An Australian zoo is keeping their animals hydrated and cool with iced treats and cold showers. (Feb.1)
Continue reading …
Just in Chicago alone, hundreds of flights have already been cancelled as a massive winter storm rolls through the midwest. (Feb. 1)
Continue reading …
An updated vaccine schedule for children and teens is just out from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Continue reading …What came between Kelsey and Camille Grammer? Well, a 29-year-old woman , but in addition to that, Fox News. Camille talked to Joy Behar last night about the end of her 13-year marriage, and noted that part of the problem was a lack of intimacy: Not only did the couple forgo…
Continue reading …New Data Shows China & United States’ Carbon Emissions Still Way Higher Than Everyone Else’s
February 1, 2011 No Comment
View larger at The Guardian . Some new figures on global and national carbon emissions have been released by the EIA : China is far and away the largest national emitter; the US significantly trails in second place; India comes in a distant third. If there’s any good news in this it’s that global emissions are more or less stable, decline one-tenth of a percent in fact. That’s all based on 2009 data, the latest available. Here’s some further stat parsing:… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …
You could argue that Motorola still has some work to do to emerge the hole it dug itself while pushing back major version updates for its early Android devices time and time again , but it’s definitely improving — and it looks like a Blur-ified build of Gingerbread for the Droid X is already starting to leak. As you might recall, Moto’s 4.3-inch beast launched on Eclair before getting Froyo a few months later, so the fact that the company is seemingly preparing its second big update already is notable to say the least; it looks to be basically the same thing they’ve already shown on the Atrix , which is definitely a marked improvement from the Blur of old. No word on how the source got these shots, but we can only hope it means the over-the-air update isn’t too far off. [Thanks, Andrew] Motorola’s Blur-flavored Gingerbread update for Droid X in the wild? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …12 Post-Apocalypse Floating Cities and Homes: From Crazy Concepts to Reality (Slideshow)
February 1, 2011 No Comment
Embassy Of Drowned Nations Concept. Photo: Oculus. Nobody really knows how much the planet will warm up in the following years and what the consequences will be. But the growing number of natural disasters in 2010 , and the recent wave of animal deaths sure made many of us think about an a… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …
A massive winter storm is moving across the nation’s heartland. In Dallas, ice closed Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport for about an hour this morning. (Feb. 1)
Continue reading …
Image: Evening Standard The road can be a dangerous, even deadly place for cyclists, and battles between cars and bikes have a sneaky way of turning out in the driver’s favor . But by riding to work with a camera built into his helmet, London’s Ben Porter was able to prosecute a driver who’d cut him off and then got out of his… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Google accuses Bing of ‘cheating,’ piggybacking off its search results (updated)
February 1, 2011 No Comment
You could say Bing is taking a cue from its competition, but it seems to be more literally taking search results as well. Google Fellow Amit Singhal is claiming so much and has provided some amusing (if not totally clever) results from its “Bing Sting.” Here’s how it works: find a search term that returns no matches for either site, make a “honeypot” page manually appear for the term, then have about 20 Google employees make the search (and click the top link) using Internet Explorer with both Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar on. Within two weeks, Singhal claims, a handful (about 7 to 9) of the 100 or so “honeypot” results were popping up in Bing. Bizarre choices, too, like mbrzxpgjys, hiybbprqag, and indoswiftjobinproduction. So, is this “cheating,” as Singhal specifically alleges? The experiment had to be run with Bing’s toolbar and / or Suggested Search feature activated, which it explicitly says are used to collect data and improve services. And more popular search terms do return different results, It’s not as if Microsoft is using non-public information, but is this an example of taking an unfair shortcut? That’s a debate we imagine with rage for quite some time. Update: Microsoft’s been sending out the following statement from Stefan Weitz, director of Bing: We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results. The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites. That’s pretty ambiguous, so ZDNet ‘s Mary Jo Foley pressed for a followup and was flatly told “We do not copy Google’s results.” We’re sure there’s going to be a lot more analysis and discussion to come — this ought to be fun. Google accuses Bing of ‘cheating,’ piggybacking off its search results (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …