The Doctor Is In: Examining The Online Excuse Generator

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

These days, many bosses are requiring a doctor’s note to take sick time off. So what can you do when you’re in desperate need of a mental health day but have no real ailment? Fear not, my friends: You don’t have to look far.

The sick day excuse has turned into a booming internet business. Some sites are selling customizable keys to freedom for as much as $20 a pop. Other services are lending a helping hand free of charge. Most of the companies claim the notes are “indistinguishable from the real thing” and are foolproof because of federal privacy laws that prevent employers from contacting your doctor.

So, without further adieu, here’s your cheat sheet to the world of online cheating:

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High-Tech Bar Tables Offer Virtual Flirting

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A new Microsoft-powered table lets you flirt with strangers at a bar — without ever leaving your seat.

Microsoft debuted the high-tech tabletop at Harrah’s Rio All-Suite Hotel in Las Vegas this week. It revolutionizes the very nature of the watering hole and may change the face of the drunken hookup forever.

Virtual Flirt

Shy guys, listen up: This feature could let you approach women in a bar without having to actually approach them. The counter’s built-in 30-inch flatscreen has a program that gives you a glimpse at the location’s ladies, even if they’re sitting right behind you. You can look at them via integrated cameras, chat with them, take and send photos, and even use the convenient number exchange option when you’re ready to seal the deal. All this, and you never have to make eye contact. Unfortunately, though, Microsoft forgot to incorporate the cybersex add-on, so you will have to engage in some old-fashioned human interaction if you wish to engage in an amorous event.

eBartending

Want to mix your own drink? Now you can — sort of. The system’s Mixologists program gives you the toys to play bartender. You can click on any alcohol, juice, or mixer and drag as much of it as you want into your drink. Once you finish the concoction, a bartender will get the message and whip up your custom-made creation. The Mixologists program will even remember your drink so you can get it again. The hope is to eventually network throughout all Harrah’s properties so you could order your drink from any station, anywhere at its Vegas hotels.

Bar Boredom

The computers have plenty of options to help you beat a boring night at the bar. You can watch videos on YouTube and play a variety of games. Oh, the bar can watch you, too: The system is designed to track your drinking and gambling habits to help the hotel better market to you.

Future Uses

This may only be the beginning of the tabletop computer technology. The systems — which are completely safe to set drinks on — have already been used in AT&T Wireless stores, where they recognize phones and give customers information specific to their devices. Microsoft is now working on applications for Starwood Hotels. We can only hope that they too will have the built-in flirt technology, room-to-room.

Check out the system for yourself in this video that will be nothing like any normal person’s experience.

Tuesday 17th June : D-Day for Firefox 3

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Mozilla has finally announced the release date for Firefox 3 – Tuesday June 17th – 5 days from now. Mark it in your calendars folks!

It’s taken 34 months to develop Firefox 3 and anticipation is high. I tried out one of the preview versions when I was helping out a developer with his new Firefox extension and the browser seemed to be quite nice.

Mozilla claims that FF3 is faster than its predecessor but I didn’t notice any startling difference. But the interface is much nicer to work with and that matters if you work with the browser all day.

I particularly like the drop-down address bar and how it shows the favicons of where you have visited :

The question though is whether all of the extensions will be compatible in time for the 17th. All of the extensions that I have installed are ones I need on a daily basis, and discovering they are incompatible will mean I will have to continue using Firefox 2. But from what I hear, developers have really been hard at work to ensure that most extensions will be ready. So I am hopeful that everything will be fine and ready to go.

So put a big circle around the 17th on your calendar and get ready to make that day a world record in downloading and to say a big Adios to the *ahem* buggy and unreliable Firefox 2!!

Fahrenheit Roller Coaster Looks Terrifyingly Amazing (Video)

Unveiled at the Hershey Park in Pennsylvania late last month, the Fahrenheit Roller Coaster promises to make people who love extreme experiences jump up and down in glee. The ride features a 97-degree slope (7 degrees past vertical!) and will make its passenger feel up to 4Gs of pressure during acceleration, more than what NASA astronauts feel during the launch of a space shuttle.

Lingro – a very cool inline translation tool

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Being a Brit in Germany, I am constantly learning the German language and I know a lot of Germans constantly learning the English language. So Lingro is a perfect web app for all of us.

It’s a translation tool but with a nice difference. Normally if you want to translate a word on a foreign language webpage, you would open up another browser page and look up one of the many online foreign dictionaries (my preference for German is dict.cc). But it’s a lot of hassle and time wasting doing all of that, when what you would much rather be doing is reading your article!

So, if you know there’s a high chance that you are likely to find words in your article that you will have problems with, put the URL into Lingro and choose your languages :

This then makes each word in the article “clickable”. So if you come across a word that you don’t know the meaning of, just click on it with your mouse and up pops up a box with the translation in the other language :

If you encounter a word you want to remember for later, you can add it to your wordlist.

Lingro also offers browser tools such as bookmarklets but I found the Firefox one to be a bit buggy.   I tried it on a BBC news page which had a video on it and the bookmarklet refused to open.

Lingro supports six languages – English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Polish.    The site is an open-source project and not all the dictionaries are finished though.

I’m sure as time goes on and the site is further developed, more languages will be supported. So this is a site to watch if you are a language teacher or a language learner.

Delicious 2.0 – where is it?

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

In what must be the biggest tease ever on the internet (9 months and counting), the new Delicious 2.0 is still not available, leading me to believe that one of the following scenarios applies :

  • Delicious is missing, perhaps dead.
  • Delicious has been put into deep stasis and blasted off into outer space (Captain Picard will find it floating around Borg space in a few hundred years)
  • Delicious has been turned into a top secret military project and the staff hermetically sealed into a bunker

I love Delicious and I use it every day. But you have to agree it’s starting to show its age and could use a bit of spit and polish to bring it into the Web 2.0 age.  So when are we going to see it?

Do any of the GAS readers actually have one of the 2.0 beta invites (or are they just a myth)? Have you been inside the “Holy Grail” to see Delicious 2.0? What is it like?

Any word on when we will actually see it live and in action?

Google’s New Favicon is Ugly – So Design Your Own

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I’m sure you’ve all seen Google’s new icon by now. Instead of the nice smart looking Google icon that has been around for the last 8 years or so, we now have this ugly looking stringy blue “g”. The person who designed it should slapped behind the head and the one who approved it, strung up by the big toe.

But saying that, considering the other alternatives, it could have been a lot worse. It looks like the designers were tripping on acid when they were designing these!

Even then, it seems that not even Google is content with the stringy G-thingy because they are now inviting people to submit their own designs. All you have to do is design your own Google logo then upload it to the Googly Googlers. Best design wins and gets their logo next to the Google URL and gets seen by countless millions every day. Fame and fortune awaits.

I’ve been wracking my brains thinking about this – has Google ever out-sourced a job like this to the public before? I can’t recall a time when they have issued a request to people outside of Google to help them out with something like this. This has to be a first… right?