Tag: BP

BP is now involved in a spill of a different kind -- a massive leak of personal data. The company confirmed to the AP that an employee lost a laptop containing information on some 13,000 claimants filing for compensation from the Gulf oil spill. It does not appear the data has been used for any malicious purposes yet. Hopefully, BP's laptops are just as prone to exploding as its drilling platforms ...

This year's IgNobel Prize winners, as always, came up with ingenious ways to do really zany things. This year's winner in the physics category, for example, discovered that people who wear socks on the outsides of their shoes are less likely to fall while walking on ice. Another researcher earned the vaunted prize for his straight-to-DVD research on fruit bat fellatio. Perhaps the weirdest ...

If you care about things like the environment and the future of mankind, you probably don't hold the offshore oil-drilling industry in especially high esteem -- unless, that is, you actually work for an offshore drilling company. Potentially hazardous and life-destroying as the business may be, there are actually a lot of people who make their livings harvesting black gold from the ocean floor, ...

Highlights from this morning's big tech headlines... Not even Apple is immune to Photoshop failure of embarrassing proportions. Documentation for the new iPod touch showed the iPhone interface, complete with Phone app, clearly 'shopped onto the the touch. Whoops! [From: TUAW] While the tech sector has proven strong through the recession, hiring is starting to slow. [From: New York Times] ...

Here's hoping you're still full of BP outrage: Maybe 50 million barrels of crude destroying the ecosystem and the lives of Gulf locals hasn't been enough or the backfired PR photoshoppery and the revelation that the company had known the blowout prevention system was leaking don't sufficiently rouse your ire. Perhaps, then, you'll be moved to know that the emergency alarm system on the Deepwater ...

As if folks on the Gulf Coast don't have enough worries already, phishing (and, sadly, not fishing) is now plaguing Florida. According to a Reuters report, many Floridians have received an e-mail from scam artists posing as BP CEO Tony Hayward. In the e-mail, the fake Hayward claims the recipient is eligible for a $500,000 grant from BP in exchange for personal information. To spread the ...

Thanks to one investigative blogger, BP has proven itself to be just as unethical as ever. Monday, John Aravosis at AmericaBlog demonstrated that a promotional photo, which allegedly depicts BP employees poring over video feeds of the leaking oil well, had been photoshopped -- and poorly at that. Not only was the photo clearly doctored, the blog claimed, but it wasn't even current. The image's ...

So there's this cheeky new app concept that's been floating around the Internet lately, and it's raised the question of how trademarks are protected in the virtual space. "The Leak in Your Hometown," an augmented reality app for the iPhone that hasn't yet been approved by Apple, captures any BP logo that the phone's camera detects, and superimposes an animated pipe, billowing some kind of miasma. ...

The first step to solving the Gulf Coast oil crisis, as with any problem, is figuring out just how large and expansive the spill really is. As scientists, lawmakers, and Kevin Costner continue to debate the best way to stop the gushing, a group of academics at MIT are doing their part to track the disaster as it unfurls. The project, called Grassroots Mapping, uses camera-equipped kites to ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. While it's not strictly tech, these marvelous works by Japanese sculptor Haroshi embody the bright, video game aesthetic over which the nerdiest of art lovers (like ...

Last week, the person operating the Twitter account @BPGlobalPR unveiled him or herself to the world under the pseudonym 'Leroy Stick,' and went on to eloquently explain the motivation behind the satirical feed. Apparently, though, that wasn't enough to satisfy the parody-paranoid officials at British Petroleum, who have forced Leroy to officially declare that the page isn't linked to their ...

The irreversible ecological, financial and personal devastation wreaked by the BP oil disaster certainly has triggered feelings of depression, helplessness and rage in both local and international observers. BP's stagnant response, deplorable statements and corrective failures, all of which have tainted the agonizing six-week cleanup period, exacerbate those emotions to an indescribable level. ...

It seems like whenever there's a major international disaster, Twitter is there, helping disseminate information, and keeping people up to date on the latest developments. And the Gulf oil spill is certainly no exception. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness is bound by law to answer every single question it ...

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April, sending the world to the brink of apocalypse, and a Twitter account under the handle @BPGlobalPR mysteriously popped up a month later, unleashing a spew of satirical jabs at BP, inarguably the most hated company on the planet. The account was fake but that didn't stop it from accruing over 100,000 followers. Now, the man behind the Twitter mask has ...

As oil continues to seep into and spread throughout the Gulf of Mexico, a newly formed Twitter account has been mocking British Petroleum's (BP) seemingly inept response to the environmental disaster. As of now, nobody is sure who started the BPGlobalPR account, which showed up last week, and now has more than 20,000 followers. According to Advertising Age, BP hasn't requested that the ...