why the hell did no one tell me I was a giant??

The Challenge

Trick our sense of scale using forced perspective. In other words, I ask that no one goes the tilt-shift or macro route. We're not creating miniatures through lens distortion as much as we're abusing the basic laws of perspective for our adolescent giggles.

The Method

We're all familiar with crushing friends' heads with our fingers, but for a bit more on the techniques behind forced perspective, Environmental Graffiti's tutorial is loaded with examples and tips. But the best advice? The simpler the landscape, the more fake-able the effect.

The Rules

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.
5. Include 800px wide image AND 2560x1600 sized in email. (The 800px image is the one judged, so feel free to crop/alter the image for wallpaper-sized dimensions.)

Send your best entries by Sunday, February 14th at 6PM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with "Forced Perspective" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg (800px) and FirstnameLastnameWALLPAPER.jpg (2560px) naming conventions. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email.

I can't wait to see what you come up with! (Just don't squish my head again, it's surprisingly painful.) [Image source]

Did you know that the music you're listening to is literal torture for the sensitive ears of your pet? It's scientifically probably true! My Pet Speaker filters out harsh animal-only frequencies, so you and Fido can jam together in comfort.

The speakers are made by Pet Acoustics, who have previously blessed us with an iPhone app dedicated to music explicitly written for the three most common household pets: dogs, cats, and... horses. Anyway! Their My Pet Speakers take a slightly different approach to serving your four-legged friend's aural needs:

My Pet Speaker features an Omni directional speaker with a 4" drive unit and cone reflector which disburses the music in 360 degrees recreating how animals hear in nature. By producing limited frequencies and featuring a soft bass design for listening comfort, your pets will not be startled or disturbed by jarring volumes and piercing sounds that put them on alert.

That's right! Fido won't be disturbed. Your friends and loved ones might be, though, after they find out you spent $250 on a speaker for your pet. [Pet Acoustics]

The iMac's notorious flickering problem has been solved through a firmware update. And after a few weeks' hiatus, Apple has continued shipping 27-inch iMacs. This may be it.

Can You Safely Buy a New iMac Yet?

Nope, but you might be able to next week.

Why?

There are two noted problems with iMacs—the 27-inch models in particular. First is an issue where their screens flicker. Apple released a firmware update for the problem, but it didn't seem to fix it. However, the second firmware update looks to have been more successful. How successful?

Combing through about 30 pages of this thread (thanks Kyle), dozens have found the second update successful—and similar threads have come to similar conclusions. A few outliers still exist, but the vast consensus seems to be that the issue is nullified when the update is properly installed.

So it looks like the flickering problem is fixed for most users. This is great news—a huge breakthrough in this whole saga. If your iMac is still flickering after the update, call up Apple and demand new hardware. It finally seems safe to say, you're probably in the minority.

But the existing, huge question mark is regarding the yellow screens. Are these fixed yet? Apple halted production lines in what we assumed as an attempt to solve the yellow screen problems (among other iMac quirks). Now they're shipping new 27-inch iMacs again.

Theoretically, the yellow screens could be behind us. But until customers actually receive and test these iMacs, we don't know if Apple was able to solve whatever problems are going on.

Apple most certainly hasn't made claims either way.

What Ever Happened With Those Apple Pay-outs

We received reports from the UK, and then the US, that Apple was essentially buying back faulty iMacs for 15% over the sticker price. It was until later, however, that we learned the catch. What once looked like a pretty great deal turned out, well, mediocre. The 15% was a flat payback rate that was meant to cover both tax and shipping. We assume it covered purchasing expenses, but a money hand-out it was not. It's also worth mentioning that this deal was handed out sporadically, and I'm not sure it's still being offered to customers at all.

Quote of the Week

"[Apple] said they can issue me a refund via check that'll come 4-6 weeks. That's nearly $2600 of my money they're going to hold for over 2 months since the day I paid for this messed up computer."

Apple Is All In

So this is it, the big moment of truth. Without official word, we are forced to interpret the delivery freezes as both a silent admission that there were problems with iMacs and an attempt to fix them. But who knows if Apple actually solved the yellow screens. Especially if the source of the issue is really in the LG panel itself—which some suspect given similar complaints with similar Dell monitors—it's possible that Apple can't cure the jaundice without raising hell down at the factory, or shopping for another supplier. (This problem shouldn't be the consumer's inconvenience, of course.) We won't know until we see the latest iMacs in the wild.

We've got a lot of sources—retail/repair spies, plenty of tipsters who are on their third or fourth faulty iMac and, of course, all of you—just waiting to share their replacement experiences. Tip us at submissions@gizmodo.com and join in.

Apple, I hope we can put these problems behind us because neither of us wants to see how bad that apple on the table can rot.

Love can be difficult. Throwing tech into the mix can complicate things even more.

We've got tech that can put us in touch with so many people at once, but can keep us from real intimacy with our closest few: Facebook friends don't have to meet, tweets don't require thoughtfulness, movie dates don't require talking, and sexting obviates touching. But we still need to get down to brass tacks for love and fucking. Uh, so to speak.

The underlying game remains but it seems like we have a lot more interference to deal with.

Of course, it isn't that one-sided. We're meeting people we might have never met before, and we're engaging with them, even superficially, across barriers and distances and with immediacy impossible even a few decades ago.

But my guess is that when we spend all this time at arms length or farther, engaging in little meaningless conversations with the crowd, it's hard to imagine we're all as good at the one-on-one time than we might been sometime in the last century. I might even suggest from my pop psychobabble arm chair that gadget geeks who prefer to fiddle with apps at a party instead of conversing with other human beings are at least slightly damaged romantic goods. I'd be speaking about myself. And so would my girlfriend:

When Brian first brought his iPhone home, it was like he'd taken a mistress. All day, all night, he fondled its touchscreen and gawked at its shiny face. He couldn't keep his eyes off of it for more than five minutes at a time. Like a good Japanese girlfriend, I let him get the lust out of his system instead of trying to stop the inevitable. I pretended not to care while he lay in bed smoothing his finger across the unlock bar, and sat stoically at the other end of the dinner table as he and the iPhone whispered sweet nothings to each other.

Geek-on-geek love isn't all bad. Nerds use the same websites and gadgets and develop, together, the same affinities and rules of right and wrong. The challenge is, along the worldwide spectrum from geek to non-geek, everyone gets comfortable with these modern tools at different paces. What's left, and constant, then, is human nature.

For the next few days, counting down to Valentine's day, we're exploring love in modern times. Our resident love doctor, Dr. Debby Herbenick, will be sharing wisdom and data to help us understand the new challenges, and we'll all be publishing various takes on this complicated subject, as well as sharing your experiences as well.

It's not all bad, in fact, sometimes it's beautiful, but let's face it, love is messy enough and adding social networks and smartphones into the mix without any established rules for how or when to use them properly, things can only get messier.

This is where our theme—and our exploration of awkward geek love—begins.

You can read all our Bad Valentine stories here.

Have you ever wondered how wicked and weird the Universe would look as you free fall into a black hole at nearly the speed of light? Wonder no more, my dear Alice, and play this video.

The stars' light gets distorted as you get closer to the black hole's horizon. First, their light turns redder, as the photons try to escape the black hole's strong gravitational field, which stretches the light wavelength. But since you are traveling at nearly the speed of light, the effect gets compensated by the Doppler effect, turning them back to blue. At the middle of the black hole, the entire universe looks like a bright ring around the black hole.

In this video you can see the same fall, but with rockets slowing the spaceship descent into the hole:

The simulation was created by Thomas Müller using his program—available as a Linux and Windows download. His software accurately shows the effect of black holes in the Universe light, using physics and a map of more than 118,000 stars created using the information captured by ESA's Hipparcos spacecraft. [VIS via New Scientist]

Controllers can be a hassle to keep track of, and often clutter up valuable home entertainment space. But here comes the Wall Clip, what Mary Poppins would surely have used if the Banks children had been gamers.

I'm sure the Wall Clip can be used to mount any number of non-video-game-accessory items to your wall, and it's that flexibility that makes them so handy. You can mount anything from a Wii Nunchuck to a Guitar Hero axe by bending and shaping each Wall Clip as necessary.

They're available in a range of ten colors, and you can pick up four for just ten bucks. And if anyone questions why you've got video game controllers hanging on your walls, explain to them that it's part of the decor, and politely escort them from the premises. [Laboratory 424 via Unpluggd]

Air Mice are fine enough if you have to control an HTPC from your bed, across the room, they're usually inaccurate and finicky. Why not make it a regular mouse too? And lo, the eVouse is.

This concept, which designer Marcial Ahsayane shoved a Microsoft logo on, transforms from a right-side-up B2 bomber in regular mouse mode to a holy-crap-stop-turning-so-sharply B2 bomber in air mouse mode. You use the latter mode to do stuff "like drawing, "optical pens" do, like drawing and pointing at stuff. [Yanko Design]

Dell's U2711, on sale for $1,100 today, seems like the monitor dreams are made of, with 2560x1440 resolution, 100 percent representation of the sRGB color space, 6ms response and a window-friendly matte finish. There's just one, tiny catch. UPDATE

This Dell monitor is believed to use the same LG-sourced panel that's been plaguing iMacs. You know, the yellow one.

To make matters worse, some have already complained that these LG-sourced monitors are already causing problems in the Dell monitor line.

The potential issues haven't prevented Dell from securing a CNET Editor's Choice on the U2711, so maybe they're just fine. But I would strongly recommend you take a look at the return policy before ordering. Full specs at: [Dell via Electronista]

UPDATE: Excellent point from a reader—the 27-inch iMac uses the same LG basic LM270WQ1 IPS panel but the Dell uses a conventional CCFL backlight as opposed to the iMac's LEDs. Especially since the LED matrix positioning has been suspected of causing yellow iMacs, the idea that this Dell display would be just fine makes some level of sense.

Reader Akis Alekozidis sent us a few mockups of apps running on the iPad. The multi-pane layouts are very similar to what we've seen Apple do so far in-house. Not bad, but where the heck is my fullscreen GIANT-BUTTONED CALCULATOR?

The $500 16GB, Wi-Fi only iPad costs Apple less than half that to build, according to a recent component breakdown from iSuppli. And for the 64GB 3G iPad, Apple clears nearly $500 in profit. Here's how it breaks down:

Apple iPad Estimated Bill-of-Materials and Manufacturing Cost Analysis:
This will no doubt be updated once iSuppli and others are able to do a teardown of an actual device, but those estimated profit margins are pretty stunning, particularly on the higher-end models. iSuppli also points out that the 32GB versions of the iPad only cost $30 more to make than their 16GB counterparts, yet retail for $100 more—a good indication that that's where they expect the sweet spot to be in the market.

Goes a long way to explaining why Apple's so willing to be flexible on the price, no?[iSuppli]

A series of emails that surfaced in an old Microsoft antitrust case have come to light, the most interesting of which show Bill Gates admitting his company was "flat footed" in the wake of the 2003 iTunes launch.

Microsoft executive Jim Allchin responded to the Gates admission succinctly enough: "We were smoked." You might remember Allchin as the guy who later took the fall for Vista and coped by, naturally, putting out a rock-n-roll album.

It's not the first email that's caught Gates owning up to his company's faults, and I'm sure it won't be the last. What's interesting about this one, though, is his encouragement to "move quick and match and do stuff better." Seven years later, and I'd say they've still got a ways to go.

——- Original Message ——-
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wed 4/30/2003 10:46 PM
To: Amir Majidimehr; Dave Fester
Cc: Will Poole; Christopher Payne; Yusuf Mehdi; David Cole; Hank Vigil
Subject: Apple's Jobs again.., and time to have a great Windows download service...

Steve Jobs ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

This time somehow he has applied his talents in getting a better Licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music.

This is very strange to me. The music companies own operations offer a service that is truly unfriendly to the user and has been reviewed that way consistently.

Somehow they decide to give Apple the ability to do something pretty good.

I remember discussing EMusic and us saying that model was better than subscription because you would know what you are getting.

With the subscription who can promise you that the cool new stuff you want (or old stuff) will be there?

I am not saying this strangeness means we messed up - at least if we did so did Real and Pressplay and Musicnet and basically everyone else.

Now that Jobs has done it we need to move fast to get something where the UI and Rights are as good.

I am not sure whether we should do this through one of these JVs or not. I am not sure what the problems are.

However I think we need some plan to prove that even though Jobs has us a bit flat footed again we move quick and both match and do stuff better.

I'm sure people have a lot of thoughts on this. If the plan is clear no meeting is needed. I want to make sure we are coordinated between Windows DMD, MSN and other groups.

.... Original Message ....
From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 4:58 PM
To: Amir Majidimehr; Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Will Poole; David Cole
Subject: Apple's music store

1. How did they get the music companies to go along?

2. We were smoked.

jim

[Groklaw]

The Hoodie-Footie Snuggle Suit: It's a Snuggie, except fitted, fleece, and with feet. Yes, ok, it's pink, and the ad explicitly says "for women," but I will not stand for such disgusting misandry in 2010. I'll take ten, please. [Consumerist]

Since Google wants to control all forms of communication, the logical next step is being not just what you do on the internet, but how you access the internet as well. To do that, they'll deploy 1Gbps fiber to you.

The company is going to test this super high speed internet to "a small number of trial locations across the United States," and give somewhere between 50k to 500k people an amazingly fast pipe. What's the point of this?

* Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it's creating new bandwidth-intensive "killer apps" and services, or other uses we can't yet imagine.
* New deployment techniques: We'll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we'll share key lessons learned with the world.
* Openness and choice: We'll operate an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.

We basically read that as bridging the gap between webapps and desktop apps by making the connection so fast that most people won't be able to tell the difference. And, forcing other ISPs to upgrade their pipes to compete with Google, since they say it's going to be released at "a competitive price". Think of it as the Nexus One of service providers. Google is going to make an offering that's better than other comparable devices/services in order to make everyone else play catch-up.

So, if you want my address, Google, to know where you need to deploy the test, you've probably got it already. Seriously man, I need this. [Google]

T-Mobile is still calling the myTouch 3G update myTouch 3G, but the latest version has a 3.5mm headphone jack, 288MB RAM, 8GB microSD card, Swype for text input and a few included apps like Visual Voicemail and a Barcode Scanner.

The phone will be $150 with two-year plan, but otherwise it's basically the same myTouch 3G that we reviewed a while back, down to it looking almost exactly identical. Swype will be pretty interesting, for text input, and we'll definitely have to try that out to see if it improves on the Android on-screen text experience. [MyTouch]