Unnerving to some, educational and brilliant to others
In the tradition of Richard Feynman’s ode to orange juice, but spiced with actual information.
 

 
California law specifically forbids early termination charges
In a preliminary ruling Monday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Bonnie Sabraw said Sprint Nextel must pay California mobile-phone consumers $18.2 million as part of a class-action lawsuit challenging early termination fees.
Though the decision could be appealed, it’s the first in the country to declare the fees illegal in [...]

 
Using Sun’s Energy to Split Water Means Solar Power All Night
A U.S. scientist has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night.
A new catalyst produces the oxygen and hydrogen that fuel cells use [...]

 
Shopping is becoming more complicated
While some consumers in the US are shopping online to avoid driving, even those visiting stores in person are hitting the Web first.
Eight out of 10 respondents who had recently made consumer electronics purchases in a brick-and-mortar store said they had visited the store’s Website first, according to a May 2008 [...]

 
Best all time selling camcorder
Pure Digital is proving that simplicity sells. The company says it has now sold 1 million of its Flip video cameras in less than a year, and the NPD Group has listed the Flip Ultra as the top-selling video camera in June.

 Amazing arrogance!
A New York City police officer has been placed behind a desk after being caught on tape deliberately pushing a man off of his bike during a Friday Critical Mass event in Times Square.

A clockwork machine hailed as the supercomputer of the ancient world provided a calendar for the Olympic Games and may have had a link with Archimedes, one of the greatest names in science, investigators believe.

 
 E-textile Pants
A pair of pants may help determine if elderly individuals have a high risk of slipping and falling by sensing fluctuations in their walking gait.

 
 
Getting access to drinking water is a daily challenge for more than one billion people in the world. Desalination may help relieve such water-stressed populations by filtering salt from abundant seawater, and there are more than 7,000 desalination plants worldwide, 250 operating in the United States alone. However, the membranes that these plants use to [...]

 
Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s gothic construction vehicle sculptures show what a world after the industrial revolution could have looked like if it was shaped by the same minds that put gargoyles atop imposing spires and buttresses in European architecture.
 

 
Butterfly wings, peacock feathers, opals and pearls are some of nature’s jewels that use nanostructures to dazzle us with color. It’s accomplished through the way light reaches our eyes after passing through the submicroscopic mazes within these materials.

Add sweetener to taste…
Obviously, the soaring cost of energy is causing plenty of pain for Americans, especially at a time when they’re being hammered by declining house values and rising food prices. The pain isn’t about to ease, either.
 

When Viviane Maraghi took blood tests to find out how many chemical pollutants were in her body, she expected the number to be low. An environmentalist, she carefully monitored what she ate and the household products and items she purchased.
 

In 1832, English author William Hone (1780 – 1842) published The Year Book of daily Recreation and Information*, an almanac of sorts in which included this quirky and wonderful “Alphabet for Beginners” (amazing they still mostly apply today).

Monitoring artificial joints should be common practice
Dr. Lawrence Dorr, a nationally known orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, realized last year that something was very wrong with some of his patients.
Months after routine hip replacements, patients who had expected to live without pain were in agony. “The pain was grabbing me around the back,” said Stephen [...]

The Electric Nomad is a standard sized electric guitar that features all the usual features, usability and playability of a normal electric guitar; however, it is designed so that it collapses in on itself down to an easy to carry size.

 
A new product from Microsoft Research. The Sphere comes from the same Microsoft Researchers that developed the Surface, aka “PlayTable”.
 

Arun Ghosh, at right, a Purdue professor of chemistry and medicinal chemistry, and graduate
student Xiaoming Xu discuss the structure of an enzyme inhibitor designed to treat Alzheimer’s disease
Scientists in Britain have developed a drug which could represent a major breakthrough in treatment for people with Alzheimer’s disease, they said on Wednesday.
The drug, Rember, targets the [...]

Looks like a vacuum cleaner when folded
A British designer has come up with a sports car that can be folded in half to park it in tight spaces. Daniel Bailey, 22, has revealed that the BRB Evolution jacks up on its nose with its back wheels sliding underneath on two rollers, and thus uses 50% [...]

Your life will not be complete until you are a contestant on a Japanese game show
This Japanese game show is set in library, so everyone has to whisper. Extremely funny. Second video after the jump.
 

Yummy
Viewed over a million times, this footage was filmed in St. James Park, London Sunday 7th August 2005.

 
 
These basketball sized eyeballs are amazing! They are custom built from scans of your own eyes so that the pattern and colours match exactly your own eye. They are certain to attract conversation when you invite guests around.

 
 Optofluidic Microscope
Researchers have developed a “microscopic microscope” – a microscope that’s small enough to fit inside a cell phone yet that still delivers top-quality magnifying power.

In the beginning, there was the roller skate, then came the skate board and later the Rollerblade. So what’s the next conveyance that we’ll be strapping to our feet to roll around the street? Video after the jump.