If you’re on terra firma, it’s pretty obvious when you need to grab your make-out partner. But how, Slate’s Explainer asks, do you know when to celebrate “when you’re hurtling through time zones at 17,500 miles [28,164km]per hour?” More »
The 2010 Times Square New Year’s Ball is ready to go. They saved money and didn’t add any LEDs, but they added new stunning Waterford clink-clink glass panels. Here’s the insider look on how they did it, and why. More »
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]
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.
Hot on the heels of the news that SMS messages cost networks practically nothing to send comes a Telstra press release that they’re expecting Australians to send up to 76 million texts during the New Years celebration. Now, I’m no mathematician, but at roughly 30 25 cents per SMS message, that equates to a crapload of money. What’s more, they expect customers to send around 600,000 MMS messages as well, and we all know how expensive they can be. More »
newVideoPlayer("/New_Years_Ball.flv", 506, 423,"");At first glance, the new ball set to drop over Time’s Square this New Year’s Eve looks a lot like designs from years past. However, the updated ball is twice as big as previous versions (12-feet tall, 5,385kg) and it will be the first to be a permanent year-round fixture atop One Times Square. Besides its size, the ball is decked out with 2,668 Waterford Crystals and powered by 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDS that are capable of generating more than 16 million distinct colours and billions of patterns. Essentially, it’s a giant LivingColors lamp kaleidoscope for the world. [Times Square NYC]
