Steve Jobs Resigns From Apple --- But Why Now?

He's been the face of Apple since we could remember. After about 15 years of leading the enterprise, Steve Jobs resigned. But why now?

Apple made no mention of Jobs' health in its statement about the change, but Jobs alluded to it in the letter of resignation he sent to Apple's board on Wednesday and later released publicly.

"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come"

The only thing surprising about Steve Jobs's resignation—which Apple had telegraphed several times already—was the timing. Why now? Because of health concerns, maybe. Or maybe because now, right now, is the perfect time for the company to transition.



The cardinal rule of bad news is that you bury it as late as you can. And since Apple is doing so well right now, this news will hopefully pass fast.



Apple has literally never been stronger. A month ago they reported record quarterly earnings in a period with no significant product releases. They were, for a brief period, the most valuable company in the world.



In a month from now they'll be releasing their next iPhone on America's three major carriers. And very possibly something altogether new: an affordable iPhone, a handset for the masses.



If Apple would have waited any longer to release Steve Jobs, the iPhone 5 announcement would've been fully shrouded in memories of him. With a month's distance, new CEO Tim Cook has a chance to stand on his own. He can bask in the reflected glory of the iPhone instead of languishing in Jobs's shadow.

(New Apple CEO, Tim Cook)

New Twitter App Lets You Speak Your Tweets! --- No More TYPING!

How lazy are you? Lazy enough to TALK instead of type your tweets???

We came across an interesting article this morning. A Japanese company called TechFirm [JP] has just released a special Twitter client for the iPad in the App Store. “Breath Bird” lets users tweet with their breath.

It's actually geared towards disabled people who can not type themselves. Interesting, right? People who can’t use their fingers can still engage in the Twitter universe by simply breathing into the iPad’s mic!


The apps "Breath Control Function" detects the strength of the breath, and convert it to keyboard inputs.

If the user wants to “type” a particular character, he/she can breathe into the mic of the highlighted row and make the app highlight all of the characters in that row, one after another- from left to right. Once the desired character is highlighted, the user simply breathes again and it appears in the tweet bubble. Users just have to repeat to create words that can then be posted to their Twitter in the same fashion.

Sounds like this is for you?

DOWNLOAD "BREATH BIRD" FOR YOUR I-PAD HERE!

Going this route, soon you should be able to just think your tweets and they will post themselves....

Drive 1,300 Miles From Maine To Florida On A Gallon Of Gas! Check Out This New Car! (PHOTOS)

Imagine being able to drive 1,325 miles on a single gallon of diesel gas.....

It seems like a dream, but researchers are working to bring this hypermiling technology one step closer to the consumer market.

Cambridge Design Partnership recently took its eco-friendly concept car for a spin at the Mileage Marathon Challenge held in the UK. A lucky 11-year old schoolgirl was the driver of this automobile which gets a staggering 1,300 MPG.

It achieves this feat with an oxygen concentrator, low-friction tires and Cambridge Design Partnership's ‘Go' system. The Go system is crucial to the car's success. It provides real-time GPS tracking information, monitors the car's performance and regulates the engine to maximize fuel efficiency.

The technology is exciting, but most of these vehicles are still in the R&D stage. They are designed to get people excited about the technology, not for Ford or Nissan to adopt next year.

Maybe in the next five years? Fingers-crossed.

The Last Space Shuttle Crew Prepares For Take Off -- Follow The Flight From Your Twitter! (Photo)

No more space shuttles! The very last space shuttle and crew are preparing for launch...and you can follow along right from your Twitter.

NASA has scheduled the launch of the shuttle Atlantis for July 8 -- and this is the very last launch of the Space Transportation System.

The last shuttle crew will go down in history among the most remembered, simply because they are the last astronauts to ride about the space shuttle.

Luckily for us, we will be able to experience some of it, as every shuttle crew member will be on Twitter for Atlantis' final flight! This will be the first (and the last) time in the 30-year space shuttle program.

Once we get the correct Twitter pages to follow, we will let you know. But even better, 150 lucky twitter users will actually be able to see the shuttle blast off and take part in the last mission. NASA says it will release the list of 150 tweetup participants by June 10.

But what about our new shuttles? What will they be like? Why is this the last space shuttle mission?

America’s next launch vehicles for human spaceflight will embrace the more conventional separate rocket booster and crew capsule. The shuttle was, indeed, a unique spacecraft that will in all likelihood never be repeated. It was and remains an extraordinary human spacecraft that no other nation on Earth succeeded in duplicating and launching. The Soviets designed and built the practically line-for-line copy of the shuttle they called the Buran, which flew—unmanned—only once.

To speculate at this point as to the configuration and, in fact, the manufacturer of the next US manned launch vehicle is really a gamble. Armchair prognosticators ask why not use the Delta 4 Heavy, while others point to the successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon capsule as an obvious choice. Certainly, the Ares 1-X launch vehicle developed by NASA and successfully launched on a suborbital flight on October 28, 2009 did not lead to further development as that program, and the parent Constellation program was cancelled.

Airport Security Checkpoints Of The Future? -- Less Groping, But Is It Less Privacy? (PHOTO)

The TSA wants to upgrade you....but is it DOWN-grading our privacy?!

After all the touching and feeling that went down this past fall, international airlines have been hankering for a way to get back into passengers' good graces. This checkpoint, along with eye scanners and souped-up passports, are what the TSA is working towards.

What you're looking in the photo above is the security checkpoint concept unveiled in Singapore by the International Air Transport Association. They're hoping it will reduce unnecessary checks and, therefore, complaints and bad press. Passengers would be subject to a quick eye scan and review of the information carried on the chip in their passports, constituting a background check. After that, flyers would be ushered through one of three corridors based on security risk. While there, scanners will turn up any liquids or underwear bombs they might be carrying.

Our oh-so-beloved TSA has been working on developing a system that will be able to do about the same.

But will this be too invasive of our privacy? Are eye scanners better than people groping?

Australian National University Announces Device Comparble to Start Trek's "Tractor Beam"

Posted By Staff Writer :YBM

Star Trek fans are going to be excited to hear the announcement that researches from the Australian National University have built a device that can move small particles a meter and a half using only the power of light. There has been optical tweezers that can move particles a few millimeters for years, this device is much more advanced.
Andrei Rhode, a researcher involved with the project, said that existing optical tweezers are able to move particles the size of a bacterium a few millimeters in a liquid. Their new technique can move objects one hundred times that size over a distance of a meter or more.

"With the particles and the laser we use, I would guess up to 10 meters in air should not be a problem. The max distance we had was 1.5 meters, which was limited by the size of the optical table in the lab,"

Rhode said.

The device works by shining a hollow laser beam around tiny glass particles. The air surrounding the particle heats up, while the dark center of the beam stays cool. When the particle starts to drift out of the middle and into the bright laser beam, the force of heated air molecules bouncing around and hitting the particle's surface is enough to nudge it back to the center.A small amount of light also seeps into the darker middle part of the beam, heating the air on one side of the particle and pushing it along the length of the laser beam. If another such laser is lined up on the opposite side of the beam, the speed and direction the particle moves can be easily manipulated by changing the brightness of the beams.Rhode said that their technique could likely work over even longer distances than they tested.

"With the particles and the laser we use, I would guess up to 10 meters in air should not be a problem. The max distance we had was 1.5 meters, which was limited by the size of the optical table in the lab,"

Rhode said.

This technique requires heated gas to push the particles around, so it can't work in the vacuum of outer space like the tractor beams in Star Trek. But on Earth there are many possibilities for the technology to touch on. The meter-long distances that the team was able to move the particles could lead to new applications such as transport of dangerous substances and microbes for sample taking and biomedical research. Far as developing the technology to move a ship like on Star Trek, right now, we just have to keep our fingers crossed.

Cardboard Record Player That Actually Works! [NEW GADGETS!]

I thought this was dope! Well, for those of you that would like to have something small and easily hidden around, this record player is one way to do it. It actually works too!!

What was formerly nothing more than a sleeve for a record gets reshaped and reused as a record player.

Sure, it’s nothing top of the line and it will probably need a little help from you, but it would still work. In order to get it up and running, just assemble all of the corrugated cardboard into the proper formation. Then just put a pencil in the center of the record on the player. The vibrations will then go through the needle and become amplified by the cardboard. It was just something that was sent out to creative directors across North America in order to demonstrate GGRP’s sound engineering capabilities.

Mattel Creates Brain Targeting Toy: Is It Harmful? Watch the video.....

This DIY gadget uses a MindFlex and it's a toy created by Mattel that allows the user/player to control the height of a ball via brainwave interface and “levitate” it through an obstacle course.

Sounds pretty cool at first, but the video below show how it could be very harmful. It is of someone who rigs the Mattel Mindflex to a battery. The object of his new device is to achieve a state of total relaxation. If the player/victim concentrates, even if it is on not concentrating, they will experience an electric shock.

Yes, that is sort of sick, and the video is also sort of sick. Then again, it is designed so we can laugh at another person’s pain, sort of like watching reality TV.

My source has speculated that someone could rewire this device so it would shock you if you didn’t concentrate enough.

Watch the video below as they "test" it out for us! lolll I don't think I would want any child trying this toy....WOULD YOU?