Our friends at Consumerist have a new owner, and it seems like a great match: they’ve become the first addition to a new non-profit division of the company that publishes Consumer Reports.
The new book The Race For a New Game Machine, by two IBM engineers, details how ridiculous the design process was when IBM was making Sony’s PS3 cell chip. Microsoft basically got a free ride.
This is hot. Safari+ seamlessly adds a whole bunch of useful desktop-like features—text searching, translation, speed-scrolling and more—to Mobile Safari through the magic of Javascript bookmarkets. [Safari+ via Lifehacker]
Not only did the Den of Geek assemble a respectable (if not a little controversial) list of the top 50 special effects shots of cinema, the site also explained the tricks behind the illusions.
Viacom wants Time Warner Cable to pay more for its channels, like MTV and Comedy Central. TWC doesn’t want to pay. So on Jan. 1, they could all go away for TWC subscribers.
Is this Swedish town that’s routing heat from its crematorium to local homes morbid or brilliant? Let’s just call them brilliantly morbid.
Last year, we published the 100 year timeline of the Times Square New Year’s Ball. Now we’ve updated it with Philips’ and New York’s newest, most dazzling time ball ever. (Click image for big version.)
The 2009 New Year’s Ball is 12 feet in diameter and weighs in at 5,386kg. It will blind you with 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs—that’s roughly triple the 9,576 LEDs that the ball had just last year—shining 16 million possible colours through 2,668 Waterford Crystals.
And despite these barely fathomable numbers, the new ball is 20% more energy efficient than last year’s.
To celebrate the century-old tradition (and appease the tourists), the new ball will stay on display all year long in Times Square. So does that mean we can get drunk and celebrate in the streets all year, too? (Yes, yes it does.) Happy New Year! [Times Square Alliance]
Men’s Wii pyjamas: the business suit of the parents’ basement set. In a perfect world, they’d only be available in XXXL. [Product Page via Nerd Approved]
I have played this video again and again, trying to figure out what’s going on here. I can’t. My brain is fried. Yoshimoto Cube has fried my brain and it’s not even 2009 yet.
While everyone else is getting drunk, doing all kinds of exotic drugs and making out, you could ring in the new year with a breath-powered virtual new year’s horn for your iPhone. But don’t.
