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Feed Engadget: Intelligent coasters create new wave of drinking games (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Household

Believe it or not, engineering minds have figured out a way to gadgetize even coasters, but Sentilla's Smart Drink Coasters hope to be the zaniest yet. Designed using vanilla glass coasters from Michael's (an arts and crafts store), one of Sentilla's diminutive pervasive computers, a handful of LEDs and a few other ingredients, these units can not only blink in different ways depending on how full / empty one's beverage is, but they can be used to create a whole new world of drinking games. Reportedly, the gizmos can be programmed to understand when a drink is on it and when a refill is needed, theoretically enabling a bartender or server to be alerted of one's drink status without even going over to check. Additionally, a set of coasters can be used to replicate a memory game much like "Simon," which could undoubtedly create a room full of laughs in the right circumstances. Granted, this all works under the assumption that you'll actually slam your container down on (i.e. not just nearby) the intelligent coaster, but if you think you're that coordinated, hit the read link for a full description and a video demonstration.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Who Are the Heavy Clickers? 3

Submitted by
Reservoir Hill
Reservoir Hill writes: "While focusing on clicks makes a lot of sense in search advertising, since the audience has already been highly qualified by their search term and is "hand-raising" — announcing their interest in a particular product or service or activity — what about banner ads on Web pages where the audience is not in an active search-and-buy mode? Dave Morgan has an interesting post on his blog about research done analyzing behavioral and click data to determine who clicks on banner ads, and whether they are different than the Web population in general. Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks. Who are these "heavy clickers"? They are predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. They are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers. Morgan makes the point that focusing banner ad campaigns to optimize on clicks means skewing campaigns to optimize on middle-aged women from the Midwest."
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Submission + - $100 Billiion 'Fix' For Global Warming Discredited (scienceblog.com) 4

Submitted by
slowboy
slowboy writes: "Science Blog reports that a $100 billion fix for global warming may not work. The discredited 'fix' is the fertilization of potentially millions of tons of iron or other nutrients into the ocean to promote an algae bloom. If this was to work then the algae would start sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce the effects of a major greenhouse gas. But guess what, that may just not work, regardless of how it would disrupt the ocean's ecosystem. It seems that the carbon may not get pumped into the deeper ocean, it may just lie near the surface and get taken back up into the atmosphere. Fortunately we are finding this out now, and not after $100 billion of you're, mine and others tax money went to the scheme."

Comment Re:My school's network sucks :/ (Score 1) 306

by Kwami (#20803497) Attached to: Halo 3 Causing Network Issues
Actually, I know of at least one school that DOES block everything but HTTP. Well, sort of. They actually block every port except for port 80. Even then, some protocols are blocked (like AIM). I've had quite the adventure these past eight weeks trying to get around the limitations. Fortunately, some awesome people started up http://www.meebo.com/ for my IM needs, and Gentoo includes emerge-webrsync as an alternative to emerge --sync. Still, it's terribly annoying. If my home university did the same, I'd seriously consider moving off-campus. Students pay a large sum of money to live in the dorms and apartments provided by the University (~$6k/year). Part of that money goes toward funding the Internet connection. At the moment, the only type of traffic that they throttle is streaming video. That's enough. I don't need my games throttled, too.

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