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Morning Xtra: Tetris Turns 25, Real R2-D2s, China Blocks Twitter

by Chad Mumm on June 2, 2009 at 11:58 AM



China Blocks Twitter and Others For Tiananmen Anniversary
We've gotten word that the Great Firewall of China has just grown to block a bevy of popular sites, including Flickr, Bing, Blogger, and [gasp] Twitter. What's the reason for this cyber tightening? June 4th is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In celebration of our Web freedom (or in defiance of the Chinese blockage), you can read all about what happened that day, here. [From: TechCrunchUK]

Builders Create $10K, Fully Functional R2-D2s
The coolest thing we've seen this year from the Do-It-Yourself-fest Maker-Faire is this video (from Wired) showing off these $10,000 home-built R2-D2 units. Does your plastic R2 toy look and move like that? No, it does not. Let's get these guys working on a lightsaber prototype, stat. [From: Wired]

Happy 25th Birthday, Tetris
25 years ago this week, an obscure Soviet computer programmer named Alexey Pajitnov coded a simple game that combined his love of puzzles with his computer training. His game, Tetris, has since gone on to sell more than 125 million units on various platforms (anyone else rock it on the Ti-83 graphing calculator?), setting the Guinness world record for video game sales. Play an online version for free, here, and please, think of Alexey. [From: SFGate]

Nanotubes Enable Tiny Data Storage for Billions of Years
Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley are developing a technique that would enable us to store data for billions of years. The process uses carbon nanotubes to write zeros and ones at a sub-atomic level, which means that, not only will the data be around for a long time, it will be contained in an exceptionally small space. Very cool. [From: Wired]

BBC iPlayer coming to the U.S.?
According to our buddies over at Download Squad, the BBC is reportedly in talks with Google to bring its wonderful iPlayer to the U.S. Similar to Hulu, the iPlayer allows UK residents to watch BBC programming online, but it only works in the UK (since UK citizens pay taxes that support the BBC). Let's just hope it'll allow us to watch more than stale 'Vicar of Dibley' reruns, though. We'll keep our fingers crossed on this one. [From: DownloadSquad]

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