— Gore Vidal, the author, playwright, politician and commentator whose novels, essays, plays and opinions were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, his nephew said Tuesday.
Vidal died at his home in the Hollywood Hills at about 6:45 p.m. Tuesday of complications from pneumonia, Burr Steers said. Vidal had been living alone in the home and had been sick for “quite a while,” he said.
— _ Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time by winning his 19th medal – a gold – as the United States romped to a dominating win in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. Phelps now has 15 golds, two silvers and two bronzes over three Olympics, moving ahead of Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, who got her haul in 1956, 1960 and 1964.
_ The team of Gabrielle Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Alexandra Raisman, Kyla Ross and Jordyn Wieber lived up to all the hype, winning the first U.S. Olympic title in women’s gymnastics since 1996.
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NASA wants as many eyeballs as possible to enjoy developments made towards the space age, by announcing that they will be broadcasting the Mars Mission landing live in where else but New York’s iconic Times Square. Toshiba will have the honor of having their Toshiba Vision screen that is located in New York City’s Times Square to be the largest East Coast location for the public to view live mission coverage of Curiosity, the most advanced planetary rover from NASA to date, as it is calculated to touch down on Martian soil at 1:31 a.m. EDT this coming August 6th.
The Toshiba Vision screen in question will perform the broadcast of NASA TV coverage from 11:30 p.m. EDT August 5 onwards, where it will continue doing so (I do wonder if that would mean the entire live broadcast is ad-free?) until 4 a.m. EDT the next day. All programming will hail from Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) in Pasadena, California. We do wonder what the two years of scientific detective work will be performed by the new planetary rover known as Curiosity – hopefully it lives up to the name, and no proverbial cats will be killed in the process. [Press Release]
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NASA’s Z-1 prototype spacesuit is completely versatile, NASA and Microsoft release Mars Rover Landing game,
If you’re feeling stressed, maybe the best thing you can do is crack a smile.
New research shows that smiling — and especially genuine smiling (where your eyes and mouth muscles are engaged) — may play a part in lowering heart rate after you’ve done something stressful. The study will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
“The next time you are stuck in traffic or are experiencing some other type of stress, you might try to hold your face in a smile for a moment,” study researcher Sarah Pressman, of the University of Kansas, said in a statement. “Not only will it help you ‘grin and bear it’ psychologically, but it might actually help your heart health as well!”
The first US-based 787 carrier is inching closer to its Dreamliner service launch. United Airlines celebrated the plane’s rollout today at Boeing’s Everett, Washington factory. The aircraft, which is set to begin international service later this year, received a custom livery, which includes a curved “swoop” — which oddly enough appears to be the focus of design chatter. That may just be because the public has yet to take a peek inside, though we did have an opportunity to hitch a ride on ANA’s variant last year, which has been flying throughout Japan since late 2011. Despite All Nippon’s head start, United’s flavor has garnered much attention domestically, marking a massive milestone in the Dreamliner’s delayed launch. Hit up our source link below for a few more (exterior) views, courtesy of United.
Filed under: Transportation
United 787 Dreamliner emerges from Boeing factory, complete with golden head-to-tail ‘swoop’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Remember how Guy Adams’ Twitter account was suspended after his rant over the delayed live telecast of the Olympics’ opening ceremony on TV? Well, it seems that Twitter has restored Adams’ account, so hopefully all of it will be bridge under the water by now. I guess it is an issue that has been blown up by someone in the media team who decided to act as an individual instead of as a corporate decision, contacting NBC in the process to have the entire thing (to some) blown out of proportion. Twitter’s rules do mention that you are not allowed to put up someone else’s private and confidential information, explicitly listing “non-public, personal email addresses”, never mind that those can more often than not be uncovered through some clever Google sleuthing.
Not only that, Twitter also mentioned “[i]f information was previously posted or displayed elsewhere on the Internet prior to being put on Twitter, it is not a violation of this policy,” which more or less invalidates Twitter’s own action of taking down Adams’ account in the first place. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail in such situations in the future, but it does seem as though Guy Adams is not in the wrong here.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: No tweets in London Olympics if you want to watch TV, Twitter flu gets tracked, predicts you falling sick in advance,
Looks as though our rumors from last week were true, EA has decided add a free-to-play option for its popular MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. This fall, they will add an option that will not require a $14.99 monthly fee. Starting August, they will cut the price by $14.95 which will also come with a free month of subscription.
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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Star Wars: The Old Republic early access to begin 13th December, Star Wars: the Old Republic to offer free trials,
Amazon also has a stake in the world of smartphone music, and earlier this morning, we talked about Spotify for Android getting an update that carries a personalized radio, and before lunch, there was word on Samsung rolling out their very own Samsung Music Hub. Amazon is certainly not going to just sit down, lay back and let the world pass them by. No sir, Amazon decided to get their feet wet in news by announcing improvements made to their Cloud Player services as well as the Amazon MP3 application.
So far, we know that Amazon did come to an agreement with the rest of the major record labels out there, allowing Amazon Cloud Player to perform its very own iTunes Match-style scan of your entire music collection. To put it in a nutshell, your life is now a whole lot easier since you are freed from having to upload the entire gamut of your files. Not only that, audio quality should see an improvement, as even if your files are of a low quality, the moment Amazon matches them with its library, your ears will enjoy streamed copies at 256kbps. [Press Release]
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Amazon Cloud Player offers unlimited space in upgrade, Amazon Cloud Player sneaks to iOS,
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