Tag: NOTABLE

Google's Gmail Motion hoax might not be so far-fetched after all. A group of post-doc students at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies has turned Google's April Fools' joke into reality, using their software engineering skills and Microsoft Kinect motion sensors. They even incorporated the same ridiculous gestures that Google demonstrated in its prank video. ...

A cyber-attack on an online marketing firm has impacted a wide array of companies and customers in what could be the largest data breach in U.S. history. The online marketer, Epsilon, sends out more than 40 billion email ads and offers each year, typically to users who register with a company's website, or give their email addresses while shopping online. On Friday, Epsilon announced that a ...

We pray to whatever higher power there might be that this is not some April Fool's prank: James Franco has deleted his Twitter account. No more feuding with Bruce Vilanch or bravely taking on a college newspaper via TwitPic. Franco will now have to go back to his 13 day jobs, four degree programs and motorized bong. ...

Microsoft and Hulu are offering a pretty sweet deal: Visit Hulu.com/Plus with Internet Explorer 9, and you'll be offered a free, one-month trial of Hulu Plus simply for pinning the site to your taskbar. It's a significant improvement over the normal one-week trial, and all you have to do is stare at an extra icon for a little while. ...

Sadly, April Fools' Day has arrived. Every year on this day, tech companies across the country and the globe spend countless man hours and millions of dollars playing pranks on hapless consumers and frustrated tech journalists. In the past, we've been treated to such delightful jokes as Gmail Paper and every link on YouTube leading to a rickroll. Even NASA got in on the action by announcing it ...

Authorities in Bahrain have released a dissident blogger, just one day after arresting him at his home. Mahmoud al-Youssef was taken into custody early Wednesday morning, as part of a nationwide campaign against opposition activists and protesters. The 50-year-old al-Youssef, who blogs in English, has long criticized the Bahrain regime for restricting freedom of expression, and has been an ...

A decade after fighting a major antitrust lawsuit, Microsoft has filed exactly the same charges against Google. Today, the company will file a formal antitrust complaint with the European Union, joining a collection of small companies that have already made similar charges against the search giant. Microsoft is hoping that the E.U. will take some action against Google, and perhaps convince ...

This gorgeous commercial -- conceived by Morihiro Harano, the award-winning creative director of Drill, Inc. -- features a sort of sloping marimba, down which a wooden ball rolls, producing an unadorned rendition of Bach's Cantata 147. "We did not add any artificial music at all," Harano tells the New York Times. The things people do to sell a wood-encased phone! Are we philistines for kinda ...

Adding yet another thing to click as you make your way across the Web, Google has finally launched its long-rumored '+1' recommendation service. (Try it out here.) It seems that Google is augmenting its algorithmically derived search results with your contacts' recommendations. Google's Matt Cutts told AdAge, "When someone recommends something, that's a pretty good indicator of quality." The ...

As lame as it may be, we occasionally hop on the ol' Google Maps, and meander our ways down scenic city streets from our desks. Paris, New Orleans and Buenos Aires can all be ours, regardless of where we lay our laptops. Thanks to an update from Google, we can now wander off the streets of Rome and into the Colosseum. We'll get some work done next week. ...

Zurich-based roboticists have developed a type of flying robot that plays hacky sack with other robots demonstrates an unprecedented level of communication and control. The quadrocepters may not look like much (as a sawed-off badminton racket makes up its playing surface), but they do sport cutting-edge guts that allow them to sense and react to changes in their environments. In the above ...

As President of the United States, Barack Obama gets to enjoy some pretty sweet perks. Big house, private jet, personal chef -- and yes, his very own computer. He has an iPad, too, in case you were wondering. Univision's Jorge Ramos posed these hard-hitting questions during a recent interview with the President, who replied with a blank stare, before coolly reminding Ramos that he's the ...

'The Social Network' and '60 Minutes' may have given you a glimpse at the life of Mark Zuckerberg, but what do we know about the day-to-day operations at Facebook? MTV's 'Diary' plans to expose the inner workings of the social network by profiling a technical engineer named Pedram and a consumer-marketing employee named Erin. The episode will air this Wednesday at 11:00 p.m. ...

Please, Internet, just take our money. No, no, we insist. As we know all too well, group coupon programs have already made a significant dent in the nation's wallets. ("I know that heights terrify me, but what if I change my mind and decide I really do want to go sky-diving? Crap. I should probably buy this coupon just in case...") Well, the sneaky services have struck again where it's bound to ...

Although perhaps less prone to absurd extravagance than the neighboring United Arab Emirates, Qatar always seems to have some project up its sleeve that would bankrupt most countries of its size. It landed the 2022 World Cup by promising to air condition the open-air stadiums it built for the games. To accomplish this difficult (and incredibly wasteful) feat, Qatar is constructing a fleet of ...