Well, get ready for Facebook ubiquity to seep into the real world. A clever hardware-hacking project called LikeBelt uses near-field communication technology (NFC) to register Facebook likes as you walk down the street. Just approach a person or thing that deserves liking, and thrust your hips in its — or his, or her — direction.
“There used to be simple ways of saying you like things, like thumbs up, high fives, or humping,” Nathan Martin, CEO of Deeplocal, told Wired.
Yes, you read that correctly: humping. Deeplocal has taken the primitive gesture — arguably, one of nature’s earliest forms of “liking” — and combined it with a wearable piece of technology in the creation of the LikeBelt.
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1. “I Love You” (Barney the Dinosaur)- The Song That Makes Bad Guys Tremble
Why is the opening theme from Barney the most powerful song of the last 25 years? Because it made sure the terrorists didn’t win. In the U.S. military detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, there’s a special spot, known as “the Disco,” where interrogators use music to get detainees to talk. Naturally, death metal is on the playlist, and so is Christina Aguilera. But according to The Guardian, the most used song in the military’s arsenal is Barney’s “I Love You.” Interrogators refer to it as “futility music,” which convinces prisoners that it’s pointless to keep their silence. After listening to the song over and over, detainees start to feel that life is meaningless, and that it’s time to give up. It really works—Just ask any parent.
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It turns out Apple’s questionable rebuild of its 5th Avenue store wasn’t in vain—the company now has the ability to make some pretty daring glass structures. Case in point: this French shop will be almost totally transparent.
Unlike the 5th Avenue retail carnival, which is almost entirely underground and encased by normal walls, this impending store in Aix en Provence, France will be both above ground and encased in glass. With the exception of one back wall, the only thing separating the Barre des Génies from the elements will be giant panes of glass—meaning it’ll be a pretty neat edifice to view from the side, peering straight through the entire thing.
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Google has put out an “Under The Hood” page to give people a look at what goes into making it a successful search engine. Here are a few wild statistics we learned:
Google handles more than 1 billion searches each day.
More than 1,000 man-years have gone into developing the Google search algorithm.
Since 2003, Google has answered 450 Billion new unique queries.
Every search query 1,500 miles on average to get the answer back to the user.
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Finding ancient computer hardware on the shelves at Wal-Mart isn’t surprising, it happens all the time. What makes this story funny is the employee’s response to the customer:
The cashier told me outright, “You’ll be bringing your kids in here some day, and these will still be here.” We had a good laugh about it, and he told me I should probably take a picture and share it with my friends.
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The eyes of anthropomorphized cars are the headlights, not the windshield. And there’s no exceptions here. Having a cartoon car with the eyes in the windshield is wrong, just wrong. And that includes you, too, Pixar. Sure, you’ve done some amazing things, made some incredible movies, but you’ve also ruined the concept of anthropomorphism in cars for a generation of children. Can they recover? Maybe. But it would take nothing short of a remake of Cars and Cars II to even begin to undo the damage.
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