NVIDIA put out a call for fancy casemods using its ION ITX platform. What came back? Well, fancy casemods!

The ION Cube is a design by Bill Owen of Mnpctech.com, and it won first place in NVIDIA’s competition. It’s a fully functional computer — one that glows, to boot. “The concept reminded me of when LEGOS started incorporating UV Green parts into their “Space” sets in the late 70s and continue to today,” Owen said of his design.

Check out more in the gallery below.

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It’s official, folks: Brita can start selling lunar water filters. NASA confirmed the presence of lunar agua today with a cheeky: “The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.” Oh, NASA!

One month ago NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft crashed onto the lunar surface, sending up a plume of moon dust to be analyzed. It’s that plume that has yielded the amazing discovery. “We are ecstatic,” LCROSS principal investigator Anthony Colaprete said. “Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water.”

Translation: maybe not enough water to fill my lunar pool (shown here in the artist rendering above), but perhaps enough to prove useful to our future exploitation exploration of the moon.

NASA, via PhysOrg

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Sure, this might look exactly like a dentist chair, but it’s designed to provide you with the exact opposite of the stress that going to the dentist delivers. Instead, it’s a therapy system by Neuronetics called the NeuroStar Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Therapy System. OK!

Designed to help people with serious depression, the system delivers short magnetic field pulses to the left prefrontal cortex as an alternative to medication. Apparently, in trials, people responded very well to the therapy. But really, they could have made it look a little less like a dentist’s chair.

NeuroStar via Gizmodo

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I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that writing with this Gundam ballpoint pen, which is shaped like a gun, is not very comfortable. But really, who cares? It’s a pen shaped like a sweet Gundam Beam Rifle! Imagine how much more assertive you’ll feel when you sign your checks with this thing.

Strapya World via Technabob

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For the holiday season, Google is offering free WiFi on all Virgin America flights.  So this is my first in-flight post.

I’m flying from Boston to San Francisco, returning from a college gig at SUNY Plattsburgh, which is so far up,…

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When YouTube rolled out the ability to upload and stream 720p video last year, only 1% of the uploaded videos took advantage of that crispy clean HD resolution. Now, with that number approaching 10%, YouTube announced it will increase the maximum resolution of videos to 1080p.

Vowing to let users stream video that looks as good or better than the source quality, YouTube Director of Product Management Hunter Walk says the company is re-encoding all the 1080p videos that have been uploaded over the past year, and they’re about halfway through that process now.

This is great. YouTube is aiming at that “10 foot experience,” while still allowing desktop users and mobile video watchers to enjoy streaming videos at the appropriate resolutions, too. Astonishing stat: users upload 20 hours’ worth of video each minute to YouTube.

UPDATE:1080p is now live — here’s a sample.

Via NewTeeVee

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Broken yesterday, the story that Michael Jackson had his body scanned back in the ’90s presents a number of interesting possibilities, particularly since there’s a big push for 3D video tech right now. Still, let’s not get too excited. We don’t know exactly what these images include, but it seems unlikely that they’re anything like concert footage that’s shot specifically for 3D. As reported, the images were meant to help create some kind of “virtual double” of Jackson, much the same way that special effects for movies like Spider-Man were created. Creating some kind of 3D concert video from that would be a big leap.

Still, for an artist as popular as Jackson was, it’s not hard to imagine someone dedicating the resources to make that leap. With some progress in holographic tech, and even more intriguing idea would be to recreate a real-live Jackson concert with a Jackson hologram as the main attraction. Given how much lip-synching goes on in today’s pop, would a full-on virtual performer be much of a stretch? Or just too macabre in this case? Whatever happens, you can bet the images won’t end up in a green screen challenge (though we can hope).

Via The Telegraph

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Today, the world comes to an end. Well, in theaters, anyway. 2012 has us thinking about the apocalypse ’round these parts (so uplifting, we know), and that led us to wondering about all the crazy technology that’s all around us — technology that at one point or another caused widespread fear that it was all over. It’s happened several times, yet we’re still here.

Make sure to knock on some wood before you click Continue, because here’s six technologies that haven’t ended the world — yet.

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Nancy needs your help! In her twilight years she suddenly found herself in the dog pound. Fortunately, she’s now safe in rescue but needs a loving forever home where she can forget her sadness and learn to enjoy life again. She’s made amazing progress so far – can you help her to blossom even more?

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According to two unnamed sources as reported in the Guardian—one current International Energy Agency (IEA) employee and one former—the IEA has been purposely painting an overly rosy picture of the remaining available world oil supplies to avoid panicking the public. Apparently this obfuscation has been a result of heavy pressure from the United States.

As one whistleblower put it, “Many inside the [IEA] believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources.”

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Sarge is a boxer cross somewhere over 8 years old. He’s a delightful boy, gentle and good with other dogs. Is there someone out there who has got a Sarge shaped space in their heart and their home?

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