Tag: OILSPILL

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, ...

The ever-clever researchers at MIT have created what could be a revolutionary approach to cleaning up certain oil spills that stick around longer than they should. They call it Seaswarm, and we'd like to think of it as the high-tech paper towel of the sea. The Seaswarm devices are actually comprised of a group of autonomous, solar-powered robots (no, wait: before you run screaming, hear them ...

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 ...

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 ...

Share The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless. We've ...

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 ...

Share As the fallout from last week's oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico continues to ooze its way toward land, the cries of anger echoing throughout the social media stratosphere have only intensified. The principal target of the online rage is BP, which has been disparaged in thousands of posts across Facebook and Twitter. The company, which owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank on ...