Found it on twitter. New Call of Duty baby!

Video Game - E3 2009 - Video Game Trailers

Google announced that Picasa for the Mac is now available in public beta form through Google Labs. Picasa is a free desktop application for fucking with, and passing around your digital photos. It's great for organizing your obscene webcam snapshots and doctored images of celebrities.

The Mac version is supposed to be relatively seamless. So whenever you get tired of iPhoto, maybe you should take a looksy.

So why did it take so damn long for Google to move it over to the Mac? The company is claiming that the wait was timed to coincide with The Macworld Expo (which happened today). They know how to keep the acne-ridden, pocket-protector-wearin' brace-faced people drooling with anticipation.

[Source]

I ran across this web page that claims to be able to teach you how to turn your car into a water powered vehicle or a water/gasoline hybrid. Can anyone give me any insight into this? If it's the real deal, this could change so many things. God, even the idea of filling my tank from the tap just made my day!

This Fox News report looks pretty convincing, too!



[Daves Daily]

In Tibet, there are two ways to cook your food: an open fire fueled by yak dung or wood (which isn't exactly easy to obtain); or solar cookers, which consist of two-inch-thick concrete covered with tiny glass mirrors.

Fire produces lots of smoke that leads to lung disease in people who do most of their cooking indoors. Solar cookers are much cleaner, but are so heavy that they need 4 people just to move one. Plus their focus isn't always dead-on, which can damage food, cooking equipment and even start fires.

Scot Frank, a student at MIT, and Catlin Powers of Wellesley College took a trip to Tibet in 2006. One thing they heard regularly from the villagers is that life would be so much easier if there was a light mobile version of their solar cookers. This way they could go take care of their flocks or fields and still eat. But it need to be strong enough to handle the fierce winds that whip across the plateau.

Ask and you shall receive.

Some MIT students and some students from Qinghai Normal University in Tibet's Amdo region cooked up exactly what they were looking for. The cooker they made, which was inspired by the nomadic tents in the region, is made from yak-wool canvas panels, the supports are bamboo, and the dish is covered with a reflective mylar. It can be assembled and disassembled easily and one person can carry it. Plus it can be anchored to hold against the wind. The students will begin testing a prototype of the cooker this fall, and make it available for mass production in local factories.

The students called themselves SolSource Tibet, and entered MIT's yearly IDEAS comp., winning one of two Yunus Innovation Challenge awards and $3k to put towards the project.

The solar cooker cost about $17 to make and, for an additional $26, can be fitted with an extra attachment and used to heat homes.

[MIT News]

So Google wants to get bigger, huh? News to me. Looks like they're about to buy Web 2.0 aggregation website Digg.com.

Check out this quote from Valleywag:

…we hear [Google’s Marissa] Mayer is pushing hard for an acquisition of Rose’s Digg, for a price below $200 million…A source familiar with the talks says Google and Digg reached an agreement last month; it’s not clear whether the offer was verbal or a formal termsheet. So why the delay? One possibility: Digg may have been exploring whether it could hire a rock-star CEO and raise more money.

I doubt the army of Digg users will be down with this, but it I dont see any reason why it wouldn't happen. Google is surely after the technology and algorithms that make Digg so effective. But a power so great can't be taken, it can only be given.

[ValleyWag]

Just in case you wanted to save some dead presidents of your power bill AND keep playing video games on your PC 8 hours a day, boy does LG has a pitch for you! The Flatron W2252TE-a monitor claims to be "the world's most energy efficient." It uses roughly 45% less power than a traditional display, which means about 40 watts less. But it still looks great with a 1680 x 1050 resolution, 2ms response time, 170 degree viewing angle, and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. The price has yet to be set.

[Pocket-lint]

According to Joystiq, an ad promoting a yet-to-be-released MTV2 track pack for Harmonix's Rock Band gives away a few of the new jams up for grabs.

These tracks include:

* Avenged Sevenfold - Afterlife
* Machine Head - Aesthetics of Hate
* Nine Inch Nails - Burn
* Nirvana - Breed

There's also the matter of the entire "Who's Next" album that has been in the works for months now, but has been delayed or canceled altogether due to theft. Give me Pinball Wizard!

[Shack News]

Spore, Electronics Arts' new universe and life simulations game, won't require a whole lotta' computer to run it. Check it out.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

FOR WINDOWS XP

* 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
* 512 MB RAM
* A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
* At least 6 GB of hard drive space

FOR WINDOWS VISTA

* 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
* 768 MB RAM
* A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
* At least 6 GB of hard drive space

MAC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Spore requires at least the following:

* Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
* Intel Core Duo Processor
* 1024 MB RAM
* ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
* At least 4.7GB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for creations.*

It will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems (PowerMac).

It's set for release on Sep. 7th, and don't forget to check out the PC Creature Creator for Spore on June 17th to help you get ready for the full release.

[ShackNews]

Paper airplanes of the future will be feared. This paper is made from cellulose like normal paper, no big deal. The thing is, science nerds at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden made the fiber so tiny and free of defects that it 7 times stronger than that legal pad of yours.

To achieve this, they break down the pulp with enzymes, beat it with a machine, and treat the fibers with carboxymethanol. I don't know what that is or does.. neither does Google Search :) Anyway, this process gives the paper a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, compared to the 30 MPa you get with regular paper.

This wouldn't really mean much to us regular folks except it could replace other plastic items, the manufacturing of which would put out petroleum waste. Green team go!

[OH GIZMO!]

The New York Times is reporting that the "Roadrunner," an American military supercomputer, has reached a long-sought-after benchmark by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. Part of it's insides comes directly out of the Playstation 3.

This (world's fastest?) computer contains 116,640 processor cores, with 12,960 chips that are an improved version of the Cell processor used in the PS3. "The Sony chips are used as accelerators, or turbochargers, for portions of calculations," said the New Work Times

"Roadrunner" takes a lot of power.. like enough to power a large mall, and requires three different programming tools since it has three different kinds of processors. Plus all 116,640 processor cores need to stay occupied at once for it to continue running. What a chore.

[NY Times]

Another fancy gadget gets released to prey on the sun, hippies rejoice. The Eclipse Intuit, (which appears to be an iPhone with a pullout keypad) would include a 5 megapixel camera with it's own photo editing software, a large touchscreen, and an ultra thin solar skin that would charge the batteries.

This probably wouldn't serve me much purpose since my phone, when not in use, lives in my pocket for 95% of the day. But if you talk on it outside a lot, this will be a welcome addition to your picnic basket.
[Yanko Design via Gizmodo]

For those of you who have big-ass flat screen TVs but don't want them to distract from your tasteful Monet print, VisionArt's got your back... I can totally relate.

They offer classy units alongside Triad speakers that include front left, center and right channel speakers underneath your flat-panel television. The artwork pulls up when you hit the power button and leaves the speakers hidden behind a black matte material. Installations are pricey, but it's a pretty sweet setup. You rich bastard.

ElectronicHouse
via
Gizmodo

This is the prototype for the next "$100 laptop" project. The design is incredible, the colors, the functionality, and both halves are separate screens!

More details here, I just thought as many people as possible should see this.

Foxconn showed off a tiny handheld Pico Projector at Computex this week, sporting a .3-inch Texas Instruments DLP chip and 854x480 resolution and weighing only 65 grams. Though Pico Projectors have been supported by many heavyweights such as 3M, Texas Instruments and Motorola, the technology has yet to make an appearance in the consumer market. It's only another prototype, but how long could it be before it makes its way to the mainstream market? Sounds like a perfect addition to anyone's dorm room.

AVING
via
Gizmodo

How great would it be to see your shower head change colors when the waters finally warm enough to dip your toes in? Not that great. But the option is there if you want it. Think Geek is selling this puppy at $40 a pop and it's LED's are powered by a small water turbine. The downside? It only changes from blue to red when the water gets to 89 degrees Fahrenheit. Luke warm usually isn't good enough to get my eyes open in the morning. The last heat-sensitive color shower head was only available from China. Now the US is getting in on the action. Lucky us.

Think Geek

I just saw this and thought you all might like it. It's huge, but I wonder if we really need all that extra room for peripheral vision. I really don't need to see Master Chief in DLP widescreen. But it does look pretty cool.

Would any of you gamers go this far with your setup?

Tata, and Indian car company, has brought car ownership to a whole new level by bringing down the price while blowing away the fuel economy of many American-made automobiles. The Nano (above) can fit five people (tightly), but the base version is a little sparse on luxuries: no radio, no passenger-side mirror, and only one windshield wiper.

Still innovative and practical. The sacrifices are part of what brings the Nano into the reach of modest-income families. On a worth-it scale... 10.

There is concern that the range of people, who can now afford one of these things, could overcrowd India's roads and cause environmental troubles. But i think we all know that a car that cost this little, and puts out around 50 mpg isn't going to destroy the environment near as fast as some of the elephant-sized monsters we have wheeling around the United States.

Safety is another concern. Chairman of Tata states that the car will meet safety standards and pollute even less than motorcycles, but some critics are saying that Tata will sacrifice quality and safety standards to meet the target price.

ABC News
The $2,500 Car: An Environmental Nightmare?

Last month an Intel saleswoman tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country’s commitment to buy a quarter-million of the One Laptop Per Child's laptops and, instead buy Intel PCs.

Intel and the OLPC haven't really ever had a smooth partnership, but this incident was apparently the last straw for Nicholas Negroponte (OLPC's founder). He demanded that Intel stop selling their rival computer in what he sees as an effort to undermine OPLC's sales.

So what happened? Intel withdrew it's support for the organization.

OLPC has been kind of a controversial issue from the beginning and some the most powerful software and chip-making companies -Microsoft and Intel- have been resisting getting involved because it could be a strong competitor in a market that they were hoping to develop. This is why OPLC contains chips from AMD and runs a cutesy, bare-bones operating system.

Anyway, bravo to Intel. I can't wait to see how they deal with this PR nightmare. For the record, my title almost read "Intel hates foreign children."

Sensationalized ideas aside, this is a rather selfish move for the chip-making giant. There's still other markets out there.

Money Times
Intel withdraws from laptop charity after row
New York Times
Intel Leaves Group Backing Education PCs

A patent filing on July 3, 2006 may foreshadow the next big thing from Apple: an ultra-mobile Macintosh. The patent filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines "a docking area configured to receive a portable computer."

Nice.

It's also supposed to enable the mystery device to communicate with the docking station using Bluetooth and IEEE 80.2.11 wireless connections.

Nicer.

Rumors about Apple working with Intel to make a new line of utra-mobile processors have been abound for a several months, but neither company will confirm it. It makes sense that Apple is interested in the ultra-mobile market, thought.

Regardless of what plans Apple has for the patent, I'm sure dudes with shiny black glasses and carefully mussed up hair will call it awesome.

Yahoo.com
Apple patent reveals innovative docking station

Dell is known for simplifying PCs and the supply chain beginning 23 years ago. What they're not known for is sleek, beautiful designs like this one.


Glass and metal in all the right places is a refreshing change of pace from a company that's been more about bottom-line discount computers and basic needs hardware. The Crystal may be a step in the right direction to put Dell back into contending with hipster eye candy computer companies like Apple. Only time will tell if the aesthetic trend continues.

1680 x 1050 resolution, 2ms response time, 2000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, built-in 2 megapixel webcam, built-in speakers, DVI and HDMI with HDCP and DisplayPort inputs, and it's available now for $1,199.