Google Earth 1984 Edition

Georgia Institute of Technology's students are using CCTV video to map actual vehicles and people into Google Earth. Easily this tech could be expanded into new and interesting applications inside GE: Cloud patterns, Live traffic visuals, Sporting events as they occur?! But there's a dark side to this, what if you tracked people? With enough cameras, you could follow someone, and monitor their movements. Can you honestly say that you know a government agency that would pass that up?

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, liter?

The KORG DS-10 game for the nintendo DS has been used to make many interesting sounds, being that it emulates a KORG MS-10 synthesizer, but none as interesting as this Daft Punk cover, where the sounds sound like the sounds!

DIY ferrofluids!

A ferrofluid is some iron particles suspended in oil, and while they sound absolutely useless, they're really interesting if you're a giant nerd like me. They've got tons of uses, and now you can make your own! (seeing as it's $165 for a litre of the stuff or like $660 a gallon)

Creepy Smiley Robot

Emo is the tiny smiling robot that will devour your soul. Programmable to respond to emoticons over instant messages and such, it's literally the creepiest smiling robot you could put on your desk.

Personal Super Computer

SGI has unveiled what they call a "personal supercomputer". With support for 80 processor cores and 1TB of ram, this isn't for playing World of Warcraft and printing out spreadsheets. Basically this machine is for amateur physicists working out of their garages to find some bosons, solve some n-dimensional equations, and resolve some tesseracts.

I roll for a delicious equipment check

Jones cane sugar soda company is making a Dungeons and Dragons branded beverage. Coming in flavors Potion of Healing, Sneak Attack, Bigby's Crushing Thirst Destroyer, Illithid Brain Juice, Dwarven Draught and Eldritch Blast, this beverage is sure to raise someone's charisma.

iPod Touch's 50% speed increase mostly true.

Apple's event declared the iTouch to be 50% faster than the previous model, mostly this claim is true. Booting the old touch took 31 seconds. The new touch takes 19. Loading a web page dropped from 34 seconds to 15. And most games teetered between loading 33% and 50% faster.

Medicare FAIL

Medicare, in an astounding display of both stupidity and insensitivity, has denied coverage for a $150 iPhone app. Roloquo2Go is a text-to-speech iPhone app that's meant to aid those with autism, cerebral palsy, ALS, Down Syndrome—pretty much anyone who has a disability that makes speaking a difficult venture.

Medicare's alternative? a government-funded $8000 desktop computer that can have no other function than text-to-speech.

What. The. Heck?

Medicare knows this, but they refuse to pay for iPhones, on the assumption that people would use it for other things. Yes, like calling the doctor?

Indiana Jones 5

Greenlit for a quintquall, the Indiana Jones series (and scrappy young lad Mutt played by Shia LeBeouf) has got another on the way. Also returning is Harrison Ford, a good idea seeing as how If he wasn't in it I would beat up Lucas and Speilburg.

Arkham Asylum sells 2 Million Copies!

G4 reports that Batman: Arkham Asylum has sold almost 2 million copies, and they'll soon release downloadable packs with extended levels.

Wait for that Laptop

Gizmodo, my favorite news source has released a list of 5 reasons not to buy a laptop just yet.

As a rule, you could always wait to buy a laptop, and find a better, cheaper one later. But believe me, now is one of those times when you have to. Here's why you should wait—just two months.

Obscura Digital's 18ft multitouch wall

Obscura Digital touts this massive multitouch display at the Hard Rock Cafe in Vegas as "possibly the world’s highest resolution interactive display available to the public", and say about it's specs:

The basics are 3 HD projectors behind an 18 foot multi-touch wall. The difference here is that the whole thing is one 6000 (almost, it is actually 3x1920 projectors, so it is a bit less)pixel plate, with over 100 4K-6K images/videos being displayed at one time. No "deep zoom" needed, everything is real-time. Also unique is the way we scale across GPUs seamlessly.

Gizmodo's iPhone App guide

Gizmodo has released it's list of 50 top iPhone apps. Making the list are favorites such as AirSharing and Facebook, as well as newcomers Convertbot and Bloom.

Twitter? Try following this politicians ankle bracelet.

Micheal Untermeyer, the candidate for Philly DA has chosen to wear an electronic monitoring anklet like the thugs get to wear. Why? The candidate believes that the state can save millions by Putting GPS trackers on nonviolent criminal defendants instead of keeping them in jail. By following the instructions here (PC only :c ) you can track him in realtime!

AT&T's iPhone MMS

MMS for iPhone launches September 25, which I would not describe as "Summer", but it is on it's way. Coming in the form of a software update to the iPhone 3G and 3GS, this feature is quite anticipated.

Quoth the AT&T:

An Update on iPhone MMS for our Mobility Customers

We know many of our iPhone customers are eager for an update on our rollout schedule for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). We've been working for the past several months to prepare our systems and network to ensure the best possible experience with MMS when it launches – and that launch date is: September 25 for iPhone 3G and 3GS customers. MMS will be enabled through a software update on that day.

We know that iPhone users will embrace MMS. The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone's multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.

We're riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that's resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry. We want you to know that we're working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.

We thank you for your business and look forward to keeping you updated on our initiatives.