People love visualizing internet usage, mostly because it's very pretty. But photographer and NYT tech editor Eric Fischer's outdone himself with perhaps the prettiest one of all, mesmerizingly mapping Flickr and Twitter use across the dark surface of the Earth.
The data from North America is pretty surprising! Twitter use is heaviest on in the Southeast and Eastern Seaboard, with much less action on the typically tech-heavy west coast. The central states are, unsurprisingly, something of a dead zone.
The rest of the world is mostly dark—according to this visualization, Twitter and Flickr are almost entirely an activity of the Western World. Oh, and New Zealand. Which loves Flickr.
Hard to say how long WD's going to keep its My Book line. Thy just announced a gently refreshed version of its My Book Studio, now available in capacities reaching 3TB and sporting a flashy new exterior that should blend right into your Mac Pro + Cinema Display setup.
These new models are equipped with a brushed aluminum casing and rely on Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs to handle the ints and outs. You'll also find FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, meaning that Thunderbolt aficionados should probably be turning their nose up right about now. The new guys are available with pricing set at $149.99 (1TB), $199.99 (2TB) and $249.99 (3TB).
You learn very quickly that most over the counter medicines only mask the agonizing pain of a sunburn for a short time. Medicines can't remove this terrible discomfort, because, until now, scientists didn't what caused it.
In a significant discovery, researchers from Kings College London may have identified one protein responsible for this searing pain. Called CXCL5, it shows up in large quantities in the sunburned skin of human and mice test subjects.
When the researchers injected this protein back into the mice, it caused a level of pain similar to the original burn. The team then added an antibody that neutralizes CXCL5 and the pain went away. This discovery is not a panacea for those who fall asleep while worshipping the sun, but it could lead to the development of medicines that block, not just dull the pain of a sunburn.
For the first time in history, a patient has been implanted with a synthetic windpipe that was created using the patient's stem cells and a replica of his original windpipe. It's amazing even though it kinda looks like PVC piping
It's the future of medical science: there's no donor needed and no depressingly long wait times. Scientists from London created the replica using 3D scans of the 36-year-old patient. The material was made from polymers with a spongy and flexible texture with stiff rings around the tube to recreate a more human-like trachea. They coated and soaked the trachea model in a solution of stem cell's taken from the patient's bone marrow and after two days, the patient's own tissues had grown to cover replica.
According to the Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, a professor at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm that performed the surgery, said the "stem cells from the own patient were growing inside and outside. This structure was becoming a living structure." It's been a month since the surgery and the patient's body has accepted the synthetic organ and he should be released soon. The doctors hope that it can lead to more artificial organs for future transplants. Not cloning!
FiveFingers running shoes and the rest of the quasi-barefoot movement are a pretty zealous bunch—they wear a pretty polarizing shoe. But the debate is now quashed in the military, with an official ban. Why? They look too silly.
According to an official Army memo, FiveFingers and any similar shoes "that feature five separate, individual compartments for the toes" are banished from military footsies on the grounds that they "detract from a professional military image."
Acer has started pushing out an update for its Iconia Tab A500 that will upgrade the 10-inch slate to Android 3.1. The update actually leaked late last month, but would have required folks to take the risk of flashing their tablets.
The Zilch by Teva is a sport sandal for minimalists, and it lives up to its name. With a thin footbed and highly flexible design, you'll want them mostly for casual hiking and camping. Plus you can fold them away at a whim.
Don't expect to do anything too out of the ordinary in these, though. They're just a step above walking barefoot, even if they're more than your average flip-flop. $80. You can find them here: GearJunkie
This is surely the sort of thing Apple likes to see -- it might not be the prettiest graph in the world, but it certainly drives home the fairly consistent growth of the iPad's global web browsing share. Back in April of last year, the company's "magical" tablet had nabbed 0.03 percent of global web traffic in its first week.
The decimal point has moved a couple of places, according to NetMarketShare, with the device now making up more than one percent of worldwide web browsing. That number is even higher in the US, at 2.1 percent, with the iPhone and Android devices pulling in 2.9 and 2.6 percent, respectively. As for Apple's share of tablet traffic -- well, there's not a heck of a lot to report on that front.
The Nokia 700 "Zeta," with the 1GHz, Symbian Belle opting for a white front and chrome back instead of the black and candy-apple combo. This could mean that, like many Nokia handsets before it, a rainbow of various hues will be available to choose from the moment the device launches.
Veho's entry into the reasonably saturated market sits just above the pricing sweet spot at $110, but it does sport some nice features like touch controls on the side for manipulating your iDevice or smart phone, and a mic for use as a hands-free headset.
The lithium-ion battery inside can keep these folding over-ear phones pumping out Springsteen bootlegs and Joell Ortiz mixtapes (gotta cover all your bases, right?) for up to ten hours. And, if all black isn't you're thing, the Gumball 3000 edition adds some bright orange flair.
These bad boys also promise up to 85,000 random write IOPS and are rated for impressive read / write speeds of 550 MBps and 525 MBps -- a shade higher than the specs being bandied-about when Corsair showed it off back in March. The drive also supports SATA 3, is backward-compatible with SATA 2, and ships with a 3.5-inch adapter that'll work with both desktops and laptops. Look for it this month in two sizes: 60GB ($149) and 120GB ($279).
Toshiba just unveiled what it claims is the world's first glasses-free 3D laptop, the Qosmio F750. It's a heavy-set beast dedicated to gaming and movies, with a 15.6-inch Full HD lenticular screen that can display 2D and 3D simultaneously in separate windows.
It also rocks an HD webcam that follows your movements and adjusts the 3D effect accordingly, so you can peek at the that lovely third dimension from almost any angle you like. Innovative stuff indeed, but how well does it all stack up? As for pricing and release, the laptop would be on the shelves in early August, with a price of £1300 ($2100).
Look at this young man! Look at how happy he is! The can, which retails for about $2.50 US, might remind you something of a Cheez Whiz container.
That's fine, we should all be thinking about Cheez Whiz as much as possible. But the real breakthrough, the one I'd like to see in my lifetime, is a foam soda that's Cheez Whiz-flavored. That's the grail, science. Seek it.
Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype hasn't closed yet, but it looks like Redmond is already working behind the scenes to make the service even more ubiquitous. According to an anonymous source interviewed by TechCrunch, Facebook is going to introduce video chat next week, and that service will be powered by none other than Skype. And while the service will be browser-based, it's also said to include a desktop component.
What's more, Facebook sent out invites for an event next week, where Mark Zuckerberg was clear the outfit would unveil a new product from its Seattle team. That's in Microsoft's backyard, of course, the invites themselves have chat icons on 'em, and, most tellingly, that Seattle office has been snapping up engineers specializing in desktop software.
Samsung sold three million of its original Galaxy S phone in 85 days. A few months later, a full ten million had been moved. Now, it looks as if the superphone's proper successor may put that latter statistic to shame. The outfit just announced that it took but 55 days to move three million Galaxy S II handsets, which works out to one phone every 1.5 seconds.
It's Sammy's briskest-selling smartphone ever, and if it'll keep up the pace once that AT&T variant lands on US soil. Which iscoming soon, right Samsung?
The oft-leaked Motorola Droid 3 is dripping information yet again, this time over on Droid-Life where an internal flyer confirms it will be available at retail locations July 14th, with direct fulfillment orders starting a week earlier. Iis a confirmed price for Verizon's QWERTY slider w/ 1080p camera and dual core processor.
Happy birthday, dear Global System for Mobile Communications! 20 years ago today, on July 1 1991, the world's first GSM call was made by Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri. The historic call used Nokia gear on GSM's original 900MHz band. Today GSM is all grown up and ruling the world -- connecting 1.5 billion people in 212 countries and serving 80% of the planet's mobile market.
It was the first fully digital cellular system using TDMA to cram more information into less spectrum and provide better sounding, more reliable calls using less power. It introduced the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), the idea of switching handsets at will (something carriers have sought to subvert by locking phones), and the reality of international roaming.
Short Messaging Service (SMS) was first launched on GSM networks, along with packet data (GPRS and later EDGE), which made internet access practical on mobile devices. Eventually, GSM expanded to the 400, 800, 1800 and 1900MHz bands and evolved into WDCMA-based UMTS (3G) and later HSPA and HSPA+, followed byLTE (4G) networks.
So next time you're at the coffee shop sipping on that latte while uploading that video to YouTube at 10Mbps using your LTE phone, remember to be thankful for that first GSM call 20 years ago -- that's when the mobile revolution really started.
If you're really into fireworks, maybe you should move your butt to any square state. But whatever you do, don't move to New York, New Jersey, Delaware or Massachusetts. They have a total ban. The awesomerest state is South Carolina.
There they have prohibited any small rockets less than 3 inches long and half an inch thick. That's right: They have a ban on ridiculously sized fireworks.
The nation's capital is, ironically, the lamest when it comes to celebrate the 4th of July. It doesn't have a total ban, but look at their description: Prohibited products include, but are not limited to, "firecrackers of any kind of description. Any fireworks that explode [...] or intended to move after the piece is placed and fires."
It's not just Apple's App Store striding past milestones today, Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace has also rounded a notable marker in its development. Specifically, it's now reported to have passed 25,000 apps by one site tracking comings and goings within it, though that figure's up for debate as the other WP7 apps tracker still lists the total at just under 25k.
The main point is that the WP7 ecosystem is growing, and faster than previously at that -- it took until the end of March to accrue 11,500 apps, a span of five months from its launch, whereas the last 13.5k have come in the brisker period of three months. Provided this acceleration continues, and there's no reason to expect it'll slow down with Mango on the horizon, Microsoft's mobile OS reboot promises to be in pretty competitive shape in time for its first anniversary.
Been lusting after the Galaxy S II, but aren't willing to break the bank? Apparently Samsung does too. Billed as a more affordable spawn from its Korean progenitor. The Gingerbread-toting handset will sport a 4.2-inch Super Clear LCD, 1GHz dual core processor (rumored to be Tegra 2), and 8GB of onboard storage, extensible with microSD.
Fret not camera junkies, also present is a 5 megapixel sensor plus flash and "HD" video recording. All that stands between you and this little Galaxy, are 4,000 kronor (about $630) and your undying love of Swedish meatballs.
