Video: "Brain Divided" (CGI Animated Short)

Video: If Computer Problems Were Real (Comedy)

Article: Tips and Tricks for Saving Money, and Getting Discounts on Everything Else

Saving money on anything is not something that will generally happen automatically. You may get lucky at times and get an awesome deal every now and then. Although, to get the best deal possible does require work in the form of research and the ability to negotiate.

 There are some basic things that you can do that can help save money on buying new products and services (online or in the real world), or how to get better deals on ones that you're already paying for.

Read all tips in the rest of the aticle

FABtotum Personal Fabricator

 The FABtotum is a multipurpose open-source low cost personal fabricator (i.e. scan, 3D print, cut or mill).

Why Are American Health Care Costs So High?

Video Description: "In which John discusses the complicated reasons why the United States spends so much more on health care than any other country in the world, and along the way reveals some surprising information, including that Americans spend more of their tax dollars on public health care than people in Canada, the UK, or Australia. Who's at fault? Insurance companies? Drug companies? Malpractice lawyers? Hospitals? Or is it more complicated than a simple blame game? (Hint: It's that one.)"

Video: The Science of Invisibility

Video description: "Harry Potter and numerous sci-fi novels have glamorized the idea of a cloak of invisibility, but Duke engineering professor David R. Smith has come up with a blueprint for the real thing. His research on a prototype cloak was selected as one of the top-ten scientific breakthroughs of the year in 2006 by Science Magazine. In a live, "Office Hours" webcast interview February 23, 2012, Smith answers questions on the science of invisibility. Karl Bates, director of research communications at Duke, conducts the interview."

Video: Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu: A mouse. A laser beam. A manipulated memory.

Video description: "Can we edit the content of our memories? It's a sci-fi-tinged question that Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu are asking in their lab at MIT. Essentially, the pair shoot a laser beam into the brain of a living mouse to activate and manipulate its memory. In this unexpectedly amusing talk they share not only how, but -- more importantly -- why they do this. (Filmed at TEDxBoston.)"

Video: AMP (Robotic SciFi Short Film)

Video synopsis (from site): "10 years after leaving a war his father started, Quinn and Amp live in the slums selling illegal custom-tech just to afford the batteries that keep Amp alive.

When an old childhood friend tracks him down, Quinn is confronted with the dilemma of choosing to remain idle in a city run by the corrupt Coreley Corporation or finally finish the war he never wanted to be a part of."

Video: Life In Single Drop Of Pond Water

Check out Google Maps Dr. Who Easter Egg

Its the TARDIS from the BBC Dr. Who television series.  Its tricky to access this Easter Egg, so you will have to follow the instructions below:

• Go to the Google Maps street view (referred to as the Police Telephone Box, at Earl's Court Rd, London, Greater London SW5 9RB, United Kingdom)
• Click on the double chevrons (they're circled in red in the picture)

• You should now be inside the TARDIS, with a 360 degree view of it.

Video: The Innovation of Loneliness

Video: Star Wars - Speed Dating

Video: Welcome To Youtube! (How to become famous)

Internet Easter Eggs

According to WikiPedia, an Easter Egg is: "an intentional inside joke, hidden message, or feature in a work such as a computer program, movie, book, or crossword. According to game designer Warren Robinett, the term was coined at Atari by personnel who were alerted to the presence of a secret message which had been hidden by Robinett in his already widely distributed game, Adventure. The name has been said to evoke the idea of a traditional Easter egg hunt."

Easter Eggs are not limited to applications, movies, etc.  Web sites have them too, some of the best and most documented ones that I have found are in Google and its related properties (such as: YouTube, etc).

I will admit that some of these are better then others, because some are real Easter Eggs while others are 'quasi' features (or something like that).

YouTube

• In the search field, type "fibonacci". (arranges the results in a tiled effect in accordance with the mathematical sequence)
• In the search field, type "beam me up scotty". (the videos on the results page will be ‘beamed’ down)
• Click on a blank part of the page and type "1980" to play Missile Command
• Click on a blank part of the page and type "1337" to see all the comments in leetspeak.
• In the search field, type "do the harlem shake" and press the search button.
• Watch the "Swedish Chef makes Popcorn Shrimp (video)", turn on the CC (closed caption), then select "Swedish-Chef".  You will have to wait for it, it happens about the middle of the video.

Google

• In the search field, type "recursion" (this one is subtle)
• In the search field, type "zerg rush".
• In the search field, type "do a barrel roll".
• In the search field, type "2*sqrt(-abs(abs(x)-1)*abs(3-abs(x))/((abs(x)-1)*(3-abs(x))))(1+abs(abs(x)-3)/(abs(x)-3))sqrt(1-(x/7)^2)+(5+0.97(abs(x-.5)+abs(x+.5))-3(abs(x-.75)+abs(x+.75)))(1+abs(1-abs(x))/(1-abs(x))),-3sqrt(1-(x/7)^2)sqrt(abs(abs(x)-4)/(abs(x)-4)),abs(x/2)-0.0913722(x^2)-3+sqrt(1-(abs(abs(x)-2)-1)^2),(2.71052+(1.5-.5abs(x))-1.35526sqrt(4-(abs(x)-1)^2))sqrt(abs(abs(x)-1)/(abs(x)-1))+0.9"
• In the search field, type "askew" or "tilt" (look towards the top of the page)
• In the search field, type "anagram" or "define anagram" (this one is subtle)
• In the search field, type "binary" (this one is subtle)
• In the search field, type "conway's game of life" (look to the right part of the screen)
• In the search field, type "bacon number [actor's name]" (e.g. kevin bacon, which is equal to 0)
• In the image search field, type "atari breakout"
• Google in different languages:
• Elmer Fudd
• Hacker (Leetspeak)
• Klingon 
• Pig Latin
• Pirate
• Swedish Chef (Muppets)

Mozilla Firefox

• Type "about:robots" in the address bar at the top of the browser window. (Bonus: do not press the button)
• Type "about:mozilla" in the address bar at the top of the browser window.  (history/folklore: its supposed to be a response to a blue screen of death in Internet Explorer 5.5 when “about:mozilla” was typed. )

Google Chrome

• Type "about:crash" in the address bar at the top of the browser window.  It's really nothing more then a crash page in Chrome, but did you know it was there?

Wikipedia

• Go to Easter Egg entry in the pictures of the rabbits click on the little thing that looks like a turtle in the lower right corner.

Note: All of these were tested at the time of the article, but over time some of the features may stop working or be removed.

KickStarter: HOLHO - hologram generator for SMARTPHONE and TABLET

With this KickStarter project you can turn your smartphone or tablet into holographic player.

Introducing CarTube (YouTube for Your Car)

Is CarTube a good? "Asterisk" (note: you will have to watch the video to understand the reference).  Also CarTube retails for $2.7 million dollars and is not a real thing.

Star Wars Filibuster (Patton Oswalt's Rant Animated)

Nerdist's created an animated version of  Patton Oswalt's Star Wars Filibuster from Parks & Recreation?

How Energy Efficiency can Save the World

When you think of some of the greatest problems facing the world, there are lots of issues that need addressing such as: global warming, over population, etc.  Most of these problems are already heavily discussed in countless different types of media (e.g. video, articles, blogs, and many others).

Although, one of the least discussed problems effecting us is the lack of access to clean, cheap and plentiful energy.  It can also be easily debated that our pursuit for energies (e.g. electricity, liquid fuels, etc.) is what got us into this situation in the first place.

The main issue with energy is the demand for it is not going away anytime soon, and the need for it is only going to increase as the population grows and there is increased affluence in developing and mature countries.

When people don't have access to clean affordable energy, this reduces our ability as a society to produce and deliver food, water and medical care. Which increases the destruction of the environment for any easily accessible resources, causes more poverty, war, terrorism, and disease.

Obviously with a source of clean, cheap and plentiful energy we can save ourselves and our planet for future generations.  Over the pass few decades more new clean energy technologies have been developed, then anytime in the past.

One of the greatest issues with any relatively new technology is its ability to gain a broad acceptance.  It can literally take a decade or more for new a energy technology to come to the market before it becomes widely accepted.

Although the greatest problems with energy is not our ability to create new sources of it, or make them in large enough quantities to meet the market demands.  The two greatest energy issues that we are facing right now are:

• As a society changing our energy consumption habits so we need less of it.
• Not increasing the energy efficiency of our existing technologies to their fullest potential.

For example, over the past few decades automobile manufactures increased the fuel efficiency of vehicles, as it was mandated by law and market demand.  When gas was cheap car manufactures didn't build their cars to be fuel efficient, they were created to be powerful.  It was not until fuel became more expensive overtime that they slowly increased the fuel efficiency of the vehicles.



Its important to note that building energy efficiency into any product does take time and can be expensive because it requires the redesign of existing technologies to use less power.

Although as a society and as individuals I really believe we underestimate the impact that we can have by changing our power consumption habits.  Also by using smarter technologies (such as a programmable thermostat) can help save us money without sacrificing comfort and help protect the environment.  By using less power, we as a country can avoid the need to create new power plants to meet our electricity demands.

Recently I watched a great video from TED by Alex Laskey, called "How behavioral science can lower your energy bill".  He discusses showing people how much more energy they're consuming then their neighbors can help people reduce their energy demands by causing a sense of competition among them.

The main point I want to express with this article is that we don't have to wait for some scientist or company to come up with a clean energy technology or new way to save energy.  We also want to avoid at all costs the creation of old style power plants, that burn fuels to create electricity.  

What we do need to do is take personal responsibility for our energy consumption.  We also need to realize that if a lot of people try to save power it does add up incrementally and can reduce our society's overall power demands.

Opinion: The new desktop PC Form Factor

The standard desktop form-factor has not changed much in 3 decades.  If you look at the standard PC tower its basically a 1980's IBM PC turned on it side.

Any of the more "innovative" designs over the last few decades never really took-off or lasted.  I believe Apple's new Mac Pro could start a "fashion" trend in the desktop PC design because its so different from most other case styles available from PC manufactures.

If you have not seen Apple's new Mac Pro case check out the video below as an example.

Video: Star Wars vs. Star Trek (Death Star Destroys Enterprise)