Hasta La Gadget!

iVina announced that it has enabled its BulletScan M40 mobile scanner to scan and upload color photos, business cards, and receipts to documents and photo sharing sites without any PC needed. The user simply plugs in a pre-configured Eye-Fi card into the scanner’s USB port or SD slot. To add this feature, registered M40 owners can go to www.buletscan.com, select the M40, and click on downloads to update the firmware at no charge. With this wireless feature, users can scan quickly to over 25 photo sharing and document sharing sites.

In case you haven’t heard of it, the Eye-Fi card is the first wireless memory card with built-in Wi-Fi that uses a wireless network to transfer captured images such as photos and documents. After setup, specify which networks the Eye-Fi uses to transfer images. It supports up to 32 networks. When the BulletScan M50 with the Eye-Fi card is within range of a specified network, transfers happen automatically.

Today is the start of the fourth annual Doodle 4 Google contest. This fun little contest was created by Google to get kids to use their imagination and creative abilities to think big and redesign Google’s homepage logo for millions to see.

The contest is open to K-12 students in the U.S., (Darn, I’m too old!) The theme this year is “What I’d like to do someday…” So, get out the crayons, pencils, markers, and paint and create whatever it is you want to do or be when you grow up. Just make sure it’s creative; only one doodle will be accepted per student. Then, Google employees and a panel of guest judges, including Whoopi Goldberg, gold medal ice skater Evan Lysacek and “Garfield” creator Jim Davis, will narrow down the submissions.

The national winner will not only have his or her doodle featured on the homepage, but will also receive a $15,000 scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for their schools. In addition, the top 40 regional finalists and the 3 national finalist will not receive a trip to New York City, a visit from Google in their hometown, a t-shirt with their design on it, and their artwork will be featured in a special exhibition in partnership with the Whitney Museum of American Art. The 3 national finalist will also receive a $5,00 educational grant and a Walcom design tablet. Not too shabby.

Make sure your students are registered by March 2, 2011 and their entries are postmarked by March 16, 2011. The winning doodle will appear on the homepage on May 20, 2011. Check out Doodle 4 Google for more details.

It looks a big shield to me. Or maybe something taken from the chest of a superhero (the Fanastic Five*, anyone?). It’s the bold new logo for the bold newish Web standard HTML. The logo has been sent out into the world via the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), as a way of enticing folks to dump the HTML4 and get with the hero.

In fact, the organization has a whole page set up for the new logo that looks a bit like the grown up Web nerd version of an activity book, encouraging folks to incorporate it into their site, create their own HTML5 merchandise, and use the Badge Builder 500, which lets you design “your own stunning, customized badge.”

Take that, older version of the Web standard!

*See: After Jump

Can you really put a price tag on funny pictures of cats? Yes, yes you can. And that price is $30 million. That’s the amount of money a group of venture capitalists have pumped into Cheezburger, the company behind the Lolcats phenomenon.

Of course, we’re underselling I Can Has Cheezburger by simple calling it “funny pictures of cats.” After all, these are really, really popular funny pictures of cats. These are pictures of cats that get more than 375 million page view a month.

Foundry Group, a VC that also pumped a lot of money into Zynga (the social gaming company behind FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and the like), is leading the investment. Foundry Group’s director, Brad Field, had this to say about the deal,

In just over three years, Ben Huh and his team have amassed a treasure trove of websites that mainstream consumers love. Already challenging the online traffic of traditional media companies, Cheezburger has an opportunity to surpass the industry heavyweights to become the world’s largest humor network.”

Cheezburger also runs the sites Fail Blog, Memebase, and The Daily What.

The beauty of a site like Facebook is its ability to adapt to whatever the user needs from it. For some, it’s all about social networking. For others, it’s the perfect place to organize for causes. For more still, it’s something of a modern day equivalent to the stocks–a very public spot for some very public shaming.

That’s the route a government official in Southern California’s self-proclaimed “Surf City,” would like to take. Devin Dwyer, a member of the Huntington Beach city council is looking to post pictures and information about drunk drivers on the popular social network.

“If it takes shaming people to save lives, I am willing to do it,” Dwyer told the press “I’m hoping it prevents others from getting behind the wheel and getting inebriated.” The councilman’s plan is pretty simple–post information about repeat DUI offenders on the site, in order to embarrass them, thereby (hopefully) avoiding more incidents.”

Huntington Beach, after all, has an unusually high number of DUIs for a city its size. In 2009, 195 people in the 200,000 person city were killed in alcohol-related accidents.

City police, however, don’t see as much value in the proposition. “Law enforcement is not about public shaming,” said Lt. Russell Reinhart, a spokesman for the department.

How about a big scarlet letter “A” for alcohol? That worked before, right?