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Morning Xtra: Brute Force Used to Open Hubble, Twitter Food Trucks

by Chad Mumm on May 18, 2009 at 11:58 AM



Brute Force Used to Rip Into Hubble -- for Repairs
Astronauts proved that billions of dollars in research and advanced space-bound technology is no match for a little neanderthal elbow grease this weekend. With a stripped bolt impeding Michael Massimino's access to the Hubble Space Telescope's broken spectrograph, the spacewalking astronaut was forced to rip the handrail from the $6 billion telescope and literally break the bolt off -- this after numerous custom-built tools failed to budge it. [From: Space.com]

Wal-Mart Wants Circuit City Customers
Circuit City is no more, so that means smooth sailing for Best Buy right? Wrong. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is revamping its electronics departments in an attempt to snag away former Circuit City customers. Wal-Mart's senior vice president of home entertainment, Gary Serverson, told a WSJ reporter, "Circuit City's business is up for grabs right now and we expect to get our share." It doesn't get much clearer than that. Expect to see larger and sexier electronics displays from the big-box giant, as well as higher-end devices -- like the Palm Pre and more expensive Sony televisions -- showing up in the near future. [From: Reuters]


Using Software to Determine Baseball Ticket Prices
The San Francisco Giants are experimenting with a new ticket-selling method that takes into account variables like weather, the team's record, and/or fan interest to set ticket prices. The team is using software from Texas-based qcue, that actively calculates demand from these ever-changing factors. Frankly, we're surprised more teams don't do this, since filling seats and selling concessions... we'd pay $6.50 for a hot dog in the rain if the tickets cost $5. [From: New York Times and SF Examiner]

Twitter-Friendly Food Trucks... a Delicious New Trend?
Twitter is great for a number of things (like watery-eyed, unblinking information overload), but what good is it when your stomach's a'rumbling? Turns out, very good. For hungry denizens of Los Angeles, nothing satisfies like Korean barbeque from a Kogi truck. But, these roving restaurants-on-wheels can be difficult to track down. That is, until the Kogi people started to tweet their whereabouts and menu items. Could this new and delicious trend start popping up all over the country? Please, yes. [From: USA Today]

Google Outage Killed 5% of Internet
Some disturbing analysis of last week's Google outage by Arbor Networks reveals that Internet traffic slowed by up to 5-percent during the hour and a half service interruption. Sure, Google gets tons of traffic, but 5-percent of the Internet is an astonishing number for one company to be responsible for. Google's far reach is due to its Adsense and DoubleClick advertising networks -- many third-party sites who use these services were unable to access Google's server, which meant that their sites slowed down considerably or wouldn't load at all. This is a serious problem, folks. [From: ComputerWorld]

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, morningxtra, top

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