Don Herbert, who explained the wonderful world of science to millions children on his Nickelodeon cable TV show "Mr. Wizard's World", has died after a long battle with multiple myeloma. He was 89.

Herbert used basic experiments to teach scientific principles to his TV audience via an in-studio guest boy or girl who assisted in the experiments. Herbert liked to perform his scientific experiments as "tricks" to get the kids hooked, then explain the science behind it later.

Herbert wrote several books, including "Mr. Wizard's Supermarket Science" and "Mr. Wizard's Experiments for Young Scientists."

In recent years, he helped set up his website mrwizardstudios.com.

[Via latimes.com]

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I've just been quite perplexed to be honest with you about what happened with WWE Wrestler Chris Benoit, who killed his wife and seven year old son and then himself this past weekend.

I'm more of an old school wrestling fan, but do watch it from time to time and enjoy the comedic storylines the WWE frequently does. This is a harsh blow to pro wrestling and it will have massive impact with its core audience (which is family friendly).


Tomorrow, June 28th, Vince McMahon, the genius behind the WWE will be interviewed in an exclusive with the Today Show (between 7-10am) by Meredith Viera. I'm interested in his answers regarding Beniot, the "tribute" (publicity stunt) WWE did for him last Monday night on RAW and how steroids have contributed to the deaths of other WWE stars like Rick Rude, Mr. Perfect and Flyin' Brian. Meredith Viera better not wimp out and do a fluff interview!

[Via AdamWade.com]

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Today Apple posted a page detailing the cost of the iPhone rate plans (US). And they aren't as bad as most people had thought. All plans have unlimited data (nice!) - $60 for 450 minutes, $80 for 900 minutes and $100 for 1350 minutes. Existing AT&T customers can add unlimited data for $20 - $40 with a varying number of text messages.

• All iPhone service plans include Visual Voicemail and unlimited data — Internet and email — so you only have to decide how many minutes and SMS text messages you need. You’ll select your plan when you activate your iPhone using iTunes on your computer.
  
  
• If you’re already an AT&T customer and want to keep your current voice plan, you can just add an iPhone Data Plan with unlimited data (email and web) and Visual Voicemail for just $20 per month.
  

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There was a time—not so long ago—when pomp and spandex dominated MTV and pop radio playlists. The book American Hair Metal celebrates this orgy of flamboyance, androgyny and animal magnetism, of big-haired alpha males and the beautiful women who surrounded them.
American Hair Metal is 180 pages full of rare photographs of the biggest bands and quotes about the sex, drugs and Rock & Roll style of ‘80s American hair metal.

With all the quotes and photos, this book will find a comfortable home on your coffee table. But don't expect much more than that. American Hair Metal is a 180 page book with 160 pages of photos. It's a ton of fun to flip through, but there's not much to read.

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In the last 24 hours, Google produced 6,783 kilowatt-hours of electricity from the sun. In October 2006, Google announced a commitment to solar energy production and launched the largest solar panel installation to date on a corporate campus in the United States. Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project.



Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex (check out this fly-over video).This installation is projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes or 30% of Google's peak electricity demand in our solar powered buildings at our Mountain View, CA headquarters.

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Labels: internet, tech news

Good news for Apple TV and the iPhone. Starting today, Apple TV owners can start watching YouTube content on their TV sets. YouTube content will also be available to the iPhone when it officially launches on June 29th.

Apple TV users can download a free update via the built-in software update option to enable a new YouTube content menu. An option to "check for updates" is listed under the Apple TV settings screen.

iPhone users will be able to enjoy YouTube's originally-created content on their iPhones when they begin shipping on June 29. A YouTube player application on the iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube's videos to the iPhone over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks and play it on iPhone's 3.5 inch display.



Both AppleTV and the iPhone will play YouTube content that has been reencoded into Apple's h.264 video format. 10,000 of YouTube's videos have been converted so far with the remainder expected by the fall. An Apple press release claims that h.264 was chosen "to achieve higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices."

Reports coming out of WWDC 2007 say that one of Apple's justifications of avoiding Flash video playback on the iPhone is improved battery life. The iPhone contains dedicated hardware capable of playing h.264 content, while Flash content would require more intensive use of the iPhone's CPU, resulting in higher battery drain.

You can read a review of the Apple TV here.


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There have been many dicks in the annals of baseball. I’m not talking about Ty Cobb or Barry Bonds. I’m talking Dick Cox and Dick Manville. Dick Hoover and Dick Pole. To date, 131 Dicks have taken the field as part of Major League Baseball (not including dicks of the lowercase variety). But there’s also been at least one Kuntz. One Boozer. And one Putz. The history of bizarre, bawdy and just plain bad baseball names is long and fascinating. This is a tribute to those men who lost out in the lottery of baseball names (this is also a chance to laugh at them).

KUNTZ AND RANDYS

RUSTY KUNTZ Kuntz had a .236 lifetime batting average — seems his bat was rusty, too. Good ol’ Rusty. I cherish my Rusty Kuntz baseball cards more than anything. They’re worth about a nickel apiece, but the joy I got out of seeing the name “Rusty Kuntz” is priceless. He inspired this list and my fascination for bad baseball names. Thanks, Kuntz!

RANDY JOHNSON It sounds like a nice enough name — then, upon further inspection, you’ll discover it is the filthiest name in baseball history. Let’s do the math. Randy = horny. As in “Do I make you randy?” Johnson = penis. As in “My johnson itches in this jock!” That makes Randy Johnson a double threat and just another way of saying “horny penis.” Maybe it’s not a coincidence that his nickname is the Big Unit, which, again, is just another way of saying “horny penis.” (Note: To be fair, there have been three Randy Johnsons in the history of baseball. The other two were position players in the early ’80s.)

RANDY BUSH Just as Superman has Bizarro, Randy Johnson has Randy Bush. Unfortunately, the baseball gods never saw fit to have these two double sexual innuendoes face each other. Outfielder Randy B. was in the American League while pitcher Randy J. was in the National, so the world never got to see what would happen if a randy bush squared off against a randy johnson. We know who’d win this one, though, don’t we fellas?

A GAYLORD, A BOOZER, A PUTZ

GAYLORD PERRY Truly one of my all-time favorite baseball names. He was not only named Gaylord. And Perry. He was famous for spitting on his balls. Gaylord Perry has the gayest name since the late 19th century infielder Pussyfoot Hymen. But Pussyfoot isn’t in the Hall of Fame, is he?

TIM SPOONEYBARGER His name doesn’t have any sexual connotation. It’s just freakin’ stupid. Say it out loud. Spooney-barger! Now, try not to laugh. Spooneybarger hasn’t played in the big leagues since 2003. Maybe he’d do better as an H.R. Pufnstuf character.

JUNG BONG Sounds like a character in a Cheech and Chong movie. If the Korean pitcher was about 30 years older, we could have seen a match up with this guy…

JOHN BOOZER It’s one of those match-ups baseball fan dream about…Bob Gibson vs. Nolan Ryan…Roger Clemens vs. Sandy Koufax…but wouldn’t you rather see the outcome of Boozer vs. Bong? It would answer a lot of questions, wouldn’t it?

J.J. PUTZ It’s a pretty bad name. But when you learn what his parents really wanted to name him, you realize he got lucky. I mean, would Topps even print a baseball card with the name Pussyfart McQueef?

DOE BOYLAND I just like this one because it sounds like the name of Michael Jackson’s next estate.

COCO CRISP Mmmm…Coco Crisp





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It's been an interesting few days for Apple and their Safari web browser. On Monday, Apple released a PC version of Safari 3 (beta) at the 2007 Worldwide Developers Conference. But within a few hours, Internet security specialists and hackers had uncovered several bugs capable of crashing the Windows operating system as well as a major security flaw making it possible to remotely take control a PC without the owners knowledge.

Just hours after Apple made Safari 3 available for Windows, David Maynor from Errata Security and independent expert Aviv Raff both blogged about the Safari security bugs they found.

"I can't speak for anybody else, but the bugs [I] found in the beta copy of Safari on Windows work on the production copy on OS X as well... The exploit is robust mostly thanks to the lack of any kind of advanced security features in [Mac] OS X." erratasec.blogspot.com

"A first glance at the debugger showed me that this memory corruption might be exploitable. Although, I'll have to dig more to be sure of that. Again, this is just a beta version. But, don't you hate those pathetic claims?" net-security.org

At last count, 6 total bugs in Safari have been recorded despite this claim on the Safari 3 download page: "Apple engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one."

But hell, Safari 3 is just a beta version, it's supposed to have bugs, right?


So why did Apple decide to make their Safari web browser Windows compatible in the first place? Three reasons come to mind:

• A cross platform web browser will encourage web developers to create web-based programs for the iPhone and make their sites more compatible for existing Safari (Mac) users.
  
  
• A PC version of Safari is an opportunity to expose Windows users to another Apple product. Apple hopes PC users will enjoy their Safari experience and think about getting a Mac the next time they get a new computer. So far, they are off to a pretty bad start.
  
  
• Search dollars. The little search box in the upper right corner of the Firefox web browser is a major revenue generator. Every time you use that little search box, the browser manufacturer makes money off the search ads you are exposed to when you are taken to the results page. I've seen reports that Firefox (an open source project) made around over $50 million dollars from that little search box in 2006 alone.
  

You can download Safari 3 (beta) from Apple.com.

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On Tuesday, the American soap opera, Days of Our Lives, debuted on iTunes (US). Full episodes of the soap will be offered at the standard $1.99, but consumers will be able to shave that cost down to 50¢ per episode by ordering a 20-episode multipass for $9.99.

iTunes Link: Days of Our Lives

The producers of the show have had several conversations about including bonus scenes from Days of Our Lives in the iTunes version, though nothing has been decided yet.

Days of Our Lives will now be the most widely distributed daytime soap in the U.S., with episodes available on broadcast (NBC), cable (SoapNet) and online (iTunes).



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Chances are, you have at least one coworker with a tendency to "let one go" at the office. Hopefully you don't work in cramped cubicle farm. It's not exactly a fun time. Especially when the said fart "lingers" and someone has overkill the room with Axe Body Spray (Paul).

Honestly, we all blow hot air from time-to-time... whether it be talking smack to our boss about how busy we are, or literally blowing hot air after a big Mexican lunch (Chris). In the latter case, it’s good to know we have back up from the good folks at Thanko.


She looks pretty happy. I wonder what she ate for lunch.
The Thanko USB seat vent is designed to cool off that hot seat of yours while increasing air flow to the immediate area. Greg at GetUSB.info proudly filed this under useless USB gadgets. That's probably because he doesn't know Chris or Paul.

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Labels: geek, usb