Sunday, May 4, 2008
Press
Microsoft Retires Yahoo Offer, Won’t Try Hostile Takeover
8:41PM Jesus Diaz | Microsoft has retired their bid over Yahoo completely, citing “excessive demands” on Yahoo’s part. They won’t try to do a hostile takeover either, because “Mr Yang would “take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft,” according to Steve Ballmer. The potential nightmare/dream love story is over. Do you think this is bad for the world, given Google’s almost monopolistic position? Or maybe it’s good because Microsoft already has enough power? Tell us your comments after reading the rest of Steve Ballmer’s farewell letter after the jump. More »
Science
NASA to Fly You to the Moon for Free, Sinatra Style
12:30PM Jesus Diaz | NASA is opening the door to anyone wanting to go to the moon as part of their next lunar mission—all without requiring years of tests, training, or smoking astroturf. Sadly, only your name will go, which is actually good because the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter—set to select landing and outpost sites for the Constellation program—is not returning. Ever. Just submit your name to the mission site, and it will be added to a chip that will orbit for eternity around the biggest cheese in the Universe, and you will get a certificate from NASA. More »
Online
Happy 30th Birthday, Spam!
11:30AM Gizmodo US Edition | Oh Spam, my how you have grown! Thirty years ago, on this day, you came into the world as a little misguided e-mail sent by an equipment engineer over Arpanet to promote a new line of computers. You were quickly shot down by other Arpanet users who called it an “insult… to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network.” Yet, at some point in time, people stopped protesting you loudly enough. Now you comprise 80 percent to 95 percent of all e-mail sent, your crafty trojans and pesky viruses have infected millions of computers, and you’ve cost IT departments nearly US$200 billion to combat you. But since it’s your birthday, instead of telling you like we usually do to GTFO, let us sing you a little song instead. It goes something like this:
Games
N-Gage Flagship Game Full of Videogame Character Knockoffs
10:30AM Gizmodo US Edition | Nokia tells us that Reset Generation—their new “flagship” title for the N-Gage—will appeal to those who grew up playing videogames. The multiplayer puzzle-adventure is supposed to tickle you by using parodies of characters like Mario, Link, and even Master Chief, resulting in what they call “the world’s first videogame about videogames.” We are going to call it “yet another game that couldn’t use the real thing so they decided to do humourous knockoffs.” Although who knows, if it’s crazy enough, it may work. More »
Gadgets
BodyBeat Metronome Keeps Beat Silently, Forgets Musicians Need Their Fingers
9:20AM Gizmodo US Edition | The Peterson BB-1 BodyBeat attaches to your finger/random appendage, sending tiny rhythmic pulses that you can feel on your skin. The non-aural stimulation will give you a silent way to count measures while playing the piano… and since you have to use your fingers to do that, you will have to clamp this to somewhere else. The question is where? More »
Toys
Maker Faire: Remote Controlled Battleships Fighting With BB Gun Cannons
8:40AM Brian Lam | Why do I need goggles to watch R/C ships sailing in a pond? Because these replicas of WWII battleships fire C02-powered projectiles. In the video above, you can see munitions bounce off the plexi shields protecting the crowd and make splashes as they ricochet off enemy hulls. The Western Warship Combat Club is recreating Axis vs. Allies fights where each side tries to sink the other. At 1/144 scale. [Western Warship Combat Club Maker Faire] More »
Phones
HTC Diamond Has Ultra-High Density Display
8:00AM Gizmodo US Edition | The first “official” photos and specs for the HTC Diamond have been leaked, complete with a 2.8-inch 640 x 480 pixel screen (twice the lines of the iPhone in smaller surface,) Windows Mobile 6.1 and 3G connectivity. Could this be the most important product of the year HTC said it would reveal in London on Tuesday? The fabled iPhone Killer? Addy will be liveblogging the event, so we will discover it then. It certainly seems like a good mobile phone, judging from the specs. More »
Robots
Sisyphus V: A Robot Making a Zen Garden
7:18AM Brian Lam | This isn’t a sandbox with a marble in it. Sysyphus V, a kinetic sculpture by Bruce Shapiro looks like a Zen Garden. But instead of a buddhist monk carefully raking gravel, it’s an autonomous steel sphere carefully crawling over and over, making polar geometric shapes that can best be described as iterative lillies or stars. A magnet on an arm on a two axis plotter sites underneath the half-ton set up, and Sisyphus is making its first appearance here, at Maker Faire 2008. An unrelated but cool Interview with Bruce, by Cool Hunting\, after the jump. [TaoMC at Makers] More »
Online
AT&T/Starbucks Free Wi-Fi Disabled… For Now
7:00AM Gizmodo US Edition | AT&T’s free Starbucks Wi-Fi for iPhone usersdeal didn’t last very long. Users on the MacRumors forum say that locations where Wi-Fi worked just days ago now have the free iPhone access removed. Considering AT&T never made an official mention of the service, it’s possible somebody at the Death Star jumped the gun and the mistake has been corrected. Or maybe the company found out that a simple hack would let anybody with a friend’s iPhone number get a free ride. [MacRumors] More »
Entertainment
