The next-generation Xbox will officially be unveiled to the public at a Microsoft event scheduled to be held on May 21st.

An invitation sent out by Microsoft Wednesday (Apr 24) promises that the new Xbox, rumored to be called the Xbox 720 (codename: Durango) will be revealed at 10:00 a.m. PDT at their headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

According to a Facebook page promoting the event, it will be streamed live online so fans can watch at home (or at work), much like how Sony’s recent Playstation 4 announcement was done.

Gizmodo has a pretty solid rundown of what to expect from the next-gen Xbox:

The Specs

We are pretty sure we know what the guts of the new Xbox look like. It’ll have a 64-bit, 8-core, 1.6GHz processor made by AMD with x86 architecture and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. (x86 means, broadly, that it’s a lot like the chips in your home computer, which is a change for Xbox, which had until now run on PowerPC.) The GPU is an 800mhz DirectX 11.x, and will be accompanied by custom hardware to accelerate certain Xbox-specific tasks. It’s also got an ethernet port, an optical disc drive (reported Blu-ray), a default 500GB SATA 2 HDD, USB 3.0 ports, and HDMI out and in ports.

For reference, the current Xbox 360 has a 500MHz GPU, a 3-core 3.6GHz processor, and 512MB of RAM. The upcoming PlayStation 4 also has an 8-core 64-bit processor and 8GB of RAM.

Price

This one’s tricky. There is zero official information out there. But we do have some clues. Microsoft supernerd Paul Thurott spitballed a “$500, $300 with subscription” number that hints at the real issue with the new Xbox: subsidized pricing.

Microsoft already offers a subsidized Xbox 360 + Kinect package for $100 up front, if you sign up for two years of Xbox Live Gold at $15 per month. That comes out to $360 for just the two years, which is more than you’d pay if you’re bargain hunting for cheap subscription renewals.

A two-year subscription for a next gen Xbox probably wouldn’t stick in the craw as much as being locked into two years with the current system (though there’s no reason to think the current subscriptions won’t work on a new Xbox). But the relative surety of the subsidized pricing implies two things. One, this is probably coming in higher than the $400/$300 levels of the 360. And two, Microsoft understands that a gaming console, no matter how many features you pack in, is a tough thing to swallow as that big of an up-front cost.

The third-generation Xbox is scheduled to hit stores in the fall, just in time for this year’s holiday season.

Meet your new $100 bill!

The Federal Reserve has finally unveiled the first images of the newly redesigned $100 bill, which is scheduled to go into circulation starting in October — more than two years after its initial February 2011 release date.

Uncle Sam has been working on the new $100 bill since 2003, and it’s taken so long for it to reach this point because it’s loaded with a ton of high-tech features that no one other than counterfeiters care about — like a blue 3-D security ribbon on the front that moves when the note is tilted in any direction, and an image of a color-changing gold inkwell (it changes to green when tilted), making it damn near impossible to successfully duplicate. Sorry counterfeiters!

Other features include (via The Week):

1. A blue, three-dimensional security ribbon that’s woven — not printed — into the note’s fabric.

2. Another security strip to the left of Ben’s face. It’s only visible when held up to the light.

3. A faint image of Ben’s face in the black space on the right, which can be seen on both sides of the bill.

4. Alternating images of bells and the number 100 that change as the viewing angle is tilted.

5. A liberty bell inside an inkwell that changes from copper to green when tilted.

6. A large “100″ on the front that also changes color when tilted.

7. An even larger “100″ vertically positioned on the back to help those with visual impairments identify the currency.

8. Raised “intaglio” printing throughout the bill to give the note its “distinctive texture.”

9. Microprinting reading “The United States of America” on Ben’s collar, “USA 100″ on the watermark, and “ONE HUNDRED USA” along the golden quill.

This is only the fourth time the $100 bill has been redesigned, with the last three revamps occurring within the past 20 years alone due to the Feds having to react quickly to improved counterfeiting technology.

As far as all of those old $100 bills are concerned … the billions of notes already in circulation will remain legal, The Week reports, but starting on October 8th, when the new ones go into circulation, the old ones will be destroyed and replaced when they reach the Feds.

Facebook is inviting reporters and journalists to its Menlo Park headquarters on Thursday, March 7th to show off some brand new features — most notably, brand new designs for Timelines and the ever-popular News Feed, the two most heavily used features on the world’s biggest social networking site.

According to Mashable, a redesigned version of user Timelines is already being tested in other countries, and someone sent them some screenshots of the new design, which features a few subtle changes to the layout of the page. (See below)

But perhaps the biggest change on Facebook will be when they release the newly designed News Feed, which has been tweaked a few times over the years, but hasn’t really been dramatically changed since 2011. But even that wasn’t necessarily a “major change” from when the feature was first introduced in 2006.

Of course, as soon as Facebook announces the changes, expect about 999 million of its 1 billion users to gripe and complain about them for at least a month or two, while the other million who agree with the changes try to convince the gripers and complainers that “change is good.”

Lions are a constant threat to farmers in Kenya, as cattle are their preferred late-night snack. But one family no longer has that to worry about thanks to a 13-year-old boy’s ingenious invention to keep lions from attacking their precious cattle.

Richard Turere has been put in charge protecting his family’s cows, sheep and goats from hungry lions since he was 11 years old. One day, he started moving around at night with a flashlight, and noticed that the lions stayed away because they were scared of the moving light.

So a few weeks later, he came up with a low-cost solution he calls “Lion Lights” — basically LEDs attached to poles that face outward and are programmed to flicker intermittently to resemble blinking flashlights. The lights are hooked up to a switch box and powered with a solar panel and an old car battery.

The Lion Lights seem to be working as intended too, because ever since Richard set them up, the Turere family hasn’t lost a single animal to lions, which is pretty damn impressive.

Even more impressive is the fact that Turere not only came up with the whole idea on his own, but also planned and installed the entire system by himself, with little to no experience or training in electronics or engineering.

“I did it myself, no one taught me, I just came up with it,” he said, according to a CNN report. “I had to look after my dad’s cows and make sure that they were safe.”

Richard Turere’s invention has spread throughout his community, and several of his neighbors have asked him to help them install their own systems.

So far, at least 75 Lion Lights system have been set up around Kenya, and everyone is behind Turere and his invention, which is being praised by conservationists for its humane approach and because it not only saves herds of cattle, but also lions and money.

Stunned by the Turere’s invention and his achievements, Kenya Land Conservation Trust executive director and chairwoman Paula Kahumbu and her colleagues helped the teenager land a scholarship at one of Kenya’s best schools, where he started last April.

Last year, the 13-year-old appeared in a video titled “My Invention That Outsmarted Lions.” He also spoke at the TED conference in Nairobi, and was invited to speak at TED 2013 in California.

“Richard is quite an extraordinary boy,” Kahumbu told CNN, describing him as a “very smart, curious and surprisingly confident [boy] for his age and background,” who has integrated smoothly with his new classmates at school, most of whom come form wealthy families.

“One thing that’s unique about Richard is that if you give him a problem, he’ll keep working at it until he can fix it,” she added. “He doesn’t give up; he doesn’t find things too difficult; he’s not afraid of being unable to do something and I think this is why he is such a good innovator — because he’s not worried that it might not work, he’s going to try and do it anyway.”

Richard’s dream is to one day work in aviation as a pilot and aircraft engineer, and with his ingenuity and ambition, we’re sure he’ll be able to do whatever he pleases in life.

Starting this week, the five major internet service providers (AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable) have free rein to harass you with notices, block you from visiting certain websites, and even slow down your Internet speed if you are found (or suspected) to participate in illegal downloading.

The arrangement comes with the implementation of the U.S.’s nationwide Copyright Alert System, first proposed in 2011. Think of it as D.A.R.E. for illegal files.

Here’s how it works:

Content owners like the RIAA (for music) and MPAA (for movies) will monitor peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing sites like BitTorrent for their own content. Once these content owners notice a copy of, say, Bridesmaids available for illegal download, the owner will collect the IP addresses of users sharing the file (you) and tattle on you to your internet service provider.

Your service provider (ahem, Time Warner), will then issue an alert to you to let you know they know you’re in violation of copyright laws. They will repeat this alert process up to six times as you are repeatedly flagged for violations because you love illegal downloads.

The alerts will start as innocuous little messages (Good morning! Did you know that you can purchase Bridesmaids legally via iTunes?) and grow increasingly severe as you are repeatedly flagged for infractions. By the time the fifth and six alerts roll around, at least one service provider has vowed to reduce your connection speed to something just a little faster than dial-up as punishment. It will be like you are watching your pirated Downton Abbey in 1921, because the service will be so slow.

(Most service providers have already had some sort of illegal download user-alert system in place for years; the difference is that now their efforts are being marketed as a coordinated anti-piracy campaign and receiving a lot of publicity.)

Am I going to get arrested?
No, probably not. The Center for Copyright Information, which runs the CAS, says that no personal information, including the identity of the subscriber, will be shared with the content owners. However, according to documents obtained by TorrentFreak, service providers will share personal information if “required to do so by law”; i.e. the content owners, having decided to pursue litigation against offenders, ask the court for a subpoena. At the moment, though, this program seems designed more to scare people than sue people.

Is my internet going to get cut off forever?
No, probably not. Most internet service providers reserve the right to cut off a user’s service if he or she violates a “terms of use agreement,” but the complete cessation of internet services hasn’t been proposed as a consequence by any provider. Internet providers are very eager for you to pay them money for internet, something elves make for free, and that won’t happen if they stop providing it to you.

So what exactly is the alert process?
The six-step alert process will vary (widely) between providers, but the general format is a three-tiered notification system. The first couple times you’re flagged for file sharing, your provider will provide you with a little notice informing you that some illegal activity has been detected on your Internet connection, and did you know that there are legal ways to acquire your favorite movies and TV shows? (Obviously. That’s why you were acquiring them illegally in the first place.) This phase of the alert is mostly a formality, designed to scare away the very young and/or animals.

Next comes “acknowledgement.” After two warnings, Verizon will redirect you to a website where you’ll have to acknowledge receiving the alerts and watch a brief video about copyright infringement. After four warnings, Time Warner Cable will lock down your browser until you call a number and agree to stop downloading files illegally.

The final level is the most serious: around the fifth or sixth warning, providers have the option to temporarily (for two or three days) slow your internet speed down to a snail’s pace. Verizon will reportedly let you choose whether to slow your internet immediately or in 14 days. AT&T will require customers to complete an “online education tutorial on copyright.” Comcast, because it’s from Philly and Philly don’t give no damns, will only require repeat offenders to watch a boring video as its Ultimate Consequence.

What happens after I get six warnings?
Here’s the crazy part — under this program — nothing. Nothing happens at all. Jill Lesser, executive director of the CCI, said in an interview earlier this month that, after you receive six alerts, you won’t receive anymore:

We hope that by the time people get to alerts number five or six, they will stop. Once they’ve been mitigated, they’ve received several alerts, we’re just not gonna send them any more alerts because they’re not the kind of customer that we’re going to reach with this program.

Of course, you can still get sued.

Can I protest an alert if I receive one?
Yes. The appeals process requires a $35 fee that is waived if the person filing it can prove financial hardship. If the appeal is successful, the fee is refunded. If the appeal is unsuccessful, you got caught AND you paid $35 for the CCI to say “Yep, we caught you.”

What happens if I get scared after my first alert and stop downloading?
You are the system’s ideal customer. You will live the rest of your life in fear, but the alerts will stop. Have fun downloading hot tracks from the public domain.

Are there ways to avoid getting alerts in the first place?
Of course there are! The method the CCI is pushing, which will no doubt prove popular with millionaires and billionaires, is to just procure all your content legally.

Apart from that, program only targets P2P sharing sites, so you can skate around this whole hoopla by using direct-download or streaming sites. If you want to get fancier and more illegal, lots of people better at computers than you are publishing long lists of acronym-heavy advice to avoid getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar (of intangible files).

Will this program stop people from torrenting?
Absolutely not. Lesser admits that it will probably have little affect on “large scale pirates,” and is instead designed to deter the “casual infringer.” It will, however, be annoying.

Republished from: Gawker

Beyonce delivered a high-energy, no holds barred performance at the Super Bowl Sunday night, and like many things that Queen B does, she had the Twittersphere going crazy.

While many celebrities had nothing but good things to say about Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance, a lot of other people sounded off as well.

In fact, Beyonce’s performance was so popular that it of course again broke records, becoming the most tweeted about Super Bowl moment ever!

According to Twitter, Beyonce’s halftime performance generated 5.5 million Tweets. The return of Destiny’s Child saw 257,500 tweets per minute, while the ladies’ rendition of “Single Ladies” generated 252,500 TPM. At the conclusion of the show, 268K TPM were generated.

Yesterday, we showed you 33 celebrity reactions to Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance, and here are more Twitter reactions (from the fans this time):

Rumors about the next Xbox have been floating around for some time now, but now, it looks as though an official launch for the next generation of Microsoft’s uber-successful gaming console is pretty imminent.

Inside sources say that the Xbox buildings on the Microsoft campus are on lockdown, and Xbox Live’s Director of programming Larry Hryb — best known in the gaming world by his gamertag “Major Nelson” — is pretty excited about this year’s E3 Expo video game conference, to be held this summer (Jun 11-13th) in L.A.

In fact … Major Nelson is so excited about E3 that he posted a countdown on his blog on Wednesday (Jan 3), reports Gizmodo.

“And it’s on…” he wrote. Only 159 days left!

Bloomberg reported back in November that Microsoft planned on release the next version of the Xbox — rumored to be called the “Xbox 720″ — in time for the 2013 Holiday season.

People familiar with the company’s plans say that the new console’s release would be planned specifically for Thanksgiving and Christmas sales.

According to rumors, the next Xbox (codename: Durango) is expected to have “four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores,” along with 8 GB of RAM and a bevy of new features — including Blu-Ray support, TV input (as well as output), an “innovative controller” and the introduction of “Kinect 2.0.”

Are you ready for the new Xbox?

Well isn’t this a big ol’ hefty bag of irony. Randi Zuckerberg — sister of Internet king Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook — is not happy about a recent privacy breach on the immensely popular social networking site.

Randi used to be the former head of marketing for Facebook, and is now the executive producer of a new Bravo reality show called “Silicon Valley” about start up companies in the world’s biggest tech hub. So you’d think she, of all people, would know exactly how Facebook’s privacy settings work, right?

Wrong.

Here’s how it all went down, according to BuzzFeed: Randi posted the above photo to her private Facebook page, showing her family’s reaction to the site’s newly released “Poke” app.

Callie Schweitzer (an employee of Vox Media) simply tweeted the photo, thinking that it was a public post, but unfortunately for her, Randi didn’t like the fact that a photo from her personal Facebook page ended up all over the Internet.

“Not sure where you got this photo,” Zuckerberg tweeted at Schweitzer. “I posted it only to friends on FB. You reposting it on Twitter is way uncool.”

Schweitzer eventually deleted the tweet with the photo, and apologized, explaining that she was a subscriber to Randi’s feed and that’s probably how she was able to see it.

But Randi was still pretty pissed about her so-called “privacy” on Facebook being violated, and later found out that Schweitzer was friends with her sister (who also appears in the photo), and that’s how the photo appeared in her news feed.

“Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend’s photo publicly. It’s not about privacy settings, it’s about human decency,” Zuckerberg tweeted.

Too bad what happened has nothing to do with “digital etiquette,” as Randi suggested, and plenty to do with Facebook’s dubious privacy settings, which, oddly enough, were recently updated to actually make the system LESS confusing for users.

But what Ms. Zuckerberg needs to realize is that no matter how “private” a photo published to Facebook is … that doesn’t mean that her friends and/or family members will be blocked from saving that photo and publishing it elsewhere.

No amount of privacy settings can prevent that.

Every year, spoiled brats flock to Twitter to bitch and moan about either the expensive gifts they didn’t receive for Christmas … or even worse, the gifts they received, but were maybe the wrong color or model.

And comedy writer Jon Hendren (@fart) did all the dirty work for us by searching through the Twitterverse using keywords like “iPhone,” “iPad” and “Macbook” and retweeting the brattiest of the bratty tweets for all to see and make fun of.

Our favorites are below:

I told my dad that if he got me the Iphone 4s instead of 5 I’d throw it at him #PrincessProbz

— Katie(@kaaayc) December 24, 2012

I really wanted the white iPhone 5 ????

— nancy camry (@nancycamry) December 24, 2012

the only thing i really wanted for xmas was a macbook pro and i know i wont get one so whATEVER

— xx (@jackthesphynx) December 25, 2012

i didn’t get my iphone for xmas :/ i got tons of not needed stuff..

— dV SHB (@Shibehh) December 24, 2012

Dad bought an iPhone 5 a few weeks ago and now mom got one… I only have a 4s. What the eff is going on?!? #weird #trendyrents

— Katie (@katiesemanski) December 24, 2012

My mom just got the 4S & I only have the 4… #wth?!

— Celia Jane (@celiajane0708) December 23, 2012

I’m yelling FUCK CHRISTMAS cause I only got 4 gifts under the tree!!!!!

— king k(@badgirlkayc) December 24, 2012

feeling like im the only one not getting an iphone for christmas

— Melissa McCall (@melllllmccall) December 25, 2012

I’m really not getting an iPhone for Christmas…… #heartbreaking #depressing #WHYmom

—Alyssa Northcutt (@alyssanorthcutt) December 25, 2012

I hate my white iPhone ???? I just wanted to have my black one ????????

— Krystal?? (@Younqq_Love_) December 25, 2012

If I got a black iPad I’d probably kill myself.

— A.(@annemcgerber) December 25, 2012

If i dont have a fucking iPhone 5 tomorrow im gunna kill myself.

— Everyones Dream (@Chri5tianhorne) December 25, 2012

I don’t like the black iPhone I want the white one again

— shay? (@shannynmetcalf) December 25, 2012

Only got an iPad 2 god mum I wanted a fuckin iPhone 5 fuck sake:///

— Finnick Odair(@movetotherhythm) December 25, 2012

I want a black iPhone now … This white iPhone is wackkk

— Freckles(@ChelseeaG) December 25, 2012

and my mom went directly against me. she asked me if I wanted the black or white iPad. I said white, of course. tell me why mine is black..?

— Majesty (@ebrianne17) December 25, 2012

Some of the users defended their bratty tweets, explaining that they were just joking.

But regardless, complaining about your parents getting you a black iPad instead of the white one (maybe white was sold out?) … or whining that you got the iPhone 4S instead of the 5 is far from cool, and shows just how greedy and materialistic you are.

Now, go to your room with your iMac from last year and your XBox 360 from two years ago, and don’t come out until you finish playing NBA2K12 and Call of Duty: Black Opps (the first one).

[Mashable via Twitter]

“Poke” — Facebook‘s most pointless feature — now has an official app of its own, but with much more significance than how it originally functioned.

In the old days of poking, you would click the “poke” button to simply attract the attention of another user (similar to “nudging” in an instant message or chat board).

But now, poking has totally changed … and for the better, depending on how you look at it.

Facebook has turned poking into an app, and it has nothing at all to do with the original poke feature found on users’ profile pages (behind their settings menu).

Here’s how it works: Let’s say you have a sudden urge to send one of your Facebook friends a photo of a, er, cucumber. But you don’t want to just send them a cucumber pic that they could post and re-share to the world.

Poke lets you send the pic, but the recipient will only have 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds to view your majestic vegetable. And they need to press and hold the screen while viewing, or the pic goes away.

You can send photos, videos or text messages via Poke, although you can’t use it for anything too elaborate since the message content lasts 10 seconds maximum. After that, boom.

The message, whatever it was, is gone forever. There isn’t even a record on the sender’s phone (although a log of who you’ve poked and who’s poked you still remains).

Poke is pretty unforgiving. The recipient must press and hold the notification to see the content. Once you touch, the countdown starts, and there’s no going back — even if you let go.

Videos just stop, with no chance of re-watching. You slip, and you’re done.

You and the person you are poking both need the app or else the recipient won’t be able to see the Poke, which only works on mobile devices at the moment.

When your friends look at your profile online, there’s no trace of poking, however, on smartphones, a note will appear encouraging users to download the Poke app.

Now … what if someone were to take a screenshot of your Poke, in turn, making it something more permanent?

Unfortunately, here isn’t a thing you can do about that, however, if someone were to do that, the app would inform you with a “flash” icon beside their name in your Poke feed.

So if your Poke ends up all over the Internet the next day, you’ll know who did it.

Sidebar: This does not sound like that neat new Snapchat app at all.

[Mashable]

Mitt Romney supporters have been seen mourning the loss of their preferred candidate from the 2012 Presidential election, and the dejected sentiment that most are carrying seems to be reflecting in Romney’s presence in social media.

Though Romney’s numbers always paled in comparison to the President’s he still experienced a rapid growth leading up to the election. He has amassed over 1.7 million followers on Twitter and over 12 million likes on Facebook. (FYI: The president has over 33 million Facebook likes and over 23 million Twitter followers)

However, today and the most recent days since the election, online support for Romney is plummeting at an extremely fast rate. Since the election, Mitt has thanked his supporters with messages and photos from the campaign.

In return for his thank you’s, Romney’s Facebook likes have been falling at a rate of over 15,000 each day since the election.

In fact, in the three days following the 2012 election Romney’s Facebook likes dropped by over 50,000.

Whether this is upset supporters giving up hope or inflated bot accounts dropping cannot be said for sure.

It is most likely a combination of both, but either way it shows just how quickly a candidate can be forgotten even in the age of social media.

Of course the ignorance that spews from both sides during the political elections also made its mark during this year’s election. In the end we are left with some pretty hilarious memes to remind us of Former Governor Romney’s Presidential aspirations.

For those who are loyal Romney supporters it may be tough to watch the ship sink as others jump for safety.

It’s noble to figuratively die with the cause but then there is a certain level of Internet troll who will remain in the trenches continuing support for the lost cause.

Posts like this from Facebook user — whose embedded spammish link leads you to a random DJ page — embody this persistent nature:

“Mitt Romney will come back stronger next term! Here’s a speech of all his goals during the next four years to prove to America he should be our leader <3“

As you can see, the losing candidate’s page is somewhat of a dead zone so the falling number of users who are supporting is fully justified. To those who are jumping ship it is not to late to rally as a nation and support our President going forward in his second term.

[Mashable, Facebook, Twitter]

Some crazy person who says they’re a psychic (wow, people are really still calling themselves psychic?) is supposedly “in contact” with Steve Jobs‘ ghost, and they say he isn’t having a nice afterlife.

The good news is that the Apple founder is “not in hell,” the so-called psychic says, but “he’s had to do a lot of reviewing of his life. Right now he knows the lesson he has to learn, but he hasn’t learned it yet.”

The psycho psychic person continued, “he’s trying to get out of this man-made hell that he’s in.”

Those ridiculous quotes come from a recent interview between Vice Magazine and Betsy Cohen, a popular psychic medium from New York City, in honor of Steve Jobs Day, which is observed October 16th, thanks to a declaration last year by California Governor Jerry Brown.

Cohen says Jobs has “guides” in the afterlife that are trying to teach him that “survival of the fittest is a made up thing,” kind of of like psychics and their ‘ability’ to ‘speak with the dead,’ right?

Cohen claims she had a “rough couple of days” when she first got in contact with Jobs, who she describes as a “very critical spirit,” and if she had to work with him when he was alive, she would probably end up “crying every day.”

Hmph. We’re sure the feeling is mutual, crazy lady! Besides, everyone knows Steve Jobs was a total a-hole to his employees and was known to curse them out regularly. Nothing hew here.

Cohen also claims that during her “contact” with Steve Jobs’ ghost, when she mentioned Foxconn — the manufacturing company that is responsible for building lots of Apple products, including the iPhone, and has been facing controversy due to violations of human rights — he gave her “a lot of harsh laughter.”

Probably just as much laughter as we would give anyone who would take this psychic business seriously, or someone who legitimately (and proudly) supports Mitt Romney. We’re talking about you Stacey Dash!

While most of us were enjoying a quiet Sunday with family and friends, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner was busy making history.

The skydiver teamed up with RedBull to jump from 128,000 in the sky. The edge of space. And he fell faster than the speed of sound — which is really, really fast for those of you non-scientific geeks.

FOX 8 reports on the epic RedBull jump achievement:

After an initial free fall, he opened his parachute and glided down to the ground, where he fell to his knees with his fists raised, then stood up, smiling and hugging members of his team.

It may not have been the longest-lasting free fall. Mission Control said during the jump that Baumgartner did not “break the record for time elapsed” before pulling the parachute.

His highest estimated speed on the way down was 729 mph.

“Guardian angels will take care of you,” said Mission Control just before he jumped.

“The whole world is watching now,” Baumgartner said, before giving a salute and jumping.

Applause broke out in Mission Control when he touched down.

With nothing but a space suit, helmet and parachute, Baumgartner hoped to be the first person to break the sound barrier without the protection of a vehicle.

Even before jumping, he set a record for floating higher in a balloon — about 24 miles — than anyone else before.

At that height, more than three times the cruising altitude of an average airliner, the thin air provides so little resistance that after just 40 seconds, he was expected to be free-falling faster than 690 miles per hour.

As amazing as all of that stuff is, you would never, ever catch a black person trying to pull that kind of stunt. We won’t even bungee jump so you can forget about ever seeing anyone of negro heritage following in Mr. Baumgartner’s footsteps.

Look ma, no hands! Sperm donation just got that much easier now that researchers at Zhengzhou Central Hospital in China have created a machine that…well, sucks the donor off, pretty much.

The machine boasts a screen for visual stimulation (read: porn) while the pink massager strokes the man’s donor pipe to ultimate pleasure. All he has to do is stand back and enjoy the hands-free masturbation.

“The machine can be used by men who cannot donate sperm in the old-fashioned way,” said Zhu Guoxin, director of the urology department at the hospital. “This machine is only recommended for patients who’ve had difficulty retrieving sperm. Users must use a condom, but lubricant and chemicals on condoms will affect the accuracy of the test results.”

Check out a video clip showing the device in action below:

If it weren’t for the $2,800 price tag, pubescent boys everywhere would be begging Santa Claus to drop one of these babies off at their house this Christmas.

This love machine would sell out faster than the iPhone 5 if it was under $500 bucks. Maybe the researchers can work on a more compact version for the mass market.

Unfortunately, mens’ forearms will probably get a lot smaller as a result of the reduction in activity.

[TOI]

The moment all Apple fans have been waiting for has arrived. Apple unveiled its brand new iPhone this morning and it pretty much lived up to all the hype set by the leaks.

The iPhone 5 is taller than the previous versions. Its screen size is now 4 inches in diameter, which conveniently allows room for a fifth row of icons on the screen.

It also has 4G LTE, a feature that many were upset about being excluded in the iPhone 4S launch. And lastly, it ditches the traditional 30-pin connector that the iPods came out with in 2003 in favor of a smaller port that the company is calling Lightning.

Have no fear though, there will be an adapter so that your old accessories remain compatible with the new device.

Apple also rolled out a refreshed set of earphones that it calls ear pods. The new devices will ship with the iPhone 5 but are available as a separate accessory now.

Apple has put great care into making these ear pods comfortable for all ear types. In fact, they even put a team of its employees on the task of measuring a wide range of ears for the project.

So if the new ear pods fit snugly in your ear, you can thank the poor saps who had to poke around in people’s ear wax for that.

The new iPhone 5 is available for pre-orders on the Sept. 14 and will ship in the U.S. on Sept. 21.

For those of you who don’t snag an iPhone 5 during the pre-order rush, get your tents ready for an Apple store campout.

Neil Armstrong, best known as the first man to walk on the moon, died Saturday (Aug 25) at the age of 82, NBC News confirmed this weekend.

Armstrong famously lead the Apollo 11 team that landed on the moon on July 20th 1969, and he was the first to actually step onto the moon’s surface.

Armstrong is also famous for the iconic phrase, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” which is what he told NASA mission control as he walked the surface of the moon for about two hours with fellow astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin.

Neil Armstrong was reportedly recovering from heart surgery he underwent a few weeks ago to relieve blocked coronary arteries, and his family released a statement explaining that the world-famous astronaut had died following complications resulting from the surgery.

“Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job,” his family said. “He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. … He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.”

President Barack Obama greets Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. (Photo: AP)

President Obama issued also a statement from the White House: “Neil was among the greatest of American heroes — not just of his time, but of all time. Armstrong and his crewmates set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible.”

As a spokesman and investment partner for Duracell‘s new Powermat wireless smartphone charging device, Jay-Z, who receives a call from his wife Beyonce, makes a very brief cameo in a commercial used to promote the new product.

The 1-minute ad follows a young man who keeps his iPhone charged throughout the day using the Powermat. But somehow, he gets his phone confused with Jay-Z’s, and while at the club, the phone rings and the caller ID says “B.”

That’s when the Jiggaman himself walks over to the table and gives the guy a serious look, and he quickly hands the phone over to the rapper, who answers Bey’s call and then walks off like a boss.

Jay-Z and Beyonce are known for keeping their relationship out of the spotlight, so it’s definitely refreshing to see Hip-Hop’s royal couple publicly acknowledge each other, even if it’s through a quick spot on a commercial.

When Jay-Z announced that he had inked a deal with Duracell to not only invest in, but be the face and spokesman for their new Powermat JV wireless charging device, he said in a press release, “I believe in the future of wireless energy and I believe that Duracell Powermat is the company to bring on the revolution. I’m partnering with Duracell Powermat because they’re providing the solutions for the future.”

Watch the commercial below:

Microsoft wants to build its own online news service, and to make that possible, the first order of business was for the company to kill MSNBC.com — its its widely recognized joint venture with NBC — after 16 years.

According to the Associated Press, the relationship between NBC and Microsoft began to unravel in 2005 after Microsoft sold its stake in MSNBC’s cable TV channel to NBC.

As a result of the divorce between the two companies, MSNBC.com has been rebranded to NBCNews.com. For further confirmation, readers who visit the old URL “MSNBC.com” URL will automatically be redirected to the new address NBCNews.com.

Similar to a real-life divorce between humans, NBC is packing up and moving out of MSN’s home in Redmond, Washington back to NBC’s longtime home in New York City.

R.I.P. to MSNBC … you will be missed :(

You may remember playing with “Hot Wheels” as a kid, but did you ever think you would be able to see what a Hot Wheels loop would look like … with real, live racing cars? (Neither did we!)

Rally car driver Tanner Foust and Hollywood stuntman Greg Tracy set a world record last weekend by driving not just one, but TWO race cars designed to look like Hot Wheels, through a huge, 66-foot tall Hot Wheels Double Loop Dare track (modeled after an actual toy) at the “X Games” event in Los Angeles.

“That was unbelievable,” Tracy said after he finished first through the loop in the Team Green car, making the jump actress the finish line ahead of Foust.

“I tell you what, I’m at a loss for words,” he continued. “That was absolutely the coolest thing I’ve ever done. It was a handful trying to land it and get it slowed down. I knew Tanner was right behind me and I was just hoping we weren’t going to tangle before we got to the end.”

According to ESPN, Foust and Tracy broke the previous record for the largest loop in a car, set at 42 feet in September 2011 by Chinese driver Li Yatao in a Lotus 5 Sportback for Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co., Ltd. in Shanghai.

Click this picture for a larger image!

Foust and Tracy hit 52 mph in the track, and also experienced nearly 7Gs as they were going through the loop, which, according to an infographic provided by Mattel, was about six-stories high, and the length of about two football fields.

The infographic also notes that it took over 125 tons of plywood and steel, and 11 test facility experts — including a roller coaster engineer, a NASA scientist and a Navy figher pilot — to design and build the track.

“That was pretty hardcore: the 7 Gs … I almost felt my chin hit my lap, I think, in the loop,” Foust said after completing the stunt in the Team Yellow car. “I felt like I was in a toy. The moment when it’s go time, the heart rate slows down, the adrenaline goes away and it’s a matter of letting it happen.”

To avoid passing out from the force of 7Gs (or seven times gravity), Foust explained that his strategy was to “grunt, tighten your core and try to make your eyeballs and veins pop out.”

Foust said that after the driver’s shift from first to second gear, the hand control takes over and, “it’s a matter of following the black line and not passing out.”

One wrong move, and the stunt could have not ended well.

Tracy said of the work that went into making the record-breaking stunt possible, “It doesn’t just happen on the day, it’s something we’ve been working on for a year. When I heard the countdown, I was ready to go.”

As you probably know by now (unless you live under a rock or something), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg married his college sweetheart Priscilla Chan over the weekend.

On Saturday (May 19), just one day after Facebook went public on the stock market, Mark updated his relationship status to “married,” capping off a very busy week for the couple.

Mark’s 28th birthday was last Monday (May 14), the same day Priscilla graduated from medical school at the University of California in San Francisco; and on Friday, Mark took his 8-year-old company public in one of the most anticipated stock offerings in the history of Wall Street.

According to close friends, Zuckerberg and Chan met and Harvard before Mark started Facebook, and have been dating for almost 10 years.

The wedding ceremony took place in Mark’s back yard in Palo Alto, CA in front of less than 100 guests, who were originally told that they were coming to celebrate Chan’s graduation, but when they arrived, found out that they were there for a wedding. “Everybody was shocked,” one guest said, speaking anonymously on behalf of the couple.

Mark wore a suit, while his bride wore a traditional white wedding gown that reportedly cost $4,700, and was designed by Claire Pettibone, a Los Angeles-based designer. Mark also designed the ring featuring “a very simple ruby.”

Mark and Priscilla had been privately planning their surprise wedding for months, but were waiting until Chan had graduated to officially exchange vows.

And just in case you wondering … no, the wedding was not timed to perfectly follow Facebook’s IPO, since the date the company planned to go public was a “moving target,” according to sources.

The New York Times and other media outlets noted that by waiting until the day after he cashed in on Facebook, Mark conveniently protected his billion-dollar fortune from California’s communal property laws that state that everything a couple earns or buys after they get married is split evenly between them if they get a divorce … but anything they owned individually before the marriage is theirs to keep.

Mark married his college sweetheart the day AFTER Facebook went public, clearly establishing his pre-marriage net worth.

But had he tied the knot anytime before that, Priscilla would have almost certainly been guaranteed to receive half of Mark’s Facebook shares if they should ever get divorced. (Though they probably have a prenuptial agreement, but that’s another story…)

And speaking of the Facebook IPO … according to a report today from the Associated Press, Facebook’s stock has fallen for the third day in a row, and investors are reconsidering how much the social network is actually worth.

Facebook’s long-awaited initial public offering of stock raised $16 billion (at $38/share) last Friday, giving the company a $104 billion value, which is $6 billion more than Amazon, Inc.

But after just three days of trading, the price of Facebook, Inc.’s stock has fallen $7, to $31, representing an almost 20 percent drop, which takes the company’s valuation down to about $90 billion.

Meanwhile, Google, Inc. — Facebook’s biggest rival — is worth $200 billion, and is currently trading at over $600/share.

Facebook’s IPO was supposed to prove that social media is not just a passing fad, and is capable to co-exist with the big boys on the stock market … but so far, it has yet to do that.

On the other hand, Facebook’s traffic continues to grow, as they recently announced that they are pushing 1 billion users … but will they survive the stock market? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

But regardless of how Facebook’s stock does, Mark will still be a happily married billionaire … so congrats to him on succeeding at life before the age of 30.

Nicki Minaj shut down New York City’s Times Square Friday night (Apr 6) when she hit the stage and performed in front of 30,000+ screaming fans to celebrate the launch of the all-new Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone.

Nicki — who just released her sophomore album “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded” — rocked the illuminated Rubik’s Cube inspired stage while dressed up in a blonde wig, black lace bodysuit and tiger-striped leggings as she performed a short, 15-minute set that included just three songs: “Super Bass,” “Right By My Side” and her latest single “Starships.”

Footage from this “secret” concert hosted by Nokia wil be used in an exclusive remix to Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” music video.

Check out some pictures and the “Starships” remix video below:

Ashton Kutcher will play the late Steve Jobs in an independent film about Jobs’ early life and the founding of Apple, reps for the actor confirmed Monday (Apr 2).

The movie, simply titled “Jobs,” will follow the tech innovator’s life from when he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in 1976, to when Jobs returned to the company in the late 90′s after being forced out. The film won’t cover Jobs’ later years with Apple.

Steve Jobs died at age 56 last October after battling cancer.

Production for the biopic is scheduled to begin in May while Kutcher is on hiatus from his hit CBS series “Two and a Half Men.”

34-year-old Ashton Kutcher, who first got his big break on the hit comedy series “That 70′s Show,” is known as one of the more tech-savvy Hollywood celebs.

With over 10 million followers, he is an enthusiastic user of popular social networking site Twitter, and was one of the site’s early adopters. Kutcher also has invested in several Silicon Valley start-ups.

Ashton’s movie will also reportedly face some competition from Sony Pictures, which is also developing a Steve Jobs biopic. According to reports, The Sony flick will based on the best-selling book by Walter Isaacson, released last October shortly after Jobs’ death.

What do you think about Ashton Kutcher playing Steve Jobs?

“Two and a Half Men” star Ashton Kutcher is going to outer space!

Demi Moore’s estranged husband will be taking the trip aboard Sir Richard Branson‘s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo as early as next year.

Taking to his blog to promote the trip and announce that Kutcher would be joining, Branson wrote:

Great news today from our Astronaut Relations team at Virgin Galactic: our 500th future astronaut customer has just signed up! Even better news is that number 500 is Ashton Kutcher…I gave Ashton a quick call to congratulate and welcome him. He is as thrilled as we are at the prospect of being among the first to cross the final frontier (and back!) with us and to experience the magic of space for himself

Ashton is joining a fast expanding group of true pioneers who are on their way to a life changing experience and a place in the history books. It’s great to have him on board!

According to reports, other celebrities might also be joining Ashton Kutcher and Richard Branson on their journey to space, including Katy Perry, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

The cost of the round-trip journey to space and back to earth costs around $200,000 a person.

A launch date has yet to be set, but we hear the SpaceShipTwo will be ready for test flights sometime later this year.

Sounds like fun, but we’re not too sure about traveling to space … and the fact that all of these big time celebrities will be on board. What if something goes wrong?

[Image Credit: CelebSlam]

What do you think about this? Would you pay $200,000 to travel to space?

As of this very moment, Joseph Kony is arguably the most hated man on earth.

But why? How can one person spark so much hate and disgust on a global scale?

Keep on reading and you’ll find out…

Joseph Kony is an evil, EVIL man from Uganda who heads an infamous guerilla group called the Lord’s Resistance Army, or “LRA” for short.

The LRA is a militant group of people who, with an extreme religious ideology, use violence in an effort to establish a theocratic government based on the Ten Commandments throughout various African countries, including Uganda.

Directed by Kony, the LRA has abducted and forced an estimated 66,000 children to fight for them, and has forced the internal displacement of over 2 million people since its rebellious campaign began back in the 1980′s, earning the violent army one hell of a reputation worldwide.

In the past decade alone, the LRA — which mainly operates northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic — has spent the majority of its time and energy not only attacking, but also enslaving and killing unarmed Acholi people from its own tribe, many of them being women and children.

Joseph Kony — who calls himself the official “spokesperson” of God, and even goes as far to consider himself the Holy Spirit — was indicted in 2005 for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, and has spent the past 7 years evading capture.

Now, social media has taken upon itself to create a massive campaign called “Stop Kony,” in an extreme and global effort to make the indicted war criminal “famous” (or “infamous” — depending on who you ask) so that he can finally be captured and punished for his heinous crimes against humanity.

A California-based non-profit charity organization called “Invisible Children” is at the helm of the campaign, which says it wants to harness the power of the Internet to raise awareness and finally bring Joseph Kony to justice.

A documentary video, entitled “The KONY 2012 Documentary” has now become an Internet sensation after going viral this week, reaching over 40 million views in just 3 days.

The Washington Times reported:

Less than two days after its initial release, the video on YouTube and Vimeo had garnered almost 20 Million views. Most viewers have been referred from Facebook and are between 13 and 24 years of age.

The KONY 2012 Documentary was created by Invisible Children, whose mission is not to celebrate him, but to “raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice,” as stated in the video’s description on YouTube.

The documentary calls for a massive event on April 20th called “Cover the Night,” culminating in the form of hundreds of thousands of supporters placing posters and stickers in every city across America. These materials seek to make the name of Joseph Kony famous and eventually bring him to justice via awareness.

Instantly, “Cover the Night” events on Facebook were started and grew to many hundreds of members who each committed to take part in this effort on the night of April 20th.

The video states that when Kony is a household name, the US Government will have to keep American soldiers in Central Africa, on their mission to find Kony.

“In order for Kony to be arrested this year, the Ugandan military has to find him. In order for them to find him, they need the technology and training to find him in the vast jungle. That’s where the American advisors come in. But in order for the American advisors to be there, the US government has to deploy them. They’ve done that, but if the government doesn’t believe that the people care about arresting Kony, the mission will be canceled. In order for people to care, they have to know, and they will only know if Kony’s name is everywhere.”

What are your thoughts on the “Stop Kony 2012″ campaign? Do you support it?

The new iPad 3 is finally here!

Apple officially unveiled the latest version of its insanely popular line of tablet computers Wednesday (Mar 7) during a media event held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA.

The all-new iPad 3 boasts a large 2048×1536 Retina display, a 5-megapixel rear camera with advanced optics and 1080p HD video recording, a faster A5X system-on-chip with quad-core graphics and 4G LTE download speeds (on cellular-capable models).

The pricing structure for the various iPad 3 models are similar to the iPad 2 when it was released last year: $499, $599 and $699 for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB Wi-Fi only models respectively; and $629, $729 and $829 for the 4G LTE models, which also include Wi-Fi.

Apple will also reportedly continue to offer the 16 GB iPad 2 in both Wi-Fi ($399) and Wi-Fi + 3G ($529) models.

Watch a 5-minute video outlining the iPad 3′s new features below:

The government officially released Steve Jobs‘ 191-page FBI file Thursday, detailing a number of things we’ve never known about the late Apple founder, including a background investigation that was conducted when Jobs was being considered for a position at the White House in 1991,.

The lengthy file also includes records of a 1985 bomb threat against him, and several interviews with various colleagues and friends of Jobs, both former and present.

One interviewee recalled Jobs’ well-known drug use, which included the use of marijuana and LSD, something Jobs himself has admitted to in the past.

Other unnamed interviewees talked about how Jobs couldn’t be trusted, and was known to “distort reality” and “twist the truth” to get his way. One person even said that they had “questions concerning his ethics and his morality.”

The file also included another very interesting piece of information. His high school GPA was a mere 2.65. (Wow!)

From the FBI file’s memo summarizing the 1991 background investigation:

Several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs’ honesty stating that Mr. Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals. They also commented that, in the past, Mr. Jobs was not supportive of [redacted] (the mother of his child born out of wedlock) and their daughter; however, recently has become supportive.

[Name withheld] advised that he has been acquainted with Mr. Jobs since [redacted]. He characterized Mr. Jobs as a deceptive individual who is not completely forthright and honest.

[Name withheld] advised that he is no longer friends with Mr. Jobs. He feels bitter toward and alienated by Mr. Jobs based on his association with Mr. Jobs at ACI. He characterized Mr. Jobs as an honest and trustworthy individual; however, his moral character is questionable.

They further stated that Mr. Jobs has integrity as long as he gets his way.

Also, the AP confirmed with the Commerce Department that Jobs did get the job at the White House during the first Bush administration … just in case you were wondering.

If you’ve got some serious time to kill, click here to read Steve Jobs’ entire FBI file.

[Image: Gawker]

Sophia Stockton — a Kansas City-area college student — ordered a used textbook about terrorism for one of her classes from Amazon, which is probably something lots of college students do. Pretty normal, right?

Wrong.

Stockton says as she was flipping through the pages of the book, a clear plastic bag with a mysterious white powdery substance fell out.

So she took the book and the bag to a nearby police station, where they discovered exactly what that “substance” was.

“I told them white powder was in my terrorism textbook and so I put it on the table and they’re like, ‘oh, okay,’ And so he went back and tested it,” Stockton recalls. “ He comes back and says, ‘you didn’t happen to order some cocaine with your textbook, did you?’ And I was like, no!”

Police officials didn’t report the incident to Amazon, but Stockton did reach out to the shopping website, though she doesn’t believe they are to blame, and will most likely continue to purchase from them in the future.

“I have ordered many times from Amazon and this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this,” Stockton told a local newspaper. “I don’t think that Amazon is at fault in this case. They can’t check every book that goes through their warehouse. I’m guessing that it (the cocaine) was just left in there by the previous owner of the book.”

Police believe there may have been up to $400 worth of cocaine in the bag, and investigators are currently trying to figure out where it may have come from.

We bet whoever that bag of coke belongs to will be pissed to find out they left it in an old book they sold to Amazon!

[NBC]

Well we may have the perfect thing for you: the Fleshlipad Holder!

The adult toy will allow men to have sex with their iPad and supposedly has the same feeling as a real-life woman. (However, we seriously doubt that.)

According to Gizmodo, the product is currently being developed and still has to be approved.

“It’s another exciting product we have in development at the moment. We are always looking to improve our user experience and this will be a way to take it to another level. Continue watching Fleshlight.com for it,” Fleshlight COO Brian Stubin stated.

There’s probably a lot of guys who are going to secretly buy this if it ends up on the market. Hey, it’s better than screwing your roommate’s chihuahua!

Turns out Swizz Beatz wasn’t the CEO of now defunct file sharing website Megaupload.com after-all.

Earlier this week, when Megaupload was shut down by the DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice), multiple credible news outlets, including us, falsely reported that Swizz Beatz (born: Kasseem Dean) was the CEO of the massively popular website.

Though the rapper/producer and part-time NYU professor’s name was indeed listed on Megaupload.com’s “About Us” page before it was taken down, according to the company’s attorney Ira Rothken, Swizz Beatz was NOT the CEO of the Hong Kong based company.

Well, at least not YET.

“To my knowledge, Swizz Beatz was never involved in any meaningful way,” Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken told VentureBeat. “He was negotiating to become the CEO, but it was never official.”

So in other words … they were in the process of making Swizz Beatz the CEO, but never got a chance to make it official.

Beatz’ name was also absent from the 72-page federal indictment brought against Megaupload, which is 68 percent owned by the site’s founder Kim Dotcom.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom pictured at a court hearing in Auckland, New Zealand

According to confirmed reports, Kim, as well as six other individuals, were charged with five counts of criminal acts, including conspiracy to commit racketeering and criminal copyright infringement.

Kim, who celebrated his 38th birthday last week, was arrested after police raided his $24 million New Zealand estate during a birthday party. Police say when they arrived on the property, Dotcom ran to a “safe room” in the house and barricaded himself in before police found him with a loaded shotgun.

Megaupload Ltd. reportedly cost copyright owners more than half a billion dollars, while they generated over $175 million in revenue, which gave Mr. Dotcom the financial ability to live a lavish lifestyle that saw him purchase at least 18 cars, including a 2010 Maserati, a 2008 Rolls Royce and a number of Mercedes Benzes.

The site came under fire last month after a viral video/song called “The Megaupload Song” was released showing a number of celebrities supporting the file-sharing service, including Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown and Diddy.

It’s not exactly clear when or even how Mr. Dotcom and Swizz Beatz even crossed paths and became so close, but sources familiar with the situation say that Mr. Beatz thought he could persuade Dotcom to turn Megaupload into a legitimate, licensed music service.

Looks like that won’t be happening anytime soon, however new reports state that Beatz is still interested in being a part of the company.

A source close to the music industry professional confirmed MTV News that Swizz is still seriously involved with the company, and he was not involved with the crimes that led to the federal indictment against the site’s current executives.

“He’s not walking away from this,” the source told MTV, adding that his name was added to the site as its CEO “prematurely.”

Once all of the legal issues are resolved, it is still very possible that Swizz Beatz will officially join Megaupload as its CEO.

According to the Associated Press, the popular file sharing website’s founder and several and several of the company’s executives — including Swizz Beatz — have been charged with violating federal piracy laws.

A federal indictment accuses Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders over $500 million in lost revenue from pirated movies, TV shows, songs, software programs and other illegally hosted content.

A person known as “Kim Dotcom,” along with three other executives, was arrested in New Zealand at the request of U.S. officials, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The company, based out of Hong Kong, listed Swizz Beatz (born: Kasseem Dean) as its CEO, though his name wasn’t mentioned in the indictment and he has not yet commented on the situation.

Beatz reportedly persuaded some of his industry friends, like Sean “Diddy” Combs, Kanye West, Will.i.am, his wife Alicia Keys, and even reality TV star Kim Kardashian, to promote his site though a viral video used to promote the service.

But after the star-studded promo appeared on YouTube last month, Diddy, Kanye and Will.i.am’s label Universal Music Group issued what is known as a “take-down notice” to YouTube, alleging that the artists’ participation was unauthorized.

Megaupload fired back with a lawsuit against Universal to stop them from preventing distribution of the video. A rep for the website said in a statement:

“We have never received any word that any artist has [individually] filed a take-down . . . [we have] legally binding agreements with the performers that appear in the video . . . They promised that they had the rights to enter into that agreement and it’s not interfering with any third-party rights.”

Megaupload, which boasted 150 million users and received over 50 million hits daily, allowed users to freely download films, TV shows, games, music and other content. They made money by selling advertising and charging subscriptions to people who wanted access to faster download speeds.

The website, ranked at #13 in the world, is considered to be a “cyberlocker,” where users are given the ability to upload and transfer files that would otherwise be too large to send via e-mail.

In theory, the site can have perfectly legitimate uses, however, the major record labels and the Motion Picture Association of America estimates that a large portion of the content being shared on Megaupload was in clear violation of U.S. copyright laws.

The federal indictment comes just one day after several websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist were “blacked out” in protest of two congressional proposals intended to stop online piracy.

The viral video Swizz Beatz convinced his industry friends to take part in can be seen below:

Remember a couple years back when the new “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” movie leaked on the web prematurely? And when we say prematurely, we’re talking several months in advance. (The film hadn’t even finished being edited yet!)

Well….the guy that uploaded the movie was sentenced to a year in federal prison:

Gilberto Sanchez has been sentenced to one year in federal prison for uploading an unfinished version of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine film to his Megaupload account.

The film was subsequently shared across the internet resulting in millions of infringements according to prosecutors. Nevertheless, the 20th Century Fox flick ended up grossing $373 million worldwide.

In March, Sanchez pleaded guilty to one count of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution.

However, he claims that he bought the movie on a Bronx street corner near his home but the original source of the workprint was never identified. US attorney Andre Birotte Jr. had this to say in response to the ruling:

“The federal prison sentence handed down in this case sends a strong message of deterrence to would-be Internet pirates. The Justice Department will pursue and prosecute persons who seek to steal the intellectual property of this nation.”

[The Verge]

Wow! So even though Fox made close to $375 million … they still prosecuted the guy and put him in jail … FOR A YEAR?! For downloading a movie. An unfinished movie, that eventually went on to make well over $300 million.

Yet, there are still hardened criminals on the streets today, right this very second … and the law chooses to spend time and money prosecuting people who upload movies on the Internet.

Your thoughts?

No, you’re not reading the headline wrong. Facebook is really threatening to sue Mark Zuckerberg!

But not the Mark Zuckerberg you might be thinking of…

Facebook has threatened to sue Mark Zuckerberg, an Israeli entrepreneur who recently took the social network founder’s name. The new Zuckerberg, born Rotem Guez, legally changed his name Dec. 7.

Zuckerberg II’s website, MarkZuckerbergOfficial.com, states that he first filed a lawsuit against Facebook in January, after the social network refused to give him access to his profile, which it had shut down.

Zuckerberg (all further mentions refer to the Israeli entrepreneur) co-founded Like Store, a social marketing company, which sells companies Likes for their brand pages. The site states (translated), “Are you sad no one’s visiting your Facebook Page? We have a solution! Need 1,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 5,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 10,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you.”

In September, Facebook’s law firm Perkins Coie threatened to sue against Zuckerberg, claiming the Like Store violated the social network’s Terms of Service, by selling brands fans. The threat instructed Zuckerberg to shut his company and never return to the social network for any reason.

Zuckerberg officially changed his name Dec. 7. In the below video of his trip to the Interior Ministry to make the switch official, he says he plans to change his family’s names as well. One week later, Facebook again threatened a lawsuit against Zuckerberg’s still existing Like Store. Little did they know, they were threatening someone with the name of their own founder.

[Mashable]

To make the change “official” … the new Zuckerberg guy has set up an entire Internet campaign for his new moniker, including an official Facebook Page (which we’re surprised is still up and active with over 5K likes) and a Twitter account with the handle @iMarkZuckerberg and his website, MarkZuckerbergOfficial.com.

Zuckerberg’s Facebook page also includes pictures of his new ID and passport, complete with his new name.

Do you think Facebook has the right to sue this guy for changing his name to Mark Zuckerberg?

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the co-founder of up and coming social networking site Diaspora, was found dead at his home in San Francisco over the weekend.

Police confirmed Monday that the young entrepreneur’s death was a suicide. “In this case it appears to be a suicide,” Officer Alvie Esparza told CNN. “However, the medical examiner’s office will make the final decision.”

New reports suggest that Zhitomirskiy’s mother hadn’t heard from her son in several days. So she contacted his roommate, who then broke down his bedroom door to find Zhitomirskiy dead. He was 22 years old.

“Ilya was a great guy,” said Peter Schurman, a spokesman for Diaspora. “He was a visionary, he was co-founder of a company that hopes to bring a better social networking experience and we are all very sad he is gone. It is a huge loss for all of us, including his family,”

CNN Reported:

Diaspora — positioned as an open-source, decentralized alternative to Facebook — came into public view last year. Zhitomirskiy and three other New York University students announced the project on April 24, 2010, seeking donations through microfunding site Kickstarter.

The founders surpassed their $10,000 fundraising goal in 12 days, and they raised a total of $200,000 from 6,500 donors in 39 days — including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The Diaspora announcement was well-timed, as it launched while Facebook was dealing with bad press about its confusing privacy controls. Diaspora also raised money from high-profile venture capitalists including Fred Wilson.

Diaspora posted its source code in September 2010 and launched a commercial version of its network a few weeks later. But after that, the buzz began to fade.

A Diaspora blog post last month pleaded for more donations, but on October 19 the cofounders said “PayPal mysteriously and arbitrarily decided to freeze everyone’s donations.” PayPal later said it had released the funds.

Over the weekend, dozens of people commented on the news of Zhitomirskiy’s death — first reported by TechCrunch — via a forum on startup incubator Y Combinator’s site.

“Ilya was an incredible person,” wrote one user. “His heart was truly driven by bringing about positive change in this world. Diaspora was only the beginning.”

Drake isn’t the biggest social media enthusiast.

The “Headlines” rapper revealed in an exclusive interview with Source that he hates Tumblr and Twitter. Find out why below.

On Tumblr:

I’m really scared for my generation, you know. The thing that scares me the most is Tumblr. I hate what Tumblr has become. Because it like, it reminds me of those cliquey girls in high school that used to make fun of everyone else and define what was cool, but in five years, when you all graduate, that sh*t doesn’t matter. No one gives a f**k about that sh*t. Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me. Then you’ll meet them and they’re just the biggest turkey in the world. They don’t actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It’s scary man, simulation life that we’re living. It scares me.

On Twitter:

I’ll tell you, my biggest thing was, I remember, it was on twitter. I remember the day my mom was getting surgery and someone came on Twitter and they were like, ‘Yo, Drake, I hope your mom dies.’ You don’t really mean that.

…Like, you know you’re going to see something bad. Out of 1000 compliments, it’s so crazy. It’s basically, like, when you used to sit there as a kid, and want to know what everyone is thinking. That’s your superpower. [Twitter is] knowing what everyone is thinking.”

We really feel Drake on this … but when you’re making millions of dollars and being endorsed by one of the biggest rappers in the game, you’re going to have plenty of haters. It comes with the territory! Just do you, count your money, and let the haters hate.

Via Information Week:

MC Hammer, entertainer-turned-entrepreneur, demonstrated some of the capabilities of WIREDoo, which Hammer called both “Deep Search” and “Relationship Search,” at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Hammer, cognizant of the presence of Google co-founder Sergay Brin in the audience, said that the technology isn’t meant to replace existing search, but to add value. Specifically, search queries add the notion of data relationships to results. For example a search of the word “car” might also come with the relationships to insurance, cost, specs, mileage, and who the driver will be. A search for “home” might also include relationships to community, schools, financing, insurance and so on.

In one search on a zip code, Hammer showed in a single screen result the schools, homes, information on the community, shopping, crime rate…when he further selected “homes” the result set showed information like square footage and schools, among other data. Selecting schools showed things like SAT scores, school credential ratings, and truancy rates. Selecting truancy showed expulsion and suspension rates. In other words, not only does each search present a wealth of useful related information, but that search can just be a starting point to drill deeper and deeper.

A search on the Apple stock symbol brought back results that showed related stock data, related news, mutual fund ownership, and each of these showed even deeper, rich data, like all of the funds invested in Apple and the share volume and changes in that volume.

Hammer, a Bay area native, said he spends his time with young CEOs, helping them get started. WIREDoo seemed an impressive example. You can see more in the video below.

WireDoo?

Yeah ………………….. nobody’s gonna use this.

Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Michael Dell and U2 lead singer Bono were among the key figures from technology, entertainment and politics who all attended a memorial service for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs held on the campus of Stanford University Sunday night (Oct 16).

While there were few details available about who spoke at the memorial, the British actor and technophile Stephen Fry, who knew Mr. Jobs, posted a note to Twitter Sunday evening describing his reaction to a memorial, though he didn’t say explicitly that it was the event to honor Mr. Jobs. “I don’t know that there was ever a more beautiful memorial service,” Mr. Fry wrote. “Everyone who spoke did so with such passion and love and simplicity.”

[LAT]

Steve Jobs died of respiratory arrest on October 5th after battling pancreatic cancer for many years. He was laid to rest in a small, private gathering attended by his family and close friends 2 days later at an undisclosed location.

It was announced by California governor Jerry Brown Friday (Oct 14) that the following Sunday had been declared as “Steve Jobs Day” in the state.

Apple will be holding a private event for their employees this Wednesday (Oct 19) to honor Mr. Jobs on the company’s campus in Cupertino, CA.

A live stream of the event will be shown at Apple’s many retail stores around the world, which will all be shut down for about an hour to allow employees to view the service privately.

Google+‘s traffic is taking a long slide down the shitter, having lost last month’s entire 1269% traffic spike. Reading this forced me to remember it exists. Google+ is simply worse than Facebook. And you know what? It’ll never catch up.

There’s nothing complicated about Plus’ meteoric hype party and subsequent thud. It goes like this:

(Almost) everyone loves Facebook.
(Almost) everyone loves Google.
Google says they’ve got a Facebook replacement.
We all go wide-eyed—could it be better than Facebook?
Google+ is invite-only.
We love feeling cool and having an invite.
We fool ourselves.
We get bored.

We arrived at that last step some time ago, struggling to make use of a social network that just wasn’t interesting enough to force us to care once the mantle of exclusivity was lifted. Google+ is fucking boring—so much that we had to write a long article just trying to figure out how to use it.

It’s not complicated, mind you—and that’s even more damning. Google+ is a simple website that’s still totally puzzling. It provides no justification for its own existence. It exists because Google proclaimed it ought to, and that’ll never be enough. As our Mat Honan put it in his attempt to help figure out what the hell Google+ is, “It’s all white space and open air, inviting lengthy discourses. And the lengthy discussions tend to attract blowhards.” This was always true: Google+ was best at being a place to talk about Google+.go

When you try to move beyond the Hey, I’m not using Facebook! How does this work? dimension of Google+, you find there’s no reason to stay. The site’s worse than irrelevant: it’s redundant. There’s no niche, no small slice to serve, no tight community of geeks in need of a petri dish. There’s nothing unique or even welcoming about Google+ at all, no special area that gives you something Facebook can’t. Its a clean clone, an inferior, whitewashed Facebook—and there will never be a point in being friends with someone in two places.

Aside from indulging privacy paranoids and irritating tech contrarians, Facebook is simply better at every single thing Google+ attempts. Say what you want about its advertising, its privacy settings, its absurd redesigns—Facebook is stellar at what it sets out to do. It murdered photo sharing services, decimated the use of Instant Messaging, is in the ring with Twitter, and, of course, is where all your friends are. And for a social network, we want to be where our friends are—we don’t want to experiment with Google‘s bright sterile waiting room. Zuck’s just doing it better than Google.

Google+ has a news feed—Facebook’s is better.
Google+ has a wall of some kind—Facebook’s is better.
Google+ had “Circles,” which illicit erections across the internet for some reason—Facebook stole the idea and made Lists, which are the same thing.

And that last one’s crucial. No matter what Google+ might have on Facebook, Facebook can always take. They stole Twitter for statuses, they ripped AIM and Skype for Facebook Chat, and they’ll ransack whatever few nuggets of worth lie in Google+ as well. They’ll always be ahead. It’s an impossible fight: whatever Google+ can do, Facebook either already is doing better or will do just as well. Nobody’s going to move to the apartment next door just because the walls are painted whiter. Google+ will lie fallow, its grave a simple marble obelisk next to Wave’s byzantine crypt.

Republished from: Gizmodo.com

According to numerous reports, the official death certificate of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs shows that he died at around 3 p.m. on October 5th at his home in Palo Alto, California of respiratory arrest caused by a pancreatic tumor.

His occupation was listed as “entrepreneur” in the “high tech” business.

Bloomberg reports:

The Santa Clara County Public Health Department in San Jose, California, issued the document yesterday, listing respiratory arrest as the immediate cause of death, with “metastatic pancreas neuroendocrine tumor” as the underlying cause. There was no autopsy performed.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) announced Oct. 5 that Jobs, 56, died without providing any details about the time and place. The iconic chief executive officer of the iPhone maker resigned his position Aug. 24. He had been diagnosed in 2003 with a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare form of pancreatic cancer, and underwent a liver transplant in 2009.

Jobs was buried at a non-denominational cemetery in Santa Clara County on Oct. 7. The name of the person who filled out the certificate was blacked out.

The company is planning an event on Oct. 19 to honor Jobs for employees, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said yesterday in an e-mail to employees.

“I have experienced the saddest days of my lifetime and shed many tears during the past week,” Cook said in the note, which was posted on the website 9to5Mac.

Mrs. Jobs’ health in the days leading up to his death was so fragile that just a few days before his death, Apple notified the Palo Alto, California police department and told them that their founder was expected to die, so that they could have patrols ready in case mourners decided to gather outside his home.

The day before his death, Apple announced the upcoming release of the iPhone 4S, the newest generation of iPhones, marking the first time Jobs wasn’t on hand to present the popular touch screen phone to the public.

The iPhone 4S won’t be released until this Friday (Oct 14), and pre-orders have already exceeded sales expectations. Apple reports that over 1 million devices have been pre-ordered so far, and analysts predict that because demand for the phone is so high … the company could see sales of more than 3 million during the first weekend of official sales.

Steve would be proud.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, and the visionary responsible for world-changing products such as the iPod, iPhone, iPad and an extensive line of Mac computers, died Wednesday (Oct 5) at the age of 56 years old following a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

Jobs had been battling a rare form of slow growing pancreatic cancer for years, and even took a medical leave from Apple back in January so that he could focus on his health.

But when things didn’t get better for Jobs, he stepped down as Apple’s CEO in August because he could “no longer meet (his) duties and expectations.”

After dropping out out of Reed College in Oregon after one semester, Jobs took some time out to find himself by designing video games for Atari, backpacking across India and working for Hewlett Packard.

It was at HP where he befriended a guy named Steve Wozniak, who would later go on to co-found Apple with him in 1976 when Jobs was just 21 years old.

Apple was the first company to develop what is known today as the “personal computer,” and Jobs was among the first engineers to recognize that using a GUI (graphical user interface) with a mouse would be appealing to users, who could now operate computers by clicking on images instead of writing text/code.

Apple’s first marketable computer was launched in early 1984 during the Super Bowl and 2 years later, after numerous fights and a power struggle with chairmen and board members, Steve Jobs was fired from the company he started.

After getting fired from Apple, Steve founded NeXT Computer, whose pricey computers never caught on with consumers.

He later bought Pixar Animation Studios before the company made it big with “Toy Story,” and Jobs helped the company grow into what it is today.

In 1996, Apple, a struggling company at the time, bought NeXT and along with that purchase came, of course, Steve jobs, who was welcomed back to the computer company with open arms as CEO. 5 years later, in 2001, Jobs introduced the original iPod, which has gone on to transform portable music and kick-started Apple’s big comeback.

Over the next decade, Apple began to introduce a number of ground-breaking products, like iTunes (2003), the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008) and the iPad (2010).

By the late 2000s, Apple was considered a top tier American business, and today, the company operates more than 300 retail stores in 11 countries, and has sold more than 275 million iPods, 100 million iPhones and 25 million iPads worldwide.

This past summer, it was reported that Apple had more money than the U.S. Treasury, and the company even briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the world.

But Jobs’ ongoing health problems sometimes cast a dark shadow over the success of his company.

In 2004, Jobs announced to Apple employees that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer. Over time, he lost weight and sparked concern amongst Apple fans with his unhealthy appearance.

During a 6-month medical leave of absence from Apple in 2009, Jobs had a secret liver transplant in Tennessee to help combat the cancer that had spread to other parts of his body.

In January of 2011, he took another medical leave of absence and helped put together his first authorized biography, scheduled to be published this November.

In August 2011, Jobs announced that he would be stepping down from his position as Apple’s chief executive officer, sparking more concern amongst Apple fans, who feared the worst.

After a lengthy battle with cancer, Jobs died surrounded by his close family and friends Wednesday, October 5th 2011.

A message posted to Apple.com paying tribute to Jobs’ legacy reads:

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs (born February 24th 1955) is survived by his wife of 20 years, Laurene, and four children, including one from a previous relationship.

Vanity Fair has just released its annual “Influential Business People” list and we have the scoop on who made the top spot.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took the #1 spot (for the second year in the row), while influential Pop diva Lady Gaga came in at #9. At age 27 and 25 respectively, both are two of the youngest entrepreneurs to make the list.

What some would say are Zuckerberg’s cyber nemeses, co-founders of Google Sergey Brin and Larry Page came in at the #2 spot and Amazon head-honcho Jeff Bezos grabbed the #3 spot, which was occupied by the aforementioned Google CEOs last year.

According to VanityFair.com, there are 14 billionaires on the list, including Zuckerberg, Brin, Page and Bezos, as well as Mark Pincus (Zynga), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Peter Thiel (Paypal) and more.

Also making the list was filmmaker Tyler Perry who came in at #44, music mogul Jay Z who came in at #21 and new “Two and a Half Men” front-man Ashton Kutcher who came in at #43. Justin Timberlake ended the list of 50 influential business people in the last spot.

Take a look at the list in full below:

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
2. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google
3. Jeff Bezos, Amazon
4. Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, Apple
5. Jack Dorsey, Square, Twitter
6. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
7. Reed Hastings, Netflix
8. John Lasseter, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
9. Lady Gaga, singer
10. Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg L.P.

11. Dick Costolo, Twitter
12. Mark Pincus, Zynga
13. Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
14. Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Graham King, Movies
15. Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital
16. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter
17. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park
18. Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners, LinkedIn
19. Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.
20. Judd Apatow, Apatow Productions

21. Jay-Z, Roc Nation
22. Todd Phillips, Green Hat Films
23. Yuri Milner, DST Global
24. J. J. Abrams, writer, director, producer
25. Robin Li, Baidu
26. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
27. Andrew Mason, Groupon
28. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, television
29. Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, Leverage
30. Angela Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey, Burberry

31. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, Space X
32. Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter Group
33. Paul Graham, Y Combinator
34. Sean Parker, entrepreneur
35. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, Flatiron Partners
36. Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Clarium Capital Management
37. Peter Jackson, Wingnut Films
38. Ryan Kavanaugh, Relativity Media
39. Mike Allen, Politico
40. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, All Things D

41. John Hennessy, Stanford University
42. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
43. Ashton Kutcher, actor, investor
44. Tyler Perry, director, producer, writer, actor
45. Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
46. Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe
47. Daniel Ek, Spotify
48. Henry Blodget, Business Insider
49. Mikael Hed, Niklas Hed, and Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio
50. Justin Timberlake, singer, actor

[Image: THR]

Beyonce is in the habit of breaking records this year.

Back in June, she was the first female artist EVER to headline the UK’s famous Glastonbury Music Festival, her perfume is the #1 best celebrity scent in the UK, and now since declaring to the world that she’s pregnant at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday … she has broken Twitter records!

A few seconds after finishing her stunning performance of “Love on Top,” the singer ripped open her purple sequined blazer to reveal her cute baby bump. With all of the excitement of her official “announcement,” this in turn smashed social networking site Twitter’s record of the highest number of tweets sent per second.

On Monday Twitter Global PR tweeted:

“Last night at 10:35pm ET, Beyonce’s big MTV #VMA moment gave Twitter a record bump: 8,868 Tweets per second.”

Beyonce took over the popular social networking site even further when “BEYONCE IS PREGNANT” became a worlwide Trending Topic, and many fans changed their Twitter avatars to photos of the songstress.

Who Run the World? … You should already know the answer to that one by now.

In news that has definitely shaken up the tech world a bit, Steve Jobs has resigned as the CEO of Apple.

In a letter sent to Apple’s Board of Directors on Wednesday, Jobs, the company’s founder, asks to remain an Apple employee as Chairman of the Board and as a director for the company. Jobs also appointed Tim Cook as his successor.

Steve’s resignation letter is below:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Jobs’ requests, effective immediately, have been approved by the board.

Though jobs is stepping down from his position, which he lost in 1986 and earned back 10 years later in ’96, he will continue to be “active” at Apple, and is also expected to continue his involvement in the company’s strategy and future plans.

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, and earlier this month, it became the world’s most valuable company.

Since January, Jobs has been on medical leave for most of the year due to ongoing health issues, which most likely sparked his decision to step down from his role as CEO.

Shortly after Jobs made his big announcement, Apple stock dropped around 3%, wiping $10 billion off the company’s value, as investors fret over a future without its visionary leader.

Do you think Apple will continue to do well without Steve Jobs as CEO?

China is known for producing counterfeit Apple products, but now it appears as if they’re taking their duplication techniques a few steps further by completely ripping off Apple’s retail stores.

A 27-year-old American blogger living in an area of China called Kunming stumbled on what she later found out to be a “fake Apple store.”

The store, complete with the white Apple logo, their famous wooden tables and a group of happy staff members wearing blue shirts with Apple logos printed on them, looked very much like the more than 300 official stores strategically all over the world.

The anonymous blogger wrote:

“I went inside and poked around. They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks.”

But there were some discrepancies between the Kunming store and the real Apple stores. For one, upon further inspection, the anonymous blogger discovered that Apple has no stores in Kunming. In fact, there are only 4 official Apple retail stores in the entire country of China: 2 in Beijing and 2 in Shangai.

There are, however, 13 authorized resellers scattered throughout the country, but they aren’t allowed to call themselves Apple Stores or claim to work for the iPhone makers, something the store in Kunming was blatantly doing.

“This was a total Apple store rip-off. A beautiful rip-off – a brilliant one – the best rip-off store we had ever seen,” the anonymous blogger posted on Wednesday. “Being the curious types that we are, we struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple.”

Another difference between the Kunming store and that of real Apple stores, was actually quite funny. The store in Kunming had “Apple Store” written on the outside of the building, which is a stark contrast to the lonely glowing white Apple logo that appears on the outside of every single one of Apple’s 331 official stores.

Also, the name tags around the necks of the salespeople had the word “Staff” beside an Apple logo on them, rather than the staff member’s actual name like at the real stores.

It’s unclear as to whether or not the store was selling fake or genuine Apple products, and Apple has so far declined to comment.

It’s also worth mentioning that the anonymous blogger who broke this juicy story also discovered 2 more similar fake apple stores right down the street.

Check out some of the pics of the fake stores below:

And here’s some video footage:

Anyone out there want to live to 150? What about 1,000? What about FOREVER???

If so, you might be in luck … because scientists have discovered a possible “cure” for old age!

If Aubrey de Grey’s predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger.

A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to “cure” aging, banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.

“I’d say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I’d call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so,” de Grey said in an interview before delivering a lecture at Britain’s Royal Institution academy of science.

“And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today.”

De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular “maintenance,” which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.

De Grey lives near Cambridge University where he won his doctorate in 2000 and is chief scientific officer of the non-profit California-based SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation, which he co-founded in 2009.

He describes aging as the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage throughout the body.

“The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic,” he explained.

CHALLENGE

Exactly how far and how fast life expectancy will increase in the future is a subject of some debate, but the trend is clear. An average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment and experts estimate there could be a million centenarians across the world by 2030.

To date, the world’s longest-living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan alone there were more than 44,000 centenarians in 2010.

Some researchers say, however, that the trend toward longer lifespan may falter due to an epidemic of obesity now spilling over from rich nations into the developing world.

De Grey’s ideas may seem far-fetched, but $20,000 offered in 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review journal for any molecular biologist who showed that de Grey’s SENS theory was “so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate” was never won.

The judges on that panel were prompted into action by an angry put-down of de Grey from a group of nine leading scientists who dismissed his work as “pseudo science.”

They concluded that this label was not fair, arguing instead that SENS “exists in a middle ground of yet-to-be-tested ideas that some people may find intriguing but which others are free to doubt.”

CELL THERAPY

For some, the prospect of living for hundreds of years is not particularly attractive, either, as it conjures up an image of generations of sick, weak old people and societies increasingly less able to cope.

But de Grey says that’s not what he’s working for. Keeping the killer diseases of old age at bay is the primary focus.

“This is absolutely not a matter of keeping people alive in a bad state of health,” he told Reuters. “This is about preventing people from getting sick as a result of old age. The particular therapies that we are working on will only deliver long life as a side effect of delivering better health.”

De Grey divides the damage caused by aging into seven main categories for which repair techniques need to be developed if his prediction for continual maintenance is to come true.

He notes that while for some categories, the science is still in its earliest stages, there are others where it’s already almost there.

“Stem cell therapy is a big part of this. It’s designed to reverse one type of damage, namely the loss of cells when cells die and are not automatically replaced, and it’s already in clinical trials (in humans),” he said.

Stem cell therapies are currently being trialed in people with spinal cord injuries, and de Grey and others say they may one day be used to find ways to repair disease-damaged brains and hearts.

NO AGE LIMIT

Cardiovascular diseases are the world’s biggest age-related killers and de Grey says there is a long way to go on these though researchers have figured out the path to follow.

Heart diseases that cause heart failure, heart attacks and strokes are brought about by the accumulation of certain types of what de Grey calls “molecular garbage” byproducts of the body’s metabolic processes which our bodies are not able to break down or excrete.

“The garbage accumulates inside the cell, and eventually it gets in the way of the cell’s workings,” he said.

De Grey is working with colleagues in the United States to identify enzymes in other species that can break down the garbage and clean out the cells, and the aim then is to devise genetic therapies to give this capability to humans.

“If we could do that in the case of certain modified forms of cholesterol which accumulate in cells of the artery wall, then we simply would not get cardiovascular disease,” he said.

De Grey is reluctant to make firm predictions about how long people will be able to live in future, but he does say that with each major advance in longevity, scientists will buy more time to make yet more scientific progress.

In his view, this means that the first person who will live to 1,000 is likely to be born less than 20 years after the first person to reach 150.

“I call it longevity escape velocity where we have a sufficiently comprehensive panel of therapies to enable us to push back the ill health of old age faster than time is passing. And that way, we buy ourselves enough time to develop more therapies further as time goes on,” he said.

“What we can actually predict in terms of how long people will live is absolutely nothing, because it will be determined by the risk of death from other causes like accidents,” he said.

“But there really shouldn’t be any limit imposed by how long ago you were born. The whole point of maintenance is that it works indefinitely.”

SOURCE

This sounds like a pretty cool idea in theory … but wouldn’t you be creeped out a bit if your grandparents could live to be 1,000 years old? Where they do that at???

MySpace has been sold!

Specific Media bought the once popular social networking site for $35 million Wednesday, which is a lot less than the $100 million News Corp had hoped to sell for, and a hell of a lot less than the $580 million they paid for it in 2005. (And even more less than the $1 billion dollars it was once valued at.)

Just a few years ago, MySpace was “THE” social networking site. But in recent years, the site has fallen behind other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in terms of popularity and overall growth.

Now, fast forward to 2011 and MySpace is desperate to get back back on people’s good side. So desperate, in fact, that they are now teaming up with Justin Timberalake, who is buying a controlling stake in the company.

The singer-turned-actor and new owners Specific Media want to incorporate original music, video and programming into the site in an effort to turn it into a major entertainment portal.

“There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect,” Justin Timberlake said in a statement. “MySpace has the potential to be that place. Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there’s a natural social component to entertainment.”

Justin, who last year appeared in “The Social Network” (aka the Facebook movie), will play an active part in overhauling MySpace, which is also set to feature “socially-activated” advertising campaigns.

“We look forward to partnering with someone as talented as Justin Timberlake, who will lead the business strategy with his creative ideas and vision for transforming MySpace,” the company’s CEO Tim Vanderhook said in a statement. “This is the next chapter of digital media, and we are excited to have a hand in writing the script.”

Under the terms of the deal, News Corp will keep a less than 10 percent stake in MySpace. The company will also receive a private equity stake in Specific Media.

We’ve heard of computers having bugs … but never anything like this!

Ever wonder what happens when a bug lands on a super-sensitive touchscreen? No? Well look at the video above anyway to find out, it’s pretty interesting.

[Gizmodo]

This should turn some heads……

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is giving away $100,000 scholarships to twenty students who drop-out of college and start their own businesses.

Read more below:

Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and one of the first investors in Facebook, is proposing a controversial path toward more rapid innovation. Today his Thiel Foundation announced that it was giving 24 people under 20 $100,000 fellowships to drop out of school for two years to start a their own companies.

Some of the recipients are leaving first-rate institutions like Harvard and Stanford to take the fellowship. In a press release, the foundation’s head, James O’Neill, said that in taking the fellowship they were “challenging the authority of the present and the familiar.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Thiel thinks ideas can develop in a start-up environment much faster than at a university. And the project is also intended to question the idea of higher education. Thiel told TechCrunch in April that the United Sates was in a higher education bubble.

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he told Techcrunch. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

SOURCE

We wish offers like this were around back in our college days … must be nice!

This has got to make life more than miserable……

A 55 year-old woman can’t talk on the phone, watch TV, or surf the web because she is allergic to electricity.

Read the full details below:

Janice Tunnicliffe spends every night playing Scrabble by candlelight with her husband because she claims to have a rare condition called electrosensitivity.

She cannot bear to be anywhere near electromagnetic fields of any kind and, as a result, she cannot watch television, listen to the radio or talk on a mobile phone and has been left completely isolated from the modern world by her condition.

Mrs Tunnicliffe, 55, was struck down with the illness after receiving chemotherapy for bowel cancer three years ago.

Since then she has suffered constant headaches, chest pains, nausea and tingling in her arms and legs whenever she is near electrical devices or items that emit a signal.

Her only relief in this time was when her village, near Mansfield in rural Nottinghamshire, suffered a temporary power cut.

She said: “Different things give me different feelings but it’s mostly headaches and nausea. iPhones make feel really sick within about 20 minutes of being near one so even though I might not realise someone has one straightaway, I soon find out.

“Wifi makes me feel like I have a clamp at the back of my head which is squeezing the life out of me. It’s completely draining and a home hub can totally immobilise me – I’m left unable to move my arms and legs.”

Mrs Tunnicliffe’s normal existence was turned upside down when in February 2008 she was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pains and vomiting.

After three days of tests, it was discovered she was suffering from cancer and surgeons operated immediately to remove a six-inch tumour from her bowel, plus 14 lymph nodes.

Fortunately, despite the size of the tumour, her cancer had not spread, but it was decided that she should have chemotherapy after the surgery as a precautionary measure.

But it was then that her unusual problem started and she began to feel ill whenever she was near the myriad electrical and wireless items in her home.

She said: “Personally, I think there must be a link with the chemotherapy and the ES, but no one is going to admit that.

“I used to go for long walks every day and while I was out of the house I would be okay. But when I came back I would start to feel unwell again very quickly and slowly I started to put two and two together.

“After the cancer, the doctors recommended we enjoy a nice holiday somewhere and the whole family went to the Greek island of Kos for two weeks in September 2008.

“While I was there was I was fine, but when I got home I felt ill again almost straightaway. It wasn’t until afterwards that I considered it might have been because of all the ‘electrosmog’ we were experiencing at home.”

Mrs Tunnicliffe has even had to cover her windows with a special metallic material to deflect errant electromagnetic waves.

Graham Lamburn, technical manager at Powerwatch, an independent organisation which promotes safer environments, said so far the medical profession has been slow to recognise electrosensitivity as an illness as its causes are as yet unknown.

The Council of Europe Committee on Monday called for a dramatic reduction in exposure to phones and other wireless devices.

SOURCE

Damn…..who ever knew a random condition could have you so left behind?????

Lady Gaga is now the most followed person on Twitter!

The pop singer recently reached 10 million followers on the social networking site and made history in the process.

Upon learning of her accomplishment, Gaga tweeted:

“10MillionMonsters! I’m speechless, we did it. Its an illness how I love you. Leaving London smiling.”

Gaga is the first person to ever gain 10 million followers on the popular social networking site … with Justin Bieber trailing right behind her with 9,662,147.

Congrats Gaga!

Despite making a whopping $500 million from his current bosses, shock jock Howard Stern is one disgruntled employee.

Find out why when you read on below:

In 2004, before Howard Stern signed a blockbuster deal with Sirius Satellite Radio, he thought about retiring. Instead, he took a “significant risk” and went with Sirius. The moment is captured in a lawsuit filed today in New York Superior Court where Stern’s company, One Twelve Inc., and his agent Don Buchwald are pressing charges that Sirius XM Radio stiffed them on promised stock.

In 2004, Stern was negotiating with both Sirius and XM, two rivals before they merged in 2008. In the lawsuit, Stern says Sirius got the upper hand by promising him that he would be treated like more than just an employee; that he would share in the company’s success.

“Sirius needed Stern more than Stern needed Sirius,” says the complaint.

Sirius signed a deal with Stern whereby One Twelve would be paid performance-based compensation based on escalating stock awards. The promises of stock are said to have been tied to subscriber growth.

The rewards were set at high levels, the complaint continues. Sirius allegedly promised to give Stern stock if the satellite company over-performed its estimates by 2 million subscribers. When Stern signed the deal, Sirius had 700,000 subscribers. The company projected it would have 3.7 million subscribers by the end of 2006, 7.2 million by 2008, and 12.1 million by 2010.

In reality, Sirius ended up with 6 million subscribers by the end of 2006, nearly 19 million by the end of 2008, and over 20 million by the end of 2010.

Some of the subscriber growth is attributable to the XM merger, of course, but the complaint notes that Stern met his early targets and had agreements in place to account for the subscribers that XM would bring to the table.

Nevertheless, the plaintiffs say that Sirius didn’t meet its bargain. During the early days, before the XM merger, “Stern and Buchwald decided not to demand payments while Sirius was struggling or reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy,” according to the complaint.

During new contract discussions in December, however, the demand for past payment was once again brought up, with Sirius allegedly refusing to make good.

The plaintiffs explain:

“In 2004, when Sirius desperately needed Stern to make its business viable, it induced him to move to Sirius by offering him a chance to share in the success of the company. Now that Stern has put the company on the map, brought in millions of subscribers, and helped it conquer its chief rival, Sirius has unilaterally decided that Stern has been paid enough. The amounts owed to One Twelve and Buchwald represent a fraction of the revenue that Stern enabled Sirius to achieve, yet Sirius refuses to honor its commitments to him and Buchwald.”

Sirius is being sued for breach of contract, and the plaintiffs are seeking unspecified money due, plus interest.

Source

Shame on you Sirius XM. Howie, you better get that money!!

Thoughts?