Xbox LIVE presents the biggest, baddest bash in town: The Xbox LIVE Arcade House Party! Throughout March, Xbox LIVE will launch a new downloadable blockbuster game every Wednesday that is sure to ramp up the multiplayer action *. Today, Xbox LIVE is excited to announce the final details of the hottest party in town offering you some really great deals! Whether you’re sitting on the same couch, or on the other side of the globe… invite your friends because this is one party you don’t want to miss!

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For children, learning to program at an early age can open up a lifetime of creativity and opportunity. And with Kodu, a new game unveiled by Microsoft at the recent 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), they can learn the skill of programming while having fun creating and playing their own games.

Kodu will be released this spring on the Xbox Live Community Games channel and will help people of all ages program their own games in addition to exercising their logic and problem-solving skills, says Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division. “It started as a way to help kids learn how to program, but what it’s turned into is a way to not only learn how to program, but to create your own games,” he says.

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When the weather cools, ectothermic (cold-blooded) animals slow down, which should be good news for their potential prey. But the colorful chameleon has found a way to keep feeding at top speeds even in lower temps: an elastic-tissue tongue, which unlike regular muscles, can uncoil nearly as fast in lower temperatures as it can in warmer ones. [More]

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Keyboard Wallet Fabric Pressure Sensor Spinning Yarn
Felted Bag Zombie Friend Wavy Cut Paper Beads Easy
Homemade Soap …
By: fungus amungus

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Apartment Therapy has a great tutorial on how to repaint your ugly vinyl
flooring. With the help of a stencil they applied a sweet hexagonal
pattern on the floor. All in all, it looks like the process is fairly
straightforward and very effective. How To Repaint & Stencil
Ugly Rental Vinyl Tile F…
By: fungus amungus

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The Happy Hour Watch is designed with a certain type of person in mind. Specifically, the type of person who looks forward to drinking at exactly 5pm every day. It only has the 5 o’clock hour marked on the analog part of the watch, which is OK. But the real fun is on the strap.

Yes, there’s a built-in bottle opener on it. Now I’m no boozehound, and I think the face of this watch is pretty ugly, but I sure wouldn’t mind having a bottle opener on my watch strap. It’s just always there and totally convenient. Come on, Rolex, get with the program.

Happy Hour Timepieces via Uncrate

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Jupiter has much stronger gravity than Earth thanks to its large size. Would that higher gravity affect the way a lava lamp works? Well, wonder no more, because Neil Fraser built a centrifuge in order to find out. And that was no small task:

The centrifuge is a genuinely terrifying device. The lights dim when it is switched on. A strong wind is produced as the centrifuge induces a cyclone in the room. The smell of boiling insulation emanates from the overloaded 25 amp cables. If not perfectly adjusted and lubricated, it will shred the teeth off solid brass gears in under a second. Runs were conducted from the relative safety of the next room while peeking through a crack in the door.

So, did it work? Watch the above video to find out.

Neil Fraser via Neatorama

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Taking really long showers is a great way to waste a whole lot of water. But it’s so easy to lose track of time in there, what with it being so warm and nice. You just need a reminder to turn the shower off.

The Waterpebble does just that. It sits on the floor of your shower and flashes an LED light at you so you know how much water you’ve used. It goes from green to yellow to red, telling you when it’s about time to get out and just when you go from simply cleaning yourself to becoming a water-hogging eco-destroyer. It’s a subtle yet important distinction.

Waterpebble via Design Blog via Gizmodo

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It looks like adult apps aren’t the only ones Apple is looking to cut from its App Store. According to Softpedia, developer of WiFi-Where — an app which allowed users to quickly find nearby Wi-Fi hotspots that were open, find out exactly where they were by using a GPS unit, and even save export those findings to a memo pad for sharing with others — the company’s app has been removed from the App Store.

From Softpedia:

We received a very unfortunate email today from Apple stating that WiFi-Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information. It also appears that all other competing Wi-Fi enabled apps have been removed as well. This is very unfortunate as the past 2-3 months have seen a handful of new Wi-Fi apps get approved. Hopefully Apple will allow this functionality in a future SDK.

While apps such as WiFi-Where would allow users to quickly find a wireless hotspot in a pinch, the flipside is that it could also encourage wardriving and other malicious behavior. Apple also removed several other Wi-Fi scanning apps, some which had been approved long ago, and others which ran into plenty of red tape.

So will Apple will be able to boast about a family friendly App Store, while Google will have its anything-goes open Android platform? If these bans keep up, Apple may have to turn its slogan around: “There isn’t an app for that… Anymore.”

Via Maximum PC

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In an article titled “Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love,” Ars Technica Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher is making clear a subject that is probably foggy in all of our minds: what happens when you block the ads on a site? With ad blockers becoming easy to use and install, what impact does it have on the websites you visit regularly that rely on that ad revenue?

“There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially,” Fisher writes. “This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue.”

Fisher isn’t mad at you, though. Nor is he admonishing you so that you’ll unblock the ads on Ars. It’s part plea, sure, but at its core it’s an informative look at the consequences of ad blockers. The decision is yours.

The site did run an interesting experiment with people who were blocking ads, however: “Starting late Friday afternoon we conducted a 12 hour experiment to see if it would be possible to simply make content disappear for visitors who were using a very popular ad blocking tool. Technologically, it was a success in that it worked. Ad blockers, and only ad blockers, couldn’t see our content.”

How did it go? While some people subscribed and others showed support, “there was a healthy mob of people criticizing us for daring to take any kind of action against those who would deny us revenue even though they knew they were doing so. Others rightly criticized the lack of a warning or notification as to what was going on.” Ars was only blocking the content temporarily and is no longer doing so. Those who deny Ars ad revenue for free content can still view that content. — at cost to the site.

Head on over to Ars to see Fisher’s take in full.

Via Ars Technica

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Well here’s your head-scratcher for the morning: Chinese gadget website Shop Kami, which is kind of like the Mos Eisley of tech shopping, has a multiouch, 3G tablet computer running Windows 7 available now. Yes, now. It’s called the Ezy Tablet, and no amount of coffee right now is going to make its existence make sense. Especially since all the pictures of it look like renderings done by a college student.

Stack up the Ezy Tablet to the iPad: 10.4 inches to the iPad’s 9.7, a 1.6 gigabyte Atom processor found in many netbooks (iPad: the 1 gig, custom-tailored A4), 2 gigs of RAM upgradable to 4 (no official figure, but probably in the ballpark), and a 250 gig hard drive (a more tablet-appropriate flash drive, with up to 64 gigs capacity). The Ezy also has some things the iPad doesn’t, such as three actual USB ports — the iPad only has a physical 30-pin connector, then requires you to use an adapter for either a USB port or an SD slot — and the Ezy also has a webcam built-in.

Looking at those specs, though, the Ezy probably runs a lot like a current generation netbook. Read: a little sluggish. Combine that will all the extra stuff it’s trying to do, and you have to wonder how well it all works.

Still, it’s available now. $680 for the base model, which includes 3G, though, curiously, if you read the fine print, doesn’t include Windows 7. It’ll be $860 for an Ezy with that. You can also buy them in bulk — if you buy 25 of them or more you can score each Ezy for a mere $52, apparently. Buyer beware, of course.

Shop Kami, via Chip Chick

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For some of us, how a pair of headphones sound is our number one priority. For others, looks reign supreme. Street Headphones let you make your headphones look as cool as you want.

Street Headphones use a laser sintered, or melted, polyamide shell that can be etched to say whatever you want: your name, a message for your sweetheart, or just your favorite band or lyrics. If I was going to pay $1,140 for a pair of headphones, they better be the best-sounding headphones ever.

Freedom of Creation via Technabob

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Barney is a sweet little chap who can be a bit shy at first. Once he gets to know you, however, he is a very affectionate boy who enjoys long walks in the countryside. He is seeking a quiet home where he can get plenty of exercise and experience the home comforts he’s been missing. He is happy to share his home with a canine companion but has no experience with cats or children.

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Sweet little Emma is feeling a bit sad and bewildered because she is missing her owner. She doesn’t require much at this time in her life besides a lot of love and a nice warm place to snooze. She would love to share a home with her kennel mate, Lucas, if possible.

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Lucas is an adorable little chap who just loves to be loved. He knows there is someone out there who will fall for him and offer him the loving retirement home he needs. He gets along with other dogs, cats and older children. If possible, he would love to share a home with his kennel mate, Emma.

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So, both me and Hannah are actually going to the Makers Faire in
Newcastle, we are staying in Durham, and catching the train into
Newcastle for each of the days. The hotel is booked, and we both have
the time off work, so were are going to be there for sure. My question
is, who else can we expect…
By: gmjhowe

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In 2005 the robotic Huygens probe landed on Titan, Saturn’s enigmatic moon, and sent back the first ever images from beneath Titan’s thick cloud layers. This artist’s impression is based on those images. In the foreground, sits the car-sized lander that sent back images for more than 90 minutes before running out of battery power. The parachute that slowed Huygen’s re-entry is seen in the background, still attached to the lander. Smooth stones, possibly containing water-ice, are strewn about the landscape. Analyses of Huygen’s images and data show that Titan’s surface today has intriguing similarities to the surface of the early Earth. Image Credit: ESA

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Toilets use fresh water, and lots of it.  Sure, you can buy a
low-flow model, but you’re still flushing with a (smaller) quantity of
fresh, otherwise drinkable water. Gregorylavoie decided to get double
use out of that water by hacking his toilet .  It’s a neat,
reversible modification: after yo…
By: canida

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