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From Engadget: Boeing’s SUGAR Freeze is a cool way to power a plane

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No, not the sensation you get when you have gulped your ice cream too fast. SUGAR Freeze is the a new propulsion concept developed by Boeing that aims to revolutionize air travel. Standing for Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research, the NASA-commissioned project (codenamed “N+4”) looks at immature technologies in the hope of kickstarting research for the future. It’s reportedly 60 percent more efficient than the equivalent Boeing 737-800, thanks to a very experimental propulsion system. Cryogenically stored liquified natural gas (hence “Freeze”) is burned in a pair of unducted fan engines while also powering a solid-oxide fuel cell as an aft-thruster. With LNG projected to remain abundant, more environmentally friendly and cheap well into the century, it makes an ideal substitute to current aviation fuel, which is none of those things. Currently it’s far too unsafe a design to contemplate building, and there are concerns about methane in the natural gas production process, but hopes remain that the kinks will be ironed out well before the 2045 deadline.

 

from Engadget

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From Coolest Gadgets: Google Street View now explores the Amazon

The Google Street View team has certainly done their part in mapping around major portions of the streets around the world, and there has been some pretty zany images to look at in the past. Having said that, I am just waiting for Google’s Street View team to head off into space, although getting their orientations right might take some time. Well, this time around, they have not traveled that far – at least not into the outer reaches of space, but rather, a handful of members of the Brazil and U.S. Street View and Google Earth Outreach teams were invited to the Amazon Basin in order to collect ground-level images of the rivers, forest and communities that are located in the Rio Negro Reserve.

I could have sworn that I saw an Angry Bird in some parts of the rainforest featured, but then again, it might have just been my overactive imagination. World Forest Day has come and past, hence the images captured have been uploaded and are now available to the masses via the Street View feature on Google Maps. No longer do you need to book a flight to South America if you want to check out the natural beauty and diversity of the Amazon with your own eyes. Hey, it is better than nothing, right?

You are able to take a virtual boat ride down the main section of the Rio Negro, or choose to float up into the smaller tributaries where the forest is flooded, without having to slap on an entire tube of mosquito repellent. How about strolling along the paths of Tumbira, the largest community in the Reserve? Not only that, you are able to visit some of the other communities who have invited the Google Street View team into recording their lives and cultures.

This project would have been impossible if it were not for the partnership with the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS), which is actually a local nonprofit conservation organization. The Street View trike was good to go even in such challenging environments, while the tripod camera with a fisheye lens saw action, capturing the beauty of the natural landscape and the local communities. Over 50,000 still photos were stitched together as a result of this mammoth effort, resulting in immersive, 360-degree panoramic views.

Since many areas of the Amazon such as the Rio Negro Reserve remain under the protection of the Brazilian government, with the public having restricted access, so this might be the closest you will ever get to the rainforest in real life, in that part of the world.

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from Coolest Gadgets

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From Ars Technica: Facebook says it may sue employers who demand job applicants’ passwords


Facebook has taken a stand against what it calls a “distressing increase” in reports of employers demanding the Facebook passwords of employees and job applicants.

One such report came from the Associated Press this week, which detailed cases of interviewers asking applicants for Facebook usernames and passwords, a clear invasion of privacy if we’ve ever heard of one. Employers examining applicants’ and employees’ activity on social media networks isn’t new—but typically it is restricted to what information users have made publicly available to everyone. Facebook said it could seek policy changes or file lawsuits to prevent employers from demanding passwords.

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from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: Pirate Bay plans to build aerial server drones with $35 Linux computer


The Pirate Bay (TPB), a popular BitTorrent website, experienced a brief stint of downtime this week. After restoring service, the site’s operators confirmed that the outage was caused by routine maintenance and not a law enforcement raid. According to a blog post published by TPB, system upgrades were needed in order to accommodate the website’s continuing growth.

In the blog post, TPB also announced plans for a future infrastructure upgrade. The group plans to move its front-end proxy servers into the sky, creating a network of small mobile computers that are tethered to GPS-enabled aerial drones. The airborne computers, called Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS), will supposedly be harder for law enforcement agencies to terminate. TPB contends that any attempt to ground its vessels will be viewed as an act of war.

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from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: Witnesses warn Verizon-Comcast deal will damage competition


The antitrust subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee heard a wide range of views on the merits of a plan for Verizon Wireless to buy $3.6 billion of spectrum from a consortium of cable companies. Representatives for the firms argued that the transaction would not reduce competition between them, but opponents portrayed the deal as another step in the slow death of telecommunications competition.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Verizon’s Randal Milch emphasized that Verizon Wireless was facing a “spectrum crunch.” He wants to buy spectrum currently held by a consortium of three cable companies. Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House bought the spectrum in the 2006 Advanced Wireless Services auction, but after careful analysis they concluded that they couldn’t afford to launch an independent wireless company. So they started looking for a buyer for the spectrum, and eventually inked a deal with Verizon.

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From Ars Technica: Zynga buys Draw Something maker OMGPOP, will soon own everyone and everything


Four weeks ago, only people who follow and play social games pretty closely had heard of New-York-based developer OMGPOP. Today, over 35 million people have downloaded the company’s asynchronous art-guessing game Draw Something, and the company has attracted a Zynga buyout offer that AllThingsD is reporting is worth more than $200 million.

OMGPOP has been around since 2006, creating 35 other social games first on its own social network and then on Facebook and mobile platforms. But today’s sale seems designed to strike while the company is incredibly hot with Draw Something‘s meteoric success—the game generated 1 billion drawings across 84 languages in the last week, a peak of 3,000 per second.

Draw Something‘s quick rise is a bit hard to decipher, considering that countless other Pictionary-style games have failed to catch fire on iOS and Facebook, including many with much deeper gameplay and features than OMGPOP’s extremely basic title. It could be that Draw Something‘s simplicity, along with a design that allows for play sessions as short as a minute or two, appeals to players that don’t have time to get fully absorbed in social games. Or maybe it just illustrates the exponential marketing power of having seemingly all of your friends stumble on to a single multiplayer game all at once.

As one anonymous OMGPOP backer told AllThingsD, “No one had any idea that this would take off, and no one knows why it did.” But OMGPOP said during a conference call that the new association with Zynga will let them quickly add new features like chat, photo galleries, and possibly the ability to draw your own profile picture to broaden the game’s appeal even further.

The company also said it currently has “no plans” to change the game’s name to something like Draw With Friends, to match fellow Zynga mobile hit Words With Friends. That game also came to Zynga though a buyout of developer Newtoy in 2010, one of 14 acquisitions the company made in a 12-month period leading up to its IPO last year. At this rate, we wouldn’t be that surprised if, ten years from now, every single major game developer and publisher is just a Zynga subsidiary.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: Samsung Galaxy S III product mockup emerges with 720p display


A mockup of the Samsung Galaxy S III appeared today on the Dutch site GSM Helpdesk (also on display at Versus.io) along with some purported specs. The article cites an anonymous tipster as saying the phone will have a 4.7-inch display at 720×1280 resolution, as well as a 12-megapixel camera.

These specs differ from those recently reported by Boy Genius Report, which stated the Galaxy S III will have a 1080p 4.8-inch screen. GSM Helpdesk goes on to note the phone will have a 1750mAh battery, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, and weigh 125 grams.

The Verge notes that the product shot included in GSMHelpdesk’s post reuses a screenshot from a Galaxy S II launch event last year. Therefore, the supposedly Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich-running Galaxy S III looks like it’s running a TouchWiz-skinned version of Gingerbread. (We’d also note that the shots are stamped with the logo of Weber Shandwick, a PR company Samsung has used frequently in the past, but Samsung tends to use MWW Group for mobile products, in our experience.)

Past rumors have pegged the Galaxy S III for an April/May release timeframe, which means we have at least ten days before the phone collapses under the weight of its own rumors. Samsung did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

 

from Ars Technica