MySpace makes your eyes water

MySpace has inked a deal with The Onion to provide it's satirical audio, video, and print content to a branded Onion page within the social networking site. First up is the Onion News Network available on MySpaceTV portal. In typical Onion style Sean Mills, president of The Onion, is quoted as saying "The news business is like the tobacco business: you want to reach new readers at as young and impressionable an age as possible," Gotta love the Onion!

New iMac proves Apple not getting out of the computer business

A few weeks after the big launch of the iPhone, Steve Jobs was at it again, and this time he is returning to his roots. Today Apple announced two new sleek aluminum iMac's with a 20 or 24 inch monitor. Depending on the configuration, a new iMac will set you back between 2 and 3 iPhones ($1199 - $1799 US). I've always appreciated Apple's designs and the new iMac does not disappoint, it is simply beautiful!

More celebrity sightings

According to her blog, Veronica Belmont's new show will be called "Mahalo Daily" and will be launched in September. There are no further details in her post other than a few pictures of her new digs at Mahalo HQ. I have to admit, I'm more than a little jealous of all those big LCD displays! Compared to the cubical that I dwell at my day job, the Mahalo office looks much more open and inviting, though I'm not sure my work could be conducted under such close quarters... Mahalo HQ looks hip, and everyone looks relaxed! Are you sure it's not just one big LAN party Veronica? We are all anxiously awaiting the debut!

Morgan Webb's webbalert - 5 minute tech news

Morgan Webb of G4tv's X-Play fame has taken her act to the web. webbalert is a new semi-daily video podcast that Morgan hosts bringing you all of the days tech stories in 5 minutes or less. Her on screen prowess shines through, the podcast if rather well produced and covers the hottest topics. I've added you to my iTunes feed Morgan... good luck with the show!

Telegraph reports mystery of levitation solved

Researchers at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have apparently worked out a way of reversing the phenomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts. The Telegraph reports:

"The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, for example, but the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together, also explaining a “dry glue” effect that enables a gecko to walk across a ceiling.

Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attract."

The initial uses are seen as allowing Micro or nano machines, such as those that trigger a car's airbag, to run smoother with less or no friction. A long way from the hover board I'm afraid but a step in the right direction!

Nanaimo, B.C. more than the namesake of a wonderful chocolate treat

Nanaimo, British Columbia has embraced Google Earth and currently has the distinction of being the most zealous of contributors of geographic data, to the mapping search engine service site. With the blessing of his bosses at city hall, programmer Jason Birch spent his evenings and weekends for 2 years experimenting with images, colours and the programming language KML. The object of the experiment was to provide tourists and residents with geographic data, and boy have they... 10 centimetres on the ground in Nanaimo equals one pixel on Google Earth, this resolution is significantly higher than maps covering the rest of the world, typically 1 meter equals 1 pixel. Kudos to Jason and the City of Nanaimo, it's thinking like this that will serve your jurisdiction well! Globe and Mail Story here.

Fake Steve Jobs outed

For some time now the blogosphere has been a buzz about the writings of "Fake Steve Jobs" (FSJ) on his blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs". The blog has been running for 14 months with the writer's true identity under wraps, and it's been something of a must read. Their has been much speculation but the true identity of FSJ has finally been revealed. How do I say this, the real fake Steve Jobs is Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine. Lyons says that after being outed he is going to take a few days off to sit in a lake and do yoga, but will return as FSJ with Forbes as his sponsor.

Futurama's return?

This shaky video, apparently from ComiCon seems to imply that Futurama is making a TV comeback! Who's bottled head will be hearing from next...

There's something fichey going on around here!

If you are old enough to remember microfiche technology then you'll probably get the name, Fichey. The site allows you to quickly move around the top stories of the day from sites like del.icio.us, digg, downfly, reddit, and StumbleUpon. It's a web 2.0 app that takes snapshots of these sites, providing the top stories, that you can then browse as an image, navigate to the next one, or double click on to be sent directly to the page. It's reminiscent of the old microfiche so it is aptly named. I like it, only wish I could choose my own sites! Not that there is anything wrong with Fichey's choices, it could be useful to me if I could direct it elsewhere, that's all.

NASA sponsored competition seeks Jetson's like future

c|net's News.com is running an article about a NASA sponsored competition that seeks to find the most fuel efficient personal aircraft vehicle (PAV). The competition is being held at Charles Schultz Sonoma County Airport in California, conjuring up images in my head of Snoopy cruising around on his dog house, but I digress. "These air vehicles can travel in three dimensions without any traffic jams, and the computer technology today enables travel that can be on demand at speeds three to four times faster than cars with equivalent gas mileage." If these guys get their way, we might all be flying our cars to work someday in the not too distant future. Think "The Jetsons" or perhaps "Blade Runner".