Lifestyle posts

Welcome to Wauconda, Washington, a small town that sold for $360,000 on eBay this week – a bargain if you’re looking for a chance to own a district. Wauconda is 25 minutes from the Canadian border and sits on Highway 20. The new owners, Maddie and Neal Love, got: a restaurant, store, gas station, a four-bedroom house and a zip code after a month long bidding war. Interestingly, the town is also known to host a couple of ghosts, including the spirit of a young Indian fighter. The Loves are both unemployed and are selling their home and all their possessions to buy the town and move there. The deal is expected…

Google takes on the world’s governments today, publishing details about how often countries around the world ask it for user data or instruct it to censor information. The data is available using Google’s newly-introduced Government Requests Tool (illustrated above). Interestingly, Brazil took the top of the list with 3,663 data requests the US took second place with 3,580 and the UK came in third with 1,166 such requests. Sure, we know Google has withdrawn from China in protest against that country’s censorship, but it was unable to publish those figures as they are state secrets. Brazil…

The Thrifty Phone Watch – because we don’t already have enough gadgets that keep us distracted from important work and other tasks throughout the day. Apparently as technology advances, people are getting lazier and need a device that’s with them at all times. You don’t even have to hold this one, so bonus! The futuristic gadget is multi-purpose and especially helpful when you have no free hands to hold a phone, or are at an event which doesn’t allow iPod’s or other devices. The Thrifty Watch Phone is a video camera, MP3 player and PDA. Who needs all of those things when you can have just one and leave…

The sun-powered Solar Impulse HB-SIA is the  brainchild of Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg and the futuristic vessel has finally taken it’s first flight. On April 9, 2010, the solar-powered plane took off in Paverne, Switzerland and soared high in the sky for over 87 minutes. The Solar Impulse was flown by pilot Markus Scherdel and climbed its way to over 1,200 meters high. The team who designed and built the aircraft hope to be able to fly the Solar Impulse non-stop around the world. The Solar Impulse has a gigantic wingspan of over 200 feet, which is the same size as a Boeing 747, but weighs…

What is the number one crisis the world faces? It’s not global warming. It’s not AIDS/HIV. It’s not even December 21, 2012. It’s something quite simpler. It is water, or lack thereof. The world is currently suffering from a water shortage crisis. But this one little faucet could immediately change everything. It’s called the Smart Faucet. It doesn’t do anything mind blowing, but what it does do is truly smart: in order to operate the water faucet, you must depress a lever that opens the water flow. The interesting part is that the user must hold this lever down to have the water flow, meaning that a…

You know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those slightly ridiculous Web 2.0 names that drops a vowel somewhere to be hip and cool. But Songr are bringing that trend back, baby! Fortunately for the music-discovery service, they actually seem pretty promising. Perhaps the best way to describe Songr is as a mix of Digg and Twitter for what you’re listening to. Rather than simply sharing which exact one is on your playlist right now, Songr lets people share what they’re listening to and then allows others to vote those songs up or down. So instead of rummaging around your music collection or…

Silk is being used to make electronics that stick to the brain. A far cry from fabric but doctors are hoping that using silk will help them explore parts of the brain that they weren’t previously able to. “This development heralds a new class of implantable devices, not just for the brain, but for many other tissues,” said neurologist Brian Litt of the University of Pennsylvania, in an interview with Wired.com. Engineers chose to use silk because it’s easily stretched and the material is super thin, making it easy to mould and work with, making for better brain-computer interfaces. BCI’s…

In light of the tablet buzz of the past few weeks, we’ve been lucky enough to see some amazing magazine concepts meant for the future. The newspaper, however, has sorta’ gotten the shaft – maybe because not everyone believes the newspaper has a future. But if newspapers look anything like this ‘The Page’ concept, it seems like they’ll be sticking around for a while. Although you won’t see this in production for years, the idea is basically this: using a flexible screen about the size of your average daily, users log in using their fingerprint and get personalized news stories on an adaptable screen….

At a time like this, there is only one thing to say. And that thing is: OMG! OMG! OMG! Yes, according to the IGN, tweets coming in from the C2E2 comic book convention in Chicago report that Steve Sansweet of Lucasfilm confirmed that all six Star Wars movies are being readied for Blu-Ray release, along with extras. Sansweet reportedly said the following: “We have been at work for a couple of years working on—I won’t call it the Ultimate Set because we keep finding stuff—but, a very full set of all six movies on Blu-ray with lots of extra material. We’re finding all kinds of scenes from dailies that…

While searching for the latest and greatest technology and gadgets, I rolled upon this website and was both intrigued and confused. Introducing Chariot Skates, a innovative idea from inventor Michael Jenkins from Australia. He has turned his idea of meshing skating, skiing and cycling all into one idea. He has essentially taken two large wheels and attached the skater’s foot below the axle for a more fluid ride. Although I am extremely interested in testing out these skates, I wonder if I will have the guts to strap them on and head down to the beach and actually use this product in public. It kind…