Via Hotels.com. Infographics to put you in the mood. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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Most Topular Stories
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Romance survey [infographic]
Holy Kaw!9 Feb 2012 | 12:02 pm -
Click And Mortar: Zynga Signs Deal With Hasbro For Real-World Toys and Games
TechCrunch9 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pmMobile app developer Rovio has famously turned its Angry Birds game into a popular toy franchise, but most other new-fangled gaming companies haven’t spent much energy going this route. But now social gaming leader Zynga is, per a big licensing deal with Hasbro. The long-time toy and board game maker is paying Zynga to turn games like FarmVille, CityVille, and its other hit titles into real world products. Details on what this will look like are scant in the press release, so I’m left guessing what this is going to mean. Fluffy pink FarmVille tractors? Lego-style CityVille… -
THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Facebook Has Microsoft As Ally To Take On Google
Top News9 Feb 2012 | 11:39 amThey are attached at the hip in search, social and the cloud. -
Google building "home entertainment system" for wireless music streaming
Ars Technica9 Feb 2012 | 1:35 pmGoogle is building a "home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company's own brand," according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. While the move has not been confirmed by Google, it would build upon the Google Music streaming service and music store. It would also likely integrate with Android—the Journal describes it in one paragraph as the "Google Android entertainment system," and says it is being developed by Google's Android unit for unveiling later this year. The system "would let people download digital… -
LinkedIn Hits 150 Million Members
Mashable!9 Feb 2012 | 1:26 pmLinkedIn on Thursday announced it has 150 million members in its network, a 20 million increase over November. The figure was disclosed in a press release the company issued Thursday announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results. The company posted revenues of $167.7 million, beating the analysts’ consensus of $160 million for Q4. Earnings were $0.06 cents per share, which was on target. LinkedIn’s stock was up more than 5% in after-hours trading. The Q4 revenue figure was a 105% jump over the same period in 2010. Revenues for full-year 2011 was $522.2 million, a 115%…
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Holy Kaw!
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Romance survey [infographic]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:02 pmVia Hotels.com. Infographics to put you in the mood. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Do aliens go invisible by 'going green'?
9 Feb 2012 | 11:24 amAs we discover more and more planets around other stars, the Fermi Paradox is becoming, well, more paradoxical. The Fermi Paradox simply asks the question "where are they?" Our Milky Way galaxy is so big and so old -- and we are estimated to be accompanied by at least 100 billion planets -- that aliens should have visited us by now. Instead, when we peruse the heavens, we are faced with the Great Silence, which is one of the biggest challenges to modern astronomy. Full story at Discovery News. More news from Discovery Communications. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink | Leave a… -
Mysterious sounds reported around the world
9 Feb 2012 | 11:23 amPeople around the world have reported hearing strange sounds from the skies over the past month. Sometimes they describe it as a hum or low rumble; other times it’s a whine, thump, or even a melody. Often the sounds have been recorded and posted online, fueling rumors and conspiracy theories. One blogger wrote, "either the world is ending, aliens are landing or everyone is getting hoaxed. Or, possibly, there’s an actual scientific explanation for the mass amount of YouTube videos capturing bizarre sounds that are being heard around the globe. Are we witnessing the beginning of a… -
Costa Concordia: an ecological time bomb
9 Feb 2012 | 11:21 amAs workers begin to extract the half-million gallons of fuel in the shipwrecked cruise liner, locals are worried that their pristine waters are in danger. Reporting by Rossella Lorenzi. Written and produced by Rossella Lorenzi and Martin Berman. Full story at Discovery News. More news from Discovery Communications. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Inside Syria's capitol: nervously normal
9 Feb 2012 | 11:18 amAs the violence in Syria continues to escalate, Syrian citizens are arming themselves to resist their oppressive regime. For days, Homs, the third-largest city in Syria, has endured shelling, tanks and attacks by heavy weaponry. Syrian protestors react with more violence against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, resulting in all-out war zones in some residential neighborhoods. Full story at Discovery News. More news from Discovery Communications. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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TechCrunch
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Click And Mortar: Zynga Signs Deal With Hasbro For Real-World Toys and Games
9 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pmMobile app developer Rovio has famously turned its Angry Birds game into a popular toy franchise, but most other new-fangled gaming companies haven’t spent much energy going this route. But now social gaming leader Zynga is, per a big licensing deal with Hasbro. The long-time toy and board game maker is paying Zynga to turn games like FarmVille, CityVille, and its other hit titles into real world products. Details on what this will look like are scant in the press release, so I’m left guessing what this is going to mean. Fluffy pink FarmVille tractors? Lego-style CityVille… -
Music Labels’ Joint Venture, VEVO, Shows Pirated NFL Game At Sundance
9 Feb 2012 | 12:04 pmOver the last decade the major music labels — and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America — have established a repeated pattern of attacking consumers in the name of squelching illegal file-sharing. Piracy, they claim, has been the industry’s undoing, accounting for an over 50% drop in sales since 1999 (the industry likes to discount the impact of legal per-song music downloads via services like iTunes, and the myriad other changes facilitated by the rise of high-speed Internet connections). Their efforts to combat piracy are often draconian: threatening… -
You Can Buy Me Love, But Please Don’t Buy Me Gadgets
9 Feb 2012 | 11:52 amValentine’s Day is just around the corner, and the majority of us are likely scrambling to find that special gift. (The rest of us, meanwhile, are cursing couples.) A Valentine’s Day gift is usually more important than others because it’s a one-on-one situation, unlike Christmas or birthdays. Just one gift, to just one person — and it better be good. With that in mind, I’d like to address an article out of AllThingsD this morning that sourced information from PriceGrabber’s Valentine’s Day Dashboard Report. The report took information from February 4… -
The Google+ Platform Roadmap From Director Of Engineering David Glazer
9 Feb 2012 | 11:49 amIt won’t stop with Google Search Plus Your World. When asked if we should expect more integrations of Google+ into Google products, G+ director of engineering David Glazer said at today’s Inside Social Apps 2012 conference, ”Yes, where it’s good for the user. I think there’s more places to make people happy by showing them content they care about.” At the first major speaking engagement about its social network, Glazer also discussed user acquisition, monetization, and support for brands. Regarding Google+ expanding into more Google properties,… -
AT&T, Google Among The Biggest Online Advertisers — comScore
9 Feb 2012 | 11:47 amAs part of its 2012 US Digital Future in Focus whitepaper, comScore looked at the online ad landscape and found a mix of old and new names. The report includes a list of the top 10 display advertisers in the United States (all of this data is US-only), as measured by impressions. AT&T topped the list, as it has in previous years, but there’s a newcomer — Google, which delivered 40.4 billion ads for products like Chrome, Google Offers, and Google+. Large brand advertising on the Internet is growing in general, comScore says. To quantify that, it measured the number of advertisers…
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Top News
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THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Facebook Has Microsoft As Ally To Take On Google
9 Feb 2012 | 11:39 amThey are attached at the hip in search, social and the cloud. -
STOCK Act Passes: House Votes For Weakened Insider Trading Bill
9 Feb 2012 | 8:38 amWASHINGTON -- A weakened version of the STOCK Act banning insider trading by members of Congress and the administration passed the House Thursday without curbs on "political intelligence" or new clean-government rules. The legislation would make it clear that lawmakers and key staffers are bound by the insider trading laws that affect everyone. -
Kodak ditches digital camera business
9 Feb 2012 | 11:23 amKodak will phase out digital cameras in the first half of 2012, in favor of photo printing and brand-name licensing. -
First Ever Photo of a Shark Eating Another Shark
8 Feb 2012 | 4:26 pmIf you're a shark, what could you possibly have to fear? You're the ultimate predator, the top of the marine food chain. You can swim around without a care in the world... -
Free cellphones cost taxpayers $1.6 billion
9 Feb 2012 | 10:12 amLast year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight.
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Ars Technica
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Google building "home entertainment system" for wireless music streaming
9 Feb 2012 | 1:35 pmGoogle is building a "home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company's own brand," according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. While the move has not been confirmed by Google, it would build upon the Google Music streaming service and music store. It would also likely integrate with Android—the Journal describes it in one paragraph as the "Google Android entertainment system," and says it is being developed by Google's Android unit for unveiling later this year. The system "would let people download digital… -
Windows 8 on ARM: the desktop is there, so's Office, but not much more
9 Feb 2012 | 1:25 pmEnding months of speculation on the matter, Microsoft has revealed that Windows 8 will indeed contain a desktop—and that desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will all be pre-installed. Microsoft insists that the desktop holds real value, and that it makes Windows less valuable to users if it was missing (a view we're sympathetic to). To that end, Windows 8 on ARM ("WOA") will have a desktop, with a taskbar, that includes Explorer, most of the current desktop utilities that ship with Windows (though not all, and Microsoft hasn't said what won't be included), and… -
Windows 8 on ARM: building a common Windows platform
9 Feb 2012 | 12:34 pmMicrosoft has started to talk in detail about Windows on ARM: what it will do, what it won't do, and how it has been put together in its latest post on its Building Windows 8 blog. The focus of the lengthy post is the work Microsoft has done to bring Windows to ARM: building a common ARM platform that works the same way, whether using a processor from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, or Qualcomm. This was a substantial undertaking: unlike desktop PCs, ARM systems are all wildly different. Windows on ARM, or "WOA" as Microsoft is calling it, is substantially identical to Windows on x86/x64. The… -
Arcade game luminaries see parallels in today's social, mobile games
9 Feb 2012 | 12:24 pmIf there's anyone who can make sense of the recent, meteoric rise of mobile and social games, it's probably the people behind the golden age of arcade gaming in the early '80s. Just such a group drew a lot of parallels between the two gaming eras at a DICE session today, while also offering some cautionary warnings about following in the arcade's footsteps. Read the comments on this post -
Linking correlation to causation with power laws and scale free systems
9 Feb 2012 | 11:30 amAn essential part of science involves finding correlations between two sets of measurements and seeking explanations for those correlations. However, relationships can be suggested by data even when they don't actually exist, and correlations may occur due to random fluctuations rather than a deep underlying principle (as the infamous "correlation does not equal causation" cliché suggests). These errors are easy to make, and the scientific literature is full of them. So how can researchers establish if a correlation is both real and meaningful? In a Perspective in the February 10 issue of…
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Mashable!
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LinkedIn Hits 150 Million Members
9 Feb 2012 | 1:26 pmLinkedIn on Thursday announced it has 150 million members in its network, a 20 million increase over November. The figure was disclosed in a press release the company issued Thursday announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results. The company posted revenues of $167.7 million, beating the analysts’ consensus of $160 million for Q4. Earnings were $0.06 cents per share, which was on target. LinkedIn’s stock was up more than 5% in after-hours trading. The Q4 revenue figure was a 105% jump over the same period in 2010. Revenues for full-year 2011 was $522.2 million, a 115%… -
FarmVille Toys Are Coming: Zynga and Hasbro Sign Licensing Deal
9 Feb 2012 | 1:14 pmIf Angry Birds and Cut the Rope can have toys, why can’t FarmVille? Social gaming juggernaut Zynga is teaming up with toy maker Hasbro to create a “wide range of toys and gaming experiences” based on Zynga properties and brands, a release read. The first products are expected to hit the market in Fall 2012. The agreement gives Hasbro license to develop and distribute an array of products in various toy and game categories for Zynga’s various properties. The companies will also be able to co-brand merchandise, which could potentially lead to digital product tie-ins. The… -
Hipstamatic Releases Lens for New York Fashion Week
9 Feb 2012 | 1:02 pmIn conjunction with New York Fashion Week, iPhone photography app Hipstamatic has released a cool-toned lens (i.e., filter) designed to capture the aesthetic of classic American beauty. The lens was developed in partnership with fashion photographer Chiun-Kai Shih, whose work has appeared in GQ, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, among other well-recognized publications. This is the second lens Hipstamatic has developed with Shih to commemorate NYFW. Last year, the pair released a lens called “Chunky,” which gives images a highly saturated, hazy glow. A spokesperson for Hipstamatic… -
Apple Hit With 250,000 Signatures Protesting Labor Conditions in China
9 Feb 2012 | 12:46 pmFair-labor organizers delivered 250,000 signatures to Apple stores in six cities around the world on Thursday in protest of the company’s working conditions in China. Apple’s main factory, Foxconn, has faced numerous accusations of providing an inhumane work environment to Chinese workers. “It’s hard to hear tales of people jumping off buildings and using their hands until they can’t anymore,” said senior organizer of Change.org William Winters, who delivered a stack of petitions to the San Francisco Apple store on Stockton Street. The rest of the 250,000… -
Live LOLz: Cheezburger Plans Grammy Awards Memes in Real Time
9 Feb 2012 | 12:35 pmI Can Has Cheezburger plans to turn the 54th Grammy Awards into a laughing matter by giving viewers an outlet to write funny captions for red carpet and ceremony photos. The “Live LOLing” event starts Sunday at 4 p.m. PT when Cheezburger’s ROFLrazzi site, Twitter profile and Facebook page will begin publishing Grammy images with humorous captions — in lolcat meme format. People can click “Recaption This” to plop their own witty text on the photos. Participants can then share their creations on their social networks. Cheezburger editor in chief Emily Huh…
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ReadWriteWeb
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Hangout With the Scientists Looking for the God Particle
9 Feb 2012 | 11:57 amWant to hang out with the people who run the CMS? No, not the content management system. The Compact Muon Solenoid. It's one of the two big detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world. CERN physicist Dr. Albert De Roeck is hosting a Google+ Hangout tomorrow from inside the cavern where the experiment takes place, about 100 meters underneath Cessy, France. He'll explain the CMS experiment and take questions about the crazy frontiers of particle physics. Sponsor The CMS is one of the two general-purpose LHC experiments searching… -
Fabled Google Drive Won't Be Another Dropbox
9 Feb 2012 | 11:00 amThe Wall Street Journal has revived rumors about Google launching a cloud storage service called Drive. The comparison everybody wants to make is to Dropbox. The thinking is that Google will challenge everyone's favorite start-up by releasing a native desktop and mobile Drive app with the same syncing features Dropbox users know and love. Google Drive rumors have been around for many years, and they've always conformed to the understanding of "The Cloud" that has prevailed at the time. If it's not like Apple's iCloud, which is integrated into Apple's devices, then it must be like Dropbox,… -
[STUDY] 61% of Social Media Users Feel So Close To You
9 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amSometimes little things like a sweet comment on Facebook or a Twitter friend calling your tweet a "favorite" can really make a social networker bee's day. A new study from Pew finds that for the most part, adults are kind to each other on social media sites. In fact, 85% of adults say that most of the people they come across on social media are rather kind; only 5% say that people are "mostly unkind," which would imply rude or mean. An additional 5% say that it's all situational. On the whole, adults have positive experiences on social networking sites. A total 68% of SNS users had an… -
[Infographic] Mapping the Tools in the Mobile Development Ecosystem
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amThe mobile development ecosystem is a large, complicated space. There are innovative startups making tools for native and mobile Web apps along with large enterprise-grade companies that offer solutions from cloud support to frameworks and developer environments. For a mobile developer, it can be confusing to know where to turn and what to use to make the best app possible. Mobile "backend-as-a-service" startup Kinvey created a map for ReadWriteMobile to help developers understand the ecosystem. Kinvey brackets the mobile ecosystem between two primary pillars: the service providers and the… -
Harry Reid Wants a Bigger, Badder Version of SOPA/PIPA
9 Feb 2012 | 9:30 amSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., still licking wounds from last week's defeat of the Protect IP Act and its House counterpart the Stop Online Piracy Act, is reportedly working on an even more sinister, Internet-regulating bill. Few details have been publicly disclosed about the latest push by legislative Democrats to expand executive-branch authority over the Internet, but the Daily Caller has pieced together publicly-available clues suggesting that Reid's newest bill is even broader than President Barack Obama's cybersecurity proposal. Sponsor Released last May, Obama's proposal…
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Wired Top Stories
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A Texas Jury Now Deliberating Who, if Anyone, Owns the Web
9 Feb 2012 | 12:25 pmThe fate of the openness of the interactive web is now in the hands of a jury in Texas, weighing testimony from the Web's early pioneers about the validity of a patent claim on features such as embedded video. A loss means that nearly every major U.S. website could owe thousands to millions of dollars to an obscure patent-licensing company based in a small-town in Texas. -
Origami Robots Run Only on Air
9 Feb 2012 | 11:38 amPowered by nothing more than puffs of air, robots molded from paper and silicone rubber can bend, twist, grip and even lift more than 100 times their weight. -
Bear McCreary Reveals the Physics Behind Your Favorite Science Fiction Theme Tunes
9 Feb 2012 | 11:35 am -
Visions of a Gaming Apocalypse Kick Off Annual DICE Summit
9 Feb 2012 | 11:26 amLAS VEGAS -- The presentations at the annual DICE Summit are meant to be something like the videogame industry's version of TED talks, big-think speeches meant to inspire gamemakers with new ideas. This year's DICE Summit began on a considerably different note, with a pair of speakers who had no end of harsh predictions. -
Report: Apple Expected to Hold iPad 3 Event First Week of March
9 Feb 2012 | 11:23 amThose eagerly awaiting the iPad with bated breath shouldn't have to wait much longer. Circulating rumors and Apple's traditional iPad release timeline, the next iPad should make its public debut in the first week of March.
