Rumpistol / Red Baron
House Party! The 3-D Light Show You Can Control With an iPad or Wii
11 hours ago
intellectual property
Apple Wins a User-Interface Patent That Smartphone Copycats Should Fear
11 hours ago
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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for July 18
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
07.18.12 -
The GeekDads Podcast Cancelled (Again) This Week
Ken is out of town and Matt's computer isn't quite up to the challenge of hosting, so we must cancel this week's GeekDads podcast, which we would ordinarily record tonight. HipTrax will be back next week on schedule, though, and the GeekDads podcast will record again on the night of July 31st. We hope you can join us in the chatroom then! Have fun seeing The Dark Knight Rises!
07.17.12 -
VMware Swaps Microsoft Vet Maritz for Ex-Intel Man Gelsinger
VMware has named Pat Gelsinger as its new CEO, moving the industry veteran from parent company EMC, where he served as president and chief operating officer. Gelsinger replaces current VMware boss Paul Maritz, who will move to EMC, where he will serve as chief strategist.
07.17.12 -
Watch Me: The West Philadelphia Kids That Took on the X Prize
Frontline tells a pretty amazing underdog tale in its new documentary, ???Fast Times at West Philly High.??? It???s about a group of inner-city high school kids who entered the Progressive Automotive X Prize, a $10 million competition to create a superefficient car. The Philly kids and their teachers didn???t have CAD software or much of [...]
07.17.12 -
Review: Olympus LS-100 Portable Recorder
This is one of the best -- and best-sounding -- portable audio recorders you can buy.
07.17.12 -
Syrian Rebels Use YouTube, Facebook for Weapons Training
Rebels fighting against Bashar Assad in Syria's civil war are outgunned, outmanned and largely aren't professional soldiers. So they're turning to social media for tutorials in how to use their weapons.
07.17.12 -
Observation Deck: At Comic-Con, All the World’s a Stage
Comic-Con International is perfect for people-watching. Just like in a typical city, everybody is either a performer or an audience member.
07.17.12 -
Dell Launches Flying Data Center at War Fighters
We're still waiting for Google's Data Center Navy. But Dell is doing its best to feed the Data Center Air Force. On Tuesday, the Texas computing giant took the wraps off what it calls the Dell Tactical Mobile Data Center -- a kind of data-center-in-a-box that's specifically designed for military outfits looking to air-lift temporary computing power into emergency situations.
07.17.12 -
AT&T; Charging for FaceTime Would Breach Net Neutrality, Groups Say
AT&T "would almost certainly" violate net neutrality rules if it begins charging for using FaceTime over its cellular network when Apple's newest mobile operating system debuts in September, the digital rights group Free Press said Tuesday.
07.17.12 -
Games for Change: Teaching With Portal, Fixing Brains With iPhone
I attended the Games for Change Festival in New York last month, and what I saw there gave me reason to believe that there will be some big hits for education and health videogames in the near future.
07.17.12
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Barnes & Noble Launches Web-Based E-Reader
Part of the appeal of the e-reader ecosystem is the ability to read the same book over multiple devices. From a dedicated e-reader to a smartphone, keeping up with your favorite protagonist's exploits without missing a beat regardless of the devices is key to happy book fans. Barnes and Noble recognizes this and is extending their ecosystem to browsers. Even Internet Explorer.
07.17.12 -
Wish List: Best Proposed Robotic Missions to Other Planets
A gallery looking at the best potential robotic probes that could seek out and explore the strange worlds of our solar system.
07.17.12 -
ARGs on Your Bookshelf: New Book Explores Transmedia Entertainment
Andrea Phillips recently published A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling. The book provides a taste of the creative and practical considerations that go into transmedia projects.
07.17.12 -
How to Steam Penguins: The Valve Linux Blog Goes Live
If you have ever dabbled in Linux or Steam and wished for the two to combine forces, look no further. The Linux Valve blog went live on July 16 - watch this space for open source game development news.
07.17.12 -
Convicted Murderer Hans Reiser Ordered to Pay His Kids $60M
A California jury on Tuesday found Hans Reiser financially liable for killing his wife, Nina, four years ago, ordering the imprisoned Linux guru to pay the couple's two children $60 million.
07.17.12 -
Study: WikiLeaked Data Can Predict Insurgent Attacks
Insurgencies are amongst the hardest conflicts to predict. Insurgents can be loosely organized, split into factions, and strike from out of nowhere. But now researchers have demonstrated that with enough data, you might actually predict where insurgent violence will strike next. The results, though, don't look good for the U.S.-led war.
07.17.12 -
Dead Again! Smallville Season 11 Revamped to Exclude Stephanie Brown
It could be the plot of a young adult novel: Teenage girl from a broken home discovers that her father is a super villain and decides to be a hero to work against him. She has to deal with other crimefighters who don’t think she’s qualified, an unplanned pregnancy, a horrific torture and beating, a [...]
07.17.12 -
VMware �Replaces CEO’ On Flight To The Clouds
VMware is on the verge of a major shakeup that will see the company replace CEO Paul Maritz and spin-off Cloud Foundry, its highly-regarded open source cloud-building platform, according to reports citing unnamed sources.
07.17.12 -
House Party! The 3-D Light Show You Can Control With an iPad or Wii
There was a time when concertgoers were perfectly happy just listening to the band play. Not anymore. Today fans expect to see pyrotechnic spectacles with elaborate lighting and special effects for the price of admission. When the time came to create the visuals for Floating -- a new album by Danish electronic artist Rumpistol / Red Baron -- design studio Futura Epsis 1 made something that was a bit of both.
07.17.12 -
Apple Wins a User-Interface Patent That Smartphone Copycats Should Fear
Today Apple was granted a notable addition to its IP arsenal: a patent for its method of displaying documents and lists -- and a whole manner of other things -- on a portable electronic device.
07.17.12
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Review: FitBit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale
FitBit's Aria scale measures your weight and fat percentage, then logs it to the cloud, graphs it on a mobile app -- and even tweets it if you want.
07.17.12 -
Google Glass Anti-Theft Patent Detects Burgled Headset, Calls the Coppers
When you plunk down $1,500 for the chance to purchase the future of wearable computing, you might expect some sort of security component to protect your investment. While tethering your augmented reality glasses to your belt with a chain is a plausible option, Google has come up with a much more technical solution.
07.17.12 -
Audi Just Reinvented the Dealership Experience
If there were ever a retail model ripe for disruption, it's the humble car dealer. And Audi thinks it has the answer with Audi City.
07.17.12 -
RelayRides Car Sharing Service Gets Boost From OnStar
Car sharing is starting to gain traction among urban dwellers who occasionally need a vehicle for a few hours, but don???t want to go the rental company day-rate route. In a recent Review Roundup, we found that the P2P car-sharing service RelayRides, which allows car owners to rent their vehicles for a cut of the fee, offered some of the lowest rates but had one of the thinnest fleets.
07.17.12 -
Office 2013 and 365: Can Microsoft Slow the Google Invasion?
Wired’s Gadget Lab has gone hands on with Microsoft’s new office suites, and come up with: “Microsoft Office Finally Gets Serious About the Cloud.” Beyond making Office now “borderline cool,” writes Alexandra Chang, the big deal is in the cloud: Facing competition from Google Drive and Apple???s iWork/iCloud integration, Microsoft is stepping up its game, [...]
07.17.12 -
Google Lets You Follow in Antarctic Explorers’ Footsteps
A century after the great Antarctic explorers crossed that icy continent, many of their destinations remain inaccessible -- at least on foot. From your desktop, though, you can visit huts built by Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott, even plant a virtual flag on the Ceremonial South Pole.
07.17.12 -
ReadySet: How a Portable Power Pack Drives Dollars to the Developing World
The ReadySet is a power-generation tool designed for the developing world to help small-scale entrepreneurs earn a living as micro utilities. It's now available in the United States via Kickstarter.
07.17.12 -
Spider-Man Has Good Taste in Textbooks
With the recent release of The Amazing Spider-Man (here’s a discussion of some of the math and science in that movie), I thought it necessary to revisit one of the more exciting moments of my academic career: Peter Parker uses Steven Strogatz‘s Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos textbook. Steve was my PhD adviser. Well, you can [...]
07.17.12 -
Sci-Fi Experiment Dominion: Dinosaurs vs. Aliens Is Far Smarter Than You Think
Tackling oh-so-current subjects like mass extinction and resource wars with nary a human character in sight, Grant Morrison and Barry Sonnenfeld's Dominion: Dinosaurs vs. Aliens is a cerebral comics/movie project that's far more ambitious than the uninformed observer might suspect. Get a preview of the comic and hear more about what's in the works.
07.17.12 -
The Government’s Mass Migration to the Cloud
Ideally, we???ll all benefit not only from better and more efficient agencies, but also from the cloud's $12 billion worth of annual savings in the federal deficit, writes Rob Vandenberg.
07.17.12
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PaaS Changing the Cost Equation, Too
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is in an early stage of adoption today, particularly in the enterprise space.?? As with any early stage technology offering, adopters are most interested in what kind of advantage it offers them.?? For PaaS, that advantage usually takes the form of getting a product to market more quickly, a decision [...]
07.17.12 -
Marissa Mayer: Yahoo’s New Pregnant CEO
Marissa Mayer is a big deal. She's Google employee 20, the first woman engineer, and the highest ranking woman there. Well, she was. As of yesterday, she's a Xoogler. Mayer quit Google in order to become Yahoo's new CEO. As if that weren't enough, the same day she made the announcement, she tweeted that she and her husband were expecting a baby boy in October. That's right, Yahoo hired her with a visible baby bump.
07.17.12 -
Record-Breaking Laser Hits 500 Trillion Watts
Laser physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have broken the record for the highest-power laser shot with a collection of beams delivering more than 500 trillion watts of peak power.
07.17.12 -
Long Genome, Lively Book
Five years ago, guitar player, raconteur, writer, genome geek and Duke professor Misha Angrist surrendered his DNA to the eyes of the public, and to his own restless, rambunctious curiosity. Over at the fine site LabLit,??Richard Grant takes a smart, lively look at the smart, lively book that resulted: The history of science and medicine [...]
07.17.12 -
Mahdi, the Messiah, Found Infecting Systems in Iran, Israel
Mahdi, a new piece of spyware found targeting more than 800 victims in Iran and elsewhere, has been stealing documents and recording conversations since last December.Who knew that when the Messiah arrived to herald the Day of Judgment he'd first root through computers to steal documents and record conversations?
07.17.12 -
The New McAllen Public Library: Brilliant!
The McAllen, Texas public library moved from a smaller downtown location to a renovated 124,000 square foot former Walmart building last December. This was touching to me on many levels, so it's worth sharing with other readers if you hadn't heard about it. The story was making the rounds on the Internet because the architecture firm that designed the new location, Meyer, Scherer and Rockcastle, Ltd., had just won an International Interior Design Association Library Interior Design award. Learning more about this story was so fun for me. The town of McAllen had a 5 1/2 year journey from choosing the site to financing the work to cutting the ribbon this past December.
07.17.12 -
Dork Tower Tuesday
Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower website: www.dorktower.com.
07.17.12 -
Holy Imaginext Batcave, Robin!
The Batcave is the centerpiece toy from the DC Super Friends range at Fisher Price. That makes it the most expensive of the range as well, but you certainly get value for money as this toy is big. Really big.
07.17.12 -
Love Superheroes and Villains? Then, Prepare to Die!
Prepare to Die!, a new novel from Paul Tobin, tells the tale of Reaver, a super hero with healing powers and a super punch, who has been given two weeks to live by his arch enemy, Octagon. Time enough to put personal matters in order, but other villains aren't necessarily willing to honor the time limit.
07.17.12 -
Merry Christmas in July!
The past couple of years, my little family has been starting some of our own family traditions. At Thanksgiving we have a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving lunch. In June we celebrate May the Fourth Be With You. In July we celebrate Christmas in July. Why? Because it's fun and any excuse to get out our Santa hats and Christmas movies is good enough for us.
07.17.12
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Core Dump: Mixed Bag of iOS App Reviews
It's time for another Core Dump! In this one, a fascinating programming puzzle game, a couple of knock-offs (which are nonetheless addictive), and a couple of tabletop games turned into apps. Let's get to it!
07.17.12 -
Kytephone App Makes Android Phones Kid-Safe
Keeping kids safe is a priority for parents, especially when it comes to sharing information online. Everyone is worried about some creepy stalker setting up a meeting, or getting their information and whisking them away from a playground or a schoolyard. Many parents opt to keep them away from things like smartphones for fear of their making dangerous connections. The problem is that there are times most of us would like our kids to have a ready means of contacting us in a pinch. Kytephone aims to provide a way for parents to give their children phones and keep them safe.
07.17.12 -
Review: Game of Life: Zapped Edition for iPad
The Game of Life was first created over 40 years ago by Reuben Klamer. Since its creation, the game has undergone some changes to keep up with the times. None of the changes have been quite as drastic as they are in the latest edition, The Game of Life: zAPPed Edition for iPad .
07.17.12 -
A GeekDad’s Paternity Leave Diary
GeekDad Community member Paul Brown shares his experiences at the start of a 6 month stint of being a stay-at-home Dad.
07.17.12 -
How the Navy’s Incompetence Sank the �Green Fleet’
On Wednesday, the Navy will sail its eco-friendly "Great Green Fleet" for the first time -- and maybe the last. The Navy has screwed up its once-promising biofuel plan with a blend of bad politics and questionable analysis, alienating Congress and Pentagon insiders alike. And that's before they get socked with a $1.8 billion annual bill for all that green fuel.
07.17.12 -
Big Tech: The Ultimate Googler Is Yahoo???s Ideal CEO
If you were to tick off the ideal leader for Yahoo, you???d wind up with a description that sounds a lot like Marissa Mayer: Highly technical, product-oriented, as Internet-savvy as anyone in the world, and charismatic enough to energize followers.
07.17.12 -
NSA Mimics Google, Pisses Off Senate
In 2008, a small team of coders inside the National Security Agency started reverse-engineering the database that ran Google. They closely followed the Google research paper describing BigTable -- the sweeping database that underpinned many of the Google's online services, running across tens of thousands of computer servers -- but they also went a little further. In rebuilding this massive database, they beefed up the security. After all, this was the NSA.
07.17.12 -
Kapow! The Net Gets a Bat Signal for Fighting Government and Hollywood Bad Guys
If you see a bat signal, or rather a laughing cat signal, hovering in the sky over Gotham City, San Francisco or New York this Thursday night, it won't just be a sign that the new Batman flick has opened. It will be a sign that the Internet Defense League has come to save the world ??? or at least the online part of it.
07.17.12 -
Breaking Bad Magnets: How Do They Work?
In the season premiere of Breaking Bad, Walter and Jessie attempt to erase evidence on a hard drive that is inside a police evidence room by parking a U-Haul truck containing a powerful electromagnet in it outside the building. Could this really work? Physicist Rhett Allain does the analysis.
07.17.12 -
NSA Mimics Google, Pisses Off Senate
In 2008, a team of software coders inside the National Security Agency started reverse-engineering the database that ran Google. They closely followed the Google research paper describing BigTable — the sweeping database that underpinned many of the Google’s online services, running across tens of thousands of computer servers — but they also went a little [...]
07.17.12
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Mothership Giveaway Winner!
The Winner of the Mothership book & John Hughes film giveaway is announced!
07.17.12 -
It’s Official: Social Media Users Happier With Google+ Than With Facebook
As much as Facebook is a part of people's day-to-day lives, a lot of people don't actually like using the social network giant. Google+ on the other hand is getting a warm reception in comparison, according to a new ACSI report.
07.17.12 -
Paradise Lost: Twisted Postcards From Dystopic Vacations
At first glance, Mary Lydecker???s colorful, kitsch postcards are seemingly innocuous, but look again and you???ll peer upon her world of dystopian leisure trips.
07.17.12 -
Batman’s Wild Rides: How the Batmobile Went From Slick Car to �Sports Tank’
The Dark Knight has always taken two things with him into battle against Gotham's evildoers: his utility belt and a crippling, untreated familial trauma. And no matter what, he almost always responds to the Bat-Signal in some sort of awesome custom batride. Quick, reader: To the Batmobiles!
07.17.12 -
Big Tech: Why You???re Still Stuck Using Microsoft Office
"The Microsoft Office for Windows" debuted in 1990. Since then, nothing has come close to unseating it.
07.17.12 -
Revisiting Clump-o-Lumps
I mentioned the Clump-o-Lumps back in February, but since they became available Knock Knock sent me a couple more so we could try some mix-and-match, and I have to tell you that the fun is multiplicative. (That's great for your kids, but may be tough on your wallet.) My kids have really enjoyed combining Squid-o the squid with Shark-o the Shark and Bird-o the bird.
07.17.12 -
R.I.P. Donald J. Sobol, Encyclopedia Brown Author, 1924-2012
We at GeekDad are sorry to hear of the death of author Donald J. Sobol who, according to??Reuters, passed away on July 11 at age 87, of natural causes. Sobol was best known for his Encyclopedia Brown series, featuring a boy detective named Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown (so nicknamed because he was a genius). The boy Sherlock Holmes appeared in some 30 books from 1963 to 2011.
07.17.12 -
NASA’s Next Mars Rover “Lands” on Xbox Kinect
If you are a space geek like me and tuned in to the latest NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) press conference, you probably weren't expecting anything unusual either. Surprise!
07.17.12 -
Shrimp Chips: Weird Food to Try at Home
Shrimp chips are a snack that work on much the same principle as popcorn, but the appearance is different enough that it made my kids really curious.
07.17.12 -
Visions of Spaceflight Circa 2001 (1984)
In 1984, The Planetary Society commissioned Science Applications International Corporation to outline piloted missions to the moon, an asteroid, and Mars in the first years of the 21st century. Beyond Apollo blogger David S. F. Portree describes these plans, which reflect the short-lived optimism of the early Shuttle Era.
07.17.12
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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for July 17
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
07.17.12 -
Video: How to Destroy a Building With Light
On July 4, onlookers in Atlantic City watched with awe as Boardwalk Hall cracked, shuddered, then crumbled to the ground. Then, somehow, the hall erupted in rainbow-colored bricks that appeared to move. It was all an illusion! The historic building remained intact.
07.16.12 -
Facebook Vows to Speed Web With Tech From … Google
In a rare case of agreement between the two internet giants, Facebook has announced that it???s adopting the new protocol Google developed to speed the delivery of webpages across the net.
07.16.12 -
Turning the ???Ocean Garbage Patch??? Into Packaging
Somewhere in the vicinity of Hawaii, a huge mass of plastic debris floats in the Pacific. And that's just a fraction of the waste that's bobbing around out there. Compared to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," one plastic soap bottle may not seem like much. But if that one bottle is mass produced by soap-maker Method, it could turn out to make a big difference.
07.16.12 -
SDCC Firefly Panel: Prepare to Bawl
SDCC's Firefly reunion panel brought tears to nearly every eye -- including Joss Whedon's.
07.16.12 -
Review: Dell Inspiron 14z Ultrabook (Which Isn’t Really an Ultrabook)
Dell's Inspiron gets a big makeover for 2012, evolving (at last) into a sleek and modern-looking laptop while maintaining a very low price.
07.16.12 -
Air Force to Mil-Tweeters: You’re All Clueless N00bs
Captain Obvious, report for duty. The Air Force wants you to know that "eye-catching" pictures on Facebook are good and that comment trolls are bad ??? so don't feed them.
07.16.12 -
Magnificent Decay: Detroit by Drone
Urban ruin porn has gotten so ubiquitous it???s morphed into a dedicated genre, and no other city seems to garner the attention of amateur shooters cataloging a metropolis??? decline more than Detroit. But how do you take it to the next level? Cue the drones.
07.16.12 -
Encyclopedia Brown Creator Donald Sobol Dies
Donald Sobol, the creator of the bestselling Encyclopedia Brown series of mysteries, has passed away at the age of 87.
07.16.12 -
Big Tech: Google???s Marissa Mayer Will Try to Save Yahoo as CEO
Google VP Marissa Mayer will become CEO of Yahoo, leading a company that badly needs a turnaround.
07.16.12
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Sprint’s 4G LTE Network Launches in 5 Markets
Sprint's 4G LTE network has launched in five markets, most of them in Texas.
07.16.12 -
Are You Reading This, Amazon? Fab.com???s Secret Retail Sauce
In a little over a year,??Fab has pivoted from being a social network for gay men to the online destination for 4.5 million design fanatics. In just 11 months, they've sold??over 1 million products -- that's 2.6 per minute. Bradford Shellhammer, Fab's co-founder and Chief Creative Officer, attributes the success to having great products. But stocking great products doesn't always ensure escape velocity, so we asked Shellhammer to tell us exactly what makes a product "Fabworthy"?
07.16.12 -
Happy Birthday, OpenStack: Now Get to Work
It's hard to believe that OpenStack is just two years old and has become such a ubiquitous part of public cloud infrastructure in such a short time. Year three will be a critical one for OpenStack to move beyond a collection of different efforts into a well-understood and directionally driven platform, writes Alexander Haislip.
07.16.12 -
Kinect Game Lets You Land NASA’s New Rover on Mars
A new free Xbox game gives anyone the chance to steer through seven minutes of terror and attempt to safely land NASA's newest rover, the Mars Science Laboratory.
07.16.12 -
Gadget Lab Show: HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE and Korg Synthesizers
This week on the Gadget Lab Show, the gang checks out the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE and a pair of miniature Korg synthesizers.
07.16.12 -
TSA Fails to Comply With Year-Old �Nude’ Body-Scanner Court Order
It's been a year following a federal appeals court decision setting aside a constitutional challenge trying to stop the government from using intrusive body scanners across U.S. airports.
07.16.12 -
Frack the Border: Cartels Using Oil Boom to Move Drugs
Ignore its proximity to the border, and the Texas fracking boom is like many others around America. Trucks hauling construction supplies barrel down country highways. Boom towns, sprawling networks of new private roads and hundreds of drilling sites have popped up. But the boom for Texas tea -- oil and gas, that is -- has inadvertently torn a giant hole in the Border Patrol's defenses.
07.16.12 -
Panda 2.0 Lands: Right Time for Antivirus via Cloud?
Panda, which says it was the first to deliver antivirus from the cloud (in 2009), on Monday released Panda Cloud Antivirus 2.0, which its says adds a news disinfection engine, a “community-based firewall”, and 50% faster scans. Panda’s free cloud-based antivirus has offered what it calls Collective Intelligence technology (see video on how it works), [...]
07.16.12 -
What It’s Like to Be an Astronaut: Amazing Videos of the View From Space
If you're the sort of person who enjoys looking out of airplane windows, watching landscapes pass and Earth unfold, then take a look at these videos from the International Space Station. Assembled from photographic sequences captured in April and May, the videos show Earth from an orbital perspective, with continents passing in minutes. Glories like the northern lights and a solar eclipse fit in their entirety within a camera lens.
07.16.12 -
The iPad Game That Took 9 Years (And an Epic Disney Fail) to Finish
The Act, released last month for iOS, took nine years and dozens of former Disney animators to get finished -- and almost died on the way.
07.16.12
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Oracle Rejected in Bid to Resuscitate Google Trial
If Oracle wants to win its lawsuit against Google over the Android mobile operating system ??? and it does ??? it will have to file an appeal. On Friday, Judge William Alsup denied Oracle's motion for a new trial after a San Francisco jury returned an incomplete verdict the first time around.
07.16.12 -
Osaka Cops Bust First Store Employee in Game Piracy Crackdown
Osaka police have arrested a man in the city's electronics district for selling videogame copying devices at his store, the first such arrest in the country, according to Japan's Kyodo News wire service.
07.16.12 -
The Cloud’s Enemy No. 1: Squirrels?!
We have recently covered one of the weakest links with regards to cloud services uptime: unreliable power. Now it seems there is another more wiley problem: squirrels in the data center! In fact, Level 3 Communications says squirrels may just be enemy No. 1 in the data center, accounting for “an astounding 17 percent of [...]
07.16.12 -
Measuring Mobile-Data Burn on the Road
To get an idea of the real-world data usage while on the road, we took a Motorola Droid Razr Maxx along on a recent drive from LA to San Diego and back, all the while playing Pandora internet radio (using the service???s standard audio quality, 32 kbps) and running the Google Maps Navigation (Beta) app.
07.16.12 -
Oil Companies Spring a Leak, Courtesy of Anonymous
Five top multinational oil companies have been targeted by members of Anonymous, who published about 1,000 email credentials taken from accounts belonging to the companies, as well as hashed and unencrypted passwords.
07.16.12 -
Syria’s Collapse Could Be a Chem Weapon Nightmare
What's worse than a power-mad dictator with weapons of mass destruction? A power-mad dictator who may be about to lose them. This is the situation the world may soon be forced to face in Syria as the Assad regime begins to crack. It is a potential nightmare that ultimately might lead to the use and proliferation of WMD across the region.
07.16.12 -
Geoengineering Could Backfire, Make Climate Change Worse
Deploying giant space mirrors and spraying particles from stadium-sized balloons may sound like an engineer's wild fantasy, but climate models suggest that the potential of geoengineering to offset rising atmospheric carbon dioxide may be significantly overstated.
07.16.12 -
Summer Field Notes 2012: The Clear Lake Volcanic Field
I’m still off in California, mostly doing lab work in California. However, I did get a chance to run off to the coast for the weekend and I swung through the Clear Lake Volcanic Field to get there. I’d never been to the volcanic features on the south side of Clear Lake before, so I [...]
07.16.12 -
Maker Camp for Teens Starts Today on Google Plus
Maker Camp -- a virtual gathering taking place on Make's Google+ page over the next 30 days -- will give teens a new project to work on every morning, and the chance to talk to a "camp counselor" and compare photos of projects done by fellow campers in a G+ Hangout every afternoon.
07.16.12 -
Brave Curls DNA
I finally watched the movie Brave and like everyone else, I was amazed at the animation of her hair. Wow. As a curly girl myself, it was uplifting to imagine all the little kids in the audience being shown that curls can be beautiful. But what about the genetics behind them?
07.16.12
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Laptops in Lecture?
There is a nice post by Stephanie Chasteen over at The Active Class about students being distracted by laptops (and other technology) while in the classroom. Stehpanie suggests a solution of a social contract for the class. In this contract, the students can define appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. I think this post brings up some [...]
07.16.12 -
10 New Comics for Your Post-Comic-Con Consideration
Comic-Con International's blockbuster tent has swollen to Hollywood size, but actual comic books remain the annual convention's sturdy backbone -- and the pump that primes the money machine. Here's a look at 10 of the coolest-sounding projects bubbling up out of San Diego.
07.16.12 -
The Solar Eclipse Marathon … and Other Ways to Make Running More Interesting
What better way to endure a grueling 26.2 mile race than with the excitement of a total solar eclipse in the sky above? That's what the city of Port Douglas in Queensland, Australia is planning with the first-ever Solar Eclipse Marathon. The next total solar eclipse will occur on 13-14 November 2012, with the event crossing the International Date Line such that those in Australia will see it on very early on the 14th, while those in Chile will see a partial eclipse near sunset on the 13th. There is a very narrow strip on the planet that will be under a total eclipse. Of that very narrow strip, only a very small percentage will be on land, including Port Douglas.
07.16.12 -
Dork Tower Monday
Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower website: www.dorktower.com.
07.16.12 -
Repost: Why is a Pelican Like a Whale?
[Author's note: The book is in, and the field season is here. I'm going out for a week of fieldwork to clear my brain (and, of course, look for fossils). In the meantime, here's a post from late last year about what whales and pelicans share in common.] Pelicans and whales are not especially close [...]
07.16.12 -
The Wow Wireless Bluetooth Speaker: Style and Sound
Here's a crowdfunding project for all you audiophiles. It's the Wow Wireless bluetooth speaker and it not only sounds great, but looks great, too. Despite the huge number of speakers out there, most of them look a lot alike. They're generally little cubes or little rectangles made of shiny metal and plastic. It's not that they're ugly, but they're just not very pretty. This little speaker delivers not only great sound, but a genuinely stylish design that will add to your room.
07.16.12 -
My Little Pony Convention 2012
Growing up, my life revolved around Barbie, Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony. As I've gotten older, my love of the toys never left me, but my collecting of them has. When I learned that the My Little Pony convention was going to be in Orlando this year, I jumped at the opportunity to go. At the same time, I also learned that the 501st Legion was going to be in attendance. That sealed the deal. There was no way I was going to miss trooping in a room full of ponies!
07.16.12 -
Disney’s The Aristocats App Lets Down the Brand
For true lovers of the film The Aristocats is a pleasant enough app but it's a let-down for a company which usually makes such wonderful, entertaining games.
07.16.12 -
2 Books to Prepare You for The Dark Knight Rises
With The Dark Knight Rises opening this week, we'll get another glimpse at the latest incarnation of Batman: and, of course, all of his wonderful toys. Insight Editions recently released two art books for Batman fans, one focusing on Christopher Nolan's interpretation, and the other tracking the history of the Batmobile, arguably the most fascinating of all Batman's many gadgets.
07.16.12 -
Book Review: My First DC Super Heroes
The "My First..." range currently includes three board books: Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman. All are big, chunky and brightly colored and every page has some interactive or touch-and-feel element to it.
07.16.12
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