May 02

Obama’s bin Laden Speech Triggers 4,000 Tweets Per Second

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, twitter

osama.jpg

Even though it happened at around 11:30 on a Sunday night, Barack Obama’s speech on the death of Osama bin Laden has become one of the most active Tweeting sprees of all time.

“Twitter reached more than 4000 Tweets per second tonight at the beginning and end of President Obama’s speech,” Twitter wrote in an official company Tweet.

In a matter of hours, a search for “Osama” on YouTube brought up more than 2,000 new videos. Flash mobs also appeared at major landmarks throughout the country, including the White House, Ground Zero, and Times Square (where Gearlog captured the photo above).

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May 01

This Week’s Best YouTube Videos: One courageous rabbit, a Super Mario Wedding Proposal, Earth Day, Symmetry, and More

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, videos, YouTube

Symmetry

Some of this week’s most popular videos on YouTube focused on weddings – I suppose everyone’s in the mood what with the royal wedding this morning. Not only do we get to see The Other Guys doing their own tribute to the huge affair, there were tons of wedding proposal videos trending this week. We figured one of them would be enough. 
One of this week’s most popular videos is another adorable animal – this time a rabbit that gets some love and care from an adopted human caretaker, and an eye-opening video from NPR’s Radiolab. Also this week was Earth Day, which if you didn’t know, you have to get down on. You’ll understand what that means behind the jump.
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Apr 27

Rumor: Hulu Plus to Land on Xbox Live on April 29

Posted in: hulu, Miscellaneous Tech, streaming, Today's Chili, videos, xbox 360

Hulu Plus Logo

For those people who use their Xbox 360 are a primary form of both gaming entertainment and video entertainment, it might be finally time to invest in a Hulu Plus account. According to a post at Joystiq, Hulu Plus will arrive on the Xbox 360 on April 29th, finally ending the long wait that Xbox owners have had to suffer while PS3 owners gloated in their faces. 
The Xbox 360 has only had Netflix up to this point, but PS3 owners have had both Netflix and Hulu Plus access. That difference has made people looking to cancel their cable television in exchange for streaming video on the Web look more carefully at the PS3 than the Xbox 360. If the story is true and Hulu Plus does come to the Xbox 360 this week, it would put the two consoles back on even ground. 
[via Joystiq]
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Apr 24

This Week’s Best YouTube Videos: Nyan Cat, Little Thor, Perform This Way, and More

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, videos, YouTube

Nyan CatSome weeks, serious videos dominate YouTube: thought-provoking, interesting, and deeply meaningful and insightful videos. This isn’t one of those weeks. This week’s most best YouTube videos made us laugh, made us smile in awe, and on top of it all, made us stare at our screen and wonder “what the…”

Among those videos are a cat who’s also a pop tart who apparently can fly, a hilarious spoof on one of our favorite Super Bowl commercials, Wierd Al Yankovic at his finest, and a world record Rube Goldberg machine that transcends past, present, and future.
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Apr 22

Christine O’Donnell Blames Bad Software for Fundraising Snafu

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, politics, Today's Chili

odonnell.jpg

Christine O’Donnell, everyone’s favorite “non-witch” Republican, says it’s not her fault that her campaign fundraising reports are riddled with errors and inaccuracies.

The incorrect data, which has triggered a federal investigation, was because of a software glitch, she claims. Her lawyer says every false record is because of an “ongoing mistake automatically entered by the software and certain other mistakes identified through the compliance review conducted over the past several months.”

According to media reports, O’Donnell originally claimed she only raised $7.3 million but she later changed that figure. Also up for questioning is the way she used that money, as there are allegations the funds, which are legally required to be used for campaign functions only, went toward her rent and personal debt.

Via Politico

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Apr 22

iPads Outnumber Linux Machines on the Web

Posted in: Apple, ipad, ipad 2, Linux, Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili

Pingdom iPad Stats

According to a study by Royal Pingdom and data from Statcounter that covered over 3 million Web sites, the iPad along makes up more hits on the sites that collected data than all of the Linux machines that visited those same sites combined. The big news from the study initially was that Windows 7 users had finally outnumbered Windows XP users, but when the team looked more closely at the numbers of operating systems near the bottom of the list, they uncovered the surprising stats. 
Overall, Windows systems still make up well over 80% of all of the visitors to the Websites in the Statcounter study, but down at the bottom, all Linux users and distros only accounted for 0.71% of all visits. The iPad however, even with the iPhone and iPod Touch removed from the numbers, accounted for 1.18%. That makes the iPad a more popular “desktop” platform than Linux, which is a turn of events few expected. 
At the same time, it’s just as possible that all of the Linux users out there simply aren’t surfing the Web on their computers, or that the majority of Linux systems in use aren’t built for Web browsing. At the same time though, it’s clear that Linux on the desktop doesn’t have the traction that the iPad does.
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Apr 22

Google Pulls YouTube from Roku Channel List

Posted in: Google, Miscellaneous Tech, set-top-box, streaming, Today's Chili, videos

Roku - YouTube Channel

If you have a Roku set-top box and you’ve been enjoying the ability to watch YouTube videos from the comfort of your couch, we have some bad news for you. The YouTube channel in the Roku channel lineup was actually an unofficial and unsupported one, and Google recently caught wind of the fact. They’ve asked Roku to pull it from their channel list, and Roku complied. 
Reportedly, the issue at hand was the fact that the channel used the MP4 version of YouTube videos that the service provides to mobile devices. That alone isn’t too bad, but the problem is that pre-roll advertisements and pop-up ads that appear over videos weren’t displayed, which made the service virtually ad-free.  
Roku noted that they’ve been in negotiations with Google to bring YouTube support to Roku boxes for a long time now, and while they don’t have an ETA for when Roku owners will be able to officially watch YouTube videos on their TV, they’d love for it to happen. If you already have the channel added to your list, you can still enjoy it, but as of now, it’s gone and new users can’t add it. 
[via GigaOm]
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Apr 21

IDEAL 0101 Punches Holes in Hard Drives

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, security, Today's Chili

IDEAL Drive Puncher

Most companies that want to dispose of their hard drives in-house buy a degausser. Most people who want to dispose of a hard drive hit it with a hammer or take it to a recycling center, if they dispose of it at all. With the IDEAL 0101 HDP from Duplo, you don’t have to put the effort into wrecking your hard drive yourself: you can just pop it into a machine and watch as a hole is punched clean through your hard drive. 
The IDEAL 0101 is designed to be a fast and efficient drive destruction device, and that it is: you just feed the drive into the slot at the top and stand back, making sure your hands are clear when the stake – ejected with up to 3 tons of force – comes out of the side and goes through the drive. The device then opens the bottom panel and spits the drive out into a collector at the bottom, ready to go to your local recycling center. 
You’ll have to spend $3300 retail to get one of these, so it’s doubtful they’ll pop up in homes anytime soon. However, considering that well-built degaussers can be dozens of thousands of dollars, this might be a good alternative for small to medium sized businesses with a pile of old drives they want to destroy.
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Apr 17

This Week’s Best YouTube Videos: Bluegrass, The Art of Trolling, Lasers, and Dramatic New Tsunami Footage

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, videos, YouTube

Maritime Laser

If there’s anything that this week’s YouTube roundup tells us, it’s that we’re all suckers for cringe-worthy videos. Really – if Rebecca Black (who just racked up over 100 million views on YouTube, by the way) can become one of YouTube’s most viewed artists of all time, then you know some of the most-watched forms of entertainment are things we love to hate. 
In this week’s roundup, we have some dramatic – and shocking – new footage from the tsunami that devastated the northeastern coast of Japan last month, some hilariously awful attempts to pick up women using memes and languages you’re more likely to find on Reddit than in real life, and a Bluegrass performance of the Super Mario. Cringeworthy? You bet. 
On the other side of things though, we get a pretty amazing combo performance of Yo-Yo Ma and Lil’ Buck, and some impressive footage of the US Navy testing its newest maritime weapon: a laser capable of setting fire to small boats.
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Apr 14

Walmart to Shrink Size of Electronics Department

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, walmart

 

walmart.jpgWalmart is slowly shrinking the electronics department in stores across the nation. In the past few years, Walmart has expanded the electronic areas. But it now appears that the sales in gadgets have slumped causing Walmart to reorganize the stores. Walmart has stated that the focus will shift to outdoor and camping merchandise for now.

However, Walmart is maintaining that electronics are still a key part of the store, but made it clear that the sales of electronics have been disappointing for a while now. Most Walmart stores will set their electronics sections back to their original size, taking 2,000 square feet off the category in all stores.

Walmart did not release info on when the change will be made or how the company plays to compete with big-box electronic stores. Walmart has been working hard for years to beat Best Buy, but it now appears to be slowing down on that path.

Via Hot Hardware

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