Bonstio's shared items in Google Reader

For The Landlocked Pirate

2009-07-09T17:00:41Z

Image Credit: IziSmile

Urban Renovation With LEGO Bricks.

2009-07-09T14:00:44Z

Jan Vormann and an army of volunteers decided to do something about the chipped bricks and decaying masonry around downtown Amsterdam. Rather than slap up some bland plaster or drab mortar, he used that world renowned symbol of Danish cultural heritage: the LEGO brick. I’m not sure about their structural integrity as a building material, but they make up for it in colorfulness and pure-grade awesome.

Vadim Kibardin's killer clock concept

2009-07-09T18:25:44Z

Designer Vadim Kibardin's suh-weeeet Black & White Clock turns two dimensions into three with a series of four OLED digits, each with their own power source.

A light sensor would figure out if it's bright or dark in the room, adjusting the numbers accordingly--going dark to form numbers during the day, and bright white at night.

Status: Concept stage, seeking a manufacturer.

(more...)

Google FAQ Reveals Chrome OS Hardware Partners

2009-07-09T13:09:00Z

Google’s announcement of the Chrome OS yesterday was, although far from cryptic, lacking in information. Simple, fast, Linux-based and netbook-capable was about all we go from the blog post. Google has tossed another tidbit our way in the form of a list of partners.

The Next Hacking Frontier: Your Brain?

2009-07-09T17:00:00Z

As brain implants and prosthetic limbs go wireless and become increasingly complex, scientists worry they will be vulnerable to hackers.

Getting drunk in the name of the lord!

2009-07-09T18:14:45Z

(Youtube Direktdrunk, via CynC)

Hier ein Priester, der Leute durch handauflegen betrunken macht. Ich dachte ja, ich hätte im Zusammenhang mit Religion schon die augenbrauenhochziehenwürdigsten Dinge gesehen, aber das hier topt fast alles. (Die Electro-Gurke topt es nämlich nicht.)

The Door to Hell

2009-07-03T16:16:26Z

The Darvaza (Darweze) natural gas crater is an endlessly smouldering geological anomaly located in the isolated Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan. Known locally as the “Door to Hell,” this close relative of the “Pool of Fire” and little-known tourist attraction has been on fire for at least three decades.

Above, we see the natural gas crater (barely) as a glowing red spot in an otherwise unremarkable landscape. Given the low quality of the satellite imagery in this area, it is surprising that anyone knows that the “Door to Hell” even exists. This begs the rather existential question: if a crater is burning in the middle of nowhere, does anyone see it?

As a matter of fact, a group of Russian geologists experienced it first hand in 1971¹ when the ground beneath their drilling equipment collapsed creating the abyss. Dispatched to the Karakum desert by the Soviet Union, they were searching for natural gas and found so much of the stuff that harvesting it became unsafe. With noxious gases threatening to harm nearby villages, the geologists set the seeping crater ablaze, unwittingly lighting the largest barbecue known to man.

The “Door to Hell” crater has been on fire ever since and shows no sign of stopping. Visible from a great distance, the glow from this eternal flame can even be seen in Google Earth’s City Lights layer.

Wow, that’s bright! Visitors to Turkmenistan can venture out to see hell first hand, but there aren’t any organised tours so you have to hire your own driver². Now who’s up for toasting the World’s Largest S’more?

Some really awesome photos of both craters can be found on this photography site and an impressive video of the “Door to Hell” is available on YouTube.

Thanks to Cris Diaz and Marc Buma

Depending on the source, at least three separate years, 1958, 1971, and 1986, are listed for when the expedition took place. I chose to go with Wikipedia’s 1971 date, mostly because it was in between the other two. ↩
If you do venture out you could visit another possibly related crater while you’re there. ↩

Locations: Turkmenistan / Categories: Deserts, Weirdness

View in Google Earth

YouTube - Open a Banana Like A Monkey

2009-07-09T19:36:35Z

KFC Popcorn Chicken Totally Looks Like a kidney stone

2009-07-08T13:00:20Z

KFC Popcorn Chicken Totally Looks Like a kidney stone

» Think you can do better? Make your own!

Pictures by: dunno source. Look-Alike by: Pine_Apple via Totally Looks Like Builder

How Large Is a Petabyte? [Storage]

2009-07-08T11:30:00Z

13.3 years of HDTV content. That's approximately 58,292 movies, which means an equal number of large pizzas. So one petabyte equals 52 tonnes of pepperoni pizza. Yes, my head has assploded. For other equivalents, click and zoom in.

How big are 20 million four-drawer cabinets? As big as the Sears Tower? I have a hard time visualizing that. Strangely enough, I don't have any problem visualizing 52 tonnes of pepperoni pizza. [Mozy]

Bay Area TV stations reject marijuana legalization ad. "It's just mind-boggling that TV stations would refuse to let this absolutely legitimate public policy debate be on their airwaves. How can we have democracy if we can't have open debate?"

2009-07-09T04:18:18Z

submitted by osmosisgenius to politics
[link] [36 comments]

The Narcissist Test Cartoon | Savage Chickens - Cartoons on Sticky Notes by Doug Savage

2009-07-07T12:01:34Z

via http://www.savagechickens.com/2009/06/the-narcissist-test.html

Google Chrome OS in Context of the Google Distribution Chain, Being a Cartoon With Roughly 11 Steps and a Guest Appearance of the MS Monster

2009-07-08T21:11:52Z

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Chrome OS in Context of the Google Dis ... | Comments]

[Advertisement] Want to advertise here? Your ad will show in the blog and feed.

Introducing the Google Chrome OS

2009-07-08T04:37:00Z

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

Update on 7/8/2009: We have posted an FAQ on the Google Chrome Blog.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

100+ Minimal and Typographic Package Designs

2009-07-06T17:05:29Z

Time for a little inspiration. Package design can be tricky, but as you can see here, sometimes it can be relatively simple and still come across as beling elegant. Sometimes, less is more….. Here are over 100 examples of package design that either has a minimal style, or a typographic based solution. If you like these and you’d like to learn more about package design, TheDieline.com and LovelyPackage.com are the places to visit. A big thanks goes out to them for a lot of the images you see here.

This is a post from: BittBox.com

Internet Explorer Vulnerability Fix

2009-07-07T09:04:39Z

Microsoft has released a security advisory about a vulnerability in Microsoft Video ActiveX Control which can be exploited remotely in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability advisory states that Microsoft is aware that attackers are trying to exploit the vulnerability. Internet Explorer users are therefor advised to fix the vulnerability as soon as possible to prevent possible attacks on their computer system.

The security vulnerability affects only Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems. Computer systems running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 are not affected because “the ability to pass data to this control within Internet Explorer” is restricted in these operating systems.

A successful attack will give the attacker the same user rights as the currently logged in user. Microsoft has issued a workaround for the Internet Explorer vulnerability that can be applied manually or using Microsoft Fix It.

The fastest way to patch the security vulnerability is to use the Microsoft Fix It script that will perform all the actions of the workaround automatically. The fix will basically remove support for the ActiveX Control in Internet Explorer. This should not have any impact on the web browser’s functionality according to Microsoft.

Tags: internet explorer patch, internet explorer vulnerability, internet-explorer, microsoft fix it, microsoft video activex control, security advisory, windows server 2003, windows-xp

VLC Hits 1.0 with Better Playback and File Support [Downloads]

2009-07-07T12:30:00Z

Windows/Mac/Linux: VLC Media Player, the open-source solution to media players that can't play your media files, reaches the 1.0 milestone today. What's new? Support for HD and other new formats, finer speed controls, customizable toolbars, AirTunes streaming, and much more.

On top of new features, this 1.0 release has been, as software types would expect, given a serious bug scrubbing and annoyance reworking. Obsessive-compulsive playback types will appreciate the better live recording, instant pausing, and finer-grained playback speed controls, while those working in non-common formats may find VLC's newfound support for AES3, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Raw Dirac, and other expensive-sounding codecs enticing. VideoLAN's front page (and just about every page on the site at the moment) has the full feature list; at the moment, we're tinkering with AirTunes streaming to see how robust its support is.

VLC 1.0 is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems, though it may take a bit for 1.0 to be pushed out across Linux distributions' repositories. Tell us what you think of 1.0, a.k.a. Goldeneye, in the comments. Thanks Frederik!

VLC Media Player [Videolan]

Day planner clock erases itself

2009-07-06T12:00:16Z

Il-Gu Cha's Trace of Time clock incorporates a whiteboard-esque erasable face and an eraser built into the hour hand - See a video of it in action here. [via Tinker.it]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

I never did like him much...

2009-07-03T14:46:21Z

New Blog Search tools: Feeds, Hot Queries and Latest Posts

2009-07-02T18:50:00Z

Ever since the new Google Blog Search homepage launched, we've been fielding requests for a myriad of different features. Today we're happy to announce the launch of our most requested feature: RSS and Atom feeds. Simply click on the links under "Subscribe" in the left-hand column of the Blog Search front page to subscribe to any topic or story in any feed reader, like Google Reader.

If you don't use a feed reader, we're also offering an iGoogle gadget that lets you embed the Blog Search front page right inside of your iGoogle page or any other page where iGoogle gadgets are accepted. You can browse topics and drill into stories from within the widget, and you can customize the gadget to choose which topics you want to follow.

With these new ways to read Blog Search stories, you might think our homepage was going unloved, but not to worry. We've also added two new features to the Blog Search homepage to better help you discover what people are talking about right now on the web: Hot Queries and Latest Posts.

Hot Queries lists searches currently popular in Blog Search — it's an easy way to quickly dive into the trending points of conversation on the web. Latest Posts, on the other hand, shows new posts from popular blogs. While Hot Queries highlights what people are looking for, Latest Posts lets you find out about stories even before people start searching for them.

There's a lot of great, fresh content being published in blogs every day. We hope these new features help you discover more of it, faster.

Posted by Akshay Patil, Software Engineer, & Dylan Casey, Product Manager

Bonstio's shared items in Google Reader

For The Landlocked Pirate

Urban Renovation With LEGO Bricks.

Vadim Kibardin's killer clock concept

Google FAQ Reveals Chrome OS Hardware Partners

The Next Hacking Frontier: Your Brain?

Getting drunk in the name of the lord!

The Door to Hell

YouTube - Open a Banana Like A Monkey

KFC Popcorn Chicken Totally Looks Like a kidney stone

How Large Is a Petabyte? [Storage]

Bay Area TV stations reject marijuana legalization ad. "It's just mind-boggling that TV stations would refuse to let this absolutely legitimate public policy debate be on their airwaves. How can we have democracy if we can't have open debate?"

The Narcissist Test Cartoon | Savage Chickens - Cartoons on Sticky Notes by Doug Savage

Google Chrome OS in Context of the Google Distribution Chain, Being a Cartoon With Roughly 11 Steps and a Guest Appearance of the MS Monster

Introducing the Google Chrome OS

100+ Minimal and Typographic Package Designs

Internet Explorer Vulnerability Fix

Related posts

VLC Hits 1.0 with Better Playback and File Support [Downloads]

Day planner clock erases itself

I never did like him much...

New Blog Search tools: Feeds, Hot Queries and Latest Posts