The term “ancient” is relative and unfortunately I can remember using many of the machines in this video, but compared to what we have today, the various equipment used here are “older than the internet,” so to speak. It makes the end result, an equipment-generated variation of “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, even more epic. According to creator bd594, “My last couple of videos I built a couple of robot bands (yeah! machines that play actual instruments). These videos didn’t fair as well so I decided to go back to the basics and create a video staring my trusty old HP Scanner and a scrappy old…

It’s hard to make us speechless. We are often overly-verbose rather than sitting dumbfounded by anything, particularly as unimportant as a movie. The Dark Knight Rises trailer dropped our jaw and made nothing but guttural noises come out of our mouths. Simply stated… enjoy. …

That awkward moment when you realize that the memes listed in KnowYourMeme’s Best of 2011 list sucked – I just had it. What happened? Is Rebecca Black really a meme? Has something as profound as OccupyWallStreet replaced something as meaningless as the Rickroll? As I watched the video below, I was drawn to wanting to use 2007 catchphrases like “epic fail” to describe what 2011 was in the meme world. I understand there has been a transition thanks in part to Tumblr and Reddit where the quick-meme advice animals and rage comics of the past couple of years have filled our creative needs and replaced the…

Every year, Google composes a Zeitgeist report that attempts to capture the essence of the year and give a glimpse of what we can expect in the coming year. This year’s message was simple but fitting: “we made it.” It matches the sentiment shared by many through the tumultuous revolution around the sun known as 2011. We saw notable deaths that marked the end of eras, the end of regimes, and the end of legends. Disasters from above and below rocked the world in ways we haven’t seen in decades. People rebelled, occupied, and even found themselves in situations where the only way to make things seem sane…

Predictions of the future are often foolish and do not give an accurate representation of reality. In this case, they got it nailed pretty nicely. We don’t know the history of this video, but it seems authentic. In it, they predict webcam, online bill pay, email, and online shopping as well as a few other nice features of today’s technological world. Not bad for hippies of the 60s. …

Sky watchers on the US west coast all the way over to east Asia are in for a rare treat in the early morning hours this Saturday, December 10th. A total lunar eclipse will grace the sky and is anticipated to be one of the brightest, deepest red moons in years. According to NASA, “The action begins around 4:45 am Pacific Standard Time when the red shadow of Earth first falls across the lunar disk.  By 6:05 am Pacific Time, the Moon will be fully engulfed in red light. This event—the last total lunar eclipse until 2014—is visible from the Pacific side of North America, across the entire Pacific Ocean…

Stunning. Intuitive. Brilliant. Worthless? The first three words in the series can clearly be used to describe the CNN #COP17 Ecosphere Project, a real-time visualization of the climate change discuss that led up to the UN Climate Change Conference 2011 being held now in Durban, South Africa. The fourth word in the series is up for debate. CNN is putting much emphasis on coverage of the conference both through their television presence as well as on the web. They have a show dedicated to the event that ran frequently in November and will continue until the end of the year. The Ecosphere project is…

It’s been a long time since a concept car has really sparked the imagination of tech geeks and car enthusiasts alike. When Toyota unveiled their latest concept car, the Fun-Vii, at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show this week, everyone from Automobile Magazine to Mashable jumped in to discuss its proposed paradigm-shifting features. It’s clear what the “Fun” part of the name means just by watching the second video below. The “Vii” stands for Vehicle, Interactive, Internet. Inside and out, most aspects of the car can interact with the internet and be controlled by a smartphone. Most surfaces on and within…

Two trends in American culture contradict each other. On one hand, technological and scientific fields are struggling to find qualified people to fill jobs. On the other hand, the education system are not focusing on producing more STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) enriched students. Nearly 3/4ths of students talented in math and science decide to pursue STEM degrees in college. Can bringing these two trends more in line with one another fix many of the growing problems in America? To answer that question, it’s important to have a more clear understanding of what STEM really is….

Google has always kept their search algorithms close to the vest, but in recent weeks they’ve opened up a bit more than usually and given glimpses of what they do and how they do it. In August, they revealed a bit under the hood of Google search. Now they put together a 6-minute video that details what has happened since starting as a research project at Stanford in 1996. Major developments such as Adwords and Universal search made the company both more profitable and more useful to the users. Here is the evolution of search as described by the source. Here is their search evolution timeline. Click to…