Mount Everest might be the be-all, end-all of mountaineering, but it’s also a dumping ground for the climbers striving upon its face—which is littered, as National Geographic puts it, "with garbage leaking out of the glaciers and pyramids of human excrement befouling the high camps." This week, Nepal announced a new rule aimed at cleaning it up.
     |
As a watch is handed down from generation to generation, the stories behind its life make it more and more valuable. And as far as past lives go, this Rolex, currently on display at the Beyer Watch and Clock Museum in Zürich, Switzerland, could top them all. It accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on one of the most famous expeditions of all time—to the top of the world.
| |
GlacierWorks, founded by renowned mountaineer David Breashears, has joined forces with Internet Explorer to put the world’s highest peak at your fingertips with Everest: Rivers of Ice. The exploration platform works in any browser, but it’s specifically optimized for IE 10’s touch-based technology. In addition to bringing the Himalayas to your screen, Microsoft is using the project to show off the potentiality of its Rich Interactive Narratives (RIN) interface, cooked up by the the teams at Microsoft Research in both India and Redmond. Using RIN, developers can design nonlinear narratives that weave together different types of multimedia, like multitouch interactive maps with embedded video, gigapixel panoramas and data visualizations. GlacierWorks’ project incorporates all of these, as it allows you to explore Everest’s valleys while learning about glacier activity and climate change in the Himalayas. If a trip to Nepal is out of your budget, you can watch a preview in the video after the break.
Filed under: Science, Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: GlacierWorks
We’ve got some pretty tall mountains here on Earth. Granted, even the best of ’em don’t hold a candle to what’s waiting on Mars, but they’re still impressive. Just look at the views Google got with its Street Mountain View shots. More »
Face it, you’re no mountaineer. Unless you are, in which case congrats. But for the rest of us, there’ll be no mountain-top revelations to make our souls take flight. Not in real life anyway. But Google Map’s new summit shots are the next best thing. More »
OCZ’s showcase of their latest flagship SSD turned their Cebit presence in possibly one of the most anticipated product launches for PC enthusiasts on show. During Computex we got the chance to talk to the marketing pillars behind the speed leaders in SSD technology, OCZ Technology.
No matter how you twist or turn things, the Vertex series is still one of OCZ’s best selling drives in the lineup. They are not only incredibly fast; they’re built of industry’s top-shelf components too, …
You might scoff at spending almost seventeen grand on a relatively boring watch that’s crafted from a chunk of rock brought down from Everest’s summit. But when you consider an expedition up the world’s tallest mountain can cost as much as $83,000, this timepiece actually becomes a slightly more affordable way to visit the top of the world. Kind of. More »
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
