5 Minutes of Interesting

5 Minutes of Interesting: CD Prices to Drop

2010-03-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

The Universal Music Group recently announced that they will be dropping the prices on all new CD's to between 6 and 10 dollars. They also said that the CD's would be packaged with "Deluxe Content" that you would not be able to get with a download, and that they will maintain a 25% profit margin with this price cut.

Mashable

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5 Minutes of Interesting: Giant Power-Producing Waterfall

2010-03-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

As you know the olympics are coming to Rio De Janeiro in 2016, and one of the first concept buildings has just been revealed. It is a 105 meter high building, dubbed the "Solar City Tower", that is self-sustaining. It has a large solar power plant that generates power during the day, and uses excess power to pump seawater to the top and produce power at night. The killer feature is that the front of this tower is a waterfall, spewing some of the pumped water out, and looking awesome. There is even a bungee platform located on floor 90.5 of this concept.

Inhabitant

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5 Minutes of Interesting: Toyota Acceleration Hype

2010-03-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

All the news about Toyota's cars accelerating out of control has blown a small problem way out of proportion, only a handfull of cases have actually been reported where a toyota has accelerated out of control with the driver not being able to stop it. However the media scare has people thinking that all Toyota's are deathtraps and the company is not doing a thing about it. However Toyota is working on solutions but the problem is they do not exactly know what the problem is other than the gas peddle getting stuck. Also, with the hype there has been at least one hoax; the runaway prius that was brought to a stop by cops has been a shady story, as it turns out the driver was gassing it and only applying light brake pressure. He may have done this to attempt to sue Toyota and get a large sum of money since he was $700,000 in debt.

Autoblog

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5 Minutes of Interesting: The McLaren MP4-12C

2010-03-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

McLaren MP4-12C, The new car from McLaren Automotive will begin production next year. The car is blindingly fast with a 0-60 time of "less than 3 seconds" and a 0-124 time of "less than 10 seconds" While it may seem that speed is the emphasis on the car handling is what the car is made for. Fully loaded the car only weighs 2800 pounds, which along with a F1 suspension makes the car handle like a dream.

Jalopnik

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5 Minutes of Interesting: Twitter Turns 4

2010-03-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

On March 21, Twitter turned 4 years old! On March 21, 2006, Co-founder Jack Dorsey sent out his first tweet, which read "Just setting up my Twttr". When the service began is was called 'twttr', instead of today's familar 'Twitter'. Last month Twitter hit 50 million tweets per day, and also hit its one billionth Tweet, which came from a private account.

Mashable

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5 Minutes of Interesting: February 13, 2010

2010-02-13T20:05:00.004-05:00

Google is going to be launching an experimental fiber optic network in an as-yet unannounced part of the country in March. They are going to serve at least 50,000 people, and up to 500,000 people with internet at competitive pricing and speeds of about 1 gigabit.
Google

Google launched "Buzz" earlier this week, its entry into the social media sphere. Buzz acts like a merger of Facebook and Twitter, allowing for both short-form discussion, as well as layered comments and multimedia postings. The service can also aggregate your activity on other sites, such as Twitter or Flickr, and create automatic postings in Buzz, acting sort of like FriendFeed.
Mashable

Google announced on February 11th that they had aquired Aardvark, a social search startup. Aardvark is based off an algorithm that directs questions to people who might be able to answer them; questions that might be difficult to find the answer to (such as specific issues with software) or preference questions work well in this format.
Aardvark

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5 Minutes of Interesting: January 30, 2010

2010-01-30T16:39:00.001-05:00

Gizmodo has compiled a complete "what you need to know" post about the Apple iPad, here's what I think you need to know. The iPad is a multi-touch tablet, featuring a screen that measures 9.7" diagonally, and weighs 1.5 pounds. The device runs a slightly modified version of the iPhone Operating System, denoted as 3.2 in the settings, while current iPhones still run 3.1.2. In just under 60 days 3 models will be available, a 16gb model, a 32, and a 64. The price for a 16gb is only $499. In 3 months you can purchase a 3G equipped version, either unlocked or with a $30 a month plan from AT&T. It's worth noting that you can cancel the plan at any time, at no penalty.
Gizmodo

Adam Frucci at Gizmodo wrote an article detailing the things he considers failures about the Apple iPad. Among the list is his distaste for the big bezel around the screen, no multi-tasking, no cameras, no Adobe Flash support, and much more. This article spawned a ton of similar pieces, and explains the opinion of most of the internets iPad malcontents.
Gizmodo

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5 Minutes of Interesting: January 28, 2010

2010-01-28T19:50:00.001-05:00

Microsoft annouced today a revenue of $19.02 Billion for the second quarter, which saw the launch of Windows 7. To date over 60 million copies of the operating system have been sold, making it the fastest selling Windows since the OS was introduced. Speculated reasons for this include strong word of mouth, and businesses who opted to skip Windows Vista in 2006.
Microsoft

A study conducted at the University of Montreal found that Caucasians and Asians don't examine faces in the same way. Two experiments were done, in which the the participants eyes were tracked as they were asked to examine faces for familiarity and emotion. Participants of both races excelled at recognizing people of their own race, but had similar trouble identifying people of the opposite race. In the second experiment however, Asians had trouble picking up on negative emotions. The research found that when examining faces, caucasians focus on a mouth and eyes triangle, while asians focus on the nose. The mouth is an integral part of how humans convey emotions, possibly the reason behind Asian's trouble in recognizing negative emotions.
Science Daily

Do liberals and conservatives have IQ differences?
American

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5 Minutes of Interesting: January 23, 2010

2010-01-23T23:10:00.002-05:00

Facebook revoked a user's vanity username yesterday- citing that it was "in clear violation" of their policies regarding impersonating people or companies. The problem with this? The username revoked was "facebook.com/harman", and the user's name? Harman. In addition to this, the Harman got a message earlier that day from an employee of "Harman International", offering various incentives for Harman to give up his username. At this point it appeared clear that Facebook's actions had been influenced by Harman International. That was yesterday. As of now, Facebook is going to restore the username to Harman, crediting TechCrunch for bringing the story to light.
Pre-Apology Story via TechCrunch
Post-Apology Story via TechCrunch

Earlier this week Youtube began offering 5 independent films for rent, and word is that they are in talks with a number of studios to begin providing movie rentals through the video sharing site. While it isn't clear what the plan would be with major studios, it looks like they are planning to set up a system for independent filmmakers where they set the price, and Youtube takes a portion of the earnings.
Mashable

An informal text input speed test done by Dan Nosowitz at Gizmodo produced some interesting results. The tested input tools were a full size macbook keyboard, an iphone, a pen and paper, a Palm treo with hardware keyboard, an Apple Newton, and a Palm Graffiti. In inputting the same 221 word passage, the unsurprising fastest input tool was the full size macbook keyboard. After that however, things get a little interesting: The iPhone keyboard is second place, at about 40% slower than the keyboard, 3rd place was the Palm Treo keyboard, coming close behind, and close behind that was a pen and paper- now taking twice as long as the keyboard. 5th place is the Apple Newton, taking nearly 3 times as long as the keyboard to input text, and in last, taking a full 4 times as long was the Palm Graffiti.
Gizmodo

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5 Minutes: January 19, 2010

2010-01-19T12:59:00.003-05:00

Show 1. As explained, 5 Minutes of Interesting is going to be a short, to the point show, delivering 2-4 news stories, and light commentary. Today's show features just myself, but I intend to have 2 people most of the time. Here are today's stories.

McDonald's is now offering free WiFi at 11,500 of its 14,000 locations within the United States. This makes McDonald's one of the largest free Wifi providers in the nation; the company claiming that 16% of the Wireless Hotspots in the nation are McDonalds.
Engadget

President Obama finally tweeted for the very first time, just this afternoon. He and the first lady were visiting the Red Cross's Disaster Operations center, and the president tweeted through the Red Cross's account- "Pushing the Button" as explained by someone working for the Red Cross. The president admitted to the workers at the center that he had never tweeted before, which seems odd considering the role that social media played in the 2008 election.
Mashable

Apple has announced their next event, saying "Come and see our latest creation". Invitations went out earlier today for an event on the 27th of January, and the event will be held in San Francisco. As Gizmodo points out, Apple's events often are named in such a way that they give away a little about what's going to be going on at the event. For instance, the "It's only Rock n' Roll" event from last Fall dealt entirely with iTunes and iPods, while their "Something's in the air" event saw the revealing of the Macbook Air. If this trend is present here perhaps this event will see the revealing of the much discussed Apple tablet, possibly named the "iSlate".
Gizmodo

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