Now this is the most. awesome. thing. EVER! However, the next few minutes after the end of the video must have been very awkward! :)
[Via Reddit]
Awesome Shirt: Ackbarpography
Old fish-head’s famous words define him! At first glance, what you see is what you get — a giant fish head. Take a closer look and you’ll discover the holy grail of science fiction one-liners… IT’S A TRAP!
Celluon EvoMouse: Changing the way you interact with your computer
The people over at Celluon have decided that using a computer mouse is so yesterday, so they’ve come up with an alternative: your fingers. The evoMouse works the same way as those virtual laser keyboards we’ve all seen. Just put the device on a flat surface, and use your fingers to accomplish the usual tasks: click, double click, drag, and even more.
[Via OhGizmo]
Hilarious: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s Star Wars [Video]
Check out this hilarious reenactment of the famous Tatooine scene from Star Wars IV where R2-D2 and C-3PO are fighting over the direction they should take by actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
[Via The Official Star Wars Blog and @bonniegrrl]
Doom for Zune as Hardware Halted
Microsoft is said to have abandoned plans to release any new Zune hardware. It will still work on the underlying media player, including versions running on Windows Phone 7 handsets.
The news comes from Bloomberg, quoting a “person familiar with the decision.” Microsoft hasn’t disputed the claims, simply noting that there is nothing to announce about a new device, but noting the company’s “long-term strategy focuses on the strength of the entire Zune ecosystem across Microsoft platforms.”
The Zune was a classic story of Microsoft being far too late to the party. The first Zune players came out in late 2006, by which time the iPod was already on its fifth generation. Facing a major marketing handicap, Microsoft struggled to come up with reasons why people should opt for the Zune over other portable media players. The result was sales that look to have been a few million, compared with something in the region of 300 million iPods to date.
The company also tried its own online music store, Zune Marketplace, which currently has a range almost as broad as iTunes. And it even tried manufacturing its own mobile phones with Zune built-in, a costly project that was abandoned after reported sales of less than 10,000 units. The technology does remain available as an app running on third-party phones running Windows Phone 7 though.
It’s telling that the most notable story about the Zune came on New Year’s Eve 2008 when 30GB models around the world crashed and then froze up. That turned out to be a 24 hour problem caused by the Zune not realizing that 2008 was a leap year and thus being confused when it found an “extra” day at the end of the year.
Of course, Microsoft is hardly alone in such matters: as iPhone users who rely on the handset’s alarm are becoming well aware, Apple seems to have trouble with the concept of Daylight Savings Time.
LIKELIGHT: A LEGO Facebook “Like” Icon That Lights Up When Someone Likes a Page
To be put in the “cool but useless” category: A real LEGO Facebook “Like” icon that lights up whenever someone like a page of your choosing. I certainly wouldn’t want to set this up to be synced with our facebook fan page, because at 170,000 fans and growing, it would keep me up all night!
[Via TechEblog]
Zombie Ant-pocalypse: New Species of Mind-Controlling Fungus Found
Picture source: David Hughes / National Geographic
Get out your tiny shotguns and chainsaws–the ant zombie apocalypse is here! Of course, it’s been raging for 48 million years now, but you can never be too careful.
Four new species of fungi that turn ants into little tiny extras from a George A. Romero movie have been found in the Brazilian rain forest. What was originally thought to be a single species, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, was recently discovered to be four distinct ones.
David Hughes, a Penn State University entomologist, and his colleagues made the discovery after noticing a wide diversity of fungal growths emerging from ant victims, according to the March 2 study in the journal PLoS ONE.
These particular fungus species take over ant brains with mind-altering chemicals, control them like voodoo dolls and then kill them once they’ve done the fungus’s bidding.
“It’s related to the fungus that LSD comes from,” Hughes said. “Obviously they are producing lots of interesting chemicals.”
Imagine you’re a carpenter ant hanging out with your little worker ant buddies back at the colony. Suddenly, you notice Carl doesn’t look so good. His mandibles have gone slack and he’s not laughing at any of your dirty thorax jokes. You shake him and slap his antennae. Nothing. No response. Then, without a word, Carl slowly turns and walks away, never to be seen or heard from again.
Carl is on full zombie autopilot now. He finds a small shrub and starts climbing. Once he reaches the underside of a leaf about 25 centimeters above the ground and at just the right angle to the sun, he clamps his jaws on the edge or a vein, anchoring himself to the leaf. As the John Murphy soundtrack swells, Carl dies.
The fungus then takes over and turns the ant carcass into a Willy Wonka factory of spore production for the next year. These spores infect other ants, creating more fungus-loving zombies. And before you know it, all the tiny ant malls are overrun by hordes of zombie insects.
How these species of fungi control ants is a mystery. But hopefully, scientists will figure it out before a bad case of athlete’s foot fungus turns into World War Z.
Awesome Stop-Motion Chess Game [Video]
Sure, DeepBlue had mad skills, but did the chess-playing supercomputer ever turn into a shark and eat a rook whole? I think not.
Bonus points for fatal impalement by unicorn.