Toshiba Ready to Mass-Produce 4 GB Postage Stamp-Size Hard Drive
Toshiba's long-awaited 4 GB hard drive, acknowledged by Guinness as the world's smallest, is ready to go into production next month. The company plans to product as many as 30,000 per month.
Lying With Photoshop: Maxim Fakes Bush Twins Cheesecake
Maxim magazine is getting full value from their Photoshop license, and will publish in the April issue an April Fool's prank showing first daughters Jenna and Barbara Bush in lingerie after a pillow fight.
Adrants is reporting that a church group is using Halo 2 to teach Christianity to kids. "We think this is an awesome opportunity to take something hugely popular in our culture and turn it into a way to share the most important message," said one proponent. "Don't you just hate it when a bunch of outer space freaks get together and decide it's their mission to torch humanity? ...the Halo storyline is remarkably like a major theme of the Bible." Amen!
Here Comes the Pentagon's Summer of Swarming Robots
Drunk on Pentagon cash, evil scientists from various U.S. universities (Penn, Yale, MIT, Cal and UCSB, each receiving millions of dollars) will collaborate on biology-inspired swarming robots that can roam over a battlefield and do Rumsfeld's bidding. Muaaaa ha ha ha ha! (I want one.)
America Online Latin America (shouldn't it be called Latin America Online?) said that it was running out of money and may either close down or go bankrupt.
Analysts at financial firm Morgan Stanley are predicting that -- suddenly -- Apple is poised to double its share of the PC market, all thanks to a "halo effect" from the iPod (people like their iPods so much they decide to buy a Mac).
Wireless Internet, 600-Degree Ovens-On-Wheels Secret To 18-Minute Pizza
An entrepreneur in Wisconsin and his company, Super Fast Pizza, delivers a pizza to your door 18 minutes after you order it on average. How? The secret is combining wireless Internet technology, parbaked, pre-made pizzas and vans containing 600-degree ovens where the pies are cooked enroute. Only in America. (props to Everything isn't Under Control)
Microsoft has been granted a patent for 3-D, computer-generated knitwear. Applications for the invention would be computer animation (take that, Pixar!) and e-commerce (eat our dust, IBM!), design, prototyping and others applications where virtual sweaters are required. The patent application says it all: "A macrostructure corresponding to a three-dimensional object is generated, based on a stitch pattern and optionally a color pattern. Yarn microstructure is generated and applied to the macrostructure to yield a knitwear model. The stitch positions of the macrostructure can be perturbed to achieve stitch position irregularities. The fluffiness of the yarn microstructure can be controlled. In an alternative embodiment, a two-dimensional knitwear texture is generated, which can then be mapped to a three-dimensional object to yield a knitwear model." Don't tell grandma.
"Petworking" Collar, Leash Enhance the Social Lives of Dogs
A research assistant named Noah Fields at the Physical Language Workshop at the MIT Media Lab is working on an automated, wireless social networking device (or "petwork," if you will) for dogs called SNIF: Social Networking In Fur. As dogs sniff each other's butts and generally frolic in the park, the special collar takes note of which dogs your mutt enjoys and which it doesn't by gathering information such as proximity and activity level. It also facilitates the social networks of pet owners, who obviously otherwise have no prospects of social interaction. (props to Modern Pooch)
Under the Hood: Google Uses Racist Site As News Source
The "white pride" site National Vanguard is used by Google as a source for its Google News service. Though news is selected and fed automatically by computers, the sites themselves are hand-picked by humans at Google. (props to Google Blogoscope)
Variety is reporting that Topher Grace will star in a Harold Ramis comedy from Universal (to be written by Gustin Nash) that will revolve around Friendster.com. (props to Cinema Confidential)
What Else Can They Cram Into a Cell Phone? How About Robot-Pet RC!
Takara is selling what it calls "Choro Mode Pets" that can be controlled via your cell phone keypad. The pets include a blue bunny, a brown cat, a green cat, a brown dog, and a white dog. (props to Engadget and Gadgets.3Yen.com)
Don't Try This At Home: Wi-Fi Booster Made From Wok
New Zealand guy Stan Swan makes 2.4GHz parabolic mesh dishes to boost and extend Wi-Fi out of kitchen items, most conspicuously a Chinese wok as the dish. Swan claims his cheap solution throws a Wi-Fi signal to 3-5 kilometers. (props to Engadget)
PSP Launch Party In Manhattan - First 500 Get to Buy PSP
Sony is throwing a PSP launch party tomorrow night at the Sony store on Madison Avenue, and is bringing in Carson Daly and Danger Mouse to provide entertainment. Only the first 500 to arrive will be allowed in and will get to buy a PSP at midnight (the gadget goes on sale Thursday). Obviously they're creating a media event -- the payoff for Sony isn't the 500 who get in but the thousands who will be outside gushing about PSP for the news cameras. (props to Cool Hunting)
I told you on March 9 about a new service called TalkToAliens.com that allowed you to call a number talk to deep space. Now the company has rolled out it's new "E-Mail to Space" option I told you about ("Chat to Space" coming soon). Write an e-mail, and they'll send it into space via a parabolic dish antenna is pointed into the area of space with the highest density of regional stars. They'll also provide you with a free "Certificate of Interstellar Broadcast" -- a frameable certificate that shows the date and time of the broadcast, as well as the first 500 characters of the message sent, so your friends and family will know you're certifiable. The service costs $19.95 per message.
Newspaper Wardrives Hospital Networks to Prove They're Insecure
UK newspaper The Daily Mail "surveyed" 12 hospitals and found that seven were easily accessible wirelessly. The paper wrote a story, named which hospitals were wide-open and pointed out that hackers could easily gain access to personal medical files. It's enough to make you sick.
A free new search engine that launched today called ZoomInfo harvests the kind of information people might put on a resume, then presents it to anyone searching for it in a detailed summary. Unlike other search engines like Google, the site doesn't end up giving you a link to another web site. The information is designed to be read at the ZoomInfo site. Once you get a result, you can send an e-mail to that person (the address is not revealed) or forward, print, link, etc., to the entry. The company makes its money by upgrading professional recruiters to their premium service.
