Whether you love it or hate it, Facebook’s new Timeline feature is here to say. Rather than jump on the bandwagon condemning the new feature, an Israeli ad agency used it to send a powerful anti-drug message.
Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief, and News of the World editor, is enjoying a sabbatical in Cape Town. Cutting a notably different appearance from the fiery redhead we’re used to, the media mogul has been escaping the phone hacking and corruption scandal that’s followed her around for months.
Five days into 2012 and we’ve already got fancy new technology. A team from Cornell University have developed a light-distortion device that can mask events as if they hadn’t happened; they managed to use light distortion to hide an event for 40 picoseconds. Which, granted, is 40 trillionths of a second, but the research is groundbreaking in the extreme.
Scientists researching previously unexplored deep-sea vents in Antarctica stumbled upon a host of new species, including hairy-chested crabs, ghostly octopus and predatory starfish, in what has since been dubbed a “lost world”.
Tomorrow will mark what many Saudi women will consider a small milestone in personal shopping. From this week, only female staff will be allowed to sell lingerie, relieving the embarrassment of buying underwear in the highly conservative Muslim nation. This is by order of the king, incidentally. The new law provides a rare opportunity for the employment of women, which was previously outlawed.
In one of the closest candidate-selection ballots in US history, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney won out over Rick Santorum at the Iowa caucuses, the nation’s first major electoral event of the year. Santorum and Romney switched between first and second frequently during the night, but a last-minute eight-vote tie margin put Romney ahead.
Earlier this week it was revealed that there are literally hundreds of bloggers who were bribed to promote Google Chrome and to claim that their blog’s were “sponsored by Google”. Google’s response has been to point the finger at ad agencies.
France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy announced today that Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek will become a Chevalier – or Knight – of the Legion of Honour for her services to the French Republic. The news was not too well received by all, with some labeling the country’s honours system “a laughing stock.”
We covered the Shell Oil Spill when it happened almost two weeks ago. The facts are this: Royal Dutch Shell operates an offshore barreling facility 120km from the Nigerian coast. This was shut down by a spill on the 20th of December. Shell sent out five ships to contain the spill. Oil is now washing up on the Nigerian coast.
Apple is holding a product event later this month in New York – and since the Christmas buy-a-palooza is just past, it’s looking unlikely that they’re going to be announcing any new hardware just yet. Instead, Apple seems set to refurbish iBooks, their eBook retail platform, with a couple of new publishing options.
Super-volcanoes are a scary reality, capable of spewing billions of tons of ash and boiling hot magma upon eruption, it’s a good thing they only pop every 10 to 12 thousand years. Except when it’s been 12 900 years since its last eruption, which is currently the case.
Iran’s army has warned that it will take action against America if a particular US aircraft carrier, which was moved due to naval exercises, returns to Iranian waters. The threat sounds far from empty, too.
As South African cricketing legend, Jacques Kallis makes his 150th Test match appearance during the third Test against Sri Lanka at Newlands this week, another international South African cricketer faces a court appearance in Australia for failing a roadside breath test on New Year’s Day.
When you think of an airport you’re likely to conjure up images of wide open spaces, cordoned off for kilometres, free of any midair obstacles, and normally you’d be right on the money. However, perched between two 6km mountains, Paro Airport in Bhutan is anything but normal.
Stephen Hawking is one of the most brilliant scientists of our lifetime, and author of “A Brief History of Time”. And he is currently shopping around for a new assistant. His website features a picture of his wheelchair, complete with wires and complex electronics. The caption reads “STOP PRESS: Could you maintain this?”
It’s the 29th of December, which means we are all now sick of Top 10 lists. There are Top 10 lists of Top 10 list. Except this particular Top 10 list is actually pretty informative, collating the year’s illegal torrent data to tell us which films people wanted to see but weren’t willing to pay for. #1 is really awful.
Having taxes on the things that are bad for you is something everyone has to deal with. There’s tax on smoking, tax on booze, and tax on gambling. In a move to remove all the fun out of your life, the French government has now introduced a tax on sugary soft drinks.
Any article discussing some fun new tech in Japan is liable to be instantly out of date, because those guys have everything. Voice synthesizers, Olympic robots, eco-friendly Christmas lights – whatever. But this is new, and probably practical enough to port overseas: vending machines that sell Wi-Fi accessible within a 50m radius.
The ashes of Janice Linden, the South African woman who was executed in China for drug smuggling, have finally been returned to local shores. Her family was devastated to receive a plain brown cardboard box containing the remains of their daughter from Chinese authorities. The South African powers-that-be have been criticised for not doing enough to stop the execution.
At the moment, Samoa is the last country to see the sun go down every day, but a change in the international dateline will now make it the first to see the sun rise. Samoa is getting ready to skip a day and shift its time zone forward by 24 hours.
Yesterday morning China launched its own satellite navigation service, The Beidou Navigation Satellite System, an alternative to the America Global Positioning System (GPS). The system could have serious implications both in terms of civilian and, more importantly, military application.
North Korea has begun two days of funeral services for its late leader, Kim Jong-il, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend in Pyongyang. Mourners can be seen bowing in the snow, and reporters can barely contain their tears, as the procession makes it way through the streets.
As North Korea lays to rest their Dear Leader, we should not forget that the ANC Youth League wished to show Kim Jong-il their appreciation for all that he has done for the struggle of the North Korean people, as well as his many achievements. The Youth League will miss their other Dear Leader.
Shell has just alerted Nigerian coastal communities that up to 40 000 barrels of crude oil was spilled on Wednesday off the coast of the Niger delta while it was being transferred to a tanker about 120 kilometres off the coast. The spill is likely to be the biggest in a decade.
An annual report from comScore on what happens online has shown that 1 in every 5 minutes of time online this year was spent on social networking sites – as compared to the 6% of internet time that went to social networking in 2007. By all accounts that sort of growth is expected to continue, and speed up, in 2012.
A team of scientists has finished developing a cheaply manufactured paint-like product prototype that they hope you will eventually be able to put on the outside of your home. The paint will generate electricity from light – electricity that can then be captured and used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside of your home.
Electronics, they’re at the center of almost everything we use and interact with on a daily basis and also one of the biggest sources of frustration known to man. But what if, when a gadget or appliance broke, it could repair itself, and do it so fast that you wouldn’t notice? That’s happening, right now.
Miami taxidermist, Enrique Gomez De Molina, is facing five years of jail time and a quarter million US$ in fines for importing body parts of rare and exotic animals to build a series of bizarre hybrid taxidermy sculptures.
A US FedEx courier recently threw a computer monitor over a wall. The incident was caught on a nearby security camera, uploaded to Youtube, and has since been viewed nearly 4,5 million times! Fedex has responded with a good example of how any company can circumnavigate a potential PR disaster.
Yes, you read that correctly, the “occucopter” is a drone that is being used by protestors to monitor the police. As the 99 per cent continue their protests around the world, they’ve acquired their own surveillance drone. Tim Pool, an Occupy Wall Street protester, has acquired a Parrot AR drone he amusingly calls the “occucopter”.