Review: Find Your Next Letterbox With the Clue Tracker iPhone App

Geocaching tends to have quite a few electronic helpers, based on the fact that it’s an electronic sport. Letterboxing, however, the old fashioned analog version of geocaching, has usually been a pen-and-paper kind of activity. I recently reviewed BoxFinder, an app for letterboxing clues. I have since found a second one called Clue Tracker. Clue Tracker [...]

Intervention — A Showcase for Web Comics

I was contacted by a friend from the comics world about the new Intervention convention. Intrigued, I checked out the workshop list. My first thought after looking at it was “Ooo! A con that talks about web comics and how to create them.” The workshops go beyond the simple nuts and bolts of writing and also [...]

GeekDad Guitar Lesson: The Firefly Theme

Welcome to GeekDad Guitar Lessons; a new bi-weekly video feature here on the GeekDad blog.  Each tutorial will present strategies on how to play your favorite Geeky/Techie/Sci-Fi influenced songs. First off, let me introduce myself.  I’m John Anealio.  In addition to being a GeekDad and a music teacher, I write and record songs about Science Fiction, [...]

Get Caught Up With Scoob and the Gang in Mystery Incorporated Marathon

Since it debuted in 1969, Scooby-Doo! has always been about snacking, solving mysteries, snacking and unmasking phony monsters (except for a few excursions into "monsters are real" territory that are generally best forgotten). And did I mention the snacking?

Review: Mockingjay Emerges Victorious

Yet again, I’ve got my daughter to thank. It was on her recommendation back in January that I picked up ??? and plowed through ??? Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and its sequel, Catching Fire, which means I now owe her for the experience of reading the trilogy-concluding Mockingjay, just released at the end of [...]

Vets Get Ecstasy to Treat Their PTSD

A pair of psychiatric experts think they’ve got the answer to the soaring number of troops coming back from war with PTSD: have them undergo intensive psychotherapy — while they’re rolling on ecstasy. Dr. Michael Mithoefer and Anne Mithoefer, a psychiatric nurse, are the South Carolina pair who’ve been spearheading research into ecstasy, known clinically as [...]

Sept. 2, 1969: First U.S. ATM Starts Doling Out Dollars

1969: Six weeks after landing men on the moon, Americans take another giant leap for mankind with the nation???s first cash-spewing, automated teller machine. The machine, called the Docuteller, was installed in a wall of the Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York. It marked the first time reusable, magnetically coded cards were used to withdraw [...]

Chiptune Documentary Reformat the Planet Now Available on DVD

Reformat the Planet, the documentary film examining both the annual Blip Festival and the community that it celebrates, has just been released as a 2 DVD set. With improved audio, supplementary footage and a brand new short, it’s a more intricate examination of the chiptune scene than even its original critically acclaimed form. REFORMAT THE [...]

Jeff Ma, Former MIT Blackjack Whiz, Dishes on Fantasy Sports, Statgeeks, and Yahoo

Even if you don’t know Jeff Ma’s name, chances are you know the man. A 1994 MIT graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering, Ma was the de facto leader of the infamous MIT Blackjack Team that gained notoriety in Ben Mezrich’s bestselling book Bringing Down the House (which was originally excerpted as a feature story [...]

Exclusive Gallery: 1983 Nintendo Family Computer Teardown

Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) Teardown [iFixit. Thanks, Kyle!] Captions by Charlie Sorrel and Kyle Wiens

Google Testing Full-Featured Google Apps

Google Apps users got a step closer to full Google-personhood this week, as the company sent invitations to select users to test out a version of Google Apps that includes all the features regular Google users get, including AdWords and Google Voice. Google Apps lets businesses and anyone who owns a domain to have Google power [...]

A Syllabus and Book List for Novice Students of Science Fiction Literature

Want to start reading some science fiction, but aren't sure where to begin? This introductory sci-fi literature syllabus is just for you.

Using Microformats in HTML5

With all the attention being paid to HTML5’s <video> tag, few have clued in to what is perhaps the most useful magical pixie dust hidden inside the web’s next markup language: the new semantic tags. Rather than using <div> tags to wrap your page sections, HTML5 offers much more sensible elements like <header>, <nav>, <section>, <article>, [...]

iPod Touch Camera Is Less Than One Megapixel

Just when you thought the only differences between the iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch were the size and the phone, a closer look reveals that the Touch actually has a different camera. Apple’s specifications page for the Touch lists a resolution of 960-by-720 pixels for the rear camera, which is roughly one megapixel. That’s several [...]

Final Fantasy XIV Beta Begins, Belatedly

Square Enix will commence open beta testing of Final Fantasy XIV at 7 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday. The beta test of the new MMO was meant to begin on Tuesday, but was postponed when the Japanese gamemaker discovered “critical” bugs in the code. Final Fantasy XIV, due out September 30 on PC and in March 2011 for [...]

Christopher Lloyd Plays Doc Brown in Back to The Future Game

Christopher Lloyd will reprise his role as Dr. Emmet Lathrop “Doc” Brown in the Back to the Future videogame, publisher Telltale Games said Wednesday. This will be the first time the actor has portrayed the harried inventor of time travel since Universal Studios launched Back to the Future: The Ride in 1991. Telltale announced its intention [...]

Furor Erupts Over Role of Self-Sacrifice in Evolution

A furor has broken out among biologists over ant specialist E.O. Wilson???s latest attack on a concept used to explain the origins of self-sacrifice in the dog-eat-dog world of evolution. The debate centers around an idea called kin selection, which biologists use to understand altruistic behaviors such as honeybee workers raising the queen???s young but never [...]

Life in a Day Movie-in-Progress Goes Live on YouTube

The world’s longest rough cut starts unspooling this week on YouTube as producer Ridley Scott presents a sampling of 80,000 video diaries recorded July 24 by DIY filmmakers across the globe. The pieces are being scrutinized by director Kevin MacDonald and editor Joe Walker, who will stitch together select bits into a 90-minute documentary slated [...]

5 Reasons Why Apple TV Is (Still) Boring

We know — the new Apple TV is really small, and it finally focuses on renting rather than purchasing television shows, integrates iOS devices as remote controls, has an optical audio output for surround sound, and costs just a hundred bones. Additional coverage of Apple’s event on Wired.com: A Remote Shipping Without A Screen Ships Broken Hands-On With [...]

Apple Redefines Remote Control — Now, It’s Your Cellphone

There’s a lot to say about the new Apple TV that Steve Jobs presented today. But I’m not going to talk about the tiny little box. Instead, I’m going to talk about that remote. Additional coverage of Apple’s event on Wired.com: Hands-On With New Apple iPods Hands-On With New $100 Apple TV 5 Reasons Why Apple TV Is [...]

Apple’s ‘Ping’ Social Network Is Already Too Big to Fail

Apple audaciously seems to think the world actually needs another social network — one that you even need special software to be part of, to boot. With the introduction Wednesday of ‘Ping,” a music-centered community that exists only within iTunes, they are probably right — and then some. Ping could easily be the opening gambit in [...]

Vail’s EpicMix App Brings Location Tracking, Social Networking to Ski Slopes

The skiing industry – fairly or not – gets criticized often for being stodgy, slow, and resistant to change. And when it does change, the results are sometimes regretful. Bogner one-pieces! Neon Boll?? goggles! Hot Dog! (Wait, that last one is still pretty awesome.) It’s this perception that makes Vail Resorts??? new EpicMix application an intriguing [...]

FCC Delays Net Neutrality Over Mobile, ‘Managed’ Services

Federal regulators are putting off efforts to regain authority over the nation’s internet providers while they seek renewed public input on net neutrality. The delay shows the intractability of the debate over wireless and wireline openness rules, and the ongoing shock waves of last month’s joint policy proposal from Google and Verizon to create a [...]

Hands-On With New Apple iPods

Apple on Wednesday refreshed its family of iPod products. The iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Shuffle all received some compelling makeovers that should help Apple stay in the lead in the portable media player market.

Futurama’s Comic Cosmonauts Recall Best Bits From First 100 Episodes

???????????????The sci-fi cartoon's milestone 100th episode arrives Thursday, but the warm, weird remembrances of the show's creative team have come in early. ???Executive producer David X. Cohen and voice actors Billy West, Lauren Tom and David Herman share some of their favorite moments.

Hands-On With New $100 Apple TV

When Steve Jobs was preparing to introduce the Apple TV, he called it "one more hobby," and based on our first impressions, that's a safe choice of words. The new Apple TV is a major hardware revamp ??? one quarter the size of its predecessor.

Sci-Fi Spoof Videos: Terminator 2: The Opera and RoboCop: The Musical

An Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator sings about the travails of being a Terminator in the extremely moving song “To Kill Someone Again” from Terminator 2: The Opera. It’s not the only classic sci-fi movie spoofed by Jon and Al Kaplan: Check out the “Murphy, It’s You” remix from RoboCop: The Musical below. [via GameAxis] Follow us on Twitter: [...]

Police Kill Hostage Taker Who Besieged Discovery Channel

After a daylong standoff, authorities shot and killed an armed man wearing an explosive device who had taken three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside the District of Columbia. Most of the hundreds of employees, including children at an on-site daycare center, had already been evacuated, police said. The station [...]

Firearms, Boots and Dirty Cars as Canvases

Editor???s note: Jeremy Hart, an occasional contributor to Wired.com, is driving around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He???s filing occasional reports from the road. The Wild West is still wild. As we pull into Scottsdale, Arizona, during Ford Fiesta World Tour 2010, we get word there???s automatic gunfire coming into [...]

Giant Skull Is Made of Thin Slices of Brain

By Duncan Geere, Wired UK An artist named Noah Scalin has built a giant skull made out of slices of brain encased in acrylic. What do you mean, “Why?” Scalin shot to fame a few years back when he created a blog that chronicled his creation of a skull every single day of a year. Since then [...]

How to Speed Up Your Site With YSlow and Page Speed

We all want our websites to load faster, but speeding things up can be tricky. There are numerous tried and true tricks we all use to keep page load times down, but once you’ve done a few rounds of optimization, you tend to hit a plateau where it’s tough to squeeze any more speed out [...]

Electric Motorcycle Entrepreneur Killed In Crash

Matt Dieckmann believed the future is electric, and he died hoping to prove it. Dieckmann, the 29-year-old founder of Electric Race Bikes, was killed Monday following a collision with a car in his hometown of Santa Rosa, California. He reportedly was testing a new electric motorcycle at the time. We met Dieckmann, pictured above on the left, [...]

Apple Takes Aim at Cable With Tiny New Apple TV

SAN FRANCISCO — In a sign that its television “hobby” has turned into serious business, Apple announced an aggressively-priced new set-top box that takes aim at the heart of the cable TV and DVD rental industries. The new Apple TV, which will go on sale at the end of September for $100, is a puny box [...]

Aston Martin’s Cygnet Microcar Headed to America

Looks like the Cygnet, which is nothing more than a reworked Toyota iQ wearing an Aston Martin badge, is headed to the United States. Aston Martin’s been hinting for a while now that it would build the crazy mashup. It always made sense for the European market, where an upscale urban commuter that beats big-city congestion [...]

Sporty New iPods Tout Tiny Touchscreens, Retina Display

Apple Wednesday showed off a sporty new model in its popular line of tiny MP3 players, the iPod Nano, a “retina display”-enhanced version of its iPod Touch, and a new version of its iPod Shuffle. The new iPod Touch is basically the same as the iPhone 4 but thinner, and without the phone: it gains the [...]

Results Of The MoonBots Challenge Announced — Houston, We Have A Winner!

After months of competing, the first MoonBots Challenge has come to a close with Team Landroids, a group from Livingston, New Jersey taking first place. The team is made up for five eighth-grade neighborhood friends named Karlin, Stanley, Brian, Gage and Jeffrey. The Landroids were captained by a dad: John Yeh. The winning team’s members [...]

Hot Water Around Giant Carbon Star Creates Interstellar Mystery

Hot water discovered around a giant carbon star requires a new theory for the chemistry around stars to be explained. The new theory could significantly alter our understanding of what materials exist in interstellar space, and where water and life could exist in the universe. “It makes us realize that the chemistry in all stars can [...]

Apple Announces New Versions of iOS

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Wednesday announced the next two versions of iOS, its operating system for iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad, adding support for multiplayer gaming, HDR photography, and wireless printing. The first revision to the operating system, iOS 4.1, will be available next week as a free download for the iPhone and iPod Touch, [...]

Ugly Vegas Carpets Want You to Keep Playing

Mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said, “It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” This certainly rings true with Chris Maluszynski’s Las Vegas Carpets series, whose name explains it all. The photos draw out the psychology of Las Vegas through the simple observation of carpet. Years ago, while in Las Vegas [...]

Attorney: Army Disabled Manning’s Weapon Prior to Leaks

A civilian defense attorney hired recently by alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning says the Army was so concerned about his client’s mental health prior to the alleged leaks that supervisors removed the bolt from his military weapon, disabling it. Attorney David Coombs told CNN, however, that other than sending Manning to a chaplain for counseling, the [...]

Video: Mysterious Patterns Reveal Self-Organizing Muscle Fibers

?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience601174639001', 'anId');brightcove.createExperiences(); The unexpected emergence of complex patterns in an apparently unremarkable dish of muscle cells may give researchers a valuable tool for studying self-organizing systems. Similar patterns are seen in bird flocks, the Milky Way and even the stock market. For the last two decades, [...]

A Month In, Pakistan Flood Relief Efforts Stuck at 1.0

A month after the Haiti earthquake, the U.S. government had over 20,000 troops on the ground, $450 million in assistance money earmarked, and an innovative web-based system to let troops and aid workers collaborate like never before. A month after the floods in Pakistan, the U.S. effort doesn’t compare in any way. And that’s a [...]

New Image of Superwind-Blowing Starburst Galaxy

The galaxy dominating the center of this image, called NGC 4666, is suffering a particularly intense fit of star formation. The starburst is thought to be caused by gravitational interactions with its neighboring galaxies, including NGC 4668 at the lower left. NGC 4666, which lies about 80 million light-years from Earth, is also spewing gas in [...]

Can Your Daughter Do This? Super-Awesome Sylvia’s Super-Simple Arduino

GeekDad has already repeatedly geeked out over Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show, and Bruce Sterling gave her newest episode a “Holy cow, kid” at Beyond the Beyond yesterday, but Gadget Lab readers need to see it for themselves. “Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced microcontroller engineer,” Sylvia says, “here’s two projects me and my dad [...]

Can You ‘Bip Bop’? Apple Wants To Know

Hardcore geeks and Apple fanboys aren’t the only ones preparing to watch Steve Jobs announce whatever he is going to announce today. Why else would I have been on NPR’s “Morning Edition” discussing the possibilities of cloud-based music services this morning? If you want to tune in to Apple’s announcement, you’ll need to do so with [...]

Spin War Shift: Military Now Bragging About Afghan Air Strikes

18 months after cutting back on air strikes, NATO is all-but-bragging about killing insurgents from the skies. In a stream of press releases, the military alliance in Afghanistan is boasting about the air-induced demise to 12 insurgents in the past 10 days. It’s the latest move in a spin war with the Taliban about civilian [...]

Nerf Stampede Giveaway!

The Nerf N-Strike Stampede ECS is the biggest and baddest Nerf blaster of the year, a rapid-firing colossus that is guaranteed to win any cubicle war. I’ve been, I mean, my kids have been playing around with my review Stampede for the past month or so and here’s what we have to report: Rate of fire [...]

Sony Takes on the Kindle With Touchscreen E-Readers

Sony’s not taking competition from the Amazon Kindle lying down. The company has added touchscreens to its three e-reader models, while switching to the new ‘Pearl’ screen from E Ink for better contrast and improving the user interface on the devices. What the company hasn’t done is drop the price. Sony’s cheapest e-reader will cost $180–and [...]

The Wheel of Time’s Digital Great Hunt

Brandon Sanderson is currently finishing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. ??He is also starting his own 10-part epic fantasy series, The Stormlight Archive–in fact, volume one, The Way of Kings is now available, and Sanderson is going on tour today (8/31) to promote it. ??Meanwhile, the next volume in the Wheel of Time series [...]

New Approach Chart For ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ Landing

The company that makes the world’s most widely used aviation maps has released a special edition approach chart honoring pilots Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles and the crew of flight 1547. The tongue-in-cheek map resembles the charts many pilots use but is filled with references to the successful ditching of the Airbus on the Hudson [...]

Now You’re Cooking … With Magnets!

The September issue of Wired magazine has a review of four hot pots???you know, those electric kettles that boil water faster than a kettle on the stove. I had one when I was in college over a decade ago (it came in handy for making ramen in a dorm room with no kitchen) but hot [...]

Aviation Thinks Outside the Black Box

Hundreds of pieces of wreckage have been pulled from the Atlantic Ocean in the 15 months since Air France Flight 447 inexplicably fell from the sky, but so far the doomed airliner’s flight data and safety recorders remain somewhere on the ocean floor. That has many in the aviation industry wondering if it’s time to [...]

Sept. 1, 1974: New York to London in Less Than 2 Hours

1974: On a flight to the Farnborough Air Show outside London, Maj. James Sullivan and Maj. Noel Widdifield fly the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird from New York to London in 1 hour, 54 minutes, 56.4 seconds. The 1,806-mph flight still holds the transatlantic speed record between the two cities. Developed during the middle of the cold war, [...]

Astronaut’s Eye View: Time-Lapse Videos of Earth

New Technique Finds Gaseous Metals in Exoplanet Atmospheres

A previously undetected element has been found in the atmospheres of two different extrasolar planets. Using a new technique at a new telescope, two separate groups of exoplanet scientists have discovered potassium in the atmospheres of two hot Jupiters more than 190 light-years from Earth. // “I’m really excited about this,” exoplanet expert Sara Seager of [...]

Browsers Turn Their Backs on Old Macs

Word is out that Firefox 4, when it ships at the end of October or thereabouts, will probably not include support for older, non-Intel Macs. Mozilla’s director of Firefox Mike Beltzner hinted at the change on a Mozilla developer mailing list last week: “I am gathering data on the number of PPC users we have, but [...]

Sea Creatures Hint at Recent Trans-Antarctic Seaway

The discovery of nearly identical sea creatures on either side of a now solid Antarctic ice sheet — 1,500 miles wide and over a mile thick — points to an open ocean passage there as recently as 125,000 years ago. The new evidence adds to geologic clues indicating the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has collapsed at [...]

Streaming Wars Heat Up: Now Amazon Reportedly Is in the Hunt

Video streaming of premium content is suddenly the internet’s hot pursuit. The latest horse in the race is Amazon, which is reportedly planning a very Netflix-like service that would provide unlimited access to a limited selection of movies and shows for a flat monthly fee. The Wall Street Journal, citing “people with knowledge of the [...]

White House: Iraq Troops Are Coming Home In 2011. Period.

When President Obama announces tonight that the remaining 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are going to all come home by the end of 2011, that endpoint for the Iraq war will be set in bureaucratic and diplomatic stone, according to a top adviser. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes waves off recent media speculation that the [...]

GM Wants to Trademark ‘Range Anxiety’

General Motors has sought a trademark for the term “range anxiety,” providing a glimpse into how it might market the Chevrolet Volt. “Range anxiety” refers to the nagging concern you’ll be stuck miles from home with a dead battery, and it could be an impediment to the widespread adoption of cars like the Nissan Leaf. The [...]

Matrix Fight Wizard Yuen Woo-Ping Feted at Fantastic Fest

Yuen Woo-Ping choreographed the epic, hypnotic smackdowns for The Matrix trilogy, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Now, the Chinese fight choreographer is getting his stateside due with a tribute at Austin’s Fantastic Fest. The Texas action film festival will honor Woo-Ping with a Lifetime Achievement Award on Sept. 25 at [...]

Pirate Bay Documentary in the Works

By Duncan Geere, Wired UK Notorious filesharing website The Pirate Bay is a long-standing enemy of the movie industry, but one Swedish filmmaker has plans to create a documentary called TPB AFK about the three founders of the site, and their reactions to being found guilty of being accessory to crime against copyright law and fined [...]

Why Does ‘Twitter API’ Keep Asking for My Password?

Sites around the web are getting splashed with a mysterious dialog Tuesday, thanks to a change in the way Twitter handles user authentication. Some Wired.com website visitors see the dialog box shown here when visiting any of this site???s blogs. It states that a username and password are being requested by Twitter, with [...]

Review: Dead Rising: Case Zero a Bite-Sized Zombie Massacre

Let's not mince words. Dead Rising 2: Case Zero is a demo that costs five bucks. It's still worth it.

For Young Athletes, Concussions Pose a Growing Problem

The number of concussions diagnosed in youth athletes has risen considerably over a recent 10-year period, according to researchers from Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island. Their findings, to be published in the new issue of the journal Pediatrics, are the result of analyzing data culled from hundreds of thousands of emergency room visits from [...]

Obama’s Commerce Secretary Talks Tough on Music Piracy

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke issued a blistering diatribe against music piracy Monday, declaring it “a growing threat” that “should be dealt with accordingly.” “This isn’t just an issue of right and wrong,” Locke said in a speech at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the nation’s musical focal points. “This is a fundamental issue of [...]

For Photo-Geek Eyes Only: Famous Developer Trays

John Cyr has been sending letters, putting his foot in doors and hounding famous photogs. All to secure some quiet time with an empty tray and pay homage to the age-old art of silver gelatin printing and its unsung, shallow-dish heroes. In the era of Photoshop, iPhoneography and unceasing quantum-leaps in digital DSLR technology, Cyr’s Developer [...]

Darpa’s Star Hacker Looks to WikiLeak-Proof Pentagon

Tomorrow’s WikiLeakers may have to be sneakier than just dumping military docs onto a Lady Gaga disc. The futurists at Darpa are working on a project that would make it harder for troops to funnel classified material to WikiLeaks — or to foreign governments. And that means if you work for the military, get ready [...]

Hallucinatory Art Snags Attention at Ars Electronica Festival

Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire. See Also: Decode Exhibition Points Way to Data-Driven Art

9 Netflix Classics Worth Streaming on Your Puny iPhone

See Also: Cerebral Sci-Fi Films That Wipe Our Minds Wired’s Favorite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time: Star Wars and After Geek Culture???s 26 Most Awesome Female Ass-Kickers

Screw Viral Videos. You Heard Me. Pass It On

Online video creators, advertisers and producers have an unhealthy fascination with viral videos, and that obsession is dragging down the entire industry. Why? Because viral videos are, at their core, no better than a fluffernutter white-bread sandwich, delivering little or no value to anyone. Viral videos are designed to surprise, titillate and entertain. They are, by [...]

Tube Full of Plasma Creates Solar Eruption in the Lab

Explosive bursts normally seen only on the surface of the sun can now be captured in a 13-foot-long tube using lab-created plasmas and bursts of laser light. Physicists have created a scaled-down model of solar eruptions called coronal mass ejections, which can wreak havoc on satellites and create beautiful northern-light displays on Earth. The new experiments [...]

Video: Federer’s Incredible Shot Wows US Open Fans

The legend of Roger Federer continues. In his first-round matchup last night at the US Open, Federer (for the second year in a row) made an incredible, between-the-legs shot against Argentina’s Brian Dabul that sent the sell-out crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium to its feet. For the five-time US Open champion Federer, it was just another [...]

Parody RPG Fantasy University Targets Serious Facebook Gamers

Though Facebook games have a reputation for being addictive, they're also seen as far too simple to satisfy the serious gamer. David Whatley, president and CEO of Simutronics, hopes that his company's new game will live up to the rigorous standards of the hard-core.

Like Lost In Shadow, Send Cash to Child’s Play

Hudson will donate 10 cents for every Facebook user that clicks the “Like” button on its forthcoming game Lost In Shadow. Child’s Play is a pet charity of the videogame set. The organization, founded by Penny Arcade cartoonists Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, raises cash for children’s hospitals, providing toys, games, books and movies to sick [...]

China’s Secret Satellite Rendezvous ‘Suggestive of a Military Program’

Earlier this month, two Chinese satellites met up in orbit. Depending on who you believe, it’s either a sign of China’s increasingly-sophisticated space program — or a sign of its increasingly-sophisticated space warfare program. A well-regarded Russian space watcher was the first to note that the two satellites, newly-launched SJ-12 and two-year-old SJ-06F, had performed [...]

SpaceX: October Launch Will Put Capsule In Orbit

Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, hopes launch its second Falcon 9 rocket in late October. The goal is putting its Dragon capsule in orbit for the first time. The launch is part of a design and test program started in 2008 after the Southern California company, founded by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, received [...]

The Identifiable Victim Bias

The epic drilling to save the trapped Chilean miners has begun: The 31-ton drill made a shallow, preliminary test hole Tuesday in the solid rock it must bore through, the first step in the weeklong digging of a ”pilot hole” to guide the way for the rescue. Later the drill will be outfitted with larger bits [...]

OMG — MG TD EV Looks Sweet

When Doug Small started drawing up plans for a homebrew electric car, he wanted to start with something lightweight, easy to work on and stylish. Naturally, he decided on an MG TD. Purists needn’t worry, however, as no British roadsters were harmed during the construction of this electric car. This is a replica TD, a mere [...]

How Cadavers Made Your Car Safer

When automakers and safety advocates show off the results of crash tests, they inevitably feature videos of their cars crashing into things, with or without dummies aboard. Back in the 1980s, federal safety regulators even turned a pair of crash test dummies into the stars of an ad campaign. What the industry doesn’t like talking [...]

Drill Down: Going Deep With NYC’s Second Avenue Subway Project

Aug. 31, 1920: News Radio Makes News

1920: A Detroit station airs what is believed to be the first radio news broadcast. The exact headlines of that day are of no historical significance, but with this local newscast a nascent medium finally conveys a message so compelling that it would soon capture the world???s imagination as only television and the internet [...]

HP Holds Navy Network ‘Hostage’ for $3.3 Billion

Someday, somehow, the U.S. Navy would like to run its networks — maybe even own its computers again. After 10 years and nearly $10 billion, many sailors are tired of leasing their PCs, and relying on a private contractor to operate most of their data systems. Troops are sick of getting stuck with inboxes that [...]

Hallelujah! Gmail Saves E-Mail With ‘Priority’ Message Filtering

Gmail users can now choose to let Google sort their inbox by the most pressing messages, thanks to a new feature called Priority Inbox — think of it as a sort of reverse spam filter which bubbles messages to the top of the queue based on what you read and respond to. In the full browser [...]

Hunt for Infinity Killer Heats Up in New Dexter ARG

This year at Comic-Con, Showtime launched an alternate reality game that gives players the opportunity to hunt down a serial killer known as The Infinity Killer. This game is the newest installment in a series of viral campaigns Showtime has used over the years to promote its dark drama Dexter. Readers should be warned that [...]

Cult Sci-Fi Toon The Pirates of Dark Water Resurfaces

runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience599619763001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences(); Ahoy, obscure animation addicts! Your comparatively alien ship has come in. The mostly unfamiliar sci-fi toon The Pirates of Dark Water, which aired briefly in 1991 before disappearing almost entirely, has emerged from the musty vaults of Warner Archive to land a DVD and digital download collection, out Tuesday. Want a freebie? [...]

Dead Codebreaker Was Linked to NSA Intercept Case

A top British codebreaker found mysteriously dead last week in his flat had worked with the NSA and British intelligence to intercept e-mail messages that helped convict would-be bombers in the U.K., according to a news report. Gareth Williams, 31, made repeated visits to the U.S. to meet with the National Security Agency and worked closely [...]

Tron: Legacy Billboard Spotlights Olivia Wilde

The Tron: Legacy billboards popping up in cities nationwide feature neither Jeff Bridges nor sequel star Garrett Hedlund in the sweet spot. Instead, Disney is juicing up the girl-power factor with a shot of disc-carrying Quorra, played by Olivia Wilde. The billboard campaign builds on years of media buzz that began in 2008, when the [...]

Twitter Moves to OAuth: The OAuthcalypse Is Nigh

Twitter is killing support for basic user authentication in third-party apps on Tuesday morning, the company says. Instead, Twitter will now require all third-party app developers to use OAuth for user authentication. This is a planned move Twitter first announced in December, and the company has posted a help page on its developer site with some [...]

Twitter Moves to OAuth: The OAuthcalypse Is Nigh

Twitter is killing support for basic user authentication in third-party apps on Tuesday morning, the company says. Instead, Twitter will now require all third-party app developers to use OAuth for user authentication. This is a planned move Twitter first announced in December, and the company has posted a help page on its developer site with some [...]

Alleged WikiLeaks Leaker Hires Civilian Defense Attorney

Pfc. Bradley Manning, the former intelligence analyst suspected of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, has hired a civilian attorney to defend him, according to a report. David Coombs, a former U.S. Army attorney in Rhode Island, was named as Manning’s new attorney, according to the Associated Press. According to his web site, Coombs’s civilian practice specializes in [...]

Feds Propose Letter Grades For Vehicle Efficiency

The feds, eager to make fuel economy stickers easier to understand even as new technologies enter the market, suggest assigning all new vehicles a letter grade based upon their efficiency. The best fuel misers would, as you’d expect, get an A while the worst guzzlers would get a D. Assigning each new car an overall grade [...]

Second Newspaper Chain Joins Copyright Trolling Operation

A Las Vegas company established to sue bloggers who clip news content is expanding its operations to a second newspaper chain. Righthaven LLC has struck a deal with Arkansas-based WEHCO Media to expand its copyright litigation campaign, in which bloggers and aggregators across the country are being sued on allegations of infringement. Until now, Righthaven CEO Steve [...]

US Open Experience Gets Augmented Upgrade

Fans attending the US Open at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, now have myriad ways of following Rafael Nadal, Melanie Oudin, Venus Williams and the rest of professional tennis’ elite, whether they’re sitting in Arthur Ashe Stadium or checking in from their work computer. Once again, the flagship feature is IBM’s live [...]

Alleged Carder ‘BadB’ Charged in $9 Million ATM Heist

An alleged carder arrested earlier this month in France has been added to a long list of defendants charged with participating in the coordinated $9.5 million global heist against Atlanta-based card processing company RBS WorldPay, in a revised federal indictment issued in Georgia last week. Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin, 27, aka BadB, was charged with one count [...]

Video: Walking Dead Comic Creator Defends TV Zombies

runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience596149659001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences(); Zombie expert Robert Kirkman sounds psyched about AMC’s TV adaptation of his comic book series The Walking Dead. “I understand that vampires are romantic, but give zombies a chance,” Kirkman told Wired.com during an interview at Comic-Con International. “It’s not their fault they’re dead, and it’s not their fault that they’re trying [...]

Tron: Evolution Collector’s Edition Comes With Light Cycle

Disney Interactive Studios unveiled the collector’s edition of Tron: Evolution on Monday. The high-end package, slated to come out on December 7 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, will include an exclusive Tron light cycle model crafted by Sideshow Collectibles. The special edition retails for $130 and comes with a plastic display case for [...]

Google and Arcade Fire Get All HTML5y

The good folks at Google have published a very cool multimedia showcase for what’s possible in HTML5. Using music by Arcade Fire (the 21st century hipster equivalent of ELO), filmmaker Chris Milk has made an interactive video of sorts that spans multiple browser windows. Eliot Van Buskirk has a full write-up, including an interview with Milk, [...]

Ruby on Rails Steams Ahead With 3.0 Release

It’s been two years in the making, but Ruby on Rails 3.0 is finally here. You can grab the third generation of the popular web framework from the official website, or update via the command line with: gem install rails --version 3.0.0 Rails 3 is a major overhaul for the framework and merges the Rails and [...]

Microsoft Raises Price of Online Gaming on Xbox Live

Microsoft will increase the price of a subscription to its Xbox Live online gaming service later this year, it said Monday. Via the Major Nelson blog, the Xbox 360 maker announced that a one-year Xbox Live account will now cost $60 instead of $50 effective November 1. The prices of one- and six-month subscriptions will also increase, [...]