5min - The Deadliest Display of Nuclear Power - Video

5min - The Deadliest Display of Nuclear Power - Video

Stream Music from BitTorrent Downloads with WeStream [BitTorrent]

BitTorrent applet WeStream plays individual songs from a BitTorrent stream in your Java-enabled browser. Brought to you by BitLet, the in-browser BitTorrent client, just give WeStream the URL of the torrent file to get started. WeStream is a really interesting idea, but it's currently got a couple of restrictions. First, it only works with OGG- and MP3-encoded music. Second, it can really only work on well-seeded torrents, meaning if you want to listen to something with just one or two seeds, you're probably out of luck. But if you can get a good speed (like this), WeStream is a perfect tool for previewing music before you download it.

WeStream [BitLet via TorrentFreak]

The Ultimate PC for Aunt Lili: Daniel Sellers gift.

Check out these specs!






Processor

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor.
64 bit Support: Yes
FSB: 1066MHz
Hyper-Threading Support: No
L2 Cache: 4M shared

$279.99



Case
Antec Sonata III Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply.

$129.95


Heatsink

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler

$21.99


Memory

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

$129.99



Graphics Card

ASUS EN8800GT/G/HTDP/512M GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

$279.99



Hard Drive

Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFDRTL 150GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

$259.99




Motherboard

ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU Type: Quad-core / Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium
FSB: 1333/1066MHz

$179.99


Total = $1281.89

RIAA: Personal Use is Stealing

We couldn't bid 2007 a proper farewell without one last bonehead move by our friends at the major labels. For some time now, it's largely been considered legal to rip electronic versions of music that you purchase, so long as they're for your own use. When you buy a CD, that music becomes your personal possession.

Desperate times, however, call for desperate shifts in litigation. According to The Washington Post, the RIAA has sent a letter to an Arizona-based music fan, accusing him of "illegally" transferring his CD collection to his hard drive.

During the trial of Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman who was ordered by the court to pay $220,000 in damages for the 24 songs she was sharing online, Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, testified, "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." He added that when one makes that copy, it's "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy.'"

While recent consumer wins with regards to technologies such as VCRs and DVRs may set a precedent on the matter of copying your own entertainment, the RIAA just wouldn't be the RIAA if it backed down. Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the organization, told The Post that it would continue to bring on the suits: "It's not our first choice, but it's a necessary part of the equation. There are consequences for breaking the law."

The Ultimate Toilet for Troubled Butt Wipers

Have trouble wiping your butt? Or maybe you're just lazy, or think it's unsanitary. Whichever the reason, the Ultimate Solution ComfortSeat (SCS-5000) can help you conquer your worse toilet nightmares. It's a special kind of toilet seat that cleans your butt with the touch of a button. That's right folks: a self-cleaning nozzle extends from the bowl and washes your butt with a sweeping motion. Best of all, the wash motion, nozzle position, water pressure, and water temperature are all adjustable. Because, well, we only deserve the best when it comes to the potty, right?

The SCS-5000 works with the included remote, which is attached to the side of the toilet seat. It's color-coded, making it easy to remember which button does what, such as pink for front wash and yellow for air dry. The system is so advanced that it even remembers your preferred settings. For instance, after a good pee, you might like a nice, frontal wash with low water pressure.

The ComfortSeat also features a heated soft-closing seat, a user sensor (so that you don't get accidentally sprayed if you're not sitting on the toilet), a warm air dryer, an automatic energy-saver mode, and an antibacterial plastic construction.

Just for the ladies, the SCS-5000 has a rear and feminine frontal wash that features a back-and-forth sweeping motion for, according to the site, a "wider and more effective cleaning."

You can get all of this loo luxury for $1,099.95. Make sure you select either an elongated or round toilet seat style.

Identify and Set Rules for Unwanted Phone Calls [Distractions]

If you're like me, you probably get unwanted mobile phone calls often from people who accidentally but habitually dial the wrong number. You can ask your carrier to block the repeated offenders, but that option is not supported by all carriers. The Baby Toolkit blog has an alternative that may be just as good. For people who repeatedly call the wrong number, create a contact called "Wrong Number" and set your phone to silent. That way, you can save your cell phone minutes and avoid being distracted when you get a call that isn't intended for you anyway.

Hack Your Cell: Identify Regular Wrong Number Calls [Baby Toolkit]

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Presented By

Yosemite, Sequoia and Tahoe Slated for the Next Big Segway Tours by Segway of Oakland

Segway of Oakland innovates turn-key Segway rental program for California Parks. (PRWeb Jan 6, 2008) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/UHJvZi1Qcm9mLVNxdWEtUGlnZy1Mb3ZlLVplcm8=

This year of Google blogging

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team

It's that time again, the end of a year - time to tote up Google's blogging activity for the last 365 days. First, a few bits of data about this particular blog:

• Number of posts this year: 300
• New product announcements: 15 (not counting our April 1 release)
• News about upgrades and additions to products: 87
• Announcing products in more languages and countries: 30
• Acquisitions: 12
• Unique visitors: 6,738,830 (for 8,655,830 visits)
• Languages: 511 (preferred language configured on computers)
• Top non-Google referrers: Yahoo, Digg, Slashdot, Fark

Beyond these basics, this year saw many more posts on privacy (9), accessibility (10), and energy and the environment (11). We blogged a good deal about Google's people and culture, our various offices around the world, and the pastimes and passions of Googlers (26, including 2 recipes). We talked about healthcare issues that challenge consumers (5). There were competitions including Google Code Jam and events for developers, educators and others (29). Through YouTube, there has been much political activity (7) in the U.S. as well as in Australia.

The posts that elicited the most reaction in terms of views and linkbacks include:

- the much-discussed "Gphone" news
- our thinking about the upcoming FCC spectrum auction
- what the OpenSocial APIs could mean
- how a black screen might not save energy
- announcing the Knol test project
- building your own Google homepage

Of course, there's more than business to write about. We celebrated National Gorilla Suit Day, deconstructed the Valentine's Day doodle, and then a snake went missing.

As for the Google family of blogs, there's been lots of growth this year: 42 new ones launched, for a total to 83 active company blogs. Increasingly, Googlers want to quickly and regularly convey product news and updates to various constituents, and blogs are a great way to do that. Among the most popular of this newest crop are the Gmail blog (nearly 1.5 million unique visitors), the Orkut blogs (in English - 3.5 million uniques; and Portuguese - 8.8 million), and Google Lat Long, with 824,000 unique visitors, which covers everything geographical. In addition, readers can now turn to new product blogs including those for Google Finance, Google News, and Mobile. Reflecting keen interest in activity outside the U.S., the YouTube blog had the greatest number of comments for its June post about the fact that YouTube is available in 9 more countries, followed by the August post announcing InVideo ads.

On the ads side: there are now 6 more non-English blogs for AdSense publishers (French, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Chinese). The AdWords team opened blogs for Brasil and the Netherlands, Japan now has its own Analytics blog, and there are now German and Chinese versions of the popular Webmaster Central. (The most popular ads-related blog is the one for Analytics, with nearly half a million unique visitors, followed by closely Inside AdSense and then Inside AdWords.)

To keep current and share their work, developers got a raft of new blogs, too, including those focused on APIs for YouTube, Checkout, Gears, Mashup, and Gadgets. Needless to say, there are now also blogs for Android and OpenSocial.

Two new country blogs, for the Czech Republic and Australia, went public, to talk about all things Google in their regions. Yet more readers congregated around the new Public Policy and Google.org blogs, as well as one dedicated to online security and malware.

Despite all this activity, and the fact that a growing number of companies also host corporate blogs, the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki (a collaborative project begun by Wired Magazine and SocialText) indicates that even today, just 46 of the Fortune 500 companies (about 9%), have active public blogs produced by company employees that focus on the company and its products. Let's hope in 2008 that number goes up. We think such blogs can serve users, journalists, critics, investors, and fans more effectively and directly than more traditional approaches. Apparently, so do 41,395,926 people around the world - the number of visitors to all of our blogs this year.

Watermark Your Pics with PicMarkr [Image Editing]

Flickr's a great place to share your digital photos, but if you're concerned about others stealing your best work without crediting you, you might want to try watermarking your images. Webapp PicMarkr watermarks any selected Flickr pic or any image you upload from your desktop quickly and relatively painlessly, then lets you choose between uploading the results to Flickr or saving them to your computer. You'll have to authorize the app with Flickr, and once you do you can browse Flickr sets, select pics to watermark, and choose from several different watermarking methods. Once you're finished, you can upload the watermarked image to your Flickr account or save it to your computer. PicMarkr is a nice idea, but it'd make a lot more sense to see something like this integrated into Flickr's new editing tools.

PicMarkr

Find Quality Album Art Fast at AlbumArt [Digital Music]

Got a new MP3 player and decided it's time to gussy up your music library with high quality album art? Web site AlbumArt offers lightning fast search results for CD and DVD cover art for an impressively wide range of artists and albums. A lot of the art appears to come from Amazon, but good luck finding it as quickly by searching the source. We've actually mentioned AlbumArt once before, and though it's not as high quality as my previous now-defunct album art source, it's a wonderful go-to source for quickly filling out your music library with quality art.

AlbumArt.org [via FreewareGenius]

Keep Daily Tabs on Your Morale with Morale-O-Meter [Graphics]

If you could look back on a week, a month, or even a year's worth of how you felt, how you slept, and your caffeine and alcohol intake, what would it say about you? Morale-O-Meter, a free embeddable web app, provides a space to log those morale indicators, graph them, and compare the results with friends, or even embed them in a blog or web site. The site can send daily email reminders to those who tend to fall off the daily entry wagon, and 43 Things users can use their existing login to start their own graphs. If looking back at your results makes you realize your job is wreaking havoc on your life, consider trying a few ways to deal with burnout without quitting.

Morale-O-Meter [via MakeUseOf.com]